Takashi Sugiura

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[W2BTD]

Love this guy. Figured he'd be retired, brain damaged, or both by now, but actually added to his resume significantly this year as one half of the excellent Dangan Yankees tag team. He's a love him or hate him kind of wrestler.

[Childs]

Yeah, I can't stand him. He'd be in the bottom 5-10 of all the nominated wrestlers for me. He epitomizes the modern puro star who's so desperate to look tough that he always does five things when he could do three. Just total numbing overkill. The sad thing is he actually is a tough bastard by all accounts.

[GOTNW]

I love Sugiura. Most of it is because of his willingness to stiff the shit out of people. He isn't exactly the most consistent worker in the world and watching him exchange elbows with a random loser in a six man in front of fifty people can be tedious. But when he's on he's awesome. And he'll be on as long as he has someone worthwhile to work with. He has great chemistry with a variety of opponents and works well to play to their strenghts, whether they be Marufuji, KENTA, Takayama or Kotoge. Great tag team worker and counter wrestler. Gets the "legit toughness" bonus points. And his punches are fucking amazing and that is of utmost importance.

[Jimmy Redman]

Sugiura I generally put in the "too much" pile. But I will say, the thing about the overkill style is that there's always that one time where the overkill works and the result is something bombastic and awesome and thrilling.

 

I feel that way about Sugiura vs Go Shiozaki from 2010. I have no idea why but for some reason all of the million head drops worked for me there in a vacuum, and I loved it. Wonder if anyone else likes that match as much as I do.

 

Still, getting one special match for every 100 matches of bullshit isn't something that puts him on a list like this.

[Jmare007]

Can someone do a list of 10 or so matches from Sugi since 2016? I've only seen a handful (with the one were he kills himself against Nakajima from 18' being the most memorable one).

I've always liked him a lot and was one of the sole reasons I kept watching NOAH for a couple of years. Does he rely too much on excess? sure, but he's still fun to watch, specially because he has no reward for his well being and ends up having matches that are insane. I'll revisit him for sure and would like more current stuff too as I completely threw NOAH out of my watching habits a long ass time ago.

[Boss Rock]

I'll see if I can put together a top 10 of his recent work. I dip in and out of NOAH frequently, but I think he's been very good the past few years (2018 especially). He almost strikes me as a late bloomer. Like he had potential and good matches earlier in his career, but it took him a little while to put it all together.

[Clayton Jones]

I think he was absolutely a late bloomer. The pair of Kenoh GHC matches are some of my favorite puro matches since 2016. He's an interesting candidate, he basically put NOAH back on the map for me, but his tendency to excess can burn me out on him. Likely to make my ballot but a big question mark as to where.

[GOTNW]

1 hour ago, Boss Rock said:

I'll see if I can put together a top 10 of his recent work. I dip in and out of NOAH frequently, but I think he's been very good the past few years (2018 especially). He almost strikes me as a late bloomer. Like he had potential and good matches earlier in his career, but it took him a little while to put it all together.

Sugiura as a later bloomer is only true in as much as he had his debut when he was nearly 31. From what I recall he's a solid-good worker pretty much from the get-go, and started developing himself as a main event talent from 2007, culminating in a great 2009 (which coincided with his championship push). If you think the work he's put on in the last 5-6 years is as good as what he was doing from about 2007-2013, you have a much different perspective than me (and this is without going into his junior run at all, which had plenty of praised matches). I will say I have really enjoyed some recent tags he has had with Sakuraba, but to me it feels as that's more of a case of a tag setting being way better at keeping the current NOAH style from falling apart than anything Sugiura has done himself. In a singles setting, he's pretty much been doing what he was 10 years ago, just with less fire and creativity. But what he was doing 10 years ago was great.

[Quentin]

Yeah I’m with GOTNW here. I’ve liked Sugiura for a long time, really enjoyed his junior run and stuff he’s done as far back as the 2001 Otsuka match and is great and feels ready to be a top guy by the time his heavyweight push comes. He’s been largely good, maybe a tad inconsistent over the past 6 year but still is game to have a match that will make MOTY list like the 2017 Nakajima match or the Go match from last year. In total we have a guy who may not have the highest highs like KENTA, Kobashi, Akiyama, that may lead you to a match being all time great but when you look in totality, this is probably the best wrestler in NOAH history and that does matter to me when compiling a list like this. 

[Clayton Jones]

To expand I meant late bloomer in the sense that it took until around 2009 for him to put it all together, but with the late start that's totally logical.

[Boss Rock]

That's where I was coming from too. He has matches from the mid to late 2000's that I like but his output from at least the 2015 Suzuki match-onwwards is what I've enjoyed the most. 

[Reel]

Here's the stuff I've liked from Sugiura since 2016:

 

Go Shiozaki  v Takashi Sugiura    NOAH: Great Voyage in Osaka    5/28/2016  

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Takashi Sugiura First Navigation 7/1/2017

Takashi Sugiura  vs  Go Shiozaki    NOAH: Kawasaki Festival    8/18/2018

Go Shiozaki/Kaito Kiomiya  vs  Kenoh/Takashi Sugiura    NOAH: Global Tag League    4/11/2018

Takashi Sugiura  vs  Atsushi Kotoge  vs  NOAH: Great Voyage in Niigata    4/29/2018         

Takashi Sugiura  vs  Naomichi Marufuji    NOAH: Navigation with Breeze    5/29/2018       

Takashi Sugiura/KAZMA SAKAMOTO  vs  Kenoh/Kaito Kiyomiya    NOAH: Global Tag League    4/17/2019      

Go Shiozaki/Katsuhisa Nakajima/Atsushi Kotoge  vs  Naomichi Marufuji/Akitoshi Saito/Takeshi Sugiura    NOAH: Navigation for the Future    2/1/2019         

Go Shiozaki   vs  Takashi Sugiura    NOAH: The Best Final Chronicle    12/6/2020   

Katsuhiko Nakajima  vs  Takashi Sugiura    NOAH: N-1 Victory    9/23/2020     

Masa Kitamiya/Katsuhiko Nakajima  vs  Kazushi Sakuraba/Takasi Sugiura    NOAH: Great Voyage in Yokohama    3/7/2021

 

I can't say that I'm the biggest Sugiura guy, but he's been one of the few consistently good wrestlers in NOAH over that time. That being said, I'd have him firmly below Go and Nakajima during that period as a whole, and recently I'd have Kiyomiya over him too. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

[Boss Rock]

The 9/19/2015 match with Suzuki is probably the best I've seen of him. And as long as the 12/6/2020 match with Go was, it was still really great.

[Jmare007]

Thanks for the recommendations!