週刊プロレス No.2209 (from October 2022)
Tetsuya Naito’s column is about his trip to wrestle in the UK, his first outside of Japan since the pandemic. He reports not seeing masks after arriving at the airport to the point of the pandemic being forgotten about, and not putting one on himself to fit in. It was also the first time a crowd could join in on the “de Japon” call since 2020 when he beat KENTA to become double champ. He had stuff to say in English prepared but didn’t follow his catchphrase’s advice and 焦ってしました and forgot it all. An LIJらしい detail is that Hiromu and SANADA were also on the tour and apparently were in the same hotel but they didn’t take the same flight or contact each other outside of the arena.
The column also talks about Intonio Inoki - he was struck by a moment showing Inoki’s fame when a cabbie in the UK heard he was Japanese and asked if he heard Antonio Inoki died, and was shocked when Naito told him he’s actually a wrestler for the promotion Inoki started. He says although he briefly met Inoki once or twice, he was still a “TVの中の人” to him. He also though that his dad is a big Inoki fan and used to tell him to always use さん when talking about Sadaharu Oh (a baseball star), Shigeo Nagashima (a baseball star), and Antonio Inoki, so Inoki is indirectly the reason Naito stood in a wrestling ring, since he likely wouldn’t have become a wrestler if his dad wasn’t a fan.
There’s a 新連載 column called それぞれの闘魂伝 that would appear to be a series of interviews about Antonio Inoki with people connected to him in some way. The first interviewee is… Shinsuke Nakamura!
He describes first meeting Antonio Inoki around when he was going to the LA Dojo, and sparring with him. It sounds like Inoki could still go pretty well at the time, and was never going to give up so the sparring match went on a very long time. Also, it sounds like while sparring Inoki had a tendency to dig in elbows and fingers into weak points like bellies and noses and… buttholes. But Nakamura was warned about that and dodged. Nakamura recounts a time when addressing a group of training wrestlers, Inoki said something along the lines of to never let your guard down, and demonstrated by suddenly slapping a wrestler. And then tried it on Nakamura too, but Nakamura anticipated it and dodged, but he could tell that made Inoki grumpy so next time he stuck out a cheek.
A memorable post-match incident involving Nakamura and Inoki was a November 2004 event where apparently a fan poll by ring announcer Kero Tanaka’s camp in New Japan set the main event as the first singles match between Nakamura and Tanahashi, but for some reason Inoki’s camp nixed that and replaced it with a boring miscellaneous tag match. And at the end of the show Inoki gave Nakamura 鉄拳制裁 and attacked him. I don’t fully understand the details and I assume some portion of it is kayfabe, but it sounds like Nakamura says Inoki told him he had to do it to push the Dome show, but Nakamura felt internally that it was Inoki’s fault in the first place for booking a boring match at the event. And then in 2006 Inoki left NJPW while Nakamura still had those mixed feelings about him.
He describes his feelings now that Inoki has passed as like, hearing parent who you had a falling out with has died. He says he wouldn’t have the unique pro-wrestling career he’s been able to have without Inoki, and when he pictures Inoki’s face now he also remembers his brash young self that Inoki helped form.
There’s a long interview with Giulia on the occasion of her 5 Star GP tournament victory in Stardom.
The first question posed to her is what match stood out to her other than the block final against Suzu Suzuki, and Giulia says her three losses at the start of the tournament stood out the most, and if she had to pick one, it would be the match against Hazuki. Giulia says when she joined Stardom, everybody, both the fans and the wrestlers, hated her guts, and Hazuki stoked those flames (e.g. calling Giulia before a scheduled match “葉月の望まない相手”) and then quickly after retired. But she was honestly glad to see Hazuki return since it meant those feelings could be worked out in a wrestling match when they wouldn’t ever be otherwise. And she feels that this match in the tournament made her appreciate Hazuki’s own love of wrestling more, and Giulia thinks maybe she got a good rival out of the deal and looks forward to their next singles match.
Then the topic turns to the match with Suzu. Giulia was crying a lot already before the match – she says that Suzu is so much like a beloved little sister to her (すずは、本当に血がつながってるって思えるくらい、愛おしい妹だなって思った), that she was extremely touched by seeing her after all her recent successes enter the ring to her entrance music and be accepted by Stardom’s fans.
