Seth Rollins vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, WWE Payback 2023 (9/2/2023)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Stink Time. 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. 

This was for Rollins’ fictional title.

It’s fine, honestly.

Really.

Seth Rollins has a bad back and Nakamura attacks it. That’s it. There’s nothing really egregious to complain about. No kickout spot upset me. The match isn’t irrationally long like some other WWE pay-per-view main events recently. Seth Rollins’ selling was even pretty decent. Not great, but there were a few moments where he remembered or did some small minor movements that someone with an actual hurt back in real life may have done. I thought it generally escalated well, and while not every transition was perfect (the way they get to the ending stomp is especially abrupt feeling), it gets a lot more right than I think I expected, or maybe that you maybe would expect had you not seen the match. It’s also not a match that has, to my knowledge, been met with a ton of comically overblown fanfare by pervert WWE fans, so there’s not even a conversation about it that would annoy me.

It’s not a bad match and it can’t hurt anybody.

It’s just kind of boring.

Rollins is one of the least sympathetic or likeable guys on the roster, so playing an under-the-gun babyface was always going to be something that never worked for me, and while there are things that are objectively good or fine here, it also never really comes together as more than that. It’s an odd thing to write about, a match I didn’t love, but also have no real negative feelings about, and I suppose for Nakamura at this point and for Seth Rollins as a solo act in general, it’s a wild overachievement and, at least relative to my expectations, a success.

Good for them, having an alright match.

The comment that came with the commission for this match (as well as Moxley vs. Orange Cassidy the next night) asked if there was any sort of parallel here or a relationship between the two matches. I assumed that meant just Shield boys main eventing pay-per-views in matches for theoretical secondary titles and succeeding, but the relationship lies elsewhere, or at least the connection between them. Compared to a match the next night with a wrestler who very silly and/or stupid people have called some kind of cosplay wrestler, its Seth Rollins who, yet again, does the actual tribute acts, not only as a beat up older pretty boy being constantly trucked by Nakamura, but as one with a bad back too.

Given what a huge fan Rollins obviously is of both far better Nakamura opponents, I’m happy for him that he got to have his little fantasy camp.

AJ Styles vs. Rey Mysterio vs. Ricochet vs. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Robert Roode, WWE Raw (9/23/2019)

This was an elimination number one contenders match.

I’m not gonna tell you you have to see it.

You don’t, really.

What it is is thirteen or fourteen minutes of cool moves, that’s constructed incredibly well and led by two of the best wrestlers of all time in Rey Mysterio and AJ Styles. It’s not going to make a single list, except maybe like best WWE TV matches in this specific September, maybe. It is, however, less talked about — both overall and in hyper-niche circles full of people who know about deeper WWE TV cuts — and a match that impressed me more than a lot of the other big multi-man WWE matches this year (primarily those prestige ass gauntlet attempts that are never ever able to recapture the 2013 Bryan magic) and a bunch of other stuff that I watched and either was not moved in the slightest by or found too boring to write about in what is, essentially, just combing for anything this year I didn’t get to initially.

Basically, I liked it more than I expected to, and since I had never heard about it, I thought someone out there might too.

AJ Styles and/or Rey Mysterio is almost constantly in the ring holding the hands of everyone else in there, and the match is relatively short enough for how many people are involved that the less skilled or currently skilled guys like Nakamura, Ricochet, and Roode really only have to do a few things here or there. Ricochet only has to the big sensational things, Roode has to do a few things and be a base/foil for Rey in the last ninety seconds, and Nakamura really only has to hit a few knee strikes. Everything else is either offense from one of the greatest offensive wrestlers ever, a bump from one of them, or something set up between the two of them (and while again limited, AJ and Mysterio seem more and more comfortable together every time).

Mysterio beats Bob Roo with the 619 and Frog Splash.

Really good and borderline great television bullshit, light and breezy and full of cool stuff but exactly short enough to not ask anything too overzealous, anchored and built around two of the best television wrestlers of the century so far. Inessential, but another reminder of just how easy it all can be.

three boy

AJ Styles vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, WWE Money in the Bank (6/17/2018)

This was a Last Man Standing Match for Styles’ WWE World Heavyweight Title.

It has not been the feud or even in-ring series that WWE or a lot of people thought it would be, to say the least.

Forget even living up to their famous and great Tokyo Dome match, these matches — WrestleMania, blood money show, and Backlash — have not been great, even by my most generous estimation. Chalk it up to Nakamura realizing what the game really is in WWE and never trying all that hard again once he got over, focusing on antics and entrance and aura above all else, if you would like. That is at least half of it, and probably closer to three-quarters of it. At the same time, AJ Styles has also not lit the world on fire in these matches either, representing something of a slump that had some people out there in the world wondering if Styles had finally fallen off after sixteen years of (relatively, you have to account for TNA sometimes) sustained quality.

