Nightmare Fuel / Tiger Mask W

• The series opens with Yellow Devil giving another wrestler a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in the classic Tiger's Den style. The victim is seen three years later stuck on a wheelchair.
  • This is expanded on in episode 3, where we see it was the third match between the wrestlers from the small promotion, Zipangu, and Tiger's Den's fighters, and all the matches had been that. Yellow Devil was just giving the harshest beating.
  • Two years later Kaioh Mikasa, one of the wrestlers from Zipangu who had fought that day, was about to fight the same opponent again-and was still terrified until Ken asked him to pass the match to Tiger Mask. And it was the comparatively weaker Odin.
  • And finally, in episode 25, Tiger the Dark gives Tiger the Third the same beating Yellow Devil gave that day. The fact that Tiger the Third is actually Yellow Devil, and Tiger the Dark the son of the man crippled that day only makes it worse... As the fact the Third comes back from it and cripples the Dark, fully knowing who he was.
• Tiger's Den's Training from Hell. It's just as bad as in the classic series:
  • The first exercise shown is the recruits climbing a vertical cliff in the snow, wearing only wrestling shorts and boots and without any equipment, then crossing a suspended bridge by hanging on its ropes. Good thing that, Tiger's Den being smart as in the classic series, they gave this as a graduation test for trainees reputed ready to receive a mask and debut...
  • Another nice exercise is running in a decompression chamber. It allows to provide the benefits of high-altitude training even in Tokyo... But it was set for 4,000 m.
    • Incidentally, Tiger's Den's base is at high altitude, on the top of an unspecified mountain (somewhere in Germany in the original series, but the original base had been destroyed).
  • The Tiger's Execution: you are forced to act as a training dummy for the other wrestlers, without breaks, every day. No wonder a ferocious wrestler like Odin was terrified when Miss X threatened him with it if he lost to Tiger Mask... And the only way out is called Hell in the Hole, and is so bad that Odin, after being subjected to the Execution for weeks, is so terrified he doesn't volunteer (at least until Takuma manages to piss him off enough) and the coach tries to dissuade the volunteers.
  • Hell in the Hole: an underground wrestling battle royal set on a mountain, with the desperate partecipants having to fight each other to the death to entertain Mr. X's rich and betting guests while they move toward their chalet, with drones broadcasting it all and deploying packages with medicines to keep the fight from ending too soon and weapons for more entertaining battles. And once the tired survivor(s) arrive at the chalet they have to face the Gatekeepers, chosen and fresh wrestlers who defend the key out of this Tiger's Den-made hell and back to the ring. And it's not a one-time event.
    • The nine participants in this Hell in the Hole include Phantom and Cox, two traitors to Tiger's Den, Ricardo, the trainee that in the first episode tried to throw Takuma down off a cliff but was thrown down instead, and the wrestlers that fought Tiger Mask and lost except Bigfoot. That is, Takuma, Kevin, Black Python, Odin, Billy the Kidman (who fought Tiger Mask as a very realistic Yellow Devil and Red Death Mask.
    • In this Hell in the Hole there was only one Gatekeeper: Blackout, a 2.5 m giant who looks like Roman Reigns and is actually a prototype combat robot. Even Miss X is appalled...
    • To make things worse, the survivors, Takuma, Kevin and Odin, do manage to score damage, and even throw it in the chalet. It was enough damage that the robot starts attacking everyone in sight, and, differently from the wrestlers, the people in the chalet aren't tough enough to witstand a few of its attacks.
    • How Blackout is defeated: Tiger the Third, Tiger's Den newest tiger-masked wrestler, destroys uses a single German Suplex. Granted, Blackout had already been damaged, but the monster could still fight.
• Among the Legacy Characters we have Red Death Mask. Anyone who saw the original series knows why the name alone is terrifying. For those who didn't... The original was known to waltz into NWA territories, beat up all the wrestlers and leave, with such strong fighters as Dick the Bruiser being terrified by him. During his match with Tiger Mask got a knee broken, and he reacted by grabbing the journalists' bench and use it to throw the journalists at Tiger Mask before breaking the bench and using the jagged edges as weapons. And this guy got a Legacy Character.
