How Pro Wrestling Taught Me About People and Life
Wrestling is freakin’ dumb and I freakin’ love it. As much as I don’t watch or catch up as much as I would like to, I believe pro wrestling will always have a great place in my heart. I would even tell my future children how much I loved wrestling even if it makes them cringe. People can make the argument all they want about how “fake” it is when they sometimes forget real people do perform these moves and it requires a lot of athleticism, cardio and stamina depending on the length of the match. But I am not talking about matches. I want to talk about wrestling the artform and the way it tells it’s stories. There are so many stories to tell from in the ring and out of it and I want to have a solid balance between the two. In my previous blog about wrestling, I mentioned that wrestling is pretty much the only medium (no pun intended) that is able blur fiction and reality. These are the points that I noticed in wrestling that people in all areas in life can find to be extremely relatable.
Overachievers Can Be Insecure
A strange start, but bear with me. Whether in career, business, or even art. There are a lot of people who achieve a lot in their field and in their lives. We can even be jealous of people who accomplish a lot more than they deserve. But despite this, even over achievers are insecure. They would always strive for something higher and even when they achieve it’s not enough for them and it brings them self doubt. The biggest example of that to do with wrestling is in one of my all time favorite YouTube videos, Kazuchika Okada, the current ace of New Japan Pro-Wrestling, held the IWGP Heavyweight Championship belt from 2016 to 2018, which is regarded as the greatest world championship reign in not just modern wrestling, but of all time. In the video, author Deb Comes of Age analyses Okada’s 2 year reign with the theme of insecurity. Throughout in his entire reign and his 12 title defenses, Okada always felt like a sore thumb despite being champion. In his matches, he always attempts over performed against his opponents, who are in some ways better than Okada in some factors. Now, I have watched plenty of Okada matches and it’s definitely not taken lightly. Kazuchika Okada is an amazing wrestler and has put on some of the best matches in the past decade. However, he isn’t as explosive as Kenny Omega or Naomichi Marifuji, or as hard hitting as Minoru Suzuki or Katsuyori Shibata or as physically imposing as Bad Luck Fale or as technically advanced as Zack Sabre Jr. or as strategic as Tetsuya Naito or even as beloved and the crowd connection to his greatest rival, Hiroshi Tanahashi, who fell to Okada from the title of “Ace” back in January 2016. From June 2016 to June 2018, Kazuchika Okada held the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for 720 days (longest single reign ever, 12 title defenses, even the first to ever be champion for a whole calendar year). Despite all these accomplishments, he is still insecure as champion. He ties his self worth to the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and he hides his insecurity with being rich and desperately trying to be the best to knock off one goal after another. I think real people resonate with this greatly. They put their identity and self worth on their accomplishments as a way to compensate their value and without them, what is their identity?
“I Have You Cheering the Bad Guy!”
This is quoted in one of John Cena’s raps as he went by his rapper moniker, the Doctor of Thuganomics: “I’m like a mafia movie, I have you cheering the bad guy!” Think of time when you were a kid, you had your favorite superhero and you’re thinking that you want to be like that person. Then you grow up and watching that superhero again and you just can’t identify with them any more. You see more of the bad guy and think wow I feel that way. Think of Kilmonger and Thanos from the MCU. Sometimes even the good guys turn bad. In wrestling, we call it the heel turn. I want to talk about 2 specific heel turns that elevated 2 people to greater appreciation and respect, even if they’re the bad guys. Tetsuya Naito from New Japan and Roman Reigns from WWE. When I think about it, Naito and Reigns are a lot alike. At some point, they both were groomed to be the next Ace of their respective companies, however they were both overexposed in the crowd and met with a lot of apathy at best and displeasure at worst. Both of them had since transformed into the men that they are now.
