Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Where do people have him on their working GWE lists or their informal greatness tiers?

I currently have him crazy high (#7). He is sort of hovering between two tiers for me (1-6 and 8-14ish) at the moment. I doubt I'll be the high vote on him, but I'll be one of the higher votes on him.

At the end of the year I had him at 20, which felt right for how much I have I seen right now. This puts him squarely in my second tier. For context, I guess my top 13 or so are people that I feel like I could argue for a top spot. My 14-23 or so are a mix of “undeniable greatness but not in love yet” or “boosting their case becuase I am in love.”

I wasn’t familiar with him at all until I joined sites like this one, there is a lot to catch up on. And it seems like his case rests on versatility, watching in different contexts, and those details that he adds to every single match. Some wrestlers you get a feel for right away and others require that deeper dive before you can fully appreciate them.

He's my #3. I'll C&P below what I wrote about him on PWO a few months ago:


About a year ago I went through nearly all of the '87 Fujiwara we have available. I mentioned it a couple posts back but I'd call him the best wrestler in the world at that point. A year later I've nearly gone through all of the '86 footage we have and I'd say he was the best wrestler in the world then as well. I used to think Fujiwara's absolute peak was '89-'90, but that was based on very little to nearly no memory of the New Japan stuff before it, which I hadn't watched since the DVDVR project way the fuck back in 2009 (which was more of a Greatest Match Ever thing and doesn't always give you the clearest picture of an individual anyway). At this point I'm pretty comfortable in saying that peak started at least as far back as '86, and that peak is about as good as any wrestler's ever. I mean, if someone can say they have a sustained peak of five years with greater quality work relative to the rest of their career then that's pretty impressive. But I guess every wrestler has a peak, you know? Scott Casey and Billy Jack Haynes and Kendo Kashin and Paul Roma and Octagon all had career peaks. I assume. Maybe Someone will deep dive Paul Roma and it'll turn out he had five years where he was clearly working at a higher level than he was for the rest of his career. At this point I can say I'm more peak in the Peak v Longevity debate so maybe peak Paul Roma will be enough to get him on my list. But peak Fujiwara is one of the three best wrestlers in the world for about five years straight, during a stretch that has some exceptional wrestling. And I still might be selling him short on how far back that peak extends.

What I've come to appreciate about Fujiwara over the years, from watching the footage of not only him but the wrestlers he trained, watching the promotion he founded, watching the style he had a hand in driving, is that he almost has a Hansen quality to him. He has this end boss aura that makes every contest feel special, every exchange, every hold or strike or move feel important. That sounds verbose and honestly kind of stupid, but I really believe it. Stan Hansen is someone who was perpetual motion, always moving forward and would only give an opponent what the opponent decided to take, if that opponent was even willing to try. Maybe not against a Baba or Inoki or Funk where there was less of a hierarchal gap, but certainly against someone further down the ladder. Like a Kikuchi, or a young Taue or Kobashi. It meant a lot of his stuff in the 80s kind of bordered on him smothering opponents, but at the same time that needed to happen for him to build the aura that he emanated, which in turn made those moments where someone managed to hang with him feel huge -- or monumental if they actually beat him. It's not EXACTLY the same because I don't really think of Fujiwara as someone who gobbled folk up, but if nothing else he made you earn absolutely everything. There was a moment in the 9/86 5v5 elimination match where he squared off against Kantaro Hoshino, Hoshino clocked him with a straight punch to the temple, Fujiwara went down like a ton of bricks, and because Fujiwara is who Fujiwara is, that moment feels like Hoshino has damn near slain a deity in the mortal realm. I guess when you boil it down it's selling within a hierarchy and knowing when to give and when to take, but that's easier in theory than execution and I think Fujiwara was as good or better at it than anybody there's ever been.

Without going through every post in the thread I can imagine someone has outlined his versatility. It's not even versatility in the sense that he was great at two very different styles of wrestling. That versatility is of course commendable, but I think - and I know how snooty and pretentious this sounds before I even say it - as a character worker he has tonnes of range. There are a few different faces of Fujiwara. One is the elite grappler whose general decorum is befitting of his status, aggressive but fair, tenacious but ultimately sporting. Take something like the 8/87 Maeda bout, for example. Another is the old master who's happy to mess around a bit, who can still enjoy life even past his prime, satisfied with the legacy he's built, secure in his standing. Look at the 3/06 match with Minoru Suzuki for that. Both of those Fujiwaras are great, sometimes for similar reasons, sometimes for different ones. But my favourite Fujiwara is the one who's out to watch the world burn. The Fujiwara who sets it alight in the first place, where decorum goes out the window and victory becomes a secondary concern. The Fujiwara who wants to make Choshu's life a misery, to drag him down to Fujiwara's level, even just for the sport of it. That Fujiwara is a special sort of pro wrestler that captures a sense of total no-fucks-given chaos very few ever have. If I'm listing not just a small handful of wrestlers that I'd want to see above any, but instead a small handful of character-portrayals from a wrestler that I'd want to see above any, then THAT Fujiwara is right up there with jealousy- and paranoia-driven 2005 Eddie Guerrero, angry at the world and everything in it midlife crisis Tenryu, and lunatic Terry Funk running around doing whatever he wants in Puerto Rico because he knows that's the only place he won't get arrested for it.

On a more specific level, the stuff about him being an amazing counter wrestler has been mentioned before. I don't think anybody sells being on the defensive like him, the way he can convey strategy from how he turns his body to deflect or absorb strikes, the way he'll sell partial blows, the way he'll use that defence to make it look like he's drawing an opponent in, ready to strike back at the right moment. That ground has been covered. But has anybody worked a chinlock like Fujiwara? Has anyone SOLD a chinlock like Fujiwara? In the '86 stuff there are lots of amazing chinlocks, which in actual fact are more like sleeper holds or chokes, but in America they'd be called chinlocks. And Fujiwara applies a chinlock like he's trying to choke the life from you and he sells being in one like unconsciousness is but moments away. The drooling, the squashed face, the glazed over eyes - there's nobody better. Nobody tells a story through facial expressions like Fujiwara.

He was top 10 in 2016 and he'll probably be top 5 in 2026. If I were to send in a list right now it would be between him and Funk for my #3. I guess he's fresh enough in the memory, and I watched his amazing 5/86 performance against Kimura recently enough, that Fujiwara would probably just inch it. By 2026 he might even be #1.

So it seems like having him #7 might be fairly common.