Previously on NJPW: Kushida and Marty Scurll won the semi-finals/first and second matches of a four-man tournament, Gedo revealed he’ll yell during a different guy’s matches now, and the Guerrillas of Destiny reminded the world that their dad could beat up the Young Bucks’ dad.
You can watch New Japan Pro Wrestling shows on their streaming service, NJPW World, which costs 999 yen (about 9 USD.) They feature a different free match on the site every week and you can do a free trial month, so it’s a pretty easy service to test drive. You can also watch certain NJPW shows with commentary by Jim Ross and Josh Barnett on AXS.
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And now, the best and worst of King of Pro Wrestling from Ocotober 8, 2018, at Ryogoku Sumo Hall.
Best/Worst: Old Cat Yells At Cloud
King of Pro Wrestling, for which I returned to English commentary and mostly did not regret it, kicks off with some enjoyable chaos because the IWGP Junior Heavywieght Tag Team Champions apparently woke up that morning and decided to make sure they were the biggest jerks on the show. (They ultimately were not, but they made a good effort!) Kanemaru and El Desperado attack Jushin Thunder Liger and Tiger Mask before their names are even fully announced or our announcers can introduce themselves. Once they’re in the ring the Suzukigun champs go right for the masks!
Tiger Mask starts the comeback for our well-seasoned heroes by just slapping Desperado in the face, delivering those fired-up kicks, and going for the younger wrestler’s mask. The pop when he tags in Liger after this is another piece of evidence in the case for opening every show with the Beast God. Liger is very much here to fight and leads our vets to some nearfalls.
The match gets insane again quickly though when Kanemaru stops what looks like a definitive pin from Tiger Mask to Despy after a double arm superplex by sliding his whiskey bottle right into the ref’s hand. When Tiger protests to the official, Kanemaru shoves him aside and gives the masked wrestler the Suntory Special, and later shoves Liger into the ref to knock him out of the ring. We soon get another visual pinfall after a Tiger Suplex, but Liger is hit with the bottle when he tries to get ref for the count. Of course, OF COURSE, the referee finally does make it back in after Desperado hits Pinche Loco on Tiger Mask, a move he set up with a kick to the nards.
This is an exceedingly dirty and frustrating (but pretty entertaining) win for our tag team champions that will contribute to me being very happy to see them eventually beaten for these titles. Although I would have loved to see Tiger Liger have another, probably brief reign, Suzukigun are almost definitely better defending champs going into Super Junior Tag League. They’re way more of a legit threat with their mix of athleticism and cheating and a now long title reign very much maintained by shenanigans.
Backstage, Tiger Mask cuts a very good promo that veers maybe a little too close to lamely whining about the Good Old Days, but is mostly sincere-sounding, no-nonsense, valid points. He says this match was a huge opportunity for he and Liger and questions how the company can even recognize as champions people who cheat this much. He puts over Sho and Yoh as exemplary recent junior tag champs and extends the criticism of extra-legal tactics in championship matches beyond his weight class, saying that “in heavyweight championships, foreigners are always using tables or whatever. Why does the company accept that? Why do they let them fight?” We’ll hear another vet bring up almost this same point very soon!
Worst: In Other Veteran Tag Team News
Tomoaki Honma and Togi Makabe then defeat Toa Henare and Juice Robinson in a pretty solid match that was probably the most forgettable part of the show. Robinson enters with a whole new outfit (including different colors of dreads) that’s very Macho Man-inspired and also makes the Juice-Henare tag team look more retro than GBH.
The match starts with Henare vs. Honma, two wrestlers at opposite ends of their careers, both looking to take next steps. Juice, whose career trajectory is also now a bag of question marks, is a fun opponent for both Makabe and Honma. He sells their offense a lot and plays to the crowd no less than when he had the title. The main purpose of the match seems to be giving Great Bash Heel some momentum going into World Tag League, and Makabe pins Henare for the win after their classic tag team finishing sequence.
Backstage, both of these babyface tag teams have nice things to say about each other, and Robinson talks picking himself up by the bootstraps. He got pretty dejected during that G1 losing streak, but it seems like he’s bouncing back much more easily from this title loss, and/or he’s had some time to process. He, the character and the wrestler, will be almost definitely be fine.
Worst: Children Have Been Conceived And Born During The Bullet Club Civil War
SPEAKING OF FINE, guess who still is not that at all?
