10 Dumbest Decisions In Wrestling History
3. TNA Embarrasses Kazuchika Okada
As is tradition, in 2010, New Japan Pro Wrestling sent Kazuchika Okada on excursion to TNA.
The mentality behind the excursion is as astute as it is simple: the Young Lion learns a new style, and new tactics with which to connect to a new and different audience. Designed to season and sharpen their experience, that this takes place beyond NJPW in turn allows its fans to disassociate from the wrestler's persona as a rookie. They return, renewed and developed, in an accepted phase of their progression as a name act.
Tetsuya Naito developed his aloof, ungovernable, no-f*cks persona in defiance of racist abuse in Mexico. Stablemate Hiromu Takahashi added a lunatic bent to his game by intensifying the dives he learned in the same country. In TNA, Okada was...
...hidden under an eye mask inspired by a 1960s TV show and booked to win by humiliating disqualifications in less than a minute.
The wildly divergent path taken by both companies in the years since paints a very clear and very cathartic picture of Vince Russo's racist ineptitude. TNA's humiliating treatment of Okada enraged NJPW into severing their agreement; Okada, meanwhile, a genius, developed into something loftier than that through genius booker Gedo's outraged determination.
A Japanese promotion subsequently overtook the U.S.-based TNA as the second biggest promotion in America in a swerve so outrageous even Russo couldn't have conceived it.