La Zona Muerta

I, like a fool, thought he was just Japanese John Cena. He came into TNA once maybe around 2005 or 6 and had a NOTHING match with AJ Styles, AJ STYLES, for crying out loud, someone *I* could probably have a passable match with and I was thoroughly underwhelmed. I didn’t like him, didn’t appreciate his aura. Oh, I recognized that he could WORK, of course, but a frogsplash? And not even a great one, at that? And he was just such a babyface… like the kind of babyface that makes your teeth hurt due to the pure saccharin content. He wiped his sweat off on your rally towel like he was ELVIS, for Gotch’s sake. Who was this dweeb kidding? He didn’t move me. I didn’t need him… I liked the stout fireplug man with no neck who talked trash and dropped opponents on their heads. I liked the bleached blond kid with the lariat finish, the one who would make it rain. I liked the tall, cool guy who gyrated and fidgeted. I REALLY liked the guy who would hold his eyeball wide at people for some reason. Just what the hell was HIS deal, anyway?

And.

Yet.

Oy, dem lips. My childhood aspirations to be a comic book artist sometimes crop up at the worst moments and the language of comics doesn’t always carry over to the language of portraiture. I did a good job on his feather thing, tho’. We continue to produce to get better, of course. I believe I did this sometime during the pandemic. POWER PRODUCTION

As my casual viewing of what Western fans now call the “Golden Age” of New Japan Pro Wrestling grew into something less casual and more studious, the man still didn’t move me. I had a LOT of catching up to do as I figured out the workings, the motivations, the key matches of Kazuchika Okada and Shinsuke Nakamura and Tetsuya Naito and the rest, so the man who essentially carried NJPW on his back as they climbed out of the dark times still didn’t resonate with me. My WIFE, a woman as evil as there has ever been, with the dark heart of a pure rudo… even SHE liked him! I still didn’t get it. I’ve a tendency to dig in my heels and if that first impression doesn’t land, heaven help you.

And.

Yet.

I think one very interesting aspect of Tana is that he KNOWS about sex appeal, how looking cool for the ladies (and the guys and anyone else who cares to buy a ticket to see oiled, muscled bodies in faux combat) and being, well… SEXY is important. His wrestling mind is fascinating and the fact that he’s so straight forward about marketing his look… not in a vain way, necessarily but in a way that speaks of necessity is an aspect of his game I never really hear anyone discuss. This piece was done last year after my wife requested a sexy, smouldering Tana… and after I found this photo shoot, I was off to the races

I couldn’t genuinely tell you when the Ace, the Once in a Century Talent, Hiroshi Tanahashi finally started to win me over. Was it him lovingly restoring the Intercontinental Title back to it’s full, physical luster when he finally wrenched it from the uncaring Naito? Was it when he had a BLISTERING match in Ring of Honor with Roderick Strong (still one of Roddy’s greatest bouts, IMO)? Was it when I learned he’d been stabbed by a girlfriend during his first flirtation with stardom, causing him to come back bigger than ever? When I realized that his cool hand sign was actually a tribute to that of Kamen Rider Kabuto (the man who ascends the path to Heaven, destined to rule everything)? Was it when I watched him have a match with a past his prime Keiji Mutoh around 2009 or so where Tana did EVERYTHING to make old man Mutoh look like the fierce competitor he had once been? Was it when Minoru Suzuki savagely destroyed his knee in a sequel to their classic bout in 2012? By then, by 2018, I had certainly started to get the message, to get clued in. This was no mere Cena figure, not just a babyface for the sake of it. Tanahashi’s connection to the audience ran deeper; it was more complex than just being a white hat in a sea of sharks. Tanahashi also had a cruel, defiant streak which you could see when he would work matches in places like Dynamic Dream Team, the bizarre Japanese indy which was a mixture of the silliest comedy and the best upcoming stars. It was BENEATH him, and he’d SAY SO. His dreams of fostering wrestling unity in 2014, 2015 were not yet fully formed, so if he had to go beat up a young Harashima, a young Konosuke Takeshita… then FINE. He’d do it because he was a thoroughbred racehorse working for the best pro wrestling company in Japan… in the world. Oh, here comes Hirooki Goto in the G1 again? I will CRUSH HIS DREAMS IN FRONT OF HIS CHILDREN, wearing a smile. That’s the kind of competitor Tanahashi was. Loved by his admirers, feared by his opponents. Even well into the pandemic, he was still having good, even great matches when the time called for it.

