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Post by Cap on Jul 18, 2019 15:19:55 GMT -5
My personal favorite shoot style wrestler, able to translate the style with more traditional wrestlers better than anyone. His match with Backlund is an all timer. His matches with Vader constitute one of my favorite rivalries ever and those aren't even his best matches.
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Post by elliott on Jul 20, 2019 16:28:20 GMT -5
Takada is a polarizing wrestler for sure. The best matches of his career are awesome, but he had some absolutely terrible matches too. For every Takada vs Backlund or Vader there's a Takada vs Cobra or Muto match that really sucks. I might include him on a top 100 list, but it would a bottom 10 sort of situation because I really love his best stuff like the Backlund match, the Hashimoto match, the Fujiwara matches, the 88 Maeda match Vader series for example. But he was so inconsistent. He wasn't a particularly good mat worker, which is kind of important in shoot style. He's not actually the best or most interesting guy in many of his best matches which is kinda problematic.  Just for shoot style workers, Id have Takada behind Fujiwara, Tamura, Han, Kohsaka, Maeda, Yamamoto, Naoki Sano, Mariko Yoshida, Yuki Ishikawa, Daisuke Ikeda, Alexander Otsuka, & Carl Greco. Takada's outside the top 10 looking in with guys like Anjoh & Funaki. |
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Post by Cap on Jul 21, 2019 8:51:57 GMT -5
So I would put it this way. I don't think Takada is the best, but he is my favorite in how much I enjoy his best work. I tend to think in terms of peaks anyway, but especially in the context of this project I'm not giving a ton of thought these days to his worst work or complete views of careers. I mean if I were making a GWE list he would fall behind quite a few of those guys, but he would still be on my list and probably in the top 4-6 shoot wrestlers.
That said, I think he often is the most interesting guy in some of his best matches. I think his ability meet Vader and Backlund half way and giving them great shoot matches is some high level work. Of course Vader and Backlund aren't goobers or anything, but Takada is really the guy that shines in both matches. I think he is pretty close to Fujiwara in their all-timer and as interesting or more in the match with Maeda. He isn't quite as animated as his opponents often, but his pacing and timing are great. I also really like when strikes are mixed in a little more and his timing and strikes in his best matches are the things that put those matches over the top.
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Post by elliott on Jul 23, 2019 16:19:54 GMT -5
For me Backlund is the hero of the Backlund match. His quirky selling & charisma really standout in this setting and his style fits really well. He was a really good amateur wrestler & great technical pro wrestler so he was able to fit in on the mat really well. Takada's grappling is by far the weakest/least interesting part of his game so I tend to give Backlund the credit for the mat work being fun in this match. Agree on Takada's strikes & timing being great. Those are definitely two of his strong points in general. Backlund's selling of the strikes is awesome. Like he's surprised the first few times Takada kicks him & only then realized "hey, this isn't just some regular pro-wrestling match." The longer the match goes & more he gets hit, the more Backlund escalates the stiffness of his strikes until he's eventually throwing those huge elbow strikes.
Backlund in that match is such a breath of fresh air with all the super serious UWF2.0 matches from 88 before Fujiwara came back in 89.
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Post by Cap on Jul 23, 2019 21:00:57 GMT -5
I 100% agree that Backlund's selling is incredible and might actually be my favorite part of the match, but that is because it is so over the top and tells such a vivid story in a short period of time. That said, I am just not as down on Takada's grappling. I mean he isn't as flashy and technical as the best shoot workers at the time and he certainly isn't as fluid as Backlund here, but at the same time I think he is a fantastic base for the style. He is good at selling and transitioning with people for their offense (which is really underrated skill). That shines ever more in the Vader matches. Vader is a big bruiser, but he is out of his element on the ground and Takada's style covered up a lot of blemishes in that regard. Tamura did fine with Vader on the ground, but he only really went after that knee bar like crazy a couple times.
Takada may not be the more "interesting" person in a lot of his best matches, but to me what he does well really is what helps those guys shine (particularly Vader and Backlund) and its his timing and striking that take other matches with more traditional shoot wrestlers (Fujiwara and Maeda for example) to the next level.
