Togi Makabe

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[BillThompson]

If a guy who regularly throws strikes that miss my a foot or more is your bag, then yeah, sure.

 

All kidding aside, he's barley a decent worker, let alone one of the best of all time. Unconvincing offense, terrible strikes, complete lack of consistency, and often times an outright terrible wrestler, Nope, not a chance.

[GOTNW]

 

If a guy who regularly throws strikes that miss my a foot or more is your bag, then yeah, sure.

Disappointed to see you'll be taking Cena out of your top 100.

 

 

I think Makabe is a very good worker who gets unjustly shit on, mostly for ridiculous reasons and often times by people who don't or barely watch modern New Japan. When I first started paying attention to NewJa heavyweights 2k10 I thought he was solid but I didn't care for him much, mostly because "for a brawler" he didn't work stiff enough. But as I watched more my appreciation for him quickly grew. I don't even think of Makabe as a brawler anymore-he's primarily a shtick worker. His shtick is over, he's got good timing and crowd control and is very good at teasing and building up his finisher. Doubt he'd make my top 100 but I enjoy his formula and find an average Makabe performance a lot more entertaining than an average Tanahashi/Goto/Okada/Nagata/Kojima/whomever performance.

[concrete1992]

The best thing about Makabe is the Spider Suplex. Mostly I'm a mark for the move since I used it regularly as a signature move in Smackdown Vs. Raw. Was a tremendous way to set up high flying moves. Makabe gets it.

[W2BTD]

 

 

If a guy who regularly throws strikes that miss my a foot or more is your bag, then yeah, sure.

Disappointed to see you'll be taking Cena out of your top 100.

 

 

I think Makabe is a very good worker who gets unjustly shit on, mostly for ridiculous reasons and often times by people who don't or barely watch modern New Japan. When I first started paying attention to NewJa heavyweights 2k10 I thought he was solid but I didn't care for him much, mostly because "for a brawler" he didn't work stiff enough. But as I watched more my appreciation for him quickly grew. I don't even think of Makabe as a brawler anymore-he's primarily a shtick worker. His shtick is over, he's got good timing and crowd control and is very good at teasing and building up his finisher. Doubt he'd make my top 100 but I enjoy his formula and find an average Makabe performance a lot more entertaining than an average Tanahashi/Goto/Okada/Nagata/Kojima/whomever performance.

 

 

Makabe has become the trendy guy to pick on recently, especially among striking fetishists. He's not nearly as bad as people would make you believe, but I've never thought he was great, or even good. He's a perfectly average wrestler who can have great matches against great opponents a couple of times per year. He could disappear from NJPW tomorrow and I bet I wouldn't even notice until someone brought it up. Not a guy I would even have under liberal consideration for something like this.

[Quentin Skinner]

No chance of making my list. He's just an average "brawler" who never really interested me, but every now and then he puts on a match I wind up really enjoying.

[InYourCase]

Has a really high peak with the 6/22/13 Okada match. Makabe's best work, one of Okada's best matches. This year has had four matches with Ishii, two of which have been bad. Up until the G1 I was debating with myself on whether or not Ishii was slowing down or if it was Makabe's fault and after seeing Ishii killing it in the G1, I put those lackluster matches on Makabe. No shot at making my list.