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Kensuke Sasaki


Grimmas

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Takayama vs. Sasaki 8/3/02 - great battle of the big men, better one in 2004, works off of this

Takayama vs. Sasaki 8/8/04

Sasaki vs. Kawada 4/4/01 - not my favorite, but there's lots of good stuff here

Sasaki/Morishima/Nakajima vs. Tenryu/Ogawa/Kotaro Suzuki - not the greatest match you will ever see, but a different setting and a different Sasaki

 

As for negatives:

anything involving both Kobashi and Sasaki, I hope you like chops....a lot

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Hase-Sasaki team is a big positive for him as well. I think Hase carried the team in some ways, but that sounds more negative than I mean it. I don't really have any idea how good Sasaki got in the 2000s, but in the 1990s, he wasn't bad. He was really good at following the lead of a superior opponent and having good matches. I think it's interesting that in the '92 G-1 Climax, he had a better match with Rude than Hashimoto did.

 

Other matches I'd recommend checking out:

 

Hase/Sasaki team:

Kensuke Sasaki & Hiroshi Hase vs Keiji Muto & Masa Chono (11/01/90)

Kensuke Sasaki & Hiroshi Hase vs Rick & Scott Steiner (03/21/91)

Kensuke Sasaki & Hiroshi Hase vs Keiji Muto & Masa Chono (07/04/91)

Kensuke Sasaki & Hiroshi Hase vs Riki Choshu & Shinya Hashimoto (10/21/92)

 

Singles matches:

Kensuke Sasaki vs Hiroshi Hase (06/26/92)

Kensuke Sasaki vs Shinya Hashimoto (01/04/95)

 

Other matches:

Kensuke Sasaki & Tatsumi Fujinami vs Hiroshi Hase & Shinya Hashimoto (07/31/92)

Kensuke Sasaki & Jushin Liger vs Ricky Steamboat & Shane Douglas (12/29/92)

 

I kinda feel like anything with him as Power Warrior should be avoided, but anyone weighing him fairly should check out at least one match. The quintessential Hellraisers match is probably:

 

Hellraisers vs Rick & Scott Steiner (01/04/93)

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  • 9 months later...
  • 7 months later...

Interesting how a guy who had a very revered 10/15 year run which ended only two years ago has almost no comments. Wonder if that displays his overhype or the PWO bubble. I used to kind of shit on him not for his work (I only thought he wasn't as great as some claimed) but for not putting young guys over and being so focused on getting himself and his strenght over. I know a lot more both about his career and pro wrestling now so I have mellowed down on him as well. He will place well on my list, probably somewhere in the middle.

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Interesting how a guy who had a very revered 10/15 year run which ended only two years ago has almost no comments. Wonder if that displays his overhype or the PWO bubble. I used to kind of shit on him not for his work (I only thought he wasn't as great as some claimed) but for not putting young guys over and being so focused on getting himself and his strenght over. I know a lot more both about his career and pro wrestling now so I have mellowed down on him as well. He will place well on my list, probably somewhere in the middle.

Little bit of both, imo. He did his best work in the 2000s and 2000s Puro isn't exactly PWO friendly, but for whatever reason, and the glory days of NOAH are still in that awkward, recent/vintage phase.

 

I love the guy and right now he's floating in my Top 40. The tag run with Hase has helped a lot because I thought he was great in a lot of those matches. I'm also a huge fan of his feud with Kobashi, which probably helps. I don't think a lot of people on here would enjoy those chop-fests, but I loved them. The singles match in the Dome, the tag match in NOAH with Go and Nakajima, and then their Diamond Ring tag in 2006 with Nakajima and Tenryu. His 2004 G1 run is lots of fun, also.

 

Longevity is on his side, more so than peak, but even then he has the 8/8/04 Takayama match, the singles match with Kobashi, and the 11/1/90 tag with Hase vs. Mutoh & Chono.

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and the glory days of NOAH are still in that awkward, recent/vintage phase.

He didn't become a NOAH regular until 2008 though. The two Kobashi matches in 2005 may have been all he'd done beforehand.

 

His 90s run was solid but that's not where his case lies.

