#rassletext

[namajague]

Sometimes I wonder if Zack just intends never to come to a majority English-speaking country again. Or come but be pointedly unavailable for M&Gs, maybe. He knows, and the company knows, that he’d get questions about Speaking Out and his lack of reaction, and I really wonder if he thinks it’ll blow over. I don’t want to think that poorly of him, but talking with a friend who has no context for wrestling really drove home how much benefit of the doubt I’m giving him. It looks much worse from the outside, to go silent on twitter after your friends are revealed as abusers, and I hadn’t quite realized that. Like, sometimes I even feel like I’m overreacting, but I’m probably not, actually.

Just... the Schadenfreude lads took maybe half a day to gather themselves and make a statement about the allegations against their friends, and people at the time told them they’d lost trust in them, they’d taken too long, they should have denounced them immediately. I don’t agree with that, because they were dealing with horrifying revelations about people they personally knew and trusted, and the time they took was likely spent in shock. Additionally, they’ve spent the last year doing whatever they possibly can to help the situation in Britwres. So, that said. It’s amazing to think that their slightly delayed reaction probably lost them fans, and yet Zack hasn’t been on twitter or given interviews in over a year despite being friends with the same people they were, and there’s still so much enthusiasm for him.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m rambling. It hurts and I would really like people to tell me how they divide their fondness for him away from his silence. Or if they just don’t care, I guess. I was on the verge of accepting it and trying to be a fan again when I talked with the aforementioned non-fan friend, who was just disgusted, and now I’m lost all over again.

[namajague]

I’m not in a place where I can write long thoughtful posts and I’m not even really in a place where I can watch New Japan without having a weird breakdown, but El Desperado is my favorite and the best and just so good and has deserved the junior title for a long time, and even though I’m so sad that Hiromu had to vacate, I’m not going to say “It’s a shame Despy won this way.” The point is that he won and I love him and I’ve been overwhelmed all day and that’s that.

I want him to beat Kota. I want anyone to beat Kota right now, but specifically I want Despy to beat his first crush, the reason he was incarnated, the one who surpassed him and never looked back. I want Despy to beat him and I know he won’t but that doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

I’m just so happy. Despy is the junior champion. When he was in Noah and got his very first title*, the tag belts with Taka, he put masking tape on the faceplate of one of the belts and wrote his name on it, to make sure that his title was his own and couldn’t be taken or mistaken for his teammate’s. (And the way the Gun treated him at that point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d tried.) 

*Not counting the Arena Coliseo tag titles, because obviously Namajague won those with Okumura and Namajague is not Despy

But now he’s been tag champs three times with Nobu, and brings both titles to his singles matches - first carrying them at his side, lately joined together behind his neck like a garland - because he’s a tag champion no matter which belt he takes home. And when he has the tag belts around his neck and holds the junior title aloft it really doesn’t matter whether he puts his name on it, because it couldn’t possibly be anyone else’s. It’s his because he won it by himself and he deserves it. And I’m happy.

This is not a thoughtful post, just an emotional one. He turned in part because he couldn’t connect with the crowd as a face, and as a heel he hasn’t let himself hear their growing support, but now he called for them and they answered and that’s beyond words. And the Gun supporting him on twitter shows that his position within the faction really has changed, not merely his attitude. I’m so happy for him.

[namajague]

I had to rewatch Kenoh and Funaki's preview match, because I’d promised a friend to pay close attention to it and give my thoughts, but I was waaay too tired when it was live to give it the attention it demanded. So, having rewatched it, here are those thoughts.

First off, I can't help but compare it to Kenoh’s match with Sakuraba, where he was so loud and angry about how it would be an MMA-type match, he'd take the fight to Sakuraba, and then he... won with a quick pin. It felt like he either overestimated himself or underestimated Sakuraba, I don't know, and although he won and was justifiably proud of himself, it still felt a little like a shortcut.

Whereas now, he's taking his time and being wary of Funaki, hesitant to engage unless he knows exactly how to approach, and Funaki seems to be approaching him the same way. Like, neither one gets close enough to strike unless he's prepared to fend off a full-body attack, because they're both aware of the other's ability. The way they dance around each other is very careful and engaging, because neither one is taking any chances.

