CM Punk/Sting/Darby Allin/Hook vs. Jay White/Swerve Strickland/Brian Cage/Luchasaurus, AEW Collision ~ Fyter Fest (8/26/2023)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent contributor Kai. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

The thing about AEW Collision is that I do not want to watch live professional wrestling on a Saturday.

Unless a show — and Collision has done this a whole lot, to its credit — can offer me up a match I believe will be great enough to watch as it happens (or in the case of the debut show, a moment), or as with the recent WWE switch to Saturday events, has a Rumble or WrestleMania type of must-see large event feeling to it, I will probably not tune in as it happens. My Saturdays, when I get off work, are for watching movies, or in the fall, college football also. I may watch some matches here and there between those things, but for the most part, I just don’t want to sit in front of the TV and waste even a little bit of my time like that.

So, at the time, I did not watch this.

The line up was not ideal, it was pre-taped, I knew I would already be watching a ton of AEW in the next week and change in between watching ALL IN the next day and having tickets to ALL OUT the weekend after. I watched APE (2012), K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER (2002), and KICKBOXER 4: THE AGGRESSOR (1994) instead. I regret very little.

However, I actually liked this.

It isn’t a great match, to be sure. Vegetables first.

The issues I always knew it would likely have, which is to say a Collision main event being at least five minutes longer than necessary and taking it a little easier before flying overseas to a gigantic stadium show and the weaknesses on the heel team in Cage and Luchasaurus lowering the ceiling significantly, are there and they do matter.

Everything else is simply very good.

By every definition, it is absolutely a house show ass main event. This match is interested in moving the chains as efficiently as possible, offering up simple and fun wrestling, and sending everyone home happy. There’s no shame in that, as long as we’re all honest, and this is a match that feels really honest about it.

In the same way that the first Collision main event felt a lot like 2004 ROH, in the way it combined a modern approach with an older-style mindset, this feels a whole lot like early 1990s WCW, and I fucking LOVE early 1990s WCW. This has a combination of tons of different characters, thrown together to air a day before a big event, a really colorful mix, easy formula, and a lot of fun fun fun combinations. Jay White vs. Darby Allin feels like the clear standout to me, in the sense that it could main event an AEW show tomorrow and likely be really great and feel like it belongs in that slot, but Hook vs. White and Swerve and Punk vs. Swerve are also a blast. Not every pairing in this is incredible, but even the ones with the less good wrestlers moves in and out pretty quickly, so nothing in this is ever TOO bad.

This is just good light hearted television pro wrestling.

You might be insane to call it great, but I am hard pressed to do much else but enjoy it.

Not the greatest match, but the most since the debut main event that AEW Collision has resembled something I truly love, and so I have to say that this was a really nice little piece of wrestling TV.

Taichi vs. Jay White, NJPW G1 Climax 32 Day Sixteen (8/13/2022)

Commissions continue, this one from the world’s biggest Taichi fan, SoundwaveAU. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $10/movie or other thing over an hour long, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was a B Block match in the 2022 G1 Climax tournament.

I’m not usually the sort of person who only watches recommended matches. I hate those people, I try very hard not to be one of them. If there’s even half a chance something might be interesting, or if one of my favorites is in something, I’ll usually give it a watch. That doesn’t mean I’m going to catch everything, because nobody ever will, but most of the time, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on things.

Jay White vs. Taichi is a match I never even considered watching, and seeing it now, I once again feel reassured that nearly every instinct I have in these matters tends to be the correct one.

I fell asleep watching this match.

Now, as a semi-professional, I woke up and started it again, of course. I got tired a second time, and I guess thankfully, managed to perservere, although I would have enjoyed either a second nap or a full night’s sleep probably more than I enjoyed this match. It wasn’t hard, on re (?) watch to see why it was that it had such a pronounced effect on me.

It’s just dull.

That doesn’t mean it had no value. Dull doesn’t mean bad, and this match had some good ideas and good moments. The last few minutes of big moves are pretty alright, they manage to string together a few actually good nearfalls, and on the surface, the heel/heel match where one side is a real piece of shit and the other at least has a modicum of honor is one of my favorite stories that pro wrestling can tell.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much more than that.