We have yet another Bullet Club Civil War tag match on this card, and it is well-executed and plot-relevant. It was, for me, also not very entertaining to watch, even though I like every wrestler in it to a certain extent. My BC Drama Fatigue has flaired up again and the whole dynamic of these people fighting each other is exhausting.
The OG team (all the active OGs, at this point in the show) of the G.o.D., Bad Luck Fale, and Taiji Ishimori enter to the original Bullet Club theme song. They have all the clout in this match in the form of all five of their title belts, which they won off Elite opponents and brought with them to the ring. The feud between subfactions could easily continue with title consequences if the Elite pin anyone in this but Fale, and there only being one junior in this match makes me nervous about that, although Ishimori should be about twelve levels above Chase Owens. A solid wrestling start goofily turns into a brawl, which the OGs dominate after it moves out of the ring because their whole thing is that they act like they would fight people IRL and they’re up against these guys:
Also, Matt Jackson, after being put through a table in Long Beach, brings back his back injury, which really sucks for that character because he just had a month off after All In and immediately got hurt again!
After several well-put-together multi-man spots, the OGs win this match very similarly to how they won the trios and tag titles. Owens tries to package piledriver Tanga Loa, but Loa counters and serves Owens up to the ACTUAL LEGAL MAN who everyone forgot was the legal man AGAIN, Tama Tonga, for a Gun Stun for the win. Tonga realizing he could and should make “guerilla tactics” more than a catchphrase has done wonders for his career and status in his faction!
The OGs start the postmatch beatdown almost immediately. Tonga extends his portion of that into a mini-rampage, making sure to beat the crap out of every single member of the other team personally even after his bros are done with them.
If they weren’t already solidly winning this feud after Long Beach, they definitely are now. Backstage, Tama declares their team to be on the top of the food chain, and, after his Good Brothers check if he’s ready, which is nice, Ishimori announces his tag partner will be “Sniper of the Skies, Robbie Eagles,” an Australian indie wrestler. With this win, this development, and what happens later in the show, things are really looking up for the OGs!
Meanwhile, it looks like the Bullet Club Elite might just drop the “Bullet Club” part of their name altogether. Matt Jackson and the rest tweeted later in the week announcing what they claimed would be their last BC-style t-shirts, and there were reports by Meltzer that certain foreign wrestlers in NJPW were not having fun under the new management and were thinking of leaving. Maybe the BTE guys, or at least some of them, are going somewhere else for good or maybe they’ll stay more in ROH and only show up in NJPW very occasionally or maybe they’re just trying to boost shirt sales right now. Maybe it’s all a giant misdirect! I don’t care that much; I’m not in charge of other adults’ career decisions!
But I am pretty sure about the part where the BC Elite have gotten the BC beaten off of their faction name. During Kenny Omega’s post-match promo, he says “We all are not Bullet Club, but we are the Elite. So let’s all stand together as the Elite” and only refers to his crew as the Elite and never says “Bullet Club” during the Wrestle Kingdom 13 press conference. Even though I’m sick of watching these dudes fight each other, it seems like it would be a lot more satisfying for this change to happen via Loser Leaves Japan or Loser Forfeits Bullet Club Name match rather than Twitter announcement and purely real-world rebranding though.
Worst: Pro Wrestling Is About Moments!
But On The Other Hand: New Japan’s Long-Term Booking Comes Through, Probably
Bullet Club is also responsible for one of the big Pro Wrestling Moments in this show FULL of Pro Wrestling Moments. It has one of the ones that I think didn’t work well in itself, but has the potential to work really well as a development and bring about cool things in the future.
After Tanahashi defeats Jay White, who was just part of a much more effective shocking moment of villainy two shows ago, Switchblade starts beating him up. As he’s about to hit the Blade Runner, urged on by Gedo, Okada RUNS INTO THE RING and SAVES TANAHASHI. The crowd goes crazy for this, and it’s really neat that the next step for Okada after hitting rock bottom was to become a vengeful hero.
He fights White off, and we get SO CLOSE to him getting revenge on his old manager and the crowd is HYPED. But when Okada goes for an actual wrestling move on the begging Gedo, JADO, wearing a Rainmaker shirt, steps into the ring and stops him. Usually when NJPW is going to have someone run in at the end of a match, they have them in a match earlier on the show to establish they’re in the building, so this was both hilariously out of nowhere and made total sense because why wouldn’t Gedo’s longtime tag partner try to help him out? (I feel like IRL, Jado is probably just still too injured to wrestle, but they didn’t want to have to add him to the faction separately.)
