AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/18 - 3/24

AEW Dynamite 3/20/24

Kazuchika Okada vs Eddie Kingston

MD: So here's a fun thing. If you view the blog on the web, you can see tags. If you click on the Kazuchika Okada tag, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and go all the way back to 2015. If you did Kingston, you'd probably just get a few months. What I'm trying to say is that when people were writing about Okada, we weren't. I'll take it a step further: when people were watching Okada, I wasn't. I was watching Houston arena footage daily or figuring out lucha through the obviously very correct lens of 2010 Jon Strongman Andersen vs Hector Garza. I'm not actually super familiar with the guy! I was familiar with Phil and Eric's 2017 take on Omega vs Okada though (http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/01/2017-doesnt-make-list-six-star-edition.html and http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/01/i-also-watched-omega-vs-okada.html respectively). So I am sort of coming in with an open, beginner's mind as I watch Okada, but also sort of not because there's a reason why I wasn't riding along with everyone on the NJPW train. 

All of this, if I'm being honest, has me feeling a little bit on my heels, since I write a lot about this stuff and do so in a fairly aggressive, direct manner. I want to be able to back it up. Ok, here's another thing. Eric and I are very close in many of our opinions. That wasn't really intentional. We read each other's stuff, often after the fact. We communicate, but we don't consult, except for that I have a pretty good sense if he's going to like something and I'll throw it his way. Where I tend to be a little more forgiving than Eric and especially Phil is on execution. 

Wrestling is symbolic. The thought, the narrative, the theory, the consistency matters more than the execution. There are a lot of correct paths to the same destination. Where it becomes an issue is if there's a discrepancy between how something is presented (or perceived by conventional wisdom) and how something looks and feels. It's when it affects suspension of disbelief that we really have a problem. That can happen a lot of ways and most of them are tied to selling. Wrestling doesn't have to be realistic. It does have to be believable within its own reality though. There's lots of ways to accomplish that, as I said. Older Andre can just put his hand out and you'll buy that it could crush a mountain because he's so big and has such presence and has been established over time and in how his opponents react to him. Baba could do a head chop and because the crowd buys into it and the wrestler who he's facing wants his paycheck and sells so big for it, over time a consistency of meaning is created. Or, you know, Terry Funk can just legitimately punch you in the face and that works too. 

I'm walking my own winding road here to say that Okada's stuff really doesn't look so great and it bugged me here. Maybe it bugs me more because he's Okada and he's been put on a pedestal for the last decade and a half? Maybe it bugs me more because he's facing Eddie and because of the people Eddie has faced over the last year? Maybe it bugs me more because I'm comparing it to the other Japanese wrestlers who I've written about recently? Maybe it bugs me because I'm also watching Fujiwara and Choshu go at it on the side? We're just days off from watching Shibata Tenryu Punch Danielson in the face, right? Maybe it bugs me because there's a lot in this match that I actually did like. I don't know how NJPW TV was structured or how much ROH TV Okada worked, but there are different constraints for weekly TV wrestling than for other sorts, and while I imagine it wasn't for everyone, I liked the pacing. I liked the methodological control. I liked the sense that he was dismantling Eddie. I liked his reactions to what was happening and to how the crowd was responding. So much of wrestling isn't about move A or move B but about what happens between A and B, and there was confidence and energy and life in that regard. It just kept leading to things (strikes and especially cutoffs) that I wasn't feeling. He'd throw a knee to the gut or clubber down to try to break a hold, and watching it I sort of ended up making the same face Okada makes when he sells, a perfectly fine expression to express dismay. Eddie is a guy who will absolutely lean into offense, but he won't jump headlong into it. That was what was apparently required here and maybe PAC is a guy to make that happen. I'm ready for Darby to get back and challenge, because he'll make all of this stuff look good without making it look absurdly over the top. 

Okada came off as someone who is very good at all of the most artificial "live theater" elements of pro wrestling (truthfully the elements I love the most) but strangely lacking in that fairly necessary visual element that assists in creating a simulated reality, at least relative to how he's portrayed (again, it's the portrayal that causes the issue in general; more on the issue in specific in a moment). It's like imagining a Jerry Lawler (and this is just an example, not a direct comparison) who could sell, who had his timing, who could connect with the crowd through his expression and body language, but just didn't have that punch that put him over the top and tied it all together by taking your worries and cares away and allowing you to buy into the fantasy of the moment. In some ways, him coming so close and then missing that one crucial element makes it worse, because you end up judging him on the curve of what might have been.

 

I think I had a bigger problem with it here because it was Eddie and it was Eddie losing his title and because I'd love to have been able to write about it as if it was real and focus on the narrative of Eddie's dream of a Triple Crown being torn apart just a few months into it by someone who didn't necessarily represent the Japanese lineage Eddie clings to so vehemently but instead that has a certain flamboyance, that went to the eyes and played dirty, etc. There's a lot to flesh out there, but I just wasn't feeling it in the same way. I wasn't immersed. It's a me thing. It's an Eddie thing. It's a long, stable bridge that had been built by his last many matches and that bridge felt a bit more wobbly here. I'm still curious to see Okada vs other guys on the roster. He's great at emoting but struggled here with immersion. I think he has upside and that the weighty and deliberate artificiality he brings is something the product could use more of. Let's just see him against Darby and Cassidy and Dustin and Garcia and whoever else and maybe not against people who require just a little more physicality like Eddie or Mox or RUSH.