KAZUCHIKA OKADA: The Early Years – From Young Lion to Rainmaker

This video covers the early career of the wrestler who defined Puroresu in the 2010s, Kazuchika Okada! From his debut in Toryumon to the North American Indys, his Young Lion losing streak to his rather disastrous trip to TNA, up to his 2012 return and immediate rise to the IWGP Title. Enjoy!

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0:00 Intro
1:54 Toryumon: Okada debuts against the legendary Negro Navarro
5:40 UWA and Chikara: The Match with Ultimo Dragon and Jushin Liger that Changed Everything
14:54 NJPW Young Lion: Losing Streak Gimmick, One-off meeting with Kobashi in NOAH
22:31 TNA: Intermittent Jobbing, Meeting the Bucks, Terrible Masked Gimmick
30:35 The Shockingly Bad Debut of the Rainmaker

#kimjustice #wrestling #njpw #tna #aew

[Music] it’s probably about time that we did a video with this guy in it kuchka akard the guy who defined prz in the 2010s the leading man the textbook definition of a champion a man who’s done so much to raise the profile of Japanese pro wrestlin continues to do so to this day and has had more all-time classic bouts than you can shake the proverbial stick hat L maker doesn’t exactly need an awful lot of hyping up but thought that list would be an intriguing idea for a little video especially as he moves on to a new part of his career his time at New Japan has come to an end and as I write this everyone’s waiting to see just what A’s next move will be but around 8 years passed between the man’s full debut in 2004 and the introduction of the rain maker at the start of 2012 and I thought it might be cool to look at that time period the formative years of an alltime great well naturally a fair chunk of this time was spent in New Japan people forget that he didn’t actually start there he began his wrestling career under the win of Ultimo Dragon wrestling for tum on Mexico for his first couple of years before graduating and joining the New Japan dojo in 2007 he had a few spots in several North American Indie promotions there’s a spot in nura and of course there’s Le rather Infamous TNA period the plan here is to have a little look at as many matches as possible we’re not necessarily going to be covering Classics but there’s definitely some Curious bouts to be found including a couple of dream matchups as well as the chance to highlight some other legendary characters here and there so let’s start by turning the clock all the way back to 2004 where we find an athletic six-footer still only 16 years of age getting ready to make his full pro wrestling debut annoyingly there isn’t a lot available online for Mao’s tumon years partly because of OB urity partly because Samurai TV are pretty gunhoo on YouTube so we’ll have to use still images here just as we would with New Japan fortunately the most important and most interesting match is available his very first one from a televised card on August 29th fly arena coliseo in Mexico City most wrestlers don’t have their first match put on television so when someone’s debut occurs in front of the cameras and it’s a singles match no less well usually it’s a sign that people think the guys’s got a lot of potential junak KIU in all Japan being a textbook example of such a fin more than that A’s debut also takes place against someone who is well a legend of Lucha Libre and no mistake he’s up against negro Navaro it’s worth taking a little bit of time to talk about Navaro him being a card’s first opponent isn’t just a case of names being thrown together especially seeing as Navaro has trained plenty of wrestlers himself if you’re not familiar with his work he’s one of the Lucha greats a representative of an older era of Lucha one that was very focused on the crispest highest standards of technical work and was an innovator of the trio style that dominates Lucha Libre today as a part of Los missero Dam all the missionaries of death with El signo and El texano Navaro was and indeed still is an expert at this style still very much active at the age of 66 and absolutely still worth watching to boot Navaro is one of the greatest technical wrestlers to ever grace Lin a true Grandmaster of the mat he can very often be found in beautiful classically styled bouts particularly with his equally talented contemporary and long-standing rival El Salah someone who has been in thein with well over 200 times in counting but also with other legendary figures such as black Terry frza Guerrera and blue panther Theo can be found on the lists for many of today’s great techn teal wrestlers there’s bounce around with him against Zack saber Jr Jonathan Gresham not to mention plenty of matches with HEI Sero who is just now getting some well-deserved attention outside of Mexico and cmll negro Navaro in general deserves plenty more attention definitely someone you want to watch if you’re in any way interested in technical wrestling and here at least briefly he’s against aarda right at the very beginning sadly the match itself is very heavily cut we only