Simply put, it is a dud of a feud that took three months away from an AJ Styles who, based on other output in 2018, could have been a serious Wrestler of the Year level guy once again otherwise.

However, this one works.

You could chalk it up to whatever you want to, I suppose, but the easiest answer here is probably the most accurate one (one could turn that plural if one would like, as them trying their hardest in the big blowoff match is also not out of character for either wrestler). Which is to say that a WWE Last Man Standing match allowed anything close to a full arsenal of bells and whistles is one of the easiest environments for good to great wrestlers to succeed in.

The rules of the match help them a lot, giving them the sort of spacing they need for a great Nakamura match at this point, but also allowing them to dig in and get a little crazy to help spice up a pairing that badly needs it. Styles can take the sort of big wild bumps — onto the steel ramp, in the crowd, outside, around the announce tables — that he wasn’t able to and/or didn’t bother with previously. It also lets them do some fun work near the end with Styles’ attack on Nakamura’s leg helping him out when he had trouble standing, helping him set up for the moves that led to the end, which is not the biggest deal in the world but a smart little thing that helps the work here feel a little more substantial.

If nothing else, the match and feud ends in a perfect kind of big babyface victory way, with Nakamura finally being totally beaten, only to taunt AJ before the end, goading him into actual revenge with a kick to the groin before the Phenomenal Forearm through an announce table finally does it. Not just something big and impactful to end a big blowoff, but preceding it with the kind of feel-good and totally appropriate act of protagonistic vengeance that WWE often denies its lead babyfaces. I’m not really ready to say any of this is what it’s supposed to be, given how much of this program sucked or, more generously, was at least deeply wasteful, but the ending itself is some real classical and successful babyface booking, the likes of which you do not often see here.

Not quite great enough to get talked up as some kind of major miracle, especially with the larger scale disappointment of every other match they had before this in 2018, but the fact that it is even borderline great at all is one of AJ Styles’ more impressive feats.

three boy

Sami Zayn vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, WWE NXT Takeover Dallas (4/1/2016)

One of the big hits of the weekend.

In the moment, I was there too. Not physically, I would never travel that far for wrestling, but like, spiritually. In that frame of mind, at least. Watching live and blown away at this new thing, Shinsuke Nakamura against Sami Zayn. What a world. What a time to be alive. Other things that assholes say. It was a lot of fun, and as a result of the novelty of it, I allowed myself to kind of get swept up in all of the praise.

At some point, I watched it again, and it was fine.

That’s where I remain now on the third watch.

I’m not going to say this isn’t a great match. The biggest strengths of the thing still remain, which is to say it feels BIG. It is a huge spectacle, full of big moves back and forth, and with a real proper sense of escalation. I usually say that as a shorthand to express the idea that the moves got bigger and bigger as the match went on, this rollercoaster ride leading to the biggest thing at the end. However, in this match, it’s more than just the offense that escalates, as you get these two wildly different personalities and see a sporting kind of respect devolve into harder fighting and brief shows of pettiness, with Zayn responding to Nakamura’s taunting and getting a little mean himself. There’s a tension to the contest that develops as it goes on, and it serves the match very very well. Zayn also does an overwhelmingly good and unselfish job here, constantly giving Nakamura the upper hand and presenting him as a better. Zayn is one of the great lovable losers in wrestling history, so it doesn’t hurt him at all, and it’s just the sort of thing that stands out when you know it’s Zayn’s departure from the brand. Nakamura looks like a billion dollars at the end of the thing, both because he’s so game for everything in the match, but also because of the performance of Zayn himself.

Mechanically, it’s also all good. They’re hitting pretty hard, and everything else works like it’s supposed to. Nakamura gives the level of effort that he would in a Korakuen Hall mid-G1 main event (around a B), but given that he’d go on to top out somewhere around a C level going forward, it’s still the best he’ll ever do in the WWE, and the last time to date that he’s ever come close to that level of excitement, energy, and effort. It’s hard not to respect that, and it’s hard not to feel some sort of wistfulness about this, given that it’s the last time he’ll ever come close to something like this. It’s also hard not to respect that idea too, even when he’ll win the Royal Rumble and have a title match at WrestleMania in two years, totally understanding that none of this is worth everything, that effort doesn’t matter nearly as much as having a cool entrance here, and playing the long game instead of being a sucker. It sucks to watch, given how great he was over the last half decade, but on a personal level, respect.