Their being able to fight in such a big venue was also notable, and the only words they exchanged after the bell rang as the match ended were Giulia looking up at the ceiling: 「でかいな」 「ね」. From an audience of 30-50 people to now 2500. But Giulia wants to fight her next in front of even more people (say, I wonder if she managed it the other day?).
Suzu was also crying a lot before the match. Giulia can imagine the many mixed emotions Suzu’s been feeling, and can feel it more as well from reading Shupro and reading Suzu’s comments about her that way (like she quotes Suzu as talking about needing to put on a face like she hated Giulia after she left but really she loves her). Seeing Suzu’s expression in the ring as the bell rang 私も感情がめちゃくちゃ、ぐちゃぐちゃだった. She thinks the match was enough to wipe clean Suzu’s grudge, and from here they can proceed with normal competitiveness as fellow pro wrestlers. She wants to have important singles matches with Suzu and also try tagging with her .
About the final against Tam Nakano, Gilia says she laughed when she heard it was Tam she’d have to fight, and the excitement and nervousness of fighting her at a time like this quickly took hold, with her shaking under her entrance gown and worrying about if they would surpass their hair vs. hair match. But she needn’t have worried, as it was such an intense match that she was completely spent and didn’t even have enough energy to travel home, instead getting a hotel, putting ice in the futon and just sleeping. She wants to ask Tam for the room fare.
She reports her thoughts when receiving the Avalanche Tiger Suplex during the match as being “あ、死んだ” and then 「ここでくたばるわけにはいかない、コイツにやられてたまるか!!」 and she especially pushed through because after her neck injury last year she needed to probe that she could get up again and bear it and be fine. “根性、根性、根性”
They talk about the special kind of trust she has with Tam for them to put on a match like that, and Giulia remarks on how the match level in Stardom has noticeably increased, and with it the number of dangerous moves. She says she wants to get better at the technical side of wrestling to be able to entertain the crowd without relying so much on moves like that - but Tam’s special, with her it’s 死ぬか生きるか!(笑)
About the red belt challenge she won via the tournament, Giulia says that she and Syuri were a great tag team, and she definitely took something away from Syuri, but Syuri also got something from her, since she went on to win the red belt and start God’s Eye and all that. Giulia compares Syuri’s run with the belt as being like “最強のロボット” - Syuri comes away looking strong and she racks up great matches and strong defenses, but does she even really talk to her opponents? Giulia doesn’t know what this 朱世界 means in the end. Giulia says Syuri’s strength is certain, and it’s extraordinary, but that she thinks a top champion should convey more than simply strength.
The interviewer makes the connection from that to matches like Himeka’s challenge against Syuri and how that awakened some additional confidence in Himeka, and suggests that, given how Giulia awakened something like that in Starlight Kid by trying to tear off her mask, Giulia’s saying as champion Syuri should do more of that kind of thing to push their opponents forward? But Giulia walks it back a bit saying that it’s just her personal opinion of being a champion, and there’s surely as many kinds of champion as there are people.
Giulia says Syuri is a great person and extraordinarily nice, but that can be a weakness too, and Giulia knows Syuri very well and knows she has her own ways of thinking about people, about life, about anything, etc. And so that’s why the fact that Syuri’s championship reign has just shown strength rankles with Giulia. She’s noticed that Syuri’s opponents come out looking the other end like “同じじゃがいも” and Syuri’s victory promos are like ワンパターン or リップサービス - she always says the same kind of thing about having a great match and fighting again. “この飽き飽きする世界が朱世界なのか?”
Giulia thinks the red belt is weighing heavy on Syuri, so she’ll take it off her. She’s said the injury last year was a setback, but really she hasn’t lost a step, as she’s been doing what she needed to do all this time, like raising up Mai Sakurai and having Stardom’s first hardcore match, so she wants you to look forward to the result of the title match.
Next up is more Giulia, since it’s her column, also about the 5 Star GP.
