The OG of Youth wishes to learn more about the ways of the puroresu?
Here’s a quick breakdown:
Strong Style was the heavyweight style of New Japan in the 80s and 90s. It had a heavy emphasis on shoot-esque slower paced matches, with legit looking strikes and submissions. This style eventually imploded on itself when NJPWs founder/owner, Antonio Inoki, started bringing in legit MMA fighters to bury his own talent. NJPW would take years to recover from that (starting with the rise of
DCAllAfrican
’s boy Hiroshi Tanahashi).
Today, although NJPW still calls themselves strong style, their matches, especially the popular Okada/Omega ones, more closely resemble Kings Road style
Kings Road is the heavyweight style of All Japan in the 80s and 90s and it is the dangerous head dropping style DC was referring to. It started off as an American-like brawl style featuring guys like Terry Funk and Stan Hansen, but when the new generation took over, guys like Misawa/Kawada (same guys in the clip you posted) started adding more impact moves like power bombs and brainbusters. They did their own meta in-ring psychology where throughout the years they would continually escalate the dangerousness of the matches, adding more head drops, finisher kick outs (sound familiar?), and even introduced super finishers like the Burning Hammer.
This **** didnt last forever either though, because guys would keep pushing themselves with the head drops and it would take Misawa's death in the ring in 2009 before people started toning it down.
22stylez
you flying out?
The piledriver @ 6:40
