Hiroshi Tanhashi vs. Michael Elgin, NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day Fifteen (8/5/2018)

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

Going into the match, on the second to last day of the A Block, Tanahashi already has twelve points. The obvious thing to do is throw in a spoiler loss, so that the Tanahashi/Okada de-facto semi-final will simply be that on numbers alone, an even match where the winner simply moves on, and there is nothing complex about it.

Luckily, New Japan’s spark of inspiration with this tournament, and Tanahashi’s year as a whole continues.

I am not super interested in spending a thousand words on Big Mike, but to keep it short, this is an astonishing achievement from Hiroshi Tanahashi. Elgin in NJPW has been one of the most embarrassing wrestlers of the decade. The desperation to be seen as a Great Wrestler, some highly respected gaijin, seeps out of his pores at all times. He does everything he can think of in almost every match, and it is rarely ever good. While a wrestler like Ishii can occasionally pull one out of him through force of will, a wrestler like Tanahashi seemingly has no chance of it.

That makes it all the more impressive when he does.

He doesn’t do the thing you might think, forcing Elgin into a classical Tanahashi match, but instead simply makes a Big Mike match smarter, while living up to his usual standard otherwise. He makes him fight over everything, paces it in a way that allows things to breathe, and does his best not only to make Mike’s stuff seem impressive and to cast him as a challenge worth overcoming, with the natural stylistic contrast helping the stupid weirdo a lot too. Even more than that, the real achievement here is that Tanahashi goes 99% of the way in faking out a classic tournament spoiling loss, only to go the other way at the last second, turning what would otherwise be chalk into something not only a little surprising, but great feeling as well.

At the end of a match that saw the big lug catch, counter, or fight through every major Tanahashi plot, gamble, or usual bit, Tanahashi simply fights his way out of a powerbomb and into a cradle to just barely pull it out.

Tanahashi goes into the final day with 14 points instead of the expected 12, creating a far more interesting scenario for the de-facto semi-final than simply another 12 vs. 12 winner takes all encounter, forcing Tanahashi to make the implicit story of his tournament explicit, and literally just having to survive one more day.

If Tanahashi does, in fact, win Wrestler of the Year in 2018, a match like this will be as much of a reason why as anything on a Match of the Year list. The fact that it is great at all is impressive, but the exact way in which it was great is that much more so.

Go Ace.

***

 

 

Kazuchika Okada vs. Michael Elgin, NJPW G1 Climax 27 Day Four (7/22/2017)

This was a B Block match in the 2017 G1 Climax.

I should hate this match.

Kazuchika Okada, save for his initial burst onto the scene and a handful of other moments (largely concentrated in 2017 and 2018, to be fair) is not exactly my favorite wrestler in the world. Michael Elgin is one of my least favorite wrestlers in the entire world, ESPECIALLY in this mid to late 2010s run in New Japan, where on top of being bad a lot of the time, he was also maybe the world’s single most cloying, embarrassing, and cringeworthy wrestler as well, spending entire matches shouting “PICK ME” at Japanese wrestling fans.

I don’t hate this match.

In fact, I thought it was great, and there’s no magical fix here that explains why, outside of that it’s only like twenty minutes. Okada isn’t working heel and it’s not like Elgin somehow took it back to like 2011/2012, when he was a far far more palatable version of what he’s essentially always been. It just simply works, something is on their side from the opening bell, and while it’s something you can argue they lose a grip on here and there, it’s something that they largely keep a hold on for most of the match. In spite of every reason this shouldn’t work, it simply does, and frustratingly, there is no obvious solution to point to.

Personally, I am opting simply to believe that the success of this match is the proof of something greater than ourselves in the universe, which occasionally concerns itself with deeply trivial matters such as this and/or deeply malevolent small-time goals, such as allowing pervert Mike Elgin fans a borderline great match to point to for the first time in years.

This match stands up there, even beyond the improbable success of the Kenny Omega matches, as proof that for a year or two here, some cosmic force was simple smiling upon the works of Kazuchika Okada for whatever reason. This match simply being not bad is one thing, you can put it down to wrestlers having good nights and the power of K-Hall and this environment. But when a match between these two is borderline great, it is perhaps time to start believing in the supernatural.

three boy

 

 

Katsuyori Shibata vs. Michael Elgin, NJPW G1 Climax 26 Day Six (7/27/2016)

This was a B Block match in the G1 Climax 26 tournament.