White and Taichi have no real natural chemistry to speak of, so the first 75-80% of the match, relying on nonsense and very clearly taking it a little slower and easier, feels like a real slog. Taichi is not an especially sympathetic figure (usually one of his better qualities!), which combines with White not being all that interesting in the middle of a match (his shit talk is magnificent, but that’s about all he has here before the switch flips) to make this very very hard to wade through before you get to the good parts. Even in said good parts, White yet again gets a little too dance-fighty in some of the exchanges, four left turns to get somewhere that’s a straight line in front of him, and he also has a hard time walking the tightrope between presenting himself as a top heel and eating shit in a way that keeps both steady.

They also have to deal with not only another clap crowd, but one that rarely reacts to anything, even with just their hands, drawing attention to just how much there is about this match that doesn’t work.

Ultimately, it feels like something even less than a first draft or a dress rehearsal for a better match in a bigger spot that never quite happened for them, and more like a pitch session or an initial storyboard. There is one good thing and a few decent bits, but a great match is so much more than that. Forget missing some connective tissue, this is a match not only missing vital vital pieces, but one created on a fundamental misunderstanding as well, in addition to its shoddy construction.

White wins with the Shellshock.

A fantastic lesson on how both you, The Readers, are free to spend you money any way you would like, and on just why I have such a trust in my instincts in the first place.

 

CM Punk/Ricky Starks/FTR vs. Bullet Club Gold (Jay White/Juice Robinson/The Gunn Club), AEW Collision (6/24/2023)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program Kai, who paid for every CM Punk 2023 AEW match. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

More of the real shit.

It is not the match the week prior, to be clear.

The loss of Samoa Joe to the formula (for good reason, tease Joe/Punk once and it rocks, keep showing it in a tag and it loses something) is not totally made up for with the addition of the Gunn Club and Ricky Starks. That’s not an insult to those guys at all, and Starks specifically adds a ton to this match, but it loses the sort of pure feeling as a result of (a) being the second Punk match back & (b) not having a real equal to him on the other side.

(No. Jay White doesn’t count. Be serious.)

What worked about the six man the week before also works here though.

Again, this very much has the feeling of one of those 2004-5 ROH tags, when both Punk and Joe were there along with Ricky Steamboat and a pre-insanity Jim Cornette backstage to help the kids with smaller detail work, in which they achieve multiple things. Not only delivering a great match, but succeeding also at building future matches. While not as impressive as the previous week’s Joe/Punk build, the work done both for the FTR/BCG and Punk/White match are so impressive, nevermind that the former wasn’t actually that good and that the latter never actually came to be.

The match itself, conceptually, is again pretty airtight.

It isn’t a short match at 20+ minutes and with this heel team I maybe wish it was shorter, but they get so much out of everyone involved.

Jay White delivers I think his best ever AEW performance in this match, primarily against Punk. First, opposite him unable to get anything going, and later, once the other three have him more beat up. So much of his AEW run up through the end of 2023 feels like he is unable to totally do what he was so good at in the 2010s in New Japan in terms of being a genuine shit heel while also doing some cool moves and then eating shit, but it works here, because the match also works with him. He is never in so long as to get dull, but the match shows the real fiber of his being in his big Punk runs. Capable and even with the best in the world, but at his core, a cheap shot artist who needs things set up for him. Annoying and good and a genuine delight to see brought down to Earth, first by Punk, and then off of the hot tag, Ricky Starks.

Everyone else on his team feels like a supplementary aspect next to the Knife Pervert, but they are all great or good in individual moments, and way more importantly, so unlikeable at all times.

The heroes are less obvious, save one, but they are all so good.

Less is asked of FTR here than usual, the focus very much on Jay, Punk, and Starks, but it benefits them in a way. Focusing on pure mechanics, and smaller runs of offense, each stands out a lot with no room to ever become annoying. Punk, now in more hostile territory, is again just the best. Playing into it while also never abandoning the real focus of the match. Selling well, slowly losing steam to put over the bad guys, managing to thread the needle between being a classical in-peril guy and also a top star in a way that nobody outside of maybe Bryan seems to totally understand anymore. It’s not just the star power of Punk that carries the middle of this match, but the performance, and unsurprisingly, nobody lays a better foundation.

Really though, the best guy here might be Ricky Starks.

