Minoru Suzuki v Shingo Takagi (New Japan, 8/29/20)
I like the stadium aesthetic of this. I barely watched any Covid-era wrestling but the closest any of it came to having an actual atmosphere was the WWE Thunderdome stuff, which was kind of like going for a bath with your shoes on. Stadium shows are also very cool in general. I'm a Puerto Rico fan so stadium shows in baseball stadiums are especially cool. Plus I coach for a living in a spectator sport and it's been pretty shitty doing that in front of no crowds for the last year, so seeing even partially attended sporting events (carny or otherwise) is neat. Anyhow this was rubbish. Shingo has been getting some GWE talk as a top tier/number 1 contender already and that sort of encapsulates my disconnect with modern wrestling and the folk who love it. I'm not taking a shot at anybody who does love it either. I honestly wish I shared their enthusiasm and took as much joy in watching it, because at the end of the day this is supposed to be fun and watching more fun stuff can only be good. But nah, Shingo is one example of a dude whose appeal is completely over my head. This had lots of strike-trading and chest-puffing and rage shouting so we know how tough these guys are. And I suppose that could work, but Shingo's elbows were basically Mick Foley punches and I don't really want to be watching that. Shingo did the Tenryu punch/chop combo at one point and it was pretty fun, but I watched the real Tenryu do that to Suzuki a couple weeks ago so this was always going to fall flat. Some of the stuff they did probably passed me by just because I'm not familiar with where they're currently at, their personas or characters, their past history together or whatever. So maybe you need to be immersed in the SCENE for this to properly resonate and parachuting in on some random match isn't the way to go about it. I did at least like Suzuki clonking Shingo with a headbutt to set up the choke. That was an interesting thing that happened.
Minoru Suzuki v Kota Ibushi (New Japan, 10/10/20)
This started out better, with some okay tentative striking and matwork. It was C-level RINGS but I like C-level RINGS fine. Then they went onto the ramp and hit each other in the face for a minute and it all went downhill from there (though Suzuki did throw one amazing punch). I thought most of this was your modern day dick-swinging at its worst. They throw forearms and slaps, but outside of a few cool instances of selling the striking never really means much. I'm not sure what it establishes. Toughness? MANLINESS? They absorb the blows and sneer and scream in defiance, but after 10 years of this we either need to surmise that EVERYBODY is tough as nails, or the striking isn't actually that good. I'm not sure what else we're supposed to glean from any of it. Maybe it's a cultural thing. On the other hand I could get on board with folk doing it just fine in the past, so maybe it's a work thing, or an execution thing, or maybe in my old age, as I now tend to enjoy sitting on the porch yelling at clouds, I can only surmise that nobody sells like they used to. We would tell STORIES in the ring, by god! Either way I have no use for the premise at this point. Ibushi's forearms ranged from pitiful to halfway decent - more of the former than the latter - but he did at least have one or two great bits where he went dead weight off an elbow. Suzuki has this rep of being a masochist and I'll read about him torturing folk, and he did throw a few corkers of elbows, but I still can't get with the act when he spends half the match doing the tongue thing. I am absolutely all in on wrestlers acting the idiot, but most of it here felt like an excuse to just go back on offence. In terms of brain damaged sneering reptiles who've been hit in the head too often he's a fair distance behind Kikuchi. Aw fuck it. I don't like actively shitting on stuff that I watch so we'll see what's what in another four years.
Thus ends my most recent foray into modern New Japan.
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