Like Big Tom the year before, Shibata is now disrespected by New Japan and asked to gift this unrepentant god damned fraud a great match. Like Big Tim the year before, Shibata perseveres and actually manages to pull it off by plugging Mike into his sort of a match. It’s the same sort of match, a kind of big dumbass bombfest dick measuring contest like Elgin/Ishii, but with more Shibata flavors. Little changes, different signature spots, but very much the same thing where very little is asked of Elgin outside of basic competency and hard hitting.

Even then, this motherfucker makes it a struggle.

Big Mike is such a god damned nerd.

The wide eyed look after every move like he’s trying to see if people are impressed yet, the real awful 2010s indie style gesturing before what feels like every single move or strike thrown, constantly filling every match with everything and anything he can think of, often betraying the power of his size differential to try and impress people with athleticism, like a big man who can do everything has any value outside of like god damned Vader. He’s the least confident wrestler maybe in the entire world, the most deeply embarrassing pick-me ass wrestler in a position this high in any major company. Nothing illustrates New Japan’s drop off rom 2015 to 2016 quite like Elgin not only being invited back after his stinker G1 run in 2015, but being given even larger stages and walking into said tournament with the company’s second most important title over his shoulder.

Elgin also fails the same litmus test that Nakajima did three days earlier, and attempts to fill space by going to the taped up right shoulder of Shibata. It’s a total misunderstanding of not just his role within this very obvious power vs. technique story, but also of what a Shibata G1 match is supposed to be. Beyond that, it’s another classic Big Mike display of his unmatched and complete lack of self-knowledge, not just of his role in the match, but who he is as a wrestler.

Like Ishii the year before, it is a stunning and truly remarkable feat that Shibata makes it work anyways.

He sells the arm just enough, while transitioning the match away from that and back into classical ass kicking fare. He holds this witless neophyte’s hand through the rest of the match just enough to barely get them across the finish line in another Shibata match this tournament that’s just BARELY great. It works for the reasons Shibata matches like this almost always work. Nasty shots, decent composition, and all the little and big things that Shibata offers up in response to and/or when executing just about anything. He’s undeniable, even against a bonafide scrub like this goof.

Really, the only thing last year’s Tomohiro Ishii vs. Big Mike match has over this is the finish, in which we got the pleasure of Big Tom putting this loser’s dick in the dirt and whipping his ass with some finality. In this match, Elgin wins clean as a whistle and in dominating fashion with his series of Powerbombs. It’s an embarrassing thing for a company like this to ask of a wrestler the caliber of Katsuyori Shibata, especially in retrospect with this being his final ever G1 Climax. I’d say it aged like milk, but that implies it was any good at the time either.

There a bunch of other larger things one can use to illustrate the drop off that New Japan had in 2016, from the shift from Styles to Omega to Naito as the poor man’s replacement Nakamura to even just comparing the G1 Finals from year to year. It doesn’t feel quite right to have this near the top of that list, given that it ultimately means nothing. Still, it’s real hard to watch this and not feel every bit of that drop in quality, the natural result of the Great Match Factory starting to skimp on materials.

***

Michael Elgin vs. Jinder Mahal, LLE Campeonato Mundial Elite 2016 Day One (6/23/2016)

It’s not good.

It’s not exceptionally bad either, or really interesting in any way once the bell rings.

Shit, it’s not even a complete match, as all these have a lot of clipping.

I just really wanted you to scroll past this, either when perusing the blog or scrolling through Twitter at some point and, as I did, contemplate for a second that in 2016, the year of our Lord, someone thought to themselves that they should book Mike Elgin vs. Jinder Mahal. It’s a tragedy for LLE, as a year later, people may have ironically pretended it was great, albeit for reasons that precluded them from running it at any point later than when they did.

 

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Michael Elgin, NJPW G1 Climax 25 Day Eighteen (8/15/2015)

This was a B Block match in the 2015 G1 Climax.