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Post by elliott on Sept 12, 2019 3:34:57 GMT -5
Watched some Takada today. Specifically the 3 Vader matches and the two Muto matches. I thought the 93 & 95 Vader matches are good main event pro-wrestling matches. They're different from each other but both good. 93 is more cautious and 95 is more out of control. Vader is great in the 93 match but it felt like Takada wasn't sure what to do with him. They do some of the same spots of slowly working Takada into the corner that Vader would do with Tamura, but they aren't as breathtaking. I wouldn't point to either match as top tier matches for either Takada or Vader. The 1994 Vader match was by far the best of that series and an all time great match. Vader looked more comfortable after spending a year working with UWFi guys and was more willing to be like "fuck it, i'm just gonna powerbomb this bitch." It is probably both guy's career performance.
The Muto matches are bad matches with both guys laying an egg. Its Takada at his worst (mat work Takada) but 10/95 especially feels like Muto just completely choking under the weight of the pressure. Its one of the oddest performances ever. The 96 match was more of a traditionally bad match that is just boring to watch.
I plan on watching the two matches with Tenryu as well.
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Post by KB8 on Sept 12, 2019 15:04:17 GMT -5
The Tenryu matches are fun as hell and he's totally fine - probably even good, but it's been a while - in them. They're spectacles where there's lots of milking of spots and both guys getting to play up their charisma, which is really my favourite setting for Takada.
He's a guy I really don't like very much in general and isn't even close to being a favourite of mine in his style, but he has some absolute crackers on his resume where he's more than holding up his end of things (though there's that one Fujiwara bout that was pretty much all Fujiwara being Fujiwara). There's almost nobody who has a greater discrepancy in my eyes between their best and worst performances. Those Koshinaka matches? Absolutely no chance I'm going back to those ever again even if you pay me. The Hase and Hashimoto matches? Two of my favourites ever and I could watch the latter every other day.
I also prefer him in a pro style setting. I don't think he's a particularly compelling mat worker at the best of times and when he couldn't be arsed he'd bore me to tears. It's not that I don't think he has any good shoot style bouts- he does - but I've always found that being able to play up the pro stylings was good for him.
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Post by elliott on Sept 12, 2019 16:38:36 GMT -5
I'd agree with literally all of this except I liked one of those Koshinaka matches ok.
That Takada is at his best in more spectacle driven pro-style matches like the Hash & Vader matches made those Muto matches all the more frustrating.
His best stuff is amazing: the Fujiwara matches, 11/88 vs Maeda, Backlund, 94 Vader, & Hash. But I agree that the gap between that stuff and even the average Takada match is pretty astonishing. He actually reminds me a lot of Muto in this way so its kinda perfect that they shit the bed together twice in the literal biggest matches in Japanese wrestling history.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 3, 2020 23:52:15 GMT -5
My favourite Backlund and Vader matches are against Takada. If it wasn't for a certain Mr CHOSHUUU then he'd be in my favourite Hashimoto match too. However, he's not a guy that leaps from the screen like Han, Tamura or Fujiwara.
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Post by Cap on Aug 4, 2020 14:18:45 GMT -5
After diving into shoot a lot more over the last year and sort of settling in a bit I would modify my original post about Takada. He is still one of my favorites, but that is completely carried by his high end matches and his ability to be bridge pro and shoot wrestling. The falloff between those elite matches and everything else is substantial though and getting a chance to settling into shoot and my own tastes has made a lot of guys jump him.
Maybe he was sort of a rosetta stone for me in a way. I see him as not just a shoot style guy who fits well with pro style wrestlers, but I also think of him as a shoot style guy with a lot of pro style tendencies (and limitations to work around) that add some pro dynamics to all his high end matches. I liked Tamura v Han the first time I watched it, but I think Takada v Vader (all 3) and Takada v Fujiwara especially helped me transition into the style.
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Post by mjp7798 on Dec 20, 2023 7:11:46 GMT -5
The variance between his high-end stuff and his worst stuff is huge. Fujiwara 10/25/90 and the Backlund match are two of my favorite matches and the Vader feud is phenomenal but then has stuff like the Trevor Berbick s**tshow
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