External presence

FUJIWARA ARMBAR covering NJPW + other Japanese promotions
twitter.com/fujiwaraarmbar ask.fm/fujiwaraarmbar

13 February 2015

NJPW New Beginning in Osaka

New Japan Pro-Wrestling
New Beginning in Osaka
11th February 2015
BODYMAKER Colosseum, Osaka

As Dinah Washington did not sing, and as Maria Grever did not actually write, what a diff'rence a month or so makes (just 912 little hours). In the early joustings of 2015, New Japan Pro-Wrestling could not have been arrested anywhere from Sendai to Saratoga. Look:




And now, ashes. To wit:



Now you can moan about the sample size and how manicured that data set is but I am reporting an accurate weather report having dipped my toes in the sea of public opinion. Some people think that Wrestle Kingdom 9 was the greatest wrestling spectacle of all time. And some people think that NJPW is now pissing directly into their eyes. The truth, as Bill Callahan probably wrote whilst musing on a relationship rather than the booking of a fake fighting promotion, is in-between.

Sho Tanaka vs. Yohei Komatsu

Well surely there can be no complaints here. Five minutes and thirty seconds is all we get in the company of the Slightly Older Lions, in a presumed transitional stage between fetching Tenzan's tea and going to the US to be hated by 65 people in a VFW hall, but they fly by. Spending the last 18 months watching the development of these two has been a pleasure and a lot of people who came to or returned back to New Japan over the recent months will be energised by being on the ground floor with these enjoyable tykes. Their style would work in any decade, in nearly any promotion (they would not excite a 2001 XPW crowd, I guess). They have the basics down and a good command of what to do with one's face. 

NJPW caption is wrong: Tanaka is on the right.

Of course they're not *there* yet, but I'm excited for their arrival. The return of Watanabe and Hiromu and the development of the new dojo students Cody Hall and Jay White will fill in for the absent part of the tale at the bottom of the card. They will be surprisingly big shoes to fill. Sho wins. **3/4

Tanaka d. Komatsu

Captain New Japan and Manabu Nakanishi vs. Tiger Mask and Mascara Dorada

With CMLL having a bit of a shit fit it is probably well that Mascara Dorada signed a full-time contract for the year, even if it means teaming up with the long-past-useful Tiger Mask against the endearingly mediocre Captain New Japan and the creaky golem figure of Manabu Nakanishi. Dorada gets the win, 'goes over' as it were, in a match that technically constitutes an upset as the junior heavyweight pair are lighter than one of the heavyweight Nakanishi's legs. **

Dorada & Tiger d. Nakanishi & Captain.

Chase Owens and Rob Conway vs. Jushin 'Thunder' Liger and Hiroyoshi Tenzan

I don't know what I like most about current NWA head honcho R. Bruce Tharpe: the character he portrays and the way he portrays it (80s heel manager who has learned some basic Japanese to better infuriate the locals) or the meta-text that has Tharpe as this insanely driven man trying to prove that his guys (largely odds-and-sods guys not signed to WWE, TNA, ROH, Sapolsky's various enterprises, Lucha Underground or elsewhere in Japan or Mexico) are better than New Japan's (who in 2014, as a random bellwether, won promotion of the year, wrestler of the year, etc.). 



To be fair to Tharpe, he parlays his international insignificance to the betterment of his character and ultimately his guys; they get a rub from Tharpe's maniacal belief. In a decent short match, Team NWA gets the win against two old New Japan's senior citizens to tease a pair of individual matches taking place on the second half of this PPV in Sendai: Owens vs. Liger for the NWA Jr. title and Conway (who looks a lot better these days) vs. Tenzan for the NWA Heavyweight. Tharpe drapes an NWA flag over Liger's body, cackling all the while. The flag cost 32% of NWA's budget for the year, but god it was worth it. **1/2

Owens & Conway d. Liger & Tenzan

Kota Ibushi vs. Tomoaki Honma

Now we're back to the status quo, without English commentary and relatively devoid of accurate insight, we are back to projecting the reason for storyline. So: Ibushi fails in his attempt to defeat Nakamura for the IC title at Wrestle Kingdom 9 (in an eye-popping match that I have seen 6 times since and can report that it bears up well) and starts in the heavyweight division from the bottom and the person who replaced him in the G1 Climax: Tomoaki '0-10' Honma.

