Pushing Puroresu: Why I Love It

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Hello confused button clicker. I’m Justin Houston, scribe behind CHIKARMY Insider and the Chikara DVD Reviews.  I’m debuting a new column here on PWP that’s all about puroresu, or Japanese wrestling to those that think Vince McMahon owns wrestling planet-wide. It’s called Pushing Puroresu and, in time, this will evolve into a place where I’ll express my various, at times divisive, opinions on everything from “Why [insert name] suddenly rules” to “[insert name] has kick-ass gear.” The fill-in-the-blank name is Kotaro Suzuki by the way. There will be Top Ten lists, Classic Matches, fantasy booking and dream match-ups, among other things. I’ll even do a weekly rundown of what, if any, puro I watched during the week, to keep up with the wrestling landscape. Now, many of you puroresu maniacs out there are probably wondering, “Why the fuck is the Chikara guy doin’ the puro column? That’s like asking Elmer Fudd to do commentary for the UFC.” First of all, I don’t understand what that means. Secondly, I’m not a guy who fancies himself one kind of wrestling. I love wrestling, in every form: lucha libre, puro, death matches, American-style, shoot-style, Mid-South, Mid-West, South-West, South…North. Wrestle Mime. Scandinavian…the point is, if there’s a style out there and someone decides to apply its teachings to the rich canvas of a wrestling ring (not a fucking mattress), chances are I’ll find something to like. I’m by no means an expert, but what I lack in complete understanding, I make up for with foam-at-the-mouth rage, blind fist-swinging and a misplaced bravado that would make Stalker Ichikawa blush. As much as I love Chikara, it’s not what reignited my burning passion for this sport six years ago. It’s puroresu. I warn you: this is about as personal an article I could write, so if I come off as a NOAH-obsessed nutjob…it’s because I am. Completely.
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I can tell you the exact moment that wrestling began to frustrate me. It was July 22, 2001, right smack in the middle of this thing called “The Invasion”. Remember how awesome that was? No? Congratulations, you’re a person with thoughts and feelings. It was the cleverly titled “Invasion” pay-per-view. After a few months of watching Steve Austin act like a blubbering idiot, giving gifts and sucking up to Vince…er, “Mr. McMahon”, I found myself wondering if this was the best a competitionless wrestling federation had to offer: “Stone Cold”, the single greatest and most successful gimmick in the history of wrestling, reduced to a sniveling weasel. But the night before the PPV, it seemed the old Austin would be returning. Alas, it was a swerve: he turned on the WWF in the main event of what would become not only one of the most successful non-big event pay-per-views in company history, but, to this day, the very last WWF or WWE PPV I ever bought. That’s not to say I haven’t seen them, of course; friends would occasionally get a SummerSlam or ‘Mania. Then the very first forces behind illegal content on the internet started to pick up steam, so suddenly there became a myriad of ways to watch them. But in eight and a half years, I haven’t paid for one. Haven’t wanted to. Because in late 2005, I found something new. I don’t exactly know where I found out about it, but if I ventured a guess, it’d probably be the Ring of Honor message board. It was Pro Wrestling NOAH. The first puroresu match I remember watching from start to finish was KENTA versus Yoshinobu Kanemaru for the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title from Pro Wrestling NOAH’s Destiny show on July 18^th, 2005. If you haven’t, I’d watch the match now, as the outcome is spoiled below.