As the hot tag at the end, so much of this is on his shoulders, and he is so great. Energetic, believably mad, the sort of explosive but just-barely-not-so-complex offense that is easy to root for. He is the exact sort of guy that this match kind of requires, likeable and cool and kicking just enough ass that it feels like some real bullshit when he loses, and it works. So many AEW bullshit losses do not feel like anything but the result of someone writing something down on paper and it being acted out (or plugged into TEW), but there’s a real “oh, you mother fucker” added onto this that helps it so so much in the end.

Starks runs through the boys, but Juice lands a cheap one through the ropes, and White hits the Blade Runner for the win.

It does not feel like the best anyone can do, pure bridge building at its best and most efficient, but it just fucking works.

Something of a stopgap, but as the match shows, that never has to be an insult.

***+

 

CM Punk/FTR vs. Samoa Joe/Jay White/Juice Robinson, AEW Collision (6/17/2023)

Commissions return again, this one coming from longtime reader Kai. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

I don’t like to talk about a lot of current wrestling on here.

Most of the time, that’s because I prefer some distance from the moment to see how things hold up, whether that means if a match is more than pure fireworks, or if a particular emotion or feeling is a lasting one or a fleeting one, and I find it much easier to tell these things years removed. Feelings always change, but the time in between something happening and years later, at least for me, tends to be when they change the most. So, while I sort of encouraged someone to pay for a review of every CM Punk AEW match in his last run in the company, when someone actually stepped up with the money, I was sort of reticent to nail down any thoughts on the matter so close to everything happening.

However, as of November 28th, 2023, seeing him put out the most mailed-in talking of his career upon a return to the WWE, I am far more at peace with this as some kind of final experiment in actual pro wrestling, and so the series begins first, with at least at the time of writing, his second most recent return.

This is the real shit.

Real ass pro wrestling.

Emphasis where it is for a reason, right? Because that was the point of Collision. That is, beyond my conspiracy theories that it was put on a bad night with the design to fail while pretending to still try, tank his drawing power argument for being kept around, and make it easy for the people who never wanted him there to begin with to get rid of him. I mean, nominally speaking, this was The Wrestling Show, the one centered around the last true professional wrestler, the one for adults, all of that.

Outside of giving away something major on the first episode, given the talent available, this is about as great a match to sell that idea and make that point as one could imagine, to show just what The Wrestling Show could offer up.

CM Punk and his boys Gun and Bald take on some real actual bad guys, all-time great Punk opponent Samoa Joe at the helm, wormy little shit-eating partners Knife Pervert and Juice Robinson behind him, building up a handful of different matches and stories all at the same time.

To be clear, it’s not perfect.

Like a lot of the big Collision matches, it sometimes feels like it’s lasting too long simply to make a point (and in cases of some of the non-Punk Collision efforts, definitely would, no equivocation about it). You can lose the second of two control segments — this one on Cash — and not only lose very little, but tighten up the match and get rid of a slight lull in what is otherwise a steady series of high points. Jay White also feels sort of lost here in an older style match, not getting to add in cool moves and bullshit smoke and mirrors stuff that helps him as a singles guy, but also lacking the skill in getting everything out of small moments on screen like Juice has, and not being the focal point like Joe is. “Exposed” is maybe a strong term, but Jay White is a lot more like MJF than CM Punk, and it stands out here. There’s also what I experience now for the first time, being in the building as this happened, which is that Kevin Kelly is dogshit on commentary, and as Nigel McGuinness would shake off the WWEism to his game, he didn’t help things either. So, this is not a match entirely without flaw.

It still just gets so much right.

People have said it felt like old wrestling or compared it to territory work, but the old wrestling it feels like — and I really really really hate saying this, someone dig me a grave and put me in the ground — is the stuff Samoa Joe and CM Punk were involved with the last time they regularly wrestled in the same company.

Something that always appealed to me about Peak ROH — not so much at the time, experiencing it as a teenager, but in every look back at it since — was the way it was able to essentially approach wrestling in a serious Crockettesque way, but to also apply all of the cool moves and ideas of modern wrestling to it without every getting too much in the way of the presentation. For all of the nasty head drops or sick dives or pure violence out there, it felt like, more often than not, that there were reasons for everything happening, and that, at least in terms of the things that mattered, that this was a competition. It’s the thing people always talk about, but rarely ever seem to actually do, either getting too boring and rigid with it or too loose, and never getting the mixture exactly right.

This match came closer than most to finding that balance again.