While Jado occupies Okada, the crowd murmurs get louder and louder and the camera cuts to show this is because the BCOGs, who have all changed clothes, have entered the arena. Given the next reveal it’s pretty great that Fale changed into a Fale Dojo shirt, repping his school where he apparently turns select young wrestlers evil before sending them to New Japan (Henare TBD.)
The BCOGs point ominously at Okada, but Ishimori and Fale grab Gedo and Jado and are like WE’RE GOING TO DO WRESTLING MOVES ON THEM WHAT NOW OKADA and Okada, I guess acting on old instincts or something, runs to save Gedo… and runs right into a Gun Stun. Because, and I still can’t believe I about to type this, Gedo and Jado are in Bullet Club now! At first this feels really stupid, but is really very on-brand because of course Gedo and Jado would absolutely want to be in the faction that uses gangster lingo and swears all the time.
We then find out that the knife has officially been welcomed into the gun fight because Switchblade Jay White is now a member of the Bullet Club. And hey, look how the confirmed new Karl Anderson color-associated himself with the new Prince Devitt, both standing out in red from the sea of black-clad wrestlers!
What immediately works about this development is how it was already teased during the G1, the incorporation of Devitt IRL recommending White to the Fale Dojo, White showing respect to basically only Fale in his G1 promos, and Tama’s backstage line about maybe the wrong person trying to recruit White to BC after he rejected Kenny. What doesn’t fit is Jay’s insistence on becoming leader of Chaos when part of the OGs’ whole deal is that they hated people declaring themselves better than them. But if we go with this being this genius guerrilla tactics plan all along, we could say that Jay was sowing the seeds of an ideology he knew was harmful within Chaos. (Or he could have a lust for leadership and immediately start drama within the OGs, but that would be super lame. Or they could just be cool with him being their leader, which would be even lamer.)
With this development, the BCOGs are suddenly a very well-rounded, reasonably-sized faction! This group that didn’t have any frequent heavyweight main eventers now has a heavyweight division ace along with their junior heavyweight ace and multi-time tag team champions, plus, on a meta level, two expendable wrestlers because somebody has to eat pins when NJPW doesn’t want people to get title shots or make anyone who could be in a title picture in the near future look weak. Also, with the addition of White and Eagles, it’s basically a Japan-Oceania Alliance faction, making it very relevant to a market NJPW has shown they’re interested in.
Backstage, Tama introduces White as the newest BCOG, and White, who’s been in this gang for about two minutes is hilariously, immediately like, “POSERS!!!1!” to the BC Elite, declaring them “rip-off shit.” Because secretly, he reminds us, he’s been getting indoctrinated since 2014!
Despite White’s recent loss, Gedo says the BCOGs are the REAL winners here and makes a very strong case for a Gedo and Jado vs. Triple H and Shawn Michaels match.
Like the millionth new BC member reveal over the past five years and the second Jay White swerve in like a month, the latest Chris Jericho Outta Nowhere Moment was hurt for me by diminishing returns.
I was very much ready to see Evil vs. ZSJ, which was built up really well, and expected Jericho to probably show up after a momentum-gaining win for Evil. Big Match Evil enters with the full laser lights and the throne and the druids, but one of them attacks him just as he’s about to step in the ring. It’s very quickly clear that this man is Chris Jericho when his hood falls back to reveal most of his head and his robe parts to reveal the IWGP Intercontinental Championship.
The surprise attack is several steps down from the attack on Naito in terms of surprise factor and violence (though I admit the step up in violence from the Naito one would probably be literal decapitation.) But when this guy has been Gene Parmesan-ing all over the place for like a year now and has held the IC title undefended for so long that I just want him to lose it and leave even though I really like Chris Jericho as a wrestler, my reaction to this was basically ZSJ’s.
Referee Marty Asami throws out the match, which very rarely happens in NJPW, and Sabre isn’t having it. He attacks Asami and then the defenseless Evil until Naito runs in to save his pal. Naito looks tough and heroic as they exchange forearms and does the Tranquilo pose, the coolest guy in the world, for a moment after taking out ZSJ with a Swing DDT. But only for a second before going to Evil’s side because he’s also a good friend! The crowd digs it, which is good because Naito has been treading water for most of the year in service of this Jericho feud.
Everyone finishes setting up this quadrangle of violence with backstage promos, filmed in the cool, more realistic and gritty-looking style New Japan does when things get too crazy for wrestlers to stand in front of a backdrop. We’re getting Jericho-Evil at Power Struggle, which should be good, another match in the fun and engaging Naito-ZSJ rivalry, and then presumably Naito-Jericho II at the Dome. Hopefully Evil vs. ZSJ will also happen sooner rather than later too because it was set up really well and I really want to see these guys fight definitively!