get a minute and a half of a 7 minute or so match most of which consists of Navaro naturally tying the debaton up in knots all too briefly Navaro evades Accardo in the corner knocks him down and prets alls the hell out of his poor legs with lro Del Negro a painful looking inverted figure four that ears him the submission still Accardo is given an introduction and some comments after the bout so again this is the sort of proper introduction that’s only reserved for a definite hot Prospect this show as a whole is an intriguing one in particular because the American Dragon Brian Danielson was on the exact same cart in a trio semi-main teaming with Los gueros del in finals Ultimo Guerrero and Ray banero against Ultimo dragon homi horiguchi and bratzo de Plata one of those neat historical coincidences that wrestling tends to throw up from time to time there aard himself would continue to work in toan until 2007 winning the young dragons Cup in 2005 but before he graduates we are going to have a look at him in North America specifically for Indies such as the Canadian uwa and chwa we’ve got a few matches kicking about from this period there’s three in particular in The Fairly short-lived uwa hardcore wrestling promotion from Ontario Canada that I would say are definitely worth a watch first up we’ve got a a tag team bout from October 28th 2006 where aarda teams with his mentor and trainer Ultimo dragon against no lesser team L Alex Shelly and Chris Sabin the soon Tobe Motor City Machine Guns had actually only just started teaming with each other regularly but they’d already made a splash by winning the 01 Max titles in Japan and those belts are on the line here as for the wise of all of this uwa hardcore and tumon had a nice little agreement for probably around a year or so starting with Ultimo himself making appearances and taking a card or along for theide and eventually leading up to a set of two very nice Toran versus uwa hardcore joint shows in 2007 I presume that the agreement itself stems from the uwa’s founder Osiris also being a torom mon trainy alongside aarda before forming this promotion you’d expect a pretty sweet tag bout from the four guys involved here and that’s what you get obviously the mcmg are just an absolutely beautiful fluid team to watch you just love to see it when Shelly and Sabin chain together those gorgeous double team moves something akin to an even speedier kind tid DX and L doing it while being Brash and arrogant as all get out bloody awesome team of course you can barely fold this pair Ultimo dragon’s naturally going to come in and hit a few of his famed spots at points from the kick combos to a big outside dive he’s got Lowe’s Legend sord spots down pat by this point and obviously the crowd loves to see it but how does a card Affair seen as we’re focusing on him he fars pretty damn well actually being the Young Apprentice aarda is naturally going to be doing most of the selling here and he does a very fine job of that projecting more than enough for the crowd here in St John’s Hall to get behind him and he’s got some nice fiery comebacks in him as well it’s fun in these early matches to pick out the spots he likes to use already as well as ones he did like but kind of ebbed away with time some variation of a slam into a senton has always kind of been a part of his Arsenal and we see that here a German suplex was his go-to finish in these black Trunks and hair di just to really ramly I’m a Young Lion Factor home and then well there’s all the giant Bubba spots which are kind of funny earlier cardo really likes to suddenly get in there with some light chop into the forehead followed by a big leaping heavy one not not to mention a neck breaker drop and Russian leg sweep pretty much all of these are trademark bbba moves and the crowd seems to dig them aarda definitely shows a lot of potential in this match only a couple of years into his career but of course he does end up taking the pin with the mcmg taking dragon out of the equation and L countering run into the corner before hitting a double stomp followed by the cradle shock there’s a lot of respect before and after and this match is a really good laugh worth seeking out I would say before we go back to the uwa we do have a little trip to Philly kuchka ard’s one and as it happens only appearance in chikawa in something of a weirder match he takes part in November 12th 2006’s from Zero to Hero card at line township fireh hall in a singles match against Osiris the aforementioned founder of the uwa hardcore promotion so I guess you could call this a Showcase of sorts it’s also a Cyrus’s only appearance in chikawa this is not a good one the crowd small as it is is rather defly quiet for it all it’s not as if airis and dardo are doing anything particularly horrible but it all just feels quite slow and the crowd doesn’t help they can’t all be winners in these early years can they aarda does the Bubba spots here and really leans into them even going for a big come on but the crowd doesn’t react