The match is real far from perfect.

First, the things that Zayn and Nakamura can’t control. It’s not their fault that the crowd defaults to NXT chant mode, with all the disgusting British people in the building, chanting a bunch of bad stuff. Notably, it’s the birth of the “FIGHT FOREVER” chant, which becomes just about the most embarrassing thing in the world for a few years. Commentary is also about as subtle as a brick, most notably with Corey Graves shouting things like “SWAGSUKE” which were best left in Taima livestream chats in 2013, somehow even more embarrassing in this medium than they were to read years prior

As a match too — and this is the thing they can control, relatively — it’s just sort of there? Like, I expressed the ways in which I think this is great. It succeeds because of the environment and because both wrestlers put such effort and importance into their actions, but it is largely just a match. A series of things in a row, performed well, but not with any real thread or connective tissue pulling them together in any meaningful way. The sort of match that any sort of fan who’s done their reading knows that both wrestlers can do much better than this, but that WWE really sort of loves in the wake of PWG Jawn and things like that. A lot of stuff in a row, but in a kind of hollow way, removing a lot of the little and more human elements that you need in order for these matches to really reach the next level. Of course, in this company, it’s hardly surprising that all they ever noticed were the louder and dumber elements of matches like this, and so you wind up with a match like this. Obviously capable of more, given the two best-of-the-decade level guys involved, but dumbed down for a crowd that might not be able to handle more than simple slop.

The transition from Zayn to Nakamura also marks kind of a perfect avatar for NXT’s transformation in 2016 as well, replacing someone likeable and good in an earnest and overwhelmingly endearing sort of a way with someone who is simply cool, but as presented by a deeply uncool company, and thus doomed to be unable to stay that way. Something genuine and immortal traded in for the latest flashy thing all the time, a brand forgetting what it is and why it was so great at its peak.

Mostly though, the match is still great.

It’s simple and fun, and mostly all awesome in a bell to bell sense. A lot of people just don’t know how to behave themselves, but it’s not nearly enough to spoil what Sami and Nakamura did together. On top of being a nice sendoff for NXT’s greatest male babyface of all time, it’s a hell of a retirement match for Nakamura.

***

 

Shinsuke Nakamura/Kazuchika Okada/Tomohiro Ishii vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi/Meiyu Tag, NJPW Road to New Beginning 2016 Day Two (1/30/2016)

This was Shinsuke Nakamura’s farewell match before his unfortunate retirement.

It is not only the emotional juggernaut of the year, but one of the all-time emotional megaton bombs of the decade, and really maybe all time. The “Geothermal Escapism” of pro wrestling, complete with Our Hero hugging his weirdo best friend after playing the game on his behalf, being slowly taken out of the frame, never to return again.

For the last several years, Shinsuke Nakamura has been one of the most magnetic and entertaining wrestlers to watch, let alone to watch wrestle, and in this match, everyone gets to hang out with Shinsuke Nakamura one last time.

When Hirooki Goto repeatedly tries to get in the way of that to prove a point against Okada or to actually try and be the one to beat Nakamura on his way out, I’ve never heard Korakuen Hall so affronted. They’ll boo a lot of wrestlers but one immediately understands the difference between something like rooting on Ishii or Toru Yano in the G1 against Tanahashi and what Goto does here as soon as they hear it. It’s this immediate rejection of Hirooki Goto’s action, but also like, his entire being. It’s a beautiful thing that it happens in Nakamura’s final match, everyone deciding they were fed up with Goto, and they spend the entire match shouting down Hirooki Goto whenever he tries to do anything.

Apart from that, this is just kind of a riff session and it is beautiful.

Nakamura plays the hits one last time against his greatest opponent, bails out Okada a few more times, and in the end, devotes himself to helping out longtime enforcer Big Tom to get a win. In between all of that. Ishii and Shibata get at it a few more times, and that’s always a joy. Hirooki Goto, I assume, also performs wrestling maneuvers but it is impossible to see him over the sound of the crowd, which is a sentence that I think really makes sense if you watch the match.

At the very end, Nakamura and Okada help Ishii against Shibata. To bring a tear to the eye, Nakamura waves off personal glory for once, and instead helps set up longtime #2 an all-time great enforcer Tomohiro Ishii instead. Nakamura throws Shibata into his grasp, and Ishii beats Shibata with the Brainbuster. Like Kobe’s final play being an assist, there’s something so unbelievably charming about Nakamura’s final offensive attack in New Japan being to set somebody else up, after so long being the star and taking over virtually every match, angle, or interview he ever did. Going against type at the last possible moment, creating a little feel good moment within the confines of a much larger feel good moment.