Not only is the majority of this a kind of leap off the page exciting fast paced wrestling while still always feeling real enough to impress, but in its main main main goal — give CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe to audiences both new and old — it succeeds more than any other build up tag around it.

Punk and Joe do not share the ring for a terribly long time here (correct decision), but being two of the best ever, get every second of their time together correct. The large idea is the idea that Joe is someone Punk has never beaten and maybe does not know how to beat — a first in AEW — and they completely nail that. The near-submission at the end when Punk is being choked out before FTR can save is the part everyone zeroes in on, and for good reason, but in their exchange early on, they establish that with an immediacy and efficiency largely unmatched on this roster. That exchange also shows the other layer here, all the great little details for the older fans. Punk trying to show what he’s learned in the last eighteen years with kicking and a greater emphasis on striking, only for Joe to immediately shut it down with way better striking, leading to Punk going to the old standby in the headlock, and things of that nature.

Like the match itself, it’s a rare combination, teasing without coming all that close to giving away just yet, offering these great little fist-pumper moments for the oldheads (hello) but, seemingly based on experience in the arena, also something simple enough to hook just about anybody, a big killer who pretty much dominates the top babyface.

The match is also, mostly, really really well assembled.

Not only in the sense that, yes, they build to the Punk tag coming last in the rotation and they build to Punk vs. Joe, and once the teaser is over, they build to a longer run at the end, but more than that. The layout is — maybe less than totally necessary second control bit aside — pristine. Classical formula, but always with some real hard shot or cool move or sequence in there to keep the attention. Cut offs and transitions that aren’t always super obvious, great heel bullshit from Juice, FTR members struggling against the brute force of Joe to get that over even further, and a particularly great finishing run with, as previously mentioned, one of the great false finishes of the year without even the benefit of a kick out for the pop. The match is far from a full on fireworks show, and it is much better than being purely functional, and somewhere in the middle there is something close to exactly what I want a semi-lengthy television main event tag to be, the best of all worlds.

Following the Shatter Machine, Juice walks into the GTS, and Our Heroes (and their annoying podcaster friend) prevail.

Send ’em home happy.

Put them back in the hotel room that they got on relatively short notice down the street from a friend’s apartment, order some delivery, make them watch HAPPY TOGETHER (1997) for the fortieth time and then also HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT for the first time, pass out, enjoy the hotel gym and pool, and head home because shit, right, you have an opening shift on Monday, you gotta get some actual rest. That is maybe less universal than it is personal, but the beautiful thing about a match like this is that I think it offers both.

It’s ideal TV/non-major live event stuff. Long enough to feel substantial, like nobody got robbed by buying a ticket, but without giving anything too major away. A great match while still leaving room for so many more great matches to come, getting that the main point of this show is the catharsis of simply seeing the hero again. A match that attains its greatness through the quality of the craft on display, and less so because they aim for a Great Match (although they do). It’s a lost art, even for some of the guys in this match themselves, and even if they didn’t get the mixture entirely right, they had the right recipe, and it’s hard to fault them too much for a little experimentation. The goal, in a larger sense, is simply too admirable, on top of the match quality itself, to let the little things matter too much. Show people that it’s worth the time, attention, and in some cases, the money they spent on it, and hook them for more. I can’t say it worked on everyone, there are people who were and are too far gone for this to ever work on, the toothpaste is out of the tube in many respects, but for what Collision is, this was just about perfect, and I miss it already.

Famously now, in the in-ring promo that began this debut episode of the show, CM Punk said to anyone who felt wronged that he was sorry “the only people softer than you are the wrestlers you like”.

Watching this, and watching all that’s come since, I’m sorry too.

***1/4

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White, NJPW King of Pro Wrestling 2018 (10/8/2018)

This was for Tanahashi’s Tokyo Dome title shot.

Once again, the third match of a Tanahashi series is the one that sees them really get it right. Or, with these two and considering that their actual best match together will come in another eight months, at least far more correctly than they had the previous two times (despite the marked improvement from their first to their second).

Nothing really changes all that much, save for the addition of new manager Gedo.

Jay White cheats, they hit on some dueling knee work, you get the standard dose of some bullshit with the Knife Pervert like a ref bump and some light work with a chair and now Gedo getting in on the action, big reversal sequences, all of that.

They just do it way better than usual this time.

