Pre-Requisite Viewing

Before I get into this year's G1 Climax Tournament final, I'd like to take this time and use it as an excuse to post THIS match, which i'm sure you'll all love. I wanted to watch it before I popped in the Tournament Final, because, well, it'll probably make the match better.

Did I mention this is the best match in Japan this year?

IWGP Heavyweight Championship
Hiroyoshi Tanahashi v. Yuji Nagata
April 13, 2007

I've said it in earlier posts, and i'll say it again; the parallels between John Cena and Hiroyoshi Tanahashi are almost eirie. Not that that's a bad thing. Through a lot of hard work, John Cena's probably the best performer on the planet these days. Tanahashi, like Cena, wasn't recieved too well when he initially won the belt, but as time progressed, despite many fans being irritated with him on some level, it became really hard to hate his matches. Here's another case in point.

Yuji Nagata on the other hand. Oh lord, Yuji Nagata. If one were to find a North American counterpart to Nagata, it'd probably be Kurt Angle. Both came in using legit sportsman gimmicks and putting on matches way past their years early on in their careers. When they're on, they're probably both in the top five in the world. However, there's a nasty tendancy to get carried away with thigns to the point where it can trash a match. When Nagata's good, he's scary good. When he's bad, he's REALLY bad.

Nagata's been scraping his way back up to the top of New Japan since that imfamous MMA match with Mirko Cro Cop where Nagata was knocked out in around 30 seconds. It RUINED Nagata's reputation in a lot of ways, and prevented the fans from really buying him as a top guy. Nagata was hit an miss for a good two years after the Cro Cop loss before finally turning it back around in 2006. By 2007, he was looking as good as he did around the time he won the G1 Tournament and IWGP Championship in the same year.

So here we are.

This starts off well with the more experienced Nagata sort of treating Tanahashi like a joke early in the match and doing a lot of stuff just to show Hiroyoshi how much he dislikes him. This non-sense doesn't really lead anywhere, but it's what it sets off in Tanahashi that makes it awesome.

Tanahashi, after feining a Dragon suicida, lets Nagata into the ring and is just like 'fuck me? No. Fuck you and your attitude' and just begins unloading on Nagata. Nagata likes slug fests and quickly wins the battle, but the patient and coy Tanahashi catches a wild kick and screws it off the top rope and Nagata clatters to the floor along with the Champion.

Here's where the match approaches HBK-Cena II levels of awesomeness. What I LOVED about HBK-Cena II was the fact that instead of playing the plucky, clutch underdog champion, Cena wrestles with a boat load of attitude and confidence. Tanahashi basically does that here. Gone is the comeback crap, Tanahashi is going to rip that leg off Nagata and beat him with it, not because it neutralizes Nagata's primary weapon (kicks), but because he can. Just like you don't see a lot of Cena extended control segments, you don't see a lot of Tanahashi extended control segments and watching him make Nagata his woman for about 10 minutes rules plain and simple.

Nagata on the other hand, is incredible. His selling is what makes the match and all the annimosity that the crowd directs towards Tanahashi makes it just that much more fun of an atmosphere. He puts on perhaps one of the best, if not THE best selling performances of the year, letting his knee give out on a whip attempt, having it give out on a third brain buster attempt, etc.

In fact, it's the selling that just shifts this match into total overdrive for the finish line when Nagata counters Tanahashi's frog splash attempt with his injured knees. The sense of urgency he has, knowing that saving his skin that time might end up being the reson he loses the match in the long run, is incredible. Tanahashi's German attempt that he tries to score a pin with that he's lying all over Nagata's grundle as if to say 'please god, please let me keep this guy down'.

The kick at the end is the punctuation. The plucky Tanahashi has juice to kick out of one german, but not two, and this one's in the books and we have a new champ.

Just a really incredible match that Tanahashi lays out that Nagata just makes better. I love this whole Nagata not trying to do too much stuff and let his selling be the thing that adds the drama. The matches i've enjoyed the most from him; the Giant Bernard match from last year and now the Tanahashi title change, have been good preciecely because of Nagata's selling making those guys look dominant.

This is an excellent match and probably in my top five so far this year. It's easily the best match to come out of Japan that i've seen. ****