Ultimately, even though I think this Moment didn’t work all that well, Jericho’s return is a welcome development and I’m basically upset about the stuff NJPW wants me to be upset about.
Best: Pro Wrestling Weight Classes, How Do They Work?
https://twitter.com/totaldivaseps/status/1049224512309477378
Other, more effective big developments in the show happen in or adjacent to the junior heavyweight division. I thought Ospreay, Goto, and Ishii vs. Iizuka, Taichi, and Suzuki would be mainly to build for Suzuki and Ishii’s RevPro title rematch (their first one was really good and if you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it when you have 30 minutes) (along with the ZSJ vs. Okada match from the same show and all these wrestlers facing off for tag championships the night before) with some Goto vs. Taichi blowoff. But the biggest takeaway from this match turned out to be the NEVER Openweight Championship becoming actually, functionally an openweight championship!
The match is a mix of good tag team wrestling, crazy brawling and biting, and that really fun Suzuki-Ishii preview I was expecting. Then Ospreay and Taichi are tagged in at the same time, and, after Goto helps his little Chaos bro deal with an Iizuka run-in, Ospreay pins the champ after a Stormbreaker. Ishii runs in to tackle-hug him immediately, Goto also gets in on the wholesome hug action, and we see Yung William realize he’s pinned someone he can challenge for a title. Taichi said he wanted to only wrestle juniors in order to keep the belt forever, but I don’t think he meant under these circumstances!
I would love to see Taichi hold this title for a while, but this is a pretty interesting development. Even if Ospreay doesn’t win, it would be a big change from what we’ve seen in NEVER title picture for at least the past two years. It’s been a real hard-hitting and/or strong style belt, and though I really enjoy that style of match when done well, I like the idea of the openweight singles belt actually leading to inter-weight-class singles matches.
The match after this (Naito, Sanada, Bushi, and X vs. Sho, Yoh, Yano, and Okada) also starts with a potentially game-changing event, the reveal of Shingo Takagi as the nueva pareja of Los Ingobernables de Japon. Naito enters in his full big match white suit with the cape because this is a very special occasional, one-upping Bushi’s repping of Halloween with his half-pumpkin, half-skull match and basically the whole L.I.J. section of the New Japan store.
Naito builds anticipation by, completely straightfaced, saying the new pareja is Milano Collection A.T., and then reveals his new teammate for real. Some people, at least in internet wrestling community land, recognized it must be Takagi when “THE DRAGON” popped up on the screen, but he still gets a great crowd reaction when he pulls off the mask.
And he will be Bushi’s partner for Super Junior Tag League despite being the almost the same height and MORE MUSCULAR than Naito! Wrestling, man. Commentary lampshades this by Rocky Romero saying it looks like Takagi maybe lost bulk to “make junior heavyweight” and Chris Carlton saying Takagi could be a “huge rival for Sho in terms of strongest junior heavyweight at this point.” I appreciate this! Maybe he’ll move up to heavyweight when Hiromu comes back.
The eight-man tag is fun too, with Okada still in full depressed weirdo mode, a funny Paradise Lock spot with Sanada, Yano, and Yoh, and me getting emotional about the Naito-Okada part because I truly believe the world would be a better place if Naito had beaten Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 12. If Naito was the champ, the energies in the universe would definitely be more harmonious and I bet my car wouldn’t have gotten impounded like a month ago!
The match ends with Takagi, who makes a great impression with all of his moves looking clean and powerful, pinning Sho after the Last Falconry. The crowd is into it and Shingo looks like he fits in great with the rest of his new team.
Best: Marty Vs. McFly
We also get a new IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion at KOPW when Kushida defeats Marty Scurll. I didn’t realize until the end of this match that there were, until that point, no babyface champions in this promotion. That made it feel really good, a real breath of fresh air situation, to see a good guy win.
Recent New Japan title matches have been pretty intense, so I think there was a part of me expecting this match to go to some crazy next level it never reached. But it was a good match, not “shoot style” but a lot closer to it at certain points than anything else on this card, which added some nice variety to the show and made it oddly soothing for me to watch.
