[2018-06-19-NJPW-Dominion] Kazuchika Okada vs Kenny Omega

[nivvad]

The culmination of a 2+ plus meteoric year rise for Kenny Omega. The callbacks, the psychology, the storytelling, the character work, the build up, the hot crowd who by the way were FIRMLY behind Kenny, etc. Everything about this match was perfect. I can't say it's better than the lightning in a bottle match they had at WK11, but it's right behind it hands down. Thank you Kazuchika Okada, you can take a rest now as Omega finally takes the wheel. The feud is over for now, but it is inevitable that both guys will collide in another historic match once again, *****.

[ShittyLittleBoots]

The first fall was legitimately great. Great sense of struggle, urgency & physicality. The offense of both men looked VIOLENT. The greatness continued in the first moments of the 2nd fall with Okada putting on that tremendous cocky face of his, showing how proud he is of getting that first fall. Omega showcased great desperation, all the while selling the fatigue of the 1st fall big time. At some point during the 2nd fall though, the match lost all of the urgency & that great character dynamic of it. Started to drag like I feared (& honestly expected) - basically lost all interest in the thing. There was a few cool moments after that, like Kenny doing the Styles Clash & Ibushi telling him to go for the Phoenix Splash. Other than those 2 moments though, the action wasn't any interesting whatsoever. Kudos to them for going over an hour, but what they did confirmed what I already was pretty damn sure of; Kazuchika Okada & Kenny Omega certainly aren't Ric Flair's, Bryan Danielson's or Trevor Lee's. **1/4

[Boss Rock]

I originally wrote this for the Greatest Match Ever project:

 

After an already thrilling trilogy of matches last year, Kenny and Okada still managed to top it at Dominion. This was a masterclass in storytelling, selling, and action. Going 69 minutes seems like it would be tough to pull off, but Kenny and Okada delivered and them some. There was some excellent learned psychology as both men seemingly had a counter or reversal for every signature move during the first fall. This was key as Okada was able to counter and get a quick pin. Fatigue began to set in for both during the second fall as Kenny and Okada masterfully sold rib injuries and near-exhaustion after every big move. The third fall was perhaps some of the most riveting and dramatic wrestling I've ever seen. Both men on the verge of passing out struggled for every inch, whether it be attempts at tombstones or forearms that had absolutely nothing behind them. It was the ultimate battle of survival and attrition between two of the best athletes in wrestling who were literally running on fumes. It also helped that Okada could not manage to pull off a Rainmaker until the third fall, making you think he was going to end it right then and there. Kenny was the star here, but Okada turned in yet another career performance as well. When it comes to selling peril and making you think either he or his opponent can end it at any minute, he is the best in the world.

 

I know it was over an hour, I know they never used the table outside of Kenny's double foot stomp, and I know this match just happened a few days ago, but this still might be one of the greatest wrestling matches I've ever seen.

 

*****

[El-P]

Greatest match ever.

 

A zillion stars.

 

I was a 14 years old mark again at the end.

[Childs]

I wrote about it in the NJPW and Meltzer threads, but I agree it was a classic.

[SmartMark15]

As someone who had his doubts about the first two and loved the third, I dreaded this match going in. The 2017 hour draw drove me mad with its bloated finishing stretch and I thought that putting a No Time Limit stip on these two would bring out the worst in them.

 

Yeah, I was wrong.

 

This match was fan-fucking-tastic. And that's coming from the perspective of someone who was ready to hate every moment of it going in. The first fall has the typically useless opening NJPW sequence only to be followed by a brutal shotgun dropkick by Okada to send Omega into the barricades. From there, their finish to the first fall is tense and brutal, culminating in a simple cradle getting the win--something we need far more of in New Japan.

 

Fall two and we get Kenny selling his ribs as he tries to even the score. We also get a wonderful cradle false finish. A crade false finish! In 2018 New Japan! Kenny gets the win with the OWA after weakening the neck.

 

Then the third fall. This is something else entirely. Both guys working probably the best exhausted/selling stretch of wrestling I've probably ever seen? Everything suddenly meant more. The struggle for the Tombstone, the constant crumbling (I adore crumble spots), and both men barely having anything behind their strikes.

