MIKAMI

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

Jetlag said:

"he looks really good in early DDT. Great combination of a shootstyle grappler, an innovative junior, and a surprisingly stiff worker. He formed a great team with Toba. His 1999 singles match against Takashi Sasaki is kind of the beginning and end of Japan indy singles. I've checked out some recent work of his and he still looks like a good worker. I want to watch more of him but from ca. 1998 - 2002 I'd say he was great."

[Jom]

MIKAMI's a big personal favorite of mine, my favorite discovery to come out of diving into DDT a few years back. If you took the athleticism of early 00s AJ Styles, the suicidal tendencies of Sabu, and the presentation of Jeff Hardy, you'd end up with MIKAMI. He's a total freak car crash worker with such a high level of coolness and such a great brain for match structure that he's able to control the chaos and consistently put together fantastic matches. His work in the 2000s is definitely his peak, as he got to work as DDT's ace alongside Takagi while making big appearances in other companies like NOAH and ZERO1. Going into the 2010s, MIKAMI started to noticeably slow down, a combination of general aging and the consequences of working such a self-destructive style, but he still found time every year to put in at least one psychopathic performance, alongside lots of his tamer but still super fun midcard work. Nowadays, he's done a great job of adapting to his continuing athletic decline, still able to pull out some awesome stuff but playing it smarter. I'd argue he's probably done the best job of adapting to age in comparison to a lot of his junior peers from his time. I've attached a list of recommendations for MIKAMI below (bolded matches are the highest recs)..