The match starts with solid catch wrestling, a really nice hip toss into an armbar by Kushida, and a lot of rolling to dodge moves and rollup pin attempts. Scurll reverses the momentum of the match with a superkick from the apron to Kushida on the mat and is able to get him in the Romero Special back in the ring. The wrestlers feel very evenly matched after this and each get in some offense, culminating with knocking each other down with finally more fired-up, simultaneous clotheslines. We get an extremely cool Diablo Armbar from Kushida, some underhanded tactics by Scurll, and a very dramatic counter of Back to the Future into the chickenwing. After this, it’s big moves and close calls until Kushida counters a chicken wing attempt and hits Back to the Future for the win.
Kushida is now tied with Tiger Mask for second-most reigns with this title, which is definitely deserved. The dude got on Instagram Live after this and shoot polished this belt very thoroughly! And he’ll be on the Road to Power Struggle/Super Junior Tag League, so he’ll have lots of possible matches in which to pick up challengers (or if they don’t want to do that, his guest star partner Chris Sabin in the tag team Alex Shelley’s Friends can eat pins with no damage.)
I don’t know what’s next for Marty Scurll, but he cuts a good, convoluted heel logic promo backstage, blaming jet lag like he does every dang time, and saying the company should have run this match in America, “more local to me…” where Kushida would have that jet lag disadvantage. Also, I think he should give those “Win for Winston” shirts to the same charities that get the t-shirts saying the wrong team won the Superbowl.
Best: Nuts For Nuts
I already talked about the aftermath of this match, and before I talk about the actual match I want to mention the very good character work at the pre-KOPW press conference by both Jay White and Hiroshi Tanahashi. White takes an Ace towel from a fan, steps on it, gets booed, and kicks it back into the crowd, and when Tanahashi enters, he goes into the crowd and wipes his face on what I think is that same towel. Not like this is anything new, but I think it’s worth pointing out how consistently good both these performers are at interacting with the audience and getting the desired reactions even when they’re not wrestling. Also, people have to pause promos multiple times during this press conference because it’s at a theme park and they have to wait for rollercoaster to pass.
Going into this match, it seems like there’s no way Switchblade could win and get into the main event of Wrestle Kingdom over Tanahashi unless NJPW suddenly hates money (although I feel like White could definitely main event the Dome later in his career if his current trajectory continues.) But there was still a little bit of doubt in my mind because of how effectively White cheated in the G1 and Long Beach, and hey, maybe NJPW thinks Omega-White is the super-duper money match now! I was a million percent sure they were doing Naito-Omega a few months ago; what do I know?
White, backed by Gedo, enters with an impressive amount of heat (one guy even starts booing loudly during the match announcement), which you can’t deny he’s generated even if you don’t enjoy his character or wrestling style. He powders out right as the bell rings to even louder boos and huge “Go Ace!” chants. After the lockup, Gedo quickly gets involved in the match, grabbing Tanahashi’s leg and leaving a window for White to shove him into a barricade, and straight-up shoving Tanahashi, causing a distraction that allows White to attack the Ace’s knee from behind. We get yet another moment of really good heel work when White plays air guitar on Tanahashi’s bad leg for a second before attacking it again.
The knee-focused attacks and Gedo interference continues until Tanahashi FINALLY brings the forearms after White disrespectfully slaps him on the back of the head. He gets a sequence of offense to a nearfall, but White is still able to hold his own. I love how he just kind of dumps Tanahashi over the top rope to the floor with that desperation suplex. Tanahashi cleverly takes advantage of Red Shoes reprimanding White for bringing a chair into the ring to hit a Dragon Screw, then a High Fly Flow from the top turnbuckle to White outside of the ring.
We soon see the Ace POWER UP during a forearm exchange… only to be slowed down by a cheap kick to his knee from White. This exemplifies something I’ve really loved about Tanahashi’s arc this year, the convincing combination of super-human fighting spirit strength and very human vulnerability.
Both men deny many of each other’s moves and land a few, backed by a constant crowd roar. Tanahashi delivers two High Fly Flows, but Gedo pulls Umino out of the ring to stop the three count and it SUCKS and the crowd is booing and so mad. Tanahashi dodges the brass knuckles-wielding Gedo, and, after being low-blowed by White, counters a chair shot with his own low blow. The retribution continues when he bodyslams White onto the chair, but White dodges what would have been an HFF onto the same chair. RETRIBUTION OVER.
White would have picked up the W if he just pinned Tanahashi right when Umino got back in the ring after another chair shot, but he has to look cool/maintain the illusion that he won this match legitimately, so he tries for the Blade Runner first. Tanahashi counters with an inside cradle and collapses right after the three-count. It’s a clever, desperate win for the Ace that keeps him in the WK main event but doesn’t make him look crazy strong going into his feud with Omega. Whether he can really pull off the complete comeback remains in question.
