Featured image by @rhysswhithisspoon
Lie #1: You can never go back
The narrative arc of pro wrestling only ever moves forward. Unlike cinema, literature, and other forms of performance and art, pro wrestling has no true way of ever bending time. There’s no going back or forward in time at any point. Flashbacks have no place in the episodic presentation of a simulated athletic competition. Wrestling can never truly escape the pace of time itself, although it can attempt to do so through more abstract, conceptual ideas. Nostalgia, for one, leaning on the emotions of the past to carry the weight of the present. Innovation, for another, the ceaseless attempt to top what came before in a near futile hunt for the next big thing, the next craziest move, the next wildest stunt.
This reality of the form has led to an unfortunate misconception that I’ve seen bandied about. Some seem all too willing to bend to time as an unyielding master, and instead try to outrace it. Constant innovation and stimulation become paramount. What’s next and what’s new? Questions that plague much of everyday life, when the senses are so heavily bombarded at every swipe of the finger. With this search for stimulation and maximalism taking root, the idea that one “can never go back” takes hold. On the surface, it’s an indisputable truism, but it carries with it some insidious implications depending on the speaker. There are those that choose to conflate the progress of time with the obsolescence of history. The argument being that if we can never go back, then it’s not worth looking back to see what’s there.
In pro wrestling, this translates to a rejection of history. For many, older techniques and footage are a nostalgic curio at best and a tiresome bore at worst. Can’t put the genie back in the bottle after all. The DDT can’t win matches anymore. We’ve seen too many worked punches to care for any individual one. And a headlock is just a rest hold. Lies, the lot of them. Lies made true because the less imaginative and talented made them so.
While it’s true that you can never literally go back, one must remember that what once was old, is new again.
Lie #2: Wins and losses don’t matter
It starts with self-belief.
Ryohei Oiwa can’t convince the fans that a headlock matters if he himself does not believe it does. If Ryohei Oiwa drags his feet through headlock spots like the worst Randy Orton TV matches of the 2010s, then he’ll have an easier time putting the crowd to sleep than his opponent. He’s not the first to try to reclaim this hold from the sands of time though. In the 2000s, CM Punk has famously made it a key part of his in-ring legacy, using the headlock as the structural keystone that his famous series against Samoa Joe rests upon. Bryan Danielson toyed with the headlock to varying degrees throughout his career as well, delivering the novel and committed bout against Claudio Castagnoli in PWG, and a more tiresome trolling use of it during his ROH World Title reign. Jonathan Gresham likely deserves some mention here too, with his run in the late 2010s leading into the start of this decade being heavily built around reclaiming importance for maneuvers long take for granted, the humble headlock among them.
Oiwa goes one step further with his use of the Big Lock. He wins with it, multiple times. In the block stages, he uses it to submit both SANADA and Hirooki Goto. Importantly too, he uses it as a key part of his strategy against IWGP Heavyweight Champion Yota Tsuji. It’s really an ingenious choice for a revitalized classic as Oiwa’s dedication to it as a finish breathes new life into the already versatile hold. Now when Oiwa grabs on a headlock towards the start of the match, it could work as both a positional advantage meant to wear down an opponent, but it could also serve as a potential early finish. Of course, it still plays the role we’re used to with a headlock in 2026 but Oiwa and his opponents have generally been smart enough to keep the action surrounding the Big Lock engaging and active. Tsuji did an incredible job at this in their block match, building multiple counters around the hold towards the finishing stretch, but also importantly selling the hold to the point that full arenas of fans found themselves catching their breath at a potential submission.
Ryohei Oiwa doesn’t just believe in the headlock, he makes us believe. If nothing else, we are forced to take notice.
Of wins and losses fucking matter, and the methods utilized for those victories even moreso. Wins matter because if Ryohei Oiwa beats people with a headlock, we damn well better be paying attention to that headlock.
Lie #3: A headlock is a rest hold
Not to Ryohei Oiwa, and certainly not to Yuya Uemura.
