10 Wrestlers Who Totally Wasted Their Own Potential
4. Jinsei Shinzaki
If social media and gif culture were a thing back when Jinsei Shinzaki was in his pomp, the former Hakushi would have gone viral. The man's arsenal of Cool Sh*t was incredibly impressive. He was a great highlight reel performer with his rope-walks, springboards, Moonsaults, and penchant for the spectacular, but very little in between.
Shinzaki was like a guitar player who'd learned how to do pinch harmonics and finger-tapping before mastering power chords. He could execute awesome, heart-pounding moves effortlessly, yet he was never able to learn how to implement them in interesting, meaningful ways.
A man of Shinzaki's skillset should never find himself in a situation where he can reasonably be called boring, but that's what many of his matches were. While the spots were awesome, there was nothing briding them. If music is about the space between the notes and wrestling the space between the moves, Jinsei missed the resume, leading to an underwhelming career resume that should've been packed with awesome, transcendent bouts.
Shinzaki had that potential. He could absolutely have become one of his generation's standout talents. Instead, he goes down as a disappointment with shockingly few memorable bouts to his name.