Best/Worst: The Golden Lovers Explode
I was very down on the set-up for this triple threat in my last Best/Worst, and I stand by all that stuff. Even more than the briefcase match, this has zero believable stakes (always an issue with IWGP Heavyweight Championship matches between the G1 and Wrestle Kingdom), and the addition of Cody revived the deader than dead Kenny vs. Cody feud from earlier this year, and also the Ibushi vs. Cody stuff. And maybe this is a weird thing to say, but if a wrestling promotion makes a character a sexual predator and treats it like it’s a serious thing (which felt very responsible at the time!) rather than Pepe Le Pew, the longer we go without payoff for the good guy, the more I’m going to want to see blood. That show where Cody had his goons hold back Ibushi and then kissed him and then claimed backstage that Ibushi had actually kissed him was one billion times more f*cked up to me personally than any deathmatch I’ve ever seen, because, although still over-the-top wrestling melodrama, it got very close to horrible stuff that happens all the time in real life. I don’t really have a choice not to think about this stuff in the real world so I’d rather just not think about it at all in the escapist world of professional wrestling. I wish it didn’t bother me as much as it does, but I’m putting it out there that this is how I’ve responded to this storyline as a result of my life experiences. I’ve critically appreciated the parts of it that were well done, but I have not enjoyed watching it on a personal level at all.
The VTR doesn’t add much depth to the match or explain the long and layered storyline that brought us to this point. Kenny Omega says, “what we’re going to show you is something beautiful and something different. You’re not going to have to worry about all those other details that New Japan has trained it to you. When you put three of those men in the same ring and put a belt on the line with a main event at Ryogoku, magical things are going to happen.” So it’s basically set up like an American indie show “dream match” main event. I think this is a valid way to go about this and try to get around the inherent lack of drama in these pre-WK title matches that I just discussed, but wow, this sets this up as very much the lowest-stakes IWGP Heavyweight Championship match I’ve ever seen and really more of a performance than a match.
I found the parts of this match where they act like this Triple Threat Wrestling Exhibition is really what’s happening to be pretty tedious. The three men rotate in and out of the ring at the beginning, and Omega lets Ibushi pin Cody for what he knows will be a nearfall and says, “Next it’s my turn,” in Japanese. Already something fishy is going on. After a fun Rise of the Terminator, Omega grabs Ibushi out of the setup for a moonsault to attempt a One Winged Angel, the one-hit kill he couldn’t bring himself to use on Matt Jackson during the Bucks vs. Lovers match. The moment of confrontation after this is played for laughs, but Ibushi looks seriously pissed off. If the point of adding Cody to this match was to give Ibushi his earned title shot without breaking their promise to never fight each other again, why would Omega go for the OWA on him?
Before we get back to the schism between the Golden Lovers, we have to watch some more really dumb stuff with Cody yelling “WE’RE FRIENDS TOO HELP ME” to Omega to help him double-team Ibushi, then tripping up Omega out of their move and get a nearfall. We see compelling intra-faction matches all the time, both serious (like Goto vs. Ishii during this year’s G1) or comedic (like Taka Michinoku vs. Taichi during last year’s BOSJ) in which friends are able to compete against each other, but these guys can’t have somebody they hang out with try to wrestle them in a wrestling match without having a crisis. And this is a huge career opportunity for all of these people in their combat sports jobs!
But when the veneer of friendship breaks down, this match gets really, really good, and actually unique. Cody gets Omega in the Figure Four, and, while they’re striking each other, Ibushi comes over and starts kicking Omega. Omega grabs Ibushi’s foot and tries to use it to break the hold, which is pretty much their relationship in a nutshell. Ibushi gets a nearfall on Omega and everybody gets some cool spots outside of the ring, the stuff I think everyone expected from this match.
Back in the ring, it looks like Ibushi is setting up for a move on Kenny, but instead just confronts him. Kevin Kelly reminds us of how Omega cost Ibushi his only previous chance at this title by serving as a visual distraction for AJ Styles. They never fought specifically about this, but I could definitely see it all coming back for him in this moment. A fired-up strike exchange begins between the Golden Lovers. Omega reveals his inner ugliness and Ibushi FINALLY works out his very justified anger against this dude. I’ve seen some fan speculation that “Ibushi’s going to turn heel on Omega,” but Ibushi snapping during this match or in the future wouldn’t be a heel turn at all; it would be an extremely understandable response to how the Golden Lovers reunion has affected his life and career.
