G1 Day 1

We start this crazy train of gibberish with the G1 in Dallas as New Japan continues to try to expand and based on the shitty ticket sales for this show, that maybe isn’t going as great as they want but we shouldn’t care about that because people caring about how corporations are doing is gross, and instead we should just focus on the sublimity of the art of men in their underwear exchanging fake wrestling moves with each other in order to elicit Real Emotions. And nobody does that better than New Japan Pro Wrestling right now.

The crowd in Dallas is pretty small and they can’t even begin to hide all the empty seats, but fuck it, who cares, because the crowd that is there is pretty loud and wild and ready to see dudes get their brains turned into applesauce, and with that let’s get to the fucking G1!!!

Lance Archer vs Will Ospreay

Archer has a new look and it’s pretty sick. He’s a dude who I think would be perfect as a monster heel in a traditional WWE hero vs villain kind of way, like you could see him being the latest monster of the Heenan family out to get the Hulkster, but sadly, WWE these days is a wretched wasteland of fascist corporatism drowning in buzzwords and weird double speak so instead Lance Archer gets to be a wild man American in New Japan and he’s good at that too, so fuck it, I guess.

Anyway, I don’t know how to write about wrestling in the standard play by play writing that so many people who write about wrestling do, so I’m not gonna do any of that shit and I’m just gonna ramble about the match instead. Cool? Cool.

I liked this match more than I thought I would because I have never been a huge fan of Ospreay, but he’s gotten way, way better and he isn’t grunting like a goddamn pig being sodomized as much anymore and he’s started to add more substance to his style, and I like Archer as a giant dickhead who likes to beat people up. It was kind of surprising that Archer won the match but I liked that he did because he’s a near 7 foot dude who can move and how do you not give a dude like that a little push and see what happens?

Ospreay was fine, and I find myself warming more and more to him which is kind of surprising given that he once tweeted at me with a GIF of a dude throwing money around when I dared to say that maybe he was kind of annoying, but that is just the weird world we live in now where everyone is connected and you can even get into fights with the President now on Twitter.

It’s hard to have your offense look realistic against a dude so big as Archer, but Ospreay has added enough impact moves to his MOVEZ to make it work here, and Archer is really good at just beating up dweebs and that makes for a good match. His ropewalk thing was impressive but also kind of shitty at the same time because there’s not much you can do from that position and so after the spectacle of it all you’re just left with a dude hitting a weak and awkward punch.

Archer won and that’s cool, but I am disappointed that he didn’t get a chance to scream EVERYBODY DIES in the face of a baby, but he’d probably get in trouble for doing that in America. Still, he could have done it to one of the geeks in the crowd. Oh well, maybe next time.

Evil vs Bad Luck Fale

Fale matches can be a tough grind to get through, but I thought this one was pretty good mostly because Evil is big enough that you can buy that he can actually hurt Fale who is enormously fat, like not even necessarily in a gross way but in a goddamn that is just a big human being way. I mean, the dude is fucking massive, like an anthropomorphized mutant walrus or some shit, and that makes for a spectacular heavyweight, but it also makes for matches that can be ponderous at best because goddamn man, how are you gonna get a giant mutant walrus to move around the ring in any way that can make for a good wrestling match?

That is the question always hanging over Fale matches, but sometimes you get a guy like Evil who can plausibly knock him down once in a while and that helps. Of course, it doesn’t really make the match good or anything like that, but that’s not really the point. Fale is just there to be the scary bear for our heroes or antiheroes to overcome.

Sadly, my man Evil could not overcome this bear, which isn’t the best way maybe to establish yourself when you’re trying to break away from your gang but that’s the way life is sometimes I guess. He’ll get his, and Fale will inexplicably put up a big number like he always does in the G1 except for last year when he got DQ’d every match which was necessary for dramatic reasons and anyway I’m rambling and I told you I don’t know how to fucking write about wrestling matches.

Sanada vs Zack Sabre Jr.

These two work well together because Sanada’s flexibility and athleticism, the fluidity of his movement, works well against ZSJ’s style which demands a lot of loose bendy shit to try to hide that his submissions are mostly nonsense.

I get why people like ZSJ, because the idea of him is so appealing and everything he does is definitely different than what you’re used to seeing, but I have a hard time getting into him because I think most of his shit just looks goofy and also because he is an insufferable twat. But that also works well, I think, in the context of getting me behind the dudes he wrestles. It’s always a fine line in wrestling between not liking a dude but still wanting to see him get his ass kicked and not liking a dude and not caring whether he gets his ass kicked or not. ZSJ is enough of a genuine dick that I actively want to see him get beaten up, so I guess he’s doing his job.

