Who Cares if Tetsuya Naito is "Washed" or Not?
Maybe the real Forbidden Door is the gateway to other fans' perspectives.
I had no plans for an immediate followup when I mentioned that Tetsuya Naito might be the master of the Allegedly Washed Wrestlers Who Are Telling Compelling Stories About Their Evolving Physical Abilities genre in last week’s newsletter.
I actually woke up this morning ready to write about another Tetsuya. (We’ll get to him again soon enough.)
But I was catching up on Forbidden Door over breakfast, as one does, and something caught my eye that I couldn’t shake.
Approximately three minutes into the IWGP World Heavyweight Title match, champion Jon Moxley slams the challenger, Tetsuya Naito, into the Spanish announce table. He mounts him, throws some punches, and showboats before rolling back into the ring and cockily waiting for what’s left of Naito to join him there.
Approximately four minutes into the match, Naito flops off the table and onto the floor. Then he looks at the camera and does this:
My first thought was “It’s weird that none of the 390458394058 comments I read about how little effort or care Naito put into this match seemed to mention that he was still very much being Naito and doing the things I love to watch Naito doing.”
My second was “Ohhhh, I think I understand the disconnect between the ‘Naito is washed’ camp and the rest of us now.”
As far as I can tell, the anti-Naito argument is that he should no longer be a main eventer because he no longer has the strength, mobility, speed, and reaction time that they believe is required to produce a successful wrestling match.
For a lot of Naito’s most invested fans, though, those physical attributes, and all of the tide-turning Glorias, crisp Destinos, and harrowing bumps they were able to produce, were a pleasant bonus feature. The main attraction has always been his ability to convey—and elicit—emotion.
As I best I understand it, there are three key things that the Naito faithful need from his big matches: 1. Look cool in a suit; 2. Struggle; 3. Be a bit of a dick about it.
His Forbidden Door match checked all of those boxes.
We are not in denial about his current state. (If anything, we’re probably more familiar with the situation than the people who are hand-wringing about his condition now, because we’re the ones dedicated enough to have watched the documentary that includes footage of his treatments. We have literally seen the fluid being drained from his knees!) It just hasn’t been detrimental to any of the aspects of his work that we value the most.
If anything, his current condition, and his willingness to lean into it, augments #2.
This isn’t a new development or a coping mechanism, either. This is something that his most ardent and detail-oriented fans have been saying and celebrating for a large chunk of his career now. Years before anyone started questioning his ability to nail the Destino, his diminishing ability to perform the Stardust Press was already and important part of his ongoing story that lead to some truly breathtaking moments of triumph and tragedy.
Back in 2019, at a time when he was still putting on frequent 5 star bangers, I wrote the following in an essay for Catapult Magazine: “As striking as he is in a cape, Naito is no superhero. The closest thing he has to a superpower is survival. His matches don’t build toward certain victories: He suffers, he endures, and sometimes he comes out on top.”
In that context, a moment like this isn’t a botch or an obvious embarrassment.
It’s a moment of imperfect struggle saved by wily veteran instincts from a man who is, as always, doing his best not to die yet.
And because we also like him to be a bit of a dick as he smirks and spits against the dying of the light, we care far more about this moment than the less than 100% powerful surge through the barrier that came before it.
Now I’m not trying to convince anyone who requires something else from a match that they’re wrong. I don’t want anyone to reconsider their star rating or to put in on their spreadsheets. If you’re sitting at home and scoring wrestling like you’re a figure skating judge, you don’t need to reconsider your ranking.
What I am saying, though, is that there are different perspectives out there and different things we want from matches.
And, from one of those perspectives, this match is a minor but still effective entry into the Naito canon.
(And as long as the people who share that perspective are the ones buying tickets, t-shirts, and pyonsukes and expressing all of those impassioned cries in domestic audiences, you’ll probably be stuck with big matches that speak to our hearts a little longer.)