I'm not making a full-fledged comparison between this and the Sakuraba match, I'd have to rewatch the latter for that, but just their mutual attitudes towards each other feel so much more careful. Funaki is respecting Kenoh too, and is showing he respects him, which sure bucks the trend. (Which is to say, whether Sakuraba respects Kenoh or not, he didn't care to convey it in a way Kenoh would understand. And Murakami speaks for himself, probably.)

So... I don't know how this is gonna go! But I think it would have been very easy for Kenoh to take offense despite respecting Funaki, and the fact that he's approaching this as if they're on equal footing instead of the challenge being an insult is interesting and worrying. I'm just glad Funaki respects him too, and that they’re both more fired up than careful after the preview.

(Also, even though Funaki won here, Kenoh was tagged in for about twice as long. So I'm keeping that in mind.)

[namajague]

I was worried for a while that this Kenta + Shibata project might lead to me caring about present-day Noah, but I'm pleased to report that my apathy about wrestling is only lifted for those two. Watching singles matches it’s clear that I will never have the energy for the whole promotion, at least without significant effort that I’m unwilling to put in. This is a great relief to me.

Necessary background information: I basically haven’t cared about wrestling since Evil left LIJ. At first I thought it was just prolonged depression about an angle (which, don’t even start, I’m making fun of myself enough), but I think it actually knocked me out of my hyperfixation. I can barely make it through a match now, unless someone I really really really care about is in it. So that’s like... Despy, Bushi, Kenta, sometimes Hiromu but mostly he makes me sad too. Sometimes the Boss but not always. Sometimes Zack but not always. Not Naito, because Evil is involved.

(Frankly even Kenta is progress, because being reminded of BC’s existence was actively painful for a while, and even now they make me feel dead inside. He’s only acceptable because he’s in America and wasn’t directly involved. And because I’m mostly watching his old matches.)

Anyway, yeah, I’m... feeling really bad about wrestling in general right now, for what I think are pretty obvious if not universal reasons? And then that on top of no longer being hyperfixated means I’m generally at a loss. I’m glad I can focus on a project, but once that’s over I have no idea what I’ll do. I don’t enjoy this.

[namajague]

Hm, OK, so. [Obligatory disclaimer about how this is my personal blog despite also being a wrestling blog, to talk myself into not caring that no one cares.] [That was not a request to reassure me that you care, for the record.] After Evil left LIJ, I told myself I owed it to LIJ to watch his match with Naito, at least. I’d watch Dominion and see where I went from there. It took me... most of a day to get through the show. (My post about Evil was written before watching it, though my sentiments remain the same.) And then while I was watching the last match, twitter refreshed itself and I saw the result, so I just... stopped. It just hurt too much - not Evil winning, even, but everything that came with it. The end of Naito’s double title reign after only one successful defense, the splintering and possible dissolution of my favorite faction, it’s just too much. So I put filters on twitter and I muted a lot of channels and cut my queue down to one post a day and I was absolutely determined that I’d never watch wrestling again.

And you know what, I don’t care if that seems like an overreaction from the outside, actually. This story is extremely painful and I cried for three days about it and have still felt kind of dead inside since. I’ve canceled my other streaming subs, and my plan was to watch Despy’s title match and cancel World the next day. But... it’s been a week. I’ve sat on it and taken in absolutely no one else’s opinions apart from two or three of my friends, just focused on reading. And now I emerge from my self-imposed isolation and discover that people are shoot mad that Evil won the titles because they think he doesn’t deserve it, which is maybe the dumbest opinion I’ve heard in a while. No matter how I feel about Evil joining Bullet Club - and, to be clear, I feel VERY NEGATIVELY about it, worse than if he’d left to start his own faction - in the real world he has been fantastic for years and absolutely deserves a stage and push. There’s no such thing as “deserving” titles, they’re fake. But attention and screen-time and orchestrated prestige, you can deserve those, and he does. People who disagree are just as weird as people who think Sanada is a bad wrestler, and I really don’t want to have an argument about either one.

