This was for Tanahashi’s IWGP Heavyweight Title.
Similar to AJ vs. Daniels eight days before, it’s not what it was once. It’s a more evolved and grown up version of something incredibly memorable from the middle of the previous decade. Again, the big thing to stress here is that it’s not 2006 anymore. Bernard is older and he’s been past it for a few years, content to let Karl do a lot of the heavier lifting in tag matches, come in and hit his stuff. He hasn’t had big singles stuff in a while as a result, but this is a long reign, and it’s worth coming back to this match up one last time before Bernard leaves at the end of his contract.
This is a great contrast to those famous 2006 matches, and even to the less famous (and less good) 2007-8 tournament rematches. Tanahashi cannot be pushed around or intimidated anymore, and he has the confidence to immediately drag his former tormentor into his style of match. Bernard doesn’t see arm work coming, and Tanahashi uses it to set up leg work once Bernard is frustrated and a little worn out. The knee work is what it is, this isn’t any better than a hundred other Tanahashi matches where he spends time working a limb. It does have a really impressive little segment in the middle though, where Bernard uses his upper body to reverse a Figure Four into the Indian Deathlock and he can hold it for longer than usual. Tanahashi sells the leg from this one segment even more than Bernard did from minutes of knee work, and in an incredible little touch, Tanahashi throws deliberately slower and weaker stomps to Bernard’s knee.
To Bernard’s credit, he doesn’t totally blow it off. It could have been so much better, but he gives it a shake and a limp and doesn’t exactly sprint around a whole lot. To the match’s credit, Bernard uses Tanahashi’s minor knee injury as a transition. Good as hell both because it’s a taste of his own medicine from a guy who knows him better than most, and because it’s this great minor touch to tell you that, yes, the things that have happened so far actually do have value. It would be out of character for a guy like Bernard to stay on the knee though, so he works the back. It’s good. It’s not what it was, but it’ll do. He’s a little awkward and less mobile at points when he has to bump for comebacks and hope spots, but there’s effort put behind it and I can’t entirely hate it. There is one especially horrific bump here too, which always helps.
Tanahashi eventually comes back, of course. This gets a little long in the transition from control to final run, but there’s one tremendous bit where Bernard’s leg gets caught trying a kick, and he knows what’s happened, and just shouts “NO” like he’s resigned to it before the Dragon Screw happens. Not everything in the finishing run is great, but enough of it is. Again, this isn’t a crazy match, it’s not an especially dramatic one, but they do a lot that I appreciated more than I remembered. Things being avoided before coming back late in the match, so they feel like miniature victories. Another tremendous example of Tanahashi selling the back better than most other wrestlers ever. Most importantly, an attempt to change things up a little bit when the High Fly Flow fails due to the bad back, and Tanahashi has to (barely) muscle big Bernard up for the arm-trap German Suplex to keep his title.
Ultimately, it means nothing. It doesn’t become a new finish and Tanahashi sticks with his reliable High Fly Flow(s) for the most part going forward. It’s still a welcome change though, and it’s the sort of thing this match benefits from. They’ve wrestled for years and they’ve all been buried in the shadow of that first match. This is my second favorite match they’ve had together because it goes for something different. Tanahashi gets beaten up, but he’s hardly the underdog. His win no longer feels like a hard won piece of good luck, but like what was always going to happen barring something extreme, which Bernard is no longer capable of. He’s better than Giant Bernard now, and unfortunately, with Bernard no longer being what he was, there wasn’t a real route to victory. It’s the correct story to tell, if not always the most exciting, and there’s just enough in the match to make up for that.
Less a conclusion to their story together than it is an epilogue, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with an epilogue.
***
HANDWERK 