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The self-conscious epic in AJPW vs. The self-conscious epic in 00s WWE / indies


JerryvonKramer

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I mean guys setting up folding tables or spending what seems like an eternity taking a turnbuckle pad off or having to go under the ring and look for stuff or long superplex battles on the top rope.

 

God, I detest extended stretches of fighting on the top rope. Especially when it's to set up some unusual top rope move (usually a super finisher) that it's impossible to get into position for without looking incredibly co-operative.

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I have a lot of material for this one, so here goes.

 

All Japan once you hit mid-1997 (maybe sometime in 96 or 95?) is absolutely a series of self-conscious epics. They are matches between two (or four) of the same five guys that had been escalating since 1993 with the exception of Akiyama. Even guys who were friends went up against one another tooth and nail. And the only real additions were big name gaijin like Vader and Johnny Ace as he progressed. Hansen had been moved more into the background by this period. So they had to keep adding more. And making things bigger and "better." Moves that used to put people away were now just nearfalls unless it was a very, very late use of it, probably after something much more recently added. Submissions really lost their meaning. It was the evolution of the earlier style of the Jumbo days into the more fleshed out "4 Pillars" style after Jumbo went, then to the more head-droppy, over the top stuff that kept on going into NOAH. The double selling had been there in the earlier 4 Pillars work, but it was not as predominant. It was used late in big matches once in a while at that point. But they needed to go forward somehow. It seemed like Taue, Kawada, Kobashi and Misawa each had their own ideas on how that should be done. Kobashi and Misawa's methods each involved a lot of head drops and laying around. Kawada took quite a while to embrace that style of things and I'm not sure Taue ever did fully. Not sure Kawada willingly went over or just finally gave up on getting his way. Either way, I'd say Kawada was the least likely of the four to rely on a lot of bombs and kickouts to build drama. Taue was more the "sprinty" guy who liked bomb throwing, but tended to work to the bombs in ways that I really appreciate. Misawa liked his formula and it worked. Use the elbows to make the slow, methodical comeback and start working in the big spots for nearfalls. And take a ton of head drops, ever increasing in big matches. Kobashi I never much cared for the way he built matches. Too much stuff just to keep the crowd going and popping. That's not to say it isn't viable, just not my cup of tea. Akiyama always had to follow the lead of those four, so his matches really became their matches. He did well with it though.

 

There was also some talk of the nuance of the AJPW style. I have a few to add.

 

1. Strike exchanges

 

All Japan strike exchanges were nothing like the elbow-elbow into oblivion NJPW snoozefests. Each guy had multiple facets they brought to striking and used all of them in a given match. Misawa relied on the elbow. A lot. But it was the weapon that got him the big upset against Jumbo. It was the primary weapon in his patented long term comeback. It KOed Stan fucking Hansen. Twice. I think any one of us would be going back to that well pretty often. He had other things he used, the jumping kicks primarily. Kawada had chops, elbows, kicks, the head pull down punts, lots of ways he would attack. And he used the ropes enough to make things varied between the same moves. And he had the arm psychology he used to set people up for the jumping high kick. Block it and your arm is gonna hurt bad enough that you don't go back on offense. Kobashi had his variety of chops, lariats, and that sweet spinning back kick/spinning back chop mix-up. And Taue, the guy had decent enough strikes, but he also knew he was outclassed striking. So he'd just toss guys down instead of keep up the exchange (something that Tanahashi should have developed, an alternative to throwing the elbow in return when it wasn't working). One thing I will note is that Kawada and Kobashi would get into pissing contests with chops (and leg work). But this was specifically against one another. It was a part of both of their characters. Kawada would also have brief forays into elbow contests with Misawa before he started back in with kicks because he knew he was losing. And you add in that when big strikes started coming out as escalations, people blocked and ducked. They didn't just eat the big move every time. The exchanges were nuanced and they learned from them going match to match.

 

2. Move level

 

There was a heirarchy of moves and what they meant in All Japan. The majority of the time (the TD 91 is a big exception) the move a guy started using earlier is considered "weaker" than a later move. A big example of this is Kobashi's half nelson suplex. For years his use of this move pissed me off. Why was it a transition? Because it was never used as a finisher in big matches. It was just something he did. Seems completely out of place, but that's the way it worked. Problem with that system ends up being that as time went on, as Parv noted, the tiger driver became a nearfall. And then head-droppy moves started being less and less effective. Five or six were needed to finish a guy off. It got out of hand due to the sheer amount of dangerous suplexes and drivers. Misawa's frog splash was midrange offense way too soon.

 

3. Use of the floor and apron

 

Seems to me in early to mid 90s AJPW early runs of offense were very often either started or ended with a DDT or something similar on the floor. Kobashi and Taue used this quite a bit. Transitions were common on the floor. Another Hansen influence maybe? Things moved to (again) bigger and "better" with apron spots later on in the 90s. And top rope tigerdrivers made an appearance either late 90s or in NOAH. Thankfully Taue used the top rope nodowa mainly as a tease. At least they were treated like death until NOAH as far as I remember.

