2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Shingo

 

1. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Shingo Takagi NJPW 11/4/24

ER: "Wow," he thought. "A Shingo Takagi match, finally getting discussed on Segunda Caida." That's not true of course, because Matt is a psycho who covers so much wrestling that obviously he hit the AEW appearances of Shingo, but he's a big name whose acclaimed work has never quite connected with me. His career has been long and successful and I'm sure there are plenty of matches among his thousands that will connect with me, but this is the first I've seen that felt just right. I fell in love with Michinoku Pro and still love it as much as ever, and I was there for the Toryumon tape trading and fell in love with a new generation of guys, and then I was older and out of college and had a job and a live in girlfriend and didn't connect with Dragon Gate the same and had less time to watch wrestling and so now I'm writing about Shingo Takagi for the first time on Segunda Caida. 

But this is a Zack Sabre Jr. review. Carry job is an insulting term that I don't really like using and this was not that, but Sabre's constant interruptions of Shingo's well orchestrated timing based wrestling made this dynamite. Dragon Gate at its best had exceptional speed with exceptional timing. The best of their multimans are undeniable. The timing and flow was real important to the style and Zack Sabre is amazing at working with the same timing to purposely monkeywrench the steps. He hits very hard and seems to enjoy being hit very hard. Sabre, over the last decade, has transitioned from a guy formerly accused of being a beanpole who needs people to hold still, to a deceptively sturdy guy who works as stiff as any of the BattlArts legends. He's a disruptor, he disrupts with surprising pop, and he seems to have this insistence on being hit just as hard and just as much. Unlike guys who make that their entire personality, whether they're actually stiff workers or just mimes doing bad stand and trade, he does not make it his personality. The stiffness and abuse are all part of the methodology to get to his submissions, which are also applied stiffly and forcefully. There's never any overwrought Hit Me Harder faces in sequences that stop a match dead, it's all stiffness that's intent on finishing. 

Sabre never seems to look for one answer. He has a shocking amount of depth and knows how to go several directions from established positions, making his method of attack always feel like his own while always surprising me. His willingness to lean into punishment to lean timing allows Shingo to work at his stiff best, getting to land full force clotheslines that occasionally get caught and twisted or beaten. But it never becomes an arm match, or a neck match, or a leg match, even though Sabre runs through sections of working on all of those things with the intent to finish, to wound, to slow. He can crank Shingo's neck with his legs, dropping his weight to drag him into the ring, without going back to a neck attack until the attack presents itself. When Shingo takes a second too long attempting a Gory Special, Sabre is there with a side headlock clutch that moves quickly into a disgusting octopus hold. If the neck presents itself, it becomes a neck match. As a disruptor, he allows Shingo to work his timing and takes every torso extension that presents itself. Sabre understands the weight of his offense and how to make submission applications and submission set ups look and feel as real as possible. The way he can straight an arm - quickly, slowly with pressure, working against resistance - and make it look like straightening an arm away from a man's body is requiring full strength from both, keeping that weight and gravity always present. For me, it adds meaning. Shingo looks like he's struggling to keep his head up at spots and it gave his responses frantic importance. 

Sabre is adept at catching Shingo's Actually Fast stuff, like the way he catches a few of his lariats and twists them into something dangerous, catching one and throwing uppercuts at it once he traps the arm, kicking at it another time. It's an all out attack and he commits just as hard to each attack, knowing one of them will lead to an ultimate opening. The weight made this into a match that could have ended satisfactorily at 15, 20 or 30 minutes. The survival felt earned but the attempts to finish felt real. Sabre's match long wear down was made even better with Shingo working 30 full minutes of body degradation. The final straw came down to Sabre throwing several short mule kicks at the inside of Shingo's knee before Shingo pulls off the Shingo Driver, causing enough of a delay in the pin attempt, and the way those kicks and the other knee and body attacks culminated in Shingo's slightly slower step down the stretch, his inability to get his legs underneath him on more than one occasion, and the way it was all done with no overacting, captured the best of this style. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST