Superstar Spotlight: KENTA/Hideo Itami

Contrary to popular belief, the man now known as Hideo Itami wasn’t always synonymous with awful injuries and horrible timing. In fact, there was a time when he was poised to become one of NXT’s biggest stars, and actually was a major star in Japan for years. Sadly, politics and improper decision-making caused his career to stall several times, and he has reached a point where his future is uncertain.

So let’s celebrate the accomplishments that KENTA has enjoyed, and take a look back at how this tiny man became one of the most popular wrestlers in Japanese history, and how his name is now synonymous with extreme stiffness and unrelenting ass-kicking.

Beginning

Kenta Kobayashi became a pro wrestler at an opportune moment. He debuted with All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) in mid-2000, just before then-president of AJPW Mitsuharu Misawa took almost the entire All Japan roster to form his own company, Pro Wrestling NOAH. Kobayashi was one of those that followed Misawa to NOAH, which would be his main promotion until 2014.

Kobayashi, who wrestled under the simple name KENTA (all upper case in Roman letters, because that’s what heels do in Japan, apparently), benefitted from Misawa’s decision to emphasise the junior heavyweight division. Junior/cruiserweight wrestlers weren’t given much emphasis in AJPW (much like in WWE for many years), as its previous booker Giant Baba always preferred heavyweight wrestlers.

Though NOAH’s style tended to be low on actual wrestling ‘characters’, KENTA did have something of a gimmick that made him more of a compelling character. Because of his small stature, he suffered from a little man complex that made people think that he couldn’t succeed because he was so small.

To make up for this, KENTA hit his opponents HARD; like Hardcore Holly mixed with JBL hard. This gave him a ‘big things come in small packages/don’t underestimate the small guy’ character that became very popular with audiences in both Japan and the United States.

What made KENTA even more appealing as a wrestler was that he managed to walk the line between scripted and real incredibly well. There were many instances when KENTA’s stiffness angered his opponents to the point that it looked like they were legitimately angry with him.

This concept of ‘the little guy hitting the veterans hard in disrespect’ became one of KENTA’s calling cards. He’d hit so hard that his opponents would want to beat the tar out of him. This made his matches so much more fun to watch, which only elevated him as a star even further.

Rise to Superstardom

From the very beginning, KENTA was one of four younger wrestlers that were given a major push. As early as 2003, KENTA was put together with Naomichi Marufuji, who’d become both his greatest tag partner and rival. The two of them were a fantastic tag team, and were the inaugural GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles, which they held for an impressive 690 days. This duo was so successful and impressive that they were named the Wrestling Observer’s Tag Team of the Year in 2004.

KENTA ended up becoming one of the biggest wrestling stars of the 2000s. He was known for having outstanding matches with many opponents and managed to gain major crossover appeal in North American thanks to a working relationship with Ring of Honor.

It was during several tours with ROH between 2005 and 2009 that KENTA would have outstanding matches with Bryan Danielson, Low Ki, Nigel McGuinness and fellow NOAH star Takeshi Morishima. It was through these matches that KENTA’s stock continued to rise, and it was thought that he’d become the breakout star in NOAH that would carry the promotion into the future.

Sadly this didn’t happen. Despite an outstanding (albeit unsuccessful) GHC Heavyweight Title match against Marufuji and a loss to his mentor Kenta Kobashi, KENTA was still relegated to the junior division. While he continued to impress with his singles and tag team matches – including bouts with Davey Richards and Taiji Ishimori – many people wanted KENTA as the world champion, much like how Daniel Bryan’s popularity in 2013-2014 led to a world title push.

But unlike Bryan, KENTA wouldn’t get his due to a series of problems with NOAH’s heavyweight division.

During the early-to-mid-2000s, NOAH was pushing four wrestlers at once in the hopes that at least one of them would become a world-champion-level athlete that had enough credibility and popularity to allow then-GHC Heavyweight Champion Kenta Kobashi to reduce the stress on his own body.

Yet even though both KENTA and Marufuji were incredibly popular with the NOAH audience and Takeshi Morishima was a vicious brawler that really defined ‘strong style’, NOAH’s bookers decided that Takeshi Rikio would become the next top star.

If you’ve never heard of Takeshi Rikio, that doesn’t surprise me. He was an interesting mid-card wrestler in NOAH for years, yet he had the look and size that NOAH wanted out of a heavyweight wrestler. Yet he was also both the least-versatile and least popular of the four rookies NOAH was pushing at the time.

Rikio was the one that ended Kobashi’s two-year reign as GHC Heavyweight Champion, and it was hoped that this historic win would make him into an enormous star.

It didn’t. Rikio failed to impress the NOAH audience as much as the bookers wanted, and his title reign was regarded with relative indifference as opposed to genuine interest. Worse, NOAH didn’t capitalise on KENTA’s character as the small underdog to build a storyline between himself and Rikio, nor did they use the opportunity to build one between KENTA and his mentor Kobashi.

