Rusher Kimura

[Grimmas]

Reel said: 

I'm mostly nominating Rusher Kimura because he seems like the sort of person who should be nominated and I'm interested in what the general feeling around him is. Obviously, he has a rep as a talker, and that really isn't in GWE purview, per se, but he was the ace of a major promotion and had a big run in New Japan after IWE closed, plus the run as Baba's partner, including the all-time great Old Man tag from 89. 

vs Jumbo Tsuruta - IWE 3/28/1976

with Giant Baba vs Genichiro Tenryu/Jumbo Tsuruta - AJPW 12/8/1984

with Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu - AJPW 11/29/1989

[Jetlag]

I remember him being incredibly dull when I went through all the IWE footage years ago. Really had me tearing my hair out watching badass legends like Vachon face this dullard. Even in his marquee matches like the Jumbo bout he doesn't add much. His old man run also produced about a solid decade of skip material. I know we shouldn't judge that stuff, but other guys like Aoyagi actually managed to add to those matches. He has his moments here and there but then, who doesn't?

[strobogo]

I agree with Jetlag. I was through 1986 or so in the AJPW Archive and I think I saw all of 2 matches with Rusher that weren't either terribly boring or just terrible. 

[Ma Stump Puller]

I love the guy in AJPW undercard 6-man tags with his delayed selling and grumpy uncle vibes but I've seen nothing of his prime work that suggests he's a top 100 recommendation at all. Even at his peak, he was always limited as to what he could and couldn't do and usually needed someone a lot more competent to lead him to a good match. He was a good prototypical brawler type but exactly HOW good he was will never probably be known fully because all of his early nasty cage stuff that got him his rep never made it to tape. Sure, he was a ace, but he wasn't a particularly interesting one.

Frankly, Elgin and Momota have way better track records (especially Elgin, who is deservingly more solid than you think he is from his comedy stuff) to work with, but that's another topic for another day.

 

 

[Robert S]

2 hours ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

Frankly, Elgin and Momota have way better track records (especially Elgin, who is deservingly more solid than you think he is from his comedy stuff) to work with, but that's another topic for another day.

It took me a couple of seconds to realize that you mean Haruka Eigen and not Michael Elgin. When talking about Family Gun members, you probably should also add Mighty Inoue, who in the couple of IWE matches I have seen of his (the ones that made the DVDVR 80ies "Other Japan" set) always looked good.

[Jom]

Big fan of Rusher here, he'll definitely be on my list and has a slight chance of landing in the top 50.

Personally speaking I love all his IWE work, I went on a big project of watching as much IWE footage as I possibly could last year and I think Kimura was easily my favorite coming out of that (Mighty Inoue and Ashura Hara really being his only close competition). He has the 70s bug where some of his matwork can be pretty slow and plodding but it's all technically competent and serves more to build the tension to the inevitable explosion that most big Rusher matches had. He's a strong contender for Japan's best brawler of the 70s, getting into pretty phenomenal spats with guys like Mad Dog Vachon and Ox Baker, and the few times I've seen him have a focused technical affair he's actually been great at that too (see the Strong Kobayashi and Billy Robinson matches).

His post-IWE career is very interesting as well, starting out with the amazing stretch of matches against Inoki (especially their 09/21/83 match) where he really got to show a heel side to his work and be a little more ruthless, before then transitioning to AJPW where he became a long-standing midcard general, never putting in bad performances but usually just putting on fun ones. He still has some standout moments though, like his incredible underdog work in the Kimura/Baba vs. Tenryu/Hansen classic. And then his late career work with Family Gundan is some of the best comedy wrestling ever, even if he's not as good as Eigen or Momota in that regard.

Here's a few random Rusher IWE recs -

Rusher Kimura vs. Blackjack Mulligan (IWE 10/10/1973)

Rusher Kimura vs. Billy Robinson (IWE 06/03/1974)

Rusher Kimura vs. Mighty Inoue (IWE 06/29/1975)

Rusher Kimura vs. Mad Dog Vachon (IWE 03/26/1977)

Rusher Kimura vs. Gypsy Joe (IWE 05/07/1979)

[TheBean]

The more Rusher that I watch, the more I like. Not enough to put him in my top 100 (yet?). I haven't seen his IWE work so thanks for these links. I was having a hard time finding the Gypsy Joe one especially. Definitely going to have to watch more IWE.

[Jom]

11 hours ago, TheBean said:

The more Rusher that I watch, the more I like. Not enough to put him in my top 100 (yet?). I haven't seen his IWE work so thanks for these links. I was having a hard time finding the Gypsy Joe one especially. Definitely going to have to watch more IWE.

No problem, luckily a good bit of his work from that time is just floating around on YouTube (most of the uploads are in Japanese though, so lots of google translate is needed). Gypsy Joe might be his best opponent from that era, and someone uploaded all the Joe matches to YT a few months back. Most of the people I know actually prefer their '76 cage match, which I do think is pretty great, but the '79 one is maybe my favorite IWE match ever. I'd definitely recommend checking out all of his work with Joe though, along with most of his big singles matches with foreigners (especially the Ox Baker matches) and any match where he's put up against Umanosuke Ueda.