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GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title
Yoshinobu Kanemaru© vs. KENTA – [Part One] : [Part Two]
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I saw the bout sometime in November, downloading it from a website that I visit quite frequently now. It took two viewings for me to understand what exactly puro was supposed to be. I was confused. They didn’t swear, cut promos, dress all that flashy…hell, they didn’t even have signature poses for God’s sake! How was I supposed to respect a man who couldn’t slightly raise his eyebrow? Then they started fighting. Not wrestling, really…they just started pounding each other. I didn’t understand if this was wrestling or martial arts. I started questioning whether it was a real fight or not. It slowly seeped in what the deal was. You see, whenever you experience a new kind of wrestling, it takes some time to figure out what rules they play by. I use the phrase “rules they play by” a lot, as it’s the biggest hurdle to overcome when trying to get into a new wrestling style or promotion. Because I was accustomed to a plodding pace, constant chants, yelling at referees, and over-the-top commentating, I was bewildered at wrestling being treated as a…a…and there it was. Like a lightning bolt rolling through my skin, the mere premise had me fascinated. My brain fritzed and twitched with all sorts of possibilities. I might have been drooling. It was one word: “sport”. It was the first time I ever considered wrestling a sport, even competitive in the least. WCW fucked kayfabe in the anal sphincter, so even while watching, I knew it was just two guys calling spots and putting on a show. Sure, matches like the main event to WrestleMania 20 made me lose my mind in excitement, but it was still a style that, for the most part, I didn’t really care much for anymore: mostly boring matches with bad commentary, stupid stipulations, and terrible storylines behind them. But puro didn’t have or need any of these things. It was pure, adrenaline-fueled combat. Back to the match. Kanemaru was all brainbusters, diving DDTs, and moonsaults. KENTA just kept kicking the ever-loving shit out of Kanemaru, at one point nailing his near legendary Fighting Spirit Busaiku Knee Kick. It took everything KENTA had, but he finally bested Kanemaru, winning the coveted junior belt for the very first time. I marked like a lunatic for the first Go 2 Sleep I ever saw. Up to that moment, it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen in a wrestling ring. It was replaced about four and a half minutes later by a match from the same show.
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Legends Collide
Kenta Kobashi vs. Kensuke Sasaki – [Part One] : [Part Two]
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I’ve been a shameless mark ever since. Puro introduced me to two concepts that I had never really applied directly to professional wrestling before: storytelling and fighting spirit. Wrestlers paying attention and even harkening back to previous matches was something I picked up on pretty quickly, and I only ever noticed it in Japanese rings. For whatever reason, before puroresu, I never saw a shred of narrative in a WWE or WCW ring. Of course now I have a better appreciation for it, but back then, I didn’t see it. Perhaps the flashy outfits are to blame. Either way, the idea of a wrestler actually learning and game-planning an opponent outside of telling their manager exactly when to distract the referee really fascinated me. Wrestling developed into something more cerebral to me, especially when I started following All-Japan’s epic run in the early to mid-90s. Every move, every gesture that Jumbo Tsuruta made, he did so with a distinct purpose. It was storytelling, and as a guy who was also obsessed with writing at the time, it was magic. On the other side of the coin, there lay fighting spirit, a phrase I had honestly also never heard before. “Fighting spirit”, to me, is defined as a wrestler’s unwillingness to be put down. Many wrestlers seem to have many different definitions, while I’d argue some wrestlers use the phrase without any fucking cohesive definition in mind. But after seeing the visceral, malicious lariats doled out by Stan Hansen, and watching Kenta Kobashi as he refused to quit, I found myself forming said definition. It is the drive in every man to never quit, no matter how badly a six foot four Texan is whipping your ass. In this broad metaphor, Stan Hansen is, say, “The Man”, one’s boss, or perhaps a person’s own self-doubt. See, wrestling picked up for me this century because I started finding all manner of ways to relate life to wrestling and wrestling to life. I started looking at my life and noticing the mistakes that I made: deceiving others, leaning on ego, and even just letting myself get walked on by people. And, like good storytelling, when the time came where I had a choice–fall back on my bad impulses or learn from my mistakes–I started choosing the latter, and reaped immeasurable benefits. And that thing inside me that always reinforced my determination, even when the local paper repeatedly sent me automated “no thanks” e-mails for my work, well…now it had a name. I ended up writing them a three-page essay on the economic ramifications of blowing up a bank in West Virginia. THAT got their attention…and me a personalized e-mail stating, if I wrote them anything ever again, that the letter would be immediately forwarded to county police. But they actually read my shit, so I took it as a win.
