History Wrestling / NobuhikoTakada

* KickTheSonOfABitch:
** During his famous match against the no less famous {{Jerkass}} Wrestling/KojiKitao, Takada broke the kayfabe and knocked him out with a kick to the head. This increased enormously his popularity and helped Kitao to reconcile with the crowd, as he bowed before them and shook Takada's hand despite the betrayal. Though according to Ken Suzuki, the match was a half-shoot from the get go, here meaning that everything on stand up was a shoot (since Kitao believed he could hang in that department due to his then recent karate training) while everything on the ground would be worked.
** His mixed match with Trevor Brebick ended with Takada kicking Brebick's legs until he [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere literally ran away from the ring]].

* BackyardWrestling: Nobuhiko was a huge fan of wrestling as a highschooler, and he used to work out and train moves from wrestling magazines. Also, he used to come earlier to the events and watch the wrestlers train (in Japan, pro wrestling sparring sessions in the arenas are usually public, as the planning of the matches is done much earlier in their private dojos) to learn their moves.

* IHaveTheHighGround: Generalissimo Takada often talked from his balcony, which was lampshaded by Wrestling/NaoyaOgawa himself in HUSTLE House Vol.1.
-->'''Ogawa:''' Takada, you won't stop looking people down from high places, will you?

** In NJPW, Shiro Koshinaka and [[Wrestling/TheGreatMuta Keiji Mutoh]]. In UWF-i, Wrestling/GaryAlbright, Wrestling/{{Vader}} and Kazuo Yamazaki. In HUSTLE, Wrestling/ShinyaHashimoto, Wrestling/NaoyaOgawa and pretty much all the HUSTLE Army, which would make Takada the arch-enemy of half of the puroresu world.
** In real life, if you are reading an interview with Enson Inoue in which he doesn't diss out Takada at all, it is probably apocryphal.

* AmbiguousSituation: He gets often accused of being involved with [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem changing the rules of his bout]] with Trevor Berbick without telling him. However, Billy Scott has theorized that Berbick's own crew was who lied to him about the rules to get him to fight, just so they can get paid.

** During his famous match against the no less famous {{Jerkass}} Wrestling/KojiKitao, Takada broke the kayfabe and knocked him out with a kick to the head. This increased enormously his popularity and helped Kitao to reconcile with the crowd, as he bowed before them and shook Takada's hand despite the betrayal.

As usual, you can find the basics at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuhiko_Takada The Other Wiki]].

** Surprisingly, despite his MMA record and the opinions of Marco Ruas, Bas Rutten and all the other fighters who trained with him him, there are testimonies that Takada was actually a great shooter back when he was young and had nothing to worry about. Wrestling/MinoruSuzuki of all people has told how Takada would school him in sparring over and over back in the UWF Neworn dojo, while Wrestling/MasakatsuFunaki commented that beating Takada in a worked match didn't even feel as a victory due to knowing how superior Takada was. It was later that his position in UWF-i allowed him to neglect his alive training, which coincided with the time his battle wear started catching up with him.

* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: With independence from his grappling skills, Takada had certifiedly some of the strongest kicks seen in Japan at the time. He once got his kicks checked in a Japanese TV science show and it gave crazy lectures, supposedly stronger than [[BatterUp baseball bat swings]]. His opponents in pro wrestling got giant bruises after one or two of his kicks, and even in MMA you can see him kicking Mark Kerr only once and making his thigh turn purple and red. One wonders how would have he done had he pursued a career in kickboxing.

* RedBaron: Actually many. "Saikyo" ("The Best in the World"/"The Strongest"), "Heisei no Kakuto O" ("The Fighting King of the Heisei era"), "Wagamamana Hikazoku" ("Egoist Kneecap") and "Seishun no [[GratuitousSpanish Esperanza]]" ("The Hope of the Youth").

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Generalissimo Takada didn't rule over HUSTLE for nothing.

* BrilliantButLazy: His FatalFlaw in relation to his MMA career, coupled with probably a serious PerformanceAnxiety. Although he was certainly an incredible athlete, Takada lacked the combat sports background of many of his peers and never bothered to consistently hone his real fighting skills during his career on the shoot-style. According to some of his partners, in his early career Takada was aware of his lack of fighting experience and worked hard to [[CantCatchUp catch up with them]], learning grappling with Fujiwara and Maeda and striking under various boxing and UsefulNotes/MuayThai coaches, but when he became the head of UWF-i, he started training a lot less due to his protected and relaxed position. By the time he had to fight Rickson Gracie, he had spent years rarely sparring for real and just kicking bags, unlike younger people like Sakuraba or Kanehara, and thus he didn't stand a chance against the Brazilian.

* PerformanceAnxiety: Even if Takada was quite passed his prime and had no experience in the game when he stepped in the PRIDE ring, some think that this, having mentally crumbled under the pressure of all the expectations to fill, is what made him look like he had never grappled before despite having trained with some of the best catch wrestlers of his time (as well as look positively ''terrified'' of engaging Rickson, which you can see on his face). Takada would later admit that he felt like crying for an entire year after the defeat, which tells a lot about his earlier state of mind.