It's All About the Thumbtacks, Baby
It's All About the Thumbtacks, Baby
The razor blades are sick too.
TW: Images of razor blade wounds
I’m a sucker for a good chair riot. Longtime fans of pro wrestling will have definitely seen their fair share of them through the years. Even if you don’t dig too deep, a clip of one of the classic ones from ECW will certainly find their way to you. For a fan of a certain generation of indie wrestling, there’s a few notable examples from ROH—the Second City Saints vs. The Prophecy and Homicide vs. Necro Butcher come to mind for me. Sickos like me remember the recent one in the Mad Dog Connelly/Jake Lander match from last year.
There’s an innate sense of danger to them. Heavy steel is flying very quickly into the ring, and who knows who it might hit. Fan and wrestler alike are vulnerable in an uncontrolled situation. Even after the dust settles, there’s still the fact that now the ring canvas is covered in steel. No matter where you bump, it’s going to hurt, and that’s not even going into the much more mundane danger of walking and running on an uneven surface covered in hard edges. It heightens the tension on every move because now even something simple and fundamental can come across as devastating.
Jun Kasai and Jaki Numazawa don’t do a chair riot here. But the thumbtacks achieve similar things.
About halfway through the match, when Numazawa dumps a bucketful of thumbtacks and spreads them around the ring, it changes the whole complexion of the match. What had been a rather ho-hum, dare I say, house show-level effort up to that point no has a little more edge to it. Or rather, a lot more very sharp points to it.
I think what I love about the thumbtacks is just how relatable they are to most viewers. Most of humanity will never know what it is to be slammed onto steel (I’d certainly hope), but we’ve all been pricked. Whether by a thumbtack, staple, thorn, whatever it may be, that’s a sensation that all of us can relate to. Multiply that out by the thousands, and it’s clear to see why the ring canvas drowning in thumbtacks makes for such an effective storytelling tool in the latter half of this match.
It’s also only in that stage of the match that we really get to see the qualities of Jun Kasai that I enjoy the most. The danger of the situation seems to flip a switch in him, and he becomes this real charismatic force gleefully working his way through the danger of it all. Outside of the kiss that opens the match, it’s a spark that’s just somewhat lacking in the opening moments.
This is my first ever Numazawa match, and to be honest, I didn’t come away with a very strong impression of the guy. I don’t know what that really says about him in a broader sense, but from this viewing, he just didn’t leave me with much.
Besides, it’s Kasai who wins the match anyway and gives us all the best visuals from it. Despite my focus on the thumbtacks, the prop that actually informs a lot of this match’s reputation is the razor blade board. I’ve seen similar weapons used in the time since this match, sometimes reprising the razor blades, other times replacing them with knives or something else. Of the examples I’ve seen, this might be the most satisfying visual result of the bump onto the weaponry. The slices along Kasai’s back are clear as day, captured perfectly by the ringside camera. It’s a nice pay off to the carnage promised at the start of the match before the thumbtacks come into play.
There’s just enough here that I enjoyed that I feel good calling it a good match, but I think great is probably a bit of a stretch.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? No.
Rating: ***1/4