much to Lim at all in fact it makes them think more of tatunka than it does Bubba part of this was in fact to do with a rip longtime chakara wrestler gruma told aarda that the crowd was absolutely full of Big Bubba fans and that the spots would go down great alas they did not we won’t see aarda get too many wins in this video but he does here after getting the ropes on a Cyrus’s reverse Brain Buster he reverses a second attempt and hits the German suplex for the free count to a kind of tepid reaction show of respect afterwards and again what can you say everyone starts somewhere don’t really want to bag on this match too much A’s two years into his career after all going back to the friendliest shores of the uwa we have two more matches here both of which took place during the uwa versus Toyo on Japan weekend in May of 2007 on night one we have a definite Battle of Legend and yon teams Ultimo dragon and aarda go up against puma and yushin funder lier aard is still a we striplin at the age of 19 and the masked Puma better known nowadays as tjp or TJ Perkins was 22 and a graduate of the New Japan Dojo there were plans for him to be an American tiger mask of sorts hence the gimmick although this didn’t really pan out in the end any who excellent match here obviously we’re going to get ligo and Ultimo going at it and they’re certainly going to bring the goods but we’re also going to get the two yans and they’re really going to impress Puma had a couple of years on aard at this point and he’s definitely got some Wicked athleticism but this is absolutely the best aard has looked to date he’s hanging with Puma on those Speedy exchanges and adding more and more to his offense but I think that the selling is the most impressive cuz he’s really selling quite big already bigger than this venue he still loves those Bubba spots mind you if there is one surprise about early Arda it’s all these Bubba spots being thrown out by a six-footer who is still at this stage classed as a junior heavyweight wrestler still I enjoy them as a Bubba fan and the uwa crowd laps them up as well after wo takes out pumo on the outside with a big asai moon salt aard is left with Liga and almost has him in a tight spot but he makes the mistake of getting caught in the corner Super Brain Buster running liab bomb and that’s all she wrote I really recommend this one for sure it’s a fun tag main event where the Legends do their Fin and the youngsters really take the opportunity to shine and as it turns out aarda taking the opportunity here was really freaking important as the official narrative goes lier was very impressed indeed by aarda and recommended that he sign up to the New Japan Dojo which of course he would do not long at all after this spout so yeah it’s a good thing that we’ve got a record of this one on the very next night Accardo would have a singles bout against Josh prohibition the uwa Canadian Champion a title Josh holds despite not being from Canada and being more than eager to tell the fans just what he thinks about Canada Josh gets some heat in the pre-match promo and aarda responds by well I’ll just let him say [Applause] it f you J W we’re on Earth could he have learned language like [Applause] that taking the to the the St John’s Hall crowd definitely loves Li guy that’s for sure now this isn’t as hot as the tag from the night before but it’s a callout Josh prohibition is one of those solid Indie wrestling hands from the norti the sort who is still going today and that you’re kind of surprised never appeared in Ro or TNA or wherever whether in singles or with his usual compatriot the just as underrated Matt MDG 20 Cross or son of Havoc if you watch luchu underground with prohibition naturally playing the hill that’s going to factor a bit in the finish with aarda looking for his German suplex Josh takes the opportunity to land a sneaky low blow and eventually polishes Kazu off with his drunken driver which is essentially a tiger driver 98 and with that aa’s time in uwa hardcore comes to an end the promotion itself seems quite cool but they didn’t last much longer after this following the retirement of co-founder Osiris and the loss of its regular venue at St John’s Hall meaning that they didn’t Wun any shows for the second half of 2007 while another venue was eventually found the promotion decided to call it quits with a final show in August of 2008 although there was a one-off show under the name in 2016 on August 26th 2007 kuchka okado would make his first appearance in a New Japan RN but of course there is still a long way to go on the show that would Mark the dissolution of the CT jushin lia’s longstanding heel group aarda would be second on in a singles match at Loren Hall against another young Prospect someone who was virtually fully bred in the New Japan dojo and again had a good year or so on aarda tetsuya Nao he himself isn’t tranquilo yet in fact he isn’t even the Stardust genius but again there’s always an interest in looking at such an early meeting between two alltime greats