In general, this match is beautiful.

All six men deliver in the way they always do in build up tags and six mans like this. It’s fast and hard hitting, cool counters and exchanges, all of that. New Japan never specialized in build up tags in the way other promotions did, there’s no real institutional muscle memory for it, but with the talent this match has, it can’t fail. Doubly and triply and quadruply so for a match like this, with the great wind of Nakamura’s farewell pushing it forward. It’s a match that takes it easy, content to let the talent kind of fuck around and figure something out, and in matches like that, it is simply much much harder to fail than to succeed.

More than almost any other New Japan tag of the 2010s, I think, this match feels like an overwhelming success.

The great thing about this match is that it never tries to do anything with Shinsuke Nakamura’s last match. No wrestler to try and make, no story to try and advance (even if this is ostensibly a classic build up tag), no larger statement about anything. This is not a match that goes out there with any real ambitious mission or purpose, and for once, that is the absolute best decision that could be made.

It just is, and that may be the more impressive thing of all.

There is a skill to it. It has to be joyful. Effortless. Fun. Wrestling defeats its own purpose when it’s pushing an agenda or trying to defeat other wrestling, or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It’s wrestling. It’s comfort. (And it needs to be okay for it to get on a plane with AJ Styles and never come back. Because eventually, it all will.)

Few matches all decade have seemed to remember that as much as this did.

After the match, Kenny Omega tries to make a big show of attacking and saying he ran Nakamura out, before Tanahashi makes the save, announcing he’ll face Omega for the vacant Intercontinental Title in Nakamura’s stead.

It’s not the biggest angle in the world, but for longtime fans, it’s a heartwarming one. They hadn’t been on the same page since splitting up as a team over a decade ago, and it was just a remarkably cool thing to see them unite, and also to provide such a clear picture of a fight between good and evil in the world of professional wrestling.

Tanahashi cedes Nakamura the ring, already having their emotional moment at the end of the previous year’s G1 Climax, and all of CHAOS comes back in for a group photo together.

It’s a punch to the gut to lose Nakamura, in a way that no other departure really has been, both as a result of how long he was there, what he meant, and what he’s gone on to do. I miss psuedo traveling NWA World Champ 2014-15 AJ Styles a whole lot too, but the production is different. Outside of a handful of matches (in which even then, I doubt it would be right to call them higher than B/B- level efforts from Nak), Shinsuke Nakamura formally retired when Okada carried him out of Korakuen Hall on his shoulders.

However, it’s just as much a celebration.

An enormously good feeling match, post-match angle, and then celebration after all of that. Over the last several years, when Nakamura was on, he made New Japan more captivating than any other promotion in the world, and this was a farewell that lived up to that, and every other thing he ever brought to the table.

The series finale of Peak New Japan.

***1/2

 

AJ Styles/Kenny Omega vs. Shinsuke Nakamura/YOSHI-HASHI, NJPW New Years Dash (1/5/2016)

Famous for all that comes after the bell, but in between those bells, this whips a ton of ass.

AJ Styles leaves New Japan with another great performance, getting the most out of a real average wrestler in YOSH-HASHI while leading the majority of the match’s control segment, delivering a few more great minutes against Nakamura, before setting Omega up perfectly for his breakout pinfall win. Nakamura isn’t exactly leaving after this match, he has his own beautiful exit to see through, but he’s good here in all the same ways. It’s a match, in general, that benefits a ton from its position in the middle of the card, getting to get in and out in something like fifteen minutes, resulting in a real lean sort of a thing.

Nobody benefits from the lack of excess and fat here more than Omega.

It’s the perfect match for Kenny to really break out in, shaped as a match and personally assisted by two different all-world level wrestlers (even if Nakamura’s time as such will be over by the end of the month), so that Kenny can look as good as possible. A shorter match based entirely around action, allowing the new kid to throw a bunch of huge bombs out there as the stars clear out and give him the floor.

AJ and Omega gang up on Nakamura at the end, and it’s too much. YOSHI-HASHI shows flashes of his future career-defining moment by falling flat on his face — only metaphorically this time, at least — and is easily kept at bay. AJ lands the Pele, setting up a poison rana from Ken, and then the One Winged Angel for a real emphatic win.

Secretly one of the most fun matches New Japan ran all year.

