>>8869498Kawato was a little sloppy as a young lion, but he was absolutely fearless. He hit way above his weight class, moved like greased lightning, had some amazing spots, and was by far the most talented young lion. Tanahashi personally took him under his wing and mentored him pre-excursion and there was a lot of expectations that he was going to be Tana's hand picked successor.
When he came back from CMLL he was a wreck. Like legit a shadow of the man he was before he left. He looked weak, fearful, and just awkward. I was one of those guys in the thread at the time making Wato pics and videos and saying it was all a work and there was no way Wato could have fallen off that bad. I was wrong. Whatever happened to him in CMLL fucked him up so bad on a basic human level that, even now, he is not as good as he was before he went on excursion.
Something really shitty happened to him in Mexico to break him like that.