with the pair sporting the requisite all black young line uniform we get a nice bout with a bit of mat work in the first half and a bit of fire at the end with Nito generally being the aggressor and doing some rather nasty fins like a basement drop kick in the corner a big missile drop kick and a pretty sharp Boston crab that was his finish back then aarda gets some nice offense of his own he’s already got some great height on that dropkick and yes the Baba spots are still present which the crowd does acknowledge one of these hope spots sees aarda do a rope one perhaps for a running drop kick but Nao intercepts hits a power slam and does the crab a second time to get the submission perfectly acceptable young lion type wrestling in front of a generally respectful crowd and you would have probably expected Nao to get the win here seeing as he’d been around for that little bit longer so we’ve got a few matches for CER here over the next couple of years as he starts plugging away in New Japan and also gradually gets a bit more bulon slowly moving up to heavyweight in the process so what sort of gimmick does this young line version of a carer have then what’s the push well it’s the same sort of fin that Kenta kabashi had in his younger days that being the good old-fashioned losing streak generally speaking aarda doesn’t win much at all especially not in singles competition in 2008 aarda went fourth 23 in single spouts only ever defeating fellow young line the buo yoshihashi now generally young lines don’t win much in singles but Accardo is fairly extreme but the quality of opponents tells its own story he’s in there against a lot of very established talents guys like Liga Hiroki goo Prince deit Koji kimoto all the way up to shinsuke Nakamura even if aard is losing all of these it’s a definite showcase a trial series if you will and a losing streak angle like this is purposefully built to get a hot Prospect over through getting the crowd behind them still the streak of largely losing singles bouts will continue in 2009 where again he doesn’t beat anybody who isn’t named yoshihashi however he is getting more and more of a Showcase in the tag and Trio bouts at the same time and the singles matches also tend to be a lot of fun with there been some really nice ones against folks like Tajiri and goia Zaki who was the GHC heavyweight champ at the time of his bout against Darda at the 2009 Dominion show the losing streak does throw up some Oddities low I don’t have a visual record of this but on the 15th of July 2009 cazu at a pin against of all people Val bloody Venus not even a joke Val Venus has a perfect one and0 singles record against line maker in fact it’s 4 and0 if you count tags it should also be noted that on January 4th 2009 aarda made his Dome debut he’s in the curtain jeral of wrestle Kingdom free teaming up with yoshihashi and mitsu hirasawa the future Captain New Japan against Milano collection at minoru and taiichi Ishikari or you know just taii while unfortunately I can’t show an awful lot of these bouts because they’re New Japan there’s definitely one bout that I would like to put a bit of focus on that being kuch kurak’s one match in Noah which was part of the very early days of what would end up being the never ending Noah versus New Japan Feud it’s a tag match and it’s one where aada will share thein with another all-time Legend on May the 6th 2009 at the nipon Buddakan aarda teams up with New Japan veteran Mainstay Hiroshi tenzan to take on Noah youngster akihiko Ito and Kenta kabashi this is a historically significant card the Main Event match the global tag League final sees GOI aaki and maharu Misawa defeat kensuke Sasaki and teshi moisha in what would be tragically the last big match of misa’s career and here in the middle of the card a kabashi lets ever closer to the end of his career faces someone who is still on the way up so naturally it’s intriguing to see just how they interact with each other this is another quite fun little match not a classical anything but an enjoyable watch while this is a late Kashi match and he’s mostly getting in there to do a whole load of chops it’s certainly fun to see him interact with tenzan who’s naturally got his own chops and headbutts to endlessly throw however both the Yun do equit themselves pretty well in this bout there’s some nice and fiery exchanges between aard and EO aarda gets to show more and more in this tag bout he’s doing a big Tope on Hilo he’s more than willing to bring it to kabashi when he’s able to and again he’s doing a lot of great selling in particular there’s a really nice Boston crab sequence with him and ETO one where aada only just escapes getting submitted eventually however with tenzan and ETO on the outside Akada is left with kabashi and bless him he tries his best he’s done some fine standing drop kicks and all sorts like that but when he tries to run at kabashi he gets his block thoroughly knocked off with a Lariat and that’s the match you wouldn’t kick this one out of bed to be honest