The Reality of Wrestling: New Japan Vs. TNA Part 3 (Wrestle Kingdom II In Tokyo Dome)
By Phil Clark
Some good things should come to an end
This past weekend, the eyes of the wrestling world were on the Tokyo Dome as for the first time since the 1990’s, a major American promotion did a co-promotion supershow with a Japanese promotion. New Japan vs. TNA supplied the majority of New Japan’s January 4 card that saw the series go to an even 3-3 with Wataru Inoue’s successful Jr. title defense, Nakanishi’s win over Abyss, and Bernard & Tomko’s successful IWGP tag title defense being the only wins for the home promotion. For TNA, the team of Styles, Cage, & Petey were victorious in the show’s opener, Team 3-D were victorious against Tokyo Sports team of the year Makabe & Yano, and of course Kurt Angle keeping the IWGP 3rd belt over Yuji Nagata in what was said to be the match of the night. All of this has set up the Nakamura/Angle unification match with Nakamura’s title win over Hiroshi Tanahashi in the show’s main-event. Quite the doings in The Dome.
P.C. Says: The show seemed good despite a few booking gambles
While I was wrong about what the attendance would be—I said 30,000 at least, it ended up being 27,000—I wasn’t wrong about the potential of this show to deliver as the first wave of reviews have indicated. The card had enough matchups that promised entertainment that the few that didn’t (Nakanishi/Abyss, Bernard & Tomko/Steiners, Goto/Muta) could still be used for their drawing power if nothing else. Unbelievable workrate would have to be the explanation for a top-to-bottom great card as the only matches that were given more than 15 minutes were the two world title matches. The longest of the other eight matches was the 3-D/Makabe & Yano tag that went 13:12 and was said to have been very entertaining.
There were a few match results that did seem to be gambles on the part of the bookers of this show, or I just felt peeved by them. 3-D beating the team of the year winners did seem to be a bit off, but in a basically hardcore match it is easily explainable. The reason I consider that a gamble is that Makabe & Yano were basically the only respectable candidate to challenge and likely take the IWGP tag belts from Bernard & Tomko. Does the win mean 3-D is going to challenge for the tag belts? If so, is that going to be at the 2/17 Sumo Hall show? Is that going to sell at all? You see all the questions this result is creating. Yes, one match isn’t that big of a deal in terms of momentum or the love of fans considering this was a loss against a team from a rival promotion, and Hirooki Goto sure better hope that it’s not that big of a deal as Muta’s win was something I’m against, but since Muta may not be back in New Japan ever again (this was the first appearance of Muta since 2000 in New Japan). Still, I do believe that the two hometown participants would’ve benefited more from wins than already established talent from different promotions. The fact that Makabe & Yano and Goto had competitive fan-pleasing matches in defeat are a plus as their status likely rose regardless of result, but in Makabe & Yano’s case more so than Goto’s, the win would’ve been nice.
The decision to have Angle keep the belt for unification is a major gamble in my opinion. I’ve already voiced my frustration with the Angle/Nagata match no being the unification match for the IWGP title. I’m not going to go over it all again, but thankfully the match itself seems to have lived up to the dream match billing that it had facing it, but Nagata/Nakamura would’ve been better for New Japan in many ways than the Angle/Nakamura unification match they have to hype right now. Most obviously, Nagata/Nakamura would be a match of two homegrown New Japan talents vying to unify New Japan’s top title. And Nagata and Nakamura had a hot semi-final at Sumo Hall during the G-1 tourney this past August. That match you’ll recall was stopped early because of a Nakamura injury, thus a rematch is highly anticipated and that rematch being the biggest title match in New Japan history would’ve more than likely guaranteed a sell-out. With Angle, his drawing power seems to be minimal in Japan as he has done nothing to send attendances over the top wherever he’s gone. I’m not giving up on the match we’ve got as since Angle/Nagata seems to have lived up to the hype, maybe Angle and Nakamura can have a great match too. I’m hoping they do because the go/bad divide after the TenKoji Four-Crown title match deprived that match of having the lasting legacy it should’ve had considering the stakes. In the case of Angle/Nakamura, hopefully they’ll produce a classic or something that can be considered classic material.
I can’t say I have too much to complain about on this show other than the few booking choices that at this point look to be mistakes. Riki Choshu has proven that he is indeed back as a booker; it took him about a year, but in the last year the booker during New Japan’s biggest financial period ever has proven that that same booking magic is still there.
A good start to 2008 for New Japan, but they really can’t make the mistake of letting Kurt Angle win the unified IWGP title. I know some may be thinking I’m paranoid and that New Japan wouldn’t make the same type of mistake that has hurt them in recent history, but I bet there were plenty who didn’t think they’d give the belt to Bob Sapp too.
The Reality is…the year has just begun. Before everybody starts going positive or negative about New Japan or TNA, let’s all (including myself) just take a deep breath and relax. The New Japan/TNA “feud†seems to be winding down with the Unification Match likely being the climax of the feud and that is probably more of a good thing than a bad thing. Yes, the two New Japan big shows featuring TNA wrestlers have been called two of the better overall shows New Japan has put on in a while, but at the same time TNA has been the only promotion to benefit from this temporary partnership. TNA gets to go to a separate and more receptive country and show off their best wrestlers (they have done a good job with whom they’ve sent for these shows) and Jeff Jarrett even got to appear at the Tokyo Dome show. On the other hand, New Japan only gets to face TNA wrestlers in their home promotion, but have yet to send people overseas and that’s (sadly) a good thing as Vince Russo is someone who has no business booking foreign talent anywhere for any reason ever, ever. He is of that mindset that can’t make a foreign talent something more than just that to the company. If you want to know how to get a Japanese wrestler over in the U.S., look at what Gabe Sapolsky and Cary Silkin have done in Ring of Honor with KENTA, Naomichi Marufuji, and most notably Takeshi Morishima over the last two years. Those three are all Japanese talent and are all from the same organization (NOAH), but the three are now three of the bigger fan favorites in Ring of Honor and receive fan support at the level of Bryan Danielson or Nigel McGuinness or the Briscoe Brothers (ROH mainstays). How did this happen? ROH’s fanbase is more smarks than marks, so insider knowledge does play a part in at least having some background on this foreign wrestler, something that announcers and video packages can do as well. Other than that, they just let those three go out and put on the best show they could, and in Morishima’s case, they gave him the promotion’s world title and let him have a dominant (and establishing) run as champion. Obviously I’m not telling TNA to give a foreign wrestler their title, but what I am saying is that foreign talent can always get over in the U.S. if booked right; TNA themselves should look at their video archive and see how well fans have reacted to foreign talent as recently as 2006. My advice to New Japan: end the TNA feud after the Unification Match. Both promotions have gotten what they wanted out of the deal and New Japan needs to keep relying on themselves as they did in 2007 because it does seem to be going in the right direction, and another effective year could make Tanahashi, Nakamura, and Makabe the new Chono, Mutoh, and Hashimoto. Think I’m wrong? Time will tell.
