Every year there are a lot of great matches, but it is very rare when an individual match has major long-term repercussions.
In the last 35 years, there are only a handful that come to mind, in the sense they either made a new superstar instantaneously at a time when one was needed, or they changed a region economically. This past weekend, a match where Kenny Omega won the vacant IWGP Intercontinental title beating Hiroshi Tanahashi at the 2/14 New Beginnings in Niigata PPV show may be added to this list.
*Eddie & Mike Graham vs. Dusty Rhodes & Pak Song on May 14, 1974 at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory in Tampa. This was the match where Rhodes turned babyface and for the next several months, the Florida promotion was the hottest it ever was, and Rhodes became the area’s top babyface for the next dozen years, and his popularity extended internationally. Rhodes was already a headliner as a heel for years before this match.
*Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat at the WRAL Studios in Raleigh on June 15, 1977 for the Mid Atlantic television title. Steamboat at the time was a prelim wrestler who Flair did the original Rocky movie shtick of being the arrogant top heel star offering a title shot to an unknown. Steamboat won the title, and while that kind of upset is age-old booking, Steamboat became an instant main eventer, a status he carried for much of the rest of his career. This didn’t do instant business nor turn the territory around, but Steamboat came out of it with a program with Flair that did well. The first run drew nothing special, but Flair vs. Steamboat was brought back many times. A second run between the two did well. They didn’t turn a territory around but they were key building blocks in Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling becoming the top regional territory for many years, and both for selling tickets and match quality, it’s generally considered the best singles program ever in that part of the country.
*Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich on December 25, 1982, a cage match for the NWA title at Reunion Arena in Dallas, is one of the prototypes. While both were already top stars, this one match led to turning the territory around. Special referee Michael Hayes and gatekeeper Terry Gordy turned on Von Erich shortly after David Von Erich had teamed with both of them as a replacement for Buddy Roberts who had “transportation issues,” and won the fall for team. David vacated his third of the six-man title to Roberts, saying that it was the right thing to do. This all led to the Freebirds vs. Von Erichs run, which led to the popularity of wrestling in the area to skyrocket. It made The Freebirds into top heels, led to weekly sellouts on Friday and huge big show business, a strong run through 1983 and 1984 which led to several of the most well remembered live events, ridiculous ratings and hottest period for wrestling in that part of the country.
*Ric Flair vs. Sting on March 29, 1987, a 45:00 draw on the first Clash of Champions at the Greensboro Coliseum, was notable for a few reasons. Sting was a mid-card babyface. There was no doubt he had charisma, but he was way down on the pecking order. Because of the spotlight, the very first Clash of Champions, the main event on the Crockett Promotions answer to WrestleMania head-to-head, and the match quality, Sting came out of the match as a shooting star. He was clearly the rising star of the business in the U.S., and with the exception of Hulk Hogan, he may have come out of it as the most popular wrestler in the U.S. In addition, the ratings the show delivered led to the Clash of the Champions becoming, instead of a one-time counter to WrestleMania, becoming a quarterly big show, which set the stage for major TV specials. But when it came to business, this didn’t have a significant impact. In actuality, Crockett business declined after this match and Sting was, even after this match, not the level of draw as a Flair opponent of people like Lex Luger or Dusty Rhodes.
*Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Mitsuharu Misawa on June 8, 1990, a match at Budokan Hall, fits this more than almost anything. Misawa had been a solid “B” babyface as the masked Tiger Mask. In a sense, while he was a great wrestler, he didn’t have the charisma or flashiness to live up to the legend that Satoru Sayama had created in his 1981-83 heyday. All Japan was a very strong company, but suddenly, it got raided of some of its key talent, most notably Genichiro Tenryu, the Great Kabuki and Yoshiaki Yatsu, by the upstart Super World Sports promoted by billionaire Hachiro Tanaka. Giant Baba needed to create a native star who could be the top rival to Tsuruta, so he made the call to unmask Tiger Mask and build him up for a match with Tsuruta on this show. While the plan always was for Misawa to end up at the top, the ascent was quicker than expected. Tsuruta was originally to win the match. Misawa was to come close, because All Japan did slow elevations to the top. But the crowd at Budokan Hall that night was so pro-Misawa, and nearly sold out the building at a time when it was rare for All Japan to do so. While sitting at the merchandise table and seeing all the excitement of the crowd and Misawa merchandise being sold, Baba called an audible. Misawa won, and in one night, he was a superstar. While Sting’s ascension never led to a business turnaround, and for the next several years, Sting’s matches with Flair didn’t draw at the level Lex Luger or Dusty Rhodes did, All Japan caught fire immediately. The company sold out its next 200 plus shows in Tokyo, a streak that lasted until March 2, 1996, with Misawa as the top star.
*Sting & Lex Luger & Randy Savage vs. the NWO, with Hulk Hogan as the mystery partner of Kevin Nash & Scott Hall on July 7, 1996 in Daytona Beach at the Bash at the Beach PPV. Business was already turning around for WCW, with a Flair vs. Randy Savage house show program. But the Hogan heel turn took business and TV ratings to a new level for the next several years. The irony is that in making the company so much bigger, it led to increased spending, which ended up dooming the company just four years later when popularity nosedived and expenses were so high.
*Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin I Quit match with Ken Shamrock as referee, on March 23, 1997, at WrestleMania XIII at the Rosemont Horizon in suburban Chicago. While not the main event, this was clearly the big match on a show that on its own was the worst-performing WrestleMania ever on PPV. The match was a double-turn, a ***** match ending with a bloodied Austin passing out from the pain and refusing to tap while locked for a long period of time in Hart’s sharpshooter. Austin was already a headlining heel, but this babyface turn set the wheels in motion for the hottest period for WWF business and popularity in history. This was probably the more modern version of the Rhodes turn, and it had even bigger business repercussions. The Hart vs. Austin feud started to turn business around that summer, and Austin came out of the program as the hottest babyface in company history. Business picked up from that match, got stronger as the year went on and exploded in 1998 with Austin as the company’s main singles star as sometime champion.
*Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada IWGP title match on February 12, 2012. Okada was a 24-year-old wrestler who had potential but was never any kind of a star. He had been in TNA for two years, where he was just a job guy, but came back a month earlier at the Tokyo Dome and had an unimpressive win. But he was given a title shot at Tanahashi, and booker Gedo had decided months earlier that he was his project and he was going to make him a star. Okada won the championship here and became an instant main event star. The Tanahashi vs. Okada program wasn’t the only reason New Japan’s business tripled over a three year period, but it was the top program, and the two had one of the best series of matches in history trading the title back-and-forth over the next four years of strong company growth.
How Tanahashi vs. Omega will be viewed with the value of hindsight is unclear. But New Japan needed something big. The strong run had started to fade in recent months. And then, in one fell swoop, they lost four major stars.
They had to make a new foreign superstar. Omega got the call. It was a gutsy move because he was not a newcomer, had been with the promotion for the past year as a mid-carder battling for the junior heavyweight title. On the plus side, Omega was an excellent performer who knew the Japanese scene, having been a regular since 2008 with the DDT promotion. He had worked a number of big New Japan shows as part of a tag team with Kota Ibushi. He signed a full-time deal with New Japan in late 2014, and spent much of the past year as junior heavyweight champion, the Cleaner of the Bullet Club. When A.J. Styles left, the promotion decided to back Omega, having him turn on and beat down Styles in a 1/5 angle at Korakuen Hall, to take over the head position in the Bullet Club, right after pinning Shinsuke Nakamura in a tag team match.
