We strive to get caught up on the G1 in a never-ending battle, but we will get there even if it takes me until Thanksgiving and you no longer care. Rather than bore you with a long and pointless preamble, let’s just get to it, night 5 of the G1, A Block action. Let’s G1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Taichi vs Yujiro Takahashi
Both these dudes are degenerates, but that creates an interesting dichotomy when it comes to face/heel roles, which is maybe the only thing that can make this potentially shitty match interesting. And yet, it surprised me, especially Yujiro who brought some babyface fire from nowhere. He is actually bringing it a bit in the G1, as the Moment is something he must strive to meet. It would be easy to see him overwhelmed and lost in oblivion, but it is a reminder that Yujiro is a vet who is often stuck playing a sort of lazy wastrel role in Bullet Club. But here, left to his own devices, he actually tries and it . . . works? Surprisingly so.
Taichi, of course, is a king shithead in the making, as evidenced by his win over Minoru Suzuki, and he will kick you really hard and also hit you with some nasty throws when he is not lazily heeling it up. Unfortunately, he begins the match by doing just that although to be fair, it does serve to set the heel/face dynamic. Still, it does not portent well, but then suddenly Yujiro starts kicking and punching Taichi really goddamn hard and Taichi wakes up and it becomes an Actual Match, again much to my surprise.
Yujiro is something of a revelation here, and he actually works the babyface fire really well in between little doses of heeldom, like biting Taichi, which actually worked in the context of a plucky face sticking it to the dickhead Taichi. I may be overplaying this a bit, but that’s how much I surprisingly dug this match. In particular one brutal punch to the face from Yujiro and some nice kicks to the face along with some nasty headdropping and lol who the fuck is *this* Yujiro?
Of course, Taichi can also kick you really hard and drop you on your head and since he is a huge dickhead, kick you in the balls and then pin you. It is perhaps not the ending any of us would hope for, but that speaks to Yujiro actually making you care about him and want better, which is not something most would have predicted by any means. And so Taichi goes back to a waiting Miho Abe, who somehow loves this idiot, who is taking over the G1, the first to 6 points, and also Suzuki-Gun, and who can put a stop to this degenerate asshole? Not poor Yujiro, but bless him for trying.
Minoru Suzuki vs Jeff Cobb
A potentially interesting match due to the backgrounds of both dudes, with Jeff Cobb a former Olympian and Suzuki, of course, one of the founders of Pancrase. Obviously, I give the edge to the Pancrase warrior instead of the Olympian, which is perhaps dark in a way, perhaps too much a dismissal of the Olympics and also perhaps dumb. And yet, Pancrase!!!
Suzuki looks almost . . . I don’t know what. Chastened? No, not Minoru Suzuki, never Minoru Suzuki. Still, the loss to Taichi shows on his face, his demeanor and everything about him, but it’s subtle enough to defy labels, and he still looks mean and pissed off, which makes it all a deft piece of storytelling in my dumb opinion. Suzuki is on the wrong side of 50 and was just beaten and cleanly, at least by Taichi standards, and his protégé, Zack Sabre, Jr, is Taichi’s tag partner and new best friend and they just won the tag titles so . . . yikes! You can understand if this is a man who sees it all slipping away, left to ponder the meaning of it all, likely wistful for those Pancrase days when he beat up young lions with impunity and tore up their limbs, although he still does that but one was real (just go with me lol) and one is fake, although the lines between Pancrase and Pro Wrestling have always blurred, no? And, hey, beating up young boys in the back is universal and real and not as perverted as it sounds, or maybe it’s more perverse, who is to say? According to Ken Shamrock, it is a Suzuki specialty and even Shamrock of all people, KEN SHAMROCK LION’S DEN HYENA MASTER, found it distasteful.
But Suzuki is Suzuki and a part of him feeds off that rage, that indignation, that HOW DARE HE of Taichi, and it might make him more dangerous than ever, who knows? Again, it’s all part of the storytelling and it will be interesting to see where it goes even if I did hate that match and result as a Suzuki fanboy who also likes him to torture dudes in the ring and not waste time hitting them with the ring barrier outside of the ring.
