(Written by jom)
There have been a number of wrestlers in Japan who have "reinvented" themselves. Guys like Minoru Fujita and Genkai immediately spring to mind, both having gone through different styles of wrestling and morphing their presentations to be almost entirely different from how they started. In this conversation though, there's very few wrestlers who can match up in reinvention abilities to Rikiya Fudo.
Originally debuting under his real name of Yusaku Shimoda, Shimoda first entered wrestling in 1997 for DDT, starting off by himself before being joined by his twin Daisaku only a year later. They would stick to DDT and CAPTURE International until 2000, when the twins transferred to Wrestle Yume Factory. When WYF collapsed only a year later, Daisaku went to BJW while Yusaku was invited to the fledgling ZERO1 with a number of other former WYF wrestlers. Yusaku would stay there for a while, spending his first few years as Kuroge Wagyuta before settling on the name Rikiya Fudo in late 2004. He would stick with ZERO1 for a few more years before going freelance in 2007, mostly working shows for Kazushigumi and MAKEHEN while also still doing sporadic dates for ZERO1. Between then and now he would become an official roster member for both Kacho Fugetsu and LAND'S END, but would only be with both for a relatively short amount of time. Currently, Fudo is still a freelancer, mostly working for CAPTURE International, the same place he wrestled nearly 25 years ago.
Stylistically, Fudo has completely changed since his start. In his early days, he was definitely a hard hitter, but was more of a "strong style" type wrestler than anything. As he spent more time in ZERO1, he became much more of a "beefy" wrestler with hard lariats and bull-like energy, hence his ring name (Kuroge Wagyuta literally means "Japanese Black Beef"). However, his biggest change came towards the end of his time as a ZERO1 roster member, when he put on much more weight and muscle, tried out a singlet, and became what can best be described as "Sleaze Vader". Disgusting Vader hammers, thunderous chops, and tons of maneuvers based around crushing his opponents with his absolute mass. To this day he's still wrestling in this style, feeling like one of currently wrestling's greatest "force of nature" guys.
I've been a massive Fudo fan for years now, and his current career renaissance as one of CAPTURE's top guys has been wonderful to see. Hopefully his insane performances there will get him more opportunities to show the world just how great he is, but for now, at least I'll try to do my part by reviewing as many matches of his as possible.
Reviewed Matches (in Chronological Order):
Yusaku & Daisaku vs. Yuichi Taniguchi & Sanshiro Takagi (DDT 04/04/1999) - B+
Yusaku & Koki Kitahara vs. Daisaku & Tomohiro Ishii (CAPTURE International 05/30/2000) - B
Rikiya Fudo & Hirotaka Yokoi vs. Kazushi Miyamoto & Tomoaki Honma (Kings Road 05/26/2006) - A-
Rikiya Fudo & Daisaku Shimoda vs. Shuji Ishikawa & Keita Yano (WMF 06/28/2008) - A-
Rikiya Fudo & Daisaku Shimoda vs. Masato Shibata & Kotaro Nasu (U-FILE 10/13/2013) - B
Rikiya Fudo vs. Daisuke Kanehira (HEAT-UP! 06/19/2020) - A
Rikiya Fudo vs. Naoya Nomura (CAPTURE International 05/08/2022) - A
No comments:
Post a Comment