It’s December 2016, and I’m at my second New Japan show. I know barely anything about any of the wrestlers, it’s all a buzz of new names and styles. The main event is a tag match, and the first wrestler to the ring is someone who goes by EVIL (in English, in all caps), carrying a scythe and wearing a purple and black velour robe. He is quite possibly the most extra wrestler I have ever seen in person.
After EVIL reaches the ring, his tag partner’s music hits: a frenetic, energetic pulse of sound. We wait for him to come out.
We wait some more.
And some more.
Eventually the curtain parts and a man in a black three-piece suit, wearing a black hood and silver mask, ambles out onto the ramp. Looking around as if slightly bored, he saunters toward the ring, his insultingly casual pace weirdly incongruous with the eager beat of the music. The crowd greets him with the frigid silence it tends to give to heels.
He gets to the ring and takes off his mask and hood to reveal a shaggy mane of bleached-brown hair and jaded, tired eyes. When his opponents’ music hits, they charge down to the ring without ceremony and start attacking him, knocking him out of the ring. The brawl rages toward my section of the audience, and I jump up in alarm as the man in the black suit is hurled into the chairs. His attacker storms back to the ring to start the match with EVIL, leaving him there. He’s only a few feet from me. I stare.
Gradually, without any hurry at all, the man in the suit with the wild hair rights himself until he’s slouching in one of the chairs. Then, with an air of infinitely weary contempt, he slowly starts to take off his suit, button by button, in the most bizarrely nonchalant striptease ever.
Eventually, he manages to get stripped down to his trunks. Ignoring all of us, he finally heads back to the ring, seemingly in no great hurry to help his tag partner. I stare after him in disbelief; Dan and I share a look that communicates clearly: Who the hell is this asshole?
And that was my first time seeing Tetsuya Naito, the leader of Los Ingobernables de Japon.
Here’s some of the things I learned later about Tetsuya Naito:
Naito was a rising star of New Japan, a protege of the deeply-beloved Hiroshi Tanahashi. He went by the nickname “The Stardust Genius,” and was known both for his flashy, flippy wrestling style and his fairly-generic good-guy persona (he and Kota Ibushi were classmates, good friends, and very similar in approach). His finishing move was the Stardust Press, a gorgeous, glitzy corkscrew moonsault that will feature prominently later in this story:
He was popular and on track to great things, and it seemed like he was ready to move up to the ranks of the main eventers in 2013, when he beat his mentor Tanahashi in the finals of the G1 Climax.
The winner of the G1 Climax Tournament gets the chance to main event Wrestle Kingdom, the biggest show of the year for New Japan, held in the Tokyo Dome. It’s incredibly prestigious, a huge opportunity. The result was rather a surprise to the audience, because the current champion, Kazuchika Okada, and Tanahashi were in the middle of a huge, long-running feud. Naito beating him and taking that high-profile spot was unexpected.
Even more unexpected was Naito taking the mic after winning and declaring himself the “top star” of New Japan.
New Japan’s promos don’t tend to be carefully scripted, so it seems likely this was Naito’s own word choice. If so–declaring himself the top star literally as his fan-favorite mentor Tanahashi was limping away from the ring in defeat–it was a monumentally disastrous choice, a terrible moment of hubris.
I’m very suspicious of anything that claims any sweeping generalization about Japanese culture, but I’m going to make two such statements in this essay, because I think they’re important for understanding the fraught and difficult relationship between the New Japan audience and Tetsuya Naito. The first generalization I will make is that on the whole, Japan is very concerned with showing proper respect to people above you in age and seniority at work. They don’t tend to valorize hotshot young guns who shake up the social order, and Naito seeming to prematurely declare himself Tanahashi’s replacement rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Whatever the reason, the result was an utter catastrophe, nearly unprecedented in New Japan history. It’s important to remember here that the Roman Reigns/John Cena effect, where fans boo people playing babyfaces, is just Not a Thing in Japan. I’ve been going to New Japan shows for more than two years, and generally they will only boo a heel if he’s just done something truly dastardly. Usually heels get polite applause, and babyfaces that aren’t getting over get the same polite applause. I have never heard them boo a person playing a straightforward face role.
But after Tetsuya Naito usurped Tanahashi and claimed his right to main event Wrestle Kingdom, the fans turned on him with vicious intensity. It all came to a head, at the appropriately-named Power Struggle in Osaka, where the Wrestle Kingdom card was finally determined. Fans had held out a forlorn hope that maybe, maybe Naito would step down somehow, would make way for Tanahashi to main event with Okada. Instead, when he comes out to officially challenge Okada, the Osaka crowd erupts into booing. When Naito looks into Okada’s eyes and declares himself once more the top star of the company, there’s laughter and jeering from the crowd.