It’s all small stuff, minor steps forward and the like. Virtually no time gets wasted early on before they get right into it, removing a lot of the filler what White has always struggled with (and will continue to struggle with) and letting him get right to the knee. Likewise, save for one real unfortunate elbow exchange and one even more unfortunate reversal sequence that gets a lot too dance-fighty for my tastes (two to three reversals in a row at most, it shouldn’t last thirty seconds before you hit a move), everything in the back half is also real tight and without a lot of obvious filler to it.

Performance wise, the trend holds as well, more of the same but tighter and better and with more energy and feeling.

White turns in his most viscerally upsetting heel performance yet, armed now not only with one of the most upsetting personalities in the world but now with a dog and pony show that includes a cheating manager. His work on the knee is a preview of what, eight months down the road, may be his career performance, managing to be real mean spirited and brutal to a body part, but without ever getting all that complex. Jay White, the character, should not be able to tear up a knee or have a million advanced techniques with which to attack it. A lot of other wrestlers would forget about this in an effort to have what they imagine to be the best possible match or to show that they are a Great Wrestler. Jay himself will later fall victim to this a lot in the back halves of matches in pre-ordained Great Match Factory epics, trying to both have his cake and eat it, but he’s terrific here. As if the 2023 work against another all-time great addled by physical limitation didn’t already spell it out, White is at his best being a disreputable shitter and nothing else, with this match once again making a perfect case.

As for Tanahashi, it’s yet another one in 2018.

Yet another ultra sympathetic performance, trying to hang onto everything that’s left. Yet another energetic fiery babyface performance, fighting against someone worth cheering him against. Above all, yet another outstanding knee selling performance. This is not one of the Okada or Minoru Suzuki matches, it less a focus of thing and more of an expression of White’s shit ass tendencies by going for the easiest and most obvious thing, but Tanahashi again excels. It’s more about little things than big ones, but for the millionth time, nobody in New Japan gets more out of the little things than Tanahashi.

The construction of the thing is also delightful.

Not so much in terms of the mechanics of the thing, teases and payoffs and strategies and the like, but in how great it is at falsely pointing towards a real heartbreaker of an ending, even one that anyone with half an eye for booking patterns would know was a long shot at best. Tanahashi makes the sort of comeback he makes in matches he loses, and they even go through the effort of burning the double High Fly Flow sequence before Gedo pulls the referee out and the smoke and mirror run begins, so if you know a little inside baseball stuff about basic construction or just watch a lot of Tanahashi stuff, you know that the thing he usually wins with isn’t going to happen again. As the White cheating spots all work, it becomes real easy to believe in the upset, even if only for a second, and that second is where the magic lies.

The magic then also lies in Jay White getting a little too into the window he sees, and getting promptly shoved out through it and onto his ass. Taking a little long after a chair shot to go for the Blade Runner, Tanahashi instead spins out and into a perfect inside cradle to win.

No deep ideological or philosophical statement here about wrestling style or fight theory, but something even older and more wonderful, the worst man in the world getting stuffed and once again beaten on a big stage by one of the best.

Go Ace.

It’s not the best they’ll do, and maybe not even a top twenty to twenty five New Japan match all year, but another significant leap forward, both for the Knife Pervert, and for the match up at large. A very impressive thing put together here.

***1/4

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White, NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day Three (7/16/2018)

This was an A Block match in the 2018 G1 Climax tournament.

Without a doubt, this is a significantly better match than their first match against each other, the famously mediocre IWGP Intercontinental Title match they had against each other seven and a half months prior in the Tokyo Dome.

In large part, it is not unfair to put a lot of the credit on the Tanahashi formula for a series of wrestling matches. If you’re reading this, you probably already know the idea, but generally speaking, a series of matches with Tanahashi and a repeat opponent is not going to peak until the third or fourth one. The first one will almost always not be great, especially if an opponent is more hit-or-miss or in the case of White in January 2018, simply not ready yet. Doubly so if that first match is in the spot that was, third or fourth from the top, and bound to get swallowed up by the headline matches anyways.

The second match — which is what we have here — is where things start to get interesting, and shocker, that’s the case now, especially in a main event slot. It’s not all that different of a match from what they did before, so much as that it is a better version in every way.

You have to give a whole lot of credit there to the significant improvement by Jay White over the last six months.

