Why Wrestler Tetsuya Naito Is the Unlikely Hero I Needed

My first memory related to professional wrestling is a punch from a Hulk Hogan fan, and the impression lingered long after my nose stopped stinging. The haymaker wasn’t malicious, nor was the child flinging it. He was simply imitating what his hero did. Hogan would get knocked down by some nefarious opponent, call upon the last of his physical and mental reserves, and gloriously punch and leg-drop his way to victory. When a bad guy gets in your way, you come swinging for the rights of every man. The difference between a xenophobic stereotype preaching anti-American propaganda and a babysitter telling you it’s bedtime isn’t always discernible a four-year-old.

While I forgave the messenger, I remained leery of the medium. As far as I could tell, pro wrestling was an outlet—or maybe an amplifier—for anger and aggression. The source, type, and avatar of those emotions changed as I got older and childhood confusion gave way to teen rebellion. Lingering Cold War paranoia was replaced by suspicion of authority figures and corporatism; Hulk Hogan begat Stone Cold Steve Austin. But the pattern remained the same: People pissed off at The Man or the world could whet their rage by watching big men beat down anything standing in their way. The action might have been “fake,” but the violence felt real to me.

That was how I saw pro wrestling, right up until the moment I became a fan.

When I was nineteen, I hesitatingly watched a few episodes of WWE programming. Not to impress a boy, but to attempt to understand him. Everything about this new person I’d begun to love and respect seemed to be the antithesis of this thing he enjoyed so much. I wanted to try to see it through his eyes. What I found was a new appreciation all my own.

I hadn’t necessarily been wrong about the aggression. It lingered in the action and the audience like an unstable gas, but there was more to wrestling than that. The performers’ athleticism could be awe-inducing. Watching their complex, largely non-verbal storytelling unfold before a responsive live audience was inspiring to me as a young writer. (I still believe I’ve learned more from wrestling than any other narrative medium.)

But I took to the bad guys, the heels, most of all. Not the monsters who obliterated everyone and thing in their path because they could, or the lazy hateful caricatures who chucked lazier insults at the audience, but the Machiavellian dicks and the clever little shits. Tricksters pushing the limits of what they could get away with behind the ref’s back—perhaps best exemplified by the late, great Eddie Guerrero, who was so irresistible in the role that he evolved into a hero who just happened to cheat. The amusingly pompous windbags, like Kurt Angle, an Olympic gold medalist who leaned into being a dastardly nerd when his initial “All-American” schtick didn’t click with post-Stone Cold audiences. Sarcastic shit-disturbers who talked and fought with all the overcompensating bravado of a hissing cat inching backwards (no one did this better than my instant favorite, Chris Jericho, a histrionic, thin-skinned, acid-tongued brat with a Napoleon complex). These fake villains were an ideal amusement for a former bullied kid and disaffected teen taking her first steps into mildly oppositional and bitterly sarcastic adulthood. I got such an arms-length thrill cheering on these machinating jesters, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to; that they’d never triumph in the end.

In time, though, I was left feeling more deflated than amused by the WWE’s cynical storytelling machine. Big dudes almost inevitably destroyed smaller wrestlers whose style was usually far more innovative and entertaining—victory was a matter of what they were born with more than anything they did. Bonds between characters were set up like dominos to be knocked down in inevitable betrayals. Human connection, hope, and effort—the basic act of giving a shit about anyone or anything—were weaknesses to be exploited and mocked, both in the ring and in the audience. While I was newly ambivalent about wrestling’s role as an incubator for violence, I was beginning to suspect that it cultivated nihilism. Eventually I adopted a stance befitting my former bizarro heroes of the ring: If wrestling was only going to magnify the worst of the world and mock any efforts to improve it—if it had no place for anyone like me, as a character or as a fan—if wrestling didn’t want me, it could go fuck itself.

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In early 2018, a friend sent me a clip of a tearful reunion that had taken place the night before at a New Japan Pro Wrestling event. Two men—former tag team partners turned quietly seething rivals, as I’d later learn—stood alone in the ring, the same violent undercurrent as palpable as ever. One reached out and the other refused. The deadlock dragged on for an excruciating number of seconds. Just when you expected them to come to blows, they embraced instead, openly weeping in each other’s arms. Even before I knew anything about this team—the Golden Lovers—or their decade-long history, I was struck by the naked vulnerability and tentative optimism of the moment.

I started following New Japan Pro Wrestling. If this raw touch of grace could happen in wrestling, I thought, then maybe whatever it was about the medium that could so easily stoke our rage and isolation could appeal to our better qualities, too. It was under these circumstances, with the aforementioned baggage and this newfound fragile hope, that I first watched a group of misfits called Los Ingobernables de Japon and their leader, a soulful-eyed and bountifully mulleted man named Tetsuya Naito.

Maybe whatever it was about wrestling that could so easily stoke our rage and isolation could appeal to our better qualities, too.

On the surface, Naito wasn’t all that different from the charming assholes I’d once enjoyed. Although he wasn’t purely a heel by the time I showed up in the fandom, he was clearly no saintly baby-face, either. I was just as amused by his brand of gleeful antagonism as I had been by the gimmicks of my previous favorites: I giggled every time he skewered his foes with perceptive, eviscerating observations backstage or taunted them with flourishes of cocky showboating. I was particularly fond of the way he’d saunter to the ring in a four-piece suit (pants, vest, jacket, and cape) for big matches, then strip down to his wrestling gear at a lackadaisical pace that frayed his opponents’ nerves as much as their patience.