Instead, Rikio lost the world title to Akira Taue, an ageing veteran of AJPW, who lost it to Jun Akiyama (the man once pegged to carry NOAH but failed for inexplicable reasons) and lost it to Marufuji. Marufuji then lost the belt to Misawa, who only put the belt on himself when absolutely necessary, as a last ditch effort to maintain popularity.

The odd thing here was that NOAH had a ready-made world champion-caliber athlete in KENTA, but for some reason, they didn’t pull the trigger on him back then when his popularity was still consistent and strong.

KENTA did become GHC Heavyweight Champion… in 2013, long after Misawa died and NOAH’s position as a major promotion in Japan disappeared. He was still its top star, but both the company’s mainstream popularity and his own had both faltered. When WWE signed him in 2014, many saw it as the death knell for NOAH, yet the company still survives somehow.

Impact on the Wrestling Business

KENTA is one of the most impressive cruiserweight wrestlers active today. Though he isn’t a cruiserweight in the traditional sense (i.e. aerial/acrobatic moves like Rey Mysterio), he has managed to achieve great fame and success in a sport designed for bigger and stronger people.

KENTA has shown many times that you can be a successful wrestler no matter how big or small you might be. His striking-oriented style has proven to be very popular, especially with the ever-growing interest in mixed martial arts taking fans away from professional wrestling.

KENTA also deserves special recognition for being the creator of the Go To Sleep manoeuvre, which he has used as a finisher for over a decade. Though CM Punk is credited as the one to have popularised it and made it a recognisable move in North America, it was KENTA who did it first and who did it best.

I would strongly encourage today’s wrestling fans to watch KENTA’s matches from NOAH and ROH to see what he was capable of at his peak. He was – and to an extent still is – a fantastic and versatile wrestler that could do pretty much anything. Many of his matches have been true MOTY contenders, owing to his unrelenting stiffness and mastery of ring psychology and storytelling.

This is a guy that, if you never saw him before, could anger you so easily with his antics and almost bully-like tendencies that you’d want him to get beat. But in the end, he’d show that he’s so damn good that you might end up cheering for the villain you thought you’d hate.

The matches involving KENTA and Marufuji are a must-watch for pro wrestling fans. These two had an extensive feud that spanned years, and each time they were in the ring together, it was downright magical. This is like NOAH’s equivalent of John Cena vs. Randy Orton, if both Cena and Orton were amateur wrestlers with legit combat sports background and could both wrestle like Chris Benoit.

What does the future hold?

Many believe KENTA’s best days might be behind him; that’s not entirely true

Upon his arrival to WWE in 2014, he was pegged to become a huge star. He was one of Triple H’s ‘boys’, the signees he oversaw personally and wanted to elevate. Yet the newly-renamed Hideo Itami had several major barriers to overcome in WWE, many of which still cause him problems in WWE’s third brand.

WWE has a different style of wrestling, and that style discourages overt stiffness and hitting as hard as possible. This is a regular problem for Itami, who has built his career on being the small guy that packs a huge punch. Unless he can adapt his style to be ‘softer’ and less painful for his opponents, Itami risks being either stuck in the same spot or released from the company altogether. After all, this happened to the original Sin Cara, who couldn’t adapt from lucha libre to the WWE style.

Second, Itami’s grasp of English isn’t the best. In WWE, one must have a strong command of English to cut promos since WWE has done away with managers and mouthpieces, except in the rarest of circumstances.

Itami is a wrestler that would benefit tremendously from a manager like Paul Heyman who could do all the talking for him, while Itami – like Brock Lesnar – could have his actions speak for him and be comfortable in that situation. If WWE are determined to make Itami work as a character, this issue would have to be dealt with as soon as possible.

Third, Itami has been plagued by poorly-timed and severe injuries, to the point that fans now joke online that he’d get sidelined with an injury for doing even the most basic of moves and segments. This injury problem has loomed over him like a dark cloud and has led to Itami missing out on what many consider NXT’s first golden age, which was from WrestleMania 31 to WrestleMania 32.

That period saw NXT outshine the main roster in many ways, with many NXT stars becoming the most beloved stars in the entire company. Kevin Owens, Finn Balor and the Four Horsewomen, in particular, have all eclipsed Itami in terms of popularity and position in WWE as he was sidelined with injuries.

Then there’s Shinsuke Nakamura, who is trained in Japanese wrestling like him, but stands out in so many ways. Nakamura is taller, has more of a reputation as a fighter, has a better command of English, and has one thing that many believe Itami lacks: charisma. Because of this, it’s possible that Nakamura stole Itami’s spot in WWE, making his future in the company even more uncertain.

But as long as WWE tries their best to mask Itami’s weaknesses and promote his strengths, he could still become a big star in the company.