Evan and Colette Discuss Shingo Takagi vs. Dragon Lee
PLUS: Goldberg talk! Hot Takes Month comes to BIG EGG!
Welcome, one and all, to the end of our run of guest posts! Joseph is back from vacation and I am a week into surgery recovery, so it’s time for the two of us to kick off our second year properly with HOT TAKES MONTH! Before we get there, though, I want to once again shout out our guests this month: Please go back and read Orchid Cugini and Robert Newsome’s essays if you haven’t, check out Live, Laugh, Liger Bomb and The Atomic Elbow, and, if you haven’t yet, prep your ad blocker and revisit this week’s match, selected by the one and only Evan Minsker of see/saw!
UP NEXT: I thought it would be really fun to do a month on critically acclaimed wrestling matches that one of us isn’t so hot on, and lo HOT TAKES MONTH was born. Thank Joseph for the modern classics on this list, and feel free to start beefing with me in advance about the Unbreakable Three Way and Shawn/Taker. Will hatred win the day, or have our hearts gone soft? Find out!
Colette Arrand
Shingo Takagi's NJPW run always seemed like something I'd be into, but I never really had a reason to dig into it until you picked this match. I think your essay does a wonderful job of going into why this speaks to you some five years later, and you'll be thrilled to hear that Joseph and I are gonna cover Shingo vs. Ospreay, which will likely be one of the most frustrating things I ever watch for this blog knowing where I stand on Ospreay. Rather than delve into why, I figured I'd ask if this was the peak of Shingo's junior heavyweight run for you, and what else about him/that time appeals to you.
Evan Minsker
It’s so sick that you all are going to talk about the Shingo and Ospreay match, which I won’t get into too much but suffice to say I am not into Ospreay and am obsessed with this era of Shingo. To answer your question, the Dragon Lee match is the high point of the tournament for me in some ways just based on where I literally was in my life (per the essay), and that entire Best of Super Juniors run was the peak of the Shingo juniors run for me. That’s not saying much, I guess—he pivoted into the heavyweight division right after this and I'm honestly completely unfamiliar with his Dragon Gate work prior. I think I was predisposed to love Shingo because he debuted as a member of Los Ingobernables de Japon, and with the exception of Hiromu Takahashi being out on injury, this was the ultimate era of LIJ for me. Tetsuya Naito was my fucking dude: sick finisher and the “don’t give a fuck” persona felt pretty singular. I was also into spooky moody apathetic goth hoss EVIL and SANADA’s awful fucking beard. What a terrible beard, holy shit.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to BIG EGG to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
 | A guest post by
|