So, idk, maybe I’ll watch wrestling again just to spite these people. Just to see where Evil goes now. I still can’t re-follow him on twitter, and I might not watch his matches against non-LIJ people, because my general distaste for Bullet Club will not be overcome by what I still think is a nonsensical addition. But Bushi has been posting ominous masks and Hiromu might want to leave LIJ, and Naito has proven that he’d rather “let everyone do their own thing” than have a straightforward conversation about how the faction can best meet its members needs, so everything is completely terrifying, and I feel like I owe it to them to care about that. LIJ are so important to me, or else this wouldn’t hurt so much, but heck if I’m gonna leave them to the hot takes of people who think half of them don’t deserve a spotlight.

I reserve the right to stop again. But this has been a really hard week emotionally and physically (I’m getting a covid test on Monday), and consider this a journal entry, I guess. I never really got out of the LiveJournal mode of posting, I still want to process my thoughts via sharing them. Whether that’s healthy, do not ask me.

[namajague]

I want to say something about Evil, but I can’t seem to make myself. All I have is wailing and betrayal, affecting me in real life no matter how little sense that makes. I’ve seen people’s potential reasons this makes sense, or where they think it could be going, and I just don’t care, and can’t engage with them at all. I don’t want to talk about how Evil had been feeling overshadowed for a long time, because while that’s true, it isn’t the point. I don’t want to see reason. I’m just hurt.

When Johnny faked an injury while teaming with Tommaso, revealing that he’d only been pretending to be a heel, I felt betrayed not only by the action but by how little sense I felt it made. Regardless of the obvious revenge attempt, something was being left unsaid that made the double turn more upsetting than a mere storyline would have been. And for a long time, all I could do was complain. I didn’t want to reason out how it might have made sense, I was just angry that it had happened at all. And it was very easy to stew in that anger and sadness, because I was the only person I knew who cared enough about the DIY story to talk about it, so I didn’t have to ignore any words but my own. And I finally came to terms with it, but it took a year and Johnny personally telling me what they hadn’t been able to explain on the show. Without that distance and explanation, I’d probably still be upset about it.

With Evil, I can’t ignore it. Everyone else is talking about it, and trying to make sense of it and/or grieving in their own way, and I can’t shunt that to the side. But all my usual efforts to look for meaning in facial expressions and tones of voice, to find clues when the wrestlers inevitably fail to tell the whole truth, are falling flat here. Because I don’t actually want to understand why this happened. I want it not to have happened at all. If there’s a solid understandable explanation, that means it’s real and can’t be taken back, and we just have to live with it. I’m just not OK with that, and I don’t know when I will be, so I don’t know how much I can engage for a while.

Please take as a given that I’m embarrassed to be this affected, but please also take as a given that you can hush. A lot of horrible things are happening in the world right now, and for a long time LIJ have been the safe faction, the one where drama never sticks and they support each other regardless. To lose that now is deeply painful, and I don’t know what to do.

[namajague]

I’m done.

The DIY story was all that was tying me to WWE for the past year and change, and that’s over, and I’m done. I’m probably not even going to write up what I was planning about their last match, because I’m so disgusted with this company. They do evil things every month and we look past it and I’m just not looking past it anymore. I have WWE stuff in my queue and there are people who work there whom I like but I can’t stomach even illegally watching their shit anymore. Not even NXT. Not even for Johnny and Tommaso’s new individual stories. It’s not worth it. I’ve felt sick to my stomach about this all day. How disingenuous it was to first say they were furloughing people - honestly bad enough, when they have that much money - and then announce the firings. The utter lack of even basic corporate loyalty, what that sort of overlord normally eats up. Firing Drake Maverick in particular and then “allowing” him to work one last match tonight, and he has to be grateful because it’s a paycheck but also they had a choice and they didn’t have to put him or themselves in that position. I’m so angry and so sad for these people. I’m done, never again.

[namajague]

Love to write up a thing and have it just... disappear when I’m not looking. Short version: saying Tommaso turned on Johnny last year is, while technically correct, extremely simplistic and ignoring Johnny’s manipulation. I’ve been over this and don’t need to go into it again, I’m a broken record about them. I just... get so confused when people act like that wasn’t a mutual betrayal, like Johnny manipulating Tommaso for months was any more morally justifiable than Tommaso manipulating him.

So I’m going to keep saying Johnny betrayed Tommaso, and I’m going to keep insisting he’s been a heel since then, and nothing they do now is going to convince me otherwise!!