Kendo Kashin

[Grimmas]

GOTNW said: "Kashin is just a troll“. „He sucks“. „He was booed at an ROH show in 2004 once“. This is what I learned growing up reading through the archives of the prowres interwebs. Actually watching the footage, you see he has a cool mask and a catchy theme song. Ok, a good start. Then I watched him tap out Masayuki Naruse in half a minute with a Flying Armbar. I like Flying Armbars. I kept watching his stuff, I kept enjoying it, and by the time I saw him carry clueless Yuma Aoyagi to a really fun match I could safely conclude conventional e-wisdom was wrong and Kendo Kashin does in fact rule. He really is a troll though, but it's part of the charm."

[Jetlag]

Very cool wrestler in concept. In reality, he is pretty mediocre or just plain sucks most of the time. I mean, I like the defense of him, but I don't think he's ever been a Top 30 wrestler in his country when Japanese wrestling was worth giving a shit about. Apparently, the name "Kendo Kashin" was given to him in Austria and doesn't mean anything, which I find fitting.

[Makai Club #1]

He was good in those 94 Junior Tag League matches but I can't think of any other time that I thought he was at least a good wrestler. Unremarkable at best. 

[Grimmas]

In highschool when we would backyard wrestle, or just wrestle in the living room while watching the WWF PPVs, I would basically just do armbars as a tribute to Kashin. 

That's the only real comment I have about Kashin.

[Ma Stump Puller]

He has his days where he's just a cool annoying troll that can actually wrestle pretty effectively when he's not hammering that in but he's mostly just kinda there in the background, and his NOAH work is fucking dreadful for the most part if he's not with someone who can work what he does extremely well. Trying to make him a Yano-lite comedy worker when he's got maybe half of the speed and mobility that he does at best is a creative choice that still has me scratching my head. I'd like to do a deep dive of him one day to see if his bright days were more common in his prime through

 

 

[Ma Stump Puller]

I've been currently on that deep-dive and I have a few thoughts thus far:

#1: Kashin is a very sequence-based performer. He doesn't really improvise, he just has a set of things he wants to do and goes through them one by one. His routine might change somewhat based on him adding in a new element or two depending on who he's with, but his general formula stays the same. This makes him consistent in many low-card tags, but also complacent.

#2: Kashin's comedy shtick is actually pretty good....mostly. He knows how to play on certain audience expectations and will do random things and mess with people for the sake of it. This makes him overbearing at points (to the point of being negative because even guys like Akiyama inevitably have to play along somewhat) but he definitely has a charm to how he does things, which I would say to the point that his post-prime career benefits from being a very reliable comedy worker. 

#3: Kashin is NOT a secretly amazing technical wrestler or masterful shoot guy under the comedy and gimmick. He's quite good at working technical sequences and exchanges, as well as having some fantastically unique offence built around that, but his shoot-work is mostly very mediocre to just outright bad (that 30 minute Fujiwara match still haunts my dreams) and I can't say he's ever had a overtly technical match that he has led or has been great. The best I can think of is his series with Tanaka and his gimmick debut against Kazuo Yamazaki or his match with Malenko. His best work comes from being able to work his more varied pro-wrestling work and mixing it with his technical foundations. 

#4: He's a surprisingly good carrier....when he cares, anyway. His work allows him to take control from less experienced peers and he's quite able at hiding limitations or making less than impressive wrestlers look good as he tends to bump good for them. He made El Samurai look somewhat impressive, which is something.

#5: I've never seen a outright shit Kashin match when it was just him and someone else. Matches might be underwhelming or have issues in general, but I can honestly never say (beyond that Fujiwara match but that was WAY out of his depth for a rookie) it was him that made the match worse in quality. Even him carrying a rookie Fujita, he does that pretty damn well and gets him to probably the best exchanges he's had yet. His versatility in range is undeniable, from NJPW Jr sprints to DDT gimmick matches. 

 Would I say top 100 as of now? Not yet, but I can definitely say that if his Jr work continues to be as solid as what I've seen, then a spot is definitely going to be available. He's pretty good when you look past the existing shit-flinging he still gets for the ROH stuff.

 

 

[elliott]

I absolutely love that  Kashin vs Rob Van Dam vs Necro Butcher is a match that happened. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E8k86p9ST0

 

[Ma Stump Puller]

Lol yeah that was a goofy matchup and actually quite common with IGF cards, which generally felt like they were made at random: Stuff like Nakajima vs the Hurricane, Rikishi vs Orlando Jordan, Vader vs Fujinami, etc. This match in particular is perfect for RVD because he just gets to do spots with no consequence, which I'm not complaining about.

1 hour ago, elliott said:

I absolutely love that  Kashin vs Rob Van Dam vs Necro Butcher is a match that happened. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E8k86p9ST0