White hasn’t made any gigantic leap exactly, it is not some massive switch flipping where someone suddenly becomes Great overnight, but it mostly just feels like someone growing comfortable in his own skin or comfortable in this role, where he clearly wasn’t in their first match. He feels more at ease doing scummy heel work, and even as opposed to in later years in New Japan, also feels like he has a better idea of how to balance classic heel bullshit with the demands of the Great Match Factory. His work on the knee strikes another perfect balance, doing damage that feels genuine, but not overloading Tanahashi, and also not doing anything more complex than it feels like a cheap shot artist heel should be capable of. Likewise, he’s much better here at plugging in his big moves into the match in a way that feels natural, rather than trying to do cool things, which is one of the harder and more impressive things for an antagonist in a promotion like this to pull off.

Knife Pervert’s attitude is the real kicker, as following from the recent Okada and Juice Robinson matches where it felt like he really got comfortable as this guy, he puts on his most contemptable performance yet. It’s not just what he does, but how he does it, and how the match is constructed to get the most out of it. New Japan will later lose sight of the idea when asking White to be the one at the helm of Great Match Factory matches, but White finds himself in the best possible kind of match he can have here. Something designed to show his skill, but always keeping in mind what a rotten little worm he‘s supposed to be, allowing him to show off all of the very best things he brings to the table, without asking him to do things he either cannot, or that counteract the things at which he’s best.

He is also still the second best wrestler in the match.

You can‘t really say one thing or the other is a cause for the leap in quality here, but if we’re looking at a mix, it’s something like 40% the improvement of the knife man, and 60% that this is simply a much bigger and better Tanahashi performance. 

Looking at what actually happened, the big help this time is that Tanahashi gets to have another knee match, an advantage their Wrestle Kingdom match never had. White‘s work on the right leg is not Minoru Suzuki or even Okada level, but it’s enough to let Tanahashi show off that he really might be 2018’s best leg seller in all of wrestling. Not only the shakes and stumbles you expect, selling whenever he has to leave his feet or land on a piece of offense, but the stuff you never expect. There’s a moment here where he gets out of a suplex behind White, but takes the time to stumble back and fall back into the corner real unglamorously and recklessly, and it’s the sort of thing that makes him so great at it, the stuff that isn’t so showy but that makes it all the more realistic. It isn‘t all knee work, of course. Tanahashi feels more animated in general, his big comebacks have a lot more spring to their step relatively speaking, and even his early match chain work feels like it’s done with a lot more direction, care, and emphasis than in their first match. 

The great ones, near the end of truly dynastic runs, often need a little something to get them going when it matters most, and for Hiroshi Tanahashi in the last year or so of his true prime, the G1 and a main event slot in it is as good of motivation as there is. Tanahashi gets it up for what he couldn‘t before, plugs in a vastly improved opponent into the great thing he’s been doing all year, and succeeds wildly because of it. Go Ace.

White cuts off the High Fly Flow by throwing Red Shoes into the ropes to crotch Tana up top, and follows up with the Blade Runner to steal another big one, two in a row.

Not the best they’ll do together, or even the best they’ll do together in this very calendar year, but a large step forward at a time when one was badly needed, not just for White himself, but the match up as a whole.

***

Kazuchika Okada vs. Jay White, NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day One (7/14/2018)

This was an A Block match in the G1 Climax 28 tournament.

While I am not the biggest fan of this match up, that largely goes toward what it eventually became. Their first few meetings — which is to say the ones in which they were not allowed to wrestle for longer than half an hour, or in big prestige title match situations — are matches I genuinely really like, such as this one.

Here, Little Kazu and the Knife Pervert don’t quite hit a perfect fifteen like they will in their 2019 Tokyo Dome match, but within a twenty-five minute match rather than something more, I think they find the exact limits here. Twenty-five minutes feels like the exact amount of time that an Okada vs. White match can go before I totally lose it and begin taking an interest in any potential other thing around me rather than the match on the screen in front of me. It is enough time for them to establish some semblance of an epic big match feeling, to hit all their big and cool moves, to tease out some big reversals and Concepts, but not quite enough to totally undercut with obvious filler.

Mostly, the main draw here is less what happens in the match — as good as it is — and more in that Kazuchika Okada shows up for the G1 clearly in the midst of a major depression. With his weird little balloons and Kool Aid red dyed hair, spiked up in a way that feels less like a cool guy and more like an awkward young man, it is the only time I have ever looked at Okada and seen genuine humanity. I love it. He feels positively filthy for the few months that this bizarre post-title funk lasted, and outside of the moments where Little Kazu went full affluenza riddled antagonist, it is the most interesting I have ever found him.