Part 1: Tetsuya Naito (Stardust to Ingobernable)
Naito’s transformation did started first, so I will start with Naito. Nicknamed “The Stardust Genius”, Naito is known for his exceptional talent as a wrestler with a flashy moveset and even flashier finisher in the Stardust Press. However as a character, Naito wasn’t even interesting. It also doesn’t help he was molded to be the splitting image of Hiroshi Tanahashi, who at the time was the ace of New Japan. By 2014, he was a contender to the IWGP Heavyweight Champion at the time, Okada, supposedly Wrestle Kingdom (New Japan’s equivalent to WWE’s Wrestlemania). Supposedly their bout was supposed to the main event that night but took the step back to Hiroshi Tanahashi and long time rival Shinsuke Nakamura for IWGP Intercontinental Championship. Eventually that night, Naito choked and fell to Okada. Humiliated and felt abandoned by New Japan, Naito goes to Mexico where he made a complete 180 and joined Los Ingobernables (The Ungovernables). He returns to Japan a changed man. Naito, grew his hair and beard, started wearing suits in his entrances to the ring, toying with his opponents, and just straight up doesn’t care what the crowd thinks. Naito eventually started his own branch of Los Ingobernables: Los Ingobernables de Japon. This character evolution has elevated Naito to eventually achieving his goal of main eventing into the Tokyo Dome and winning the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental multiple times, even to the point he became the first to hold both at the same time.
Part 2: Roman Reigns (From Dog to Chief)
Reigns, on the other hand, tells a different story. A member of the legendary Anoa’i family, Reigns was blessed with not just the family and the connections, but also the look that most major league wrestling companies would look for. Tall, muscular, and handsome. Roman debuted in the main roster in 2012 alongside Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose (now Jon Moxley) as the trio were collectively known as The Shield. Nicknamed “The Big Dog”, Roman’s role was simple. He plays the strong and silent type. The muscle and Reigns carried his role very well. Reigns, a talented wrestler/performer in his own right, he didn’t have the exciting in ring prowess of Rollins nor the mic skills of Ambrose. In the eyes of the fans, he wasn’t seen as the next Ace of WWE after John Cena. When The Shield imploded, only Roman kept The Shield aesthetic meanwhile Rollins and Ambrose went on with their own identities. Without the workhorse talent of Seth Rollins and the charisma of Dean Ambrose, Reigns was exposed tremendously. Despite these flaws, WWE pushed Roman very hard to the top even to the point of main eventing Wrestlemania 4 consecutive times before he was even ready. He even defeated the Undertaker at Wrestlemania 33 which in the next night, Roman was met with a lot of boos and chants of expletives. WWE continues to push him to be the next big star regardless whether or not he connected with fans. By October 2018 on Monday Night Raw, Roman announced his re-diagnose with leukemia, first time in 11 years. Before the announcement, Roman walked in to the ring in street clothes with a mixed reception from the crowd. After the announcement, he exited with extreme positive reception as well as a “Thank You, Roman” chants. Keep in mind, the fans hate Roman the wrestler, not Joe Anoa’i (he dropped his name when he made his leukemia announcement). Obviously, it was a very emotional announcement that left people cheering for Joe to beat cancer. On February 2019, he returned to announce that he was in remission.* For the rest of 2019 to 2020, Roman (the wrestler) was going through the motions with pretty random rivalries which did him no favors to missing out his WWE Universal Championship bout WrestleMania in 2020 due to the Pandemic and wouldn’t appear. At Summerslam, Roman returns with a somewhat different attitude. He said very little and just destroy everything in his sight. For the next few weeks, Roman becomes more relentless and brutal even aligning with the legendary pro wrestling manager Paul Heyman. Exit, the “Big Dog” Roman Reigns, the goofy jokester who only gets serious because his opponents doesn’t get serious and enter “The Tribal Chief” Roman Reigns, a cold and ruthless mob boss who leads a path of destruction to provide for his family. This new Roman Reigns would win the Universal Championship, family feud with his twin cousins, Jimmy and Jey Uso, main event WrestleMania once again. To finally shed off his ties of the Shield, Roman walks upon the stage with a new entrance music and with no protective vest and replacing a black glove on his right hand for a gold one. With these final changes, Roman Reigns became the final boss of wrestling. Acknowledge him.
- Side note: The majority of this information on Reigns is summarized thanks to the page “Persona and reception of Roman Reigns” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_and_reception_of_Roman_Reigns
What I love about these 2 stories is that Roman and Naito took real life situations out of their control and give them an edge to elevate their status in their respective companies and win the respect of the crowd. I see this also happening in real life. In general, I don’t know anyone in real life who turns “bad” bad per se to elevate their life and career field. I know everything wrote about is how good guys turned into a-holes in order to get somewhere in life. Yes. That is true, but I see it more of a someone who finally decided to grow a backbone. The difference is that while Roman and Naito seem to not care about a lot of things on the surface, deep down they still care. They still have desires and goals.
