Toru Yano vs Shingo
Takagi
My man Toru Yano had a sound gameplan: lull Shingo into a
stupor of silliness and then cheat to win, which is a lesson that my dad taught
me. “You gotta cheat to win” is one of his favorite phrases, right up there
with “Neil, I’m leaving you and your mother” and both have had an indelible
impact on my development as a ridiculous human being.
Even though Yano wasn’t successful this time around, it’s
important to appreciate that he is working with what he’s got and doesn’t want
to fool around with any head dropping nonsense or battles of dumb spirit
warrior machismo which is a thing that gets the best of us from time to time. I
do not begrudge him his underhanded ways because the world is an unfair shit
place and, well, you gotta cheat to win.
Shingo had to beat Yano here or risk being seen as just a
failed upjumped junior, and he did, so more power to him, I guess. I remain
convinced that he is too ugly for true success, but that is shameful on my part
as I shouldn’t be encouraging surface level judgments like this because that’s
what leads to a promotion of nothing but hairless young boys in tight underwear
preening for my enjoyment and that would have to make me ask some hard
questions about myself, so I suppose I should applaud Shingo for making me
discard my own shallow vanity and my need to be surrounded by beautiful people
like a 17th century French aristocrat chilling at Versailles.
What am I rambling about? I don’t know, I don’t fucking know.
All I know is that I wanted Yano to beat Shingo but I knew it was not meant to
be, and that is just the way the world works. You gotta cheat to win and dad
will abandon you and ugly menaces like Shingo will triumph over the beautiful gentle
heart of a warrior poet like Toru Yano.
Juice Robinson vs
Hirooki Goto
I feel bad for Goto because my spellchecker doesn’t
recognize his name even though it recognizes most everyone else. I suppose that
is a metaphor for Goto’s career, which is destined to be one of subtle humilities
and discouraging setbacks. He is trying, yet again, to be relevant in a world
that constantly tries to toss him to the side, and I like what he’s going for
with his connection to Shibata and the LA Dojo, which I still think would make
a really cool faction. Have Shibata be the life force of the whole thing and
let Goto and KENTA kick the shit out of dudes in the ring in his name and in
his honor while the eager young boys from LA swarm like unwelcome foreign
menaces. But Goto is 40 years old and it’s hard to see him getting that final
push that has eluded him all these years. Shit, man, that is just the way of
things. We all think we should get that place in the spotlight that seems
promised to us, but most of us don’t ever quite get there and that is just
something that Goto needs to accept, just like I need to accept that I am not
going to magically breakout with my weird gibberish ways and get the real life
money marks to get behind me. We do what we do because it is what we do, and we
hope for the best, but in the end, time runs out and you did your best but fuck
man, it just didn’t quite work out. That’s just life for most of us.
Juice, on the other hand, seems like he is getting ahead of his
own destiny and that is good to see because let’s be honest, on paper Juice
Robinson seems like a dude who should fail out of this brutal New Japan world,
but somehow he has managed to get the people behind him and he is being given a
chance to tell his own story instead of being caught in the grist of mediocrity
and lonesome indie journeyman status. It’s obvious that New Japan loves him and
that he has earned himself a place as a fixture in their world. I mean, almost
every show sees a huge Juice Robinson banner in the crowd, which is not
something you can say for most of the other dudes, including a native son like
Goto.
I like both of these dudes and it sucks that one of them had
to lose, but it’s also nice to see one of them get off to a quick 2-0 start.
Juice’s time is still in front of him, and it will be interesting to see how
far he can go with this thing, but Goto’s time is likely behind him, and now
all that’s left is to try to salvage some sort of place of pride for him on the
card, and I think the best way to do that is to align with Shibata and KENTA
and just tear shit up and make people respect you. He’s lost as just another guy
in Chaos, but as a brutal kick machine sent to capture glory for a particular
aesthetic of Shibataness there is still an enticing future to be had.