(as you know, after the match, Kenny Omega turns on AJ Styles and the Bullet Club ejects its all-time best member. He cuts a bad promo about it after, assuming control, and also naming the Omega/Bucks group “The Elite”, which is obviously important, if not also an incredibly embarrassing e-fed ass name. To Kenny’s credit, he toned down a lot of the bad heel stuff in this initial ascension, but nobody can hide forever. Coming months will reveal the massive downgrade that this is, in between all the annoying Elite six man tags and the bad singles matches before the G1 megapush, but yes, obviously, it is a downgrade.

AJ Styles brought an air of legitimacy to his matches that Kenny Omega rarely even comes close to on his best day, making everything feel bigger and also more dignified. Better at everything mechanically, but also much smarter, rarely doing things that don’t make sense on some level and having a great feel for slowly escalating a match without any real excess to it. With Kenny in the role instead, things shift more to accommodate him, and matches involving the top foreigner begin to become much dumber and longer. It’s a maximalist style of wrestling that does a whole lot less for me than AJ’s more measured approach, but maybe appeals much more strongly to people discovering wrestling outside of the mainstream for the first time, and maybe that is the point and where things were always heading anyways.)

(the match still really really really rocks though.)

***1/4

 

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. AJ Styles, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 10 (1/4/2016)

This was for Nakamura’s IWGP Intercontinental Title.

It’s quite the famous match. As much for the now iconic fist bump at the end and the significance of it being the last singles match either had in New Japan as it is for genuinely just being a really great match. The former often overshadows the latter, which isn’t necessarily fair, but these things often never are.

The best thing to say is that the match itself more than lives up to the moment that it’s retroactively become.

Despite their doomed WWE meetings, this really is such a natural combination.

What works so well for them is that despite surface level stylistic differences, at this point, both tend to believe in the same things and wrestle with a similar ideology. Nakamura at the Tokyo Dome has these big larger-than-life feeling struggles that slowly build up to a titanic back half, where every move feels like a major blow, and I’ll be God damned if I wouldn’t describe a big AJ Styles match in the 2010s in a real similar way. Slowly building up to a major back half, where there’s not a lot of waste to be found and where the majority of things that happen in a match — if not all — have some kind of function and utility.

In the spirit of the men wrestling it, this is a remarkably sure-footed affair that mostly makes that confidence feel correct.

There are very few surprises to be found here.

Nakamura and Styles don’t wrestle a particularly fancy match. These are two brilliant offensive wrestlers and this is a match primarily about offense. It works for the reasons almost all of the great matches involving these two work, which is that they’re very good at slowly building up and getting the most out of so much of what they do. Mechanically great, but transforming the lizard-brain pleasing hard shots and cool moves into something much more satisfying through the process of teasing out, building up, and then delivering. It’s absolutely nothing you wouldn’t expect coming in.

There is, however, one lovely little short term bit in the middle that I love SO MUCH. After going to a stalemate, Nakamura yanks AJ off the middle rope onto the mat. AJ sells his back like he’s re-injured his recent injury (we are all still extraordinarily skeptical given that it allowed him to rest and only work the big matches to exit territories before going to the WWE), only for AJ to bolt up to his feet as soon as Nakamura turns his back to give him space, and pounce on Nakamura.

As a response to the ruse AJ pulled, Nakamura more directly goes after AJ’s back for a few moments, being the one to dominate the middle instead of the expected route of that role going to the antagonist of the two.

It’s a beautiful story, AJ faking being hurt worse than he was for an easy opening, but still being hurt enough to make for a similarly easy target. After all AJ’s done for most of the last two years, it feels like the perfect way for his last major singles match to go, constantly punished for taking the easiest approach now that it can finally backfire on him in a really major way. It happens with the minor back work in the middle, but also near the very end, as AJ’s overreach in trying the Styles Clash off the top from the previous year’s Dome match against Naito allows Nakamura an opening that eventually sees AJ Styles defeated. Okada beat him twice in title matches in 2015, but it’s really only here (and in the Tanahashi G1 match) where AJ Styles truly feels like he gets everything he’s had coming to him.

Something that also works very well about it an this match in general is the way it kind of softly babyfaces AJ Styles, despite how much he deserves it. He still is who he is, but he winds up more sympathetic than ever before as a result of being the one to take more punishment here, bumps just a little bit wilder and in a more respectable way, and winds up gaining something by the end, allowing for the events of the next night to be set up just a little bit better. It’s a tact that New Japan will return to in 2017 and 2018 when the time comes to turn Kenny Omega into a top babyface, to mostly successful results, but in this one match, AJ Styles does it significantly better and more naturally. Both in terms of the way the story led them here, and in the way he’s able to sell it, which applies both to the mechanical aspect of his hurt back, but also just being able to shift slightly over instead of flipping a switch from BAD to GOOD.