Ibushi gets the better of the exchange, but Cody shoves him off the top turnbuckle into a barricade. More Kenny vs. Cody happens, nowhere near as compellingly motivated as the Golden Lovers stuff, but with a very realistic sell of a V-Trigger that would definitely make me think someone was concussed if I saw a person look like that after being kneed in the head in real life. By the time all three men are back in the ring, the social contract barriers between them are broken down and they are beating the crap out of each other in cool-looking and impressive ways (plus that deadlift German to double sunset flip spot that went really wrong.)
More spots happen and it looks like it’s going to be big moves to the finish from this point on, but then, when Ibushi hits the Kamigoye on Cody for what would have been a three count, Omega GRABS UMINO’S HAND TO STOP THE COUNT. When he can’t break the pin legally, he physically and illegally stops the count, cheating to sabotage what would have been the biggest accomplishment of his partner’s career. He tries to comfort or apologize to Ibushi, who looks absolutely miserable and like the last several months of his life are flashing before his eyes. Carlton translates Omega’s Japanese words to his partner as “I’m sorry, but know your place.” The real Kenny Omega has finally fully jumped out after months of being barely concealed by the top champion/face of the company act, and surprise, the real Kenny Omega wrestling character is still a horrible narcissist and all-around garbage human being.
Ibushi shoves Omega’s hand off of his shoulder and just slaps him and then delivers more open palm strikes. (Omega should really examine his life and realize, “Wow, it seems like everyone I hang out with for years who doesn’t directly gain financially from me, and even some that do, feels like I’m keeping them down and eventually becomes so fed up they attack me in a rage! I should maybe change the way I treat other people!”) The closest thing we get to my highly desired Ibushi murking of Cody is an EXTREMELY SATISFYING no-sell of a chop from the American Nightmare followed by Ibushi hitting him so hard he flies out of the ring.
Now the Golden Lovers are straight-up wrestling. Ibushi mounts Omega and delivers more of those palm strikes, and even gets so emotional that this usually pure babyface breaks the rules, hitting Omega with a closed fist and getting a warning from the ref. Cody gets back in the ring and gets some nearfalls, and we see Omega throw his body over Ibushi to protect him from a potential chair shot, because sure, he’s invested in Ibushi’s welfare when it won’t result in Ibushi overshadowing him. And then, when Cody’s knocked back out of the ring, Omega gets a nearfall against Ibushi with a J-Driver, then hits a V-Trigger and the One Winged Angel for the win.
Even though everyone and their mom knew Omega would retain going into this match, it happened in a way that made me feel real emotions. The Golden Lovers gave us an incredibly heartwarming wrestling moment when they reunited, and now they’ve given us a heartbreaking one. Ibushi’s situation has already had sad subtext for a while, but this match openly confirmed it. The context of an implied romantic relationship makes this suck on a much more relatable level than if this happened in any other tag team because I think most people, by a certain point in their lives, have seen an unequal relationship where someone is being mistreated and is miserable, but just can’t seem to get out of it. As Cody and the Young Bucks get in the ring, acting like everything’s fine, Ibushi doesn’t even stand. He stays kneeling with his head in his hands, looking like he might be crying, and Omega acts like he’s just really beat from the hard-hitting match. It’s all very ugly.
While this match reached some emotional heights in a unique way for wrestling, I still wasn’t crazy about it overall. It reminded me of Naito vs. Suzuki in Beppu in that it had distinct separate sections that didn’t really mesh together, although in Omega vs. Cody vs. Ibushi this had more to do with jarring tonal shifts. Still, the match got the job done, with Ibushi’s odd, sidekick-y role since the Lovers got back together addressed by more than that one Tanahashi promo, and after months of Omega is this weird flux state between playing villain in Japan but hero for two New Japan shows in America plus All In, he’s revealed the real version of himself, and the version of himself that will fight Tanahashi at the Tokyo Dome.
Mostly Best: Hashtag Dump Him
After Omega puts over how unique that triple threat was (true in terms of storytelling), Tanahashi enters the arena with the briefcase. His appearance gets louder cheers than a lot of the main event match. Omega quickly reverts to full anime villain, and Tanahashi cuts a pretty cool mic drop promo. There couldn’t be a more dramatic contrast between our now-official Wrestle Kingdom 13 competitors.
Backstage, the Ace tells Omega he’s going to kick his ass in the most wholesome way possible.
