Liger retirement match
I missed the first match due to some poor choices on my
part, but I managed to get things going in time to see Liger take his final
fall, and it spoke to me as Liger was one of the entry points into Japanese
wrestling for me, as I suspect he was for most Western WWFCW kids which then
converged with the early internet and tape trading and the grotesque thing of
various message boards like Death Valley Driver for me and probably a lot of
you reading this and whatever that spawned into in our various collectives over
the years, and it made me realize that this dude, Liger, has always been there,
been the one dude everyone could agree was cool, whether we were 10 years old
seeing him for the first time in WCW, or whether we were snarky jackasses on
message boards in our 20s and now into our 30s and Twitter and all of it, and I
just turned 40, and Liger has always been a central figure in all of that and
now he is retired and it makes me think of all of you and how we have basically
grown up together as virtual friends in a weird internet world, and we’re still
gonna be doing dumb shit when we’re 80 online, and it is all just so fucking
ridiculous, like we will have lived full lives with each other without ever meeting
face to face which is why I admire Liger for never taking off his mask. Here,
we are one thing to each other and in real life, probably not so much, but that’s
okay, just don’t take off the mask and we’ll be alright, the mask is your true
face anyway.
ZSJ vs Sanada
I missed the junior tag match thanks to New Japan’s shitty servers,
but I managed to get it back part way through this match, which was not a match
that I even really wanted to see because I think ZSJ is False and I have seen
him and Sanada wrestle this same match plenty of times already. I do want to
note that Sanada’s look has become its own thing, like we’ll look back on this
as the yellowed scrub of Sanada’s life, which is fine for such a good looking
dude to do, to make it at least interesting. I have nothing bad to say about
Sanada, and I have nothing good to say about ZSJ so let’s just leave this here
and remember that Sanada is the good one.
Jon Moxley vs Juice Robinson
Moxley is interesting to me as a dude who can pretty much
call his own shots in the wrestling world, and he seems determined to roll with
New Japan and AEW so that will be fun and fascinating to follow. Of course, the
big deal here was Minoru Suzuki getting involved and he and Moxley have
energies that are not necessarily alike but are very commanding and I look
forward to whatever shit they can come up with, especially because I feel like
Moxley in particular is the kind of dude who needs to be motivated to be
interesting and what could be more motivating than playing around with Minoru
Suzuki? Yeah, so that should be a whole lot of fun and is all I probably want
from my pro wrestling, I mean hopefully. Juice remains Juice, a dude who I like
and who has a real command of the New Japan crowd, which is hard for a dude
like him to capture, but he has managed to do it and I suspect he will be a key
dude in New Japan’s Western rollout, and might end up working out better than
Kenny and the Bucks in that regard. At least to me, a dude who likes his
wrestling New Japan styled and if they can’t all get along, no worries, because
Juice is there and he’s enough.
KENTA vs Hirooki Goto
This style of wrestling is very much my thing, and KENTA and
Goto are both good at it, not as much as dear departed Shibata but still, that
is the thing I like in my pro wrestling and so this was a match that I enjoyed
quite a bit, as Goto gets vengeance for his boy and the LA Dojo, which also
ties nicely into New Japan’s efforts to make this American thing real. Anyway,
I like both of these dudes and obviously KENTA is the villain of the moment and
he plays it well, a lot of resentment and anger built into contempt that I can
appreciate. You don’t like him? Fine, that just makes it more fun when he fucks
your shit up and really to me that makes him a hero.
Jay White vs Kota Ibushi
Jay White remains 2020 Ric Flair, and he does it all so
perfectly. Special shout out to that top rope Uranage, which was sick as fuck.
I don’t talk about MOVES here very much, but that is not what I am interested
in as far as writing about this shit goes. But exceptions can be made especially
when they are so cool as that, which was some top level throw wizardry and
reminds you that Jay White has a ridiculously deep toolkit to work from as he
invents himself anew with every match. He is quite possibly the best MOVES guy
for me right now. Ibushi meanwhile remains a dude who will die in the ring and
also a dude who is probably weird as fuck outside it. I mean he gets concussed
so regularly but it doesn’t even matter because he is essentially on autopilot
most of the time. Where does he go from here? I don’t know, but it will be
interesting to see if they put the jetpack on him.
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Chris Jericho
Chris Jericho is fascinating to me because he was never that
big a star, but he has managed to leverage himself into being maybe the top guy
in the world wrestling hierarchy. His command of the crowd is about as good as
it gets and he’s just still good enough at the MOVES part of it all that it
works. It is sorry to see Tanahashi gently prodded down the line, but I still
think he can be a dude who holds up his end for a while and be like Fujinami,
who looked great at the age of 142 the other night. Anyway, this was two elder wrestle
dudes going at it and it was pretty damn good.
Okada vs Naito
They fucking got me with this. I spent the last ten minutes
of the match on my feet cheering on Naito, which is how you know they are doing
the wrestling well. Especially because
as I said last night that Naito doesn’t really do it for me, but I was all his
on this night and it was the right night and time for him, and even if he doesn’t
get a long run, it doesn’t matter, because this was his victory, this was him
winning the game for himself and I have to commend him for that. After all was
said and done and KENTA running wild as the big villain, I was totally satisfied
of this thing, this fusion of sport and theater, in a way that doesn’t happen
anywhere else really. Okada’s part in it was note perfect as per usual, and he
will always be The Guy, but this was Naito’s night and it was fun as hell and
it was what had to happen. And that’s how you make a Wrestle Kingdom.
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