>>10307747I'm not as much of a crazy Mutoh mark as some of the guys in this thread (particularly the unhinged Inoki-ist dude) but I will say that I disagree with you.
Mutoh had a unique dynamism to his movements. Everything he did had his own little stamp of uniqueness to it, from the sole butt to even his style of movement -- he would move really slow and then snap to his feet quickly and do a bottom dropkick. Shit like that is TIGHT as fuck and is pure Mutoh, nobody else does it like that. Mutoh understands the personality is important in wrestling and he, like Chono and Hashimoto, was great at injecting his own personality into his style in the ring. I think this is something that very few guys in wrestling, Japanese wrestling in particular, pull off but when Mutoh did a move, it was unmistakably Mutoh. It never looked like some guy just doing a vanilla moonsault or some shit, it always looked particular to him.
Now, you're saying that he is far from one of the first guys you should look into if you're getting into Japanese wrestling and honestly, I disagree. Mutoh is just as important as Inoki or Misawa or any other huge influencer on puro itself, and I'd argue that you can't understand the SPECTACLE side of Japanese wrestling without understanding Keiji Mutoh. And I don't just mean entrances, or the Muta character specifically, I mean everything from the way he walked to the weird staccato rhythms of his offense in the ring. Everything seemed a little offbeat, almost like jazz, and that, to me, is why he is absolutely in GOAT contention even without the resume of incredible matches that some others have.
