Hisaya Imabayashi: The Greatest Wrestler Who Can't Wrestle
In praise of DDT's resident Kermit the Frog figure.
I remember the first time I truly saw Hisaya Imabayashi.
It was February 17, 2019. After weeks of anticipation—and a fair amount of foreshadowing that things might go tits up—Pokotan, DDT’s answer to cute and ostensibly profitable mascots like Chiitan, had just made his debut in a 6 man tag match at Judgement 2019~DDT 22nd Anniversary~. And quite literally gotten its head kicked in.
The team of Keisuke Ishii, Kota Umeda, and Mizuki Watase spent the majority of the match’s eleven and a half minutes beating the shit out of the poor, adorable creature while its teammates, Danshoku Dieno and KUDO, largely failed to stem the flow of darkly funny brutality. And their opponents topped it off by knocking Pokotan’s head off to reveal a stunned and hapless Makoto Oishi before finishing him off.
It was all too much for the GM to bear. He stepped into the ring to scold Dieno, KUDO, and Oishi for their vibe-killing behaviour. But his voice almost immediately abandoned any semblance of sternness or authority in favour of broken squealing.
“What have you done? he wailed. “The whole point of mascots is fantasy and hope! Why is the person inside visible! Why is it a 40 year old middle aged man inside! Why is his head all fucked up! Say something that gives us hope!”
Dieno promised to do better next time and started crying. Imabayashi begged him to make sure Pokotan’s head stayed on next time and collapsed into sobs.
I’d been familiar with Imabayashi’s presence before this moment. I’d seen him at the various DDT events and press conferences I’d watched since I started following DDT the previous fall. And I recognized his face in older clips featuring his alter ego, Amon Tsurumi. But I had not, until that moment, been familiar with his game.
And I was thrilled to discover that there was a lot more where that pitiful display came from.
Pro wrestling is packed with on screen authority figures of various stripes, but I can’t think of anyone who fills the same role that Imabayashi’s character does. He’s not the overbearing big boss who exists primarily as fodder for rebellion and cathartic comeuppance or a snivelling and striving middle manager type causing trouble for the good guys. He isn’t a beloved wrestler who’s been temporarily placed in a GM role to give them something to do while they’re injured, either.
GM Imabayashi is a well-meaning but largely ineffective salaryman who is desperate to keep DDT just functional and appropriate enough to survive. Outside of his blood feud with The Pheromones, he’s not trying that hard to shut down anyone’s antics. For the most part, he seems at least partially onside. He just wants them to behave enough—and keep their assholes covered just enough—to allow matches to happen without ruining any lives or contracts. The closest comparison that I came come up with in any form of entertainment is Kermit the Frog trying to keep The Muppet Show in check.
Even if I am overlooking a similarly hapless figure in wrestling, I can’t imagine that anyone could play the role as well as Imabayashi. The man is a genuinely good actor, and he’s particularly gifted at playing pitiable for laughs. He knows how to push his voice to the point of breaking while he pleads for maximum comic effect. He’s able to make himself just relatable enough to invest in and wince along with while remaining tragic enough to laugh at. I never actively cheer for him to fail. I simply understand that this is the natural order of things and I can’t help but cackle when a troublemaker like Dieno or Sasaki makes him pay for his crimes against unrepentant fuckery. The only other performer that comes close to him in the field of pathetic comedy is James Smith, who played the sub-Willy Lowman-esque punchline of character Glenn Cullen on The Thick Of It. And Smith didn’t have the added challenge of making Glenn partially likeable.
Perhaps most importantly of all in wrestling, though, Imabayashi is also skilled in the art of physical comedy. Which means he can do all of the above while executing a perfectly timed crumple, pratfall, or roll around on the mat after yet another attack from his former arch enemies.
He also happens to have a great mind for wrestling. A mind that is inversely proportionate to the rest of his body when it comes to wrestling ability.
His series of matches and other encounters with TJPW head Tetsuya Koda are entertaining because they’re wrestling exchanges between two men with little to no physical skill whatsoever trying and failing at basic wrestling moves. But they’re also a genuinely fascinating insight into what can happen when two people who thoroughly understand what they’re doing can’t execute it to save their lives.
We will sometimes see talents in wrestling who have all of the physical skill in the world but no greater concept of or interesting in what they’re doing, but how often do we get to see matches with solid psychology and instincts attempted by fumbling men in their underpants?
If you are not yet familiar with Imabayashi’s game, there’s a particularly accessible entryway into his world for English speakers on the recent DDT/GCW Never Ending Noisy Story card. Part way through Dieno vs Effy, our beleaguered GM appears in the ring to plead in English with the horny rabble-rousers to “stop fucking around” and “fight seriously,” while the wrestlers completely ignore him and the commentary team laughs at him because he pronounces it “shiriously” and “shiri” means butt in Japanese.
Which, spoiler alert, is exactly what Imabayashi gets in the end.