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Sasaki was always someone I liked more than the hardcore fan mainstream in the 90's, but it kind of makes me laugh to see him thought of as being underrated by this site. I'm not even saying that's wrong necessarily, but when I was growing up watching Japanese wrestling it would have been considered the ravings of a lunatic to even consider Sasaki seriously for a list like this. I understand that for many people the 00's are a big plus for him, and I would consider them a plus as well. Still the swing on how Sasaki is viewed by the hardest of hardcore Japanese wrestling fans is pretty dramatic.

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  • 1 month later...

Today I watched Tanahashi & Nakamura vs. Sasaki & Minoru Suzuki from 12/04 to take a look at younger Tana & Nak, and always find something fun in a Suzuki outing. Well, I was absolutely blown away by this. Tanahashi was laid out early and having his knee iced outside like a Kobashi tribute, while Nakamura spent the bulk of the match playing face in peril getting absolutely destroyed, with Sasaki in particular looking like a brutal powerhouse. Great stretch run with the crowd completely behind the young babyfaces, which was all the more impressive given this was in a real low point in New Japan's history. Terrific near falls along with spots building upon work from the early portions of the match led to really fun finish.

 

Not sure why this wasn't nominated on Ditch's best of the 2000s project, as it felt like a legit high-end candidate. Big feather in Sasaki's cap as well as Nak's, as I'd never seen him play such a sympathetic babyface.

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  • 5 years later...

I was watching some Wahoo McDaniel recently, and while the comparisons to Hashimoto and Choshu that have been made have grounds, the one worker whom came to my mind was Kensuke Sasaki. Now, that might not sound as flattering, but coming from me, it's not all that bad either.

Just looking at this thread, no one actually makes a proper case for Sasaki, and compared to 2006, he fell something like 70 spots on the final rankings. I have never considered myself Kensuke Sasaki fanboy #1, but I've always revered him for his working capability and he has only grown in my eyes as my taste has developed.

The Kensuke Sasaki I'm talking about is the 21th century one (starting with 2000). This is a case making post: if you familiarize yourself with him and enjoy it, know you're gonna see a different worker in the 90s. Maybe you'll like that one too, but that's irrelevant for now.

Firstly, just philosophically. I love who Kensuke Sasaki is. I love how he projects himself. I love that he cleary either puts thought into making himself look a certain way or just has a fragile ego. He's the type of wrestler who will kick out at 1, who will win a test of strength against a dude who's a head taller than him, who won't just job to anyone or let anyone just get their shit in and work long control segments on him.

Essentially, Kensuke Sasaki is the antithesis to the new school of japanese wrestling where dudes don't care about anything. They don't care about hierarchy, they don't care about winning (or more importantly: not losing), they don't care about seducing a high profile female wrestler when a joint show forces them into the same hotel, they don't care enough to leave their home promotion for leverage.

This is how you get to modern japanese wrestling, where the only difference I see between IDK, Goto vs Karl Anderson and Okabayashi vs Sekimoto is the latter is at least following the Choshu tradition in terms of offence, but the structure is the same. Strike, strike, strike. Body language and selling is replaced with the „I pooped my pants“ face. Strike, strike. Run the ropes, get countered, move on.

Not with Kensuke. This is a dude who will go on a control segment for 5 minutes just because they're making him do a job, and he wants you to remember he looked strong. He doesn't possess your standard run of the mill jwres move-set either: he'll club your neck, throw a Seoi-Nage, one arm Powerbomb you to hell.

Anyway. The matches. I remember doing this for Shinjiro Ohtani, where I wanted to deconstruct the myth of him not having a good output in the 2000s. With the 2000s being Kensuke Sasaki's prime, it's only natural I make a list for it too, though there's no point in it being as comprehensive. It's a mix of personal favourites (whom I do consider great) and canon, I don't think they'll be hard to distinguish:

vs Tenryu-NJPW 4.1.2000.

vs Kawada-NJPW 9.10.2000.

vs Kawada-NJPW 4.1.2001.

vs Hashimoto-NJPW 9.4.2001. (If you like the sound of Hash and Sasaki working a proto-Futen match, you're in luck)

vs Fujita-NJPW 8.10.2001.

vs Naoya Ogawa-NJPW 4.1.2002.