So, he and Cobb had a match, and perhaps interestingly, Suzuki seemed to have more respect for Cobb, likely due to his Olympian status, than most, and again, it is subtly done. Suzuki also seems to play to the crowd more here, which coupled with the Taichi fiasco sees him maybe headed down the road to sympathy and a faceish turn. I say faceish because come on, it’s Minoru Suzuki and he is monster. But also because where does he go if he loses the Hearts and Minds of his Suzuki-Gun allies and disciples, especially to a sleazy degenerate dipshit like Taichi? Aside from Rage, perhaps life as a wandering old cowboy, dangerous and mean yet oddly loveable, even outside the NEIL LOVES MINORU SUZUKI context. But maybe I am just reading waaaay too much into this.
But anyway, yeah, they had a match and it had a lot of mat wrestling at the start of it perhaps befitting an Olympian and a Pancrase KING and founder. It maybe could have and should have gone deeper in that direction, but it soon turns to striking and Cobb getting kicked in the face, and to be honest Cobb is not a very good striker, at least not by New Japan standards where everyone knows how to kick people in the face and punch them in the throat. It just is not in his nature and perhaps speaks to the “This guy just doesn’t seem like he fucks” comment I made about Cobb earlier in the tournament. He can hoss you around and splash the shit out of you in the corner, though, but Suzuki seems almost disappointed by Cobb’s lack of striking prowess, silver streaked beard nonetheless and ends it quicker than you might expect with an emphatic Gotch Piledriver on the big man. But again, Suzuki’s moods are all so subtly done and never quite escape his Crabby Old Bastard essence. I love him dearly.
And again, Suzuki plays to the crowd and basks in their applause as if he is searching for something, anything, to soothe his blackened soul. But lol then he spies some Young Lions to beat up, chases off after them and remembers he is still Minoru Suzuki and you’re not.
Kota Ibushi vs Tomohiro Ishii
This is the wrestling we all know and love, with these two freaks just beating the shit out of each other with strikes punctuated occasionally with a big move. Ishii uses every part of his body to batter at Ibushi, knowing he must pull out all the stops against this freakish man-child. Perhaps most innovative enough are headbutts to the chest from the prone position whenever Ibushi attempts the Kamigoye, which lol is one way out for sure. Just lean into the dude, go forward not backward, and as such is perhaps a metaphor for Ishii’s entire career.
Sadly, Ishii takes yet another loss and at 0-3 this thing has unraveled quickly for him. Hopefully it sets up a redemption run but it also may be part of his story as the man whose heart and soul are part of the DNA of the G1 and the entire New Japan style really, and yet he is forever relegated to being that mid-card gatekeeper who never really gets the full shot he maybe deserves. At least when he is not upsetting Kenny Omega like he did a few years ago, but those types of wins sadly come too few and too far in between for the Stone Pitbull, whose graying stoicism is but a veneer for a heart of fire which shows itself as every one of his matches goes through almost an Ishiiesque formula, but since it is also the best formula for the best professional wrestling, perhaps in all of the world, it all works. He is a sure Hall of Famer who doesn’t maybe have the DRAWING MAIN EVENT status or TITLES demanded by Herr Meltz, but no one has a greater OMG WHAT A MATCH resume than Ishii. I mean outside of an Okada but even then, who doesn’t look forward to an Ishii match more than just about anyone including *gasp* Okada? Yeah, I said it.
A nice little touch is a desperate and probably desperately sad Ishii continues to flail away at Ibushi after the match while both are laid out from the effort of it all. Ibushi is like wtf as he fires back a couple of shots of his own, but this is really all about Ishii and that heart underneath the Stone Pitbull exterior. He continues to try to get after Ibushi before being dragged away by some Young Lions, fighting on instinct and a refusal to accept that he is now 0-3 in his beloved G1.