This is some really good wrestling storytelling (that admittedly I am projecting rather than learning Japanese to confirm) here. You expect Ibushi, having nearly scored the big win on the big stage, to overawe the wretched Honma with speed and even size. But no. Honma has traded salt and lemon deathmatches with Zandig. He has been dumped through tables, ladders, chairs and railings. He has fallen off big things, been hit with spiked objects and has generally clowned on the toilet scene for years. Every indignity has been his tenfold, so some kicks from a pretty boy aren't going to mean shit.



Leading with his head (literally. Thinking things through is not a strong suit), Honma hits the running Kokeshi and the diving Mascaras headbutt to the delight of the previously and soon-to-be subdued Osaka crowd. When in control as favourite, Ibushi oozes class, and if indeed this is his long wind toward actual verifiable stardom, then it is a canny step. The Frankensteiner-rolled-through-into-double stomp was incredible, and I say that not as a 'moves guy'. 

Ibushi eventually wins a fine match developed from the unfortunate situation surrounding the G1 Climax by delivering performances that would have fit perfectly into that tournament's distinct style. The highlight of the evening. ****

Ibushi d. Honma

IWGP JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP
reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly) (c) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt and Nick Jackson) vs. Time Splitters (Alex Shelley and KUSHIDA)

For the larger matches, matches with titles on the line, especially those at big events, I do like to give a full write-up and respect and reflect upon the efforts of the guys in the match. Here I am coming up short because we have seen this match or variations thereupon in New Japan and Ring of Honor for nearly a year now. 

Do not misunderstand me too quickly: it is a good match if you are into it, full of high-wire drama and acrobatics and low on traditional notions of 'selling' and 'psychology' (which needs to be spoken of in terms of regional and historical construction a bit more. There is no uniform 'way to sell' or 'tell a story'). There's great stuff here and I am a big fan of when O'Reilly triangle chokes people out of the blue, here plucking KUSHIDA out of mid-air during a Moonsault to try and end the contest. 



However, it feels like time for a big attitude change toward tag wrestling and weight categories and even the cross-promotional aspect because matches like this, which are on paper quite original and special, become like watery porridge for breakfast everyday. I don't necessarily advocate slowing down or doing 'less'; these are creative workers and surely there is a creative solution.

Losing Alex Koslov, a fine all-around wrestler, can't help with issues of depth. Maybe the teased link-up with NOAH may bear fruit, though their own tag divisions frequently feel threadbare. Bullet Club members The Young Bucks, the most consistent and impressive junior team anywhere in the world for the last three years, win the match with More Bang For Your Buck and foreshadow the divisive turn the evening will take. ***1/2

Young Bucks d. reDRagon and Time Splitters to become new IWGP Jr. Heavy Tag Champs.

IWGP JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
Kenny Omega (c) vs. Ryusuke Taguchi

I remember a class I took during a postgraduate course. It was the first class of the first semester, during which the personalities of the people oscillate between maintenance of public face and the way they are in actuality. Except for one person, who upon being informed of a certain piece of information, kept saying 'yes but how do they KNOW?' The lecturer, only young, battled bravely at first, then got a little salty, and then admitted defeat. The person's face smugly turned upward in the suggestion of winning the knowledge battle, having not only defeated someone paid to teach but having overturned the entire humanities field because one can quite simply not KNOW anything. 

The point I am making is that it was the wrong battle to fight at the wrong time. Whether one can truly know something or not is a matter for philosophical symposia on the nature of thought or a night on the beers alone. It seemed sort of inappropriate at the beginning of the journey, whilst being instructed in early Chinese cinema, when down the line with some experience and reading and acclimatisation could have been met a little more warmly. Sure the person was there in the class on reputation and performance, but hadn't really done anything yet to be overturning the very foundation of the knowledge economy.


To me that's kind of what Kenny Omega is doing at the moment with his run in Bullet Club and NJPW. It is tone deaf to the situation and the idea of character development. Omega's comedic and wrestling credentials are not in dispute and he is here on reputation and performance and his presence, I have every confidence, will enhance a thing that is already very good.

