NJPW World Television Championship
Reading time: 4:40 minutes
Rating: ★★★★ — 4.00

(This match was commissioned by Vic G. If you wish to learn how I review and rate matches, click here) See the details below if you wish to support me through ko-fi! 🙂

People tend to flatten David and Goliath into a story about size, and sure, when Jeff Cobb is standing across from Tomohiro Ishii you would have to be trying pretty hard not to notice the size. The match notices it too. It spends the opening minutes making Ishii run directly into that problem, partly because he’s Ishii and partly because he cannot really learn anything about Cobb without testing him first. What matters is where they go from there. Cobb’s advantages extend beyond having more mass to throw around, while Ishii possesses all of these stubborn, slightly irrational qualities that keep a physical disadvantage from becoming the entire match. The fifteen-minute limit gives them just enough time to prod at those things and see which man breaks first.

This title defense begs the question: what if David didn’t give a shit about Goliath being…Goliath?

Here, Ishii is in his element as the challenger. He captures the spirit of the plucky, dogged and determined babyface because, aside from his relentless comebacks,which some have branded gratuitous no-selling, the man is built like a starter Pokémon but hits like a final-form main eventer. His matches against Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada are testaments to the kind of worker he is and his popular appeal as the everyday Joe turned pugilist.

Jeff Cobb presents a rare and dangerous obstacle for old Ishii. Forget his fucking WWE run and all that lost time running around SmackDown, getting jobbed out as Solo’s weird face-painted goon. New Japan Jeff Cobb will demolish your bones with clean F-5000s, neck-crunching suplexes and that oh-so-lovely Tour of the Islands. He looks and hits like a boulder and can scarily accelerate like one rolling down a hill. For casual fans reading this, you can thank me for showing you what Smackdown creative head Road D-O-double-G couldn’t.

Commentary in this match points out two important things: this isn’t their first meeting, Ishii has already beaten Cobb thrice, and Ishii has a history of neck issues. So this match becomes a question of adaptation and familiarity for Ishii. He knows what to expect from Jeff Cobb, but can he get a fourth win against a much more dangerous version of his old foe, one who now has more to lose as the champion? For Cobb, this match is more than just his title defence; it’s also a chance to redeem himself against Ishii on the grander stage of Dominion.

The match starts with Ishii and Cobb trying to push each other around in a meaty version of “who blinked first”. This is familiar territory and a point of pride until Cobb sends Ishii skidding backward and makes the difference in size impossible to ignore. I’ve always felt the trick to beating Cobb is to keep him from centering himself. If you let him settle into his stance, he becomes difficult to dislodge. Also, he’s not your usual brute. He’s skilled enough to use throws and suplexes as his counters. If you charge at him while he’s already firmly bunkered down, he’s just going to absorb your momentum and slam you.

Even if Cobb’s size is too great to ignore, Ishii’s appeal is that he doesn’t care. His game is built around absorbing punishment because honor and pride demand that he keep going. Given that, this isn’t David with a cute little slingshot trying to hit Goliath right between the eyes, David’s got a war club and he’s down to trade blows.

That’s evident in the first half of the match. Ishii tries to push Cobb down with shoulder tackles, and it becomes a costly effort. He then makes several attempts to lift Cobb for a vertical drop brainbuster, eventually getting him up for some great hang time, but not without great difficulty. It’s a crazy gamble that kinda backfires on Ishii. You can see that it exhausted and hurt him getting that much lift and elevation with Cobb, and all it really does is put pressure on Cobb to turn up the offense against Ishii. Which he does by throwing him to the corner and then setting him up top for a devastating superplex.

Some of Ishii’s familiar habits and tropes start surfacing, notably his stubborn resiliency, which is known as tōkon, or fighting spirit. It’s a trope in Japanese wrestling where combatants who have been beaten down find renewed courage to fight through the exhaustion and pain. Ishii is one of the more famous wrestlers associated with this trope. It’s why he’s called the Stone Pitbull: he refuses to stay down. That burst of sheer adrenaline or defiance lets him endure attacks. You can see it right after Cobb superplexes him. Ishii gets right back up, enraged and all fired up. It is a controversial subject in modern wrestling. Defenders see it as a fighter’s second wind, while critics tend to argue that it can become a convenient excuse for no-selling when used in the improper context. My two cents on that debate? You have to ask whether fighting spirit serves a purpose narrative-wise or if it’s just cosmetic fluff to justify getting the wrestler back into the fight without having to sell the consequences of the previous encounters.

Or, you know, you can just enjoy good wrestling. That works too.

I think Ishii’s fighting spirit is done in good taste here because even when he’s back in the game, retaliating with a back suplex followed by a high-angle belly-to-back against Cobb, you can see that he’s visibly shaken. He’s also a step slower, and his offense slowly shifts to trying to cut Cobb down to size with forearms, lariats and the occasional enzuigiri. Fortunately for Ishii, Cobb begins to grow frustrated with his inability to put him away despite his offensive salvos. In his frustration, Cobb gets sloppier and opens himself up to attacks. Although Ishii isn’t as aggressive as he was earlier in the match, Cobb’s growing impatience gives him small windows to hit back.

Cobb starts looking more anxious. Commentary even points out the bewilderment on his face when Ishii is still alive and hitting him. Shit, I’d be scared too if I saw Ishii shrugging off my three days’ worth of gyming. Still, beneath all that angry shouting and bravado, Ishii’s fatigue is just as visible. He doesn’t move as freely anymore. His body language gives away a man forcing himself through sudden bursts of offense against Cobb.

Ishii still finds small windows where he can meet force with force. But once they enter the final five minutes, Cobb’s got plenty of bombs left, and it becomes more noticeable that Ishii’s well is running dry. When Cobb catches Ishii in mid-air during one exchange, Ishii barely escapes with a hurricanrana. The crowd fucking pops because the move is so wild and unexpected, and more importantly, it represents a potential breakthrough for Ishii. This match was slowly slipping out of Ishii’s grasp, so that hurricanrana is the first positive sign of a potential counteroffensive.

That hurricanrana gives the finishing stretch its urgency. Ishii follows up with a lariat and comes close enough to make the crowd believe that one unexpected adjustment might steal the championship. He attempts another Vertical Drop Brainbuster, but Cobb survives the lariat, blocks the brainbuster and turns Ishii’s last stand into the Tour of the Islands. It’s a poetic finish, capturing the romantic absurdity of Ishii’s existence: a stubborn old puroresu Don Quixote squaring off against windmills like Jeff Cobb, doomed to struggle but forever in love with the struggle. Fucking gabagool, it’s so good.

At 11:47, the match gives both men enough room to show what makes them compelling. We get the familiar Ishii exchanges, as well as Cobb’s feats of strength and his “these blows might actually affect me” selling. The TV title’s time limit helps keep things moving and trims any unnecessary habits from both wrestlers.

I’d like to think the finish protects what we admire about both men. Ishii gives the crowd the familiar stubbornness and resilience that make him beloved, while Cobb shows enough power and dominance to make him a fun champion to watch, with just enough alarm in his selling to suggest that Ishii’s blows are beginning to matter. David keeps up with Goliath and even gets the better of him at points, but Goliath’s power, and, more importantly, his own determination to win, eventually overwhelms David’s bravery. This time around, maybe David should have stuck with the sling.

★★★★ — 4.00 Attempt at Olympus