This review was commissioned by Joe B. over on my Ko-fi account.
I remember hearing about Longlegs months before I actually got to see it. Even before all the trailers and what not, the marketing for it had already filtered onto my FYP on TikTok. Of course, it was hidden as a seemingly objective third party discussion of the film, and that’s really enough to keep the film in mind at the very least. All the hype around it couldn’t stop talking up its qualities as the next great horror movie, best horror movie of the decade, scariest movie of the decade. All this hyperbolic marketing that made me skeptical, and sure enough led to disappointment by the time I sat through the whole empty slog in the cinemas.
Ibushi/Marufuji has received similar hyperbolic appraisals since it dropped. The reception not only emphasizes the poor quality of the match but also the potential ethical missteps that led to its occurrence in the first place. In this case, watching at all these months later with all the context already in place, I find myself underwhelmed even by its badness. Worst match of the year? Please. One of them’s hobbled, of course it’s going to be fucking bad. This match is bad for understandable human reasons–a gross mixture of hubris and promotional greed. Those things I can at least empathize with to a certain degree.
The match itself though? Bell to bell, far from the most upsetting thing I’ve seen. Again, one of these wrestlers comes in with one leg and then leaves with no legs. Yeah, it’s going to fucking suck especially when the wrestler in question has built his name over astonishing feats of physicality that he somehow still attempts here and it goes exactly as poorly as expected.
The real secret to this match though it’s that it’s just fucking boring. They’re moving at half speed, gingerly dancing around Ibushi’s injury. Marufuji tries to make this an arm match instead just to create some kind of narrative hook, but of course that doesn’t really matter in the long run. It’s just a means of killing time, Ibushi doesn’t bother to sell it, and if we’re being really honest, do we think he would have sold it even if he wasn’t injured? There’s no way to know for sure, but I have my doubts. They try to compensate by spending a lot of time on the mat but neither man is skilled enough to make that work even at the peaks of their abilities. And then, for some crazy reason, Ibushi still tries to do his big moonsaults and flips anyway. No wonder he gets hurt.
And really, I can empathize with the bad hand Ibushi’s drawn here. In a now deleted tweet explaining and apologizing for this match, Ibushi mentions having been scammed by a nationwide clinic chain when appraising his health before the match. On top of that, there’s probably a certain amount of promotional pressure from Marufuji and the NOAH office to have their big main event go on in spite of injury. I couldn’t tell you the details of the conversations that went on between Ibushi, Marufuji, and NOAH, and what other external factors might have led to Ibushi attempting the things he did here. One imagines there’s a certain level of professional pride at stake for him here too, wanting to put on a good show for the people that paid money to see him. But I truly, truly just struggle with the idea that Ibushi is blameless in this scenario. That man is limping to the ring, crying literal tears of pain before the bell even rings. I sure can’t read Kota Ibushi’s mind while he’s wrestling this match, but nobody has a gun to his head. Nobody’s compelling that man to climb the ropes and try to leap to the outside. Again, I’m not privy to what pressures Ibushi faced backstage, but for god’s sake, one of you, any of you just call for the bell and sit down on the mat and roll around for half an hour instead of letting this dude leap off the turnbuckles and fuck up both his legs in the process.
It may not be Ibushi’s fault that he was forced to wrestle a bad 30 minute main event at one of NOAH’s major events. But he certainly shares some of the blame for the specific ways that it was bad. Risking too much, going for spots that exacerbate his injury, even more intangible errors like trying for his “Murder Ibushi” spot when he can barely plant any weight on either foot to get anything behind his strikes.
There’s the argument here that someone should have stopped him for his own good and that’s where the NOAH office and Marufuji carry the burden. Promotional greed and this broken idea of what prestige wrestling is meant to look like in Japan driving these parties to push on with something that is so very clearly a bad idea in every way. It’s no new thing for your favorite wrestlers to wrestle hurt, but some of them at least produce good matches, and that just was never going to happen here. What point is proven giving this crowd a bad 30 minute match instead of a bad 5 or 10 minute match instead? Cards are subject to change literally all the time, shuffle things around and get Ibushi off the card. Did any of those fans in attendance really come away the better for having seen a bad match that left one of its wrestlers hurt? Even if you’re a fan of Kota Ibushi and Naomichi Marufuji, surely this is not the match you wanted or envisioned. Just give it up, for goodness’ sake. A million different things that anyone involved could have done and no one could be bothered.
Overall, just an absolute non-starter of a match. Broken before the bell could even ring, which in a way, makes it a lot more tolerable than so much of the other dreck out there in pro wrestling. The match itself is mostly boring, and as a match that’s really its greatest crime. It happens. It’s really all the other hubbub around it that makes it such a fascinating car wreck for people to ogle at though, but as a creative product, it’s far from the most rancid thing I’ve ever seen. What we’re seeing here is Kota Ibushi on a bad night–the worst possible night–and it’s still better than some of the bullshit people try to accomplish on their best possible night. Bad choices were made, Ibushi was treated unfairly, and he made it worse for himself in the end. But these are mistakes, for the most part. I doubt anyone involved would tell you that this is the match that they wanted to happen. I can forgive him for that much at least. Trying and failing is an unfortunate thing, and in this case an irresponsible and unnecessary thing, but it’s a sin of Ibushi’s I can at least forgive (I have far less sympathy for the parties around him responsible for all this).
Trying, succeeding, and producing dogshit though? Those are the matches truly worth the ire. Ibushi vs. Marufuji, the wrestling match, is pitiable, but not quite infuriating.
Rating: *