Ibushi, of course, is a mentally ill man-child, more animal than man at times, and you wonder when watching him sometimes whether he can even speak in full sentences or maybe has one of those 100 word vocabularies of the feral children who were raised by wolves only to be forced in ugly and grim fashion back into society by well-meaning types who nonetheless ruin these kids’ lives. I mean, what life could be better than literally running with wolves who love you unconditionally? But Ibushi has perhaps found the best alternative for a drooling idiot like himself as a pro wrestler, where he can kick and strike people really hard in between getting dropped on his dumb head. And so he does here, perhaps the only dude in all of wrestling who can best Ishii when it comes to just beating people up, which is somewhat of a dichotomy for a dude best known to many as a Big Spot Death Defier type dude. But such is the completeness of Ibushi’s game.
Of course, this was all great, with Ishii finally getting caught in the Kamigoye and pinned, a man left to search for answers in the fire of his own soul, while Ibushi’s dead-eyed insanity and damn near psychotic inner life march on in the G1. He may not be able to read or write, but he sure can wrestle matches like this, which call for a bit of everything from him. Even when he landed on his feet after a throw it wasn’t without his head skidding on the mat for a moment. Other than that, he avoided virtually any head damage aside from being, you know, kicked in it and he likely went back to the locker room and flung himself off of a chair into the wall or begged Minoru Suzuki to BEAT HIM REAL GOOD like Halle Berry screaming at Billy Bob Thornton to MAKE ME FEEL GOOD in Monster’s Ball. All of life is Ibushi’s Monsters Ball and while he may die in the ring one day, it’s better than being forcibly civilized by do-gooders. Run wild with those wolves, baby.
Shingo Takagi vs Will Ospreay
Not gonna lie, I had a hard time getting into this at first because of Ospreay and his ridiculous bullshit. His slight heelish mannerisms, playing an ever more cocky dickhead with each outing, are somehow worse than even the bleating nonsense of before, a caricature of an asshole rather than the real thing which is strange because he *is* a real asshole, forever the dude who tweeted at me a GIF of him tossing money around and also a likely rape enabler which, uh, isn’t really a good thing to be. To be fair, you do want to see him get shut up which is the mark of any good heel, but more than that, you just don’t even want to see him at all, which isn’t.
Still, they got me by the end, which punctuated a pretty damn good match the Ospreay of it all aside. There is no denying his ability to go when he is not dance fighting, at least in a Movez sense, and Shingo is probably the best opponent for him. It helps that the people of Kobe are solidly behind Shingo, the one dude maybe who can match Ospreay move for move when it starts to get ridiculous, and his power helps to reign Ospreay in a bit because Ospreay can’t fuck around too much here without getting his head ripped off. Of course, Shingo rips it off anyway, and in the closing minutes of the match, and this is one of those matches where the last 10 minutes feel like the close, the people of Kobe start to audibly OHHHHHHHHH despite themselves and while great, it also serves as a reminder that wrestling, especially in Japan, is so much better when the fans start to break down and start screaming names which has been missing from pandemic life and has dulled the atmosphere somewhat or perhaps even a lot.
But like I said, they start to carry on despite the RULES which as I said before is always a hell of a thing to be able to get Japanese fans to break protocol. It’s too bad Ospreay was involved but what the hell, he is gonna get the big push no matter what as New Japan continues their Western expansion plans once the aforementioned pandemic subsides. At least he might as well be the best Ospreay he can be, which is still an unbearable shithead, but what are you gonna do?
Shingo is great here, just ripping Ospreay apart with Movez of his own, bludgeoning him with clotheslines that would make JBL ashamed of his own in comparison were JBL to care about anything in a human sense, which of course he cannot. But why the fuck am I suddenly talking about JBL? Oh yeah, his clothesline from hell can’t even compare to Shingo’s best, including one where he clotheslined Ospreay while Ospreay was sitting on the top rope, just fucking killed him with it, which you have to admit is satisfying to see.
Fuck Will Ospreay, but while the first moments of the match were almost ruined by him, once he shut up things got much, much better. Perhaps the best thing anyone can do is turn him into a broken mute and that is what Shingo managed to accomplish and in doing so moved up the List of My Heart.