We’ll have plenty of time covering 2016 to talk about the ways in which a downgrade happens in this position though.

What we don’t have nearly enough time left for, sadly, is the sort of wrestling these two do in the back half.

It’s wonderful. Big dome style wrestling, ultraconfident bomb hucking, great set ups and payoffs, all just about as crisp as possible. The things that don’t go immaculately smooth land in a naturalistic way, still looking painful and adding a sense of realism because of the way guys like this are able to adapt in an instant. Perhaps the match’s greatest virtue is that, as these two have barely ever even interacted before anywhere in wrestling, every single thing that they do has a novelty to it. It’s all new, on top of every other thing that it does correctly.

The escalation is just about perfect, offering up some big new developments and small little changes to the ordinary that feel just as major. AJ Styles uses the classic cut off knee seen in Nakamura’s Tokyo Dome fights against Sakuraba and Takayama in years past, and when giving out the first Styles Clash kick out in his entire NJPW run, it only comes as a result of the one-arm version out of a Triangle Choke. Nakamura has to shift things slightly, pour on more Boma Ye variants in a row than he normally would, and even needs the trusty old top rope Landslide from Tokyo Domes past as well after AJ’s previously mentioned overreach. A northern Boma Ye and then the regular Boma Ye follows that, and Nakamura keeps his title.

Once more in the Dome, the King stays the King.

A genuine spectacle bell to bell, only elevated into something of greater meaning and importance by everything that’s followed. The last really great Shinsuke Nakamura singles match. The last AJ Styles singles match in New Japan. Not the exact end of an era, but one of the last matches of its kind. You still get shorter matches, but they’re NEVER style bombfests or G1 hoots, they never feel as monumental and significant as this did while possessing those same virtues. What we have here is a major New Japan title match with absolutely zero pretense to it of anything beyond that of a pure offensive display, under twenty five minutes, but feeling like fifteen, carried off by two of the most watchable and enjoyable wrestlers of this time and place.

Pro wrestling comfort food, and the sort of wrestling that is sorely sorely missed.

***1/2

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Ryusuke Taguchi, NJPW Road to Tokyo Dome Day Five (12/18/2015)

It’s not quite Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Toru Yano, but in that same vein, it’s the end of one of New Japan’s better and more interesting feuds of the year. Simply put, Taguchi has been stealing Nakamura’s taunts and mannerisms, but using them to set up his flying ass attacks instead, and Nakamura is very mad about it.

From start to finish, it is an incredibly charming match.

Beyond the entertainment-first element of the issue, it’s exactly what a heavyweight vs. junior match on a Tokyo Dome build up match should be, and also all that it really can be. For newer fans, this might be a surprise, but it’s the sort of match really made on the effort level of Shinsuke Nakamura, and at this point in New Japan, that means this is a great match.

More importantly, it is an unbelievably fun and different match.

Nakamura is never really in any real danger from the aging junior heavyweight, but that doesn’t quite mean that he eats Taguchi alive. The big thing is that the usually calmer and more composed Nakamura is much more easily aggravated here than in any match he’s had in some time. He gets annoyed by the Weapon’s antics and making light of his whole deal, and while he can and does kick the shit out of Taguchi’s ass (figurative), it does open him up to making more mistakes than usual, and allows Taguchi to hurl his ass (literal) around to come back. Taguchi never quite has enough to beat Nakamura, but that’s something everybody knew about going in. Of course he’s not going to beat Shinsuke Nakamura. Not only is he a junior heavyweight, but he’s a few years past his prime and focusing more on comedy these days.

What Taguchi can do though is take his pound of flesh (off of the ass) in the process.

It’s not in the same way a Tomohiro Ishii or a Tomoaki Honma might take that, through raw aggression and outstriking a guy like Nakamura and putting the fear of God into him. Taguchi does it simply by forcing Nakamura to take him seriously, and by being able to continually frustrate and embarrass him. Every roll up, every taunt he can do before hurling his large hole at Nakamura’s face, and especially the ankle lock at the end that does real damage, it all compounds. By simply not immediately getting his ass kicked and beaten as soon as Nakamura wants, Taguchi gains so much, and it’s a beautiful sort of thing that wrestling can do.

Even when Nakamura does shut him down and then immediately hits the Boma Ye to win, it doesn’t take back what Taguchi’s won in lasting so long in a real and legitimate match. Nakamura did what was expected. Taguchi did what wasn’t, and that’s enough of a difference to matter.

