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Post by hashtagswag on Oct 10, 2017 15:00:21 GMT -5
I dont recall mentioning moravsky lol .joe is the only guy who matches drew in anw that much is true ..but im talking about sasuke here .. drew is in his prime is better than morimoto ,nagano and yuuji imo .. its an unpopular opinion as drew is yet to reach the final stage let alone win it all .im just going with gut feel here . I also feel drew had the greatest ninja run ever on anw usa vs the world stage 3 .i felt that it was during that run that we saw the man in his true prime .
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Post by Philip on Oct 10, 2017 17:52:36 GMT -5
Yusuke won when he was 23, and Nagano when he was 34. Yusuke only 25 and is nowhere near STARTING his prime, so I can't comment on that.
Because of that, I chose Nagano. Dude was so ahead of his time. It's pretty amazing watching some of his runs from over a decade ago. He moved like Drew pretty much.
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Post by jba392 on Oct 10, 2017 22:46:23 GMT -5
May get hate but its fine...my pick is on mountain dew drew ..theres not a single other competitor as gifted as him ..hes the only guy that can speedblitz a course and also hang 10 with the rock climbers and cliffhanger guys if not best them .. hes a few tourneys away from a total victory .. had he taken on the earlier version of the course he would of made it seem like childs play . Youve got to keep in mind he also trains for anw so its harder for him to focus on sasuke type of obstacles .the 2 shows have a different sort of design so it demands different sort of training . As nagano said ...he feels as if drew is toying with the obstacles .if drew ever focused soley on sasuke and the ucch vertical limit combo then we have a freaky competitor on hand . Uhm.. Drew was in Sasuke for years now.. so he did take on an easier version of it (M9 days)... just correcting you there.. and Joe has the record in ANW so not sure where you are going with this. He clearly means that Drew doesn't focus solely on Sasuke, which definitely makes a difference. ANW is a lot more endurance and big swings/laches which is what he spends most of his time training. If he spent more effort training the UCCH-VLK (which are the only Sasuke obstacles to take him out besides in 27), his results could possibly be even better than they are now. He only competed once in the M9 days and it's pretty well regarded that Drew post-injury is a different monster than pre-injury. If Drew now could take 27, he'd almost certainly win, which is the point hashtagswag is making. I don't really know what you're talking about with Joe.
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Post by hashtagswag on Oct 11, 2017 8:03:46 GMT -5
Exactly my point mate ..im glad theres someone else here who got my point ..look i love nagano and yuuji etc but ive got to be brutally honest ..theres no ninja past or present that moves through a course like drew .im not saying the guy is perfect because he has slipped up a few times ,but hes the closest to perfect we have ever seen . I somehow feel if nagano himself would put money on drew to be the next to clear ..just abit more grip endurane training and a slight drop in weight should do the trick .
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arsenette
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Post by arsenette on Oct 11, 2017 11:56:40 GMT -5
True but this poll was comparing results vs. potential. What I meant about Joe is that he has the better record on ANW consistently over Drew thus far but never had the chance to get on Sasuke thanks to NBC. It still doesn't make sense he was included in the list when it should have been relegated to just champions.
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Post by SRW on Oct 12, 2017 7:21:10 GMT -5
I go on results who can get the job done! Potential means nothing to me. Nagano is the strongest as I said earlier but I will say Morimoto could very well get up there if he stays consistant quite honestly I think he's going to win it again sooner than later 34 showed again he's head and shoulders over the pack atm.
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Post by hashtagswag on Oct 13, 2017 2:51:17 GMT -5
But since you guys mentioned joe id like to go of topic for a sec and say if joe competed in sasuke ..he may very well pass the ucch .. he seems to already find the backwards jump easier .it would be alot tougher with the tiny ledges but i think joe has become much stronger now .
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Post by m4tt3r0x on Oct 13, 2017 14:25:13 GMT -5
*I mention Sasuke 34 briefly here but even then there aren't really any direct spoilers. Regardless, if you haven't seen it, don't read it (mods delete this if you feel this has to not be here):*
Been thinking about this poll since 34 happened. I kind of forgot just how good Morimoto is now. I think he has (so far) handled the pressure of being champion better than any other so far. If he does feel nervous on the start line of Stage 1, he doesn't show it. Something interesting about him that I've begun to notice is how calmly he takes on Stage 1, and more recently Stage 2. He usually has one of the slowest times, but it seems to be on purpose. Nagano, Yuuji, Drew were/are super fast (all naturally too). They always posted the top times or close to it, and just the way they approached obstacles resulted in them beating them in the blink of an eye (like Nagano in the early days or on the Jumping Spider specifically, Yuuji on pretty much anything in the shin sasuke era, and Drew nowadays just fluidly destroys stuff in his path). Even Akiyama had the fastest rope climb rate out of any champion... but Morimoto just knows how to budget his time without rushing and making mistakes, which all three prior champions did a lot... Nagano has butchered the Jumping Spider, an obstacle he was iconic for attempting, and for Yuuji what comes to mind is Sasuke 23 on the Unstable Bridge.
I wish I could include Akiyama more in these analyses, but his eye sight really shot his potential. It's a good thing he got in as early as he did.
Nagano and Drew really dominate power wise (besides Takeda, who else lifts the last wall over their head with time to spare every single time they finish Stage 2?), which is something Yuuji and Morimoto lack, who I think are better Stage 3 performers. I don't know if we'll ever see Drew conquer the current Stage 3... Sorry but I can't help myself from including him in this discussion. He just looks like champ material to me, and at his current state would likely dominate past Sasukes where previous champs won, but I think he has a way better shot at becoming one in ANW than Sasuke with the current Stage 3.
