30 Day Wrestling Challenge - Day 26 Favourite Tournament

May 14, 20205 min read

Who doesn't love a tournament format? Cup competitions provide the most entertainment in football and in wrestling it is the same. Do or die. Only winners advance. If only there was a penalty shoot out in wrestling to add even more drama...

What are the WSBF nerds favourites?

DOM - SUPER STRONG STYLE 16

As a kid I never really liked wrestling tournaments, probably because it meant a lack of storyline focus on my individual favourite wrestlers.

But today’s topic has again got me thinking a little bit about the popularity of tournaments in wrestling in the last few years. From independent annuals like BOLA in California or SSS16 here in London, to the WWE’s single eliminations of The Mae Young Classic or UK Championship and let’s not neglect the round robin styles popularised by the G1 (and She1).

All of these series have provided some of the most emotional, memorable moments in our great sport over the last few years but what makes them so engaging?

Eric Bischoff says the most important ingredient in to a successful story (in this case a match) is stakes. Meaning there has to be something to be gained or lost in a contest for it to capture an audience. This principle is what gave us some of the most famous stories in WCW history, like Crow Sting’s title chase; then even some of the most infamous, like Judy Bagwell on a pole.

The older I get and the more (thousands of) hours of wrestling I consume I can’t help but agree with Easy E and I think the need for stakes in a story is a decent indicator in to why a show like Raw, which is filled with fantastic wrestling each week, is continually drawing widespread criticism from fans and the “times 16 fast forward” treatment from me.

The 50/50 booking style with wins and losses being traded between superstars in rematch after rematch means that the audience doesn’t really see any sustained value in victory. At the end of the day, athletic wrestling is amazing and we all love a strong style, back and forth match with a contested closing stretch and loads of false finishes but I think wrestling is still at its best when there’s an emotional connection to the story and characters.

Stakes in the outcome of a match are one of the easiest ways to create emotional connection and this is why tournaments are so popular with promoters and fans alike in the modern day. Every single match has stakes and there’s a reason to care who wins.

So what’s my favourite? Super Strong Style 16 is my Christmas. Every year I love it. It’s not just the wrestling, it’s the atmosphere, the friendship and the craic. I’m gutted it’s not on this year, but I’m already excited for another all-time long weekend when we can safely return.

BRUM - NEW JAPAN CUP 2018

If this was "Best Tournament", I don't think my pick would cut it. I would end up going for an early 90s AJPW Champions Carnival, a modern G1 Climax, or perhaps the BOSJ from 94 or 95.

However, sometimes favourite doesn't necessarily mean best.

I love a tournament in wrestling. The aforementioned Japanese ones produce most of the best matches of the year; and the "West" does them well too: BOLA, King of Trios, 16 Carat, and SSS16 are all big highlights in the wrestling calendar.

It kind of goes without saying (but I've never let that stop me before) that the reasons why tournaments are great is because they give automatic context to every match.

I love long nuanced arcs in wrestling but sometimes it's nice to have something finite to watch as a discrete piece of entertainment. That's not to say that tournaments can't have an impact on the wider landscape of a promotion, a relationship, or a wrestler's journey, but they are also devised to be a singular consumable.

It's also nice to see a simple story executed well and that's why my favourite tournament is the 2018 New Japan Cup.

The tournament does have a few good non-ZSJ matches (Ishii and Elgin have a great Hoss fight and Ibushi manages to drag a banger out of Yoshi-Hashi) but this tournament is all about one man: Zack Sabre Jr.

I'm a card carrying ZSJ fan boy so to see him run through a prestigious tournament like he did was pure joy. And not only that but beating Naito, Ibushi, SANADA, and Tanahashi to do it was magical.

Zack had already amassed an impressive CV by then but winning the New Japan Cup was his coming out party on a global stage.

His NJPW run has been mixed since but I'm still holding out for the emergence of Sabre-Gun and a future IWGP title reign.

Even if that doesn't happen, I'll always have the New Japan Cup 2018. Because that's the beauty of tournament, right? The before and the after doesn't matter - everything from Juice locking up with Takahashi to the Ace of New Japan tapping out to Orienteering With Napalm Death: that's all that counts.

ROSS - THE WRESTLING CLASSIC

It takes New Japan weeks to complete their brackets, PROGRESS, WXW and PWG 3 days, but in 1985, WWE managed to squeeze in a 16 man tournament AND a WWE Championship match in under four hours.

That my friends, is how it's done. How did they pull it off, you ask? Well you had Dynamite Kid winning in seven seconds, count-out wins within a minute, JYD doing pinfalls himself and they still had time for a Tito Santana time-limit draw and to keep on showing Lord Alfred Hayes sexually assaulting some woman backstage.

It was a different time, I'm not entirely sure it was a better time, but it did singlehandedly win me last weekend's non-publicised quiz against the current ShockMastermind champion.

30 DAY CHALLENGE

DAY 1 - FAVOURITE MALE WRESTLER

DAY 2 - FAVOURITE FEMALE WRESTLER

DAY 3 - FAVOURITE MOMENT YOU'VE SEEN LIVE

DAY 4 - FAVOURITE TAG TEAM

DAY 5 - YOUR FIRST WRESTLING MEMORY

DAY 6 - FAVOURITE FACTION

DAY 7 - FAVOURITE PROMOTION

DAY 8 - FAVOURITE MANAGER

DAY 9 - FAVOURITE COMMENTARY TEAM

DAY 10 - FAVOURITE ENTRANCE THEME

DAY 11 - FAVOURITE MATCH