Yeah, this tournament was also the start of all that BIG MIKE horse shit that extended his relevance by another two or three years. It’s a major weakness of the tournament, and an early example of New Japan’s lack of standards when it comes to foreign talent. He’ll eventually go on to produce some of the more excruciating matches of the rest of the decade, but this is the standout of his initial G1 run.

That is, of course, entirely because of one Tomohiro Ishii.

It’s an all-time heroic performance given what Ishii is asked to do.

New Japan disrespects its most consistent and productive wrestler by asking him to legitimize this absolute forgery with a classic Ishii Match. It’s even more offensive than the series with Togi Makabe that’s filled up and largely wasted most of Ishii’s year outside of the G1, as at least Makabe is a star and there’s a reason for it and he has a certain charisma and energy to him. Elgin is a void, whose already embarrassing I LIKE NEW JAPAN TOO, GUYS act becomes especially grating when he actually works in New Japan (this will later happen to Dragon Lee, I am not specifically targeting Mike (also, I am specifically targeting Mike)). Allowing him to no-sell for Ishii and try and do Ishii shit in some kind of mirror match only has the effect of making Ishii look worse for taking so long to dispatch with this unequivocal fraud.

Despite the deficiencies of Mike Elgin, Ishii once again produces a great match, owing to all of the small touches he adds to a match like this in more minor moments and the drama he can bring to the bigger ones. It’s a delightful show that Ishii puts on, illustrating his own greatness at the expense of one of the many low IQ imitators that have propped up over the last several years since he broke out. The comparison is there in front of the world, as Elgin does all of the same big stuff and none of the same small stuff, leaving the act feeling phony and hollow when compared to the real thing. This would all be infuriating, but there’s a certain thrill as well that comes from Ishii rallying at the end and putting Elgin back down where he belongs. It doesn’t make up for the waste of Ishii’s time and energy, but it has the effect of at least sending everyone home happy.

This two bit huckster will be back, for for the night, it’s a lovely little morality tale.

The wrestling equivalent of comparing gold to gelt for fifteen minutes.

***

Michael Elgin vs. Jay Briscoe, ROH All Star Extravaganza VI (9/6/2014)

This was for Elgin’s ROH World Title.

At this point in time, Jay Briscoe hasn’t been pinned or submitted in close to two and a half years, since the spring of 2012. Like AJ Styles as the unofficial NWA World Heavyweight Champion in a lot of these matches, Jay Briscoe is also defending something “bigger”, he has a status to protect to some point. It’s long enough now that beating him is going to feel like a big deal. So while Michael Elgin has no real status as the ROH Champion, as this is yet another Elgin title match not trusted to main event a show, Jay Briscoe’s streak is the real thing here.

This works for the reason a lot of the big Jay Briscoe singles stuff does.

He has his roots in 2000s CZW and JAPW, but at this point after transforming himself into a more traditional brawler, Jay Briscoe main events hit on a lot of the same things that old WCW ones did. It’s not only that they feel more legitimate — both because of his style and the streak — but they’re always conducted in a way so it feels like everyone is always constantly trying to win. It doesn’t always result in great matches, this one is borderline for sure, but the matches are always more interesting to watch. It’s one of the best things ROH has done in the post-Gabe period of the company, and this is one of the crowning moments of that run, a full-throated declaration that Jay Briscoe is The Guy now.

It’s an interesting sort of a match. Michael Elgin is still one of the dumbest wrestlers alive, so even while Jay himself is a great bumper and seller and manages to pull off the situational underdog thing well, Elgin constantly almost blows it. He doesn’t seem aware of the story Jay is obviously telling, and constantly gets in the way of the clear power vs. grit story by doing shit like a leaping codebreaker off the middle rope for a nearfall instead of leaning more on the power. In the end though, it’s being a big dumbass that costs him, so it’s not the end of the world. He needlessly takes the match to the apron instead of pressing the physical edge that’s given him most of the match, but Jay hits the Jay Driller off the apron and through the ringside table.