But his tin ear really stands out here, in front of the Osaka crowd many believe to be the best in wrestling, as some comedy shtick that I am too weak to detail but suffice to say it involves Taguchi's ass, a flag and the insertion of such, fails miserably. Esteemed wrestling critic Rumblemetrics (who posts on Twitter @badtracking) gave me pause and articulated it best when reviewing the Vince Russo'd-up 1999 Royal Rumble (in 2012) when he said

Wrestling should be old timey and square not *au courant* and *edgy* and I am not going to go on and on about this but while Austin and the Rock and Foley and increasingly Triple H by this time were all excellent at having wrestling matches there was just so much garbage underneath that I found the show pretty unwatchable and I am not of the view that shitty wrestling is much improved by dudes demanding other dudes fellate them when they don't even really mean it man they are just trying to demean them through suggestions of submissive

And whilst this match didn't start as badly as that paragraph finishes and ended with an okay wrestling match, this Omega stuff is just so very at-odds that I am struggling to reconcile it. It is like trying to be Shinsuke Nakamura without having taken the steps that Nakamura took along the roads of being moderately okay until he arrived at the solution to becoming excellent. If this reads like Hermann Hesse-lite then blame me for chainlistening to three of his books recently. 

Omega defended his title successfully and was faced down by Mascara Dorada in the post-match sequence that continued to establish the dominance of Bullet Club, which feels like a place that we have travelled to before dear friend. But maybe when we get there, senpai, it will have changed in time. **1/4

Omega d. Taguchi (first defence)

Kazuchika Okada, Toru Yano and Kazushi Sakuraba (CHAOS) vs. Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga and Yujiro Takahashi (Bullet Club)

Okada took a fall to Fale the day after his Wrestle Kingdom 9 defeat to Hiroshi Tanahashi, though the old 'his ribs are taped and he is emotionally fraught' excuse carried a little currency. That match appears to be the destination based on this showing, and offers some worry to fans as Fale has beaten Nakamura and Tanahashi and Shibata and appears to be winding up for another push in spite of many feeling that he has regressed rather than improved.

It is hard to tell on this offing. Sakuraba lays back for much of the match, whilst Yano is Yano and will forever be Yano: cheat, comedian and barman. Okada takes some lumps and roars back to win in a not-quite Cena-esque fashion though nonetheless it has something of the single-handedness about it. Tonga eats a cracking bump for the Rainmaker in a match that didn't get past second gear. **1/2

CHAOS d. Bullet Club

Shinsuke Nakamura, Tomohiro Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI (CHAOS) vs. Yuji Nagata, Satoshi Kojima and Tetsuya Naito

Togi Makabe is sick, so Kojima is coralled into the thundering babyface brute role to pair off with Ishii, the thundering not-quite-babyface brute-in-opposition. As alternates go, it was a wise choice, as Ishii and Kojima worked up a minor whirlwind around which the match manoeuvred. Nagata and Nakamura, set to dance in Sendai for the latter's title, also teased the longform of their outing. Their G1 Climax match from 2014 was fine - not the best of either man during the tournament, but interesting and deliberately tentative. Here they're charming and entertaining without being brutal.

Hey look at this awesome picture of three of the best ever

With the above-named pairs cancelling one another out, Naito easily overpowered YOSHI-HASHI for the win. Naito continued his stellar record of getting booed in Osaka, this time continuing to lap up the hate as he bleeds from the mouth. I'm not quite sure where the Stardust Genius heads from here, aside from a tag team bout alongside Kota Ibushi in Sendai against the genius pair of Yano and Sakuraba, which should be interesting to say the least. ***1/2

Naito, Kojima and Nagata d. CHAOS

IWGP TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP
Meiyu Tag (Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata) (c) vs. Bullet Club (Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows)

So after all was set and done, when they climbed to the top of the mountain and after the smoke had cleared, the Kuwana schoolfriends of Goto and Shibata put aside their beefs and joined forces to take gold at Wrestle Kingdom 9. For Goto it was the first title since 2012, when he defeated Masato Tanaka for the then-not-very-prestigious Intercontinental Championship. For Shibata, who debuted 12 years ago, it was his first ever championship.

As a tag team it was not a stellar year for Meiyu Tag. They had been beaten by Gallows and Anderson, beaten to the #1 Contendership by the seemingly at-random pairing of Hiroshi Tanahashi and Togi Makabe and then flung apart in the wake of the G1 Climax. Returning together at the Tag League of 2014, they overcame a shaky start to defeat the IWGP champions in the final.



