You may have noticed a certain bounce in the step of wrestling fans after this past weekend.
You’ll have to excuse us if we feel like one of those dogs in those videos of servicemen and women returning home to them after tours. Give us a wide berth; our hips are very sore from violent tail-wagging (ok, taking this a bit far). In the G1 Climax 36 Final between Ryohei Oiwa and Yuya Uemura, NJPW finally found its way back after far too long wandering in the woods.
There’s a distinct image when anyone pictures what an elemental NJPW match looks like, as a template. Two guys, probably with hilarious haircuts, in an oddly lit building, doing simple better. It isn’t wrestling deconstructed necessarily, but more rooted in crisp basics than anywhere else. It’s stripped down, sure, but it’s the roots done so well and so sharply that the other tenets of wrestling shine through more brightly because they have less to cut through—the stories, the emotions, the conflict can pop that much better without clutter. Also, the haircuts have the added bonus, combined with Japan’s usual humidity, that 20 minutes in it’s hard to tell if each guy is deep into a wrestling match or 40 minutes into drumming for Iron Maiden in their headlining set at Castle Donington.
NJPW had gotten so far away from that in recent years, with only brief spasms of triumph trying to find oxygen in the morass of “Huh?” that it was otherwise serving up. Say the words “House of Torture” and “run in” to any NJPW fan in the past three years and they’ll go into some reverse-Pavlovian response and lock themselves in the nearest closet. The habit of tossing the heavyweight title on whoever started/joined a heel faction the previous week left the whole thing feeling like it was chasing a bus it had just missed.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t attempts to get back to what NJPW used to mean, but they never felt like true commitments. Certainly the talent drain didn’t help. Kazuchika Okada, Jay White, and Will Ospreay all left; Hiroshi Tanahashi got old and then retired. Completing Hiroki Goto’s journey was a nod to what used to be, but it wasn’t about turning a new page. NJPW needed to get to the next generation, but one they didn’t trust. The company and the young wrestlers were essentially locked in a room together, each eyeing the other warily.
The spraying-to-all-fields method was exemplified again by whatever it was they were trying to do with Shota Umino.
First he was Jon Moxley dressed as Tanahashi. Then he was Tanahashi dressed as Moxley. Then he was some guy loudly telling everyone not to put in the paper that he was Moxley or Tanahashi. Then he was about three different other things. Nothing hooked, and it was all way too dressed up.
While NJPW has always had a variety of styles and wrestlers, the variance was just there to highlight the core. That it didn’t need all the decorations or spot-fests or empty noise. It could just be two guys beating the shit out of each other. Or it could just be two guys pitting a headlock vs. a wrist-lock, as Chris Charlton described Oiwa vs. Uemura.
Doing simple better.
NJPW is grounded in guys coming out of their dojo having done three million hip bridges, arm drags, and headlocks not merely to say they did or to “pay dues” as they do in Orlando (or because in Orlando they’re teaching a bunch of college track stars what those things are), but because those need to be so crisp so that everything else shines brighter. There’s a reason Okada didn’t break out his dropkick until about 18 minutes into any of his matches. It pops because the simpler stuff has already done a good portion of the work.
Oiwa and Uemura could tell the story of the next generation finally taking control of the company through two simple holds. Uemura found about a dozen different ways to get back to a wrist-lock, while Oiwa had to persevere and power through to get back to his headlock. Their commitment to it drew people in, bringing them back to what they loved about wrestling and NJPW. This was the AC/DC of a wrestling match. Save your pianos and 12-minute bridges for another time, we’ll take our three-minute headbanger in 4/4 thank you very much. Two guys, distilling wrestling down to what truly matters, skipping the bullshit. It’s the match Moxley has in his head every day.
It capped off a wondrous G1, with NJPW as poised for a run as it’s been in some time. It has a new forever rivalry in Oiwa and Uemura. It has a true final boss champion, with Yuta Tsuji blossoming in this tournament, finally. It has its charisma machine in Yuto Ice. Boltin Oleg and Callum Newman to carry the gaijin flag. It even has Umino, with enough time having passed from the thrashed-about persona attempts that he has been able to just get back to wrestling.
NJPW is at its best when it does simple better than anyone.
Oiwa and Uemura brought it home.
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