It’s not the end of the match and the kickout is egregious, but they do an interesting sort of thing with it, as it is functionally the end. Elgin is still big dumbass and tries to play tough guy about it, and then when he has the chance, he blows it by trying to string together like eighteen things in a row. Jay’s hit with the buckle bomb, but gets out of the Elgin Bomb and immediately unloads a second Jay Driller to regain the title. Elgin’s bigger and stronger and maybe faster, but he’s one of the stupidest wrestlers alive. In contrast, Jay is just tough enough to hang in there, bang it out, and wait for the Elgin fuck up. I love a match that clearly rewards someone for being smarter or better at something, and this is one of those matches.

Elgin completes his mental collapse over the last week, complete with a border crisis, losing to Trevor Lee in PWG and pissing everyone in ROH off, and finally, talking about wanting to try and play baseball in interviews instead of promoting the company at all like guys like Adam Cole and Kevin Steen did in similar positions. He’ll be stuck in Canada for a while, but will come back as this absolutely deranged Sons of Anarchy ass leather and angsty acoustic entrance music ass complete fucking loser. If not for New Japan booking him for some reason, you get the sense that he’d be gone from anywhere respectable by like mid 2016, this washout that everyone pretends they never liked (instead of that process happening in 2019-2020). Elgin loses the title after two and a half months, a major rarity in ROH, and it’s this clear eject button on his reign. 

Even more rare is what ROH does, even on accident, by striking while the iron is hot.

Jay Briscoe wins the title for the second time, and still feeling like one of the hottest acts in the company, ROH does what it hasn’t done in years and years and years. Jay Briscoe won the title once before, but that felt experimental, and this felt like a coronation. Jay’s the top guy now for sure, and for the first time since 2007 at the latest, ROH has its title on a top babyface who both feels like a hot act and is universally accepted by the fanbase as a legitimate top guy. It seems like the most simple and obvious thing in the world, and for ROH at this point, it feels so impressive. A critical element of this 2014-2015 resurgence that Ring of Honor somehow managed to have, and perhaps the thing that they got most correctly in the entire post-Gabe existence of the company.

***

Michael Elgin vs. Trevor Lee, PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2014 Stage Three (8/31/2014)

This was a quarterfinal match in the 2014 Battle of Los Angeles tournament.

While a fun enough match with the speed vs. power dynamic, there’s a real energy missing from Reseda that isn’t usually the case. It’s hard to say for sure if it’s Night Three fatigue or just the inability to believe Trevor had a shot. He’s beaten Kevin Steen and everything, but it was a clear pay-it-forward measure on Big Kev’s last night in town. Michael Elgin is the ROH Champion and while we’re not exactly in that Samoa Joe/Bryan Danielson/Nigel McGuinness era where it’s an unwritten rule that the ROH Champion doesn’t do jobs, it does still tend to wind up on people who protect themselves. Adam Cole and Kevin Steen both had the benefit of also being PWG Champion around the same times, and while Steen could put over Ricochet in a BOLA, Trevor Lee isn’t exactly spending his spare time in Dragon Gate. It’s a hard thing to believe that Trevor Lee can do this, even if Trevor does gradually get Reseda into it through sympathetic selling and some real wild maniac level bumping.

Fortunately, Elgin is just dumb enough to not know what guys like Adam Cole and Kevin Steen and others never really had to be told, which is that as the champion of a company on television and pay-per-view and it means the match can have the exact right finish. Trevor keeps narrowly avoiding the final piece of all these different overly showy Big Mike flurries, before snatching a cradle for another huge upset.

ROH was real mad about this for obvious reasons, but it’s exactly the sort of thing that happens when you put everything on the back of somebody this dumb. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

The first part of Elgin’s enthralling mental collapse over the next few months.

three boy

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Michael Elgin, ROH Road to Best in the World Night One (6/6/2014)

It isn’t going to make any lists probably, but sneakily, this winds up being one of my favorite Elgin matches ever.

In the same way that only Nixon could have gone to China, really only Jimmy Jacobs could have gotten a match like this out of a guy like Elgin. He’s small enough to make him look like a monster when bumping but also Elgin is short enough that they can convincingly do a match like this without it ever feeling hokey or forced. Jimmy is also experienced enough to work this in the perfect way. The idea of building Elgin up for his big title match on Ring of Honor’s first genuine pay per view in a few weeks and nothing Jimmy does ever takes away from that. It’s all trickery or being desperate enough to hurl his body around at Elgin. It works until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t anymore, he gets his ass horribly beaten.