 

And of course, Omega winning. The perfect finish to a brilliant match.

 

Certified classic.

 

*****

[klhare]

The first fall was legitimately great. Great sense of struggle, urgency & physicality. The offense of both men looked VIOLENT. The greatness continued in the first moments of the 2nd fall with Okada putting on that tremendous cocky face of his, showing how proud he is of getting that first fall. Omega showcased great desperation, all the while selling the fatigue of the 1st fall big time. At some point during the 2nd fall though, the match lost all of the urgency & that great character dynamic of it. Started to drag like I feared (& honestly expected) - basically lost all interest in the thing. There was a few cool moments after that, like Kenny doing the Styles Clash & Ibushi telling him to go for the Phoenix Splash. Other than those 2 moments though, the action wasn't any interesting whatsoever. Kudos to them for going over an hour, but what they did confirmed what I already was pretty damn sure of; Kazuchika Okada & Kenny Omega certainly aren't Ric Flair's, Bryan Danielson's or Trevor Lee's. **1/4

 

Question for you:

 

What about it made it BELOW AVERAGE to you? I understand not liking it, that is fine, but to me the work looked good, they were all proficient, there was an obvious story, and there were parts you even acknowledged as being great. So overall, was it REALLY below average? I'm just curious, I feel like a match like this has to be at least acknowledged to be ***-***1/2, because even if it wasn't for you, they pulled what they were going for fairly effectively. Not trying to come at your or anything, just something I think about whenever I see a rating like this for a bigtime match like this one.

[Cap]

Full marks from me. I talked about it elswhere. The long and short is where I though the other three matches (though I liked them all a good bit) where somewhat redundant and could lose me in the final frame, this match never lost me for a second. The 3 falls gave it some structure that carried the length and their dynamic a little bit better. Nothing much else to add. Fantastic, world class wrestling in my book. *****

[MJH]

Whilst I agree with the majority that it was a great a match, I also have to agree with ShinyLittleBoots that the second fall was majorly problematic for me.

I should preface this with two points: one minor, one major. The minor one is I'm writing this 5 days since I watched the match (it's been a long time since I actually logged in, I'd forgotten my password, and if not for the system overhaul today I would'n't've been about to retrieve it); the second is, as with most of the long-term posters of this board, I grew up, as it were, watching the All Japan guys, how they put their big matches together, and that has obviously influenced how I watch/understand/etc big matches ever since.

Anyway. I went into the match knowing the result. I know many people try and avoid doing so, but I've never been one for #spoileralert, quality is quality and anything worth watching is worth rewatching. I also knew how the falls went (i.e. the first to Okada, the final two to Kenny) but not the actual finishing spots themselves.

So, the first fall. I liked this a lot. I thought they did a tremendous job of working an interesting 30/+ minutes without bringing out any of their big offensive guns, nor even any major spots. What was clear to me, how I read it, was Omega had the momentum. Of course Okada got his licks in and the current NJ group as a rule work more back and forth than the old All Japan guys, but nevertheless, I picked up on "it's Omega's night" very quickly, and nothing they did broke me out of that. As a result, I saw the "fluke" pin coming, but thought it tremendously well done and the perfect way to wrap up the first fall.

But, like I said, the problems for me started in the second fall.

So, we're now in a situation where Omega has dominated, but Okada "stole" a pin. It seemed patently obvious to me how the second fall would go: Omega gets desperate, starts to take chances, one backfires, he's beat on for a long time, makes a comeback (if ever there was a time for a modern guy to steal Misawa's comeback it's in that situation there) and pulls it out, leading us into the showdown finale (which is, in the end, what we actually got in the third fall).

Obviously, that's not what we got. Sure, Omega wiped out early, Okada was far more relaxed and was strutting around with everything under control, but that segment didn't last for a long time at all, Omega gets back into it after having his back worked over, etc, without any great struggle, and the second fall continued in much the same way as the first had ended, with Omega "having the better night" as it were, only this time he avoids the flash pin and takes it home.