She talks about Mai Sakurai’s growth - with a 4-7-1 record she didn’t meet her extremely ambitious 10-2-0 goal, but taking into consideration also that she advanced through from the preliminary tournament it’s an impressive record nonethless! Albeit not impressive enough to save Giulia and Hideki Suzuki from joining her in triple dogeza in a future edition of this column once they have the opportunity to take a picture. Giulia reports that talking to Mai, she was most excited about her chaotic match with Risa Sera where they both got counted out - Giulia got the impression that it was like when someone discovers something new that they’re really into and enthusiastic about. Giulia says since pro-wrestling is nescessarily something taught to you at first, there comes a moment when you break out of the shell and realize how free pro-wrestling can be: プロレスってこんなに自由でいいんだ, and she thinks wrestling Risa Sera gave Mai Sakurai that moment.
About Maihime’s first singles match against each other getting best bout, Giulia says 「この2人はプライベートでも大親友。そんな彼女らが恵まれた肉体と肉体をぶっつけ合った超パワー対決は、白熱の展開だった。」 and says that the wrestlers aren’t informed of those post-tournament Stardom awards before the ceremony, so their reaction shown is real.
Kenoh’s column is about Antonio Inoki. He calls him a 日本プロレス界の神 and an MMAのパイオニア and praises in particular that he プロレスを背負って、世間と勝負してた and did so many things that penetrated through to the public eye that 「日本でプロレスってジャンルが市民権を得てるのは猪木さんのおかげだ」. Kenoh gets going strong and says he’ll follow Inoki’s lead and spread peace through pro wrestling by becoming a 国会議員 and wrestling in Russia. To which the interviewer can only reply 「け、拳王さん…。」
Talking about Inoki’s catchphrases like 「1,2,3、ダーッ!」 and 「元気ですか⁉」 Kenoh acknowledges that his own catchphrase, 「クソヤローども、オレについて来い」 isn’t really something you can say outside of a pro wrestling context, so he should work to come up with something that can penetrate further into general society the way that Inoki’s did.
This issue has a really big cool feature on wrestlers’ last matches, since retirement matches have been a big subject recently what with Mutoh’s whole tour.
Naturally, the first piece of the feature is an interview with Atsushi Onita, who has so far returned from retirement 7 times. All the copy around the interview is deadpan very funny, like saying ”引退試合の特集となればやはり大仁田厚に話を聞かないわけにはいかない” or the headline advertising “大仁田厚が語る「詐欺ではない」理由.”
Onita says it’s definitely 申し訳ない but he’s surprised when people tell him it’s been 7 times since he doesn’t keep careful count. The first retirement was because of a knee injury, and they talk about how in the 昭和のプロレス界, “taking a break” or “recovering from injury” weren’t really options, it was either you keep wrestling or you retire (yikes), there wasn’t the expectation that wrestlers could freely bow out to heal up like there is now. But it’s thanks to demand (需要) from his fans, the 邪道信者, that he’s able to unretire and still have people come to see him.
Onita’s an amusing interviewee. The interviewer brings up the full year retirement tour he had in 1995 FMW and how there were presumably people upset when that retirement ended up temporary, and Onita responds with some kind of non-sequiter about how he saw on the ネットニュース that New Japan is trying a new way of accepting applicants or something like that. He says people say he commits retirement fraud, and if you say it’s fraud maybe it’s fraud, but he feels what makes it different is he doesn’t go in being like “I’m gonna commit fraud.”
The interviewer mentions that this serial unretirement wouldn’t be possible in other pro sports, and Onita spins it into a speech about how the beauty of pro wrestling is it’s breadth of possibility, since as long as you have a mat you can wrestle absolutely anywhere, unlike pro baseball where you need a stadium.
Onita claims for his retirement in 1995 he considered the Tokyo Dome but went with 川崎球場, apparently to preserve FMW’s indie image - 川崎球場 was rugged enough to be just right: “便所が臭いくらいが丁度いいかな”
Next in the feature there’s a list of notable retirement matches:
- Antonio Inoki’s was at the Tokyo Dome in on 4.4.1998, against Don Frye, with appearances including from Muhammad Ali, and Inoki reading a poem called 道. Afterward he pushed his vision of wrestling including founding UFO in 1998 and IGF in 2007, attempted a political return in 2013, and his condition worsened since 2018 until his death in 2022.