vs Nagata-NJPW 7.6.2002.

vs Takayama-NJPW 3.8.2002.

vs Bob Sapp-NJPW 28.3.2004. (I'm not kidding, this rules)

vs Takayama-NJPW 8.8.2004.

vs Tenryu-NJPW 15.8.2004.

vs Kobashi-NOAH 18.7.2005.

vs Ohtani-ZERO-1 7.8.2005.

w/Nakajima vs Kobashi & Shiozaki-NOAH 5.11.2005.

w/Nakajima vs Akiyama & Kikuchi-NOAH 4.12.2005.

vs Murakami-BML 22.3.2006.

w/Murakami vs Fujiwara & Minoru Suzuki-BML 19.4.2006.

vs Minoru Suzuki-AJPW 28.6.2007. (This will alienate some folks. It's long, has a prolonged headlock control segment and a bunch of limbwork which may be sold in a way that won't satisfy some. However-I love it, and it is absolutely authentic Kensuke Sasaki)

vs Toshiaki Kawada-AJPW 18.10.2007.

vs Morishima-NOAH 6.9.2008.

vs Akiyama-NOAH 10.4.2010.

vs Sugiura-NOAH 23.7.2011.

w/Akiyama vs Takayama & Omori-All Together 27.8.2011. (Kensuke spends the entire match treating Omori like he's only there because they needed a fall guy. Guess how it ends?)

vs KENTA-NOAH 8.11.2011. (I wish this was still online. KENTA had just debuted his GAME OVER submission around this time, and it was treated as an instant killshot. They worked a very smart match built around KENTA trying to lure and trap Sasaki into it with Sasaki using his strength and size to escape the predicaments he'd find himself in.)

vs Sugiura-NOAH 14.11.2011.

w/Miyahara vs Takayama & Maybach Taniguchi-NOAH 4.11.2012. (This isn't some legendary match, but the context makes it incredibly amusing. Around this time Taniguchi had made the transition from Shuhei to Maybach, motivated by KENTA's Rick Ross fandom. He had started to get a push as monster-type wrestler. Naturally Kensuke's reaction to that was to oblitare Taniguchi and not let him get a single move in during this brief bout, as it ended with the Kensuke Office team winning after a DQ as Taniguchi hit Sasaki and Miyahara with a bunch of chairshots. This both works in the context of the match [getting his ass beat motivated Taniguchi to get DQed] and in the context of the Kensuke Sasaki mentality [the sheer fact he had to sell during the post-match means he had to compensate for it by not giving Taniguchi anything])

vs Nakajima-Diamond Ring 11.2.2014. (this is his retirement match, and really, a perfect showcase of the Kensuke Sasaki mentality. He puts over his protege, Katsuhiko Nakajima, in a match in which he takes basically the entire match and just relentlessly beats the shit out of him-like, I'm used to Kensuke dominating, but he really makes a point here; and then Nakajima just kinda hits a couple of moves and goes over.)

 

Obviously this isn't everything, among others off the top of my head I can remember him having several good in bouts in his AJPW run (some in the Champion Carnival for sure) and a million high-profile tags in late 2000s/early 2010s, but if you're interested you can do some digging of your own.

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  • 1 year later...

Yeah no the Bob Sapp match Sasaki has is probably one of my favourite low-key showings I've seen when I was interested in Sapp's stuff. The belt-hung lariat spot single-handily makes it one of the crazier displays he's had, including the fact he actually, like, sells and bumps great for Sapp to boot. He'd probably get on a top 100 just for that. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

To me, Sasaki has always felt like a Top 200 pick rather than a Top 100 one. His output is good without being great and inputs-wise, he is solid but unremarkable. 

He is in a bunch of stuff I like (the Kobashi match of course, the Hase match from 6/1992, his feud vs. Nagata 2002-2004, the Tenryu 2000 Dome match, the 2/2006 Kensuke Office Tag) but other material has left me cold (not a fan of the Kawada feud, the Fujita match from 2001 ended up being a bunch of nothing)

I still have some matches to check out from the list above (the Bob Sapp match sounds unique and fun) but he might be the epitome of the wrestler who is always involved in one way or another but never stands out.

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