2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Ospreay vs. Naito, Just Another 6 Star Match

 

Will Ospreay vs. Tatsuya Naito NJPW 8/12/23

ER: I decided to spend 45 minutes of my Saturday listening to Kevin Kelly lackadaisically call the 2nd 6 star New Japan match of 2023.

Match starts with loose headlock transitions, lot of space between all the matwork, few can look as disinterested in matwork as Naito. Nothing looked deliberate until OSpreay starting cranking the wrist, and I liked the way Ospreay committed to the misses on his running back elbow and a slashing front kick. 

It always strikes me as odd that Ospreay commits so much to the impact of so many of moves but always prioritizes the landing on his pescados with minimal regard to impact. Road Dogg ass pescado. 

I can't believe how little two front row fans flinched when Ospreay was whipped into the guardrail, but vaults right it at high speed, coming one inch from curb stomping each of their kneecaps upon landing. I have had my face smashed by a guardrail at a wrestling show, and got my picture photographed with Misawa for use in Japanese newspapers. But I would have flinched had I actually seen the danger that was right before me. 

The apron forearms didn't do anything for me, but Ospreay took a neckbreaker off the turnbuckles to the apron and an even worse looking one from the apron to the floor. He's a guy who seems to say the type of things that somehow who takes a lot of shots to the back of the head would say, so I guess I appreciate his commitment. 

Naito's Gloria into a cool pluma blanca had good application in reasonable time, and Ospreay's fight to the bottom rope looked strong, his face and neck getting squeezed harder each time he pumped his legs closer towards the ropes

Naito's short arm back elbow to the neck is his first good strike of the match, and I like how the first one acted as a harbinger of how he'd go after Ospreay's neck down the home stretch. 

Ospreay sticking the landing on Naito's poison rana looked great, but it immediately turned into Red Shoes making one of his classically idiotic overreactions that never feels like he's actually reacting to what just happened. His arms held out in hooks, his hands clawed and his face pleading; he looked like a teen finding out his best friend drove drunk and as such won't be able to play in the big game Sunday, ruining the school's chances of going to State. It's always the dumbest fucking reactions from that guy. 

It's wild that Scoot Andrew's "making a guy hold himself on the ropes for 12+ seconds" is a move set up that has survived into 2023. We haven't found a better way to get there than this? Ospreay sets up Naito's balancing act with two hard knees to the face and hits a great shooting start press as the payoff, and while both of those are a much more violent set up for a much better payoff than what Scoot did, it's still a guy awkwardly holding himself in position for a really long time. I think most of the wrestlers that could have figured out the best way to look convincingly stuck in the ropes for that long had all stopped wrestling before Scoot Andrews innovated the set up. Finlay is the only one who comes to mind that I definitively remember being good at occupying time while balancing his body across the ropes. 

If I was impressed by Ospreay landing crown first on two neckbreakers earlier, I have to be excited about Ospreay landing on the top of his head for a great rope run tornado DDT and a smoothly followed up Valentia brainbuster.

I like Ospreay's desperate, opportunistic use of the Hidden Blade, after Naito missed the stardust press. It was a good point to set up a both-men-down situation, but the huffing melodramatic fight from their knees that they used to work back into the match was awful, and the stand and trade looked uninspired until Naito's short arm back elbows. It was a clunky way to ease into the big finishing stretch, but easily forgotten because of leading into such a hot finishing stretch. 

The back elbow to the neck that finally knocked Ospreay to his knees looked like something that would drop someone with lightning bolt nerve pain.

Ospreay hooks several kicks into Naito's left eye, easily the most WAR strikes of the match in terms of impact, great use of foot placement and thigh slap and Actually Kicking Face, Naito's falls looking really authentic. But naturally when Red Shoes prevents Ospreay from doing any kind of follow up ground and pound, he turns the entire focus of the match onto himself for the entire time he counts Naito down. This goof acts like the most important moment of the match is his humorless Frank Drebin routine, Naito down while doing Elvis That's the Way it Is kneeling finger point poses.

It's hilarious timing, because moments later, after Ospreay takes a rana reversal directly on his shoulders as fast as SUWA (just about the highest compliment I can give someone), Ospreay superkicks an off-balanced Naito fully in the mouth, Naito's bazoo resting on Ospreay's boot as if it was holding him upright for a brief moment, and once I realized Naito was clearly knocked out I understood why. Of all the times for Red Shoes to put the full spotlight on himself and make his dramatic count down the pivotal spot of the match, it does not happen when a man is actually knocked out.  

The knockout makes Naito's collapse on the follow up look that much better. It turns out that Naito becomes a really great seller when he gets knocked out and then forced to run at someone. 

You can clearly hear Ospreay calling the rest of the match, literally give Naito step by step directions to guide him through every movement, and what's insane...is that the movements were incredibly complicated AND lead to the best, most natural looking reversals of the match! Both of Naito's consecutive Destinos looked good, and neither felt expected or telegraphed. They looked like a guy who just knew how to use physics to his advantage, even though they were mostly being controlled by Ospreay. Ospreay was essentially working a lazy-eyed blow up doll and making the execution of his opponent's offense look the best it had looked all match. Ospreay's late kickout if the second Destino looked earned and burdensome, as if he was kicking out a blacked out man's heavy corpse off of him. 

On the third and final Destino he made sure to wallop the back of his head hard into the mat, and I love the insanity of not just calling for the finish to be the second Destino, which would have been a wholly valid finish. The fact he forced a kickout and then forced a corpse to do it one. more. time. is the kind of stupid wrestler brain I can really appreciate.  

This was not a 6 star match, whatever that is, or a 7 star match, or a 5 star match, or probably even a 4 star match. But the finishing stretch was good enough and unique enough because of the impressive literal carry job that I can see a scenario where you forget about the opening 15-20 minutes of mundanity. I remain unconvinced by Naito as a worker, and wish Ospreay could integrate more selling into his epics, but carry jobs always impress me and this one was him literally willing a dead body through a complicated finish, and that's cool. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST