I want to help beginning wrestlers construct and design their characters

A bizarre dream, but distinctly logical.

My husband and I recently finished watching New Japan's Wrestle Kingdom (Japanese wrestling's version of the World Series).   Of course, it was incredible with fantastic matches, and far superior than any US promotion.

I also went nuts over the entrances.  

The entrances are my favorite parts.  Impressive wrestling aside, the entrances, costumes, and music touch my theater side.  I've worked as a theater producer, dramaturg, director, playwright, costume designer, and probably many other things I don't remember.  I adore the pageantry, the flaunting magnanimity, and the genius certain wrestlers have with their look and characters.  Some know how to communicate their characters using only their body.  Others have some of the most ornate costumes I've ever seen, some worthy of the Met Gala red carpet.  

My husband suggested I throw a letter in a bottle into the internet offering my services to be a Wrestling Artistic Consultant.  Of course, why pick me to help, other than I'm free (for the moment)?

I know what I'm talking about.

​So let's talk about who I like, why I like them, and what flaws I feel they have:

Kazuchika Okada

I've talked about Okada before and my deep love of his flair.  But it's tempting to look at what he wears, and how his coat seems to grow every time we see it, and simply say he's just being flashy to be flashy.  But it's more than that.

Okada is The Rainmaker.  He is opulence to a degree of trashy and tacky.  But somehow the wrestler himself manages to transform back into beauty and regalia.  We love him in spite of the fact that he overdoes it.  Okada MUST overdo it.  He's a rock star and owns an auditorium filled with thousands of fans the moment he walks in.  His clothes say this.  His clothes are loudly demanding all attention in the room.  They scream for reverence and devotion.

Because, quite simply, Okada himself cannot do that.  What I mean by this is that Okada the person isn't a great speaker.  He isn't great using his gestures and movement to create a specific character.  Oh, when he walks down the ramp he's strutting and it's awe inspiring.  But that's all he does.  

And it doesn't matter.  In the ring, he's the best of the best of the best.  In the ring, he lives up to the promises of his coat and gaudy pimp necklace.

Okada represents the key to making a good character: find your weaknesses and cover them up.  Find your strengths and exploit them.

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Minuro Suzuki

Minuro Suzuki is one of the oldest wrestlers in New Japan and is so good at what he does you can't even see it.  

​This dude has the simplest outfit a wrestler can have: black trunks.  He enters with a black towel over his head.  When he removes it (at a key point in his entrance music) he reveals a head shaved in various ways.  The picture below shows the elaborate designs he can have, and at times with shocks of hair sticking out horizontally from the back of his head.  This is the only flair he will have, and even this isn't consistent.  But it doesn't matter.

Why does Suzuki have so little?  He doesn't need anything else.  Anything else would distract us from his character.  Suzuki's character is a fucking psychopath.  

You can see it in the way he walks, the way he climbs into a ring, moves around it, approaches his opponents, and, following a match, beats up civilians outside the ring for seemingly no reason.  He sticks his tongue out with bizarre insane expressions.  Suzuki seems to give no fucks about anything or anyone.  He likes to hurt people.  We know exactly what a conversation with him would be like: at some point, we would probably get bitch slapped.

The wrestler has gobs of acting talent (I assume) and he has made incredible use of it.  What we learn from Suzuki is that you don't have to have a giant, Okada-like ornate beast costume if you can sell your character with your self and your body.  In my opinion, Suzuki is actually bigger than Okada; but, of course, he's been doing this a lot longer.

Sanada

Sanada is a blooming flower in the garden of New Japan, and it isn't out of the question that he'll get a major title run in the future.  He belongs to Los Ingobernables de Japon, a group that is a goth/luchador hybrid.  It would be very easy to go overboard with this kind of combination, especially taking the goth element to an extreme (as I think Evil, their leader, does).  But Sanada doesn't.  

Having a goth element in anything is a precarious, ticklish thing.  Most goth things are cliche, especially where death is concerned.  It's too easy to look like one has picked their outfit from Hot Topic or fly-by-night Halloween store rather than think through what it is they want to be and are.  

​Sanada's outfit is very simple: black tights, with some design on them, a matching tank top, a mask for entrances (during big events), a mohawk and beard.  For Wrestle Kingdom, he had bleached his mohawk and beard, giving his look a slight disorientation.  When he took off his mask, his hair was so startling, so animal-like in its variegated coloring, it seemed like he was wearing a different mask.  But, he wasn't.  This makes his character intimidating.

Now for the masks, as seen below.  On the left, he has gone with a more traditional skull mask, but he has made one distinct and important change: the addition of a horn.  This is a man who associates himself with inhuman predators.  The mask on the right takes the horn theme to an extreme level.  The animal he's wearing could be anything, and certainly not one we know of.  When he removes the masks, they have become indelible upon him.  We still see them because Sanada acts them.

I don't know if I've ever heard Sanada talk.  I assume he doesn't talk; he doesn't need to.  The way he walks, the expressions he has, the snarls, the way he wrestles, all lead one to believe he's a thug, the muscle of LIDJ and Evil's assistant.  But Sanada has been evolving, moving himself slowly into the middle of the spotlight.  He doesn't need to say why and how this is happening.  If you watch his actions, he will tell you: he's a mythical, superhuman predator who does not fuck around and will take center stage if he feels like it.

So, if there are any beginning wrestlers reading this, please contact me.