Kazuchika Okada vs Jay White
Amazingly, I was not all that into this match and it may have been the weakest on the show, certainly relative to expectations. I blame both dudes as well as the pacing, structure and everything else you expect to be top notch between these dudes, especially in a Jay White match.
And yet, I think I blame Jay White, blasphemous as it sounds given my near legendary love for his dickish heelishness. But I think he maybe went too far with it here, letting it obfuscate all the sick throws and awesome match structuring and pacing he is known for, at least in this stupid household. The reliance on Gedo for cheapish heat and the arrogant mockery of the crowd were maybe too much? I don’t know. All I know is that for the first time I felt irritated by a Jay White match and not in a good way.
That shouldn’t obfuscate that he is a phenomenal heel, everything that Will Ospreay is not. While Ospreay is annoying as fuck, that doesn’t necessarily translate into wanting to see him get his ass beat as it does just wanting him to go away. But Jay White is the master of wanting to both see him get his ass beat and wanting to watch him wrestle because he is so damn compelling. But again, here, it just doesn’t come off well as he leans too far into the I’M A DICK CROWD PLEASE REACT EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE RESTRICED BY COVID, and maybe it’s the crowd’s inability to get incited into passionate wrath, but maybe it’s Jay White leaning too much into the shtick of it all, and I don’t think this is my take just because I’m drunk. It’s especially amazing given that I am the world’s biggest Jay White fanboy and yet here we are.
Okada, meanwhile, does no better, looking again and again for the listless Money Clip at the expense of the tried and true Rainmaker and although he draws an audible laugh from the crowd by donning Geod’s hat, which again is a tough pull given the pandemic induced silence of it all, he never quite gets going and maybe Dan is right when he says that it feels like Balloon Okada rather than the killer we all know and love. Still, the whole thing felt off, Okada or not, as both men played to a formula befitting maybe an ill-fated story idea than their actual strengths.
Still, Jay White hit a couple of sick throws, including his patented Urinage, but Okada never did jack shit and we’re all left to wonder whether it is an intentional bit of storytelling as The Rainmaker falls to 1-2 in a Rainmakerless existence or rather it is just two dues being lazy and relying on the fact that they are Jay Fucking White and Kazuchika Fucking Okada to see them through. In any event it doesn’t work and the crowd in Kobe almost seems perplexed when Jay White gets the clean win and Okada falls to 1-2, clearly not making the most of his tournament.
Is it all a story, or is it just mere laziness? I tend to want to give both these dudes the benefit of the doubt, but as much as Okada has underwhelmed I am almost more concerned about Jay White’s reliance on Cheap Heat, which has begun to feel less revolutionary in Japanese wrestling context and more rote, the sort of lazily drawing back upon tiredness that can get a dude like this into serious trouble.
Still, I am in the proverbial tank for Jay White, which has been well documented in these parts and obviously Okada is Okada, but let’s not pretend here. This was not really a good match, certainly not a good main event match, and definitely not a good G1 main event match. Worried? Maybe a little, but this is Kazuchika Okada and Jay White we’re talking about so maybe they deserve the benefit of the doubt. Still, when you are less compelling than a fucking Yujiro match, you know things have taken a turn for the worse.
I still look forward to what these dudes do next because, again, they have earned it, but this was most certainly Not Good and that sucks because this should always be New Japan’s Marquee Go To Match and it fell flat(ish) and even the Kobe crowd seemed to sense it. Maybe get Gedo the fuck out of there, at least from an interfering sense, but that is all a part of Jay White’s whole Deal so who is to say what the problem was here other than both dudes should be held accountable? It sucks, but welcome to the G1 where standards are High and no one gets a Get Out Of Jail Free card. We can only hope for better in the future, which I never thought I would say given the prevailing dynamics and feud here, but what else is there to say? This was just not very good. And so we press on, hoping that it was just a fluke, but of course, I am still many shows behind so who knows? I can only go off of what I saw here and I hate to say, and yet am forced to say, that I did not like it.
No comments:
Post a Comment