G1 Night 4 B Block Baby

 

We try like bewildered beasts to catch up in the G1, chasing the fresh waters and grasslands to what proves to be an endless paradise where little to no white men trod except for those willing to learn the ways of the wilderness and even then they live just to be kicked in the face and offered up as sacrifices to the old gods. Maybe we’ll find an end to it all by Christmas or maybe it will all just bleed into a Wrestle Kingdom and pandemics will be over and the G1 will be back again and time moves in circles and we never stop chasing the fresh waters and grasslands of it all. But today, let’s just write and read about some wrestling that we watched or maybe you didn’t and just like to read about it I don’t know I just chase and write. Fuck it, let’s goooooooooooo!!!!!!!

 

 

Hirooki Goto vs Sanada

 

Hey, I like both these dudes! Hey, they had a match!

 

Not a ton to say about this one, which is to say it was maybe slightly disappointing? Maybe that is not fair, but this is the G1, baby, you either make the masses weep with transcendent pro wrestling or you disappoint. Or you are Toru Yano and these things don’t matter, or maybe that is what makes Toru Yano transcendent? Who are we to say? Maybe some more about that later during his match where it would be appropriate, Neil? Oh, okay.

 

Anyway . . . yeah, slightly disappointing, I guess. Goto tries to catch up to the moment and seemingly fails until surprisingly getting the pin over Sanada who is suddenly listless and perhaps in seek of something more comfortable in the wake of his betrayal by Evil, who as his regular partner perhaps betrayed him more than even Naito and yet no one seems to care for poor Sanada’s feelings which is perhaps partially due to his aloofness which may be stoicism more than a man who doesn’t care about things which Sanada clearly must as he stumbles off in bewildered fashion after losing yet again, dropping to 0-2 in what seems to be a dark tournament taking shape for him, although maybe, just maybe, this sets up for a run of heroic redemption and healing for the quiet, almost forgotten, member of LIJ. Wow, that was one run-on sentence for sure.

 

Goto, on the other hand, despite winning, seems like a man clearly furiously treading water to keep from drowning, which has kind of been his role the last few years to be honest. He seems to be letting down Shibata and himself, already being humiliated by KENTA in his first match, the man who betrayed Shibata and by extension Goto last year. Again, this seems kind of weird given that he won the damn match here, but an ailing shoulder and his long history of never being able to quite capture being The Man loom as terrifying Omens for what should prove to be another struggle of a tournament, and yet Goto never quite drowns, does he? No, he usually ends up banging his way to contention, or at least near contention, and if he finds his Inner Shibata, perhaps he can shock everyone in what promises to be a Block B that is up for grabs save a Naito run of dominance. Still, he’ll have to do better than this.

 

 

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Toru Yano

 

Tanahashi tries to play Yano’s game which is always a dangerous decision and Gets Got which is a shocker as he falls to 0-2 and Yano moves to 2-0 leading to autistic screeching of Herbian types although that is not fair to legit autistic people who deserve better than to be compared to Pro Wrestling Fans.

 

Okay, so now that I’ve offended everyone, let me say that I do not for the most part have a problem with Dave Meltzer who I believe to be the foremost historian of the Pro Wrestling and a man who is often insightful when it comes to certain business arcana and their implications for companies going forward and often when it comes to the Pro Wrestling itself and its artistry. And yet, no one can argue that he has His Vision of what makes for great Pro Wrestling and if one strays from said Vision, he just can not see a point or purpose to any of it and such is his take on Toru Yano and often unfortunately those who ape or slavishly follow the teachings of The Herb are often bewildered and even Angry by these same sorts of things. That, of course, is their right and sometimes maybe it even is Right, but not with Yano in my opinion - and again these are all just stupid opinions - who transcends the Normal Way by not giving a fuck about it and drawing a different picture, one that seems simple and perhaps crude and rudimentary but then he laughs at your picture and somehow gets people nodding and smiling at his picture and then you are left in an indignant rage because your picture is technically better and so you start to try to draw like him and of course you cannot and lol he just made you look like a fool and now you are 0-2 and he is 2-0 and you are tearing up all the pictures and screaming that Art is Dead and you just got sucked into the Bewildering Dimension of Toru Yano.