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So, clearly I have a passion for this. Don’t worry, though: you don’t need to like wrestling as much as I do to get something from this column. If you do, great. If not, I hope you’re at least slightly amused by my eccentricity. To be fair, I’m sure there will be much more knowledgeable people than me commenting here, many of whom will talk about concepts way over my head. Or no one will comment and I’ll just be the crazy guy who likes puroresu too much. I’m totally fine with that. But my ultimate goal here is to create a dialogue about puroresu that’s fun, engaging, and keeps people talking about a sport that seems to be, unfortunately, slowly withering away. Puroresu (and wrestling in general) will never die off completely, but in today’s wired world, a society that would rather force the magician to show them his trick than suspend their disbelief, I often wonder what the landscape of the sport will be in ten or twenty years. Hopefully, there are still some people left who just want to watch the rabbit materialize from the hat. What follows is a list of the major Japanese wrestling companies and just how much I watch them. It should give you an idea of what to expect in future columns, which I can promise won’t be preachy, or at least not as preachy.
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NOAH – I’m obviously a huge fan of Pro Wrestling NOAH, so you’ll probably be hearing lots about them. However, they are having injury issues of epic proportions there, so who knows how long some of my favorite guys will even be working. KENTA and Kotaro Suzuki are on the shelf for the foreseeable future, and guys like Go Shiozaki, Akira Taue, and Jun Akiyama, all of whom are big draws nursing injuries, may not be far off that list.
Dragon Gate – This is the company I follow the closest. I’m a huge sucker for factions and elimination matches, so DG is pretty much home. This year, the company has gone through a shifting towards more strong-style puro. Fast-paced high flyers like CIMA, Dragon Kid, and BxB Hulk are now mixing in a more combative style like that of YAMATO, Shingo Takagi, and Masaaki Mochizuki. It’s the most fun I have watching wrestling outside of Chikara.
NJPW – New Japan puts on the biggest annual puroresu show anywhere and may be the biggest wrestling company in Japan. I’m not high on a lot of their guys (I’m looking at you, Tiger Mask), but Nakamura and Tanahashi always seem to deliver the goods. They have a fantastic young base, too: Hirooki Goto, Apollo 55, No Limit, and the newest member of TNA, Kazuchika Okada, will keep them strong in the future.
DDT – It’s the wackiest shit you’ll ever lay eyes on. DDT is every other wrestling company in Japan snorted all at once with just a dash of pure crazy. Top talents like Kota Ibushi, Kenny Omega, and company owner Sanshiro Takagi mingle with crazy characters like Danshoku Dino, YOSHIHIKO, and Michael Nakazawa to form an entertaining juggernaut.
AJPW – Nowadays, not a lot of All-Japan crosses my lap unless Keiji Mutoh or an outsider is involved. I do however watch a TON of the pre-Millennium stuff, specifically early 90s. Kobashi, Kawada, Misawa, Jumbo, Taue, Kikuchi, Hansen…if you’re into puro as much as I am, these names shouldn’t be unfamiliar.
BJW – Death matches fanatics, I have bad news: blood and gore fests scare the shit out of me. I find it really hard to watch guys like Abdullah Kobayashi and Ryuji Ito erode their lives away with light tubes and razor boards. However, I am getting more into Big Japan thanks to their supreme booking and great use of young talent.
Zero1 – I like what I’ve seen from Zero1, but it’s not something I watch every week…or every other week. But with guys like Tanaka, Kawada, Hidaka, Sawa, the enigmatic Hayato “Jr.” Fujita and some interesting outsiders, I find myself watching more and more.
Others – I don’t watch a lot of joshi unfortunately, but I’m not opposed to it either. Same goes for BattlArts. What I’ve seen, I mostly like. With joshi, some of it I really, really dig. But it’s not something, outside of the Ice Ribbon shows, that hits my radar with much frequency.
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Next week, I’ll be writing about Dragon Gate’s current Open the Dream Gate champion Naruki Doi, and why he’s way more awesome than he gets credit for. I’ll discuss a Classic Puro match, as well as talk about any I happened to watch that week. If there is a God, and if he thinks Morishima could stand to lose a few pounds, he’ll get The Kings of Wrestling vs. Sasaki & Mori match to me pronto!
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I know this was probably hard to swallow, but I promise future editions will be a bit easier to digest. To reward you for your patience, here’s a picture of current GHC World Heavyweight champion Takashi Sugiura living his life fuller than any of us could imagine. See you next week.
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