An Ace Who's Able To Change
How Hiroshi Tanahashi gambled with the audience's sentiments at Forbidden Door 2023
In honour of Forbidden Door season, here’s a detail from the Toronto edition that’s stuck with me for a year now.
On the June 24, 2023 episode of AEW Collision, the go home show on the eve of Forbidden Door, Hiroshi Tanahashi had a singles match against Swerve Strickland. It was a perfectly functional bit of business that managed to secure one of AEW’s rising stars a singles match for the history books against one of the all time greats and give uninitiated viewers a better look into who Tana is and what he’s about before he challenged MJF for the AEW World Championship the next night. There was, however, one awkward moment toward the end when the Ace climbs the turnbuckles to attempt his signature High Fly Flow.
And then this happens:
He recovers a few seconds later to land the HFF and go on to win, but that split second, but theres no taking that moment of weakness back.
Watching this live and lightly sauced from the very back of the Scotiabank Arena’s lower bowl, I assumed that this was a botch and winced accordingly. Every moment of his legendary and awe-inducing career in the ring makes itself known in how Tana moves today, and imperfect moments like this have become more common in his work over the past few years.
Watching and gif-ing it up close now, I’m more inclined to read it as intentional. It’s entirely possible that he decided to whiff it for the drama after briefly struggling with the footing. But the genesis of this moment is far less interesting to me than what he does with it.
It’s been about six and a half years since I first dipped my toe into the New Japan Pro Wrestling universe. For as long as I’ve been following it, I’ve been watching Tanashashi fight against what might shape up to be the last great rival of his active career: time. The earlier days of this feud mostly revolved around the idea that Tana wasn’t finished yet and could, given the right amount of work and heart at the right moment, still stand with the very best. This lead to some genuinely emotional and powerful moments, including Tana clawing his way back to the top to score what will likely be his final G1 tournament victory in 2018. But they were more recognizable beats for a pro wrestling story. What Tana’s been doing since “he’s still got it!” started to deteriorate into “has he still got it?” is far more rare and arguably more interesting.
Tana’s an incredibly smart wrestler for a number of reasons, including his ability to read crowds and work them based on what he’s learned about them. He’s clearly aware that the changes in his physical abilities have become a point of concern and consternation. And he’s done a wonderful job of folding both his limitations and the public opinion about them into his storytelling, playing on our expectations to maximum effect.
Whether he intentionally flung himself off that turnbuckle on Collision or time made that decision for him, that moment and all of the fallible humanity that it implied was lodged in the AEW fanbase’s mind leading into Forbidden Door.
And he milked it for all it was worth, making his unsure footing one of the main themes of his match against MJF.
Every ascent he attempts is fraught with very deliberately exaggerated peril.
English commentary underscores this problem by discussing the difference between the turnbuckle pads in NJPW vs AEW, and how Tana’s relative unfamiliarity might be working against him.
And Tana continues to work the hell out of newly unfolding adversity.
When he does nail the High Fly Flow, it’s a moment of relief as much as it is of triumph.
It also creates the space for MJF to be a corner cutting bastard.
And ultimately paves the way for his downfall.
This is a perfect example of why I find discussions about whether or not a wrestler is “washed” so boring and reductive. I’m far less concerned with what a wrestler can or can’t do than what they can do with what they can or can’t do. Wrestlers like Tana—and perhaps the true master of the genre, Tetsuya Naito—are telling far more compelling stories about limping into their twilight years than many are currently weaving about their prime. There will always be a part of me that will miss the Tanahashi we saw in the ring against a young, snot-nosed Okada, or making weird magic with Shinsuke Nakamura, but the one we have now has so much to offer us, too. And as long as he has the mind for wrestling, and the willingness to work with the tools currently at his disposal, he’ll be an ace-level talent worth watching.
On a barely related note, I also made a gif on Tana’s Forbidden Door entrance while I was revisiting the match, because that last point? That’s at me waving my Tana towel around in the crowd.
For an added added bonus, here’s me with my towel and empty ciders at Collision.