- Riki Choshu announced his retirement in 1997 and had his last match, a sorta gauntlet match against various wrestlers, at the 1.4.1998 Tokyo Dome show. A memorable moment in the retirement road was his protege Kensuke Sasaki delivering the 介錯 via lariat. After his retirement, he returned to wrestling about a year and a half later due to a challenge from Atsushi Onita, founded WJ, returned to New Japan (hey yeah he was on those Dome shows I watched), freelanced, and retired again in 2019. Now he’s putting energy into the entertainment industry.
- Genichiro Tenryu’s retirement match was in 2015 at 両国国技館 against Kazuchika Okada and it won best bout that year. Wow! After retiring he’s done talk shows and the like and revived the Tenryu Project in 2021, but his physical condition continues to fluctuate.
- Terry Funk, perhaps the most beloved foreign wrestler in Japan ever, started talking about wanting a retirement match in Japan in the future in 1980, and in 1983, after a “Terry Funk Sayonara Series” in All Japan he had a fabulous, emotional retirment match in front of 13600 fans and his teary-eyed family, declaring “フォーエバー。さよなら、さよなら.” After his retirement, 1 year later, he returned to active wrestling in All Japan after he seconded Giant Baba and Dory Funk and got bloodied by Stan Hansen and Bruiser Brody.
- Akira Maeda retired in 1998 with a (shoot-style? MMA-influenced pro-wrestling? don’t ask me) match against Alexander Karelin in RINGS. After retiring, RINGS folded in 2002 and he continued to promote MMA off and on, like Big Mouth Loud in 2005 or THE OUTSIDER in 2008.
- Nobuhiko Takada retired in November 2002 at a PRIDE show at the Tokyo Dome and I don’t know enough about shootstyle promotions to convey more about it. After retirmenet he led PRIDE, including the successor event RIZIN, and goes on TV as a celebrity sometimes.
- Kenta Kobashi retired at a packed 日本武道館, exceeding expectations even in his retirement match. After retirement he entered his “second youth” and promoted his own Fortune Dream shows, along with training, speeches, and match commentary.
Next is a page talking about retirement in 女子プロレス with some less detailed examples (like Yuzuki Aikawa, Natsuki Taiyou, Dynamite Kansai, Kagetsu, etc.). It talks about how AJW had a rule where your career was restricted to the age of 25, and how that quietly started to fall away when ace Bull Nakano turned 25 and kept going. The summary suggests I think that the crop of wrestlers starting their careers in 1985-1988 joined out of idolizing the Crush Gals and so were made up of especially committed athletes, and so wrestlers from specifically that generation tend to have long careers, while wrestlers immediately before and immediately after tended to have very short ones. Compared to men’s wrestling, women’s wrestling also tends to have far fewer cases of long fadeouts and serial unretirers, as wrestlers for the most part tend to move on once retired.
Next there’s a page laying out ways other than an official retirement match that a pro wrestling career can end, with examples: sudden death (Rikidozan, Giant Baba, Shinya Hashimoto, Mitsuharu Misawa), a retirement ceremony (Jumbo Tsuruta, Stan Hansen, Masakatsu Funaki – temporarily, Kensuke Sasaki), and fading out without an official end (Toshiaki Kawada, Masahiro Chono).
The history column talks about how the Four Pillars era of AJPW used the catchphrase 「明るく楽しく、激しいプロレス」 and generally kept competition bloodless and decisive: 「ノー流血、ノー両リン」 and the columnist uses that as an introduction to talk about a time when AJPW was decidedly not like that: the feud between Destroyer and Abdullah the Butcher across 1975 and 1976 (for example, this match - it doesn’t look as horrifically bloody as I was expecting but I mean it’s an Abdullah the Butcher match so be warned about that), when it sounds like Destroyer was second in popularity in AJPW behind Giant Baba, before Jumbo Tsuruta debuted. There’s some anecdotes from Destroyer about causing a stir while filming variety shows after matches like that and his mask still being bloody no matter how much he washed it. (with, in an odd coincidence for me, a mention of Akiko Wada as an example of a show regular shocked by that – I just saw her as a cool tall biker in Stray Cat Rock from 1970)
I didn’t really take any pictures this issue, so here’s a few from Wrestle Princess why not.
