Survival Tobita

[Dylan Waco]

Discuss Here.

[elliott]

I'm actually glad somebody nominated him. I love Survival Tobita. He's not making my list but if this was purely "favorites" he'd rank easily.

 

The rematch against Ken the Box where Ken can't climb into the ring because he's a bunch of boxes ranks highly on the list of "greatest things to ever happen in recorded history" wrestling or otherwise.

[Loss]

Who in the world even has these tapes? As someone who has searched for this stuff in recent years, nothing came up at all through the usual sources.

[elliott]

I assume DEAN~ has all the copies. There is a good bit of Tobita on youtube actually.

[Timbo Slice]

Survival Tobita vs. Ken The Box IS professional wrestling.

 

Also:

 

[JRGoldman]

So I nominated him, and I guess I should try and explain why. As my list comes together, I'm realizing that being "objective" when it comes to this is virtually impossible. We don't need to rehash that conversation, but I've thought about this enough where I think everyone's list should in some way reflect who they are as a viewer. Survival Tobita is not someone I can honestly come in here and defend as a great wrestler. That would be disingenuous of me. What I can say is I think Tobita in some way defines an aspect of what makes wrestling great. If someone was to ask me to make a three hour long video of everything that is great about pro wrestling, Tobita would be on there ahead of so many people who have been given consideration in this project. I know in my brain that someone like Randy Orton or John Morrison is a better wrestler than him in the strictest sense of the word, but I would rather watch Tobita a hundred times out of a hundred if given the choice. I think that should count for something.

 

Also, Elliott is right, there is a surprising amount of his stuff on youtube.

[Jetlag]

Survival Tobita has been quite active in the last half a decade. He is now Pro Wrestlings Harmoney Korine and runs those "Unemployment Pro Wrestling" shows which are so seedy and desperate. He a had match against Homeless Jimmy that went over 30 minutes and is a mix of blood, violence, and surreal comedy.

[Ma Stump Puller]

Survival Tobita was #86 on my ballot. There's something to be said about a man who was for his entire career completely unathletic to a level unheard of and couldn't do a single move even remotely well still getting on a top 100, and that's mainly because Tobita for me mastered the postmodern idea of what we consider a deconstruction. He took elements from classic Showa-era wrestling protagonists and he distilled them into their basest of components over and over into where a scrubby fat bloke was fighting some grand fearsome creature of myth in a hotel parking lot in front of at best 100 people. He took what was considered to be the highest of professional sports and made it into the everyman's story, a tale where despite not having legendary fighting abilities or being 7-foot tall Tobita is still able to fight these beasts made of boxes or awfully-applied rubber masks over flimsy fabric. Even though he always loses, it never stifles his motivation to keep wrestling. 

And really, that's part of the charm with Tobita; he's a normal guy in a world of aces, icons, and fighting experts, and, ultimately, that's enough for him. He'll be more than happy to go in a losing effort with Jun Akiyama in a nigh-squash one week in one of his very few flashes of glory and be down in the back of dingy basement gyms the next doing what could be barely distinguished as "wrestling" to a audience of a couple dozen at best. If wrestling is an art form then Tobita is the man who tapes a banana to a wall and challenges you to confront his own work as its own field of art. Is it actually so? Regardless of your own answer, everyone will probably get something else out of it, and ultimately someone who can do that much in a field so homogenised has to be at least praised for the transgression.