Against Shinsuke Nakamura, Kazushi Sakuraba Fails to Smother a Flame

Shinsuke Nakamura. Kazushi Sakuraba. The Tokyo Dome. It's a classic clash for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship on 1/4, with Nakamura achieving the unlikely.

I know there’s a whole match to cover, but I need to talk about Shinsuke Nakamura for a moment, because hearing his New Japan theme for the first time in a while, the Nakamuraness on display, was arresting, even without the spectacle of his more elaborate Wrestle Kingdom entrances. 

There is nobody like the Shinsuke Nakamura of this era, not even Shinsuke Nakamura.

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I remember when Jim Ross, calling his first Nakamura match, questioned how a guy who found inspiration in Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury could be such a badass. The issue with the question was JR’s definition of “badass,” by which he typically meant John Wayne. Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury did impossible things and made them look easy, using their bodies and voices to create art that, for many, transcended their medium.

Shinsuke Nakamura wasn’t Hulk Hogan or Antonio Inoki, but he is one of the wrestlers responsible for bridging the gap between Japanese wrestling and American audiences. For me, he was the wrestler, regardless of whether he was orchestrating a classic, letting loose during Fantasticamania, or laying low in six man tags. I love Tanahashi and Okada, but Nakamura’s magnetism is on another level, which is why WWE signed him.

So his New Japan theme hits, it’s 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome, and I know I’m in for a treat. Challenging him for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship (RIP) is Kazushi Sakuraba, the Gracie Killer, one of the most feared and respected catch wrestlers of all time. So of course, it’s Nakamura who challenges him instead of the other way around. Unorthodox. Fearless. 

Nakamura carried a 3-1-1 MMA record into this match, but that’s nothing to Sakuraba, whose experience as a shoot fighter eclipses most professional wrestlers of his stature. Watching this match, you get the sense that Nakamura is playing the underdog, especially early on when the “feeling out process” turns into a display of how capable Sakuraba is at maneuvering from position to position. He grabs a leg, he transitions to a waistlock, is forced into a rope break, and counters a Nakamura takedown that looks like the act of a man who knows he needs to control this match. Sakuraba takes Nakamura down with a double leg, goes for the cover, realizes that he can’t get Nakamura’s shoulders down, and struggles against Shinsuke’s body looking for something, anything, that he can grab hold of and inflict pain upon. It is breathless, beautiful, and has the feel of improvisation, just two highly skilled athletes testing each other out.

Then Nakamura slaps Sakuraba. 

This is a classic wrestling strategy, slapping the taste out of a more experienced technician’s mouth in an effort to break his concentration and move the match out of his realm. Ren Narita did something like this against Katsuyori Shibata at Wrestle Kingdom 16, stomping his teacher in the corner after enduring six or seven minutes of Shibata pressing his advantage rather easily. Ren Narita got stomped, though.

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This isn’t Nakamura’s fate. While the match moves into more of a back and forth pace from here, each man trading strikes, throws, and submissions, Nakamura’s slap disrupted the pace at which Sakuraba was wrestling. As great as Sakuraba is, within the confines of a professional wrestling ring, Nakamura has the advantage when the pace quickens, as he’s able to exploit little holes in Sakuraba’s chain wrestling. A particularly sweet exchange in that regard is Nakamura countering a key lock by rolling through it, which lands him in an arm bar, which he blocks until he can’t anymore, at which point he uses the momentum of Sakuraba winning the hold to spring up to his feet and hit a Boma-ye.

I may be using the phrase “chain wrestling” incorrectly, but I am not a fan of what some might call “legitimate” sports and I got a concussion once doing Brazilian Jujitsu in a mall, so my impression of it comes from the great sport of professional wrestling, particularly the early 2000s rivalry between Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit, which is often praised for its chain wrestling. I’ll be blunt: I think it kind of sucks. Their matches are great, but the opening three minutes where they’re maneuvering from hold to hold never struck me as great because Kurt Angle was an Olympic gold medalist and Chris Benoit was, by comparison, just an exceptionally trained technical wrestler, and the gap between the two was always evident. 

There is a skill gap here, too, but it doesn’t matter. The grappling here is far more influenced by MMA than freestyle wrestling, as Sakuraba’s relentless search for a hold was like watching someone douse a fire with a wet towel. He smothers Shinsuke Nakamura, but again, the pacing allows for Shinsuke to find holes, escape through them, and land bombs. 

It’s an incredible dynamic, much more fun than the heavyweight MMA “influenced” matches that plagued the early portion of Brock Lesnar’s WWE return. Here you are seeing a man do something unlikely if not impossible, leveraging his impulsiveness against the cracking calm of his opponent. Sometimes that means taking a knee to the face. Sometimes that means kneeing someone in the face. Sakuraba is surprised when he comes to after a Boma-ye puts him away, but he knows just as well as anybody else that you only need one good shot to win a wrestling match. Shinsuke Nakamura knows this, too. He never doubts his ability to land said shot. He was right to do so.