 

How do you judge such a thing? Well, you can’t, and that is what bewilders and often angers a Certain Segment of the Pro Wrestling Intelligentsia which is a ridiculous oxymoron when you think about it and yet we are all a part of its stupid existence. I don’t blame you if you don’t like or get Toru Yano because hey man, we are all in this together and all have Our Things, and yet I don’t NOT blame you because to not call a poem a poem is also ludicrous and lol Toru Yano is laughing and laughing and laughing as we talk about all this and that is the point.

 

Tanahashi, meanwhile, is left scrambling for Answers which do not come because he is older and 0-2 is a terrifying prospect for the Elderly, which is unfortunate because he got himself into shape for this and is feeling like a man ready to run The Company again and bang models with a Hard Dick which has eluded him for a while maybe and stay up late drinking with The Boys while also getting up early to make Big Business Decisions before the proletariat has even awoken but Youth is just an Illusion, a Game laughed at by Time and Tana is not drinking with the boys or fucking models but trying desperately to find Meaning in the Life That Comes For Us All. His young protégé, Kota Ibushi, is ready to maybe run the company, and Tana has lived vicariously through him for a moment but that moment is now passed and past too and he is left a man who got his Abs in order but has found a business and kingdom which is not really his anymore so what does he do? Well, he plays air guitar and remembers that he is Hiroshi Fucking Tanahashi and proclaims that he will win 8 in a row and be found in his Old Office calmly sipping a scotch and reading the day’s paper while the wolves at the door howl and tear each other’s flesh having failed to understand that they are all peasants and he is King. Or he wins some and loses some and plays golf on the weekends with his old friends. Who is to say? Nobody, but never ever fuck with the King until he is dead, and the King is not yet dead.

 

 

Juice Robinson vs KENTA

 

Juice’s new look is vaguely ridiculous, like a man who fell out of the late 70s and into 2020, maybe did some coke along the way, maybe got sucked off in an alley by a Trans Prostitute and then beaten up and robbed by the same Prostitute before laughing it all off and heading to the gym to get in some work before heading to the arena to wrestle in the G1. And it works for him because he’s Juice Robinson and you’re not.

 

That Juice is also a man who can work a crowd of Japanese fans into doing whatever he wants pretty much because he understands that they are an orchestra just looking for a good conductor and he knows how to conduct, getting them to play a little Queen with their hands and feet while he punches KENTA in the corner. But he also understands how to connect more deeply, viscerally, with fans, Japanese, American, whoever, who want to get behind a fired up kid who is a little ridiculous and a lot lovable because he obviously cares about all this and can also wrestle and fight in the style called for while blending in elements of traditional American pathos and pro wrestling, which is really what Good Japanese pro wrestling has always been about, white or Japanese or whatever, understanding and respecting the particular Japanese character and ethos while also understanding and respecting that underneath it all is a raging fire that longs to be spoken to and for and will explode volcanically if stoked and pressed in all the right ways. And really, that is just Pro Wrestling at its core, no matter where it is found and practiced. And Juice is a dude who is good at understanding all that and working it.

 

KENTA is a man who has been betrayed in a way and has responded to that betrayal with one of its own and the result is an ugly maelstrom of a man who just can’t live with any of it and so he continues on in a fit of self-loathing, trying to make you loath yourself and all of, of, IT along the way. But he is also a man who can still kick you really hard and flash all of the things that came before all the Loathing, and remind you that he can still be beautiful and stirring, and yet it is not enough as he is knocked silly by Juice and then pinned, left to scramble back to his pit of self-loathing, not even the top dude or the second dude in Bullet Club, but a hateful assassin staring at the bullet and wondering if it is for himself or everyone else.

 

That’s a hard place to be obviously, and plenty still wait in the block to smack him around some more for being in that place and all the assorted betrayals, both of others and the self, that come along with it. But he will still kick you in the face and he will also humiliate you if he can, like what he did to poor Goto in his first match of the tournament, yet another spit in the face of Shibata and his former self along with it. That mixture, of self-loathing and of beating the piss out of everyone who reminds him of it, will continue for KENTA as he stumbles his way through the G1 and through life, until emerging as a man who either repents of it all and perhaps finds some dignity, honor and peace, or until he just becomes a blackened wreck, a ghost of the man who used to be the terror of NOAH and who once dreamed of something even greater, of something grander, for himself, but failed, as most often do. It is brutal and unfair, and yet, such is the life of KENTA, as it is for so many others.

