Tanahashi & the Puro scene

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

It appears likely that Tanahashi will be going into the WON Hall of Fame this year. This is sure to cause other parts of the internet to blow up in excitement/rage, but we never really talk about non-US wrestling here. So peeps, who is peeping that New Japan? Or any current puro, or really even lucha or US indies or anything that isn't WWE or TNA or UK wrestling. Do we not talk about it because nobody watches that stuff, or are there secret puro fans still out there? Reveal yourself!

[Guest John Hancock]

I watch a spot of New Japan, especially when people talk about how great it is. Lucha's chugging along.

[The Fury 65]

its one of those promotions i always say i need to see more but never check out, i've heard great things recently from them. is Okada still champ at NJPW?

[Maxximus 353]

I keep up with some of the puro news, mostly New Japan and DDT. RoH is dead to me right now, but besides that I try to keep up with PWG which I think personally is and has been the best indy promotion in the world.

 

I don't pay much attention to lucha these days. At least not as much as I used to.

[Guest Frank Botch]

I'm not a huge Tanahashi fan by any means but I do think he deserves to go into the HoF. I'll watch most of the big NJPW shows apart from Okada main events, I still can't stand that guy. I mean he's getting praised by an awful lot of people, even those who dislike modern puro for the most part, so I should give him another chance but all his matches are just so LONG. NOAH is pretty much an indy these days. AJPW is a pretty funny promotion to follow, and Akiyama is still top 1 in Japan. I mean this match is just beautiful:

 

[video=youtube;KRcHy97HDs4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcHy97HDs4

 

Only prefer Shibata/Ishii 1 and Nak/Sak to that match from all the pimped NJPW. Also if you want to watch a total mess of a match from two usually awesome workers, that second Ishii/Shibata match has to be seen, what a disgrace. Anyway I do watch stuff and keep up with news and I'll post in this very thread about it.

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

Yeah, I'm interested to hear what people actually think of the product. New Japan, I mean, although other things as well. But I mean it's all the rage, and yet not something we ever talk about here. With the extremes of opinions floating around, I want to know what the relatively normal and centrist TWO Universe thinks.

 

I still need to watch the most recent Tanahashi/Okada that people lost their shit over, even by the standards of Tanahashi/Okada matches. Of the first five, Invasion Attack is the only one that I'd call a genuinely great match, where I felt they put it all together and really delivered the epic that they were supposedly delivering every time out. Their other matches are good, but contain glaringly annoying flaws for my taste (i.e. LOL @ selling anything), and aren't things that I'd put above any of a hundred other "good" puro main events. And yet there are other Tana matches I've seen - Suzuki, Ishii from the G1 - that I really liked and would rate much higher than those "five star matches".

 

Which is why I'm interested in hearing more about them, and Tanahashi in particular, because there's a huge disconnect for me between what I see in him/them, and the outrageous things I hear from Meltzer and NJ fans, where he's one of the greatest of all time, best main even run of all time, it's the best in-ring series of all time, all of this shit. I just, I don't even dislike Tanahashi particularly, but I'm just not buying what people are selling him as.

[Guest Jayfunk]

Maybe its the style you not getting its different and would be harder to get if looked through an American tinted glasses?

[Guest Ciaran The King]

I personally watch NOAH, NJPW and PWG (not much but a little). I watch mostly for Okada, Tanahashi, Devitt, KENT and a few others

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

Maybe its the style you not getting its different and would be harder to get if looked through an American tinted glasses?

 

I don't think this accounts for everything since I am comparing them to other puro main events of the same style in saying that they don't stand out from the pack.

 

Differences in styles is real, and it's fair to say I don't like the average puro main event as much as I like the average WWE main event, to put it that way. But I am still completely capable of enjoying a puro main event and recognising a superlative match when I see it regardless of what style it comes from. I see the greatness in Misawa/Kawada. I see it in Kobashi/Sasaki. I see it in Tanahashi/Suzuki even. But I just don't see it in most of the Tana/Okada matches, the way that others do.

 

It's not a style clash as much as I just don't like the matches as much as other people, for such and such reasons.

[Guest Ciaran The King]

There was a great match earlier this year between Okada and Devitt

[The Fury 65]

I may try watch wrestle kingdom when it comes around again, i mean the triple threat match and sakurba's match were awesome from this years

[Guest Frank Botch]

Which is why I'm interested in hearing more about them, and Tanahashi in particular, because there's a huge disconnect for me between what I see in him/them, and the outrageous things I hear from Meltzer and NJ fans, where he's one of the greatest of all time, best main even run of all time, it's the best in-ring series of all time, all of this shit. I just, I don't even dislike Tanahashi particularly, but I'm just not buying what people are selling him as

 

Yeah I'd agree with all this. I mean, I would never say Okada is at the level of Davey Richards as a worker, ie the dregs of society, but I think there's a parallel with how he, and the Tanahashi matches, have been praised and the way Davey Intensity was hailed as the saviour a couple of years back. I mean you have the same people who loved Richards now saying he's ''gone too far'' when he's always sucked. I don't think Okada/Tana matches will suffer the same fate, just because they are headlining a sucessful promotion and the matches are never as offensive, but I've never seen such an amount of hyperbole over a series of matches (and I'm not being hypobolic there). Like you had people saying their Mania day match was the best ever right when it finished. The best match ever. Maybe it's down to wanting to be a part of something as it happens or whatever, but that's all for the sociological thread I'll start later.

 

I've seen three of the matches, the one the day of Mania (Okada ruined it), the Dome match (really average) and the G1 draw, which was fine.

Edited November 5, 2013 by Frank Botch

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

I admit I really liked the Mania match. I thought it was the only one of theirs (until the latest one, more on that later) to actually reach the levels of a great match. I don't remember anything specific about it now other than they worked the arm, not the leg (which I prefer overwhelmingly), and I liked the final stretch. I feel like it needs a rewatch, which is quite an abhorrent prospect after watching six of their matches and all of them being 1000 hours long.

[dsrchris 190]

Since I stopped watching the Japanese stuff around 2007/2008, this short clip amounts to everything I know about current Japanese wrestling:

 

[video=youtube;Nk21JebXL6M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk21JebXL6M

 

Based on that, I kinda like it. :D

[Guest Jimmy Redman]

For what it's worth Botch, I watched the latest Tana/Okada, it may have been their best match, and Okada's selling is the main reason why. His selling has improved a tonne from being spotty and annoying to something much more consistent and substantial.