A few weeks ago, Wrestle Kingdom 11 happened, the 2017 edition of New Japan Pro Wrestling's annual show. Over the last few years, WK has become a quintessential event for western fans of wrestling who venture outside of WWE-produced TV. People who like rating and discussing matches often put main events of WK on top of their "best of year" lists. This time the encounter between Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada blew everyone's expectations, receiving praise from virtually everywhere. There was almost no voice that it was anything below spectacular. Some argued that there were better matches on the show, but after a few days those voices died out and tone of discussion shifted towards answering the question "Just how good was that Omega/Okada match?" "Was it just match of the year, or match of the century?" One Dave "Tastemaker" Meltzer rated it 6 out of 5 stars, calling it the best match in decades.
I thought it was OK. Nothing wrong with it, but not necesarily my prefered style. There's just certain formula big matches in NJPW tend to be built around which I'm not a big fan of. Also, for some reason I always had a problem with some manerisms and pace typical for Japanese wrestlers which means I tend to not like a lot of matches from that country.
Of course when something is so universally praised but you don't really like it, it's easy to fear you just don't get it. That's what breeds snobism. But you can also go the other way and feel like that's just wrong, that we all have our own preferences and tastes and for everyone to agree on something like "how good a wrestling match was" is unnatural. I've recently listened to a music podcast do its top20 albums of 2016 list and they pointed out how a lot of widely read lists tend to have a lot of same entries on them, almost as if their creators were looking through each other's arms and making sure they don't miss anything widely regarded as important. In those podcasters' opinions, music is such a personal medium that it's hard to believe so many different people all had such similar evaluation of a year worth of albums.
Of course it's hard to argue that wrestling is as personal of a medium as music. But it can certainly be polarizing. In the middle of 2016, there was a match between one Will Ospreay and Ricochet on another NJPW show, "Best of Super Juniors". These two are known for their lighting-fast high flying style, meaning they do lots of flips and acrobatics during their fights (usually to add more momentum to a strike or dodge someone else's move). Since they were performing a match together, this meant they were able to trust each other and coordinate a series of fast and impressive moves. For a slew of reasons, this match ended up getting lots of publicity and a very split reaction. Lot of people loved it because of just how impressive the moves were and how straight up enjoyable to watch it was. Others hated it for barely hiding it was a fake fight, doing all those impractical moves instead of more traditional holds and strikes.
There's so many different ways you can wrestle. Showcase grappling holds and transitions from all different strikes. Try to tell a story mostly through your body language and mimics. Do flips. Most wrestlers nowadays don't restrict themselves to one, but rather try to be a complete package. But even when it comes to particularities of certain style, they will change more broadly depending on the region, and then more minutely depending on the company a wrestler works for, or the school where he learned, or just his own unique flair.
Now, if you're asking yourself where am I going with this, the answer is "nowhere really". I guess I'm kinda sad to see "best of year" lists filled with matches and performers that all represent a style I don't really like all that much. So in spirit of taking that negative energy and doing something positive about, I'm gonna write down my favorite matches from this year onwards and perhaps talk about them from time to time. I've been in love with British PROGRESS for over a year now and I've been appreciating Mexican CMLL more and more recently. Then there's Lucha Underground which is just spectacular. Let's see if I can spread some love for the shows closer to my heart.
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