 

 

Yoshi-Hashi vs Evil

 

This was, shockingly, perhaps match of the night for me as Yoshi-Hashi tried yet again to shed the Yoshi-Hashi of it all and be what he has always dreamed to be, a Man who Belongs, both in the G1 and in New Japan proper, and of course, in all of our hearts. And matches like this go a long way towards wanting you to want that all for him.

 

Yoshi-Hashi brought it all against Evil, everything in his heart, everything in his abilities, and probably deserved to win. No, he definitely deserved to win, both in the contexts of the ambiguously “fictional” world of pro wrestling and in the metatextual sense, which sees us all root for our favorites based on their reputed skills and Places In The Back and whatnot. And yet he lost, which is all part of all of that gibberish when it comes to Yoshi-Hashi, and also part of the story when it comes to the man who beat him in dastardly fashion, the appropriately named Evil.

 

The win for Evil, and the manner in which he stole it, is as apropos as the loss was for Yoshi-Hashi when it comes to telling their respective stories. Evil is the asshole who turned on everyone and is taking every shortcut in the book towards its end, which he hopes is a picture of him once again holding the double belts of Intercontinental and IWGP success and glory. But mostly, it is a picture of a man struggling with a Poor Choice, both its implications when it comes to how others feel about him and about how he feels about himself. Like KENTA, this sort of self-loathing manifests in being a vile shithead even if it is not how he would like to be. He must wallow in the despair and ugliness of his own making, relying on the wretched Dick Togo and his own newly found proclivity for punching other men in the dick to bathe in the blood and guts of the fans, his opponent and himself.

 

Yoshi-Hashi, meanwhile, is left to once again scramble for his own sense of self, wrapped up in the Failure Demons which have plagued him for so long, always the man who fell and burst his own head open while trying to save his friend and have his moment at the same time. He will always be that dude, both in its hideous failure and the absolute lovableness of it all. He has to win at some point, has to be the man inside, the man who deserves to be loved and appreciated not just for being a lovable failure but a man capable of beating down evil and Evil whenever they or he present themselves. He almost did it. By god, he should have done it, but he did not, and that remains the ballad of Yoshi-Hashi, a song which becomes more compelling with each sad verse.

 

 

Tetsuya Naito vs Zack Sabre Jr.

 

I’ll admit it, I fell asleep towards the end of this match. It wasn’t a full-on sleep, but one of those where I could hear and understand everything even as my eyes closed and then opened and then closed again and then stayed closed for longer and longer intervals. It was enough that I did not feel compelled to go back and watch the match again. I got the gist of it all and was awake, eyes opened and all, to watch the end as Naito said Fuck Time and Destinoed the shit out of ZSJ, who remains a spindly nuisance.

 

I don’t hate ZSJ as much as, say, dear Kendall, but I also do not really like the man, either in or out of the ring, which is odd because in both respects he should be a dude I like very much. I was vegan for ten years, am very leftist in my views and enjoy a man who can torture others in the ring via technical wizardry. And yet, the whole package when it comes to ZSJ feels somewhat False, just that, a package, which is not so much Pure in its disparate parts, but adopted as a premanufactured Whole, which is something I disdain.

 

Perhaps that is not fair to ZSJ. It almost certainly isn’t as by all accounts he is a dude who works very hard at what he does, which includes maintaining that spindly nuisance body intentionally instead of just being a lazy prick who gets off on doing nonsensical flashy wizard moves which are the technical equivalent of Will Ospreay’s bleating dance wrestling nonsense. And yet, that Falseness feels more like the actual ZSJ bullshit than a True Man Of Faith so to speak and if I am not making sense, I apologize, as I try to work my head and typing fingers around the whole idea which maybe isn’t coming off or maybe it is, either way we proceed as befits the way of New Writing.

 

Anyway, part of me, a small part perhaps, is beginning to suspect that ZSJ deserves more credit and respect than I currently give him, more certainly than I have in the past, and yet I am not there yet with him. I still find his spindly nuisance body off-putting in an I Can’t Believe This Guy kind of way, and his so-called technical wizardry has been exposed as False by dudes like Kendall, who know way more about this shit than I do, but even I can see his slippery bullshit is just that, bullshit, a con-artist’s shell game which is not as smart as he thinks it is. “Yeah, but that doesn’t actually hurt” is something I should not be saying while watching pro wrestling and yet I find myself at least suspecting it while watching ZSJ, which some might say is a failing on my own part to just shut up and enjoy the show, but these things are weird and I get both arguments, I really do, but there is just something about ZSJ which doesn’t let me just Shut Up And Enjoy The Show.