Jeff Cobb vs Jon Moxley
I think we’ve seen enough to know that Moxley can hang
working the New Japan style infused with just a little bit of his own brawling
tendencies. It will be interesting to see how he plays his time in New Japan
vs. what he does in AEW, and for now it looks like he’s willing to be a
Professional Wrestler of the old school ways in New Japan, and that lends
itself to a certain chemistry with almost everyone he wrestles. The tables are
fine, but what has me fired up is his ability to just go in the ring with
whoever is in there with him, and you realize how much he held back in WWE,
probably out of sheer contempt for the bland style he was forced to work in, but
also because there is no place for subtlety in that idiot circus where you are
encouraged just to be a one note performer, which in Moxley’s case was as an edgy
idiot and edgy idiots don’t get the chance to really wrestle, you know?
Jeff Cobb is fine. I mean, he’s there to be a hoss who will
throw people around and then eat the loss in the end because somebody has to be
the job guy in this thing. It is not a condemnation of him because just to be
in this thing means that you are a top level dude, but when it’s all sharks out
there someone is gonna get eaten.
As always, I dig the energy Moxley brings to this thing, and
I love the whole Shota Umino apprentice thing that they’ve got going on, and it’s
easy to see why this dude was talked up for so long by other wrestlers because
when he gets the freedom to just do his thing, it’s gonna go in fun places.
That is how the old boys used to get it done, and sometimes you just have to be
willing to trust a dude that he can paint his own picture without you forcing
him to stay in the boring lines that you make everyone else paint in. A big
part of me wishes that Moxley was with New Japan full time just to see how far
he could go with this thing, but a big part of me also loves him in AEW for the
same reasons. It would be nice if they could all just get along and let him own
both places, but the world is shitty and egos are fucked up things and so you know
that this whole New Japan run for him has a finite feel to it, a limiting thing
that makes it hard to really invest in him. Still, he is killing it out there
and I guess we’ve just got to roll with what happens.
Tomohiro Ishii vs Jay
White
Jay White getting punished by all those he wronged in his
whole hijacking of New Japan is fun to watch, both because you want to see him
get his ass kicked and because he is so, so good now, his character translating
to his wrestling so that the whole thing just makes beautiful sense. Everything
for him is based on the idea of taking advantage of an opportunity – a roll up,
a low blow, a million and one reversals – and it works because he has established
himself as exactly that dickhead. He has the entirety of the crowd bending to
his will, going where he wants them to go, and that is the essence of pro
wrestling.
And of course Ishii is Ishii and plays the perfect foil to
Jay White’s villainy, all indignant pride and chops to the throat. It is easy
to get behind Ishii trying to murder Jay White because both dudes are just so
good at being what they are.
It is interesting that Jay White has started off 0-2 in this
tournament, but it speaks to how quickly and how well he was established last
year. He can afford to eat losses because you know that somehow he’s gonna
steal his way to the top again. And that lets dudes like Ishii get their shine
off of him and look like heroes and this is just the way pro wrestling is
supposed to work.
Tetsuya Naito vs
Taichi
What I just said about Jay White and Ishii is true here,
just in another way. Naito is so well established that him losing doesn’t hurt
him, but it is a very big deal for Taichi to beat Naito, and this is the way
the whole thing sustains itself. I particularly enjoy Taichi having to reach
for his Kawada roots to supplement his lazy villainy, doing just enough to steal
a win from a dude like Naito. It sets Taichi up, I think, to start to take Minoru
Suzuki’s place at the head of Suzuki-gun, along with ZSJ as just a couple of
utter dickheads ready to ooze their way up the card.
I won’t get all creepy about Miho Abe again even though I
want to, and I guess I just did, but fuck it, I am a 39 year old dude watching
and writing about hairless young Asian boys playfighting with each other so
that train has already left the station. I do like her dynamic with Taichi as a
sort of enraptured fangirl who he’s all too willing to take advantage of and
use for his benefit or toss in front of him as a shield from the aggressions of
dudes he has pissed off. That is just good old fashioned evil wrestling dickery.
As for Naito, it’s interesting that the two guys who I would
consider favorites in this block have started out 0-2, which opens the whole
thing up to a variety of possibilities made especially intriguing by Moxley’s
presence and Ishii’s continued G1 gloryhogging. And now you’ve got Taichi
running around looking like a dude who is ready to shoot his way up the card,
and Juice doing his thing and Goto trying to hang on, and . . . yeah, this
block is really intriguing and fun and you can’t ask for anything more from
your pro wrestling in the year of our lord 2019.
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