You can see Naito’s throat work in something close to a sob as the crowd rains their fury down on him. He blinks rapidly, seeming to struggle to catch his breath, and watching it later I am suddenly sure that I’m watching a wrestler having a panic attack in real time. All of his nonverbals from this time are truly, deeply miserable. Everything is falling apart and he cannot salvage it. He cannot seem to find any way to turn the audience’s affection back to him. He’s failing completely.
In the face of this fan revolt, New Japan does an utterly unprecedented thing and takes a fan poll to determine the main event in the Tokyo Dome. The result is clear, and the main event is changed to be for the Intercontinental title, with Hiroshi Tanahashi challenging Shinsuke Nakamura. The heavyweight title defense, which has always been the main event at Wrestle Kingdom, is demoted. Okada and Naito will not main event in the Tokyo Dome, and Naito will hate the Intercontinental title, the belt that usurped his destiny, with all his heart from this moment on–but that’s a different essay, and a different unfolding story.
Tetsuya Naito, the Stardust Genius, is obliterated by this turn of events. His popularity is annihilated, his character in ruins. He can’t even be a proper heel. No one even wants to see him lose. No one wants to see him wrestle at all. They just want him to go away.
So he does.
Broken-hearted and bitter, he goes to Mexico, where he once spent his excursion–the time studying abroad most young wrestlers go through–to recover and reset. When he returns, it’s as a member of a stable started in Mexico by La Sombra, the future Andrade Cien Almas, called Los Ingobernables. His character is that of a man who has been through the fire of despair and come out on the other side in ashes, numb beyond caring. He doesn’t give a shit–not about New Japan, not about the audience, not about other wrestlers. His constant refrain is “Tranquilo. Assen na yo”–basically “chill the fuck out” in Spanish and then in Japanese. He strolls, he ambles, he’s insultingly nonchalant. He stops doing his fancy high-flying Stardust Press and switches to the Destino, a somersault reverse DDT. The Destino has the advantage of being a move that can be delivered with little warning, unlike the Stardust Press. Instead of being flashy and applause-seeking, he tends to be ostentatiously uncaring during matches, moving slowly, sometimes stopping to pose while lying on the mat–and then, without warning, he will launch into a sudden move like the Destino, an abrupt blur of motion, usually to immediately go back to his lax, uncaring contempt.
The fans are free to vent all their dislike on him, he doesn’t give one single fuck anymore. And for a while, they do despise him, because here’s my other sweeping generalization about Japanese culture: they don’t tend to be fans of people who can’t be bothered to care; they don’t tend to like weary irony. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well and with all your heart. So a lazy wrestler who doesn’t give a damn? They don’t like that, they don’t like that at all.
Not that he cares.
When I learn all of this backstory about the strange bored wrestler, I am overcome with an immense, almost crippling relief. Because I know myself, I know my weaknesses, and I know: I would have loved the earnest, bland Stardust Genius with all my heart. I would have suffered for him when the crowds turned on him; I would have missed him when he went to Mexico; and when he came back, I would have battered my heart to fragments on the rocks of his disdain. But I’m saved from all that by a lucky fluke of timing. Thank God, I think. Thank God he doesn’t care, so I don’t have to care about him.
As Naito starts to assemble a team of misfits and oddballs–purple velvet wizard EVIL; sassy poison-spitting Bushi; stoic, silent Sanada–the New Japan audiences mostly stay chilly, put off by his withering contempt. They’re all clearly immensely talented wrestlers, but for a little while the fans are slow to warm up to him. Yet they can’t help it: he’s too talented, just too good despite his apparent carelessness. The paradox of outward cool with hints of intensity, reflected in his moveset full of sudden offense, is too charming to resist entirely. He wrests the heavyweight championship away from Kazuchika Okada for a couple of months, and seems surprised to find the crowds starting to support him.
It may be the addition of the final member–Hiromu Takahashi, a Young Lion just back from his own excursion in Mexico–that shifts the balance completely. Because while all the other members of Los Ingobernables de Japon affect a cool, uncaring exterior, Takahashi is just the opposite. Takahashi cares too much, about everything. He flirts and enthuses with every single one of his opponents. He falls madly in love with his first title, calls it Belt-san, and makes elaborate photo montages of him wooing it with roses and bubble baths. He cares more passionately about his stuffed cat than many wrestlers care about their tag team partners. He teases and jokes with all of his stablemates, and under his onslaught of emotion, Los Ingobernables’ facade of cool detachment (because it was always a facade) begins to crumble. They care about each other more and more. Naito becomes more and more protective of his little flock of weirdos. They begin to suffer for each other, to openly worry about each other. And as it becomes clear how much they care–even if only about each other and not one single fan–the audience starts to love Naito again. He still doesn’t give a damn about the audience, and yet–slowly, gradually–his star rises once more.
