YMMV / Nobuhiko Takada

• Americans Hate Tingle: American MMA fans cannot stand Takada, not even as a general director of PRIDE or RIZIN. This is often because all that they know about him is his involvement in fixed fights, as the MMA fandom in America rarely overlaps with its pro wrestling homologue (and even for the latter, it doesn't help that Takada is best known for his tenures in UWF and HUSTLE, two promotions that were never popular in America outside of niche circles).
• Awesome Ego: Generalissimo Takada.
• Badass Decay:
  • In the 1990s, Takada was one of the most popular pro wrestling aces in Japan and a name who could fill up arenas at will. Now, he is an occasional TV guest and an executive in RIZIN, the latter of which is nothing compared to what UWF, HUSTLE or PRIDE were at their time. While his colleagues Maeda and Funaki have passed through similar decays, Takada' has been especially painful due to the abrupt and tragic way it began.
  • For Japanese fans at The '90s, Takada was the coolest guy and one of the best wrestlers around. Then it came his MMA debut and he became a laughingstock whose only redeeming qualities were his sincere efforts. This could be felt even in United States, where old school wrestling fans used to think he was a legit athlete and one of the best workers around, while nowadays he's seen as one of the least interesting workers of the shoot-style and one whose wrestling feats are seen as perfunctory.
  • Even within his fellow wrestlers and fighters, opinions about it took a nosedive after his failure in MMA. There was a time in which Dave Meltzer of all people believed that Takada was the most talented shooter of his generation until PRIDE 1 came around. Even his one time trainer Lou Thesz would later claim to be shocked by his lack of success, in contrast to Bas Rutten saying that Takada was being tapped out by white belts at the BHJJ school.
• Base-Breaking Character: Though most of the IWC accepts that Takada had an uncanny ability to work epic matches with the least skilled opponents, many fans dislike his wrestling style, composed basically of kicking hard while standing and going for the armbar every time they hit the ground, which compares unfavourably to the great combinations and chain wrestling present in other shoot-style wrestlers.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: His worked fight against Alexander Otsuka. They traded dropkicks, jumping kicks and even a perfect fisherman suplex by Otsuka. The match was officially a MMA fight, but American promotors considered its Willing Suspension of Disbelief as too much to digest and removed it from the DVD.
• Broken Base:
  • Was Rickson "carrying" or making Takada look good for an extra payment in their rematch, or was Takada actually giving him that amount of trouble? Gracie stated in Black Belt Magazine that Takada had improved for real since their first match and that's why he fought so methodically, but fans are not so fast to stop the debate.
  • Similarly, some believe Igor Vovchanchyn was carrying Takada during the first round before finishing him on the second, while others believe that Nobuhiko actually hung in there without having to be carried.
• Critical Backlash: Yeah, Takada didn't belong to the MMA main event scene, fought fixed fights, and was apparently tapped out by white belts. But even so, he was the only of Rickson Gracie's opponents who actually gave him trouble on his own field, took down Vovchanchyn, held his own in the first minutes against Mirko Cro Cop. Kind of impressive for someone who in his first fight looked like he never trained mixed martial arts before.
• Fanon Discontinuity: A good part of the wrestling and MMA fandoms keep claiming the Takada's bout against Trevor Berbick wasn't a shoot, but a worked match that turned a shoot (among other things because Takada's poor MMA record has made unpopular to think that he ever was any good). Paul Lazenby, Josh Barnett and Pat McCarthy have said several occasions that it was a shoot and was always intended to be such, and this is actually the only way the accepted version about how they screwed Berbick makes sense (namely, that they changed the match's rules's - not script, but rules).
• He Really Can Act: While he was already good with the mic, his role as Generalissimo Takada proved that he was a massively good character actor too.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • His "Otoko da!" or "You're a man!" became memes in Japan during his time as PRIDE general manager.
  • A lot of his lines as Generalissimo Takada also did.
• Moment of Awesome: His match against Keiji Mutoh at the NJPW/UWF-i Tokyo Dome event in 1995. Up to the time, it was the largest pro wrestling crowd ever gathered in Japan, the largest crowd for any indoor event ever in Tokyo, and the third most successful non-PPV event in pro wrestling history.
  • He was also part of the only UWF match Dave Meltzer ranked 5-stars, at the UWF Year-End Special - 12/5/1984, Co-Main Event: vs Kazuo Yamazaki.
• Never Live It Down: His failure at defeating Rickson effectively killed his pro wrestling career, and his MMA tenure altogether buried it deeper. He later resurfaced in HUSTLE, but mostly because it was HUSTLE. Even among pro wrestling pundits, where his MMA career should not matter, many opinions changed from being one of the best workers of his generation to a begrudgingly entertaining one-trick pony.
• Narm Charm: Takada wearing a fundoshi and clubbering the taiko at PRIDE's opening ceremonies.