Konosuke Takeshita vs. Mike Bailey, DDT Same Day & Night Box Office Festival in Matsuyama 2018 (6/17/2018)

Of all the matches that Takeshita and Bailey have had together (and may one day have again), this is my favorite.

Why‘s that? 

There are a lot of reasons that could be the answer, realistically.

Most vaguely of all, it could simply be that it is their second match together. People have a way of figuring things out in a rematch after the learning experience of a first match. Hell, that applies to just about everything in life. You drive a car better the second time, you cook a meal better the second time you try it, whatever else you want to throw in there. Repetition makes things easier, you work out the kinks, refine the processes, all of that. It‘s to be expected, more often than not, that a rematch will probably be better, which is why most repeat match ups don’t get to their big hit on the very first try. 

You could also look at the things they did differently to explain it.

Something like the focus now on Bailey‘s arm instead of his knee helps them out a whole lot. Bailey is still not a great seller, although he does put in the effort, but simply not forcing him to express pain in his leg while spending like eighty percent or more of his offense using said pained leg is an improvement. He doesn’t throw a lot of elbows or chops, and so the less intense selling is a lot more appropriate, if not great. The removal of a large mark against their first match is, for sure, a benefit. 

Another thing they did differently, and probably the biggest part of this being better, is that they cut it down from nearly twenty-eight minutes the first time around to now a much more manageable thirteen or fourteen. Konosuke Takeshita and Mike Bailey are not twenty or twenty-five or half-hour kinds of wrestlers. They‘re action and energy and fireworks, and virtually all of their best work is either (a) under 20:00, or (b) has an all-time great like HARASHIMA there to hold their hand through a longer match. Shoving them into a box here and forcing them to cut out a lot of the clear filler results in a match that’s not only more efficient on an intellectual level, but also one that is allowed to satisfy the more lizard-based parts of the brain by simply whipping a ton of ass, free from parts that do not whip ass, or that whip less ass. 

None of these things are the answer to the question though.

The answer is instead something far simpler, both larger and smaller than all of those potential reasons, and incredibly stupid, because it is simply that this was is a Flame Tights Takeshita match.

All of the above may stem from this one specific gear that always resulted in one of the better versions of Takeshita that we ever got, or it may be an incredibly silly coincidence that more often than not, Takeshita‘s best work during this period of time happened to be whenever he wore this laundry day ass more ordinary attire. The beautiful thing is that one can never really be sure, creating the sort of weird alternate version of an otherwise mercurial performer that you don’t often get to see in pro wrestling, but that real sports are filled with. 

The Hoodie Melo of pro wrestling does it again.

***+