Herein lies my problem. Dramatically, the momentum is all with Omega. He dominated the first fall, slipped on a banana, lost his head for a moment at the start of the second but swiftly gained control back, kept his cool, and evened things up. And this is where knowing the result did create an issue: the booking calls for Omega to comeback from having the odds stacked against him, right? At no point was that the case. Sure, he lost the first fall and was beaten on for a bit at the start of the second, but Okada wasn't going for the kill by any means; Omega has evened this up without taking much damage, AND, of course, Okada's just spent the interval on his back putting over the One Winged Angel.

At this point, they've lost me. What are they going for dramatically? Now, they had the table in place, and I thought, OK: so they double-barrel the comeback, using the table spot for the Kobashi transition, Omega does his long comeback and gets the job done.

But, no. He eats an early rainmaker, puts it over huge, and the third fall is the epic, next-move-wins showdown with everything at stake. They do a much stronger job of long-term selling than has become the norm, and the third fall in many ways was great, but I'd been so taken out of it by the second fall and the absence of a prolonged period of peril for Omega that for all the great work, I wasn't drawn into it.

*

I'll hold my hands up: I realise these guys are not Misawa, Kawada or Kobashi, and I don't expect them to work matches in the same way at all. It's not a problem for me that they took a different route to what I was expecting: I have no problem with them breaking the law of Chekhov's gun, and whilst there are some spots that I didn't like (the tombstone on the apron and the straddling DDT on the floor could have been significant transitions and I felt both were completely wasted), there were significantly more positives about the match than negatives.

But the negative is a big one: I didn't get the structure. Or rather, I did (or thought I did) for the first and third fall, but with what happened in the second, the third should have gone differently. From a dramatic perspective, I felt at no point was Omega in real jeopardy of losing except at the end when it was even-stephens (the false finish on the flash pin in the second fall was a great spot, but that's not what I mean).

It all goes back to what I've thought/written previously about Okada's matches with Tanahashi: for all the great work going on, I'm not in tune with whatever their thought process is and I find it hard to join the dots.

I'm happy to be corrected by people who watch more of these guys than I do, who're inevitably more attuned to their work (I've seen all their previous matches except the 60:00; some of the major G1 matches and Okada's defences), perhaps with less of an All Japan hangover, for lack of a better word. Hopefully I've laid out in sufficient detail where my problem lies here, and I don't want to sound like I'm down on the match, or these guys, I think they're great, I really do, in so many ways, but it's so fundamental for me as a viewer to understand what's going on in terms of structure, story, etc, and in a very literal sense, they're incomprehensible to me.          

 

 

 
 

[Childs]

I come at it from the same background as you, largely, but here's how I read it. Regardless of how well he wrestled over the first two falls, Omega was fighting an uphill battle because Okada was a historically great champion riding a historically great run, and he still had the Rainmaker in his back pocket. You blow the first fall against a guy like that and you're automatically in a hell of a bind. To go for the AJPW parallel, didn't you always feel the odds were in Misawa's favor, even if Kawada and Kobashi seemed to have his number? Well, Okada is the Misawa of New Japan. 

[MJH]

Yes and no. You always knew Misawa was going to make a comeback of sorts, no matter how bad a situation he was in. And it hurt several matches insomuch as, if Misawa hadn't got a certain amount of shit in, you knew it wasn't ending. But I can't remember any particular instance of them working from presumptions/preconceptions in the way I guess you're implying: they always established in the match what you needed to know.

If someone comes into this Okada/Omega cold, where's the overcoming-the-odds arc for Kenny? If Okada is so strong, why couldn't he muster a prolonged period of dominance and kick Kenny's ass for a while? If anything, the fact that Okada essentially fluked the first fall, got cocky and did nothing much with it, and Kenny came back quite comfortably to win the second, isn't that giving the first-timer the opposite impression?    

[nivvad]

I feel like you're undermining the storytelling that was going on even BEFORE the match. Go and look back at the card for full context. Up until the main event, every CHAOS member had lost, and there were 3 title changes. They were building the drama even before the match started, and it built to a point in the third fall with thoughts of "this is all going too perfect for Omega, Okada HAS TO be making his huge comeback soon". The point of the first fall was to put Omega in trouble, the second fall was to make Omega look strong, BUT remind you that Okada always makes a huge comeback. But that never happens.

