Muscle Power 23 Power
Model MP-23
Price history
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Muscle Power 23 Power: the flexible US-market Muscle Power Yonex listed in 2005–06
Where Yonex listed it
The Muscle Power 23 is sometimes dated to 2003 as Yonex’s entry-level racquet of that year. Yonex’s own records place it later and in one market. Its name on Yonex USA’s Muscle Power page was “Muscle Power-23 POWER,” and that page is the only Yonex source found that lists it: it sits at the foot of the list in captures from October 2005 to June 2006, below the 99, 88, 66, 44 and 30. Yonex USA’s list of December 2003 had no 23; it ran 100, 99, 88, 77, 33 and 22. A US retailer’s Yonex price list first included the 23 in April 2004. The model is absent from Yonex Japan’s lineups, from Yonex’s international Muscle Power page and from its 2006 and 2007 export catalogs.
What Yonex listed
Yonex USA gave the 23 POWER four lines of specification: flexible, a graphite frame, a graphite shaft, and 2U (90–94 g) with a G4 grip. It printed no balance, color, stringing range or country of manufacture. What made it a Muscle Power was the frame. Yonex’s copy on the same page said that instead of seating the string on the sharp points of conventional grommet holes, the Muscle Power frame seats it on “Round Archways” that cause no string stress-load and fatigue through contact friction. Yonex claimed the stringbed held its tension at a peak seven days after stringing, and that string and frame worked as one unit at impact. Yonex publishes recommended string tensions, never a maximum, and gave none for this model; its 2007 catalog recommended 17–22 lb for the Muscle Power 21 and 29 Light that followed it.
No player on record
No professional is documented using the MP-23, and no Yonex page or report names a player on it. Its users were club players. A BadmintonCentral member who had owned one described it in 2011 as a little above beginner level: a bit heavy, with a fairly flexible shaft, steady and accurate at the net and only average on smashes. The Muscle Power series’ link to Lee Chong Wei runs through the Japan-market MP-80, which Yonex Japan listed for him in 2005, not through this export model.
Its place on Yonex USA’s list
Yonex USA’s Muscle Power list changed often. In mid-2004 it ran 99, 88, 66, 44 and 30. The 23 POWER had joined below the medium-flex Muscle Power-30 by October 2005, and by November 2006 both were gone, replaced by the Muscle Power 21 and the Muscle Power 29 Light; the export Muscle Power-30 has its own page. Yonex’s 2006 catalog introduced the 21 as new: green, flexible, with a graphite frame and shaft, 2U, made in Taiwan and fitted with Yonex’s Shockless Grommet. Those are the 23’s Yonex-listed flex, materials and weight class, though Yonex never called the 21 a successor. No colorway, player edition or limited version of the 23 is documented. The name has outlived the racquet: Indian online retailers now sell a “Muscle Power 23-Power” listed with titanium mesh in the frame, a different build from the graphite frame Yonex USA described.
Shop stock after the listing
No verified sales of the MP-23 are recorded yet. It was the lowest model on Yonex USA’s list, and Yonex’s own record of it covers late 2005 to mid-2006, with no captures of that page between July 2004 and October 2005. Shops kept selling the name. In July 2011 a BadmintonCentral member bought a new “Muscle Power 23 (power)” in Toronto, and another poster said it was regularly on sale there. Whether those were the frame Yonex USA listed is not documented.
Copies and markings
No counterfeit report specific to the MP-23 has been found. A BadmintonCentral member wrote in January 2009 that most of the fake Yonex racquets he had met were Nanospeed 8000s and 9000s, Armortecs and Muscle Power 99s and 100s, models from the top of the range. The practical question is identity. Yonex printed no country of manufacture for the 23; the 2011 Toronto buyer said his was made in Taiwan. In Yonex’s 2006 catalog every Muscle Power from the 44 up was made in Japan and the two below it, the 29 Light and the 21, in Taiwan.
A late entry model
The MP-23 was not the first chapter of the Muscle Power story. The Muscle Power 100 opened the series in 2000, and Yonex USA’s 2003 list already had the 22 and 33 at its foot. The 23 belongs to the series’ last export phase, when Yonex USA listed lower models beneath the Japan-made 99, 88, 66 and 44. By June 2007 Yonex’s international page listed only the Muscle Power 99 and 45, and Yonex’s 2008 catalog kept three Muscle Powers: the 45, the 22 LT and the aluminum-framed 7.
Yonex USA documents the Muscle Power-23 POWER as flexible, with a graphite frame and a graphite shaft, in 2U (90–94 g) with a G4 grip; it listed no other weight. Yonex published no balance, color or country of manufacture, so treat those as details to record, not proof. Look for the Muscle Power frame’s raised ridges between the grommets and read the printed model name: the Muscle Power 21 that followed it shares the flex and weight class but is green and made in Taiwan. A “Muscle Power 23-Power” sold new today is a later build. Yonex’s counterfeit guidance of the period gives general checks: a hologram sticker, if present, should resist peeling, the O in YONEX should be narrow rather than wide and round, and the code on the cap above the handle should be laser-engraved.
Buy the MP-23 as a period club racquet. No player story, edition or production figure attaches to it, so the checks that matter are the printed name, the 2U weight class and the condition of the ridges, joint and grip on a frame about twenty years old. For the documented history of the Muscle Power line, look to the Japan-made MP-100, MP-90 and MP-88.