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'Nuttiest' wrestler in history?


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Surely Jun Kasai, no?

 

Anyone doubting it needs to watch this :

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvYPT9W4aM

Yeah, i'd agree with that. He's been at that crazy shit since about the days of the famous Honma/Yamakawa matches which must be about 12 years ago now. Even before the Monkeyboy gimmick he was off his nut, and he would do any kind of disgusting stunt, whether it involved sharp stuff, fire, or falling from heights - he just didn't give a fuck. If it was likely to cause hideous amounts of pain and make viewers wince, he was good for it.

 

The saddest thing is, he was actually one of the few who were actually good. He had no need to do all that to himself - he was a good wrestler, had a fun gimmick, and was pretty charismatic. He could have had a perfectly decent career as a straight/comedy wrestler on the Japanese indies (and probably made as much money) without subjecting himself to all that shit on such a regular basis for so long.

 

To be honest, i suspect he (and others of his ilk) must have some kind of mental illness. A high pain threshold is one thing, but he was just fucking deranged.

 

The strange thing is though I enjoy watching Kasai to see what hes going to do next and just how far hes going to go. Its wrong I know but he's one of the few deathmatch wrestlers who I'll actually go out of my way to watch.

 

I havent seen a lot of his early stuff, did he ever do just straight wrestling matches? I have seen enough of him where even now you can tell he could have been quite good with having to resort to the crazy antics he gets up to in almost every match or as you say he could have been a pretty good comedy wrestler.

 

I agree with you on the point that some of these guys have to have something wrong with them. Even at times Ive questioned Mick Foley and Terry Funk's mental state with some of the stuff they've done but with the likes of Kasai etc there cant be a question there HAS to be something wrong with them.

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Surely Jun Kasai, no?

 

Anyone doubting it needs to watch this :

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkvYPT9W4aM

Yeah, i'd agree with that. He's been at that crazy shit since about the days of the famous Honma/Yamakawa matches which must be about 12 years ago now. Even before the Monkeyboy gimmick he was off his nut, and he would do any kind of disgusting stunt, whether it involved sharp stuff, fire, or falling from heights - he just didn't give a fuck. If it was likely to cause hideous amounts of pain and make viewers wince, he was good for it.

 

The saddest thing is, he was actually one of the few who were actually good. He had no need to do all that to himself - he was a good wrestler, had a fun gimmick, and was pretty charismatic. He could have had a perfectly decent career as a straight/comedy wrestler on the Japanese indies (and probably made as much money) without subjecting himself to all that shit on such a regular basis for so long.

 

To be honest, i suspect he (and others of his ilk) must have some kind of mental illness. A high pain threshold is one thing, but he was just fucking deranged.

 

The strange thing is though I enjoy watching Kasai to see what hes going to do next and just how far hes going to go. Its wrong I know but he's one of the few deathmatch wrestlers who I'll actually go out of my way to watch.

 

I havent seen a lot of his early stuff, did he ever do just straight wrestling matches? I have seen enough of him where even now you can tell he could have been quite good with having to resort to the crazy antics he gets up to in almost every match or as you say he could have been a pretty good comedy wrestler.

 

I agree with you on the point that some of these guys have to have something wrong with them. Even at times Ive questioned Mick Foley and Terry Funk's mental state with some of the stuff they've done but with the likes of Kasai etc there cant be a question there HAS to be something wrong with them.

Yeah, it could be pretty compelling to see what piece of torture his sick mind would devise next, but it's not really what you want to see in wrestling, especially when it seems like it's just for the sake of it. Take that barefoot thumbtack match he had with Mr Danger for example (i think they created that?)....... trust that lunatic Kasai to decide to take away any protection his usual attire would afford him to wrestle in only a pair of trunks, and then think up spots like the Undertaker ropewalk on barbed wire ropes amongst others.

 

I haven't saw much of him in 98/99 when he was just breaking through, but i think he was often working straight tag matches against guys like The Winger, Mens Teioh etc. But by the time those backyarders from CZW arrived in 2000, he had become psychotic. I always remember a tag match i saw with those CZW turkeys (well, via a music video anyway, iirc it was set to Disturbed - "the Game" if anyone else remembers). It was one of those outdoor shows, and some of the stuff he was doing even as midmatch spots was just ridiculous, for example; not content to just get thrown off the roof of an artic trailer, through a table onto the concrete about 20 feet below, Kasai would get gorilla-press slammed on it to give him an extra 7 feet of a fall!

 

I quite enjoyed BJPW from around '01-'03- the CZW clowns were less prominent, although they had brought in similar shit like Pondo and '2-Tough Tony' from some other US indy i presume. And Van Hammer! Anyways, there's a lot of good matches with Kasai v guys like Yamakawa, Kanemura etc, (in both BJPW and FMW) and Kamikaze. They do mostly involve garbage, but there's some decent stuff in them to tell you he was a handy little worker. I also remember a comedy match v Mens Teioh dressed as a giant pink bunny, but that was shit! Kasai also hosted most TV blocks that i had from that period, he was a charismatic little nutjob.

 

I definitely agree about Terry Funk. The guy was a legend with a 30 year legit history. I can't figure why he had to go down the road he did from 95 onwards. His reputation and history alone would have assured him regular bookings for the rest of his career. Ok, it made him a cult-hero among a generation who would probably be otherwise ignorant to him, but is that really worth destroying your body and aging about 30 years in a decade for??

 

Just before Funk became a big thing in ECW he worked WCW for a spell in 1994, and his work as the 'middle aged and crazy madman' was fantastic, but it was reasonably safe. He did do a moonsault once or twice, but the violence and punishemnt was a whole lot more worked than it ended up being in Japan and ECW in upcoming years. I just never understood it at all. I'm no expert on Terry Funks career and probably haven't saw anything of him when he was in his prime, but gimme his '89 NWA work (like his feud and I-quit match with Fair) and the '94 run i mentioned above (including a fun match with Tully Blanchard) before his crazy ECW, FMW, and even WWE stuff anyday.

 

Foley certainly had a few screws loose too, but in hindsight, you can kinda see that it was a gamble which paid off because he would never have got to the main event scene without it. If it was his dream to main event Wrestlemania or whatever, he had to do that kind of shit to make him stand out.

 

With Foley, it's not even so much the high profile bumps like at Hell In A Cell that i find myself watching in disbelief, it's the hundreds of disgusting bumps and falls he regularly took which weren't well remembered and didn't make the highlight reels - whether it was an elbow drop from the 2nd turnbuckle to the concrete, flying backwards off the apron onto the guardrail, his crazy bumps into the ringsteps etc etc. it;s just hard to believe that he never broke his back or completely shattered his pelvis. So yeah, definitely not wired up quite like the rest of us, but in the bigger picture the OTT craziness at least did serve a purpose with Foley. What a lucky bastard he's been in that he's avoided more serious injury though.

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Abdullah Kobayashi getting kenzan spikes hammered into [and subsequently yanked out of] his skull.

 

****GENUINELY NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH****

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3BDLUkMGhg

What....the fuck?

 

Even I was wincing when they were trying to get the second one out. I thought his scalp was going to give way and tear.

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Seeing as how Japanese deathmatch wrestling seems exempt from criticism, or atleast exempt from automatic dismissal

 

It's not. Idiotic spastics are idiotic spastics regardless of nationality. It's certainly not "rasslin" anyway, so I'm surprised you like it Richie, seeing as you've said before that it's Wrestling on the marquee and that's, that bring crisp ringwork, what it's about for you. I hope one of these fellas well and truly brain themselves, as they obviously have no respect for their wellbeing, so why should I? Hope he dies.

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