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The G.O.A.T. 100 #88 | Shingo Takagi
- Peter Edge
- 16 hours ago
- 16 min read
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
Judging wrestlers from different eras is difficult. Judging wrestlers from different companies might actually be harder… How do you look at someone who spent 14 of his 22 years in the business wrestling for a promotion like Dragon Gate? A promotion which – while it did spend time as the No. 2 promotion in Japan – still never hit five figures in attendance. (Is Case Lowe going to order a hit on me because I pointed this out?)
The fact is, Shingo is one of the more important people of his era. In a world where big jumps don't happen often in puroresu these days, Shingo made one, made the landing stick and made NJPW bearable in one of the most dystopian settings in wrestling history.
Back in 2004, Shingo was the first graduate of the Dragon Gate dojo the company set up after their departure from the Toryumon branding that came with Último Dragón. He would win Rookie of the Year in the 2005 Observer Awards.
Starting off as a member of Blood Generation, Shingo was then moved to New Hazard, (one of the newer factions in a group-centric DG company) becoming teammates with BxB Hulk and YAMATO. He won his first title, the Open the Triangle Gate championship, as part of a trio with Hulk and Cyber Kong. But they were forced to vacate the belts after Hulk picked up a jaw injury which would put him on the sidelines.
A year later, Takagi and Kong turned on Hulk to set up a splinter group called Real Hazard along with an assortment of young guns and veterans. This feud with Hulk saw the pair go a full hour on 2008.6.29. The draw meant the match failed to settle the No.1 Contender for Dragon Gate's main championship – the Open the Dream Gate Title held by CIMA at the time. But their rematch was for that title, because CIMA had picked up an injury of his own, to his neck.
Takagi won the title and turned face in the process by showing his opponent Hulk respect and sportsmanship and fighting off the rest of the Real Hazard group when they turned on Takagi. Takagi would switch factions regularly, starting with Typhoon after his divorce from Real Hazard, but then forming a quartet called Kamikaze.
Yamato and Takagi would reunite and team in the annual Summer Adventure Tag League in 2009, winning the 5th edition of the tournament and winning the company’s tag belts (Open the Twin Gate) beating Genki Horiguchi and Ryo Saito. They would hold those belts until December, losing the titles to CIMA and Gamma.
2009 would see Shingo involved in a scandal that caused perceptions of Dragon Gate to go south very quickly. In 1999, CIMA had brought a monkey by the name of Cora for the Toryumon dojo for the young trainees to look after.
As Cora’s life would continue, his living conditions became worse. It was when a blog written by YO-HEY, displaying the point of view of Cora as the terrible things that were inflicted on him by people at the dojo – for the purposes of entertainment – came to light.
Dragon Gate would release a statement apologising for the incidents but denying that they took place and said in said statement that the person that was “responsible for causing all this confusion” had been disciplined for an indefinite amount of time.
These denials came despite photos of the abuse being out in the ether and the backlash got to the point that DG called a press conference with 6 individuals present at the table with their heads shaved as punishment for their actions. Those six being CIMA, KAGETORA, YO-HEY (then known as RYOMA) Naoki Matsushita and President of DG Takashi Okamura and commissioner Toru Kido.
Matsushita was the chief offender and CIMA’s lax of keeping up with providing a safe environment for Cora meant he was punished as well. KAGETORA was proven to have sprayed Cora with a spray that was harmful to the animal and RYOMA was more-or-less punished for getting the company into trouble with the blog he wrote. His suspension lasted a year, which was a euphemism for getting fired.
While Shingo wasn’t featured in the police report that came out, his lack of action and also blogs about Cora’s antics of being distressed including attempts to escape the dojo as if they were comedy meant he was tarnished by the scandal and Takagi would voluntarily shave his head as penance as well.
2010 would be a standout year for Takagi. 5th place in the Most Outstanding Wrestler award in the Observer was supplemented with Top Ten placings in Tag Team of the Year in his Kamikaze team with Yamato. Shingo also had two Top Ten placings in the MOTY award that year which saw Takagi face Bryan Danielson on July 24 in Philadelphia during Danielson’s enforced short break from WWE after his firing from the company after the Justin Roberts incident, with the match finishing 3rd and his match two weeks before against BxB Hulk a place below. The Hulk match was the highlight of a feud that was on many lists for Feud of the Year.
