The Art of Wrestling: More KENTA

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MORE BLOODY KENTA?

Yep. There are a ton of KENTA matches on Golden Boy Tapes’ Best of Japan 2004 DVD set, and I’m going to ‘review’ a bunch of them for you. I’m taking my time working through that set. It’ll be a miracle if I finish it before The Best of Japan 2007 is released, but I’m enjoying the hell out of it. I’ve already watched and written about big batches of Bryan Danielson, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Toshiaki Kawada, and Shinja Hashimoto matches off of that set, and every minute of it was thoroughly enjoyable. The past couple of days, to prepare for this column, I’ve been watching (in most cases re-watching) KENTA matches on the tiny screen of my inexpensive portable DVD player, mostly while sitting in my car on ferry rides going to or from meetings. This hasn’t exactly been a difficult chore. 2004 KENTA is about as fun as professional wrestling gets. We’ll look at two singles matches this week and some tag matches later, and see if you don’t agree.

KENTA vs. Kenta Kobashi 10/9/04

This is the match I posted on youtube here, so you can watch it for yourself and see how your opinions differ from mine. Then, you can write me about it here. Or you can be a leech that contributes nothing. That’s your right, of course.

I love teacher vs. student type matches, and this is about as awesome an example of such a match as we’re likely to get any time soon. It’s also, I believe, one of the matches from KENTA’s trial series. A trial series is basically a good excuse for a bunch of veterans to kick a young lion around the ring over the course of a tour or two. I love trial series matches. The odds are pretty goods that I’m going to enjoy this one.

KENTA gets a very sedate welcome from the crowd. His mentor gets a huge KO! BA! SHI! chant and dozens of streamers. KENTA plays right into this by heeling things up right away and attacking Kobashi straight off the first clean rope break. For his part, Kobashi underrates his younger opponent, throwing chops in exchange for KENTA’s full-on running kicks to the face. It’s immediately and wisely established that KENTA’s kicks are real weapons, capable of taking Kobashi down. KENTA, however, gets cocky… and this makes Kobashi mad. Then, we get to watch KENTA doing what he does better than pretty much anyone since Ricky Morton and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi were at their peaks: Take, and sell, an enormous ass-beating. Kobashi is usually pretty damn entertaining when he’s delivering a beating, so this part of the match is a real joy to watch.

KENTA eventually finds a small opening, and he goes back on offence. He uses his quickness and athleticism to full advantage, but still shows through his body language and facial expressions that he’s both hurt and exhausted. Not many pro wrestlers do that very well any more. CIMA and American Dragon come to mind as younger generation stars who have figured it out, but I’m having trouble coming up with many more examples. This is a huge part of the reason why so many were raving about KENTA back in ’04.

The young man adds to the awesomeness by busting out brief ‘tributes’ to Kawada and Misawa, and suddenly the crowd starts reacting to what KENTA’s doing as much as what Kobashi’s doing. Way to go, KENTA!

Ultimately, though, that just pisses Kobashi off even further, and thus it’s time for some classic All Japan style back and forth offence. I don’t’ know that the ending to this match is ever in doubt, but if you can’t enjoy simply watching these men lay into each other with big moves and killer strikes, then you and I just have very different tastes in wrestling.

KENTA vs. Mitsuharu Misawa

Misawa is no longer the wrestler he once was, but he is still Misawa. This is another Trial Series match, as far as I can tell, so the point isn’t really to see if KENTA can win here, it’s more about how good he looks in losing. Also, I personally am very interested in seeing how good he can make Misawa look in losing to him.

Like the young fool that he is, KENTA starts out trading elbows with Misawa. That doesn’t go so well for him. Kicks and speed, unsurprisingly, work a little better. As he will do more than once during this series, KENTA loses his advantage by getting too cocky. In this case, he tries using some of Misawa’s trademark moves against the man himself, then takes it a step further by mocking some of Misawa’s signature gestures. The crowd loves this, but in my mind I can here Jesse Venture complaining to Gorilla Monsoon that he should concentrate on kicking ass and forget about the crowd. Cocky KENTA slaps Misawa, and eats an elbow for his effrontery. This leads to KENTA eating a large number of elbows from various angles.

Eventually, the younger man takes advantage of the slightest of openings, and goes back to kicking the Legend. Once again, however, his cockiness proves to be his undoing as he busts out Kawada’s famed Stepping Kick, which of course pisses Misawa off. KENTA eats a few more elbows, and this in turn leads to the back and forth bit, with each wrestler hitting big moves for two counts. They build up to a climactic spot where KENTA escapes the Emerald Frosion and hits one of his own on Misawa. When that isn’t enough to get a three-count, KENTA is Ohtani-like in expressing his frustration, and rightfully so. It’s academic that he’s going to eat the move himself pretty soon, and that will end it. Still, KENTA has fought a good fight, and given Misawa one of his best matches of the past couple of years.

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So what did you think? I really want to know! The matches I posted last week got hundreds… and hundreds of hits on youtube, but only a tiny handful of people took the time to write and either thank me, comment on the matches, or bitch about the sound quality of the KENTA vs., SUWA footage. That particular handful of people all rule. I assume that the rest of you are lazy selfish douche bags. Still, I’d like to hear from you, so I am asking… no, I am begging you to send feedback to mr.gordi at gmail dot com. Or, you can accomplish the same thing by clicking here. Don’t click the feedback link below, though. There are problems with my IP email account, and I might not get your message if you send it there… and that would be heartbreaking!