seeing aard and kabashi in the same Rin just this once is a lot of fun I’ve never been a big tenzan fan at all but he was burly enough to be nice in this tag and ETO was really good too it’s a shame that his career ended up being quite short as he chose to retire in early 2010 aard is certainly getting featured a fair bit during this time period even if he is often on the losing end of bouts he’s constantly getting tested against strong opposition and often being given some time to establish his character on the mic and in Lin against some very serious operators even if no one could have possibly predicted just how far kazuchi kakado was going to go from here despite the losing streak and all of that things certainly look bright and much like a lot of other Hot Prospects over the years in 2010 he is about ready to go on a foreign Excursion right before he goes on said Excursion he has about on January the 31st to get against the facelet runs the place the once in a century Ace Hiroshi tanahashi naturally aada comes up short once again here in what would be the very first singles bout between the pair but he is still able to test Tanner a little bit and push against him eventually losing out to the highfly flow in around about 13 minutes it’s the end of his time as a Young Lion and it is now time for him to go out swear for a bit and see what he can do although as most people know that’s not going to work out quite as New Japan hoped it would of course it’s time for TNA those pesky rag sheets announc the news by presenting aarda as someone who has good looks and athletic ability and someone who New Japan sees as a future star therefore they want him to get some experience and yeah he’ll certainly get that although most of it will perhaps not be in the ring seeing as a cardo will have less than 20 matches in TNA over the course of his 20 month Excursion most of them will be either dark matches or at best bounce an explosion usually ones where he’s on the losing end in all his time Leo he will only have two matches on impact one where he largely gets beaten up as part of an utterly god- awful Feud and another where he’ll be in a holy different costume in short kuchka aard will spend 20 months being treated like an almost total jobber if you ever thought that one of the ideas behind the foreign Excursion was for it to be a somewhat humbling experience well look no further than this it’s not as if aarda won’t have a decent match here and there while he’s in TNA but the opportunities by a certain point just seem to come so rarely that no one could really be blamed for forgetting that he was there at all and the one time that he did get something of an angle well we’ll get to that I suppose we should Breeze through some of these explosion matches you get the odd one with a decent opponent someone like an Alex Shelly or a Doug Williams but you’ll also get a thrown together tag team where Accardo and homicide end up eating a PIN to Jesse Neil and Shannon Moore or Ricardo ends up getting squashed by Rob freaking Terry in what I think in retrospect is a pretty Salient Point big man melts compared aer’s TNA experience at the time to that of Eugene aatu in WCW someone who knew Japan was clearly very high on and wanted to see used recently but didn’t end up featuring a whole lot on TV and even then Nagata got way more spots just on Nitro alone then aard got in TI as a whole hell at least Nagata had a manager in the shape of sonono aard had virtually nothing the common factor here of course is that both are Japanese and with TNA’s booking and General State of thingss been so chaotic and generally terrible at the time there wasn’t much interest in booking a Japanese guy like aard much at all there was an idea at some point in 2010 to put aard in the costume of um L character here that I can’t really say the name of on YouTube the one who was a major part of the TNA Impact video game but this fell through when it became clear there wasn’t going to be another game beyond the first one however aarda did still end up da in the outfit once in 2011 perhaps the most intriguing of all these explosion matches might be one of the earlier ones in which the aform mentioned homicide okada team went up against generation me or rather Leon bucks while the match only goes 4 minutes I think it’s notable as one of only a few times to date that aarda has faced off against the Bucks in fact I think it’s the only one that’s a straight up two on Two tag bout as opposed to a trios match it should also be noted that aarda and the Bucks became good friends in TNA riding together and cracking jokes and occasionally getting each other out of some tricky spots the Bucks once got AER out of unnecessary blading when he wasn’t actually booked in a match anyway after a 2010 that largely consisted of job job job and not much character at all TNA would try and do something with aarda at the start of 2011 although by God when you look at what they ended up doing you really wish they didn’t bother before this there is