But while Shingo was showing heel tendencies in the summer of 2010, the big twist was that BxB Hulk would actually be the one to turn heel instead. A new heel group had formed called Blood Warriors and their 12-strong unit was overmatching the company. So the top factions in the company, Kamikaze, WORLD-1 and the remnants of Veteran Army came together at the urging of Masaaki Mochizuki’s after he won the Dream Gate.
Everyone was in agreement. Well, almost everyone. BxB Hulk, you see – absolutely fucking hates Shingo Takagi. The feeling was mutual. Nevertheless, Mochy’s persuasive skills forced the rivals into a handshake and an agreement to both join the nascent JUNCTION-THREE and to team at the June Korakuen.
However, when Takagi made his entrance for the main event on the show, Hulk was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly, Hulk emerged from the audience. Well, it was actually Blood Warriors member Naoki Tanizaki in disguise. But the confusion was enough to create an opening for the newest member of Blood Warriors, BxB Hulk to attack Takagi from behind with a steel chair. Hulk’s joining of JIII had been a ruse, and he was now a heel.
The Blood Warriors vs JUNCTION-THREE feud would last the rest of 2011 with the feud-ender happening on February 9th, 2012, with a 14-man elimination tag with the losing team having to disband.
JUNCTION-THREE would lose and honour the stipulation. Takagi and Yamato would form -akatsuki- with Dragon Gate Nex Member Chihiro Tominaga, and the debuting Super Shenlong III.
The 18-month tenure of -akatsuki- was eventful. Takagi and Yamato won the Twin Gate belts twice in this period, making it reigns two and three in their partnership and Shingo won the Dream Gate Title for the second time when he ended CIMA’s 574 day reign in Kobe on 2013.7.21 but a month before, the unthinkable happened – Yamato turned on Takagi.
During a tag-title defence against BxB Hulk and Akira Tozawa, Hulk handed a chair to Yamato, who hit Shingo over the head with it, joining the Hulk / Tozawa helmed group – an offshoot of Blood Warriors called Mad Blankey or MB.
-akatsuki- would disband after losing to MB in a loser must disband match on 2013.8.1. (0-2 for Takagi at this point in losing stable must disband matches.) But Takagi’s new feud with his former tag partner Yamato (and MB by extension) would continue, with Shingo starting up a new squad named Monster Express with Akira Tozawa, Masato Yoshino, Ricochet, Shachihoko Boy and Uhaa Nation, with Tozawa joining Takagi’s stable after being kicked out of MB after the victory over -akatsuki- in August.
Yamato beat Takagi in Shingo’s first defence of the Dream Gate title on 8.23. Takagi would win the Twin Gate belts with Tozawa on 12.22 taking the belts off Yamato and Naruki Doi, a reign that lasted seven months and ended at the hands of Eita and T-Hawk.
On 2015.8.16, Takagi would win the Dream Gate title for a third time, besting Yoshino, his stablemate. Shortly after, he would make the heel turn that had been massively teased four years earlier.
Leading a new group called VerserK, Takagi would hold Dragongate’s main belt for almost a year, minus Jimmy Susumu having the belt for a month before Takagi won it back. A defence against Masaaki Mochizuki got 5 stars from Dave Meltzer and a match against CIMA was also critically acclaimed.
The hot-potato moment of Susumu and Takagi exchanging title wins would see Takagi win the Dream Gate for the fourth time, the first time that someone had won DG’s main title on four occasions. That fourth reign would end on 2016.7.24 at the hands of Yamato for his fourth reign as champion.
Yamato’s previous 12 months had seen Mad Blankey (this sounds like a drug featured in Brass Eye) split and then join VerseK – reuniting with Shingo. Then in May, Yamato was betrayed by Takagi and the rest of VerseK before getting his revenge on his former friend that July night with his Dream Gate win.
