180 matches over the course of a month. It would have
actually been 181 but there was the one forfeit loss Nakamura had to give up
due to injury. Add to that all of the undercard tag team matches and the number
shoots well into the two hundreds. Watching all or most of these go down is
nothing in league to the mental and physical duress undergone by the wrestlers
and other talent participating in these shows. But to such a large number of
matches in that short span of time does take a certain level of commitment and does
leave a mark. When the dust has settled, stepping back and reflecting is a
must.
This was absolutely the case as the final show of the
tournament drew to a close. Here in New
York, t would be 2 AM when I pried myself out of bed and started up my Macbook,
having just had an hour’s sleep. In the
dark I laid back in a position conducive to falling back asleep as I proceeded
to watch the show get underway on that modest screen. The rush of watching this
action as it happened live across the gglobe would be such that staying awake
was no problem.
The show breezed briskly by right up to the intermission, which
gave an opportunity to gather reinforcements in the form of coffee and leftover
pizza. As the 4 AM hour came and went the dark was gradually replaced by a
mellow grey. And then the weird epiphany-like sensations hit. Tanahashi was celebrating
his victory after an incredible match with Shinsuke Nakamura as outside my
place, the most wondrous sunrise was taking shape in the sky. A radiant pinkish
orange flooding the sky with a warm welcoming light. The light made a unique
path through window shade and furniture to cast a warm neon rectangular panel against
a wall in my living room. All I could think was how this spoke sufficiently of
the wondrous moment occurring in Sumo Hall and as a result in my own personal
space.
Filled with adrenaline there was nothing to do but chase
that sunrise. A few moments later, feet were shoved into sneakers, headphones
attacked to ipod and placed over ears, and I was stumbling out into the street.
Japanese post-rock band Mono’s song,
‘Pure As Snow (Trails Of The Winter Storm), a song I’d encountered when my
fantastic film fanatic alter-ego mondocurry heard it in a new by Sono Sion
movie, Tag (Real Oni Gokko) was selected to fill my ears. It’s a lush,
majestic, sorrowful and hope-inspiring sonic creation… yes all of those things,
it really is worthseeking out to give a listen. About midway down the long
sloping hill my apartment sits at the top of I gave up, the sun reaching its
more standard position. And as the world around me was wrapped in stillness and
solitude, the irrational surge of energy brought on by that cathartic wrestling
program was finally subsiding, leaving me with a most unlikely realization: Pro wrestling
is beautiful. More specifically, New
Japan Pro Wrestling is beautiful.
This strange experience as night turned to day, touched by
sadness and insecurity and brilliance and optimism, was not likely the intended
effect of the show. IIt was planned with its local crowd in mind, arriving in a
mid afternoon blaze of sun and filing out in the darkening evening, where
perhaps snacks or suppers awaited before an exhausted sleep would take hold.
But an effect of the New Japan World streaming service, now approaching its one
year mark, was to open a portal transporting me to the show and the show to me
and allowing me to view in tangent with this awesome natural phenomenon that I
would have otherwise missed entirely, in the standard mode of Sunday morning
slumber.
New Japan Pro Wrestling has been putting out nothing short
of an amazing product, at least as long as their World service has been active,
but probably a bit further as well. So it is not that large a leap to find this
strange feeling of transgression occur at the end of one its shows. While the
singular experience may not replicated any time soon, it served to make me
consider how NJPW has been a form of solace for me on account of its consistent
quality. It’s been something akin to a buoy, keeping at the very least this fan
afloat. In a reality peppered with unreliabilities – tragic occurrences,
uncertainties over the future, the sudden abandonment or change in personality
of those you trusted in – this wrestling promotion has been a steady source of
unwavering quality, the effort of many individuals working together to ensure
the best or close to it is achieved. Even if there are some low points or
head-scratching moments within the mix, a crescendo or ‘main event’ if you will
is always there hitting the high water mark.
Not only is this level of quality consistently high, it always gives the
sense of striving for something even greater.
I believe this can be accounted for on two major fronts. The
first I believe, is an incredible talent pool who believe in what they do and
are insistent on never phoning it in. The names Tanahashi, Nakamura, Okada,
Styles, Ibushi, to name only some, have been delivering nothing short of ‘match
of the year’ contenders when they get in the ring on the major stage. They
always appear physically and mentally exhausted after the big shows they
wrestle in because they have clearly given it their all. If something works
great they may continue to use such a tool in their arsenal but they always add something new to the equation the next
time around.
The other thing that I firmly plays a large role in making
NJPW so consistently good is its adherence to some core beliefs about how pro
wrestling should be presented. While lack of change may be frustrating at
times, it has ensured that when those big moments come in the critical matches
of each major show, they are not disappointing. The most significant of points
that are insisted on are that the most important story is the one inside the
ring, and the force driving that competition in the ring is also to win inside
the ring and be the best. Always. It is not because somebody kidnapped
someone’s daughter, or the regime controlling the company is tyrannical and
needs to be usurped, or a representative of another country is under orders to
demonstrate that nation’s dominance over another. Those can be fun, and one
could argue they have an important place in keeping pro wrestling somewhat
relevant to the mainstream. But in the bubble that New Japan Pro Wrestling has
created for itself, wrestling is real.
Even if the competition is staged and predetermined, the effort put into making
this a convincing, compelling athletic competition that suspends ones disbelief
about what they are watching is 100 percent genuine. Thus you have a
competition with results that feel real, and those presenting it have shown a
tremendous commitment to making it so. And there you have the G1 Climax, where
this commitment was adhered to on a scale as grand as a 181 match tournament.
And of course that fits in to a bigger picture mapped out and connected
together over time, but one could argue the G1 is its crowning achievement.
While NJPW has been doing well for a while, and I have
witnessed some of it on video upload sites and the very occasional ippv
purchase I feel it is worth focusing on this time period commencing with the
inception of NJPW World because that has opened the promotion’s activity up to
such a wider audience. The promotion and wrestlers in the promotion are most
definitely aware of that and it no doubt has an effect. Its launch time was
curious, right around the end of 2014 in time to build up a bit of momentum
before the big culminating event Wrestle Kingdom occurred in January of 2015. It
should be noted that although Wrestle Kingdom occurs in January it marks the
conclusion of many stories that have occurred throughout the prior year. A lot
of the company’s 9th Wrestle Kingdom’s success could be attributed
to the PPV push it got as Jeff Jarret worked very hard to promote it in tandem
with his Global Force Wrestling project. Therefore, I am very interested in the
next Wrestle Kingdom and see it as the first that is truly part of this ‘NJPW World era.’ It is the first of these big
events that will have had a year long build up told via this international
streaming service. And a huge part of it has been the unfolding of the G1
Climax.
It may seem some faulty logic: that a wrestling show made
available internationally leads to watching it end as a beautiful sun rise
occurs leading to the belief that NJPW may be at the top of its game right now
and is putting out the best wrestling there is in the world. Yet before you
dismiss it, I strongly suggest you find your way to a bit of the G1 Climax, as
much as you think you can handle, and see what it does for you.
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