Ultimately I think there is just no answer to the question of who's best. They're all good overall, and all have particularly better skills than others in certain areas. Also some trained much more than others, you have to take that into consideration. Nagano was the best for the longest time span though, and is no doubt the most recognized champion. I had my college professor bring him up in class a a week ago, completely out of no where. ANW got brought up origianlly (not by me), and he said he had only seen the Japanese version on G4, and specifically recalled watching with his then girlfriend, "Nagano climbing the tower to hit the buzzer."
Here is my final question if anybody cares to think about it: Even though Nagano clearly had the most raw and untrained talent of any competitor (good luck debating that), and is the favorite for this poll, does anyone honestly believe he at any time would clear the UCCH + VL, at any previous age you put him at? I don't see it, even with his iron grip. I don't think he would ever train to even do it (he is who I'm referring to when I say some trained more than others). You have to devote a substantial amount of your life to have the grip strength to do that. Drew has stated it takes years to be able to do it, and said in an interview he still wasn't ready before 34 happened. I think the first person to ever do it would be Morimoto though, and he trains less than Drew does. I guess Stage 3 was a lot more open to the common man back in Nagano's day though.
So yeah, they're all great, and maybe ranking is just dumb.
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arsenette
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Post by arsenette on Oct 13, 2017 15:06:00 GMT -5
Agreed that ranking them is pointless. My only contention was something you brought up yourself where Drew was potential while the others on the list actually fulfilled it. I can go back in time about potential being stronger with others that were either cut off because of politics, etc. so it's a slippery slope to skew a discussion about 1 guy you like rather than a discussion about things in an equal playing field.
As for your new question i do think Nagano could have done it. Akiyama absolutely. Nagano's explanation on why he worshiped Akiyama was that he was a machine and far stronger than him upper body wise. He chided his friend about only training upper body and that's why he would fail lower body stuff a lot. So the combo I would see Akiyama doing well on it simply it is also implying that if in his prime he was in this era he would have had equal training to get to that point. Nagano's adaptability is what made him legendary. Only training a few days before the tournament and still almost defeat it was due to his year long work schedule and actual manual labor. Akiyama was also heavy manual labor. Both were fisherman and work with their hands for their livelihood. Ever HOLD cargo net? Now have that soaked with water and tons of moving fish on it. Friggin' Akiyama dealt with iron crates (see Deadliest Catch to get an idea). So the grip is there not because of training on an obstacle but because they work with their hands and having a grip is a matter of life and death (especially with Akiyama when he was a crab fisherman). Nagano's strength of being able to adapt literally on the fly, regardless what obstacles were put in front of him was the reason why he is always on everyone's list. Hell if he stopped smoking and dedicated himself to being an athlete his life would have been so different.. but I conclude it wouldn't be who he is today. He himself mentions that he didn't have that body when he was young.. fishing sandbags out of the ocean as his first job is what sculpted that physique and worked that iron grip of his. That is something Drew and Morimoto and Yuuji will never have because their lives are quite different only training on obstacles while Akiyama's and Nagano's livelihood trained their grip over a lifetime longer than even some of the ones we are talking about.
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Post by wrestlingfan55 on Oct 13, 2017 19:24:25 GMT -5
I would include Akiyama on this poll simply because he was so far ahead of his time. I wonder how his training changed after he won.
I feel like a prime Bunpei would be a force on this current course too.
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Post by Matt Midoriyama on Oct 23, 2017 3:43:26 GMT -5
Personally voted for Nagano and however much I like Drew, I don't think he sould be included in this list till he has won a competition. I would have added all the winners (Isaac, Geoff, Dave, Le, etc) to the list as only the winners have proven they can do it. Look at any sport and there are great athletes who never won the world cup, an olympic gold, a world title or a grand slam. Great athletes they may have been but you have to be able to go all the way. Drew for example could have won ANW9 but he made a silly mistake, he did not handle the pressure and expectations. Geoff on the other hand started his ANW career very late, could he have won more than once had he had more chance? Who knows, perhaps he would not have been ready even if he had started earlier.
If we include Drew then why can we not include somebody like Sean McColl? He is an absolute beast and a climbing legend and if he were to dedicate 5 years of his life to ANW then I think he could win it 2 or 3 times. I think he would have a decent chance of winning Sasuke 35 if he were invited (if the tackle didn't pump his legs out).
As for the debate over the difficulty of the courses, again I feel this is irrelevant. You can only beat what is put in front of you and that is what you train so hard for. Nagano, Yuuji etc did beat what was in front of them whilst hundreds came up short. Different eras, different training, different tools (a slightly better shoe, a slightly better diet, a slightly better training schedul can make ALL the difference between winning and coming up 1 meter or 1 obstacle short).
What excites me though going forward is the potential of a Sasuke / Ninja Warior World Championships in a few years time with the best current athletes from the dozens of incarnations all competing on a level playing field. I am not talking about ANW USA vs Japan / vs World format where the Americans have a huge advantage having experienced the obstacles a couple of days earlier. I am talking about a real World Championships with hundreds of competitors from all over the world. There are some decent Swedes out there for example, some Belgian climbers who are amazing and Pery as well as the 2nd place in Ninja NL have huge potential too.
Well how about that for a first post on this message board?
Hi folks, thanks for having me on board!
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