Sanada vs Lance Archer
Archer’s violence vs Sanada’s speed makes for everything you
could want out of this sort of match, and as sad as I am that my man Archer
wasn’t able to take it here, I can’t fault the effort. But more than that, this
match recalled something I said a while ago on Twitter, you know that lawless land
where you almost assuredly followed me from to here, that New Japan’s whole
presentation is so intimate, and what I mean by that is that from the camera
work to the performances of the wrestlers themselves, you feel like it is all
going on right there in front of you and that you are seeing something real and
provocative, whether that’s Archer literally smashing Sanada’s head into the
camera or Jay White deciding to beat up Rocky Romero on commentary, shot in a
way that almost makes you feel as if the assault is happening on you, and the
whole thing is just . . . intimate.
Anyway, intimacy aside, I of course dug this match as I knew
I would, and I hope that Archer is given another look as a singles dude because
he is bringing it, both in terms of energy and in terms of doing fun shit in
the ring, and with his size and that Everybody Dies attitude, he is everything
a pro wrestler should be.
But, here, Sanada takes it, and that’s fine because Sanada
is also a dude doing good things, and he has started to evolve from a sort of
bland Muta takeoff into something truly unique, and it’s all just so much fun to
watch. He and Evil are both kinda breaking out for me, and it will be interesting
to see how they continue to evolve, both within New Japan and their faction,
LIJ, and it should make for a lot of fresh and fun shit which is how you keep
this thing moving forward year after year. Dudes come and dudes go, but as long
as you have dudes fighting their way up like Sanada and Evil, it just replenishes
itself, and this is how you do pro wrestling.
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Bad Luck Fale
This was basically a replay of the Fale vs KENTA match, with
the frustrated hero trying to win out against the swarm of Bullet Club
shitheads but falling short thanks to said shitheaderry and also Fale’s
enormous walrus girth. It sucks for Tana, as he is eliminated from G1 champion
aspirations, but this is just the way of things as you get older and you get
caught out by these fuckers who have been hounding you for years now.
Fale is Fale, which is to say that he is very enormous and
very ponderous and sometimes very frustrating to watch, but he serves his role,
which is as Bullet Club’s chief pain in the ass, and without him and his ilk
there would be nothing to overcome from our dudes like Tanahashi. He will
forever muddy up the G1 because that is just his way and his purpose and we
cannot fault him for that, can we?
Will Ospreay vs KENTA
Man, you have to feel for KENTA, as you can almost taste his
anger and frustration at being a dude utterly rejected by his own because of
some Poor Choices. Broken down and embittered, he just wants to show that he is
still the man that he used to be, which is the man that inspired half these clowns
in the first place, but he is not that man anymore and he has to live with
that. He’ll blow some spots, and his body isn’t gonna hold up, but a diminished
KENTA is still worthy of respect, a broken dragon just trying to fly again,
each threatening movement an echo of his majesty, and if you get too close he’ll
breathe fire on you and remind everyone that, yeah, this is still a fucking
dragon and you should leave its ass alone.
Ospreay, meanwhile, continues to bury some of his shittier
tendencies as he rides that line between junior and burgeoning heavyweight, and
this win felt like a kind of statement, both that he is ready to move on from
being a junior and more specifically from being a junior tied to the devotion
of those who came before him, like KENTA. In the end, you have to kill your
father to become a man. It’s a nasty bit of business, but that is just life,
dude. You can’t be a little boy anymore, bleating like a wounded sheep, you have
to be a man, willing to destroy the neck of your hero and yours at the same
time in pursuit of some crazy artistic glory that no one else understands,
Kota Ibushi vs Zack Sabre Jr.
These two always have the same sort of match, with ZSJ
trying to catch Ibushi in his goofy holds while Ibushi just has to fire up the
intensity to liquify ZSJ’s smug face with his bare knee. It is good that Ibushi
won because you don’t need a birdman like ZSJ getting too big for his britches
and because it shows that Ibushi is ready to leave this trash clown behind to
deal with his true peers like Okada.
I know I go hard on ZSJ, and a part of that is simply
because he does play that role so goddamn well where you want to see him get
humiliated, but a part of it is also because his shit is just that goofy. You
can buy that he is some sort of wrestling wizard if you just let yourself go
with it, but there is no real immediacy to his violence, like he doesn’t come
across as particularly dangerous, aka a man who will snap your arm on a dime,
but more of an annoyance, a dude who will writhe and pester you with cheap
tricks until you finally just get tired of it and tap out so he’ll leave you
alone.
But that is just one interpretation of this whole damn silly
thing, and you don’t have to view it through the same lens as I do. If ZSJ
makes your dick hard, I am certainly not going to try to debone you. It’s just
that I like to fuck someone with a little meat on them, that’s all.
Kazuchika Okada vs Evil
Shit, man, I really wanted Evil to pull this off just like
Sanada did and vault into the main event conversation, but in the end, Okada is
still Okada, majestic and unwilling to get caught out a second time by the same
gang. Still, Evil did his evil best here, including trying to stomp Okada’s
entire head through the mat and just flat out chucking a chair into his face
because fuck Okada, this is Evil’s town.
But Okada would have none of it, and every time Evil was on
the verge of triumph, Okada would slap him back down until finally our poor
sweet Evil could not get up again. Okada uber alles I guess, but damn, you don’t
have to break a man’s heart like this.
Anyway, Evil will be fine, and I still really feel like he
and Sanada are both making that move and one day they will both break out and
we’ll have violent times spiced with old begrudges and it will be a beautiful
thing to watch. Like I said before, this is just how you keep the wheel turning
year after year after blessed year.
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