The main event of Unagi Sayaka’s latest produce show was a flawed affair. It didn’t need the twenty-six minutes it was handed, which meant there was an abundance of filler as everyone wandered around trying to fill space. However, what it got right, it got really right. When you’ve got Minoru Suzuki and Unagi dripping blood all over the place, the Eel’s blonde hair turning red while Suzuki had streaks of it running down his chest, you can get away with a few flaws.
It’s also (alongside the opener, but more on that at the end of the month) the exact kind of match I want Unagi to be involved in. She is at her best when leaning into being a chaos merchant. Since leaving Stardom, she’s forged an identity as a wrestler who can turn up anywhere at any time and make a nuisance of herself. On top of that, she’s seemingly charmed everyone, allowing her to pull together cards that very few others could. There aren’t many shows that have Jun Kasai, Minoru Suzuki, Kyoko Inoue and Chigusa Nagayo wrestling on them. She’s the ultimate instigator, both for herself and others, which is a much more interesting role than any of her attempts to legitimise herself. I don’t need her to be a ‘serious’ wrestler, I just need her to be Unagi.
And sure, she still let some of her flaws slip in here. She can’t stop herself from striving towards the epic, and some of the last-gasp shenanigans at the end got a bit silly, but I think it works better in this environment than in a Marvelous title match. If you’re going to go over-the-top, do it while leaking blood and desperately fighting back against two guys twice your size (and with significantly more scars). This match was already ridiculous, so letting some of Unagi’s more theatrical tendencies run riot wasn’t the end of the world. If anything, it played into the heightened nature of the whole thing.
Plus, it’s just fucking cool. When you’ve got Fujita, Suzuki and Kasai milking a bloodstained brawl around Korakuen, you can’t go wrong. Those guys know what they’re doing. Watching Suzuki wandering through the crowd, tongue out as his blood splattered onto the ground, it’s hard not to get a thrill from it all. That it was brought together by the colourful world of the Eel only makes it all the more enjoyable. I don’t think I will ever enjoy everything Unagi does, but goddamn her, I can’t help but admire it all. She’s chaos incarnate, and flawed or not, you don’t want to miss it.
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