While it doesn’t feel right to call this Nakamura paying it forward in one of his final New Japan matches, it’s still an impressive and admirable thing that he does here, because he absolutely did not have to do this or humor any of this or try even half as hard as he did. With Nakamura, it’s easy to be blown away by any non-required effort so it’s hard to quantify this as being more impressive than whatever else, but it’s a real joyful piece of pro wrestling that always stands out a lot to me.

A better match than any in the Nakamura/Goto feud that ate up five or six months of IWGP Intercontinental Title matches this year.

***

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Karl Anderson, NJPW Power Struggle 2015 (11/7/2015)

This was for Nakamura’s IWGP Intercontinental Title.

Within six months, both Nakamura and Anderson will be nearly unrecognizable as a result of learning how hard they didn’t have to work in America, and recognizing the futility of effort. It’s more of a bummer with Karl because of the horse he hitched his cart to, but the outcome is functionally the same. For all they contribute to wrestling after like mid 2016, they may as well be retiring soon. Even if 2015 Karl isn’t exactly on the level of his work in the SUMMER OF GUN, he’ll be missed. Especially so when the G1 Climax tournaments in the future try to replace him with losers like the Guerrillas of Destiny, or whoever. It’s not the loss that Nakamura is, but there’s a loss all the same. With both men soon to be departing for their forever vacations, it’s nice to see it one more time in a spot that both feel is worth the effort, even if it’s hardly some historically great match up.

Once again, it’s just a nice little chunk of wrestling.

Both guys excel in matches like these, where it’s nothing more complex than throwing all the offense out there and lining things up in the most aesthetically pleasing way possible. Karl works the neck and head, cheats a little, and eventually falls short because he has none of the physical gifts of any of his main event opponents. Nakamura has an energy, charm, and presence that has a way of elevating matches like this when he puts in that initial effort, and it succeeds once again. It’s all big moves and counters, but it’s assembled with enough care and carried off with enough snap and efficiency to make it another fun watch out of these two.

Once again, Karl Anderson suffers for having failed to ever evolve past the Gun Stun. He’s not big enough, fast enough, strong enough, or quite smart enough to have The One Thing work for him like it has for others, and by this point, everybody knows about it too. His major success comes from the one time he has a variation that Nakamura doesn’t see coming, pulling him off the middle buckle with one. Unfortunately, Karl keeps trying for the original recipe, and he eats shit every time. Nakamura beats Karl one last time with the standing Boma Ye and it just feels correct.

Functionally, it’s Karl Anderson’s last singles match, and there’s no more fitting way for him to go out than by losing an inessential three boy in the main event of Power Struggle.

***

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura, NJPW G1 Climax 25 Finals (8/16/2015)

This was the finals of the 2015 G1 Climax.

Perhaps even more importantly, this is the last time that Hiroshi Tanahashi and Shinsuke Nakamura will ever wrestle each other one on one, the official and formal end of an important rivalry in wrestling history and one of few more important ones in the history of New Japan specifically.

There’s not a lot that they have to say together at this point, either about each other, themselves, their relationship to each other, or even about wrestling itself. Mostly, that’s because for the last ten years, they’ve already said so much.

Most impressively, they still find a way to do that, by telling a story about their history together as a whole.

Tanahashi and Nakamura first faced each other in the main event of the January 4th, 2005 Tokyo Dome show, over a decade before this match. In the ten years since, they’ve told every story that seems possible for them to tell. They’ve had matches about unfortunate injuries changing the match, the uselessness of raw anger, the idea that someone can lose in a flash despite being better, instinct vs. intent, Nakamura getting tougher, Tanahashi getting tougher in turn, the value of science, the value of preparation, and proactive wrestling vs. defensive wrestling. It’s rarely ever a rivalry that’s gotten personal, but it is one that’s devoted itself to many facets of wrestling philosophy and ideology in a way that other rivalries simply have not ever had the care or patience or intelligence to accomplish.

After all of that — and especially their 2014 series that saw Nakamura finally learn how to plan ahead to finally get past Tanahashi for the first time in years — there isn’t much else for them to do. Beyond the ideological questions of their rivalry, it was always about who had what over the other. Tanahashi had to catch up to Nakamura, then he did, and it went in a circle. After their last go around, it was made clear that each man has become the best version of himself.

With that established, this stands apart from the pile as the most purely even match they’ve ever had.

That comes down a lot to the crowd too. With incredibly vocal fans cheering in support of either man, the majority of chants cross over each other to create a chorus of either “TANAMURA” or “NAKAHASHI”. The result is pure and simple noise. A buzz in the air for virtually every moment of the match. It makes the entire thing feel larger than life in a way that a rare few pro wrestling matches can. Sumo Hall isn’t a dome or a stadium, but it feels in the bigger and better moments of this match that this is a match that deserves the biggest room possible.