 

Naito, on the other hand, has won me over pretty much completely, and falling asleep is not his fault but my own as I attempt to not just burn the candle at both ends but at all points in between, a stupid man chasing his own Poor Choices into the abyss. But Naito is enough to wake my dumb ass back up and applaud his Capturing of The Moment as it desperately dwindles into the Time Limit, capturing the fervor of a crowd who wants to see a Real Finish and not ZSJ escape with an eelish draw. And Naito brings them to that moment and captures the pin and it is all good, my reservations about ZSJ and my own Poor Choices aside. And so ends another night of G1 madness, and now it is on to catching up to the next show and the next show after that as I chase those fresh waters and green grasses into eternity with you all.

 

 

 

G1 A Block Night 2

 

We continue to G1 with the A block as I scramble madly to catch up and write these things for you, my creatures of the internet, I am half convinced I invented some of you, but so you see I’ve caught the G1 fever, baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Jeff Cobb vs Shingo Takagi

 

Listen, I have been stubborn with both of these dudes for various stupid reasons. I get it, I am a fucking jackass sometimes, and I have my favorites and I have my not so favorites and it’s probably not fair but was it fair when some of my cousins got the chocolate bars from Uncle Mark and some didn’t? No, and that’s not a euphemism you fucking perverts. What in the ever living fuck am I even talking about now? I don’t know other than I have been perhaps unfair with both of these noble warriors.

 

I mean, Jeff Cobb came to the ring with white streaks in his beard already, and yeah, it’s that easy to win me over. I too have the white streaked beard and it’s a sign of virility and not that someone jizzed in your beard so fuck off you jokesters we’ll have none of that here. Anyway, Cobb getting the win is interesting, I guess, in that New Japan always needs that power gaijin and you have to keep him strong or strongish. Sacrificing Shingo in that effort is perhaps an eye opener or maybe not, I don’t even fucking know. But Shingo being treated like the chaff is kind of surprising, right? Then again, there is little to no chaff in the G1, which is part of its appeal, so somebody’s gotta eat the dirty ass and if that’s Shingo, so be it. He seems like a dude who can take eating any kind of ass, no matter how dirty that shit literally gets.

 

I’m sorry for that. Let’s reshape this and look at this as an opportunity for Jeff Cobb to show that he is more than just a marshmallow, and that when he throws guys, sometimes they land funny and that’s just what happens when the people demand a hossy gaijin. Anyway, this match was fine, good professional wrestling between two dudes who are quality professional wrestlers. Maybe I should have just said that.

 

 

Kazuchika Okada vs Yujiro Takahashi

 

Yujiro has been a thorn in Okada’s side all summer, and now in the G1, Yujiro gets a chance to beat Okada but of course that is not going to happen as Okada submits the sex pervert of the Bullet Club who is forced to wrestle like he means it because Covid has stripped him of all his ladies, most notably the lovely Pieter and her pristine ass. This is not what Yujiro signed up for. He’s here to fuck and if I am reading the scene right sell the sexual favors of the ladies who accompany him. But 2020 is transformative for all of us and Yujiro has lost his hustle and must take it out on Okada, probably because Okada is pretty enough to trick Yujiro and Yujiro is a villain who must exert his authority over “the bitches” which is not MY choice of words but rather the life he has chosen for himself. I deplore misogyny in all its forms, a woman gave birth to us all after all, but Yujiro has issues. It’s literally the character he plays, calm down.

 

Anyway, Yujiro has to do *something* now that he can’t pimp and that means beating up on Okada, who takes Yujiro’s best but Yujiro’s best is of course not enough and Okada practices submissions on him like a doctor in 1942 Poland and fuck it, I am trying to offend everyone today.

 

 

Minoru Suzuki vs Taichi

 

First of all, I of course am intrigued by the master/follower dynamic, which has just been exploded all over by Taichi. Second of all, I fucking hate the chair shit and outside of the ring shenanigans that made up the first half of this match. I mean, I get that they wanted to tell a story that these two have problems with each other, but surely they could just as easily do that by kicking and smacking each other around rather than fucking with chairs and guardrails which are fucking boring.

