New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 10 Workrate Report

I wrote up the first 8 episodes of this series, but had to skip last week's. The idea of sitting through one hour of TV dedicated to Okada vs. Naito seemed like unbearable torture. Both are clearly the worst two NJ guys, with Naito being one of the worst workers I've ever seen. A completely clueless man when it comes to pro wrestling. So I skipped it, for my own sanity and yours. None of you would have wanted to see two paragraphs of me having a shitty Friday night. Wait do you? I don't know. All I know is that I didn't want to watch it.

1. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (1/4/14)

So this would have gotten an astronomical rating if I was only grading up through the entrances. Tanahashi comes out with old Megadeth and current weird anime guitarist Marty Friedman walking behind him up the ramp, shredding weird pop metal jams while Tanahashi mimes doing the same. Nakamura comes out with a bunch of strippers moving all funny, then when walking down the ramp he runs into an invisible door, finds the key to unlock it, bursts through said fake door and begins to do all sorts of red leather jacket Beat It moves down the rest of the rampway. Really jumped up a whole 'nother level with that shit.

And then the match started and it was clearly the worst of their recent matches, and not really a good match in general. For a Tokyo Dome main event this had zero big match feel. Tanahashi unconvincingly worked the knee, and Nakamura didn't even notice that was happening as it didn't slow him down for a second. Tanahashi got his ribs supposedly worked over but he didn't care too much about that either as it never made him stop for one second and think before hitting a few High Fly Flow variations. Some stuff looked good; I like Tanahashi's Cloverleaf, and while kind of goofy I liked the Styles Clash out of a Cloverleaf. Nakamura really had zero interest in selling the knee and Tanahashi kept insisting on going after that knee. Even after the match Josh Barnett was flipping out about Nakamura's tissue and ligament damage, "he may even have a couple of broken ribs!" all the while Nak is fucking moonwalking down the entrance ramp, not looking any differently than he did at the start of the match. This match was kind of a majorly aimless dud. Both guys are capable of much better.