Fugo Fugo Yumeji

[Grimmas]

Jetlag said: 

Okay, hear me out. On the surface he's a Zero1 jobber who rarely made TV. How on earth can he have a case? But really, if you look at his indy career, he has been a great wrestler since at least 1997 (only 1 year in his career), and up to 2018. That's a 21 year span. He's shown up in huge variety of different settings, and is always extremely efficient. And he was a pretty great character in Z1 too, attacking people with crazy headbutts and having a few memorable short TV matches. His technical ability is pretty good and he has a knack for building great matches around a few suplexes and his incredibly violent headbutts, which he uses better than almost everyone. Another interesting thing about him is his project EXIT, a promotion that seems to focus on short, intensely violent matches in a ring that has chains instead of ropes. If anything, he's a guy I always want to check out no matter what kind of match he's in.

Recommended matches:

w Makoto Saito vs. Cosmo*Soldier & Takeshi Sato, WYF 6/10/1997

vs. Katsuhiko Masada, MUGA 4/6/1999

w BUKI vs. Yuki Ishikawa & Johta, EXIT 7/14/2018

[Ma Stump Puller]

He was in a pretty fun comedy match during the Fujiwara/Arakawa nonsense in ZERO-1 and he shows up in some dingy-ass indie matches that look like they take place either in literal basements or random ass bars. That being said, if I wanted "angry guy who works big headbutts with technical work" I'd just go with Tamon Honda instead, namely because I don't need to cover the ends of the Earth to see a good chunk of his work.

Top 100? Very doubtful unless his work is truly THAT good, which I didn't get a big read off his early MUGA matches.

 

[Jetlag]

Someone made a challenge on Twitter about workers who had great matches in 4 decades and I noticed Fugo is part of this small and illustrious circle of elite workers.

FUGO OF THE DECADE:

90s - w Makoto Saito vs. Cosmo Soldier & Takeshi Sato, WYF 6/10/1997

2000s - w Takao Ohmori vs. Manabu Nakanishi & Mitsuhide Hirasawa, Z1 2/17/2008

2010s - w BUKI vs. Yuki Ishikawa & JOHTA, EXIT 7/14/2018

2020s - w Hiroaki Moriya vs.  Tatsuhiko Nakagawa & Hiroyuki Iwahara, FU*CK 1/3/2022

Footage is a bit of an issue, notably he started showing up more in the 2010s as DVD releases of these craptastic indy shows started making their way on our Google Drives. That said more and more has been seeping out, for example Fugo sent a 30 minute match against Keita Yano to his buddy to randomly to put on youtube with no description, and as stuff continues to seep out over the next 3 or 4 years I can see Fugo ending up with a pretty decent spot on my list. You know someone is a special talent when they have a great match on a FU*CK show, for crying out loud.