Tetsuya Naito “El Ingobernable”

The leader of Los Ingobernables de Japón began his career as a babyface but this persona wasn’t received well by the Japanese audience. It just didn’t feel genuine . In 2013, he won New Japan’s G1 Climax tournament. Winning this prize usually guarantees the victor the main event at Wrestle Kingdom, the Japanese equivalent of Wrestlemania. That year, Naito’s match was voted to be moved to the semi-main event instead of its rightful place. After losing this scrimmage, he left Japan embarrassed, detested and defeated. He arrives in the Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre promotion in Mexico. There, he learns Spanish and joins Los Ingobernables, a heel faction. The group is successful and it seems a change of location/character is just what the wrestler needed. Tetsuya Naito returns to Japan with a brand new attitude. He decides to continue Los Ingobernables success in his home country. Thus, Los Ingobernables de Japón (aka LIJ)was born.

BUSHI “Jet Black Death Mask”

Bushi was one of the first members to join Naito’s new faction. He too, spent time perfecting his skills in South America before returning to NJPW and was the first member of the group to hold a title under the LIJ moniker.

Hiromu Takahashi “Time Bomb”

Hiromu Takahashi joins the group soon after, becoming the youngest “pareja” in the group. He actually trained under Naito as an apprentice and continues to be his most loyal disciple. In fact, Hiromu was the first person Naito suggested the idea of ever starting LIJ to.

SANADA “Cold Skull”

Sanada debuts as a pareja in 2016, almost immediately adding heavyweight gold to the groups repertoire by way of aiding Naito in winning the International Wrestling Grand Prix (IWGP) Heavyweight championship.

Shingo Takagi “Rampage Dragon”

Shingo is the most recent addition to the group and the only member that did not train under New Japan’s “Young Lion” training program. He brought a sense of diversity and newness to the group. His fiery personality has created some tension between him and Naito. That being said, nothing has come from this tension besides healthy competition~~~yet 😉

Evil “King of Darkness”

Evil (yes, Evil) was the very first member of LIJ before they were even calling themselves by that name.Takaaki Watanabe was returning from excursion; the final step in the Young Lions training program. He aligned with his good friend from his training days, Tetsuya Naito. They made their partnership official when Watanabe helped Naito cheat to win an important match. After the occurrence, Naito announced that Takaaki Watanabe would now be known as Evil, dubbing him the King of Darkness. Evil was there through it all and was thought to be as loyal to Naito as Hiromu is. While Evil was not Naito’s apprentice, he was still named by him, rose to popularity at his right hand, and was viewed as a Naito production. LIJ was known for never letting their individual goals create discourse within the group; however, their image as a collective force was ruined. In 2020, to the surprise of a worldwide audience, Evil betrayed Naito, leaving LIJ in order to join the Bullet Club, another heel group in New Japan. I will discuss the Bullet Club more as well as the aftermath of this betrayal in my next blog entry.

There is no better example of the coercive power that the wrestling industry has than in the career of Antonio Inoki. As I mentioned in the previous entry, he was trained by the equally, if not more iconic, Rikidozan before participating in the Japanese Wrestling Association. His matches were consistently well received by audiences all across Japan. Inoki became so popular that he was elected into the Japanese House of Counselors twice!

The most notable part of his political career was when he managed to negotiate with Saddam Hussein for the release of forty-one Japanese hostages in the early nineties. He successfully  freed the hostages with his impressive social skills, an important skill to have when climbing up in the wrestling industry. He completed the negotiations whilst hosting a wrestling event in Baghdad, Iraq called スポーツと平和の祭典 which translates to “The Festival of Sports and Peace”. Inoki also had a momentous wrestler vs boxer match against Mohammed Ali that led to the invention and popularization of Mixed Martial Arts. This match is what helped establish their connection come time for Collision in Korea.

Kota Ibushi receiving a “Fighting Spirit Slap”

Super fans of Inoki are known for asking the wrestler to slap them. This unique request began after a video was released of Inoki striking down a fan who’d attempted to punch him. After the fan received the million dollar smack he found his footing and bowed to Inoki, thanking him for the “gift”. The sanctified slap is known to the fans as the “Fighting Spirit Slap”. Antonio Inoki triumphantly retired on April 4th, 1998 in a match against Don Frye in front of a crowd of over seventy thousand people. He also retired from politics in 2013 and now resides in New York. 

Jumping back a little to the time after Antonio finished honing his craft in the JWA, he quickly founded New Japan Pro Wrestling, the most prestigious Asian wrestling promotion in the world. Dozens of notable wrestlers have passed through New Japan including Hulk Hogan, Dynamite Kid, Tiger Mask, etc. Antonio’s legacy lives on through the growth of the company and the many people he trained including Shinsuke Nakamura, Brian Adams, Rocky Romero, Minoru Suzuki, The Great Muta, and Riki Choshu. 

The company is approaching its fiftieth year of operations and is showing no signs of slowing down. They’ve shown great efforts to continue forwarding the brand’s reputation especially during the pandemic. They managed to host one hundred forty live events during 2020 despite interference from the pandemic and held their “Resurgence” pay-per-view at the Los Angeles Coliseum in August. In my next blog entry I plan to discuss my favorite wrestlers from the New Japan roster: Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI, SANADA, Hiromu Takahashi and Shingo Takagi. Together these men are known as Los Ingobernables de Japon.