Omega talks about doing new things in this company like that one ladder match he had and wrestling Jericho and the triple threat, very much new things for this company that other companies do all the time. He compares Tanahashi to Old Yeller and explicitly says the older wreslter needs to be taken out back and shot. The story, in addition to personal beef between Omega and Tanahashi, is more solidly established to have the larger theme of if New Japan should change/Westernize as it grows (Omega) at the expense of its heart and soul, the man who helped it get where it is today (Tanahashi), and Mr. Change The World is now pretty explicitly evil.
The press conference for Wrestle Kingdom 13 the day after King of Pro Wrestling adds more depth and builds more hype for this “test of two different ideologies of pro- wrestling.”
In promos and answers to questions, Tanahashi lays out where he stands. His goal with pro wrestling to let people have a good time while always looking “towards my victory in the end.” He was bothered by the personal drama fueling that triple threat, saying “the IWGP belt is not just an accessory” and exposes the messiness of the relationships between the competitors by asking, “Why would you use a table on teammates?”
In a statement that works as both a shoot and in kayfabe, Tanahashi points out that “Kenny has the eyes of the world and more and more people have found pro-wrestling. But the way he wrestles, it’s not easy for those watching for the first time. There are so many questions.”
Omega, bringing back that fully villainous voice he also used recently in his press conference with Ishii, does a good job of actually setting up Tanahashi as a believable underdog, claims that he’s reason New Japan wrestlers are getting a paycheck (Did they not get paid before? Does he think the company would have straight-up shut down when Tanahashi got injured in 2016 if not for him?), and says the crowd’s cheers for Tanahashi are actually “prayers” at this point because “they don’t want to see you die in the ring.” I’ve really disliked a lot of Omega’s recent promos, but appreciated how this combined some really good twisted heel logic with an attempted psych-out to turn Tanahashi’s babyface power from the crowd into something that makes him feel insecure.
Tanahashi admits Omega is a great athlete, but says pro wrestling “should never be cruel,” like Omega very much was during his last two title defenses. Omega’s response starts with shoot examples of people telling him watching him wrestle has helped them ge through hard times, but he soon tries to flex by citing Funko Pops (always too lame for words) and says, actually, though he hasn’t been cruel so far, their match at the Tokyo Dome will be “a vicious beatdown.” After months of focusing on star ratings and Best Bouts, Omega really, sincerely wants to fight.
Tanahashi continues to expose Omega all over the place, bringing up how part of the Bullet Club turned face only when Ibushi joined them, and implies he and/or the rest of the locker room doesn’t respect their IWGP Heavyweight Champion who’s been fighting dirty and dissing them in promos.
The use of the words “babyface” and “heel” take this press conference to a worked shoot territory that I personally really hate (including Omega referring to himself as Tyson Smith), but that New Japan likes to do with interviews sometimes. Omega freaks out about being called a heel, saying “What does that even mean in 2018?” As he talks about why he isn’t really the bad guy, he reveals himself even more to be the absolute worst.
After he’s resigned himself to playing the villain he already is organically, he archly declares that he and the Ace won’t have a “best bout,” but it’ll be a great story of a legend who to regain his status “and then peters out and dies… I will be the genius to direct the fall, the final fall, of Hiroshi Tanahashi. And it will be a legendary performance for a legend in our sport… it’s the least that I can do.” Omega closes the press conference by saying if this doesn’t happen and the Ace does win the title, “then it’s time to kiss this f*cking company goodbye. There goes the worldwide movement, everything I worked hard for. It is dead in the f*cking water.”
Interestingly, Tanahashi doesn’t meet Omega when he goes high drama and responds to these statements as a calm, good-hearted, realistic dude. He says he never told Omega he had to be the heel, but “I just don’t agree with your point that you think your change is the answer. I just want you to stop and think about it. Not everything will work out. Some things will, other things won’t. I get your point that change is important, but, pro wrestling has its history and has become a culture. So the idea of pro-wrestling itself, never changes. What has changed is how you deliver it and how you perform, but that’s just the surface. That’s what I think.”
And that’s our WK main event feud officially set the heck up now, and we have months to go before we get to watch it! The personal, professional, and shootier artistic conflicts within this impending physical conflict very well established. And now, on the Road to Power Struggle, Tanahashi will start to escalate the feud in preview tags against… IBUSHI. Ibushi, dump him! Dump him! Get out of this, buddy!
I’ll see you back here soon to talk about probably mostly cool tag matches and developments in the junior heavyweight division on the first part of the Road to Power Struggle!
