Umanosuke Ueda

[10.0] "I've no interest in writing some qualified, begrudging acknowledgement of Ueda like the other reviewer here, I think he was a spectacular wrestler. His appeal was not in the superficial, like using chairs, it was in the uncooperative aura that he projected. Everything he did felt boorish and outrageous, and a great source of tension in his matches was the period of time where the crowd are just waiting for him to fully explode. He made it look as if he despised anyone he fought against, and so anyone fighting back against him, especially someone like Inoki, would be fired up and fighting for their life. So he is a 10. I reject the idea that he was a primitive first step into heel wrestling which has since evolved past him. I think he was a perfect heel wrestler and someone wrestling exactly like him nowadays would be successful artistically if not commercially."

[6.0] "While I'm not the biggest fan of a lot of Ueda's in-ring work that I've seen, he was about more than that, and I have to respect what the man accomplished in his career. As the trope codifier of the Japanese heel working in Japan (though he wasn't the first - that would be Chati Yokouchi, whom Ueda allegedly modeled his character after), Ueda was a pioneer who struck out in a far different direction from the (note that this is me going from written accounts, as I've never seen tape surface of his early work) technically gifted but bone-dry performer that he originally was. He became a character so effective that people ranging from Goro Tsurumi to Mr. Gannosuke to Toru Yano to EVIL have been cribbing from him ever since. It's a real shame that the accident happened, because with a low-impact style he could've continued to make a living on the Japanese indie circuit as a nostalgic heel character for another decade had he wanted to. Umanosuke Ueda was hardly one of puroresu's greats, but it arguably would've become more limited had it not had his template to follow for a native heel character."