Having dethroned the same pair at the Tokyo Dome, the omens are bleak for this encounter. You see, it's not really sensible to take a team that held a world championship for 1 year and then have them lose three competitive matches on the bounce, however much you think they ought to. And that is what happens here. Gallows and Anderson win and regain their tag titles.

Online criticism went into meltdown. People have bought into the Shibata and Goto storyline (and I think, from a certain remove, more out of kinship with the enigmatic Shibata rather than the stoic Goto, though he too is liked) and had high hopes for a freshened tag scene led by two hungry and exciting workers. I must admit that I am not free from this criticism; the result was a letdown, though I also feel Goto and Shibata are much better apart than as a team, however symbolically compelling their partnership is.

I also pointed out that their WK9 match felt underweight on time. This match takes those extra minutes I suggested that it was deserving of and doesn't quite convert them, staying comfortably within the formulaic regions of tag wrestling. Bullet Club add another title to their stable, and another in a match that felt a little underwhelming given the potential it had to shine. ***1/4

Bullet Club d. Meiyu Tag to become IWGP Tag Team Champions

IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) vs. AJ Styles

The same dilemma as outlined in the previous match was in operation at the outset of this match, which influenced perception and expectation of the outcome. Styles took pins from Tanahashi at the G1 Climax Final and at Kings of Pro-Wrestling, where he surrendered his run as IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Here he resumes business, taking the title back after Tanahashi temporarily took charge to sell extra tickets for the Dome Show (he says, cynically).

Two matches between this pair before AJ Styles joined NJPW as a full-time concern, one in TNA and one in NJPW, showed Tanahashi and Styles as wrestlers with rare talent that could shine given the spotlight and extra minutes. At least, this was my proclaimation ahead of the G1 Climax finals. Six months down the line, I feel ready to revise.

History repeating
Sometimes two guys will not have the same chemistry that the same two people will show with a third wrestler. Tanahashi and Styles' matches with Minoru Suzuki or Kazuchika Okada have hit glorious heights. And I would argue, not too heavily but assertively, that the former pair are better wrestlers than the latter pair. But for some reason, whenever Tanahashi and Styles have come together, it feels mechanical rather than natural and less than what either is capable of.

But Fuji! I hear you cry. You gave both their G1 Final and KOPW matches 4.25. That is true. They were mostly very good matches and as mechanical structures go among the best. But they were also working between the gaps of overbooking; firstly dancing around Jeff Jarrett's looming guitar and then secondly providing a stage on which Yoshitatsu could dance. This third match, effectively a rubber match, does not get the slightly reverential treatment it deserves. And whilst Yujiro's referee distraction or the High Fly Flow that dispatches half of Bullet Club on the outside (and busts Tanahashi's eyebrow) doesn't play into the finish, it is nonetheless a complete chore.

And as a result I couldn't get into the drama of this match. I knew who would win and the match didn't feel like it could convince me otherwise (matches that arrived with this predicament and began to work their magic: CM Punk v Undertaker at Wrestlemania, Honma v Shibata at the G1 Climax). They were two talented workers having an exhibition, with a crew of jackanapes at ringside distracting or threatening distraction (which is distraction in certain terms). 

Styles did win cleanly with the Styles Clash, a flourish that played into the storyline of the match (AJ felt slighted that as innovator of the move and chief neckbreaker of its utilisation that someone else would ever do it) and thus Tanahashi's record-breaking seventh reign was halted on the first defence. Bullet Club paraded en masse in the ring, now holding the all of the IWGP titles bar the Intercontinental, led by Anderson crowing as usual. ***1/4

Styles d. Tanahashi to become new IWGP Heavyweight Champion

Though I'm no fan of Bullet Club, I am individually happy with all of the current champions as champions. Kenny Omega, Gallows and Anderson, The Young Bucks and AJ Styles are all capable of better matches than they produced this evening and perhaps it is just a coincidence that the night on which they reasserted themselves as the dominant force just so happened to feel a little bit flat in-ring.

Aside from Mascara Dorada challenging Omega, there was no indication of future direction, though with an event on Saturday and the New Japan Cup to feed the next title challenger, it seems churlish to do anything other than accept the status quo and admit that NJPW have written into glory from lower points than this. In the scheme of things, this is the stuff of wrestling: a minor disappointment for babyface fans that should resolve. It would just be so much better without all the damn cheating.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)