  • "The Red Death had long devastated the country". This quote from the Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Masque of the Red Death" is used to describe both the old and the new Red Death Mask, comparing them to a plague.
  • He has a match with Ryu Wakamatsu before fighting Tiger Mask. Red Death Mask first No Sells four elbow hits to the face, then grabs his face in an overpowered brain claw called the Red Death Claw, squeezing so hard that Wakamatsu starts bleeding as his skull is cracked while he's thrown on the ground and then lifted. That's when Wakamatsu faints from the pain... And Red Death Mask concludes by throwing him on the metallic ring post, nape-first.
    • Miss X states he didn't even have to use his killer move. He was holding back.
  • His assault on Tiger Mask, starting by surprising him and covering him with a cloak and kicking him, before throwing him on the ring post-just as the original Red Death Mask did with the original Tiger Mask. He then continues with a Tiger's Cave beatdown that includes a Red Death Claw at the stomach, a diving knee drop on the throat and the Red Death Drop-a normal Red Death Claw that is continued by jumping from the ring post and having the victim land on the back. Everyone cried in horror as Tiger Mask's mask was soaked in blood...
• Tiger Mask's first challenger for his title of Masked Champion: Bigfoot. 240 kilos, has won all his matches in five minutes and hospitalized many of his opponents, and his bear hug can take down a tree. And to make his worse, his expected Logical Weaknesses of poor stamina and little ability in ground fight aren't there (Tiger's Den knew someone would try to exploit them]and trained him to overcome his weaknesses), and if you try and exploit them you'll only be outlasted or, as happened to Tiger Mask, end up blocked in his hold under his immense weight.
• Tiger the Third: the Legacy Character and grandson of Tiger the Great, complete with costume-and formidable abilities, that helped him annihilate Bigfoot and Blackout. Ken was terrified when he saw him-and considering the first Tiger the Great was the one who crippled him, he may have actual nightmares about both of them.
  • Then there is his true finisher, Sacrifice. You think the Devil drop in the first entry was bad? This one is a vertical drop powerbomb that holds the opponent's legs in a figure four before dropping them neck first, then further wrenching the legs to ensure breakage. Even Fukuwara Mask is disturbed by how busted Tiger the Dark's legs will be, much less his upper body.
• The Reveal of Fukuwara Mask's identity: Keiji Tanaka, a GWM wrestler that had come to Japan with Yellow Devil and likely Tiger's Den's pupil. Even with his off-screen Heel–Face Turn]], that casts the usually buffoonish fighter in a much scarier light.
• Tiger the Dark's reaction when he discovers Kaioh Mikasa wearing Yellow Devil's mask.
• The new Universal Mask: incredibly agile like the original one, but fighting in a ring with metal pipes over it to take full advantage of his agility-and not too shy to rain attack after attack from the pipes.
• Big Tiger the Second choking a journalist for pointing out he's too short to call himself "Big".
• The brief flashback of the death of the original Big Tiger and Black Tiger. Complete with the screwdriver in Big Tiger's eye.
• Episode 35 shows just how dangerous a champion-level wrestler can be without fouls when Makabe inflicts a quick but effective and brutal No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Tiger the Black, with such moves as interrupting his Moonsault-thus having Black hit the turnbuckle with his groin and the post with his chest-and a spider suplex while Black was too stunned to land right-hitting the ring at full force with the top of his head. It was so bad that Black had to be hospitalized-and Makabe wasn't done when he was interrupted by Tiger the Great III.
• To anyone who saw the old series, Tiger the Great III ripping Tiger Mask's mask can't help but have them recall what happened when his grandfather did the same to Naoto Date.
• The last bit is provided by Haruna, of all people, when in the final episode Miss X' leg collapses again after her match due the beating Haruna inflicted on it months earlier.