Zack Sabre Jr vs Bad
Luck Fale
Listen, we all knew what this would be and it was what it
was and let’s just move on.
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs
Lance Archer
It’s wild that Korakuen decided to back Lance Archer against
Hiroshi Tanahashi. But, shit, man, you can’t deny that there is something weird
and beautiful happening with Archer. There was one moment in the match where
his hair was tangled in the ropes and he looked like a legit insane person and
even stared directly into the camera like he was gonna pop out of the screen to
beat me up and scream EVERYBODY DIES at me. That is just good pro wrestling
energy right there.
But it’s more than that, I think. It also turns out that
Archer is really, really good at that thing called professional wrestling.
Everything he does feels real and menacing, and that claw hold he’s added is so
old school and it feels true, like that’s a big ass hand crunching the skull of
a hairless young Asian.
It is also wild that it felt cheap that Tanahashi beat Lance
Archer, but that is where we are at here in the Year of our Lord 2019. It’s
amplified by Korakuen, which would be the place where this sort of thing
happens, but I have felt it watching him in other places too. He has a certain
energy that people respond to, a sense of legitimacy that is so rare in pro
wrestling these days. I absolutely believe that Lance Archer is a dude who
would roll into a town with you and fuck or fight everything that moves and
just keep moving forward, forward, forward because everybody dies.
KENTA VS EVIL
KENTA channeling all of the bad energy of the fans into
murdering Goto was certainly a thing, especially late in the match where he
kept posing and howling with fury like he was drawing on their disdain, which
is a hard thing to do especially when you’re looking for safety after a few
years of being fucked around. But it’s good that KENTA has not found safety
because it leaves him alone to channel all of that negative energy into cruel
strikes and the sort of professional wrestling that makes me the happiest
because I am a sick man who likes seeing dudes just fuck each other up for
glory or pride or just because no one is on your side and so fuck them, I’ll
just get meaner and meaner.
I feel for Evil, who I would really like to see get a chance
to move up the card a bit, but it is difficult to summon the power necessary to
defeat a man like KENTA, all piss and bitterness. Evil would have had to break
KENTA to beat him and he’s just not up for that yet, I guess. Still, Evil
remains a favorite, both in terms of the dude and the concept, and I would very
much like to see him pursue KENTA into the haunted places of his soul while
children weep.
Kota Ibushi vs Sanada
This was always gonna be an erotic dance between the two
handsomest dudes on the roster and also a wild fucking time given that they
move like they have had bones removed and because they are both willing to go
to the idiot place where they are compressing vertebrae and destroying their
short term memory, and so it was in Korakuen where a crowd that loves both
these dudes shrieked and howled as they died for everyone’s sins.
I will never get past how extreme Ibushi is, like he is
almost certainly going to die for this, and has already negotiated away his
ability to read or to understand basic human emotions beyond whatever impulses
motivate him to keep acting this way. Some would say that is awful, but to me
it is deeply romantic in its sheer devotion to the sublimity of its own
ridiculousness. Kota Ibushi will be killed by professional wrestling but fuck
it man, there are no noble deaths, no dignified way to get torn from your own
sense of self as you get sucked into the hell maw of dying, so why not just go
out there and burn yourself away to something poetic?
Sanada is not as fucked up as Ibushi, but he’s honestly not
that far behind in his willingness to simply give himself to whatever insane
energy that is professional wrestling as practiced by people who are one with
the wrestling, who let their lives be sublimated into an insane passion play,
and you put these two dudes together and they are going to ruin their bodies
and their minds together for nothing but the sheer euphoria of the moment, like
two people fucking into the night while the world burns.
At some point this will all catch up to them, especially to
Ibushi, who is almost always seemingly on the precipice of disintegrating into
a million martyred pieces, but that is the thrill, to watch them just go with
it because to take a breath would be to let it all catch up to you at once, and
just throw some ice packs on it and don’t worry whether or not you’ll be able
to understand traffic signals ten years from now. Ibushi wins, but it hardly
matters because they have both already proven that they can take you with them
to places very few dudes can and in that place they become something more than
two dudes playfighting in their underwear, they become the physical embodiment
of an exquisitely evocative poem.
Kazuchika Okada vs
Will Ospreay
The sense is that Ospreay is ready to ascend to the sort of
rarified plane occupied by only dudes like Okada or Kenny Omega or Ibushi or
Tanahashi or you get the point, and I almost expected him to go over Okada
here, but it was not to be as Okada reestablished the pecking order in his
camp. I imagine this is only the early part of a rivalry that will flourish in
the next few years but goddamn, they might not get there if Ospreay can’t even
turn his own head because his neck is already that fucked,
But that is all gibberish for tomorrow, and today, Okada and
Ospreay had to follow Ibushi vs Sanada, and they still managed to do more and
die harder while the crowd in Korakuen was raptured to the heavens. It’s
especially fun to see Ospreay grow into the spot, both literally and
figuratively, and when you see something like this you can understand how New
Japan keeps this thing going even if guys leave or get hurt or whatever. There
are still echoes of the campy bleating from Ospreay, but he has moved himself
into a position where it felt right that he might beat Okada in the main event
of a G1 show and it will be exciting to see how far he can take it before his
body abandons him.
Okada, meanwhile, is the singular dude who can keep ahead of
this crescendo of a fever dream that is New Japan Pro Wrestling when it gets
into that flow where you just keep getting pulled higher and higher until
something has to give, and there is Okada always, ahead of it all, absorbing
the energies of Ibushi and Sanada and Ospreay and then blowing it all off in
exchange for being the champion of the world or at least the IWGP. He will walk
with you as far as you can go and then when you can’t go anymore there is only
Okada. And that is where we are in the heart of this 2019 G1.
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