Shingo Takagi vs. Dragon Lee Is a Hoot and a Holler
Sometimes you watch a wrestling match and it just rips, no notes!
By the time 2019 rolled around, I was basically out on NJPW. Not gonna whine about the reasons why — certain things about it had become unappealing, and I had other things to watch, so I did. I think, therefore, that this is the first Shingo Takagi New Japan match that I’ve seen, and it is both a hoot and a holler. I tend to cringe a little at the prospect of hyped BOSJ matches from Korakuen Hall — after the one-two punch of Ospreay/Ricochet and Ospreay/Scurll, the tournament had become something of a referendum on the state of wrestling akin to PWG’s BOLA tournament when, in fact, the circumstances of neither tournament could be effectively replicated anywhere else without feeling like a Quibi Original take on something that, speaking frankly, kinda sucked shit — so imagine my relief, then, that this is just a straight, balls-to-the-wall match between a great champion (Lee) and a challenger (Shingo) who had yet to be defeated in his New Japan tenure.
“Just” is no slight — we’re eight nights into Best of the Super Junior XXVI, and a few months into Shingo’s run of dominance in the division, it’s a proper main event match, but it’s not trying too hard to stand out of its context. It sets up a nice potential story for a rematch, one where the champion learns from the mistakes he made his first time around and maybe slays The Dragon with the belt on the line, but I’m seeing here that this, in fact, never happened, so maybe it wasn’t just the pandemic that caused Gedo to lose his touch.
My favorite bit comes at the beginning of the match, when Lee stretches out his arm for a handshake and Shingo, after some posturing, does so, then uses his grip strength to crush Lee’s hand. It puts the champion on his back foot immediately, and effectively shows the difference between the two men, if you couldn’t tell just from looking at them. Shingo Takagi effectively dominates the whole match, too — Lee’s not helpless, and he goes on his runs, but from the handshake forward he is the underdog, and by the time the bell rings it’s clear that he’s maybe only tapped into about half of Takagi’s reserves.
They dig into this simply and effectively, with Takagi largely using his strength and weight advantage to bully Lee around and keep him on the mat. Early on, there’s a moment where Shingo is using the ropes to stand on and double stomp Dragon Lee, and while Shingo’s not a small man, he is a junior heavyweight, doing Big Man moves that most big men can’t make look all too convincing. He’s just on Lee’s chest and stomach, using the ropes for leverage, squeezing every bit out before stomping the shit out of him and squeezing again. His sentons, too — they look HEAVY and horrifying to take. You sigh when Lee avoids one early, then groan when he takes one full force.
It isn’t long before Dragon Lee is just eating bombs — he takes a DDT on the outside and things get more dire from there, to the point that the best he can do is fight Takagi off for a minute or two before taking whatever horrific thing he has in store for him, like an apron DDT he’s only able to wriggle out of once. Lee is hardly a pushover though, as his strikes are great and enough to effectively stagger Takagi enough that he’s not on the other end of a squash, but it’s the fact that he spends so much time getting thrown around that makes his comebacks so thrilling. The one towards the end of the match is maybe the most visually spectacular, but the one I really like is when Lee finds an opening for a dragon suplex, then uses the fact that Takagi left his feet to break his grip to quickly adjust for a bridging German for a nearfall. It’s smart, impactful wrestling that does a lot to show you that, despite being at a disadvantage, Dragon Lee is the champion for a reason — he loses nothing by losing this match, even cleanly.
When the match really starts to slip away from him and he goes into desperation mode, it’s those little moments of hope that really let you bite on the idea that he might pull a miracle — when Shingo goes to the well for a second time on a couple of moves, he finds himself at the other end of a couple of roll-ups and a crazy knee strike. But he’s too winded to keep things rolling after that — when Shingo sees the knee coming, he’s able to block it, and had he something else in mind other than charging full force at Lee with a Pumping Bomber, he might have won the match there, but instead Lee manages to check his chin one last time in spectacular fashion, hitting a German out of the dodge, followed by a standing knee strike, a poison rana, and a sitting knee strike, all of which is done expeditiously and with force, the pin attempt swift in its coming and the sort of thing you’d complain about a one count kickout for except that Takagi’s kicking out on instinct — he’s in it enough to know that his shoulders are off the mat, and that’s all a great wrestler needs to know to try to pop one off.
Had this been a transition to another 10 minutes of 50/50 wrestling to a conclusion I might feel differently, but instead it’s Dragon Lee’s last gasp. Another knee gets a two count, and rather than go for a third (and maybe the win), he decides to go for the Dragon Driver, which at this point in the match he doesn’t have the gas to do. Shingo matter of factly turns it into a Last of the Dragon and picks up the win. Nothing really deep to say here, just a total blast from front to back.
Rating: **** & 1/4