Sometimes you tend to hear this conversation at some point:
who is the greatest commentator in pro wrestling history?
Some may say Joey Styles, Jim Ross (personal greatest), Gordon Solie, Gorilla Monsoon, Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay, etc.
All of those options are fair and, in fact in terms of a western lens those are the names we always choose because well, we grew up with those names (well I grew up with Michael Cole, personally.)
However, when you talk to those who are wrestling historians, and even those who are diehard puroresu fans who talk about nothing but puro. The only commentators (just in general.) you're going to hear them mention are either Shinpei Nogami, or in AJPW a name like Akira Fukuzawa, or the English commentators for NJPW like Kevin Kelly, Walker Stewart (who for his age to be able to commentate for a company like NJPW is crazy.) and Chris Charlton.
But there is one name that I feel should be mentioned more and, I'm especially surprised he isn't brought up at all when wrestling historians or diehard puroresu fans talk about commentators or just in general talk about NJPW at one of it's golden eras (the 90s.)
That name is Yoshinari Tsuji.
Born in 1961, he joined TV Asahi in 1983 doing a wide range of TV content before joining NJPW as an announcer in 1988 where there he'd continue to work with NJPW up until the mid 2000s.
Now, you may ask yourself, why do I think he is so underrated?
Well, I want you to look back on this. When you watch any big event or standard TV taping in the 90s and early 2000s, who was the one commentator that called the main events?
When you saw all of the big junior division matches, who was the main commentator who called it?
IT was Tsuji. He's the guy who called everything, all the big moments, the big matches, he's the guy who was there for pretty much the entire big boom period 90s NJPW had.
And even outside of him just being there for the big moments. From researching a bit about him the guy also seemed to know what he was talking about, and he even gave the wrestlers nicknames that stuck (I believe he came up with the nickname for Shinya Hashimoto 'king of destruction' or I've also heard 'destruction emperor.')
As well, his style. When you watch those matches in every match the guy would basically be into the match and you could tell. Even with a language barrier, he still added something extra to the match because when the match got really good, Tsuji would basically have this explosive energy and he'd basically be wild for it. (It sounds weird describing it in text but like let me put it like this: the best commentators act exactly like how the match is acting and if the commentator feels like he's a natural part of the show then he's doing his job really well. Tsuji did that job really really well.)
Basically, I think Tsuji is one of the most underrated wrestling commentators ever and It's a shame really, because the guy was just so good at what he did and I certainly wish I knew Japanese to understand exactly what he was talking about because he was basically the voice of NJPW. Think about the nicknames of pro wrestlers who were in NJPW in the 90s and he probably came up with those nicknames the guy was very very good at what he did and I think he should be talked about more, that's all really lmao.
Also I'm bored and that's why I wrote this but tbh I'm fully expecting someone who knows Japanese or is Japanese to go 'actually we think he sucked and here's why.' But regardless those are my thoughts also him and Masa Saito are to me the Japanese equivalent of JR And Jerry Lawler outside of the whole Lawler being a pervert
by Careless-Butterfly64