Of course, it’s still Big Mike and you get some dumb stuff where he leaps around and tries to fly when that’s not the point. He always seems just a little too preoccupied on making sure everyone leaves this thinking about how great a wrestler he is, but it always has the opposite effect with me. Instead, I always leave thinking about how Michael Elgin thinks he’s a way better wrestler than he is because of this. Fortunately, Jimmy is great at reigning him in. It goes a little long, Elgin tries a little too much, but Jimmy never lets himself get drawn into epic territory, so it kind of just comes off like he’s hard to beat and less like the match meandered before the finish.

A genuinely (mostly) great match, due entirely to Jimmy’s effort.

***

 

AJ Styles vs. Kazuchika Okada vs. Michael Elgin, ROH War of the Worlds 2014 (5/17/2014)

This was for AJ Styles’ IWGP Heavyweight Title.

Nothing all that fancy or spectacular to behold here, but it’s fun as hell.

AJ Styles once again proves merit as an all-time great multi-man match guy. Here he has a talented and interesting wrestler in Okada, but one wholly inexperienced in a match like this (despite what certain psychos in 2013-2015 demanding a Tana vs. Okada vs. Nakamura three way would like), and a mediocre and very stupid wrestler in Elgin. It’s not exactly Chris Daniels and Samoa Joe or Low Ki and Paul London, but it works.

Nobody ever clogs the ring up, there’s always interesting matches, and a very clear story to it. AJ is a coward, Okada wants his belt back, Elgin is a huge weeb and a gigantic loser and this has been his dream since he saw his first New Japan match at the end of 2012 and then saw some gifs of a Kobashi/Williams match. Elgin always wants to get rid of AJ, having originally been promised the one on one shot at Okada before AJ stole the title. Okada always wants to beat AJ alone after the theft two weeks earlier. It’s a small thing, but the result is that each person clearly wants the match to go one way, and there’s a fight over that. It makes it more interesting than just a display of moves.

To be fair, there are also a lot of cool moves in this.

It’s a cool little match.

Okada owns the big goof with the Rainmaker, but in classic fashion, AJ takes advantage of Okada only being able to do and think about things one way and gets him on the blindside. After that, AJ hoists up the jabrone into the Styles Clash for the win.

Nothing to blow anyone away, but another notch in the belt for AJ, and it’s finally a title match for Okada in 2014 that isn’t a total letdown.

***

Michael Elgin vs. Cedric Alexander, ROH Flyin’ High (3/22/2014)

Actually really fun!

I’m no Mike Elgin guy, but like his previous fun work in the past against ACH and AR Fox, this delivers. The trick apparently was to only watch matches he has against athletic young black guys, because it always brings something out of Mike.

It’s not perfect, as Mike’s started watching New Japan and his brain has started to totally collapse and he’s revealed himself as an embarrassingly desperate striver, doing every possible cool move to try and stay over after his heat’s slowly evaporated on account of people seeing all he has to offer, seeing that he’s spiritually vacant outside of being Big, and growing bored. ROH is ostensibly building him to face Kazuchika Okada, giving him an excuse to do Tombstones and Rainmaker-style ripcord spots, but given that he was already doing that, it’s not quite enough to write it off. He’s worse than he was in 2012, probably the peak of his career in any sort of artistic sense, but what he can still do is playing a powerful mountain for more likeable underdogs to try and climb.

Cedric’s about as likeable an underdog as they come on the U.S. indies in 2014. The energy that’s always been there shines through like you’d expect, but he’s gotten much tighter and crisper with everything by this point. He’s established enough in ROH that everyone really likes him and wants to see him succeed too, which helps elevate a thing like this against a less-than-perfect opponent. Some wonderful nearfalls, awesome comebacks, the works. Mike wins in the end, but whatever, this is Cedric’s match.

Another phenomenal near breakout level performance from a talent that ROH will go on to do practically nothing substantial with for years before they find greater fortune elsewhere. A very weird pattern that’s obviously impossible to blame on anyone or anything within the company at large.

***