Uemura has been on his own journey of revitalizing the classics. The comparisons to the recently retired Hiroshi Tanahashi have been plentiful, and Uemura delivers on the spirit of that comparison moreso than the finer details. Sure, he does a beautiful crossbody splash as one of his signature finishes, but Uemura similarities to Tana run far more in line with the influences they both draw from. Those beautiful armdrags that Uemura incorporates into his work call to mind Ricky Steamboat, and beyond that Tana’s own fondness for American pro wrestling. There’s much of the 1980s babyface archetype in Uemura, most especially in his earnest selling and expressions in the ring. On the semi-final night, Heat Storm puts in a fabulous selling performance as the larger champion tries to bomb his way to victory. Uemura’s body gets put through the ringer and things like a simple kick out wear him down as much as a brainbuster bomb.
It’s that attention to detail that means that Yuya himself isn’t likely to dismiss the power of a headlock. And here too, in his first G1 Final–a spot taken from him multiple times in the past, first by injury then by defeat–he sees it as a means of both control and humiliation. Uemura’s the first one to grab a headlock in this match, initiating an extended bout of problem/solution pro wrestling that recalls a New Japan of a previous century more than any of their Bushiroad predecessors. It keeps The Grip neutralized, but it also sends a clear message of one-upsmanship to Oiwa as well. About as classic a piece of anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better, but one that feels far less obnoxious than so many other iterations of it in pro wrestling entirely because of its pure simplicity. The headlock is a beautiful hold to work a match around because of its status as a default placeholder. It’s essentially a blank canvas upon which Oiwa and Uemura are free to paint vividly upon.
That’s not to dismiss any of the other work that goes into this match because it truly is some just goddamn beautiful pro wrestling. Uemura’s able to fluster Oiwa with that initial headlock, but it’s the turn to armwork that forms so much of the match’s drama. On this front, Uemura impresses so much, shifting from the sympathetic underdog of the semi-finals to a much more tenacious worker in control here. When Uemura grabs a hold, it’s a goddamn struggle to make him let go. He proves it with the headlock early on, but he’s even more practiced at picking apart an arm. Unlike Oiwa’s stablemate Zack Sabre Jr, Heat Storm’s not in the business of showing off how many holds he can do, simply that when he finally decides to grab one, it’s not one he’ll let go of lightly.
The problem/solution-style work around the headlocks and Uemura’s arm holds recall a style many had given up for dead in modern day New Japan. This isn’t some futile high concept rebellion either. Sumo Hall is frothing at the mouth for this action, reacting as strongly to an attempted slip out of a headlock as they are to those big, nostalgic Tenzan Suplexes down the stretch. The enthusiasm the crowd has for this makes the slight moments of compromise stand out just a bit. Those traded suplexes, while executed about as well as one could ask especially by Uemura who’s become well adept at rolling through and still exhibiting pain, feel like they belong in an entirely different match. The extended runtime too, while about as breezy as forty minutes can be in 2026, also means that these two are on occasion prone to repetition. I can understand that this is their biggest opportunity yet, but I can’t help but think the slightest bit of added restraint might have been wiser. These two have so much time left, and I’d hazard they gave just a little bit too much here.
But what works is just stunning.
The actual goddamn struggle from Oiwa to break free of Uemura’s arm work, paired with how well he sells the arm throughout the match really turns him into something of an unlikely hero of this G1. While myself and other like-minded fans grew ever more fond of Oiwa’s in-ring philosophies, it seems that he won the hearts of Japan along the way too. When the bell rings, it’s Oiwa’s name their chanting, and it’s Oiwa they back as he tries to get through this bout down a limb. Can The Grip keep hold when he’s down one hand?
The answer is, with enough tenacity, yes.
In this case, Uemura might have respected the headlock as a means of humilation, but Oiwa has mastered the headlock as a means of victory. In the final moments, Oiwa grabs tight and he doesn’t fucking let go. It’s true of his hold on Uemura, and it’s true of his hold on the audience. Sumo Hall cries for his victory, and so do I seated at home. Oiwa wins. It’s about as grand and satisfying an ideological victory as there’s been all decade long. Oiwa himself stands victorious, but so too does New Japan, proudly demonstrating with absolute confidence and clarity that the new generation of talent is finally here, delivering their first honest to god classic in the process. This marks it as perhaps the best, and most important, G1 Climax final in over decade, serving as a major milestone for a fresh, hot young talent exactly at the moment that his stock was going up, up, up. It’s a victory too for those of us that chose to believe, as he did, that these things matter. Wins and losses, armdrags and headlocks, the little things taken for granted. All of us, shouting together, “Just hold on, Oiwa. Hold on and squeeze.”
Keep holding on, Oiwa, and I promise, we’ll never let go.