Also add on the point of the Golden Lovers story arc, the call backs to previous matches by combining spots from each previous match, etc. Everything was building to show that the Kenny Omega in THIS match was a completely different monster than what Okada had dealt with before. 

Sounds like to me you aren't understanding the full context of this match. It was a 2 year long story told from the moment Omega won the G1. Every Okada defense had been building to this 4th match in a highly regarded series. I'd recommend going back to when Okada won the title in June of 2016 in (ironically) the same venue, and finally concluding with his final defense where he loses the title in the same building. 

[Boss Rock]

3 hours ago, Childs said:

I come at it from the same background as you, largely, but here's how I read it. Regardless of how well he wrestled over the first two falls, Omega was fighting an uphill battle because Okada was a historically great champion riding a historically great run, and he still had the Rainmaker in his back pocket. You blow the first fall against a guy like that and you're automatically in a hell of a bind. To go for the AJPW parallel, didn't you always feel the odds were in Misawa's favor, even if Kawada and Kobashi seemed to have his number? Well, Okada is the Misawa of New Japan. 

I've always sort of made the comparison to Misawa as well when it comes to Okada. The guy you know who probably has a 1% chance of losing, yet still finds ways to make you think his opponent is gonna pull it off.

[fxnj]

Fuck yeah, MJH is back. New PWO is already awesome.

[gordi]

5 hours ago, MJH said:

Yes and no. You always knew Misawa was going to make a comeback of sorts, no matter how bad a situation he was in. And it hurt several matches insomuch as, if Misawa hadn't got a certain amount of shit in, you knew it wasn't ending. But I can't remember any particular instance of them working from presumptions/preconceptions in the way I guess you're implying: they always established in the match what you needed to know.

If someone comes into this Okada/Omega cold, where's the overcoming-the-odds arc for Kenny? If Okada is so strong, why couldn't he muster a prolonged period of dominance and kick Kenny's ass for a while? If anything, the fact that Okada essentially fluked the first fall, got cocky and did nothing much with it, and Kenny came back quite comfortably to win the second, isn't that giving the first-timer the opposite impression?    

Nice to see you back here, MJH. 

I think you did a great job of explaining your issues with the layout of this match, and I'm pretty sure that I understand them. I can absolutely see how it might come across as "they could have done a better job of having Kenny overcome adversity and fight from behind within the match itself," and I don't disagree with you there... 

but..

I am perhaps an interesting test case for "coming into this cold."

Prior to Dominion, I had simply not been able to get myself "into" current New Japan. I utterly despised the Omega vs Okada match at WK 11. I felt deeply frustrated by guys like Ospreay and the Young Bucks, with all the talent in the world but seemingly no clue how to use it beyond "hey look what we can do!" I only watched scattered, highly-pimped matches between WK 11 and WK 12 and I was almost always disappointed. 

Watching WK 12 on TV with my friend as it happened, I found myself very happily surprised by Cody vs Ibushi; I utterly loved Goto vs MiSu; I enjoyed Jericho vs Kenny a ton; and I was a bit burned out by the Main Event but I could tell they were working hard in there. 

Between then and Dominion, I watched a tiny handful of pimped matches, and was again generally let down by the "I go, you go" style.

So, I was fairly close to going into Dominion cold. I'd seen Kenny lose at WK 11, read about their other matches, and I was aware that NJPW were booking Okada as their super-duper-ACE of all Aces. 

And I, at least, was hooked from beginning to end of their Dominion match. Utterly captivated. Completely into it. The mountain that Kenny had to climb was baked into the long-term story telling (as Childs and nivvad have explained). Even for an extremely casual NJPW fan like me, that was pretty clear. The story being told in the match itself was more of a "these guys know each other so well now, they have a dodge, defense, reversal, or counter for everything the other guy does" type of tale. I thought that they did more with that type of story-telling than anyone else I have ever seen wrestle that kind of a match. 

A lot of the "Even with all the momentum, Kenny might not win the belt" drama came from the simple fact that Okada didn't use the Rainmaker to take the first fall. I'm not a fan of the common current trope that every wrestler only has one finisher and that nothing else can end a match... but here it was employed effectively to tell a compelling story. And: They tied that in perfectly with the "dodge, defense, reversal, or counter for everything" story.

