A couple of years back, I had some minor surgery that required me to be anaesthetised. As you’d imagine, I can’t remember the moment of going under, but I do have a memory of the dream I was having as I woke up. In it, I was being hunted. I can’t recall why, but I do know who was doing the hunting. Arisa Nakajima. While I don’t believe Nakajima typically spends her spare time chasing down fellow humans, I think the fact she found her way into my nightmares speaks to part of what made her such an outstanding wrestler. She felt real. She’s so real that whenever I saw her outside of the ring cracking a smile or doing everyday tasks, it caught me off guard. In my head, Arisa is a killer. Someone devoted to the style of wrestling she believes in, and the idea that she’d ever not be in that zone almost never occurred to me.
In a wrestling scene that is becoming increasingly homogenised as styles are smushed together, people like Nakajima are vital. Truthfully, she’s never been my favourite wrestler. I’m too attached to my oddballs and outcasts for that to be the case, but I adore what she stands for. Alongside peers like Sareee, she believes in the traditions of joshi wrestling, shouldering the legacy of AJW and bringing violence into the sport that we love. When I saw their match last year live, I was brought to tears, not because it was sad but because of their devotion to what they do. Nakajima had an ironclad belief in what she stood for and was willing to go as far as she could to show it to the world.
Sadly, that’s probably what’s pushed her towards this retirement, the injuries building up after years of abuse. However, if she had to walk away, this was how to do it, surrounded by some of her most violent pals. There was no holding back on this final appearance as she went thudding into Hiroyo Matsumoto and Hanako Nakamori, putting everything behind every forearm and boot to the head. Yet, what always impresses me about Arisa is that there is beauty to her brutality. It’s in the seamlessness of her and Tsukasa Fujimoto, two people who seem to live on the same page. There is a reason that friends hit each other harder than enemies in wrestling. You have to trust the person you do this stuff with to go far but not too far. With these four, there never seems to be a second of doubt, even if Nakajima did get one last bloody nose for her troubles.
Arisa Nakajima leaves behind a hell of a legacy. You only have to see how many people lined up to say their goodbyes, giving her enough flowers that she should probably consider floristry for her next career. She’s also in that blessed position of still only being 35. I’ve said it about a lot of our recent retirees, but that’s young enough to live a whole other life, maybe even two. She can go off and be brilliant, but hopefully a bit less violent at whatever she wants to do next. Perhaps even make new friends and colleagues who won’t know they’re sitting next to the Violence Queen. That’s probably no bad thing – I wouldn’t want them to have nightmares.
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Ramblings About Wrestling 