He wins the Intercontinental championship that cost him his main event, then proceeds to destroy it over nine months before losing it again. His anarchic glee at dismantling the title, the symbol of his past disgrace, seems to win the NJPW fans over even more–it betrays a depth and intensity of passion that shatters the last remnants of his uncaring mask.
Whatever the reason, by the time he reaches the finals of the 2017 G1 Climax again–the first time since the catastrophe of 2014–the audience loves him more than it ever did as the Stardust Genius. He doesn’t court their love at all, yet they love him despite that, because of that. It’s deeper than any simple explanation. He’s theirs now, and they’re his.
There’s a weight of agonizing destiny on him as he fights Kenny Omega in the finals of the G1 Climax. They both start the match contemptuously nonchalant, but as the match progresses they both grow increasingly desperate–Omega to prove himself to the spectre of Kota Ibushi, Naito to prove himself worthy of main eventing the Tokyo Dome. It’s a frenzied match, both men putting everything on the line. And near the end, with Omega down on the mat… Naito points to the turnbuckle.
The crowd goes wild, because they know what he’s signalling, and he climbs the turnbuckle to deliver his first Stardust Press since he’s returned from exile. He didn’t attempt one even in his title matches against Kazuchika Okada, but here, where the stakes are a chance to main event the Tokyo Dome, here he attempts it. It makes clearer than any words that what matters to him is a chance to redo history, to have the main event he was denied, to prove to everyone it’s where he belongs.
He misses with the Stardust Press, but eventually he does manage to pin Kenny Omega after a Destino and win his chance to achieve his destiny. He fistbumps each member of Los Ingobernables, even Hiromu’s pet stuffed cat.
With his team gathered around him, he looks out at the crowd and says for the third time in his career: “I am New Japan’s top star!” He says it not with bravado, but as a simple statement of fact, this phrase that in the past has been met with silence or jeers.
The crowd applauds wildly. He has their hearts.
He doesn’t have mine.
I like him, I even admire him, but I’m not letting myself get emotionally invested. Because I’m a stubborn fan, and resist being won over as long as possible. I adore nearly all wrestlers, but there are few I trust enough to care about: they’ll let you down, they’ll break your heart and take your t-shirt money while it’s still wet with your tears. I’ve got tickets to Wrestle Kingdom, my first Wrestle Kingdom, but he’s not the reason I’m going: I’m there for my favorites, and he’s not one of them. I’m not opening my heart to this guy. It’s not happening.
Naito wins the G1 Climax in August 2017, and Wrestle Kingdom is January 4 2018. As the autumn wears on, anticipation mounts. Kenny Omega, fresh off his defeat in the G1, is challenged by Chris Jericho, and their match receives a huge amount of hype. Omega and Jericho both declare that their match is the real main event of Wrestle Kingdom 12, and I find myself fuming: he may not be my favorite, but after all Naito’s been through, it’s just not fair that anyone should try to overshadow this.
Later, Kazuchika Okada points out that twice now he’s had a title defense become a co-main event, and that each time it’s been a match with Tetsuya Naito. You figure out the common denominator, he sneers, and I’m suddenly seething, yearning to see Naito Destino his perfect cheekbones into the cerulean mat. It’s got to be his destiny, right? Surely all of this pain is leading to a triumphant win in Tokyo.
At some point, very much to my surprise, I realize that I’m looking forward to this match more than any other on the card. I want to be there when he beats Okada, when he lifts the title in front of forty thousand screaming people in the Tokyo Dome at last. I want to be part of that moment of destiny.
But it’s got nothing to do with loving Naito. I’m not the kind of person to love a wrestler because he doesn’t give a shit. I’ve got some fucking self-respect, you know. You care or I don’t, that’s the deal.
(I still hope he wins.)
The Tokyo Dome is huge. As a person who rarely attends sports events of any kind, being in a gigantic arena full of excited fans is a new experience for me. Ripples and waves of sound seem to push me around as I take my seat in the eighth row, next to a solemn Japanese teen who does not applaud once in the next five hours, but watches everything intently and tolerates my effusive shows of emotion stoically. I cheer for the Bucks, I worry for Kenny, I scream and throw myself into everything.
And then it’s the main event.
And it is the main event, despite everything Omega and Jericho have said; the crowd was into their match, but there’s a roaring rumble of sound that makes the whole Dome vibrate when Tetsuya Naito’s opening promo video starts up that makes it clear where the audience’s heart lies.
In the video, Naito explains that he’s had three dreams since he was fifteen: to become a wrestler for NJPW (check). To be IWGP heavyweight champion (check). And to main event Wrestle Kingdom in the Tokyo Dome.
