Ladies gentlemen please welcome Dave in his debut column…
Jesus creeping God, am I ill. Great timing, too. My first column for Parts Unknown, and some unearthly critter worms its way into my intestines and hunkers down for a long stay. It’s nasty business in there, I’m afraid, and best left undescribed. They’d balk at putting stuff like this in medical journals, let alone on a pro wrestling blog. But the hell with it. There’s a deadline peering up over the horizon and I intend to hit it right between the eyes.
And speaking of hitting things hard, I’ve been trying to expand my puro horizons as of late. The sheets love it almost reflexively and so do Internet smarks, who are usually nerds, and most nerds labor under the delusion that something cannot suck if it comes from Japan. Never mind that if Asia is the stained, shapeless trenchcoat of a mall pervert, Japan is what he’s wearing under it; their bizarre culture is all the rage among neckbeards these days and wrestling is no exception.
Why, exactly? Puro is stiff, but so is American wrestling, especially in the indies. Puro guys don’t sell anything, which is another American indie staple (although the Yanks do it more out of ignorance than as a stylistic choice). A lot of puro, I’ve found, is fairly dull, pitting Generic Japanese Wrestler A against Generic Japanese Wrestler B, and they drop each other on their heads and trade lariats for about half an hour. And this is so exciting that guys like Meltzer suffer involuntary priapism whenever two Japanese wrestlers so much as lace up their boots in the same locker room. It’s insane.
Also, much of the time, it’s boring. There’s no drama in it. Part of this might be due to the various cultural and linguistic gulfs between America and Japan, and there’s also Japan’s treatment of pro wrestling as a sporting endeavor instead of some grotesque carny ritual to consider. But I don’t get as much of a human element from most puro than I do from, say, Flair/Funk, or Austin/Bret, or even Raven/Sandman. Those guys all had characters that came across through interviews, selling, and personal quirks, and that’s what drew me into the matches. Of course, all those matches were good, too (yes, I liked the Raven/Sandman feud, and I’m sure I’ll have to defend myself from the pillory for that later), but their characters helped build the matches into something worth suspending disbelief over. I’m not saying puro has to turn itself into 1970s Memphis to be interesting, but there’s a pretty wide middle ground between that and expressionless stoicism.
Morishima is a great example of what I mean. He hits hard, has a jaw-dropping backdrop driver, and he looks like Terry Gordy didn’t bring any rubbers on his last trip east. But that’s it, really. He isn’t particularly interesting away from his moveset, a good portion of which is kind of sloppy, and he hasn’t put on the caliber of match as champion that Samoa Joe or Bryan Danielson did. My guess is that if his name was Bob Smith, he’d be jobbing in 6-man scrambles right now. Of course, he’s done decent business in NOAH, and they have a good working relationship with ROH, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why Americans like him.
But there are exceptions to this. Jushin Liger, for example, is cool – his costume gives him instant presence and he has the mannerisms and signature moves to draw people in. Same with Muta, who reinvented himself with age a la Terry Funk and is now way cooler than he ever was. Shinjiro Otani was the biggest asshole ever in the ring, and had the facial expressions to back his surly moveset. Taijri started off pretty bland but found himself in ECW and continued his tricksy, mischevious ways in WWE and now back in Japan. Even Mr. Pogo, who was a dumpy fat guy with hockey hair and an Ultimate Warrior paint job by the time he hit FMW, had an interesting persona. And while most puro guys sound like they’re coming off a bad hangover, Pogo always cut promos that caught my attention, even though I don’t speak the language. And ROH has brought over guys like KENTA, whose intensity lends itself to a good character.
Come to think of it, every name I dropped in that last paragraph is a lightweight (except Pogo and Muta, of course). They seem to get more leeway in terms of ga-ga and character development, or just sheer goofiness. Gran Naniwa is the latter personified, and so are promotions like HUSTLE (a ladder as champ? Muta’s green mist impregnating a dominatrix? Hard Gay? I’m sold). Even when the camp overtakes the wrestling, it’s still more fun to sit through than whoever AJPW’s letting out of their sarcophagus to wrestle.
Good lord, has it really been 800 words since I went off on this tangent? When will this raging gibberish end? It must be my stomach. Whatever’s turning it inside-out must be halfway up to my brain by now, and if I don’t stop now they’ll find me dead at this keyboard, my fingertips scabbed over and a rambling, 16-page epic about goddamned wrestling to stand as my last earthly communication. They’ll bury me in a field of lunatics who died knitting imaginary sweaters. Well, I won’t have that. See you next week.
Folks, please send any and all comments to kiefda03@gmail.com or just leave them below!