just enough time for a CER 2 checkin with New Japan he will make an appearance at the dome for wrestle Kingdom 5 on January four tagging with hioki goo against lenoa team of tekashi seura and Yoshi hero takayama jeez that is quite the destructive combination isn’t it when you get a pair like that together it’s no wonder that they end up taking the W and in something that must feel way too familiar by now it’s a cardo who has his shoulders on the mat pinned by takayama following an Everest German suplex this is all kind of like when your football team’s just got this top top y talent and it’s taking them a while to settle in you reckon or at least you hope that when they finally do score it sets the ball rolling and they fulfill all a promise and lens some that’s what this period of Accardo is like it’s coming but it just needs a little patience but first well we’ve got to make our way through the misery that is artto he starts appearing in January allied with Samara Joe as his mysterious masked camera man or helper or whatever and he’s a part of Joe’s utterly Dreadful Feud with the Pope D’Angelo daero the Mask doesn’t exactly help matters drawing rather unflattering comparisons with Kato from the Green Hornet after helping Joe to defeat the pope at Against All Odds in February he has his first match as okato against Pope on impact essentially a complete squash where okaru ends up winning by disqualification but only because Dao wanted to give him a solid beating with his nucks a couple of weeks or so later we get an absolute stinker of a backstage segment where Pope kidnaps aato ties him up and essentially tortures him even pulling a fake knife on him in order to lead Joe backstage typically Dreadful TNA crap for the time it’s like someone looked at the old tank habit and Big Owl angle from WCW 2000 and decided it would be a good idea to one L back just pathetic really needless to say n of this helps zatoo get over in any way shape or form he may as well be I don’t know Ricardo Rodriguez or something his final match in TNA once again build as a Cara came in June of 2011 when he lost a first round Championship Challenge tournament match to Alex shile it’s fair to say that aarda wasn’t exactly positive about his time in TNA saying in interviews long after the fact that he hated the company although recently what with his return to a TNA Ren and and all of that he has said that if the whole experience taught him one thing it was the need to develop a strong character and that without the hardships of TNA he couldn’t have truly become the rain maker as most people probably know New Japan themselves were utterly enraged with how TNA had handled their star Prospect and the result of that was The Cutting of all ties between the promotions before we totally wrap up this section there is one more Curious Indy to look at while lardo’s TNA time is mostly remembered for him being Samar Joe’s sidekick they did actually have one match with each other not in TNA but in Jersey all pro wrestling back in 2010 not long after he’d popped up in TNA it’s not much of a match to speak of aarda does kind of look a bit of a generic goober here coming out to One Step Closer by Lincoln Park if you please but you can see that he’s putting muscle on Joe’s had some pretty famous matches in jpw and it’s his first time there in a couple of years so needless to say he is treated like a God by this audience this is a pretty short bout and it is basically an extended squash Joe once threw a few of the classics noping out on an attempt at a top rope move by Arda hitting the big elbow dive face washing him and after kicking the big Jesus out of him in the corner finishing him off with the muscle Buster this is currently the only time that kuchka akard and Samar Joe have ever faced each other and if the now free agent aarda decides that aew is where his future lies hopefully it won’t be the last so finally we get to aa’s return where the true story of the rain maker begins still this little bit is definitely worth examining because even with a card’s return to New Japan and considering just how quickly he went into the main event from there it still wasn’t all that straightforward people kind of forget or rather they don’t care to remember remember A’s proper red debut the first introduction of the rain maker when he came back on January 4th 2012 inside the Dome at wrestle Kingdom 6 mainly they don’t care to remember it because it was by all measures an absolute shocker of a debut how so well let’s have a little look at least in Stills a card’s return would be against a rather familiar opponent Yoshi Hashi Yoshi was just about the only person that cardo was able to defeat in single spouts in the late naughties but he’d been on his own fore an Excursion his had largely happened in CML and he’d certainly managed to wrestle a lot more than a card have got to do in TNA and so this midcard match is presented as the return of two Hot Prospects from their excursions although it shouldn’t be too hard to guess