The next two years saw Shingo only get two title wins. Both of them would be Triangle Gate title wins with VerseK stablemates (Cyber Kong & T-Hawk for 16 days and Takashi Yoshida & El Lindaman for 128 days) It felt like Shingo was being de-emphasised, having one single challenge for the Dream Gate Title against Yoshino on 2018.7.22.
Just two months later, Shingo would leave Dragon Gate. Officially, it was a “graduation” (as all people leaving the company get the graduation line – if it’s on good terms.)
The de-emphasis of Shingo in the last two years had been for a reason. Takagi had wanted to leave Dragon Gate but after the bitter split between CIMA and Dragon Gate, DG couldn’t afford to lose the best worker in the company in the previous decade and a half …but the will to find new horizons was too strong and Dragon Gate agreed to let Takagi leave.
In the statement, Shingo said he was going freelance. Shingo Takagi would sign and wrestle for NJPW the day after his final match at Dragon Gate.
At King of Pro Wrestling 2018, Los Ingobernables de Japon unveiled a pareja that had been teased beforehand: Takagi coming out in a LIJ mask unmasked to a big pop. (Considering Shingo had been in 11 stables during his 14 year career so far, it was a risk for LIJ in canon – to bring in a guy that had more clubs than Rory McIlroy to his name.) But the newest member of the New Japan roster and the newest LIJ pareja had success in the Jr. Heavyweight division very quickly, with a successful teaming with BUSHI where they got to the finals of the Super Junior Tag League in December, which would be a three-way with Sho & Yoh and El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru as opponent teams, with Sho and Yoh taking the honours.
The team of Takagi and BUSHI would go on to win the Junior Tag Titles at Wrestle Kingdom 13, beating Desperado and Kanemaru. That reign ended in March at the hands of Sho and Yoh. But then the month of May came and it was time for the Best of Super Juniors – the annual Jr. Heavyweight tournament in NJPW.
The 2019 tournament would see the two titans of the division in separate blocks. Shingo was in Block A and Will Ospreay, seen by many as a Top 5 wrestler in the world, was in Block B. On paper, it felt like the tournament was destined to see Takagi – who had yet to be pinned in NJPW – face off with Ospreay in the final.
It was arguably the most-star studded Super Juniors in New Japan history. Before the working relationship between AEW and NJPW came to being, CMLL and ROH were the alliance that opposed WWE. Titan and Dragon Lee from CMLL joined the NJPW regulars. ROH had Marty Scurll, Jonathan Gresham and Bandido represent the now third biggest company in the U.S after Double or Nothing had propelled All Elite Wrestling to the number two spot (and closer to WWE than Ring of Honor have ever been to the Fed.)
Five of his nine matches in Block A would be classed as “notebook” and he went 9 wins in 9 matches in the round-robin stage. Ospreay won his block with a 7-2 record to set up the match that many were hoping for.
The match got the scale breaking *****¾ from Meltzer. The Cagematch rating is 9.63 as of time of publishing, making the Ospreay vs. Takagi BOSJ final one of only 85 to be above 9.50 on the website.
His loss in the final to Ospreay would be the last match Takagi wrestled in the division. Shingo announced after beating Satoshi Kojima at Dominion 6.9 the week after the BOSJ final that he was moving up to Heavyweight. It is something that was a rarity in New Japan. Of the 38 men that have won the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title, only Nobuhiko Takada, Kota Ibushi, Kenny Omega and Prince Devitt had a sustained, successful tenure in the heavyweight ranks of NJPW.
The next 8 months saw Shingo enter his first G1 Climax and go 4-5 but in what was maybe the greatest tournament of all time (with 46 of the 73 matches in the tournament getting 4 stars or more in my notebook of star ratings), every Takagi match in the tournament bar one got ****+ in my book. (That one was against Toru Yano.) Shingo would also become the first person to hold both NEVER titles, winning the Openweight Six-man belts with LIJ teammates, BUSHI and EVIL and the Openweight Singles beating Hirooki Goto.
Then COVID-19 happened.
