Broken Kazuchika Okada Is The Best Ever Wrestling Storyline You’re Not Watching
The G1 Climax Press Conference was a perfectly pitched posture party. All 20 men let their actions speak as loud as their words, taking the microphone stand in their finest formal wear to add credibility to their individual calls to arms. Tetsuya Naito's LIJ monogramed three-piece was divine, Jay White dressed for the main event job he wanted, not the midcard one he had, whilst Hangman Page steered into his Old West aesthetic by accessorising his skinny fit suit with a Grandpa Simpson bolo tie.
Analysing their style choices wasn't without merit. Each man's attire was telling - for every glance over the Aviators by Kenny Omega, there was a supermarket-suited stumble from YOSHI-HASHI. Kazuchika Okada had one last reveal of his gradually unravelling psyche - his hair.
A younger Okada had once wore his barnet with a shock of purple, but the poorly-managed red dye-job he debuted that day was yet another divorced Dad moment for the once-proud warrior. It'd have mattered less if he'd have started his tournament off in winning fashion, but 'The Rainmaker' wasn't yet at the end of his own torturous 40 days and 40 nights arc. From June 9th through to July 20th, he didn't win a singles match. The defeats came in two by two - a loss to Jay White was compounded by a humiliating defeat to Bad Luck Fale. Previously unflappable as the gatekeeper to the most prestigious prize in all of wrestling, Okada was now a man falling respectively to his own stable underling and one of the G1's (literal) biggest losers.
He's since rectified his record, racing up A Block to give himself a fighting chance of making the final against one of the B Block megastars. It's clear little else has been resolved though. Cameras have caught moments in which his past-life seems to flash before his eyes. He peers into the distance whilst his instincts briefly assume control of his body. In the immediacy of the moment he strikes with the fire, fury and force of old. It drove his slumpbusting victory over Hangman Page and overtook him in the final stages of battles tougher than they should have been against YOSHI-HASHI and Michael Elgin. Even his discuss Rainmaker highlights the deep-rooted disconnect. It's a flailing clothesline from a man that's lost as much control of his own psyche as he has his opponent's wrist, even when it connects.
These moments are pyrhic, fleeting fronts. Okada, like Bullet Club earlier this and the current booking of the f*cking Tongans in the tournament, is not fine. Bookending battles with the 'Best Bout Machine' will in hindsight come to reflect the slide into, and rise out of, this current breakdown.
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