You'd be hard pushed to find a better example of a heel turn providing true career salvation than what happened with Tetsuya Naito in 2015. He was the recipient of a big push in 2013, winning the G-1 Climax and earning a title match against Kazuchika Okada at Wrestle Kingdom 8 in the process. The crowd began to turn against a man who was seen as being sort of a Tanahashi-lite, and in a move that must have been crushing to Naito his match was bumped to the semi main event. He floundered in 2014, and he started 2015 eating a pinfall loss against AJ Styles in a nothing match at Wrestle Kingdom 9. Then, he went to Mexico. Upon returning from the land of lucha, something had changed in the Stardust Genius. Gone was the high energy attitude, replaced by the single most nonchalant character I have seen in any form of any performance art, ever. He began to take forever to reach the ring, and would seemingly do everything he could to just annoy the heck out of anyone and everyone. Somehow, it has genuinely saved Naito's New Japan career. Previously a dead in the water babyface, Naito and his Log Ingobernables de Japon stablemates BUSHI and EVIL stand out in NJPW, and 2016 will undoubtedly see their reign of unpredictable terror grow and grow.
Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.
