The Wrestling Bard 02.20.09: A Learning Experience

Posted by Aaron Hubbard on 02.21.2009

What watching a match from a different point of view made me realize.

"When you're finished changing, you're finished." –Benjamin Franklin

People have a tendency to take things for granted. Chances are, if something is a part of your everyday life, you won't pay as much attention to it as you do the things that aren't part of the norm. And when something first starts (a job, a new girlfriend/boyfriend), it seems fresh and exciting, and you pay a lot of attention to it. But once that job becomes a career and that girlfriend/boyfriend becomes your spouse, some of the excitement is lost. I'm extremely guilty of this. Things that are a part of my everyday life (school, work, family, friends, God) are often ignored as I search for the next big high, the next thing that will make my life bigger.

Wrestling is one of those things I take for granted. Wrestling has been a part of my life for so long that I cannot remember a time when I wasn't a fan, nor can I imagine a time when I won't be a fan. For nearly two decades, Aaron Hubbard and professional wrestling go hand in hand. If you were to ask anybody that knew me, wrestling would be in the first three things you hear about me. I'm "The Wrestling Guy". And as such, I take wrestling for granted a LOT of the time.

I've learned something though. Those things that become a part of our everyday lives don't stop being important. At the end of the day, I still love my job, my family, my friends, God, and wrestling. I might take them for granted sometimes, but they are extremely important. Otherwise, I wouldn't have allowed them to become part of my everyday life. I've also learned that no matter how familiar you are with something or someone, you never know everything about that person or thing. Sometimes you even learn things about yourself by learning about those things that you take for granted.

This is a somewhat long anecdote to describe a strange feeling I had this week. I was reviewing Ring of Honor's very first Pay Per View, Respect is Earned, (which will be available to read soon) and more specifically, a match between Naomichi Marufuji and Rocky Romero. Usually, when I watch a match, I'm watching it for the sake of being entertained (which is how I think wrestling should be watched 90% of the time), but this time, I was watching as a critic, not looking for flaws, but being aware of them. During the reviewing this match, I learned a few new things about wrestling and about myself that have been most enlightening.

I'd watched this match several times before this, and I'd enjoyed it tremendously, and rated it at around ***1/2. I'm a complete mark for Naomichi Marufuji, who I believed, based on talent alone, to be the best Jr. Heavyweight in the world. A lot of people will say it's KENTA or Bryan Danielson. I'd be hard pressed to make a case against Bryan, but I don't feel the need to clarify Bryan because in my opinion (read that again, just to make sure you get it) he is the best in-ring talent in the world, PERIOD. As for KENTA, I've always said that he's a bunch of kicks and some solid Japanese quasi-finishers. Oh, and Go To Sleep. That's not a complaint, just an observation.

Anyway, I liked this match because Naomichi was in and brought his working boots on. Naomichi is somewhat notorious for bringing less than his A Game when he goes outside of Japan (more on that later), but this was a little different. Naomichi busted out the dragon screw in the ropes, his superkicks, his Shiranui (Sliced Bread #2 or "The Kendrick" for the uninitiated), and his coast-to-coast springboard dropkick. Romero, who is one of my least favorite wrestlers, also worked his butt off in this match. I actually said that this was the best match he had had of his own accord, as opposed to being carried. I had no complaints about the match and I was ready to talk about how great this match was.

And then, I sat down to review it. And when I watched it with a mind that was more attentive and aware, I noticed a few things that really pissed me off about the match, and I was very surprised at the source of my anger.

Rocky Romero, as I've said, is pretty high on my "hate list". In fact, it's a good thing Ruckus showed up and I have someone that I hate even more. At best, Romero is a poor man's Low Ki (or Kaval or whatever he's going by now). He throws a lot of kicks and does some solid submission work. However, his kicks are nowhere near as crisp or as stiff as Low Ki, and he does not have the creativity to switch them up. More than that, Romero has consistently lacked any consistency in his offense. He'll be working an arm for an armbar and start throwing kicks at the legs or head. He also has a tendency to ignore logic in selling. Case in point, in this match, Romero had his legs worked on for a good portion of the match, but still worked in his kicks and a springboard tornado DDT, and the Diablo Armbar (flying armbar takedown from the top rope). Most wrestlers aren't Bret Hart when it comes to selling, but Romero is noticeably patchy.

However, the circumstances surrounding this match with Marufuji were different. Romero and Marufuji were the second match on the card of Ring of Honor's first PPV. The first had been a four minute match that was there to put over then champion Takeshi Morishima as a dominant force. These guys had the first long, competitive match on ROH PPV. It was their job to show fans the ROH style and let fans know that Ring of Honor offered an ALTERNATIVE to sports entertainment. That's a heck of a task to put on two men's shoulders. Romero rose to the occasion, and gave one of his best performances. Romero worked the arm smartly and consistently, showcased his offense, and left it all in the ring. I may think the guy is the definition of average, but hey, I applaud effort, and I respect Romero for his work on that night.