 

Obviously, Suzuki losing here is a Big Deal and probably means Suzuki-Gun is in peril, at least in its current administrative form. Taichi beating up Dad is kind of uncomfortable to be honest, and I know I am not alone in wanting Suzuki to send that shit to his room, but life is cruel and unfair, and Taichi is fucking Miho Abe in Suzuki’s bed, and Suzuki can’t even make eye contact with him at breakfast. ZSJ just woke up and now they’re both pissing on Dad’s head my god why do families have to fight like this?

 

I hated this for the most part, mostly because of all the outside shit, and then Suzuki losing which is not for me even if I have related to Taichi in previous G1 gibberings. I get what’s going on here but that doesn’t mean I have to like it even if it does make me a big ol’ mark.

 

 

Tomohiro Ishii vs Will Ospreay

 

Right away, Ospreay is bleating like a fucking goat and I don’t like it. In better news, Ishii doesn’t like Ospreay either and so he just smacks the shit out of him. He even gets into the throat which Ospreay ruins by selling over theatrically. I thought he had made some progress with this shit, but I guess not. And now that he is associated with sex crimes albeit loosely and I don’t know really and don’t care, it seems as if the company is going to cast him as an asshole, which he is. Never forget he fucking tweeted me a gif of money falling when I dared to criticize him. The dude is a fucking geek and Ishii should have taken liberties with him. They don’t care in Japan. Just crush his windpipe. No big deal.

 

But Ospreay is being built as an important piece of New Japan’s ever expanding ways, looking to the west with this dipshit, so it is what it is, which is an ugly phrase, but fuck, Will has made an ugly mess of things. Anyway, Ishii deserves better than this, and Ospreay may be thicker, but that goes intellectually too. Fuck him.

 

 

Kota Ibushi vs Jay White

 

Of course I loved this. Jay fucking with the crowd like a king, Ibushi getting dropped on his head like there is anything in there worth protecting, Ibushi abusing Jay who takes what’s coming to him only to steal it in the end because that’s what Jay White does and Ibushi doesn’t know how to read.

 

The knee work was sublime, and again, it speaks to Jay White’s ability to structure a match, which I believe him to be the best in the world at. The shenanigans with Gedo are all just a part of it, and didn’t derail the match. I don’t often talk about specific spots or moves, but there was one German that landed Ibushi right on his head and I don’t know if he gets off on that or if we get off on that, but it was very sick indeed.

 

I suspect that these two dudes could do this even better at some point, which is not to say that this was a disappointment, but that nuclear gear that Ishii gets into hasn’t been brought out quite yet, and I think everyone expects Ibushi to do it, but so far he has come up juuuuuuuusst short, which is probably me being a dick and demanding DEATH IN THE RING, but at some point the very big bombs have to start dropping, right? Feel free to tell me I’m an idiot, for that is how we G1 as honest men and lady men.

G1 B Block Night One

 

B Block action gets underway as I struggle to catch up and am already a couple of days behind, forgive me, it is madness around here. But we G1 like warrior poets and let’s just get on with it, shall we?

 

Juice Robinson vs Yoshi-Hashi

 

I am on record as being a pretty big Juice Robinson supporter, and I remain so. Like Jay White, I think he plays the crowd about as well as one can in these modern times, strange and terrible as they may be. I’m not even sure if that means it would work in front of a more Westernized crowd although Juice does seem to still resonate when he’s over here, as does Jay. But that is more an indictment of our own post modern mutant crowd, of which we are all sadly a part, who tend to judge the performance rather than enjoy the performance, which I suppose is what I’m doing here too, but fuck it, these things get weirder and weirder the more we think and talk about them, and also tedious, so let’s not linger too long on this topic.

 

But Juice is back in a New Japan ring proper and he has a new style, which is apparently Blues Brothers inspired because lol why not I guess. Underneath all the ridiculousness, Juice is a well-trained New Japan style wrestler who mixes in some Western grandiosity like a modern day Dusty Rhodes on coke, which is most certainly not a bad thing although classic Dusty was also likely on coke if only because everyone was back then but it sure did not reflect in his physique but fuck it we’re already rambling here.

