Wednesday, October 11, 2017

NJPW King of Pro Wrestling 2017

A main event so good it got seventh graders interested
Graphics via F4WOnline
King of Pro Wrestling is typically regarded as the biggest show to come around during the autumn lull between the G1 Climax and WrestleKingdom. The show was also named after a trading card game made by Bushiroad, the card and collectible company that bought New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2012 (they also had a convention going on down the hall from the G1 Special in Long Beach, at which I shook my head in disbelief because I'm not a child so I don't play with cards, but I do fly halfway across the country to see pro wrestling because I'm a normal adult). As of this writing, I've only watched about half the show. I did not watch the debut of Roppongi 3K (returning young boys Sho Tanaka and Yohei Komatsu), but it was probably good. I did not watch the 6-man tag with Cody, Kenny Omega, and Marty Scurll, even though that's a juicy little combo there. And I did not watch the fourth iteration in a month of the same three-way match for the tag belts, and I might never even do that.

I cannot recommend enough that you watch the match between KUSHIDA and Will Ospreay for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. We saw them do incredible work earlier this year in the finals of the Best of the Super Juniors, so the bar was set high, but of course these lunatics went and leaped right over it. The opening stretch was maybe the best I've seen all year, and it made clear Ospreay's determination to stop effing around and finally beat KUSHIDA. Without needing to draw it out close to the 30-minute mark, these guys created brilliance in 15 minutes and did what hasn't been done all year outshine — the heavyweight main event. The crowd was more into this, and both KUSHIDA and Ospreay were working at a higher level.

Tetsuya Naito defended his WrestleKingdom title shot briefcase against Tomohiro Ishii, and even though the outcome was never really in doubt (as much as we love Ishii, he is NOT maineventing WrestleKingdom), they still went hard. At one point, Naito slapped Ishii on the back of the head very hard, and the camera showed Ishii demonstrating a serene look of absolute fury. I don't often praise Ishii's acting skills, but that facial expression spoke volumes, at least as much as his vicious chops to Naito's throat. Naito finally won, and he took great pain to kick Ishii out of the ring while spitting on him. The NJPW crowd needs to occasionally be reminded that this guy they're joking nuts for is a Grade A jerkwad.

And in the main event, Kazuchika Okada defended his IWGP Heavyweight Championship against EVIL (all caps, all the time). This one also felt like a requisite title defense on the way to Wrestle Kingdom, but you'd be hard pressed to find a NJPW performer who would ever mail it in. Okada and EVIL still beat the piss out of each other, with EVIL adding a violent wrinkle to his already-violent bit where he puts a chair around a guy's neck and then hits it with another chair. He almost had Okada down, but the champ rose up and fought him off, needing a few Rainmakers and a spinning jumping Tombstone to finish him off.

For those who don't know, I teach seventh grade language arts. After school today, I was in a room with a few coworkers and I was finishing the Okada/EVIL match on my computer. Three boys walked in the room, as they milled about the building waiting for the volleyball game to start. They saw I was watching wrestling and they ran over to me. Of course, they asked if it was WWE, but I explained how this was New Japan Pro Wrestling, from Japan! They sat and watched the last few minutes, ooohing and aaahhing when they were actually paying attention. "Do they actually hit each other in this one?" No, I said, but they hit hard. At the end, as both Okada and EVIL lay spent on the canvas, one of the boys asked me, "Are they lying?" It was the funniest way of asking if wrestling is fake that I've ever heard, and even though he probably knew the answer, the genuine exhaustion from both of those performers was enough to make him question it. See? Pro wrestling can still make magic every now and then.