 

I absolutely agree with you that AJPW story telling is the best kind of in ring story telling ever. But, it isn't the only kind of effective pro wrestling story telling. 

 

 

 

 

 

[MJH]

First of all, hey back at you guys.

In hindsight, I probably should have watched it with the English commentary. I know Callis in particular is pretty close with Kenny and would therefore assume he'd be clued in on exactly what they were going for and be able to fill in a few of the gaps (when I first became confused during the second fall, I thought Omega must've worked several matches where taking too many risks had cost him and one of his big talking points leading into this match was how, whatever happens, it was essential for him to keep his cool). I also absolutely agree with gordi in that there is no one way to work a match and for those of you who've been around a long time, you might me remember I've been more effusive than most on Zenjo (the Toyota/Kyoko series in particular), and a variety of other things that don't follow some "AJ is the only way" thing.

That being said, I'm not sure how I feel about, for lack of a better word, episodic matches. I remember a discussion back in 2004-2005 (I forget exactly which board but I want to say Smark's Choice) when ROH was the rage, specifically the Joe-Punk series, "learned psychology" was a big thing, and someone brought in a lengthy quote of Roger Ebert's, talking about John Travolta dancing in a film for the sake of having him dance and it didn't fit into the story of the film. That's a different thing, but my point then still applies in this case: I do feel that matches should be first and foremost self-contained, and work on their own. But again, that's as much because the first thing my brain does in just about every match I watch is try to latch onto the roles of the guys involved, who is the favourite/underdog/face/heel, who's coming into the match with the momentum, who do they want me to root for, etc... it's an (at times) unfortunately analytical approach (the fact I've spent the past three years learning Russian hasn't helped to curb my more mildly-autistic tendencies), but it's why I've always gravitated towards the thought out or the thoughtless.

Forgive the self analysis, but one of my main reactions to this match was to look at how I watch wrestling and why this match didn't work for me as well as it has for most other people (Cena/Punk in Chicago was another example of that, but for all the praise that received, it pales to this).   

 

[gordi]

Joe vs Punk is an excellent point of comparison for this match, in my opinion. As you say, both are more about a "learned psychology" type of story-telling. I suppose that kind of match is best enjoyed with the maximum amount of context...

I guess one of the things that impressed me about the Dominion match is that I was able to pick up on and follow the story even though I had only seen one of their previous matches (which, again, I hated) and I was watching with Japanese commentary. So, that gave me the feeling that these guys were telling a story this time.

 

w/r/t: favourite/underdog/face/heel etc:

That is my big problem with watching a lot of current pro wrestling. They don't seem to emphasize that kind of stuff enough for my tastes these days. There seems to be a whole lot of 50-50 back and forth I go you go until someone hits their official finisher structure, and not much showing ass or struggling back from underneath. It really stands out when I watch 80s matches, how much more important that stuff seemed to be back then.

I sometimes think that with a lot of current stuff we are meant to root more for "a great match" rather than for one wrestler or team to win, if that makes sense. There were a few matches on Dominion that I felt did a good-by-current-standards job of getting me to root for one wrester (or team) more than the other. I don't know if it was good-by-80s-standards... but I appreciated the effort.

 

[MikeCampbell]

The only thing that really soured me on this was when Okada took the reverse rana on the floor, stumbled and sold perfectly, rolled into the ring and ate the V-Trigger and then promptly countered the One Winged Angel into the Tombstone. I could buy him playing possum after the rana, but it just shit on the running V-Trigger. It wasn't like anything else they did leading up the actual end of the fall was really impactful, aside from maybe Omega countering the dropkick with the powerbomb, and escaping the same cradle that pinned him in the first fall.

 

Other than that one thing, I think mostly lives up to the praise it's getting. As annoying as those pop-up sequences with the suplexes were in AJ/NOAH, they get it right here. When Omega is selling his midsection and sees Okada signal for the Rainmaker, so he jumps up and his the snap Dragon while Okada isn't paying attention. I don't think it redefines wrestling nor is it the best match I've ever seen, but I wouldn't be surprised a bit to hear that it won MOTY, and it deserves to.