 

Yoshi Hashi, meanwhile, remains who he is, which is to say a dude who always looks on the verge of a panic attack, deeply uncomfortable in his own skin, which is sad because he can do good things when he gets fired up, which sadly is not all that often. He is a champion now, although the lowest rung of champion you can be in New Japan, which is somehow fitting and also kind of adorable as it was when Okada strapped the belt on Yoshi Hashi like a proud older brother or someone who didn’t give a fuck that he just lost the match for the vacant six man tag titles because let’s face it, Okada has better shit to do. But again, we digress, and I suppose it’s because there’s not that much else to talk about here other than Juice and Yoshi Hashi had a match and it was a decent enough match, very much what one would expect from the two when they are both at their game which is perhaps me underselling it a bit as I had no problems here, I like Juice and Yoshi Hashi probably deserves more than my scorn and mockery, but that is also kind of his role and everybody gets it, even him, especially him, which is probably the saddest thing of all. Anyway, I’ve got no issue with this match and neither should you.

 

 

Toru Yano vs Sanada

 

Toru Yano remains a wrestling poet, and while the Meltzerian school may not Get Him that is perhaps more a compliment than anything else. I’m sorry, Dave. I don’t mean to belittle The Meltz but let’s face it, he can be awfully myopic when it comes to his wrestling, but that is probably true of all of us, is it not? But Yano will Yano and that means he will infuriate and delight and also surprise with quality wrestling now and then as is befitting a dude with a legit amateur background which is the hallmark of all great clowns. There must be substance beneath the façade or it is all just bullshit. Yano, like myself, is a clown because he chooses to be and that is the difference between him and your ordinary jackass.

 

Sanada, meanwhile, remains a man hunting for that Glory moment. Betrayed by Evil alongside everyone else, it is perhaps saying something that Evil was the man who took that spot and not Sanada, but then again, Sanada’s aloofness doesn’t really lend itself to being a monster or a supervillain but rather the enigma that he is, but enigmas are enigmas only because people are stupid and uncomfortable with anyone or anything they can not immediately access or nail down. It is both what makes Sanada who he is, what makes him special, and what keeps him from being pinned down to A Spot.

 

Anyway, the two had exactly the sort of match you would expect, with each doing his thing. Sanada trying to trick Yano with the Paradise Lock in almost Yano like fashion was a nice bit of a role reversal, but of course you don’t fuck with the master and so Yano turned that around and got Sanada counted out. Of course, it all couldn’t have happened without the interference of a Young Lion who shouldn’t be involved like that, no matter how good his intentions and Sanada should beat him in the showers or whatever the hell they did to Benoit to make him a ruined man. Yano, meanwhile, should buy the boy lunch or something, but he probably won’t because Yano is kind of a dick.

 

 

Hirooki Goto vs KENTA

 

I still feel for KENTA, who remains scorned by all, both Japanese fans and mutant geeks over here. It has to be especially galling for him as a dude who chased a dream in a way no one had really done before only to see it all fall apart in a nightmare of injury and misuse, followed by him trying to return a hero’s return only to be shit on by everyone even though his move set and style had been stolen and aped by everyone from Daniel Bryan to Shibata to CM Punk, and hey, two out of three ain’t bad, amirite? That’s probably not fair because as gangly and uncoordinated as he is, even Punk had the mental wherewithal to ape the right dudes and wrestle interesting matches. We all shit on the dude now, but let’s be fair. No? No. Okay, fine, fuck Punk. But still, the point remains that KENTA is a legendary kind of figure who is being treated like shit by everyone and you can’t blame him for being salty about it. Worse, he has clearly been shunted down the line of Bullet Club dudes, as Jay White gets Gedo, which makes him the Club Ace really, doesn’t it? And then Evil gets Dick Togo, and poor KENTA can’t even get Jado, treated like a common Yujiro. The fucking indignity.

 

With all that said, he channels all of that inner rage into kicking dudes in the face and submitting them when he feels like it which is really the best KENTA there is, so it all works out in the end. Kinda, right? I mean, he is never gonna be exactly who he was, but who among us can say differently? Time and its cruelties comes for us all, and we are left changed and inglorious, and yet we can find a new kind of glory in the change, in our own decrepitude, a wisdom and sort of indignant rage against the dying of the light and such words of poesy.

 

And then there is poor Goto, the man who can never quite be The Man, and also a dude who slid into KENTA’s spot as Shibata’s pal, which makes KENTA abusing him here all the more poignant and sad, really. This sort of thing always seems to happen to Goto though, right? I want good things for Goto, but it never quite comes off. Still, it doesn’t get much lower than a dude calling his shot on you and then pulling it off, making you look like an utter chump. Poor Goto deserves better, that’s all I know, but somebody has to pay the price for KENTA’s rage and mistreatment and, well, of course that someone would be Goto. It is what it is.