And of course Sanada is beautiful to watch, both because he is so goddamn handsome and because he moves with a fluidity that is unmatched in my opinion which as we all know is the only opinion that really matters. I don’t like his Skull End finisher because it always looks kind of shitty to me, like I don’t buy that a dude can’t just slip his head out of there whenever he wants but that wasn’t really a factor that much in this match. I also cringe a little whenever he does his moonsault. I mean, it’s a beautiful moonsault, but every time he lands I can only picture his knees turning to sawdust in a few years like Muta or Kobashi or Tanahashi, but that is all carelord stuff.

I thought the finish was built really well throughout the match because it plays to both these dudes slippery styles, and the marks in the crowd sure loved it. I mean, whenever you can get a crowd to explode off of a rollup reversal backslide bridge extravaganza sequence you’re doing good things, and also, yes that is the technical term for that sequence. Look, I am horrible at actually calling MOVES so that is about as good as you’re gonna get out of me. I am all about the drama and the passion and the ridiculous art of it all and hopefully I can do something with that or else we’re in for a long summer.

Kota Ibushi vs KENTA

Man, I loved the fuck out of this match. KENTA was obviously out to prove something before his body disintegrates into its base elements, and his strikes in this were just sick. Of course, it helps when you have a madman like Ibushi who is willing to let you beat the shit out of him because that is the only form of human emotion he can connect with in his autistic haze.

But Ibushi brought the violence too. There was a slap early in the match that I bought legit knocked KENTA silly. Ibushi has this thing where he’s a very good boy but he’s also got a sick streak where he likes hurting people and I can dig that as a fellow sick dude.

Put these two dudes together and, well, you get a match like this. The crowd was feeling it too, which just added to the whole thing. One or both of these dudes is probably gonna get hurt in this tournament, but fuck it man, at least they got to go all out on day one. I think Gedo probably knew that the only way to get this match right was to do it right away before they both became crippled and I salute him for his foresight.

I really want to see these dudes fight a million more times, and I feel like if they did they would just get more and more fucked up and problematic and KENTA would wind up caving in Ibushi’s brain as Ibushi became erect and yes this is why you watch Japanese wrestling, don’t lie. Not to me, but more importantly not to yourself. A million billion Shibata points to this one.

Kazuchika Okada vs Hiroshi Tanahashi

Goddamn, the fans were fired up for this, which made it feel pretty special. A lot of that was just appreciation for New Japan finally giving them a real New Japan show instead of a hybrid ROH/NJPW dudes mailing it in deal which is how they normally run these American shows. But a lot of it was also because this was Okada vs Tanahashi, and it’s amazing that this is a rivalry that never gets old, never gets stale.

I always sort of cringe when I see Tanahashi these days because it’s obvious his body is abandoning him, but he looked about as spry as you could hope for in this match, and again, it was good of Geto to book this to happen right away instead of later on when Tana would be walking like Terry Funk to the ring. He was able to get some bounce on his moves, which was missing only a month or so ago, so maybe he has another run left in him after all.

Okada is Okada, which is to say that he’s good at pretty much everything a wrestler should be good at, like peak Bret Hart only better. He just does so many little things well, like the timing on his kickouts, which always amp up the drama in his matches and make you feel like he’s on the verge of being taken down, whether it’s against Tanahashi or fucking Yoshi Hashi or whoever. But when it’s with another master like Tanahashi, you’re pretty much guaranteed High Art. And you could feel that energy throughout the match, that feeling that you are watching a rare thing, two masters doing it for the sake of the art, and the crowd felt it and was just ridiculously hot for all of it and man, that’s just good pro wrestling.

It’s hard to say that wrestling has ever been better than this when you get to see these two dudes do it again and again and it never gets old, and it’s so cool because when you watch them you see all the other eras in them, you see the epic All Japan style of the 90s, you see Fujinami, you see Shawn Michaels and you see Bret Hart and you know that this is such a thickly layered thing now, this pro wrestling, the art of it all and I hope these two dudes wrestle each other for a thousand years and that Tanahashi can keep hitting that High Fly Flow to the floor and that Okada will still hit that picture perfect dropkick right to the face, and at least for now they are still doing it and the crowd in Dallas got to be raptured and this is pro wrestling that I love.