Post 200: A Bit of Wrestling

So a quick post for my 200th, and it's about wrestling.

All Japan Pro Wrestling (y'know, that other company in Japan... the one nobody pays attention to) held a show at the Ryogoku Kokugaikan the other day. At this show Satoshi Kojima, otherwise known as the man with one of my favorite names in the world, put his legendary Triple Crown championship on the line. Against who? A giant chunk of fat named Ryoto Hama. Surely it was no contest. Surely Kojima retained his crown against the rookie of only a year. Surely the man who weighed in excess of 400 pounds and tags with Akebono in a veritable buffet of tubby immobility. No. No. Ryoto Hama WON the Triple Crown championship. THIS GUY (on the left).


This guy is fat in ways that Yokozuna only dreamed about. I'm just in absolute shock that he won the title. Although given the fact that AJPW is basically ignored these days, I'm not surprised that Mutoh would pull something like this in hopes of some attention. Some western fans seem to really be into Hama... but I'm unconvinced. This was a big gamble that I'm not sure will play out how they want.

Since I caught wind of this bit of news I started wondering about the rest of the champions around the wrestling world. I can't say that I actually follow this form of entertainment as closely as I used to these days. I check up every now and then out of morbid curiosity more than anything else really. I stopped being a fan of the "genre" of television when I realized that most companies weren't making an appealing product for me. Even a company like TNA which started off on the right foot eventually decided it needed Bischoff and Russo to face fuck it into the ground. So I'm going to take a look at the "world" champions, which I just researched on Wikipedia because I realize I don't know where else to find this information anymore.

WWE
WWE World Heavyweight - Chris Jericho
I think I knew this, but it was still a delightful surprise to see that Jericho was the champion.
WWE Heavyweight - Deacon Bautista
How very ordinary and boring. A weightlifter wins a belt in MacMahon's company.

TNA World Heavyweight - AJ Styles
One of the few people deserving to hold the title on a regular basis. Quite good.

NOAH
GHC Heavyweight - Takashi Sugiura
What? Though he's a good wrestler I don't see the sense in this. Don't see a long reign here with such competition as Morishima, Marufuji, Shiozaki and Rikio. Let's not forget KENTA is almost healthy again.

NJPW
IWGP Heavyweight - Shinsuke Nakamura
My man Shinsuke! Always a contender, always good. This company is gleefully forgetting the Lesnar and Sapp days of 2005-2006.

AJPW
Triple Crown - Ryoto Hama
See above...

NWA "World" Heavyweight - Adam Pearce
Holy awful! Why did it go back to him? Oh yeah, because he books himself to win it all the time.

RoH
ROH World Heavyweight - Tyler Black
Probably a good choice but I can't really be sure since I stopped watching before he hit his zenith. He's no Nigel or Danielson, but not bad.

Well, that's my look at wrestling. Don't expect another one for a long time. I'm really not interested in wrestling anymore. Maybe NOAH and NJPW, but nothing domestic.

Mitsuharu Misawa

Mitsuharu Misawa has died.
It's been a couple of weeks since his death, but the impact is still there. Coping with the death of a true wrestling legend will, sadly, be easier than a normal celebrity death. Even so, Misawa was a wrestling GOD plain and simple. There were rarely finer performers in the ring who were able to sustain such a long, industry impacting career. Misawa WAS Puroresu (Japanese wrestling). He took the reigns of All Japan Pro Wrestling as a young man and revolutionized the style of wrestling. His emphasis on exciting matches full of big, dangerous moves was fresh back in the 90s. Fueds with Kenta Kobashi, Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue led to some of the greatest matches in the history of wrestling. He innovated what are now some of the most basic moves of wrestling. Tiger drivers, Emerald Fusion and its knock-offs, and flashy elbow based offensives.

Leaving AJPW in the 2000s Misawa founded Pro Wrestling NOAH. Consistently voted promotion of the year, and several times putting on the highest attended wrestling show in the world for a particular year. The company he created was based on his principles of wrestling. NOAH puts on the best shows yearly. The marquee matches are truly spectacular showcasing the granduer of the 'epic' match. Misawa had his fair share of epic matches. Three Kobashi vs Misawa matches were in the top 10 of all time. Misawa vs Kawada, Misawa vs Akiyama, Misawa vs Taue. He was a man who put on the best shows, and made sure his men did too.

Simply put, Mitsuharu Misawa was magic in the ring. Every time he went out there he put on a brilliant performance. I had the great fortune to see Misawa wrestle in person. I went with two friends on a road trip to Philadelphia to watch what was Mitsuharu Misawa's only US excursion in many years. The atmosphere was, well, magic. There was something special in the air. When his music hit and his banners were marched in, I was instantly a little bubbling child. I was giddy. The match could've been awful, it wasn't, and I couldn't have cared. He was right there, mere feet away. It was the experience of a liftime.

It seems his magic came at a heavy toll, physcially and mentally. He put on matches 9 months a year for 20 years. Wear and tear on his body took it out of him. His heart gave out in the ring and he died in the same place he had entertained millions. He never stopped, he kept going to the very end.

As a (former) fan of wrestling the past couple of years have desensitized me to performer deaths. Dozens and dozens of wrestlers have died in just the past 10 years. Not just old guys whose glory days were the 70s. It's young guys in their prime dying untimely deaths. Its ridiculous how workers in the industry die! Not even the barely significant no-name guys. It's the names. One day a wrestler will be in the ring entertaining a crowd of folks with questionable IQs, a week later he'll die of some heart related disease. It should make wrestling fans extremely angry at the businessmen running the industry. Their "burn 'em up when their young" style of managment, forcing them to be out there 300 days a year is killing these guys. But the fans don't care. They move on and keep those who came before in their memory. The fans should DEMAND more from the management of these companies. The WWE, for instance, seems to only do enough to cover its own ass. This is not the case so much in Japan, where the companies legit look after and care about their wrestlers. They treat their wrestlers decent.

Sadly Mitsuharu Misawa has left the world. Yet his matches and memory will live on, honored forever as an eternal wrestling legend.