But there was an unapologetically and equally untamed soft side to Naito’s character that I found equally intriguing. While the members of LIJ were extremely competitive, they clearly cared about each other with that same ferocity. No matter how much he tortured opponents, refs, and the occasional commentator, Naito remained unfailingly kind to his youngest fans, often stopping to extend his hand toward children in the crowd and share a trademark fist bump with them. He would also, when the situation called for it, seamlessly drop the bravado to become gently thoughtful in his promos. It was one of those moments—when he addressed a crowd in Kumamoto for the first time since the 2016 earthquakes, offering empathy and reassurance—that made me realize I loved Tetsuya Naito.

My emotional investment only intensified as I learned more about his character’s ongoing story and the issues and outlook that informed his words. Naito, also known as the Stardust Genius, began his career as a promising if rather bland young wrestler who was being groomed to be New Japan’s next big hero. But just as he was about to come into his own and fight for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at WrestleKingdom—NJPW’s most prestigious belt, won at its biggest show of the year—the fans began to lose interest in him. They didn’t hate him—in wrestling, you can work with being hated. They were indifferent to him, greeting him with heavy, disinterested silence. As a result, the match that was supposed to be his coronation got overshadowed by two more established wrestlers fighting for the less important Intercontinental championship. Naito was sent to work in Mexico, his career all but a write-off.

When he addressed a crowd in Kumamoto for the first time since the 2016 earthquakes, offering empathy and reassurance, I realized I loved Tetsuya Naito.

In Mexico, he fell in with a group of charismatic heels called Los Ingobernables, rebuilt himself, and returned to Japan with a whole new (bad) attitude. El Ingobernable Naito was smirkingly apathetic, antagonistic, and anti-authoritarian. In the ring, all that he seemed to care about was winding up his opponents and then telling them to “tranquilo.” Outside of it, he only seemed to care about his Ingobernables hat. But beneath that smug sheen of tranquility lurked someone who really, really gave a shit. This became increasingly apparent as he began to assemble a group of fellow misfits who had also been sidelined or overlooked for various reasons. Their obvious bond grew along with their ranks. Los Ingobernables de Japon were even more competitive than your average siblings, but they were fiercely loyal and protective, too.

With LIJ at his side, Naito won the Intercontinental belt and generally abused it as a symbol of his failures. He clawed his way back to the WrestleKingdom main event, but stumbled when he tried to reclaim his past glory. He won the Intercontinental title a few more times, more as a side effect of defending his team from various threats (including my formerly beloved Jericho) than out of any actual desire to hold it. He is now making peace with both the belt itself and what it has represented to him as he fights to get back to the main event and IWGP Heavyweight title. In the process, he has evolved from a bitter failure who only cared about his hat and his revenge into a philosophical late bloomer who cares about his hat, his team, his young fans, and his future.

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There are, I’ve learned in my research, cultural reasons that Naito’s journey resonates so strongly with New Japan’s domestic fans. As a Westerner, my perspective on this is limited, and it’s not my place to attempt to explain it. What I can speak to is why he’s also found a devoted international following: Tetsuya Naito is going through some archetypical millennial shit.

Naito, like so many of us, spent a chunk of his life building toward a future that seemed all but guaranteed if he worked hard enough and wanted it enough. When it became clear that this future would not unfurl as planned, he rallied, rebranded, and returned to fight with a mix of sarcastic humor and love for the family he found and assembled with similar misfits. He’s still working to find new meaning in benchmarks that were once considered below him. And he’s still angry—there’s every reason to be—but anger alone cannot sustain him.

For my generation of wrestling fans, Naito embodies our time and our struggles every bit as much as the Hogans and Austins did for generations before. Unlike his predecessors, though, he offers no easy outlet for our anxieties, no vicarious triumph over our enemies. As striking as he is in a cape, Naito is no superhero. The closest thing he has to a superpower is survival. His matches don’t build toward certain victories: He suffers, he endures, and sometimes he comes out on top. His hardened exterior protects a surprisingly tender heart that hasn’t quite given up yet. His interviews also emphasize the power in keeping going, even when the result is far from guaranteed. “There’s a saying . . . if you don’t give up, your dreams will come true, and I don’t like that,” Naito said in a documentary that aired last fall. “But whatever situation you’re in, if you don’t give up, you can see the light. I hope people can see what I’ve done and understand that.”

Naito offers fans no easy outlet for our anxieties, no vicarious triumph over our enemies. He is no superhero. The closest thing he has to a superpower is survival. 

I never expected to need this kind of hero at this point in my life. I assumed that growing out of the need for an external source of inspiration or a role model was a benchmark I’d inevitably pass on the way to adulthood—along with getting a remotely stable job, following a logical career path, establishing some semblance of economic and emotional security, and maybe finding a hint of a clear purpose. Now that few of these things are going according to plan and I, like many in my generation, am scrapping through my own falls and rises, I’m glad I have a story like Naito’s to light my way.

To find this in wrestling, of all things, feels especially powerful to me. Discovering that a medium that has so often been treated as an outlet for aggression, antipathy, and violence can also be an outlet for earnestness, genuine effort to improve, and giving a shit makes me think that maybe we really can be more than our basest instincts. Watching the Stone Cold-esque fuck-the-man antihero archetype be transformed into an iconoclastic champion of solidarity and emotional investment gives me hope that maybe everything doesn’t end in apathetic despair. And every time I see Tetsuya Naito reach out to bump a tiny fan’s outstretched fist, I see potential and connection where I once saw only destruction.

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