Shinsuke Nakamura Runs Into Yoshihiro Takayama

Yoshihiro Takayama is a brick wall of a man. Taller than most of his competition, sturdy, and with the heaviest strikes one can imagine, he’s a physically imposing challenge worthy of the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, Shinsuke Nakamura, but also of the Tokyo Dome.

It’s a shame then that New Japan is in the state it’s in at this point in time. This match happens on January 4, 2010, just a couple of years before the massive resurgence of popularity that would make New Japan the can’t-miss promotion not only in Japan but anywhere in the world. They’re about to come out on the other side of the business woes of the previous decade, but they’re still hurting. Despite announcing an attendance of over 40,000 people, reports from Dave Meltzer’s Wrestler Observer Newsletter has the number at about half that. One can tell from how shadowed New Japan keeps the stands, never really granting us those same flashes of a packed stadium that made things like Vader/Inoki or Takada/Hashimoto so compelling. You can hear it too from the cheers, they never roar, instead they echo in the cavernous empty space.

And yet, it rules.

It is a simple formula, and one that’s worked for Nakamura in the Dome in the past. He’s thrown up against this massive beast of a man, and has to find a way to take him down. As great as Nakamura/Sapp or even the first iteration of this match was in the past though, we’re at a better time now wherein Takayama’s still operating close enough to the peak of his abilities while Nakamura’s own talents have actually caught up to his positioning on the card.

The result feels explosive.

Even early on, when Nakamura tentatively tries to chip away at Takayama’s leg, the cut off comes swift and brutal from the challenger. That first knee to the gut, the clubbing blows from Takayama set the tone for what’s to come down the stretch. It’s a matter of sheer power and will for Takayama, with Nakamura being forced to play into a more canny and precise mode of operations to get any headway going.

This becomes clearer when you note how they use their knees in this match. For Takayama, his knee strikes are blunt tools. Sledgehammer shots whose sheer concussive force can knock the soul out of the IWGP Champion. He batters Nakamura with these knee shots, whether catching him draped over the apron or smashing into the corner with them, they’re deadly blows that stop the dynamic champion in his tracks regularly.

The most notable example though, comes about halfway through the match. Nakamura charges in for a low takedown and Takayama flattens him with big knee right to the skull. It recalls a similar cut off Nakamura suffered at the hands of Alexey Ignashov in a shoot fight in K-1, and would be echoed later again in Nakamura’s famous bout against Kazushi Sakuraba. Here, it’s just as gross as the Sakuraba bout with Takayama landing such meaty blow that it’s a shock Nakamura’s able to continue.

Nakamura’s knees are a little more surgical in deployment.

In attempting to cut off Takayama, for example, one sees Nakamura pointedly targetting the head with his knee strikes. Even if it means forcing Takayama down by hand or leaping up to get it, Nakamura’s looking for a knock out blow to take the big man down.

He doesn’t get it in a flash though, instead the match is strucutred around Nakamura having to earn this thing. He tries the knees to open up Takayama for arm work, for example, but that cerebral approach doesn’t really stick. Nakamura’s best chances come from just throwing himself full force at Takayama. It’s a fascinating and compelling display of a wrestler being forced to give up strategy, and just well and truly gut it the fuck out.

Nakamura’s skill and cleverness are well and good, but it’s only heart and sheer raw determination that can get this done. You can’t use a scalpel to knock a brick wall down, you need a fucking wrecking ball.

Takayama forces this man to earn every bit of it. When Nakamura nuts up and throws a big punch right to the jaw in the corner, Takayama walks right through it and starts landing the shots himself, forcing Nakamura to just give it every goddamn thing left. To Nakamura’s credit, he rises to the occasion. There’s some crisp elbows but also some solid punches, and then those kicks and knees to bring him down. It’s not so much that Nakamura overwhelms Takayama, but the fact that he survives what he does—including a real gross headbutt in the midst of the flurry—just long enough to get those knees in speaks volumes.

It’s a wonderful display. Structure and execution-wise, in the vein of something like the best Aja Kong vs. Meiko Satomura matches, where the inevitability of the victor seems to turn on its head before the viewer even realizes. Before the bell rings, it’s Takayama having to reach into something deeper just to survive, rising like a horror movie monster after absorbing a Bomaye right to the face. He doesn’t last long after that, but he sure made the ride worth it.

Despite playing to a mostly hollow venue, a massive-feeling match. One where the sheer fundamental strength of the moment-to-moment action compensates for the failures of time and place.

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IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Misawa and Kawada have the benefit of both circumstance and timing on their side, not only wrestling a great match but wrestling it at the peak of their powers in the mid-90s, when All Japan was at its hottest. Here though, there’s just a stronger funamdental control of the space within a match. Takayama and Nakamura are concise and punchy, quite literally in fact. It’s a close call, and might switch on any given day, but for now we’ll give it to Nakamura and Takayama.

Rating: ****1/2