Jetlag said: 

Easily overlooked Japanese undercarder who went from being a great tenacious underdog in AJPW and SWS to doing a heroic job carrying his own scummy WYF promotion, which is a story I'm really invested in. He also has some awesome feud under his belt participating in WYF vs. Shin FMW and WYF vs. WAR. Great outmatched hero type of guy, who also looks really good doing hard nosed technical wrestling and being a psycho potatoeing lower ranked guys. He''s grown to be one of my favourite Japanese heavyweights of the 90s, having a few Black Terry-like performances working his ass off on tiny shows, and he has  a number of great matches from 1988-1997, possibly earlier than that depending on if I can find any of his New Japan matches. Footage is a bit of an issue but right now I'd say for someone who didn't make tape much he has a really strong body of work.

w Shunji Takano vs. Ricky Fuyuki & Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 7/19/1988

vs. Genichiro Tenryu, WAR 1/23/1996

w Masayoshi Motegi vs. Tarzan Goto & Ryo Miyake, WYF 7/16/1997

From what I've seen he goes from a middling tag worker with surprisingly bad showings (like he gets a bad performance against Steamboat somehow???) but around about late 80's as OP says he starts to get it and pull out consistent fun showings. His PWC stint is just full of grungy brawling and whatnot, which is something he shines especially well in. Dude teams up with Great Sasuke dressed up as Batman, how can you not love that? 

Probably not top 100 given he lacks footage during his peak but I always enjoy finding random shows with him showing up.

 

9 hours ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

From what I've seen he goes from a middling tag worker with surprisingly bad showings (like he gets a bad performance against Steamboat somehow???) but around about late 80's as OP says he starts to get it and pull out consistent fun showings. His PWC stint is just full of grungy brawling and whatnot, which is something he shines especially well in. Dude teams up with Great Sasuke dressed up as Batman, how can you not love that? 

Probably not top 100 given he lacks footage during his peak but I always enjoy finding random shows with him showing up.

 

I'm pretty sure you are confusing Shinichi Nakano with Shunji Takano there, at least as far as the teaming with Great Sasuke part goes.