During the summer of 2018, Kazuchika Okada will learn how to throw knives.

In doing such, he throws this little freak into a great match too, I guess. Whatever.

The Knife Pervert cuts the Rainmaker off with the Blade Runner for the upset, and a shockingly sympathetic Little Kazu will get even further into balloons, weird hair colors, and very possibly also Midwestern emo.

***

 

Jay White vs. Juice Robinson, NJPW G1 Special in San Francisco (7/7/2018)

This was for the Knife Pervert’s IWGP U.S. Heavyweight Title.

Is this probably always going to be known as the match where Josh Barnett almost fought Jay White over some incredibly weird thing about throwing Juice into the railing right by commentary?

Yeah. I don’t know. Maybe. Probably, unless you’re in some weird ultra insular community that is gigantic on either the Knife Pervert and/or Juice.

The match also genuinely rules.

I myself am not the biggest fan of either wrestler, often enjoying the idea of what they are more than I enjoy either in actuality or in practice, but this is one of the better outings either ever found themselves involved in. That’s not so much because either man was on some next-level heater here or because this is one of those classic New Japan narrative successes, a whirlwind of perfect payoffs both long and short term. No. In fact, the match struggles early on in the back and forth stages, before they really find their footing and something to focus on. It’s just that when they do finally find something to focus on and to center the match around, that focus is the injured left hand of Juice Robinson, contained in a soft cast, and well, you know.

What is the name of this blog, after all?

Jay White is not a master craftsman here exactly. The extent of his attack on the hand is some yanks on the fingers, stomps, and armbar or two. The point is less what he does though and that he does it. The hand is already visibly injured, the soft cast — never removed — exists as a constant reminder of that. He doesn’t need to destroy it, so much as he needs to do something to show it matters. Likewise, Juice doesn’t need to be dying out there and unable to move his fingers or to constantly need to hold it still at his side, so much as he has to show the difficulty it gives him, so there’s something to overcome beyond just the Knife Pervert doing a lot of offense to him. He’s outstanding at that, always holding it a little weird or shaking it off in the right spots. He uses the right for most of his chops, but the few times he really really has to rely on the left, there are immediate consequences.

The other thing is that, honestly, it’s better like this, the exact amount that they can handle both as a guy working a limb and a guy selling one, and the amount that does something a little different with what, in 2018 thanks to WALTER, is becoming more of a routine thing.

Juice’s hurt hand is the focus of the match in that it is an impediment, but moreso in what it represents. The attack is a shorthand for a larger story being told, White disrespecting him enough to attack it here or there or to pull on as an anchor, rather than a fully committed assault.

It’s not only an approach that befits their level of talent — both overall and in this specific sort of a match — but one that allows them to have the best of both worlds. The thrill of all of the wonderfully executed and set up big moves in the world as is befitting a Great Match from the Great Match Factory, but also with the mechanical thrill of Juice’s struggle, and the more emotional satisfaction when he’s able to push past it. Great professional wrestling.

The only major flaw comes at the end, when they walk their way with purpose into an absolutely perfect conclusion, and instead opt for an infinitely less satisfying one. White manufactures a referee bump and a low blow, but before the referee recovers, White finally uncorks the sole left hand with the cast, and then the Pulp Friction. It is the ideal pro wrestling conclusion here. The villain overreaches, the hero makes the decision to go for it despite the pain, and hits his move.

Jay White kicks out instead, and after a totally okay few moments to follow, Juice reverses the Blade Runner into a simple schoolboy to win.

It really is not the end of the world. Had the prior chance not existed, it would be a fine enough finish on its own. However, it does exist, and in a clear effort to protect the Knife Pervert for what is to come (a foolish idea, but then New Japan always wanted to have its cake with White and eat it too, trying to have him exist both as an opportunistic swine and as a legitimate threat through ability alone), the best possible solution gets passed up for one of many potentially acceptable ones.

The unity ticket is for cowards, and so this match, while great, is not all it could be.

Still, despite its flaws, this is a far far better match than it would ever be without the decisions they make or are forced into by pure physical realities.

(Although, I may in fact be a little biased.)