It feels like the biggest match the company could run at this point, and the biggest G1 final in a long long time.

That gravity and sense of importance to everything is a major boon for this match. As one between a pairing that’s done it all, it’s exactly what elevates this match to a level above most of the others in their series (give or take a G1 Special 2011, as this unfortunately doesn’t have tooth damage). Nothing is new, each man knows every single thing that the other has to offer, but it all feels SO consequential.

The match itself is what you expect at this point, and that’s mostly a compliment. There are some areas where they cannot help themselves, such as Tanahashi using attacks on the knee as transitions, even if he knows well enough not to really trust Nakamura with all that much more than that. To his credit, Nakamura continues what he learned in 2014, and never just blows it off like he used to, but it’s the weaker part of the match compared to everything that surrounds it, outside of a moment or two when he has to hesitate to cover after a Boma Ye variation. It’s everything you expect in all the other areas too. They find new avenues to go down to fit some of these things in and find new angles with which to approach some of the offense, but nothing is a surprise. It’s in the same realm as their previous G1 meeting or the Tanahashi/Shibata match from earlier in the tournament. Stories that have concluded and become more sports rivalries than wrestling feuds, based around people who know each other too well to be surprised anymore.

To their credit, they manage once again to not repeat themselves.

They go out of their way early on to make the point repeatedly that the old ways aren’t going to work anymore. Both wrestle different styles on the ground, but Tanahashi knows Nakamura’s holds too well for them to really work like they did a decade earlier. Tanahashi can also strike now, and won’t be baited into mistakes or caught sleeping like he was when Nakamura first became the King of Strong Style. On the other end of that, Tanahashi is past the point where he can ever work Nakamura’s knee for any sustained length of time, because Nakamura got caught too many times from 2011-2014 to ever fall for it again. Similarly, Nakamura’s prepared counters in 2014 don’t really work as well here as they did then.

After establishing what doesn’t work early on, the match then emphasizes all of the things that still do. The major pieces of offense and small counters to them. Tanahashi wasn’t able to tear apart Nakamura’s leg, but by chipping here and there, he makes him unable to really get the most out of the Boma Ye variations late in the match by always making him pause before the cover. Tanahashi denies Nakamura the ability to close through the old trusty science, but Nakamura denies Tanahashi in more overt ways by blocking or denying every High Fly Flow version he attempts, even getting the most out of The Gambit as a result of Tanahashi’s inconsistent knee work not making it the killer it is at its best.

Beyond that, it’s also a great little piece of tournament wrestling. The ideology is perfect and one of the best tropes in wrestling, spending numerous matches building a move or a set of moves as the absolute end of things, before blowing it all up in the biggest possible setting. To their credit, they don’t just apply this to what’s worked in the 2015 G1 Climax so far. Tanahashi’s cradle that he used for a flash win over Nakamura in last year’s tournament is something that doesn’t work here. Similarly, Nakamura’s different Boma Ye variants fall short, as does his last ditch attempt at the exact same armbar sequence (takeover -> Triangle -> Reverse Cross Armbreaker) that beat Kazuchika Okada the night before.

It takes the entire match for Tanahashi to find something new, but once again he does. After nothing else has worked, Nakamura goes for what worked in their Tokyo Dome match seven years earlier, the avalanche Landslide. Once again though, what’s old doesn’t work so well anymore. Tanahashi leans him back just enough on the ropes to break out a brand new kind of hanging High Fly Flow to take them both down to the ground. It’s not a big Tanahashi thing that feels like a prepared counter for once though, and instead comes off more as him taking a branch from Nakamura now and creating something out of nowhere on pure instinct. A Dragon Suplex, the HFF to the back, and then the original High Fly Flow follows that, and Tanahashi wins.

For the last time, Tanahashi gets Nakamura. Like Nakamura got the best of Tanahashi in 2014 by adapting some element of his game, it’s now Tanahashi that learns a little something from Nakamura.

The most fitting end to the rivalry possible.

At the end, Nakamura surprisingly shakes Tanahashi’s hand. Both men have spent their careers avoiding maudlin shows like this, so after a decade of fighting, it really means something. It’s the end of a decade of hostilities. Sometimes quiet, often loud, but always important. That’s what the match was, this one last story to tell together, encompassing their entire time together and bringing it to the best and most dramatic possible close.

A perfect conclusion to a great rivalry, and one of the best feeling matches of the year.

***9/10