When do you think Yusuke will decline?

[dakohosu]

At what age or tournament do you think Yusuke might start to decline, and if so, under what pretense do you think he'll decline? Do you think it'll be due to the constraints of older age, will the course become too difficult for him (I very much doubt this but still), loss of interest, etc.?

[m4tt3r0x]

Only way I see him waning in interest is if he starts a family and doesn't have the same time he used to.
He's such an upper body power house that he'll probably never struggle much on Stage 3 since age is not the main factor. We see someone like Yuuji is just as capable as ever upper body-wise well into his 40s.
Like Nagano said the legs are the first to go, but if Yuuji can still clear Stages 1 and 2 in his early 40s then surely Yusuke can.
His overall power level of course will not be the same at 45 as it was at 30, so I'll bet he'll decline in respect to Kanzenseiha potential relative to his first two wins. That said I can still see him making it to Stage 4 at 45 years old, but at that point he may be outclassed by younger talent who will raise the difficulty curve.
Also worth mentioning since Sasuke 29 he's only failed Stage 1 when the Warped Walls were wet, and the last time he failed Stage 2 he was like 22.

[dakohosu]

Jan 27, 2022 14:34:19 GMT -5 m4tt3r0x said:

Only way I see him waning in interest is if he starts a family and doesn't have the same time he used to.
He's such an upper body power house that he'll probably never struggle much on Stage 3 since age is not the main factor. We see someone like Yuuji is just as capable as ever upper body-wise well into his 40s.
Like Nagano said the legs are the first to go, but if Yuuji can still clear Stages 1 and 2 in his early 40s then surely Yusuke can.
His overall power level of course will not be the same at 45 as it was at 30, so I'll bet he'll decline in respect to Kanzenseiha potential relative to his first two wins. That said I can still see him making it to Stage 4 at 45 years old, but at that point he may be outclassed by younger talent who will raise the difficulty curve.
Also worth mentioning since Sasuke 29 he's only failed Stage 1 when the Warped Walls were wet, and the last time he failed Stage 2 he was like 22.

Agreed with all of these points. I can’t really see him declining anytime soon until he gets to an age where his stamina really starts to suffer (these days we’re talking 45+); even if he starts a family he’s so synonymous with Sasuke that I feel like they’ll just be another motivating factor for him. After all Hioki mentioned that his family’s support was part of the reason he started doing well (he didn’t have any children during his rocky first few attempts).

As you mentioned I think another factor is how far the new, younger talent 10 or so years down the line can raise the bar to a point that Yusuke may no longer be able to keep up when he’s 40 or so. I can’t see this happening any earlier than 10+ years from now due to how adaptable he is to any new obstacle that comes his way. With Nagano we had Yuuji coming out of nowhere and stealing the show while Nagano was getting older and losing interest so he couldn’t keep up with the pace at which the course was changing; this could potentially happen down the line with Yusuke if an unknown absolutely dominates the course but a few things to bear in mind; Nagano never trained on obstacle replicas and relied on pure athleticism which obviously suffers much more as you get older, whereas Yusuke will just build a replica of anything that takes him out. Also, I can’t really see how anyone could blow Yusuke out of the water in terms of especially ability on Stage 3. He’s so far ahead of the pack that I can’t see anyone surpassing him in the near future.

I also do wonder how badly a couple of freak fails might affect Yusuke’s future performances. The two times he’s failed Stage 1 in recent years has been due to the weather so those are sort of write offs, but if he fails the Fish Bone or another early obstacle, I wonder if he runs the risk of entering into some sort of drought. After all, Ryo at one point was thought of as the best competitor out there, then he failed Stage 1 and did so again four further times. Nagano basically just gave up after failing Stage 1 three times in a row from 24-26, and Yuuji nearly retired after a couple of bad runs. Both were champions that at one point no one could’ve envisioned them failing Stage 1 consecutively.

One last thing to consider is whether the producers will specifically try and take Yusuke out like they did with Yuuji and Ryo for Sasuke 31, but he’s so well rounded that it’s almost impossible to do so without creating another Sasuke 19 situation, and besides Sasuke 39 was the best time to do this and they just didn’t. They just made the course slightly harder across the board but definitely nothing earth shattering that’ll stop him in his tracks. If he wins a third time then maybe they’ll bite the bullet and target his weaknesses, but again idk what that would consist of.

[m4tt3r0x]

Good point. It's gonna be hard to find someone who can match Yusuke's ability on Stage 3. Not only is he strong as hell but his precision on the cliffhanger jumps is unparalleled.

[dakohosu]

Jan 27, 2022 15:40:30 GMT -5 m4tt3r0x said:

Good point. It's gonna be hard to find someone who can match Yusuke's ability on Stage 3. Not only is he strong as hell but his precision on the cliffhanger jumps is unparalleled.

Yeah exactly.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but a part of me hopes that someone else will come out of nowhere and dominate within the next few years, because otherwise we’re just going to have 10-15 years of Yusuke being Last Man Standing or winning in every subsequent tournament. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in awe of Yusuke’s unparalleled all-roundedness, but one can only be impressed by him dominating so many times before it becomes a bit monotonous. I already feel like it’s got to that point with him winning in 38 being the most predictable Kanzen by far.

Some people said the same about Nagano but I feel like this is more of a thing because 1) by the time Yuuji came about Nagano was already in his late 30s, Yusuke’s just turned 30 so he’s realistically still got more than a decade to dominate and 2) the difference between Yusuke and the rest of the field is way wider than with Nagano who always had Bunpei close by performance wise.

I’m hoping Yoshiyuki and Tada up their game as well to make things a bit less predictable in the future, as well as Inui maybe letting some of those insanely strong unknowns on YouTube who can do Cliffhanger jumps for days actually compete for once?