Tamon Honda

[6.0] "Probably could have done more for himself if he had applied more and maybe started wrestling more early: unless you have the natural talent of a Tenryu or the body of a Batista, you probably aren't going to get much done in 10 years before hitting a physical downturn. That being said Honda would eventually mature into a great technical wrestler (when he, again, was actually in something major with stakes) and somewhat underrated in his performances even when he cares: the guy could really go when he wanted to and had some freakish strength to boot. For the most part however you have really heatless exchanges or decent to good tag matches, through most of that "good" comes from his tag partners. Decent, but could have done so much more."

[8.0] "Honda started late and was pretty much doomed to be a midcarder from the start in All Japan. In AJ, he was a legit amateur, but wasn? t as big as Gary Albright or as young or promising as Jun Akiyama. Noah thankfully was a different story where he finally got the chance to show what he could do in the main event and had some great tag and singles bouts with Kobashi in 2002/2003. While his career might have been underwhelming, Honda hit his peak in 03 and what a great year it was."

[5.0] "Despite having a lot of promise when he debuted, in part because of his amateur background, Honda never lived up to that promise, or even came close to doing so, and he was perennial midcarder."

[5.0] "Honda's kinduva lazy bastard, ain't he? Guy's got a legit grappling background and clearly can go on the mat... yet he so often does the bare minimum in his matches, only showing his true ability when challenging for titles. I get the idea behind not going 100% every time--and, in fact, agree with the philosophy--but Honda's uninspired performances are so barebones that there's nothing to latch on to. I don't see how anyone could care about Honda if the first match they saw of him was a throwaway tag, as he doesn't bother showing personality or any in-ring flourishes that are worth mention. The guy that challenged Kobashi was basically an entirely different wrestler. So, yeah, talented, but good at hiding it."

[8.0] "Honda is a very unique wrestler to say the least. He's not known for being particularly fast, but he has displayed impressive amounts of strength. He utilises his amateur wrestling background to his advantage, as he is an incredibly technical wrestler and one of the unsung masters of submission wrestling (His Olympic Hell submission finishers come to mind, some of them are absolutely awesome! ). Even though he never won "The big one" in either AJPW or NOAH, he's an excellent challenger and can put on a great main event if he needs to."