In Genichiro Tenryu’s column, he talks about AJPW’s 50th anniversary show at 日本武道館 which it sounds like had lots of hardcore AJPW fans in attendance. It sounds like he wants AJPW to remember its roots and offer AJPW-like wrestling, and he likes Kento Miyahara as a star people will come to see (although he’s not full-on 生え抜き since it sounds like he started in Kensuke Office), but the combination of the younger Aoyagi getting the junior belt, a prospect from a college wrestling team making his pro debut, and the Saito brothers returning from travel, make Tenryu express concern that new stars may be pushed too fast - that’s not very AJPW-ish after all.
He also talks about Tatsumi Fujinami’s 50th career debut anniversary match scheduled against Hiroshi Tanahashi, and is impressed by Fujinami’s resiliency and continued name value as a 昭和 pro wrestler. Fujinami’s son, LEONA is also a pro wrestler, so the father is modeling a career for the son to look up to as well. Tenryu wants Fujinami to go until he can’t anymore, he can probably at least get to 55 years, right?
In an insert Tenryu talks about Keiji Muto and speculates that for his retirement at the Tokyo Dome, Shinsuke Nakamura might be the right fit for the opponent (close!).
The costume column is aout Juria Nagano from TJPW. Because of her karate experience, her costume is based on the themes ”和” and ”空手” but she had it made pro wrestlerish (like with eye-catching red instead of white) rather than just straightforwardly wearing karate gear. There’s a black belt in the costume, and the fabric hanging off of it in the front is apparently the kind of thing also on dojo gear in karate, and she always steadied her nerves by holding onto it, so it’s in her costume now too. She asked for 和っぽい flowers in the fabric design but she doesn’t know what kind they are. She only wears the arm cover on one arm now since it got in the way but she doesn’t have any particular reason why she picked the left arm.
It sounds like she’s still actively working as a real nurse too, so the nurse uniform in the entrance gear is earned. Apparently she changes her hair by season, like putting blue in to evoke the sea in summer, etc.
Hideki Suzuki’s column is about Antonio Inoki. He says he wouldn’t be a pro wrestler if Inoki hadn’t started IGF, since they didn’t have an orthodox entrance exam and he wouldn’t have been the type to persistently try one of those (side note: I’m reading a book about Tanahashi that talked about him only passing the New Japan entrance exam on his third try after hanging outside of shows and angling as persistently as possible for additional chances). It sounds like Suzuki’s a bit grumpy about the more shallow tribute actions shown for Inoki, like Yoshi-Tatsu wearing black trunks and doing a 卍固め.
Suzuki mentions there’s apparently 仁王像 modeled after Inoki at 池上本門寺 (also the resting place of Rikidozan).
In the Editor’s Eye column, they talk about a Big Japan wrestler, Hideyoshi Kamitani, who apparently used the word 妖怪 to describe himself and now has the nickname 妖怪超人. The editor compares him favorably to Kitaro from ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 (Shigeru Mizuki’s extremely famous yokai manga), for it sounds like, his blend of deathmatch and non-deathmatch styles, similar to how Kitaro portrayed positively yokai and humanity co-existing.
The end of the magazine column interviews Masahiro Chono, particularly about the early 2000s period where it sounds like Chono was in a position of power in New Japan and Inoki still owned the company. It sounds like Inoki’s influence particularly made itself known in the cards for Dome shows, and it sounds like Chono compares elements like Joan Laurer (Chyna) wrestling Chono as like Chono and the others being like “ok we’re gonna have a 和食 menu this time” and then Inoki and his interest in MMA coming over and being like “I’ve got an Italian chef so let’s put that in there too” and the overall theme of the shows ending up muddled. Chono says that New Japan doesn’t have a connection to the MMA-inflected “Inokiism” anymore but that’s a good thing since those were called the dark ages, and each generation rejects the previous one’s style in some way. And 闘魂 and strong style are still at the top of New Japan. The times when there needed to be a New Japan Dojo graduate to succeed the top spot in the promotion are past. Chono says "闘魂アントニオ猪木"は永久欠番として残してほしい, and New Japan should forge a new path forward and not try to chase or replace that legacy.
Side language note: I came across another new to me euphemism for death here: “猪木は帰らぬ人となってしまった。”