Fuji Yamada and Mark Rollerball Rocco Define the Future of Professional Wrestling
Fuji Yamada and Mark Rollerball Rocco Define the Future of Professional Wrestling
And not just in the sense that Yamada will soon be Jushin "Thunder" Liger
William Regal often tweets about Mark “Rollerball” Rocco’s prowess as a heel. He was 18 when he competed in World of Sport with him, a literal babyface who once teamed up with Rocco’s opponent in this match, Fuji Yamada, who is, of course, better known as Jushin “Thunder” Liger. Regal’s thesis is that the aggressive cruiserweight style whose lineage traces back to Tiger Mask and The Dynamite Kid and has been a backbone of wrestling around the world for some 40-plus years can also be traced back to wrestlers like Rocco and Marty Jones, the rings of World of Sport.
He’s not wrong. I don’t necessarily buy into the notion that wrestling in the 1980s was some stolid, lumbering thing crying out for reinvention, but when I look to eras of creativity and progress, I often settle here, in a decade defined by Hulkamania, which was far wider spread than just the United States. In the 1980s, you have Masa Fuchi and Atsushi Onita taking part in a Tupelo concession stand brawl. You have Gran Hamada laying down the foundation of lucharesu. You have Tiger Mask and his rivals, Dynamite Kid and Black Tiger, who is, of course, Mark Rocco. You also have the beginnings of wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero, Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, Bret and Owen Hart, William Regal, Fit Finlay, and many, many others.
Central to this blossoming style was travel. I don’t need to tell you how learning excursions work, but what unites every name in the previous paragraph is that they didn’t just make towns, they made countries. The United States, England, Mexico, Japan, Germany, Canada–these were all fertile ground in the world of professional wrestling, each with their own quirks and tricks-of-the-trade that worked to enrapture wrestling fans. “Wrestling as a universal language” is a tired cliché, in part because it’s true. But after the 1980s, as American wrestling companies got more insular. Look at a guy like The Great Muta, at one point a top draw capable of feuding with Ric Flair, then, eventually, teaming with The Insane Clown Posse, all while remaining one of the most over acts in his native country.
I’ve now written a lot without really talking about this match, so let me come to the point: there is a certain romance to meetings like this, until recently, was really only kept alive by promotions like Ring of Honor and CHIKARA. I am glad that it is back, that there are companies successfully experimenting and finding success with bringing in luchadors and wrestlers from Japan as opposed to wasting years of their career in developmental. All of this is happening against the backdrop of a product that owes more to matches like this one than Hulk Hogan, so it’s easy (for me at least) to lose sight of that, but when you go back this far, when you watch the kind of wrestling Chris Hero used to have to import tapes to watch, you get something that really pops.
I love this match. It’s a gem before the bell even rings, an enraged Rocco pawing at Yamada, trying to psych out the young man he lost his championship to, though I suspect he wouldn’t mind his blows landing. Then the bell rings and his aggression and fire are immediately turned against him by the coolheaded Yamada, who asserts control over Rocco until he scoots to the outside. Classic heel vs. face psychology, the sort of thing that works now and will still work when all of us are long dead.
The thing about a wrestler like Rocco is that he doesn’t need to play this so underhanded. He’s an extremely gifted wrestler, and one who is just as rotten and mean-spirited when he’s on the level. His knee drop, early in the match, is as vicious as anybody’s, his hammerlocks and arm-wringers doled out with the intensity intrinsic to the setup of a finishing hold like the LeBell Lock. That he cheats makes him loathsome. He’s good at it, too. If I were someone wrestling in ROH’s Pure Rules division, I would put a keen eye to the way Rocco puts Yamada’s body between him and the referee so he can punch Yamada in the ribs.
Rocco is louder about his disdain for Yamada throughout the match, employing the finishing holds of Antonio Inoki and Riki Choshu while calling them out by name. It’s Choshu’s powerlock in particular that signals a sea change in this match, an extended period of control for Rocco where he snapmares Yamada into the ropes and catches him with a kneebreaker, focusing on the leg just after Yamada used them to execute a flying elbow drop with Rocco half the ring away. It is smart, fast, and mean, three of the best things a wrestling match can be.
I haven’t said much about Yamada, but that’s because Rocco is such an engaging heel. He never stops moving, never ceases in finding new points of attack against his opponent, physically and psychologically. During a round break (which is much less an impediment to getting into World of Sport than you’d think, if you’re unfamiliar), he picks up the championship belt and starts taunting his opponent and the crowd with it. Pure heat. Sheer hubris, too. Believing he has Yamada where he wants him, he claps for himself before whipping Yamada into the ropes, but the defending champion executes a standing switch and a German suplex in lightning quick fashion and gains the first fall.
For the first time since their opening exchange, Rocco finds himself at a disadvantage, but he’s too smart to fall for the “Yamada Special,” a blind crossbody from the corner, at a relatively early point in the match. Here’s where I’d like to shift my focus to Yamada. Everybody knows him as Jushin Liger, one of the most thrilling, effusive wrestlers in history. Clad in a head-to-toe bodysuit modeled after the Jushin Liger anime, Liger far outlived its influence, as Keiichi Yamada’s combination of technical and areal prowess, magnetism, and selling transcended whatever “limitations” his garb presented.
Again, I’m telling you something you already know, but how marvelous Liger was in the ring cannot be overstated. Here, three years into his career, you can see that he has a lot of that package put together. He’s a firework waiting to burst. Eighteen minutes into this match, he’s at a point where whatever speed advantage he has over Rocco (and it isn’t much of one) no longer matters. He is functioning on second winds, Rocco ragdolling him to the outside whenever he lands a bomb like a flying dropkick.
You want to see the kid win, and it’s not just because Rocco is such an effective villain. He’s too exciting to deny on offense, and otherworldly sympathetic when he’s in trouble. Look at the pain etched on his face when he finds himself trapped in a Canadian backbreaker, a minute after being whipped into the exposed metal of the turnbuckles:
He’s as good as Ricky Steamboat, and without Steamboat’s now oft-imitated tic of staggering around like the protagonist of a boxing movie. Liger’s selling, as you can see in this match, is as much about his body as his face. The way he fights against his leg. The way he’s sucking in air. You can see Liger’s mouth and his eyes under the bodysuit, you are trained as a fan to look at a wrestler’s face to gauge his pain, and Liger does that well, but he isn’t just clutching at his neck or his back to signal pain, he carries himself like a man who will wake up tomorrow wracked with bruises and contusions.
Rocco’s willingness to cheat is his undoing. Once Rocco unties the turnbuckle pad and successfully whips Yamada into it, that’s all she wrote. It’s a short reign, one that Rocco calls a fluke, but luck has nothing to do with his success, now or in the future. Keiichi Yamada is here to stay. Like Rollerball Rocco, he has the future to define.