***1/4

Jay White vs. David Finlay, NJPW Road to Wrestling Dontaku 2018 Day Ten (4/24/2018)

This was for the knife pervert’s IWGP U.S. Heavyweight Title.

It came as an immense surprise to me — as it likely will to many of you — that I really, genuinely, and actually liked this a lot.

Definitely it is not perfect.

The match goes on for like twenty five plus minutes in a Korakuen Hall main event spot and it is a bit more than either can reliably handle at this point. There are at least five minutes you can cut out without losing a whole lot. In general, it is very much a match between two young wrestlers of an undeniable mechanical skill, but who have not entirely figured out just what they want to be yet. White is close, with a lot of the mannerisms of the Knife Pervert nailed down and the general kind of contemptable vibe, but Finlay is nowhere near close. There’s a sort of disorganized feeling to the entire thing, with the match very much feeling like a first draft before an editing process.

Having said all of that, White and Finlay have the sort of a young wrestler match that I really respect though.

It is remarkably ambitious, but not in a way that upsets me.

So often, ambition in young wrestlers just means a long match. More often than not, given half a chance, that is the case. Even with far better wrestlers — CM Punk and Chris Hero back in early 2000s IWA Mid-South, for one — than these two here and now. This is ambitious in another sort of way though, being this like two-thirds formed main event epic that gets just enough right to be genuinely very good and just enough right to still not be great.

There are so many things they get right here, and honestly, way more of them than on the other side of the ledger. These big spots that are beautiful and impressive and almost entirely successful. A genuinely great sense and feeling for how to properly escalate a match of this magnitude and this length, not just when the bombs begin to fly, but also in the early stages when they’re chain wrestling.

It’s a shame the connective tissue isn’t entirely there, or that they take it a stretch too far here or there, but really, I do not have any negative feelings about the thing. Not every match that fails to be capital-g Great is a bad match, and this was a match that impressed me far more than I ever expected it to, at the moment, and even half a decade later.

White blocks a leaping cutter and fires off the Blade Runner for the win.

Not quite great, but ambitious enough to really impress.

Punishment Martinez vs. Jay White, ROH Death Before Dishonor XV (9/22/2017)

This was a Las Vegas Street Fight.

Relative to other ROH midcard feud ending brawls — your ACH vs. Adam Pages and Cedric Alexander vs. Mooses or Tommaso Ciampas of the world — it is not the best. There are still limitations here, not in just that ROH in the 2010s always treats these matches in a measured way that never allows any of them all of the shortcuts possible, but also just in the talent involved. Mainly, I mean that Punishment Martinez is a total nothing, the world’s third best Baron Corbin to paraphrase someone else (Lance Archer is the first best), a force of nature style mediocrity whose results depend entirely on everything put around him moreso than anything he is ever going to give you.

At the same time, this is still an ROH midcard feud blowoff gimmick match at a time when, despite not operating at the strength they did years prior, that was still a relatively sure thing. There is just enough magic here and just enough allowances made to make this work, in spite of every reason on paper that it shouldn’t.

Largely, that comes down to a remarkable performance from Jay White.

That’s probably not all that surprising in retrospect. Since something clicked in mid-2018, White’s been consistently real good as a heel and occasionally pretty great at it. However, it comes here as a pure no-frills white meat ass babyface and it’s maybe one of my favorite performances he’s ever had. Offensively, it’s all kind of young gaijin basics. Tope Suicida, flying back bump dropkicks, simple suplexes, and the like. However, it’s all done with a force and a snap, and most importantly, with a kind of natural likeability that makes it all work.

You can also lay some of that responsibility at the feet of what they’re allowed to do, and how long they’re allowed to do it for.

For thirteen minutes — exactly long enough so that this never feels handcuffed by time and also so that they’re never allowed more than they can handle — they get to do a lot of really neat stuff, even if they’re not allowed to do everything. Martinez and White get to beat the hell out of each other with chairs and a garbage can, do some cool moves outside, and build to a real sick run of stuff at the end, with a Powerbomb on a chair contraption, a release Burning Hammer on the same contraption, and finally a chokeslam on thumbtacks to give Martinez the win, with Jay White about to return home and discover how cool knives are (do not throw them). Independent of performances, it is simply a cool match that goes out of its way to only do cool things.

An ode to the power of some good old fashioned bullshit.

***