This Japanese Wrestling Commentator Screaming "HOLY SHIT" Live On Air Is The Funniest Thing You'll Hear All Day
If you know me, you know that wrestling is a massive part of my life. I love it. Love the graps to death. I watch all the wrestling I could possibly get my hands on, which is A LOT OF WRESTLING in 2018, but not all promotions were as readily accessible as they are today, and a few years ago, when I was getting into Japanese wrestling, this was very much the case. “Back in my day”, I had to scour the internet for DailyMotion links on forums that’d lead to unmarked videos that were maybe half of a G1 Climax match if you were lucky, and I loved the chase aspect to this game.
When I’d find an unbelievable match I HAD to show my friends, though, they’d all give me the same excuse for not wanting to watch it…“You can’t even understand what the commentators are saying!”
Now I’d always be flabbergasted by this, because I didn’t realize commentary making/breaking a match was so important to so many of these people. Sure, it CAN make or break a match, let’s use Triple H vs Sting from WrestleMania 31 as an example of a well put together match that commentary broke (seriously, read live reports from the venue, the crowd loved it), but more often than not nowadays without good ol’ JR and King in the booth, commentary is slightly annoying white noise. So I’d shrug my shoulders, tell everyone they didn’t know what they were missing out on, and continue enjoying New Japan Pro Wrestling to the fullest.
Years later, English commentary came into the fold as NJPW flourished worldwide, everyone I’d tried to get to watch NJPW with me was now rocking Bullet Club shirts, talking about how great it was to have Jim Ross back on commentary (though with all due respect to his legendary career, he is one of the worst the industry has to offer at the moment), and I’m still watching NJPW weekly…with Japanese commentary. I realized that somewhere in my years of “putting up with it”, I really fell in love with it, and it’s because of moments like this. Every now and then something like this happens; previously the famous “YOUNG BUCKS-UH, GO HOME-UH” clip…
And you realize that what commentators are saying in relation to the professional wrestling match in front of them doesn’t really matter. It’s the emotion with which they say it that does. And NJPW’s Japanese commentators are EMOTIONAL.
Check out this match and the rest of the G1 Climax on NJPWWorld.com, New Japan’s version of the WWE Network. It’s basically the same price, and with the English translation function on their website, it pretty easy to sign up for. This match in particular was IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kenny Omega’s first singles loss since last January (his opponent being Tomohiro Ishii), and it was a truly incredible bout that’ll probably go down as the best contest 2018’s G1 Climax has to offer when it’s all said and done.