In most of the aforementioned scenarios of one match making an instant headliner, the pressure wasn’t on like here. Mid Atlantic was loaded with talent and Steamboat was just a guy who was good looking that they decided to shoot an angle with. Sting wasn’t being groomed to be a top babyface, and was just a guy with potential who was given a shot in a big match on television where the idea is you don’t give away your money matches on the road on television, and Flair vs. Sting was not a planned main event direction at the time. With Misawa, they did need someone to fill the Tenryu slot as Tsuruta’s big rival, but felt it had to be slow because nobody would buy it, but he got over so big when he unmasked that Baba went with it from the start.
Omega’s big win, capturing the IC title that was vacated when Nakamura signed with WWE and New Japan, for whatever reason, decided that instead of rushing an Omega win over Nakamura before Nakamura’s contract expired, would just vacate the title and Omega would get credibility for beating Tanahashi, who is still viewed as the company’s biggest star.
But that decision was tricky, because Tanahashi had just lost the Tokyo Dome main event to Okada, and with Nakamura and Styles gone, his value to the company was even greater. Tanahashi had a legitimate dislocated shoulder, suffered three weeks earlier. On the Osaka show, Omega and the Young Bucks destroyed his shoulder to weaken him. During the match, Omega worked on the shoulder much of the way, in a match that featured incredible selling by both men, with Omega doing just as good a job of selling a knee injury, even to the point of doing a moonsault off one leg and other moves like he was working with one steady leg later in the match.
Both came through in a match that at least as a live spectacle, appeared to hit all its marks. Omega came across like a major superstar. Tanahashi, between his selling, the length of the match, and the match story, wasn’t hurt at all. The title, even with Nakamura not losing it, looked to have kept its credibility. And Omega vs. Tanahashi now looks like a major program going forward.
Similar to that of Steamboat or the draw with Sting or even the loss by Austin (that was booked as stronger than a win due to the way it was done), was an important cog in this story. But times are different and just a win over a top guy alone may help him in acceptance, but he not only needed a win but to be able to fill the shoes of Styles.
His performance, along with Tanahashi’s during the match, helped. He came across like a legit singles main eventer during the match, and even more so as he controlled the audience with his post-match promo while Tanahashi had to be helped out of the ring.
Omega told a story from before the match, that he had to win clean, actually aiming it at a section of fans, smart marks was the term he and The Young Bucks were using, because they’d think less of the match if it had interference. Then, early in the match, when Cody Hall and Tama Tonga tried to help out, he explained he wanted to win on his own, and sent them to the back. Of course, as a heel, that was just the set-up for more interference, not just from Hall and Tonga coming back out, but from The Young Bucks, who were hiding under the ring. However, Michael Elgin made the save for Tanahashi, and in the end, they went several minutes with no interference, with Omega winning with his One Winged Angel in 29:10.
Omega then did a post-match interview, where he announced that he and The Young Bucks are now “The Elite,” which means a new tag line for T-shirts. The Bucks had come out earlier in the show wearing new “The Elite” T-shirts. Then he said he was the complete performer, that he could wrestle, that he could talk and that he could sing. He then sang Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream.”
Just three days earlier New Japan was looking, well bleak wouldn’t be the word, but looked like a once super-hot promotion past its peak in the midst of a slow decline.
The New Beginnings in Osaka on 2/11, before the company’s usual hottest crowd, was a good show. But it was far from the caliber of most big shows in recent years. There were throw away matches that were just there. The junior heavyweight tag team three-way, where Matt Sydal & Ricochet won the titles, was very good. Katsuyori Shibata’s Never Open weight title defense against Tomohiro Ishii was tremendous, with Shibata looking like the guy who will be put in the Nakamura position as the other top Japanese singles star. The angle with Omega and the Bucks taking out Tanahashi’s shoulder to build for three days later was well done. But the show ending was a disappointment, as the fans just weren’t that into Okada’s IWGP title defense against Hirooki Goto, who needed badly to step up and didn’t.
While a very good match, particularly the last several minutes, it was a disappointment because of the high standard that Tanahashi, Styles and Okada had set in recent year for IWGP title matches. As a big show, it definitely felt empty without Nakamura and Styles.
the level of dikkery is high with those two
