Muscle Power 88
Model MP-88 · Vita Marissa
Price history
No verified sales on record yet, so we don't publish a market value for the Muscle Power 88. Asking prices don't count — only completed sales do. A price chart appears once 3 clean verified sales are logged.
0 verified transactions on record · USD · methodology
Saw a sale? Report it →Where to find it
Search live eBay listings →Places to search for this racquet. We don't track stock, and listings and asking prices change fast, so check at the source.
Muscle Power 88: the mid-range Yonex behind Vita Marissa’s doubles titles into 2008
Two names on one racquet
The Muscle Power 88 is usually described as Lee Chong Wei’s first racquet. Yonex’s records support part of that, and they name a different player outright. Yonex Japan’s staff page, written in 2005, lists Lee on the MP-80, a Japan-market model that matches the MP-88 in materials, weights and years on sale; Yonex never says the two are the same frame, but the fit is close. The player Yonex did name on the Muscle Power-88 was Indonesia’s Vita Marissa. Yonex’s tournament reports list her on it six times between May 2007 and June 2008 (and once, in between, on an ArcSaber 7), including her women’s doubles titles with Liliyana Natsir at the 2007 China Masters and the 2008 Indonesia Open.
Rounded corners, titanium in the shaft
The MP-88 was on Yonex USA’s Muscle Power page by December 2002, two years before the 2004 date often given for it. The series was built around the Muscle Power frame. Instead of seating the string on the sharp edges of conventional grommet holes, it ran the string over rounded “archways,” which Yonex said removed string stress, kept tension at its peak a week after stringing and steadied the face for aggressive smashing. The MP-88 paired a high-modulus graphite frame with a shaft of high-modulus graphite and UltimumTi, a titanium-nickel alloy that Yonex said stored energy on impact and released it in a quick snap-back. Yonex rated it Medium flex and sold it in 4U (80–84 g) and 3U (85–89 g), made in Japan.
Lee Chong Wei and the MP-80
Lee Chong Wei first appears on Yonex Japan’s advisory-staff pages in 2005. His entry names the MP-80, and its results end with his semifinal at the 2005 All England; Yonex left it unchanged into February 2007, and from mid-2004 the same pages listed Peter Gade on the MP-80 as well. The entry does not say which racquet he used in any given match, and no earlier Yonex record of his racquet has been found. At the Yonex Open Japan in October 2006, Yonex Japan named his racquet as the Nanospeed 8000, and from May 2007 its reports had him on the Armortec 900 Power. Fan histories disagree on his “MP88” years, one blog giving 2000–2005, and none ties it to a match. That blog describes a blue-and-silver frame in photos of him, which matches the Navy/Silver finish Yonex Japan gave the MP-80 by 2004.
The middle of the ladder
Some fan sources call the MP-88 a beginner’s racquet. Yonex placed it in the middle of the series. Its December 2003 US list ran MP-100, MP-99, MP-88, MP-77, MP-33 and MP-22 (the 33 and 22 have their own pages), and its 2006 export list put the Extra Stiff MP-100 and MP-99 above the 88 and the Flexible MP-66 and MP-44 below it. The MP-77, MP-66 and MP-55 match Yonex Japan’s Muscle Power 70, 60 and 50 in shaft construction, with small differences in weight classes and grips, though Yonex never calls them the same racquets; each Japan model has its own page. Yonex USA gave the MP-88 the same power and control marks, 5 and 5, as the flagship MP-100. In Japan the MP-80 was new in 2001 at ¥23,000 before tax, just under the Muscle Power 100’s ¥25,000. Retailers sold a 2003 and then a 2004 version of the MP-88 without saying what changed; the MP-80 went from Champagne to Navy/Silver in the same window, which points to a repaint rather than a new model. Yonex published no limited or player edition.
Old stock and old favorites
No verified sales of the MP-88 are recorded yet. Yonex’s export site listed it in April 2006 and had dropped it by June 2007, and Yonex Japan ended production of the MP-80 in 2007, so an unused frame is old stock nearly twenty years old. Players kept looking for it after it was gone. In a 2013 BadmintonCentral thread on replacing worn MP88s, posters described the 4U as head-heavy but very light, with plenty of power and excellent control, and suggested the Armortec 900 Technique or Voltric models as replacements. Frames sold as Lee Chong Wei’s early racquet rest on the MP-80 listing, which covers the model family, not a particular frame.
Copies and confusions
No counterfeit reports specific to the MP-88 have been found, and Yonex published no model-specific guidance. Yonex’s general warning of the period said many imitations were sold on internet auction sites and that many were crude copies that broke easily. The more common confusion is between markets. Japan-market frames were sold as the MP-80, a separate model number, and should be described as such rather than as an MP-88.
Outlasting its own range
The Muscle Power range shrank as Armortec and Nanospeed models took over the top of Yonex’s line. Yonex’s export site showed five Muscle Power models in April 2006 and two in June 2007, and Yonex Japan ended the MP-80 and MP-90 in 2007. The MP-88 stayed on court longer. At the Uber Cup final in May 2008, Yang Wei and Zhang Jiewen beat Liliyana Natsir and Vita Marissa 21–15, 19–21, 21–16, and Yonex’s report listed four different racquets in the match: the Armortec 900 Technique and the Nanospeed 9000 Type S for China, the Armortec 800 Defensive and Marissa’s MP-88 for Indonesia. For a Lee Chong Wei collection, the MP-88 is the probable export counterpart of the first racquet Yonex listed for him.
Yonex documents the Muscle Power-88 as Medium flex, with a high-modulus graphite frame and a shaft of high-modulus graphite and UltimumTi, made in Japan, in 4U (80–84 g, grip G4) or 3U (85–89 g, G3–G5). Yonex published no balance point; its Japanese copy calls the 4U MP-80 light and head-heavy. Yonex made no Lee Chong Wei or other player edition of the MP-88, so printed player branding on one is not Yonex’s. Yonex’s counterfeit guidance, published a few years after production ended, gives four checks: a hologram sticker, if present, should resist peeling; the O in the YONEX logo should be narrow, not wide and round; the production code on the cap above the handle should be laser-engraved; and the butt cap should match Yonex’s green.
The MP-88’s documented story is Vita Marissa’s doubles titles of 2007 and 2008 and, through its likely Japanese counterpart, the first racquet Yonex listed for Lee Chong Wei. Buy it as a Japan-made, mid-range Muscle Power of that era, and treat any claim that a particular frame was his as unproven without dated photos. Collectors following the Lee Chong Wei link may want the MP-80 too, since that is the name Yonex listed. On a frame this old, check the grommets, joint and grip closely.