 

4. No-Selling/Overselling

 

As mentioned above, there was the double down forever spot in 93-95. But it was used a bit more intelligently. And there were no-sells of big suplexes and the like, but they showed up once in a match. Again, as we get bigger and "better" it starts showing up more often and becomes a lot more ineffective.

 

From what I have seen the modern NJPW style likes to incorporate a lot of badly done strike exchanges and no-selling. Where the one counts on big suplexes came from I don't know. Modern WWE main event style seems like a poorly thought out cosplay of 90s AJPW as well. It's sort of like Undertaker and Shawn meets the 2000s indies. Which makes a lot of sense. I won't say that I hate the 90s AJPW style. I still like watching the matches. Some of them. What I tend towards is thinking that a LOT of wrestlers and fans fell in love with it for obvious reasons. But the imitations it has produced have ignored the small parts that made the bigger pieces fit together. And I feel like at some point some promotion in Japan or the U.S. is going to have to achieve breakout success using a different formula for their "big" matches for there to be any kind of changes. I still love the original style for it's highs, but I feel like it actually poisoned the wrestling industry by creating a bunch of well-meaning imitators who just don't have the understanding to pull it off.

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I have a lot of material for this one, so here goes.

 

All Japan once you hit mid-1997 (maybe sometime in 96 or 95?) is absolutely a series of self-conscious epics. They are matches between two (or four) of the same five guys that had been escalating since 1993 with the exception of Akiyama.

 

Jun's had been escalating as well. Jun's work in 1996 after moving up to be Misawa's primary partner is quite a distance beyond his 1993 work. It went on from there to his Triple Crown matches in 1997 & 1998.

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The "1 count where there should be a 2.9" thing was started by Kobashi during his big GHC run, I think.

 

I've been playing with the idea recently that some of the very things that made the King's Road style great also made it untenable long term. The learned psychology, the sense of escalation across matches, the way in-ring action reflected the booking and guys getting stronger and stronger as time went on... at some point you can't keep adding new stuff to the equation. I love that rigidly logical hierachy-based booking, but I think it, combined with a lack of new guys who could keep up with the style, and the desire to keep making increasingly desensitised fans pop was really their undoing.

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I have a lot of material for this one, so here goes.

 

All Japan once you hit mid-1997 (maybe sometime in 96 or 95?) is absolutely a series of self-conscious epics. They are matches between two (or four) of the same five guys that had been escalating since 1993 with the exception of Akiyama.

 

Jun's had been escalating as well. Jun's work in 1996 after moving up to be Misawa's primary partner is quite a distance beyond his 1993 work. It went on from there to his Triple Crown matches in 1997 & 1998.

 

Absolutely true, which is why I separated him from the rest. Jun had just joined the party, so to speak, in 96, where the other four had been building on prior stuff for years by that point. Was in no way trying to undermine Akiyama, just making the point that he hit that level later than the rest.

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Glad this thread got bumped. I was watching the Negro Casas/Rush hair match the other day and struck me as odd that it seemed to get praised at the time from a lot of people who aren't high on near-fall heavy stuff like Shawn/Taker. The first half was pretty great but then it felt forced how the match just went into near fall after near fall to make it "epic" and it didn't feel like something the match needed at all. It could have been forgiven if it ended in a good finish but instead all it built to was an utter bullshit low blow finish that destroyed any good will I had left towards the match.

 

To me, the match highlights CMLL aping the self-conscious epic and it's far from the worst example I've seen. In the Atlantis Anniversary show matches from the last few years, for example, it was pretty much the same thing as Shawn/Taker with half the match pretty much just being move->near fall->lay around->repeat. In a way, I think big lucha matches might be the worst example of the style period as at least in the big WWE and puro matches you have guys trying to get big runs of offense and the drama of looking for their finisher instead of just trying to sell every move as a potential match ended. I'd be interested to hear what others think about these CMLL finish runs as, again, it seems odd that most of the people pimping these matches are generally not the ones who dig the style elsewhere.

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As the VoW honchos say, I hate it when exciting things happen in matches, especially when it tells a story of competitors pushing each other to the limit and picking up on one another's habits and arsenal.

 

Imitating the Joe Lanza approach to discussion isn't a desirable quality, my dude.

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Glad this thread got bumped. I was watching the Negro Casas/Rush hair match the other day and struck me as odd that it seemed to get praised at the time from a lot of people who aren't high on near-fall heavy stuff like Shawn/Taker. The first half was pretty great but then it felt forced how the match just went into near fall after near fall to make it "epic" and it didn't feel like something the match needed at all. It could have been forgiven if it ended in a good finish but instead all it built to was an utter bullshit low blow finish that destroyed any good will I had left towards the match.

