G1 B Block Gibberish

Juice Robinson vs Shingo Takagi

We start the B block madness with this matchup between Juice, who is always halfway between winning the dream and having his house repossessed after being dragged through the streets of Tokyo for mouthing off at the wrong guy with the missing pinky finger, and Shingo, who is ugly and also the belle of the ball in New Japan after sliding into LIJ from Dragon Gate and beating the shit out of all the juniors. But this is not the juniors and Juice has something to prove and so he’s gonna punch Shingo real hard in the mouth and then Shingo is gonna lose and that’s just the way it is.

And amazingly, that actually was the way it is, or was, or whatever the fuck, I don’t know. Juice is a man shorn of everything, his pride, his gabborus ways (did I just make up a word?) and even his precious hair after getting beaten up by Jon Moxley and losing his U.S. heavyweight title, which is a thing that would get even the best of us down I suppose. But yeah, Juice is . . . subdued. But maybe he took all that goofy energy and transformed it into bitter hate, and maybe he took that hate and punched the ugly out of Shingo. It’s not Shingo’s fault. He was just the dude who happened to be in Juice’s way.

I kind of expected Shingo to win, so that made Juice’s victory even sweeter, but I don’t want to dog on Shingo too much. The dude is good at what he does, it’s just that I can identify with an up-jumped fuckup like Juice and I like to see him win and have good things happen to him. Shingo was fine, and I am impressed by his strength, and I can get down with The Dragon because chasing the dragon is slang for doing heroin and that’s something I think we can all agree is a good time, at least until you end up with your arms full of holes and all your shit’s gone because you sold it to buy more drugs and then you’re sneaking around, trying to scam people and you didn’t think you were the type to suck a dick for drugs, but yeah that happened, and so you try to get clean but it’s boring and so you end up falling apart and hanging around with shitty people just like you who lie and steal and do whatever they have to just to get through another day, and maybe one day you get introduced to an ugly motherfucker with a weirdly buff body, and he doesn’t care about you, he just wants to know if you’re willing to go back to Japan with him with bags of heroin shoved up your ass, and then you land and he and his LIJ friends take all the heroin out of your ass and dump you in some shitty street a million miles away from home, and maybe Juice will save you from The Dragon, but probably not because he’s moving on to better things and you’re left chasing the dragon.

Jon Moxley vs Taichi

This was short and fun. I liked that Taichi attacked Moxley first in the crowd because that’s the sort of shit you’d expect Moxley to do, and I liked Taichi trying to beat the shit out of this crazy white dude who just showed up and tried to take his job. Also, I liked Miho Abe doing Miho Abe things which is honestly kind of a stereotype of Japanese girls as seen through the lens of a lecherous Westerner, and I’m not gonna lie, I am of the west and also a letch, and who could deny sweet Miho Abe? Not me. Anyway, moving on, Moxley terrorizing poor Miho Abe was a highlight of the match, which like I said was short and fun. That Death Rider DDT or whatever the fuck it’s called is pretty sick, especially in Japan where Moxley can get away with spiking people on their heads because it is their national tradition. WAR MISAWA.

Moxley moves with a totally different energy than he did when he was in WWE, and I look forward to seeing what he pulls out against, say, Naito, but I also think that he could probably do some pretty sick wrestling in the ring without tables and all that shit. He has the sort of body – Juice is developing it too – that is conducive to that raw as fuck Japanese style of wrestling, and a part of me just wants to see him go UWF style or some shit, just wrestling and trading holds and submissions and holy shit writing about wrestling makes me see how fucking homoerotic it is and come on, let’s just wrestle for a minute . . .

Oh shit, I almost forgot to talk about Shota Umino carrying Moxley’s belt, which is maybe my favorite G1 story, the wild Moxley getting his own young boy to carry around all his shit. I really want a Moxley/Shota tag run to happen, with Moxley just beating the shit out of this young boy and the young boy learning from his elders and maybe even getting a handy from one of the rats. That’s just how people learn. We should go back to the apprentice system and also wrestle for a minute . . .

Toru Yano vs Tetsuya Naito

You either get Yano or you don’t. I’m not even talking about the obvious comedy shit, but the subtle understanding that this is all just a game and he’s playing it a different way and he will absolutely steal your soul while you’re busy mocking him. I understand Toru Yano because I am Toru Yano.

Anyway, I think Naito respects Yano in a way, he gets it, he understands that this is all just farce. They are two dudes shitting on normies but coming from different angles. Tranquillo vs Goofy Shit, in the end it’s all just one rebellion against the frigid norms of society.

Also, I like that Naito got caught playing Yano’s game and ate the loss because it underscores the idea that you can make moves by fucking with the system and fucking with people, that you can play your own game and see whatever messy shit it makes. Deep down, I suspect that Naito feels the same way. Is he mad that he lost? Of course, but in the end he has to hand it to Toru Yano for doing it his way and disrupting the game. Which game? ALL THE FUCKING GAMES.

Tomohiro Ishii vs Jeff Cobb

This match was pretty fucking wild, and yet it was the epitome of the Ishii match, which I guess makes sense because the typical Ishii match is all about eliciting wild emotions as you watch two men bludgeon each other into the abyss. Jeff Cobb is the perfect opponent for this kind of thing because he’s willing to throw Ishii around like a sack of potatoes and also to slap and strike and concuss, and Ishii feeds into Cobb’s strengths and dudes get thrown. It was kind of funny to see how small Ishii really is next to Cobb, who isn’t that tall really, and it makes the whole thing that much more bizarre, a little potato shaped man throwing the entirety of human violence into his opponent and asking for more, sadism and machismo made flesh.

Maybe Cobb is bigger than I remembered. Hang on, let me check. Nope, he’s only 5’10” which is an honorable height (that’s me, baby) but not exactly monster sized. That must mean Ishii is, like, 5’4”? I don’t know, but that just makes the Ishii of it all even better because you have this tiny dude who won’t take shit from anyone, even a nice island boy like Jeff Cobb, and that means that whoever gets in there with Ishii has to be ready to get fucked up. You don’t want to mess with the little guys with chips on their shoulders, and you especially don’t want to mess with a dude like Ishii who doesn’t even have shoulders really. Jeff Cobb knows.

Hirooki Goto vs Jay White

Jay White is the perfect asshole, and he plays it so well, playing with Goto’s face, making him smile while he’s out cold. That’s good dickhead shit. That’s the sort of dude everyone just wants to punch in the face, which is kind of the point, you know? His grandstanding and dickish behavior is so on point and I love it when the Japanese crowd get all bothered and start booing him because it feels real, it feels like it was earned.

But that also makes it easy to get behind a dude like Goto, who has to win or be humiliated. Rocking the LA Dojo shirt, Goto brought some Shibata with him as all his shit was really crisp and looked like it fucking hurt. And when the dude being hurt is Jay White, that makes it all the better, right?

This is definitely a Goto I can get behind, with the ghost of Shibata riding his shoulders, and I hope he makes big moves in the G1 this year. At some point, Goto has to get a shot, he’s just too damn good to leave treading water like a common Yoshi Hashi and I almost would like to see him start a new faction based around Shibata and the LA dojo. I think that would be really fun, Shibata as the spiritual head of it all, Goto as his warrior, maybe get KENTA in there too. Is this dumb? Am I just fantasy booking some shit? Probably, but fuck it, I want that to happen so much. I never knew I loved Goto until just now, but that is the power of the G1 I guess, and that is the power of my gibberish.