For the first time in a very long time, I’m not really watching WWE. My reasons are both show and non-show related, but I’m not going to elaborate on them here. I follow New Japan pretty closely and enjoy them a lot. I also enjoy a fair amount of indie wrestling, though I couldn’t fairly call myself anything but a casual indie wrestling fan. I’m at a point now where that is going to change. With none of my time going to WWE, I have a lot more time to explore the world of pro wrestling everywhere else.
Enter NicoPro.
The service is relatively new and offers shows from a wide variety of Japanese promotions, including smaller shows from Stardom, All Japan, Big Japan, NOAH, and Sendai Girls, plus shows from a plethora of other independent groups. I’m diving into all of this almost completely blind. I watched some of the All Japan Champions Carnival from earlier this year, and I’ve watched specific matches from Big Japan and NOAH, but otherwise I’m completely in the dark here.
Adventures in NicoPro will serve as a record of my journey into the unknown. Let us begin:
J-Stage: September 11th, 2017
J-Stage is an all-junior heavyweight promotion, though outside of that there isn’t a ton of information I could find about the promotion’s history other than they’ve been running occasionally for at least a couple of years now.
Jumping headfirst into a wrestling show with virtually no knowledge of anybody on the show led to a fair share of confusion as I watched. There were moments where I couldn’t put pieces together fast enough to get a real sense of what was going on, but by the end of the show, I realized it didn’t really matter because I’d had so much fun. Generally, the matches from this show fell onto a spectrum ranging from bad and messy to really good.
I had originally intended to review this whole show. But at a certain point I realized that I had written nearly 2,000 words, and 800 of them were about just one match. No one was going to read a review that was already 2,000 words long at halfway through a show that happened a month ago. So, I decided to focus on just one match. A match that might not even be unique to people who follow Japanese indie wrestling. But for me, this match was something entirely different, and I was in no way prepared for it.
The Brahman Brothers
Atsushi Maruyama & Yasu Urano vs. Brahman Shu & Brahman Kei
Maruyama is a long-time Osaka Pro wrestler, and has worked All Japan, DDT, Zero1, and Michinoku Pro, all within the last 5 years. Yasu Urano mostly wrestles for DDT. The Brahman Brothers seem to work mostly for Big Japan and Michinoku Pro at the moment. Also, Urano is wearing a shirt from the band Yes, so I guess I’m not meant to cheer for anyone in this match.
This whole match was fucking ridiculous. Not in the “Holy shit! What amazing moves/drama/violence!” sense, but in the “What the fuck is even happening?” sense. I guess you could call this a match, but really, this was more like a pro wrestling version of the kind of comedy skit staged at Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding reception in Game of Thrones.
The Brahman Brothers attacked both the crowd and their opponents with water (either bottled or in a bucket), which was followed by a mini food fight. After some abysmal striking from one of the Brahmans, they set up a hardshell traveling suitcase against Urano’s groin and rolled a bowling ball into the suitcase. They did some kind of celebratory chant, but one of the Brahmans fell on his stomach doing a backflip and sold it for slapstick.
Then, inexplicably, a man appeared at the ramp with a flash of light, as though her were an angel summoned via Maruyama and Urano yelling to the back. The man brought a bucket to the ring with him. Maruyama performed some prolonged ritual, which involved him striking the inside of the bucket multiple times, with his hand opened and straight. One of the Brahman Brothers was happy to politely sit and watch through the whole thing, which was very nice of him to do. Going by the crowd, this was all pretty funny, so I guess if it works, it works.
Eventually, Maruyama had struck the empty space in the bucket enough to produce a glove, which apparently granted him touch of death™ powers. He used the glove to dispose of the man who brought him the bucket (rude), and turned his attention to the Brahman Brothers, who to this point have been fine for minutes, but did nothing to prevent this disadvantage. One of the Brahmans was wielding a long black and yellow staff, which he twirled impressively. However, rather than hit someone with it, he front-kicked Urano and then tried THROWING THE STAFF at Maruyama. Maruyama evaded this vicious throwing stick attack by jumping. It’s possible that there’s context about the staff that I’m not privy to, but without any context, this whole exchange was bizarre.
I can’t keep going like this.
One of the Brahmans produced his own glove from the bucket after a much less extravagant ceremony (he chopped the bucket twice) and Urano sacrificed himself by using his body to shield Maruyama and taking the glove shot himself, therefore buying Maruyama some time. I guess a guy in a Yes shirt can be heroic after all. Luckily, because the Brahmans are idiots, they congratulated each other with a big high five, which lead to instant paralysis for the non-glove-wearing Brahman.
This led to a dramatic showdown in which both Maruyama and the remaining Brahman had to try REALLY hard not to touch each other with their gloved hands to get through their spots. The glove-wearing Brahman—having somehow pulled off a one-handed go-behind without using his gloved hand, attempted to choke Maruyama. He did this in such an exaggerated and telegraphed manner that the only possible outcome was for him to miss and throttle himself, which is exactly what happened. This did not lead to a pin. Instead, this led to the ref confirming his inability to continue, calling for the bell, and then putting up THE DREADED X sign.
This match was a hallucination. A fever dream. I just wrote more than six-hundred words about this match and I still don’t really understand it. The actual wrestling they did looked pretty bad. The comedy they did is incomprehensible without any context. It was just a parade of absurdity in front of a wrestling audience.
When it was over, Maruyama performed another quick ritual, striking a bottle of water with his death glove, which imbued the water with magical rejuvenating powers and so he revived everybody with this newly-enchanted water. However the still-gloved Brahman Brother struck him down with his death glove, a truly ungrateful act. He poured out the remaining revival water and spit on Maruyama as they left.
Now, I have experienced a PWG slow-mo match, with no warning or context ahead of time, and I’ve still never felt so bewildered by a match in my life. Are matches like this a regular occurrence for Japanese indies? I’d guess that they are, but having no frame of reference, this whole presentation was aggressively weird.
But I also won’t say I wasn’t entertained.
I’ll be back again soon with another trip into the unknown!
Follow Dan on twitter: @VoidRitual, or keep up with Kwinnpop @KwinnPop!