Here’s the thing.

Time comes for us all.

I’m old and uncomfortably heavy, the strain of time and weight placed on my knees and core. A back injury suffered in my thirties has made my forties decidedly less pleasant and will continue to do so in my fifties and sixties and however much further I get after that. Other than obsessively walking EVERYWHERE and occasional weight lifting, I was never super active, so you know, que sera sera. But here’s a man two or so years my senior. The year I was moving out on my own and jobbing in a local mom and pop pet store, he was debuting for New Japan. He has been doing horrible things to his body since 1999 and now the brother can’t walk, at least, not normally. Talk about IRON WILL. He has to do this brutal, bow legged crab walk to get in or out of the ring and it’s painful to even watch. He’s slower, heavier, OLDER. IT HAPPENS. He’s given us so much in the past 25 years that there’s hardly anything left for himself. The matches thus far in his retirement tour haven’t been stellar; there’s no gas left in the tank. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

And.

Yet.

For a man who has given his literal all to be moved like this during the match with Kenny Omega and… *sigh* Gabe Kidd at Wrestle Kingdom says a lot. The match moved him to tears, sure, but wearing my armchair psychiatrist hat (5 cents; the Doctor is in), I suspect part of him was crying because he doesn’t have the physical capacity to create art like that anymore. As for me, this is an example of the sort of thing I do a lot these days, taking a screenshot or photo or whatever and turning it into a drawing and then smushing and creasing and blobbing it until it looks like a semi painting. Done this year, of course

So we finally come, in my self important, meandering way, to Friday night… Friday night and a competitor who would NOT let Tanahashi’s last match ever in America be a poor one. Enter Konosuke Takeshita, the man who, in my opinion, is the best wrestler in the world, and someone who reveres Tanahashi, grew up watching him and most importantly… had been squashed miserably by Tana in the past. This time… Tanahashi was in the Mutoh position of needing the young, hungry wrestler to create movement around him, so they told a perfect story; Tana used precision assaults to Takeshita’s knee to cut down his freedom of movement, to (somewhat) level the playing field. Takeshita powered through anyway and during the climax of the match delivered a series of FIVE driving knees, passed down straight from Jumbo Tsuruta and the path of Kings he forged, to Jun Akiyama and his wandering, stern soul right to Takeshita, and then, as the capper, the hissatsu*… a particularly vicious double running knee blow… straight from the tradition of DDT itself and Takeshita’s old peer Harashima (a man also destroyed by Tanahashi in years past), the Somato.

And that was it. No more Tanahashi in America. Soon, he’ll retire in Europe and then, in January, his career will end in Japan. Oh sure, he’ll still be around, the president and ULTIMATE figurehead / ambassador for New Japan, but never again will we see the Ace, the Once in a Century Talent perform in a wrestling ring… and we will be poorer for it. Did we take him for granted? I mean, I can’t speak for you, but *I* definitely did. I didn’t get it for so long and then Father Time took it’s inevitable toll. I think of all of the times New Japan had to go back to this man, to ask him to be there for them one more time and honestly, it gets me kind of emotional. The ultimate “in case of emergency, break glass” wrestler, a guy who can connect with nearly anyone, in any language. Someone so smart about wrestling, so well versed in it and yet trapped in a body that can’t translate that knowledge to action any longer. It’s heartbreaking… but I don’t think he’d want me or ANYONE to think that way. He’d want us to celebrate the performer he was, the career he had.

And who knows? Maybe one day they will strap a fifty five gallon drum of freshly harvested stem cells to his knees and feed them intravenously into his missing cartilage, his ailing MCLs and ACLs and he’ll rise one more time when New Japan needs him most.

A century is one hundred years, after all.

*finishing blow / killing attack