So basically, I watched this match expecting to crap all over Romero's performance, but I was surprised that, outside of his patchy selling, I really had nothing to complain about from him. By contrast, Marufuji did something in this match that really, REALLY irked me. He did not sell his arm. I'm not talking about "fighting through the pain", or even Romero's patchy selling. I mean that Marufuji didn't even acknowledge that Romero had worked the arm. Not even once. He didn't grab his arm, he didn't shake it, he just refused to sell it.

Why does this bug me so much? It's really simple. If Naomichi had been wrestling say, KENTA, he would have damn sure sold the arm, and most likely for the entire match. Naomichi was refusing to sell for Romero because he believes himself to be way out of Romero's league. He may in fact be, but that is no excuse. Don't believe me? Romero's finishers are the Diablo Armbar, the Tiger Suplex, and KO Kick. Romero hit all of them and Marufuji didn't kick out. And then he hits a pair of nice superkicks and a single Shiranui and wins? Man, way to make Romero look like a threat there. And when I realized how angry I was at this, I realized that my real issue was the Japanese hierarchy system.

In Japanese wrestling, there is a hierarchy. Japan is serious about the "paying your dues", and there is no main event talent in Japan that does not deserve his or her spot. The problem is that Japan often neglects its "diamonds in the rough". That's why names like Mitsuharu Misawa and Keiji Mutoh are still winning world titles, despite both of them being past their primes. Ric Flair might have overstayed his welcome, but how many world titles did he win upon coming back to WWE in 2002? Um, yeah, NONE. When you look at the list of GHC Heavyweight Champions from NOAH, only two (Naomichi Marufuji and Takeshi Morishima) were homegrown stars, and their reigns are considered to be two of the lowlights of the GHC Heavyweight's short history. No disrespect to Jun Akiyama or Kenta Kobashi (who were and still are amazing wrestlers), but does Mitsuharu Misawa still need to be winning world titles?

Anyway, the same applies to Marufuji. Marufuji is one of the top Jr. Heavyweight's in the world, and is also booked as one of the top Jr. Heavyweight's in the world. He's had to work to get there, and he's earned his spot. But now that he's there, he has an ego that tells him that he doesn't have to sell for opponents that "aren't in his class". Now, Romero may not be in his class, but he deserves at least a little respect. And what about Marufuji's debut in the U.S.? When he wrestled Bryan Danielson (who absolutely is on Marufuji's level as an athlete, even if he's not booked that way in Japan) he also neglected to sell any of Bryan's legwork. And he does this to every gaijin he wrestles. Marufuji wrestles with an ego, and not because his character has an ego. The best thing I can compare it too is the ego that Triple H wrestles with. Triple H always works his butt off to make sure he has a great performance, but how often does he go out of his way to make sure his opponent looks good? MAYBE half of the time.

Compare this to KENTA. You can go back three weeks ago to my column and see KENTA wrestle Kotaro Suzuki, a wrestler who is MUCH lower on the totem pole than KENTA. Yet he puts over his offense and has a competitive match with him. Whenever KENTA wrestles in the U.S., he always pays respect to them in the ring, be it Bryan Danielson or Delirious. While I don't think he is as versatile as Marufuji, KENTA goes out of his way to make his opponent look good. And that's something I really, REALLY respect about him.

Why do I respect that so much? It goes back to my opinion of who the GOAT is, Ric Flair. Now, Ric had great ring skills, but he takes second to Shawn and Bret, among others. He has great charisma, but Austin and the Rock have him beat. He had the look, but Hogan and Sting had a better look. He could cut a great promo, but Piper and Foley are probably better. But he has all of these traits, and no weak points. Another trait he had was this: No matter who he was wrestling, whether it was Harley Race or "Curtain-Jerker" Smith, Dusty Rhodes or Joey Jobber, Ricky Steamboat or Johnny Boots-and-Tights, Ric went out of his way to bring out the very best in his opponent. If a wrestler's stock was not increased by wrestling Ric Flair, he looked at is a failure. This philosophy has been adhered to by all the greats. Lou Thesz, Ricky Steamboat, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, The Rock, and Eddie Guerrero. Even John Cena follows this philosophy.

So when I see guys like Marufuji, Great Muta, Hulk Hogan, or Triple H wrestle with an ego that says, "I'm better than you are", it lowers them in my eyes. I'm not taking away from the talents of these individuals, but the selfishness that they display on a regular basis is somewhat depressing. I never noticed it before, but you learn something new everyday, be it about wrestling, or how you feel about wrestling.

So that was my brief learning experience from this week. Take what you will from it.

Weekly! Wrestling!
As promised, here is Nigel McGuiness vs. Go Shiozaki. Now you can see why the fans of workrate love McGuiness so much. I don't care that some people may not know he is, what matters is that I know who is. And yeah, Go's pretty great too.





Thanks for reading, now read everything else. Including Jake Chambers, who may very well have written the best article of his 411 writing career this week.