 

 

Zack Sabre, Jr. vs Evil

 

This was really interesting as ZSJ played de facto face against Evil and it actually worked. I thought so, anyway. As a dude who really doesn’t have much time for ZSJ, I actually kind of liked him in this role. He still looks like a man who would be broken by an ill wind and he is still most definitely a dick, but he took his dickishness and turned into something if not noble than at least appreciable in the face of true assholishness on the part of Evil and Dick Togo. It is also perhaps because ZSJ seems vaguely humbled without TAKA around to jock him, which also added to this match’s dynamic as TAKA and Dick Togo were of course Kaientai running buddies back in the day, and now ZSJ is left alone while Evil gets himself some of that Kaientai juice. It would have perhaps been fun to see TAKA and Dick Togo on opposite sides here, dueling assholes for their asshole charges, but it maybe worked out better this way.

 

Of course, ZSJ isn’t a face by any means, especially when he is palling around with fellow dickhead Taichi, but the subtlety of leaving him alone to deal with both Evil and Dick Togo tipped the crowd in his favor and he played the role well, I won’t lie. Escaping with a flash pin both allowed him to come off looking triumphant against evil (and Evil) but didn’t make him look too heroic either, you know? It was just the right balance. He can now go back to being the asshole dick that everyone knows and loathes, but it’s interesting to see he has this sort of card to play if and when the time comes to do something different with him.

 

Evil, on the other hand, hasn’t exactly set the world on fire since his turn, and it feels kind of bad because he is a solid dude, just maybe not the right dude at the right time for this spot, but it was probably necessary especially given Naito’s role. Naito needed someone to betray him and, well, Evil was there and it was either him or Sanada really and we already talked about Sanada maybe not being right for it either. But Evil has a chance now to settle into the role and maybe take a new run at things even if that means ducking away from the title picture for a while, which is honestly probably for the best. They established him, and then pulled him back, and that is honestly the way it was probably planned. These things take some delicacy, some push and pull before they really solidify him. People freaked out because it felt like Evil was being pushed down everyone’s throat, but I don’t think that was really the case so much as they just needed to establish him and now they can pull back a bit and see where things go. From that viewpoint, perhaps things haven’t worked out so terribly after all. I don’t know, and that’s about as honest a thing I can say, as any of us can say, until time proves us all fools, liars or geniuses.

 

 

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Tetsuya Naito

 

I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure whether these two would be able to bring it on a scale necessary to compete with the best of A Block, mostly because both have a tendency to get banged up and Tana is getting older and I am not the world’s biggest Naito fan, but fuck, I was very wrong. This match killed it, and Tana looked the best he’s looked in forever, sick abs and all, while Naito continues to prove me an idiot every time he brings the juice like he did here.

 

I’m not sure why I don’t warm to Naito like everyone else, but I’m glad when I’m wrong, and both he and Tanahashi wrestled a great match, complete with dueling bits of dickery towards each other’s troublesome knees. That’s a thing I’ve always appreciated about Tana, his ability to somehow be both the world’s biggest babyface and kind of a dick at the same time when the moment calls for it. It allows him to work the crowd in whatever direction the match calls for, a lost art for most performers.

 

Naito also has some of that, a lot of that actually, more and more with each passing year it seems. He’s obviously kind of a natural dick, but he also plays a vulnerable side really well, almost as well as Tana, and the result is a match between two dudes in which they both pull at crowd’s heart strings even while cutting them at the same time, both face and heel in one bravura blend that is hard to really describe and can only be really appreciated by witnessing the well-behaved Japanese crowd breaking from their clapping to audibly gasp even though it is Against The Rules. When you can get the Japanese to break protocol because their hearts demand it, you know you have taken things to a great place.

 

In the end, it was Naito’s match, but it felt throughout like it could and should belong to Tanahashi. The crowd seemed somewhat deflated and disappointed in the result, but that is no bad reflection on Naito but rather how goddamn great the Ace remains, why he is The Ace, and why this match worked as well as it did. I mean, Naito is the Big Draw, but Tana remains the Man of the people’s heart, and both maintained their roles throughout, transcended them and even switched between the roles in their own way, which, again, is what made the match so superb and what makes both such amazing performers deserving of such a special place in Japanese wrestling, in all of Pro Wrestling, history. Yes, this is me finally giving in to Naito. Bless his ass. And that’s just the start of B Block action in what promises to be yet another sublime and ridiculous G1, may it last forever.