It’s time for Tetsuya Naito to achieve his final youthful dream.
He comes to the ring in a white suit, wearing the mask of a fox, the Japanese shapeshifter and trickster. I can feel the wall of sound that greets him in my gut; I can’t imagine what it would feel like to be in the center of this maelstrom. There are scattered boos, but mostly it’s all love. We want him to win. Okada comes to the ring to respectful applause, but it’s nothing compared to what Naito is getting.
I realize then: this isn’t just about Naito’s redemption, it’s about the audience’s. It’s our chance to give him the support he deserves, to make up for abandoning him all those painful years ago.
Naito smiles wryly and, there in front of forty-three thousand screaming fans, starts to take off his suit, button by button.
He takes so long that Okada throws up his hands and the referee angrily gestures at him to hurry it up. He doesn’t. He looks out at us, calm, tranquilo, and this time I get it, I can feel how he’s savoring the moment, how he’s enjoying making us all wait, how we’re willing to wait for him this time. We’re here for him.
When the bell rings, though, all facade of tranquility is gone; Naito launches himself at Okada in a flurry of motion.
The match is frenetic, desperate. They’re both brutal with each other, and the crowd is following them all the way. They’d follow Tetsuya Naito to Hell itself. I find myself caught up in the screams of the crowd–he’s not my favorite, but here in this moment, I want him to win badly.
I really want him to win.
About 45 minutes in, Naito gets Okada down on the mat and he climbs the turnbuckle.
The crowd goes insane as he launches into a Stardust Press, the second he’s ever done since his rebirth as a heel. I didn’t think the Tokyo Dome could get louder, but it does, the sound ratcheting up into a glorious roar of endless support.
The Stardust Press doesn’t connect, and the next fifteen minutes are a symphony of finishing moves, an intricate interweaving of Naito’s Destino and Okada’s Rainmaker–countered, or kicked out of, or completed but with the wrestler too exhausted to take advantage. They can’t put each other away. They can’t finish each other off.
Okada goes for a Rainmaker. Naito dodges it and counters it into a Destino.
And then he screams, a sharp incoherent noise with no tranquilo in it at all, and points at the turnbuckles.
There in the crowd, my heart pounding, sound slamming into me from all directions, I am suddenly certain that here in the Tokyo Dome, at the main event of his dreams, he’s going to somehow put the Destino and the Stardust Press together, chain them off each other, combine them into one move, as if he can knit the two broken pieces of his soul together.
My heart breaks.
I mean it’s as if I can physically feel my heart crack open, giving way beneath the terrible weight of this moment. Because of course Tetsuya Naito cares, he cares so much that he wants not just to win this, he wants to win it as his whole self, as the Ingobernable and the Stardust Genius in one. He wants us to love his careless confidence now and also the bright, earnest self he once was. He wants it all.
And I want him to want it all. Don’t give me wrestlers who cry for the moon, give me wrestlers who demand the stars, who want to be their best, most whole selves. Who care so much it almost breaks them.
As it does here.
Because as Naito drags Okada up for the Destino, Okada counters it and drops him with a spinning tombstone piledriver, then finishes him off with a final Rainmaker. He pins him, and the bell rings. It’s over.
I burst into inconsolable sobs.
The crowd is stunned, in agony. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Our love was supposed to redeem him, to lift him to victory. We watch in numb disbelief as Naito staggers out of the ring, as he falls to his knees, trying to make his way to the back, his shaggy hair over his eyes. We’re in so much pain.
Okada takes the mic. “Hey, Naito-san! Naito-san!” he yells. Naito stops, and Okada says in Japanese, “So… main eventing Tokyo Dome. How was it?” There’s a complicated mesh of emotions in the voice of this imperious bright champion, who finally has main evented with Naito as he should have years ago: there’s a taunt, but there’s a deeper emotion too. Stop, it says. Look around. Listen to how much they love you. You had their hearts, Stardust Genius. You had their hearts at last.
“It feels good, doesn’t it?” says Kazuchika Okada.
Tetsuya Naito stops and looks at the audience, listening to our grief. He looks at Kazuchika Okada.
He smiles and walks out of the arena, his head high.
I don’t know what the message of this match was. I don’t know what lesson Tetsuya Naito has to learn before he can win the championship in the Tokyo Dome. I don’t know if he needs to learn to give up on his dreams of still being the Stardust Genius and accept who he is now, or if he needs to learn to push even harder, reach even higher. I don’t know if he will one day win with the Destino or if he will win with the Stardust Press. My heart hopes for the latter, but I don’t know. Here’s what I do know:
I will be in the audience at every Wrestle Kingdom to cheer for him with all my heart.
I will be there when he achieves whatever stardust destiny awaits him.
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