Umanosuke Ueda

[Grimmas]

Jom said:

Historically speaking, Ueda is a vital part of Japanese wrestling history as the first major native heel. Sadly, the heavy focus on that fact has sometimes led to his actual in-ring work being overlooked, which I think is a damn shame. Ueda is great!! He's very much of the 70s heel mold, with a high propensity for chokes and nerve holds, but he's also a wonderful brawler and one of the greatest escalators in wrestling history. You can pull up basically any IWE tag involving Ueda, at some point he always gets mad enough that he breaks a bottle over someone's head or stabs them in the face with a turnbuckle. He also gets major points for his return run in the early 90s, where he took part in a few of the most violent matches ever, especially his "Anything Goes Anywhere" match with Ishinriki. Ueda not only created the Japanese heel, he set the bar for it sky high.

w/ Jos LeDuc vs. Mighty Inoue & Rusher Kimura (IWE, 09/09/1979)

vs. Terry Funk (AJPW, 08/02/1983)

vs. Koji Ishinriki (NOW, 12/11/1992)

[Grimmas]

On discord, 

HenryHeadCheese said: 

Umanosuke Ueda / Professor Ito, Mr. Ito
Cool and unique brawler. Greet matches against a variety of opponents and a great jerk.

Animal Hamaguchi & Mighty Inoue vs. Kintaro Oki & Umanosuke Ueda - 2 Out of 3 Falls (IWE, 10/5/79)
https://youtu.be/vm4R7O_HNIQ?si=lbNNZTJxELz0Mbvr
Giant Baba & Bruno Sammartino vs. Tiger Jeet Singh & Umanosuke Ueda (AJPW, 10/9/81)
https://youtu.be/PIbG0ErHVHs?si=6WAm1hk86Ntkw-cc
Genichiro Tenryu vs. Umanosuke Ueda (AJPW, 7/22/82)
https://youtu.be/VVx7EdhVl6U?si=1f97G-sL6tL-hQuD
Giant Baba vs. Umanosuke Ueda (AJPW, 12/7/82)
https://youtu.be/TxiFddC3cQU?si=nJ5QRtacTIm6Ykxn
Genichiro Tenryu vs. Umanosuke Ueda (AJPW, 6/1/84)
https://youtu.be/DF3Chy5pp0U?si=7P8RQH7E7lvH-dBw
Ishinriki vs. Umanosuke Ueda (NOW, 12/11/92)