Being Left Behind Means Nothing; You Can Still Succeed!
Storytelling, at it’s best, is what makes wrestling the best thing ever. And when it comes to storytelling, there is always a great sense of relatability and euphoria when your favorite wrestler wins a match, a championship, or a trophy. I want to talk about everyone’s not favorite wrestler, from New Japan Pro Wrestling, Yoshi-Hashi. Yoshi-Hashi is a really difficult wrestler to described. I have been watching New Japan Pro Wrestling since 2017 and it had some of the best wrestlers on the planet. Yoshi-Hashi is unfortunately not one of them. Yoshi-Hashi is not a bad wrestler objectively. When it came to the aforementioned wrestlers such as Kazuchika Okada, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Tetsuya Naito, etc, Yoshi-Hashi just stands out like sore thumb. He didn’t have exceptional talent in his ring work. He wasn’t as charismatic and his character was just kind of dead on arrival. For his entire career, he didn’t have much wins in single matches never mind a single title reign. He has been wrestling for 12 years without a single title win. Even with his lower ranked Chaos stablemates in Tomohiro Ishii and Hirooki Goto achieved successes in their own right as champions with each holding the NEVER Openweight Championship while the latter in Goto was the two time IWGP Intercontinental Championship. As a fan, I deeply resonated a lot with Yoshi Hashi. He wasn’t my favorite wrestler by the stretch, but when I think about there are times I feel like I was in his shoes. I don’t think I achieved a lot in life and that lack achievement has really gotten to me and I would feel like a failure in life even if I still staying in the game. I saw myself in Yoshi Hashi and I as a fan has this question almost every time he was in the ring is “when is he going to get that big win?” That all changes when on August 2020, NJPW announced a tournament to become the new NEVER Openweight Six Man Tag Team Championships. Now, the NEVER 6 man tag belts were considered to the uninteresting titles by most fans and it’s not a new belt. It’s been a thing for a couple years. In came the finals for the 6 man tag titles. It was Chaos vs. Chaos. Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto, and Yoshi-Hashi vs. Sho, Toru Yano, and Kazuchika Okada. I think it was probably the most important match in Yoshi-Hashi’s career and the story wrote itself. From the same affiliation, we have 3 of the most under appreciative members vs. the 3 more prominent members. In 24 minutes, this match was mayhem, back and forth, and well…chaos. The most important interaction of the match was Yoshi-Hashi and Kazuchika Okada. The reason for that is because while they are stablemates, Okada never really saw Yoshi-Hashi on his level. In fact they both re-debuted back in 2012 on January 4th’s Wrestle Kingdom event. Before he became the Ace, Okada was just a cocky young upstart who returned to Japan after a horrible excursion in America, meanwhile Yoshi-Hashi returned after his excursion in Mexico. Despite this, Okada flattened Yoshi-Hashi in just 5 minutes. In someways, this motivated Yoshi-Hashi to get up to Okada’s level. For the past 8 years, he has fallen behind to Okada. Even in various points they became a tag team within the faction, Yoshi Hashi was always the weak link and was always pinned. So this is it. Chaos vs. Chaos. To the end of the match, Tomohiro Ishii pinned Sho, therefore Hashi, Goto and Ishii are the NEVER Openweight 6 man Tag Team Champions. In the aftermath while giving the titles, Okada took the hands off the title to the referee, “Red Shoes” Umino and wrapped the title around Yoshi-Hashi’s waist. Yoshi Hashi finally earned Okada’s respect. All 6 men joined for a photo op with Yoshi Hashi being the center. I remember being overjoyed with Yoshi Hashi finally getting that well earned W. It was clear in his post match speech he spoke from the heart and was overwhelmed with emotion. He spoke how everything can be changed in an instant and as someone who was going through hard times of not feeling accomplished in it brings me nothing but great joy seeing underachievers reaching their goal after years of hard work with no fruit. Even it was just one night, Yoshi Hashi became New Japan’s Dusty Rhodes.
Final Thoughts
Hey, I am a fan. Wrestling can be really freakin’ beautiful when done right. I am still a fan because just like movies, comics, books that will tell stories that make me laugh, smile, cry and even anger. The beauty to me is that wrestling is that medium that people can relate to other people that sometimes other mediums can’t do it themselves. I will always be a fan and why wrestling will always have fans.
…
I need new friends.