We all know how the coronavirus pandemic affected us all. It caused the world to stop. I got put on furlough and while the idea of staying in my house and not going to work for 3 months sounded great at first. I was climbing the walls very quickly. Thank god for YouTube, Netflix and wrestling.
Japan dealt with the pandemic very cautiously. Live events in arenas would see capacity limits and fans banned from making noise via their vocal cords. It led to surreal viewings of wrestling events with exciting moments being met only by clapping and it went on until January 2023. The king of this period was Shingo Takagi.
He would during this time give the Openweight Title a hardened USP of being the “big meaty people having bangers title” with matches involving Shingo and Openweight belt never failing to produce anything under 3.75 stars. The 2020 G1 saw four “notebook” matches by Takagi, with a mode average of 4.25 – the joint highest of this G1, tied with Tomohiro Ishii.
His second reign with the Openweight singles belt ended in a loss to Hiroshi Tanahashi at New Beginning in my MOTY of 2021. That match finished 10th in the Voices of Wrestling MOTY poll but it wasn’t the only placing in the Top 10 for Shingo as his series of matches against Will Ospreay resumed, with Takagi challenging for Will’s IWGP Heavyweight Title after Will also successfully promoting to the heavyweight scene had seen him take New Japan’s grandest prize
The match finished 4th in the VOW poll for 2021 and the match got 9.39 on Cagematch with Big Dave giving the match seven stars, making him the only person that thought their May 4th match was better than the BOSJ final in ‘19.
But when Will vacated the title not long after the match, Takagi would face Okada for the IWGP World Title. Shingo would win the title in their Dominion match and while it is a travesty that he never got to hold the beautiful v4 version of the IWGP Heavyweight Title but the “butterfly belt” that looked so much like the WWE Divas Championship instead, Shingo thoroughly deserved the belt because he was making himself the MVP of the “clap crowd era” of New Japan.
That MVP status was born out of the sheer number of great matches he was having that year. Shingo had seven of the Top 20 matches of the year on Cagematch – his matches against Tanahashi, (1.30 and 7.25) Zack Sabre Jr, (9.23 and 11.6) Ishii, (9.18) Cobb (1.5) and the Ospreay match.
Kazuchika Okada got his win back over Shingo and won the title on the first night of the double-header in the Tokyo Dome at Wrestle Kingdom 16 and Shingo wouldn’t get another title shot for New Japan’s top Heavyweight belt until November 4th, 2024.
Instead Shingo ended up being the human form of the idiom “square peg in a round hole” when he got put into the King of Pro Wrestling Division. While the KOPW Title was potential evidence that Gedo got a concussion and suddenly thought he was Vince Russo, Shingo single-handedly made the title somewhat interesting.
In his 365 days as provisional champ (it’s complicated) he wrestled Taichi in a 30-count match and a Last Man Standing Lumberjack match, ELP in a “Who’s Your Daddy” match and Great-O-Khan in a MMA Rules Match… but his most memorable KOPW match was against Aaron Henare.
In a Ultimate Triad match which was a 3 out of 5 Falls Match but you had to get the 3 Falls by getting a pin, submission and keeping your opponent down for 10 seconds, the match would get 5.25 stars from Dave Meltzer in the biggest example of a 5 star+ rating he’s given that has made you go “huh”
I should state that I like Dave Meltzer. He’s a big influence on what I’ve watched historically and a project like this is only around because of Dave Meltzer (and Sergei has just realised why I’m addicted to commas like Whitney Houston was addicted to coke). But Dave’s easy willingness to give out more than 5 stars for a match is something that should be studied by sociologists for centuries to come. Yes, star ratings are the least important of the least important things. But giving out 5 stars+ for wrestling matches is like ordering pineapple on a pizza – just odd behaviour.
The KOPW Title, once Shingo stopped being a part of it after his loss to Taichi in a Takagi-Style Triad Match in which the 3 out of 5 Falls Match could come from either a pin, submission, count-out, KO or Stoppage (so, basically a normal NJPW match that happened to be 3/5 Falls), went to hell.
