Greetings from the purgatory between the heaven of getting a pitch accepted and the hell of having to write the story. I’m looking forward to sharing this thing with everyone in the future. More than that, though, I am looking forward to the part where I don’t have to write it anymore. 

Before I dive into the actual work part of my job, though, there’s a new Tetsuya Endo match available on YouTube, so of course I have to tell you to watch it, allude to the manifesto I am determined/doomed to write on why he is the best and unlike any wrestler we’ve seen before, and struggle to express one aspect of what makes him the best and unlike any other. 

And then I will tell you to listen to classic gay Canadian music. 

Match of the Week: Tetsuya Endo vs Jun Akiyama, DDT Kawasaki Strong 2021, February 14, 2021

The bad news is that — spoiler alert — Endo lost. I figured this was coming and concede that it was time. But seeing his KO-D Openweight championship reign come to end still saddened me as someone who thought that Endo has done exceptional work in and out of the ring under the almost impossible circumstances of the past eight months. And as someone whose fantasy booking almost always ends in “and then Endo won and everyone knew how good he was!!!”

But the good news is that Endo lost, and his unique talent and presence shine even more in defeat than in victory. He’s utterly magnificent here.

A recurring theme in my attempts to explain the full genius of Endo, and what is sure to be a recurring theme in my oft-threatened manifesto on why he is the best and unlike any other wrestler we’ve seen before, is that the terminology and tenets of pro wrestling criticism can’t accommodate the full scope of what he’s doing. The words and the concepts are there to explain why he’s great — and he is fairly well regarded among those who who evaluate wrestling within this framework — but trying to get at why he’s exceptional is a little more intangible. 

The aspect of this match that I’m going to focus on here is a good example of this issue. It’s a great showcase of Endo’s selling (which is the act of responding to a choreographed move like you’re suffering for real, if you’re a non-wrestling person who has made it this far), but more important to me is that it’s also an excellent demonstration of the strikingly unselfconscious way that he portrays vulnerability in general. A more traditional evaluation of this match might bring up that Endo sold his ass off and helped to make Akiyama look even more like a relentless monster in the process — and I’d agree with that sentiment. But then I’d want to add something like “Endo’s palpably increasing desperation in this match makes me think of Joyce Carol Oates’s observation that ‘boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning’ in On Boxing.”

Before I get to the match itself, though, I want to draw attention to a subtle bit of heavy lifting that Endo did in one of the shows leading up to the big event. As a result of the ongoing challenges of putting on wrestling events during a pandemic and a minor knee surgery on Akiyama’s part, Endo and Akiyama were only in the same ring together once before the title bout. This meant that the majority of the build for this big, consequence-heavy confrontation had to be squeezed into a single tag match.

Endo, who handed Akiyama his first loss in DDT, had to go from being a fairly dominant champ who could confidently and definitively defeat the legend who had all but humiliated the promotion’s other young star, to someone who considered his opponent a serious threat. A progression that ideally would have taken months to unfold had to be abridged into a few minutes. 

He accomplishes this by acting like a terrified little punk with a crumbling sheen of superiority. 

He alternately freezes and flails in Akiyama’s submission holds. 

He has a little post-escape pout.

He struggles with a single leg takedown attempt that makes Akiyama look like an immovable mountain. And then hotshots away with all of the bravado of a bullied kid claiming they didn’t even want that stolen lunch, anyway, when he fails. 

He panics.

I’m not going to argue that this display single-handedly established Akiyama as a genuine threat. His deserved reputation had already solidified that fact among viewers. But it went a lot way toward demonstrating that, in the pit of his stomach, Endo knew it, too. 

As much as I’d love to breakdown every moment of the 31 minute title match with gifs and superlatives, I realize that your inboxes and patience are not limitless and that I have work to do, so I’ll simply recommend watching this match not just as the story of Akiyama’s victory, but also of Endo’s defeat. And his growing awareness of that defeat. 

And sneak in a couple of gifs of my personal favourite moments:

The juxtaposition of Endo’s skill as a high flyer and a seller really does it for me here. The exquisite beauty of his peerless Shooting Star Press crashing into pure shit-eating. A reminder that every time he flies, he’s equally able — and willing — to be Icarus or Daedalus.

The dying swan grace! The anguish on his face when he’s throwing those useless elbows! The way he clings to Akiyama to avoid complete collapse and the way he grasps at his chest in an effort to orient himself like someone fumbling through the dark!

And finally this perfectly timed and shot bit of tragicomedy.

In the weeks leading up to this match, Endo overcompensatingly declared that he was going to defeat Akiyama and make him stand in the ring and declare that “Tetsuya Endo is the best.” Akiyama might not have been forced to say it, but after that performance, I’m sincerely ready to claim it. (Again.)

Song of the Week: “All Touch” - Rough Trade

I recorded an interview for a podcast earlier this week in which the host brought up my past as a Canadian rock critic and gave me a chance to plug whatever bands I wanted. Anyone who met me before, say, 2012 will instantly realize how hard it was for me to settle on a name or two and not record sixteen hours of rambling recommendations. What I ended up settling on was a brief history lesson about Change of Heart’s cult classic indie prog masterpiece, Smile, and a general introduction to Rough Trade.

I’ve been on a bit of an “All Touch” kick since I read this article about the 40th anniversary of their sophomore album, For Those Who Think Young, last week. And holy fuck, it’s good stuff. “Challenging eyes above the rim of a cocktail glass/ Hoping I'd react” is one of my favourite lyric and delivery combinations in all of music.

(Fun fact: Queer icon Carole Pope was my neighbour for a brief period when I was a baby.)