Susumu Yokosuka

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[InYourCase]

Yokosuka has had a career of a ton of very good matches and a handful of great matches. His match with Shingo from DG:UK is my favorite Dragon System match ever. It tops anything Toryumon, Dragon Gate proper, DGUSA, T2P, etc. ever produced. It's the fucking best. He's succeeded in singles, tags, and trios matches. He has a slim shot of cracking my Top 50. When he turns it on, he's incredible. I'll watch him in six-man tag after six-man tag on Dragon Gate Infinity's and then he turns it on and shows everyone that he's one of the best wrestlers in the world. Awesome big match worker. Love the guy to death.

[W2BTD]

Without the slightest bit of hyperbole, he's one of the most underrated wrestlers ever. He doesn't even get the proper amount of hype among people who closely follow the style. When put in a position to deliver, he never fails. A real pro's pro who does everything right and never leaves you flat with a sub par effort. The issue with him, like with just about everybody in DG, is the cycle booking that makes you forget he exists for months at a time. That leads to a relative lack of super high level classic matches, and that's something I weigh very heavily. He'll be hard to rate in that respect, almost like a William Regal, because i'll almost surely think he;s a better wrestler than people I have ahead of him, but he just won't have the match resume to justify being higher.

[soup23]

Case or Joe, can you build a mini playlist of 5 or so matches from him that would exemplify his strengths? He is one of the DG guys where I don't know for sure whether he would or would not have a shot at my list.

[Alan4L]

Case or Joe, can you build a mini playlist of 5 or so matches from him that would exemplify his strengths? He is one of the DG guys where I don't know for sure whether he would or would not have a shot at my list.

 

was alerted to this request, and first off delighted to see Susumu nominated (and Minoru Tanaka too, so I'll dip into that thread also). The problem with pimping the DG guy to new people is that most of their stuff exists on people's hard drives and not on youtube/dailymotion. Pretty much everything has surfaced online over the years but very little of it has stuck since GAORA decided they didn't want their stuff online. With that said, I found a couple of Susumu goodies worth sharing:

 

vs. Flamita (a proper pro's performance making the young flyer look like a million bucks)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnMYPMIVKlw

 

the first match in the 3 match series against Shingo on British soil. Really this match cemented DG-UK as a thing:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2qhqzf_shingo-vs-susumu-yokosuka-dragon-gate-uk-2009_sport

 

vs. CIMA

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x65q3s_cima-vs-susumu-yokosuka_sport

 

vs. Shingo for the title in Japan (Susumu sells his ribs like crazy IIRC)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ze8j_shingo-takagi-c-vs-susumu-yokosuka_news

[El McKell]

A pillar of consistency for years and years, unlike a lot of the old school Dragon Gate boys he shines more in singles than the multi mans where he can fade into the background. Alan's post above is a good selection of recommendations but we could and should add the 2017-11-03 match against Mochizuki which hadn't happened yet at the time of the last post in this thread

[WingedEagle]

Over 20 years of consistent excellence with MOTYCs sprinkled throughout the run.  No idea where he'd rank but I can't imagine any way he doesn't make my list.