The following are the matches that took place with the Provisional KOPW Title on the line after Takagi’s reign:
Whiskey Bottle Ladder Match (Bottle of Whiskey suspended from the ceiling
Rural Revitalisation Match ( A 2 Out of 3 Falls Match with fall 1 being a ten-minute most-covers match, (every pinfall attempt results in one point) Fall 2 being a five-minute eel-eating contest, and Fall 3 being a strap match, with competitors joined by a strap and needing to touch all four corners consecutively to win
Ishimori Ring Fit Match (10-minute Ironman Match with competitors having to complete a high intensity circuit training program at the 3, 6 and 9 minute marks of the match)
FIRE RUSSO! 👏👏👏👏👏 FIRE RUSSO! 👏👏👏👏👏
While the KOPW Title would be the incarnation of the decline of Gedo as a booker, Takagi was becoming one of the faces of the expanding coalition of the bigger wrestling companies that are not WWE. Takagi wrestled in the three Forbidden Doors that have taken place in North America (as of publishing). 2022 and 2023 saw Shingo in trios matches with the first seeing him team with Sting and Darby Allin under the name Dudes With Attitude, (adding Shingo to the DWA alumni list along with Paul Orndorff and Junkyard Dog) and with the third Forbidden Door show seeing Shingo and Bryan Danielson facing off in a great match.
(What, you don’t remember the second FD match that Shingo was in? It was him, BUSHI and Hiromu Takahashi against United Empire members Kyle Fletcher, TJ Perkins and Jeff Cobb …according to Wikipedia!) Takagi would also appear at the Anniversary show for Revolution Pro on the first All In Wembley weekend in 2023 and would wrestle Will Ospreay in a match that I was present at… and was only a ****½ star match. Which I admit is an absurd thing to write.
Shingo would then be back in the Openweight Title scene, swapping the title with Tama Tonga in what were the best singles Tama will ever have and HENARE in matches that showcased their chemistry, before losing the title for the fifth and final time at Wrestle Kingdom 19 in a match that was just ****¼ … "just", considering the talents of both men.
Since then, Takagi would settle in the position on the roster as gatekeeper. He has challenged Zack Sabre Jr., Hirooki Goto and Callum Newman for the IWGP Heavyweight Title in each man’s first IWGP Heavyweight reigns. He still had bangers once a month in 2025 and his G1 in 2025 saw Shingo finally having an absolute brilliant match against Takeshita and also show off his incredible chemistry with Sabre Jr. (that made Zack a close second in my list of Shingo’s Wrestling Soulmates list behind Ospreay) and in true Dragon Gate style, his faction LIJ had a complete rebrand after Tetsuya Naito left NJPW and it merged with Bullet Club to become Unbound Company (in the worst naming of a faction since PCB, the trio of Paige, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch.) (Geddit?)
Shingo could have easily ended up fourth on the totem pole in Unbound Co, with Gabe Kidd, David Finlay and Yota Tsuji above him. But the former two being All Elite has made sure that Shingo isn't just relegated to being "another guy" in NJPW, for the time being.
His Callum Newman match at Sakura Genesis rocked – where at 43, he kept up with a guy two decades younger. But it feels like singles glory is further away than ever in New Japan, perhaps even more so after the purchase of New Japan shares by CyberAgent. But he still has a hefty role at the King of Sports.
But I think he should have had a heftier role in the last few years. Yes, the talent pool at NJPW is big and crowded, but after being the Most Valuable Player of the “clap crowd” era, his reward was being in wacky stipulation matches and being sent back to the Openweight Singles Division.
There's a good way of explaining his career by using the title of a song by Wolverhampton’s finest – Beverley Knight. The words: Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda.
He left Dragon Gate island (where it feels like there's a better chance of escaping Alcatraz than Dragon Gate) just before he was in danger of getting stuck there at the age of 36. He was the king of NJPW in almost complete silence and never got a chance to lead the company with fans able to cheer. But he remained one of the best in the world throughout.
Shingo's arrival in New Japan missed the peak of the “Five Star Era” but he was one guy that (despite the flaws in the booking) helped NJPW in the world’s darkest hour when fans needed a distraction
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