Keita Yano

[Grimmas]

Ma Stump Puller:

It had to happen at some point!

Insanely innovative with his unique blend of IIave/shoot-style, Keita Yano has pushed the envelope of what constitutes a wrestling match for about a decade+ at this point. He's had NWA-style 60 minute features, battles in garages and local gyms, fought on playmats for an audience of a couple dozen at best, wrestled every single major Japanese indie name you can probably list off using Google and then some, in doing so got the attention of even legends like Tenryu who have made him mainstays of his promotion to this very day.

What really gets the guy over is not just his sheer versatility; it's his ability to make any format of match seem impressive quality-wise. Even when he has to do more sanitized conventional "epic" main event outings he clearly proves that being in a actual wrestling ring doesn't hurt his quality one bit. It's the truly weird stuff that really consolidates his GWE case though, and it really helps that even with all of my extensive footage watching of the guy I still don't think everything's been covered yet.

Vs Fujita Hayato (Battlarts 06.08.2008)

Vs GENTARO (Apache Pro 04.17.2009)

Vs Fugo Fugo Yumeji (EXIT 11.28.2010)

Vs Taro Yamada (Wallabee Pro 6.14.2012)

Vs Manabu Hara (Wallabee Pro 07.28.2013)

Vs Iori Sugawara (Taiheiyo Pro 02.16.2014)

Vs 326 (Taihieiyo Pro 11.30.2014)

Vs Taro Yamada (Kani KING 01.25.2015)

Vs Hideaki Sumi (Wallabee Pro 11.29.2015)

Vs Great Zako (Unemployment 10.21.2018)

Hikaru Sato trilogy (Tenryu Project 13/08/2021/09.19.2022/11.13.2022) 

[Jetlag]

Good-great undercarder type guy early in his career, who sometimes brought things into BattlARTS that didn't belong, tho he has a lot of stuff from that era that holds up well. But holy fuck when he put on the Joker makeup and became the god of the sleazy technical matches, it has to be the reinvention of the decade. He is doing pretty well in Tenryu Project right now too it seems having to wrestle in a ring is limiting his creativity a little. Amazing resume of matches considering he often fights without a ring, or opposite untrained karate guys and other sleazy phantom figures.