Original Title: Quick Japanese Wrestling Email
Original Date Sent: September 2, 2012
Sent to: The usual cadre of unwilling readers
Context: Watched this late one night and then stayed up even later writing the email. Needless to say, I was excited...
Sorry, have to do this. Had to tell someone about it and the
recipients of this email are bearing the brunt of it. I watched a
match and felt compelled to write about it. So here it is.
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada
IWGP Title Match
New Japan Pro Wrestling
6 - 16 - 2012
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xt4qzu_hiroshi-tanahashi-vs-kazuchika-okada-c-njpw_sport
*If you're going to watch try to do it on a browser that will block
those annoying Daily Motion ads that interrupt every five minutes.
Google Chrome seems to do the trick.
When this match first happened, the folks on the internet bitched a
little based on the result. I will be so kind as to not reveal it on
the (very) off-chance that you decide to watch it. But then a clipped
version of the match came out and that tune changed. All the sudden,
this was getting talked up as a strong possibility for the match of
the year. Then a couple people were able to get bootleg copies and
suddenly it was the best match to take place in Japan in the past five
years. And now it's hit the internet. And I watched it. And it was so
good that I felt compelled to write about it. I can safely confirm
that not only is this the best match to take place so far this year
(easily topping John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar at Extreme Rules) but it's
also the best match to take place in Japan since at least 1998 when
Kenta Kobashi challenged Toshiaki Kawada for the Triple Crown.
It used to be that Japan pumped out classics on an almost monthly
basis, whether it was the epic King's Road battles of All Japan or the
innovative, eye-popping encounters of the New Japan junior
heavyweights. But those years are long gone. The stalwarts of the
1986-1997 era are well past their primes or even in their graves. The
blue chippers from those years like Akiyama, Tenzen, and Kojima never
seemed to reach their full potential. The Dragon Gate kids were fun
and exciting but their matches always seemed more like dance
exhibitions than fighting competitions. Even the internet sainted
KENTA never really busted out a match considered to be on par with
those hallowed matches of the mid-90s.
It seems odd then that this should be the match to break that spell.
Tanahashi has never been considered one of the elite workers in Japan
despite his popularity and multiple runs with the IWGP Title. Think of
him as a faster, floppy haired John Cena. Okada is a guy who has
pretty much come out of nowhere this year. He took the title off of
Tanahashi back in January and has been tearing it up since then. The
rap on Okada was that his character caught fire and then was thrown
into the main event scene too soon. But he delivered in big matches
time and time again. He's the perfect bad guy in that he's an arrogant
little shit who can back up his cockiness. He's one of those assholes
who you'd love to see get destroyed despite that sneaky feeling in the
back of your mind that it would be a hell of a lot more fun if he won.
Okada is, and I can't believe I'm about to say this, like the best
possible version of Dolph Ziggler. He even throws a better drop kick.
To start, this has the requisite big match feel. The crowd is alive
right from the entrances and chant for Tanahashi from the onset. They
take a couple minutes to feel each other out and establish the story
for the rest of the match. Tanahashi works on the knee and Okada goes
after the neck. It's all well and good up to here. The goal of pro
wrestling is to tell a story in the ring. In a way, it's a form of
live theatre. And like all stories, it has a structure and builds to a
climax. This match follows a three act structure to perfection. At one
point, Okada dropkicks Tanahashi while the latter is seated on the top
rope. Tanahashi goes tumbling backward into the abyss in the first of
at least five jaw dropping moments. Thus, we are in the second act of
the match. Things become harder hitting and faster paced. All the
while, Okada does a fantastic job of selling the damage to his knee.
At one point Okada uses his knees to counter an aerial maneuver by
Tanahashi and follows it up with a display of agony worthy of an
operatic death scene.
The biggest problem of the modern era of Japanese Wrestling has come
in the third act of the high end matches. As the finishing sequence
progresses, guys tend to kick out of too many big moves and forget the
body part that they're supposed to be selling. It's a common and very
valid criticism. The matches are still fun to watch but they lack the
depth of the intricate King's Road matches that played out like novels
in the wrestling ring with each character coming to their particular
end in a logical and sometimes tragic way. And that's what really sets
this match apart. It's controlled and yet contains as much drama as
any match with endless 2.9 counts. There are several great sequences,
the best of which is a struggle over a Tombstone Piledriver. By the
time the match ends the crowd seems completely drained from thirty
straight minutes of non-stop cheering (in addition to the rest of the
show).
It's a really special match and a great blend of everything I love
about wrestling. It tells a story and pays off things at the end that
were built up in the beginning. It's tremendously physical, sets a
blistering pace, and made me yell "Holy Shit!" loud enough to wake up
my roommate if he wasn't already an insomniac. I didn't really have a
dog in the fight but found myself rooting for one of the guys
(Okada...after all, I described him as a better Dolph Ziggler) and
hung on his fate the whole way. It's actually quite similar to the
John Cena vs. CM Punk match that was the Match of the Year last year
in that it took an oft-criticized top guy and confirmed that he could
have a classic match (Cena, Tanahashi) and a guy who was on the rise
and showed that he had the star power to be the top guy in the company
(Punk, Okada). I don't know if they'll ever be able to replicate it,
together or separately, but for this night at least everything clicked
and they delivered perfection.
Thanks for indulging my rant.
Mike Coast
PS - I titled the email before I actually wrote it. Once again, things
got a little out of hand. So I guess it's a (Not So) Quick Japanese
Wrestling Email.