 

To me, the match highlights CMLL aping the self-conscious epic and it's far from the worst example I've seen. In the Atlantis Anniversary show matches from the last few years, for example, it was pretty much the same thing as Shawn/Taker with half the match pretty much just being move->near fall->lay around->repeat. In a way, I think big lucha matches might be the worst example of the style period as at least in the big WWE and puro matches you have guys trying to get big runs of offense and the drama of looking for their finisher instead of just trying to sell every move as a potential match ended. I'd be interested to hear what others think about these CMLL finish runs as, again, it seems odd that most of the people pimping these matches are generally not the ones who dig the style elsewhere.

 

I wasn't as high on Rush v. Casas as some, so I'm probably not the guy to defend that. What i would say is that something like the Dragon Lee v. Kamatiachi series is probably a reasonable example of what you are talking about here. I love that stuff precisely because it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is - cutting edge, crazy, highspot wrestling, with enough learned psychology and build to make it more than just fun. I absolutely think it's fair to criticize it along the lines of what you wrote above. What I would say though is that the uniqueness of the way lucha uses near falls, and the nature of finishes within lucha, allows me to enjoy those matches more.

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  • 1 year later...

While I don't think New Japan has "perfected" the style, I certainly see that far more of New Japan is utilizing a layout reminiscent of All Japan in the 90s. For me personally, it's always been far more accessible than New Japan classic strong style which is why I'm able to enjoy more New Japan than I used to. I do find the tweet about Baba's finisher philosophy quite fascinating though.

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New Japan hasn't perfected the style at all. The style peaked in the mid-90's. Then it became overdone and overkill, then it became NOAHism and KobashISM, then it got mixed with the US indy mentality that had itself been permeated by puro cosplaying, then Kenny Omega had ******1/4 matches and shit.

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Caught this on twitter and thought it was interesting in the sense that it backs a lot of what people thought about King's Road. From someone that would know about it.

https://twitter.com/reasonjp/status/894762264154193920

chris charlton‏ @reasonjp

Kyohei Wada on King's Road style.

 

 

c5weuwI.jpg

 

Weird if true, considering how many times Kawada would repeat the powerbomb.

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Also, with the colorful characters and outside interference and audience pandering and all of that, calling New Japan perfected WWE style would be more accurate than calling it perfected All Japan style.

 

They also do comedy spots in matches that modern WWE doesn't do, like stuff out of an 80s Little Tokyo match. It's successful so I'm not knocking them. But newer fans of puro go on about Strong Style and have no idea how different the style is from the 80s and 90s at times.

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Caught this on twitter and thought it was interesting in the sense that it backs a lot of what people thought about King's Road. From someone that would know about it.

https://twitter.com/reasonjp/status/894762264154193920

chris charlton‏ @reasonjp

Kyohei Wada on King's Road style.

 

 

c5weuwI.jpg

 

Weird if true, considering how many times Kawada would repeat the powerbomb.

 

 

I actually saw this after seeing the Kawada-Dr. Death Champion Carnival match. Kawada did two or three powerbombs to win and also used the stretch plum (the quote on Twitter goes on to say Baba hated submissions and would always yell at Kawada for doing them).

 

As for the discussion in general, I almost feel like AJPW and later on NOAH reached a point of needing to "top themselves". i.e. more moves plus more kickouts was seen to be the natural progression. And while there was a bit too much "spot, kickout, sell, spot, kickout, sell", I feel that the 4 pillars were just overall better at selling the intensity and accumulated damage of a match than the indy imitators. There was also a much better sense of escalation and building to bigger spots as opposed to Davey-Tyler where they just started throwing bombs out the gate. And while that style DID set the groundwork for bad imitators, I think that more falls on the imitators themselves not understanding proper escalation and storytelling and instead just focusing on putting as many big moves and spots as possible in a match.

 

And speaking of the WWE self-conscious epic, I understand why a lot of folks don't like the Shawn-Taker matches, but I would argue there was a better sense of storytelling and escalation as opposed to the Triple H-Taker matches, which are the epitome of excess. Shawn certainly could be excessive, but "Big Match Triple H" is still the undisputed king in that regard.

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Navigational/NOAH Style "King's Road" but with workers whose wrestling style is more influenced by modern lucha than anything. Nobody's really having Undertaker matches.

 

I would also call Kenny Omega the first true pseudo-intellectual in wrestling history. Great at doing things that seem smart but aren't intuitive and don't stand up to thinking about them outside of their vacuum. The Rainmaker spot from Dominion is one. Why wouldn't he just deadweight himself rather than have Okada bring him to his feet and THEN cause Okada to miss by "collapsing"?

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I've been critical of the NJPW main event style over the past few years, thinking its incredibly overrated, a shadow of 90s AJPW, etc. But with the growth this company is showing, I have to admit that it may not be my favorite style but it's really working. They're doing 3 straight nights at Sumo Hall and the first night looked like a pretty full house. In the past the first two shows have had more sparse crowds. The final night sold out well in advance. They sold out the big building in Osaka for Dominion with 13,000 there. They sold out Osaka Hall in advance for the G1. They set their gate record in Sapporo according to Meltzer during this G1. What they're doing is working. It may not tickle me as much as Lawler-Mantell but it's a winning formula for growing a company in 2017.

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