New Japan Pro Wrestling Logo

Today we’re going to begin our second “unit” about wrestling so to speak. My next round of journal entries will revolve around eastern wrestling, specifically the Japanese style of wrestling called Puroresu. Puroresu is also referred to as “Strong Style” because it is known for having  harder strikes and less theatrics than the American/western style of wrestling. The most popular Japanese wrestling promotion is New Japan Pro Wrestling aka Japanese WWE. The company was founded in 1972 by Antonio Inoki,

Antonio Inoki

arguably the most influential Japanese wrestler of all time. This story involves a pay per view where Inoki starred in the main event: “The Pyongyang International Sports and Culture Festival for Peace” or, as it was called in the US, “Collision in Korea”. 

Collision in Korea, as its name suggests, was held in Pyongyang, North Korea and boasts the record for the highest attended pay per view wrestling event in history. An astonishing 355,000+ people were in attendance over two nights, April 28th and 29th, 1995. At the time, Antonio Inoki was both a political official and a wrestler. To boost his reputation amongst North Korean dictator at the time, Kim Jong-il, he came up with the idea to host a New Japan event for North Korean citizens. Surprisingly, Kim Jong-il responded well to this idea and suggested inviting Mohammed Ali to the event. I’m not sure if he understood that Mohammed Ali was not a kayfabe wrestler but he was receptive of the idea nonetheless.

Antonio Inoki, Ric Flar, and Mohammed Ali arriving in North Korea

After Inoki found out Jong-il was allowing an American into the country, Inoki decided to book his New Japan wrestlers against a list of notable American wrestlers at the time. He wanted to ensure that this event showcased the best that wrestling had to offer considering most North Koreans had never witnessed wrestling before.

Rikidozan

The few that had would only be familiar with Rikidozan, a North Korean native sumo wrestler who somehow got involved in western wrestling before reinterpreting it into puroresu. I apologize if that last sentence was a lot to take in but it’s true. Rikidozan established the second most popular style of kayfabe wrestling while he was squatting in Japan in the 1950s. He then went on to train a generation of Japanese talents including Antonio Inoki which is how the North Korean connection was formed in the first place. Apparently, a young Kim Jong-il was fascinated by Rikidozan and, in turn, was fascinated by Inoki for being his protégé.

Now was this pay per view actually any good? Not really. While the matches were fine and the crowd turnout was high, the crowd’s reactions were very disappointing. Jong-il had made the event mandatory which put a damper on things. Additionally, the crowd had no idea who they should be rooting for and were apprehensive about cheering on the wrong opponents. The American wrestlers involved had awful and unwelcoming experiences, with Ric Flair even kissing the ground after landing back on US soil. In short, Collision in Korea was a memorable failure as Inoki wasn’t even able to secure any deals with North Korean officials. I’ll talk more about his life and career in my next entry about the legendary Antonio Inoki.

For this blog entry I’m going to stray a bit away from my usual structure and discuss three times when real world problems found their way into the kayfabe world.

Cactus Jack and his son Dewey Foley

Cane Dewey 

In wrestling, a “promo” is the equivalent of a monologue. They usually take place before or after important matches and they are the wrestler’s chance to speak directly to the audience. It’s common for their real emotions to come through while delivering these promos despite them still being partially in character. Whenever this happens, it is called a “shoot”. Cactus Jack, a wrestler who was working for ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) delivered a heartbreaking promo about a sign that he saw a fan holding up during one of his matches. During this, he shot on the owner of the company, the ECW fans, and the wrestling industry in general. Written on the fan’s sign were the words “Cane Dewey”.  Dewey being the name of Cactus Jack’s three year old son. ECW was known for their violent matches that occasionally included wrestlers caning each other. Having to continue performing for an audience who would take the time to write something like that, caused Jack to question why he became a wrestler in the first place. 

Matt Hardy vs Edge

Wrestlers Matt Hardy and Edge had one of the most fascinating feuds of the early 2000s, probably because they were actually at odds with each other. Matt was in a relationship with a female wrestler named Lita both in real life and on screen. Unfortunately he was out with an injury and his backstage friend Edge agreed to accompany Lita while she remained on the road with the WWE. Through spending this time together, Edge and Lita began seeing each other behind Matt’s back. He found out about it and posted a shoot rant about how betrayed he felt. Word got around to the company bookers and instead of pretending the events never occurred they included the cheating scandal into the Kayfabe storyline. Edge and Lita became major heels and Matt was a relatable babyface that the crowd wanted to get his revenge. All three of them have said that including this into their characters was unpleasant but somewhat therapeutic. 

CM Punk’s Pipebomb 

The pipe bomb is a part of my top ten promos of all time. After the Curtain Call, it is the most notable Kayfabe break in wrestling history. CM Punk even says “I’m breaking the fourth wall” while waving directly at the camera. Essentially, he was fed up with how his career was being treated by WWE’s owner, Vince McMahon (something very popular amongst several wrestlers). He shot on the “ass-kissing” that went on backstage claiming notorious wrestlers Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and John Cena got to their positions not because of their talent in the ring, but because they were good at politicking to backstage officials. The most notable part of this promo is that he used The Rock’s real name, Dwanye, which doesn’t even exist in the Kayfabe world.