who’s going to go over why is this deut so bad ly well for a start just look at the bloody state of him when he comes out out the oo familiar music plays but he wears the jacket as if it’s made out of a bin liner his blonde hair is one of Le worst die jobs in wrestling history and he doesn’t have any freaking eyebrows who the hell is this idiot he looks like that one 123 kid wrestling figure the bell’s not even one and it’s already [ __ ] the match itself is a pretty average one to say the least Yoshi hashi’s playing the hill and he doesn’t do a bad job of it even going so far as to Gob on the at one point which is kind of ear but the two don’t have much in the way of natural chemistry aarda hits a nice drop kick as usual gets the advantage after Yoshi misses a Swanton hits a kind of weak air raid crash and that brings us to the Finish we get an unconvincing arm stretched out pose before aarda grabs Yoshi’s arm from behind and Spins him around for an absolute whsp of a short arm clothes line which much to the shock of the crowd is enough for the free the already quiet crowd is kind of perplexed by the whole thing I mean this finisher is a complete turkey in every way it’s even worse than the guy’s new look so yeah not a good re introduction hell compared to leak cardo of 2009 it actually feels like this guy’s gone backwards as if TNA just completely destroyed him broke his Spirit I’ve heard some people posit that this match and a card’s new appearance was awful by Design perhaps because that’s the only way to justify what came next so they completely dampened all expectations before a true aard got to spread his wins I don’t know are Jad and ghetto capable of such acts of mad genius it’s not something I’d roll out but it seems crazy probably because it is to top it all off after the cracking main event of the night which sees hosi tanahashi defeat Mino Suzuki For What was a Len record 11th consecutive IWGP title defense who should Len come out to challenge him but this bloody idiot Mr ratchet Salon himself Just For Men’s new spokesperson who’d previously lost to tanahashi in the final match before his Excursion is out to cement his return by defeating the once in a century Ace and ending his glorious record-breaking Title reign naturally tanahashi accepts with the match booked for next month’s A New Beginning show at the Asaka Cal gymnasium the crowd are well they’re even more perplexed to be honest pretty far from convinced that’s for sure absolutely no one could have predicted what was to come nobody thought that on February the 12th aarda would defeat tanahashi nobody would have thought like the difference between aarda on list KN in the dome and the aarda who came out a month later in aaka would be night and day the bucket loads of presents the sheer command of it all and of course the everpresent Ghetto by his side no one who had seen the rather stinky match that aarda had at the Dome would have thought that this title match would be in any way good at all let alone be a truly excellent and dramatic title bout and no one who’d seen aarda beat yoshihashi with one of the worst finishers of all time could have predicted the authoritative fump of the rain maker as it took tanahashi’s head off and brought the curtain down on his Reign indeed a lot of people thought that as good as this match was it was all down to a big carry job by tanahashi and the decision to put the title on aard so quickly someone who may have been seen to have had negative momentum before L was at the very least an utterly rash one and at worst potentially catastrophic surely this guy isn’t ready for any of this at all but it didn’t exactly take too long for most of those people to fall in line the very next month appropriately enough at new Japan’s 40th anniversary show aarda has his first defense against tetsuya naito the man he faced in his first ever New Japan bout and the pair put on an absolute classic one for the ages the rest is history kuchka Akada overnight becomes lorded as one of the world’s greatest wrestlers the future of New Japan becomes its present and aarda will be at the Helm of the company for the next day decade seven heavyweight title ones G1 climaxes an entire trophy room full of MVP awards wrestler of the years match of the years the first Japanese wrestler to top the pwi 500 a staggering 27 matches rated at five stars or above including a sevenstar match it’s not exactly a bad one is it as this video comes out aard is moving on to another promotion perhaps another era we’re still yet to see just what that is or where that going to be but expectations are obviously right up in the stratosphere after all he’s achieved so much already and he is still only 36 years of age with that in mind it is nice to look back at the early years where the expectations might not have necessarily been so high but the promise was certainly there for sure and happily he’d deliver on it all and lend some hopefully you’ve enjoyed this video and until the next time bye for now [Music] a [Music] a