OZAWA: Savior Complex
If I’M the Savior of NOAH, and YOU'RE the Savior of NOAH, then who’s steering the Ark?!
I’ve been watching Pro Wrestling NOAH for about six years now. In that time, I’ve seen both fans and wrestling media declare at least five wrestlers the “savior” of NOAH. Six, if you count Kenoh twice, and many more if we include people like KENTA and Marufuji, who bore the title before I began watching regularly in 2019.
There seems to be this constant thought that NOAH is “sinking” and consistently needs saving. From there, came the idea that there must be one person who could rescue the company from ruin, some magical superstar who could return the company to its golden days.
Credit where credit is due, there have been well-documented occasions where NOAH had fallen into such terrible financial ruin that there was palpable danger of the promotion closing. To the point where it was included in the promotion’s storytelling, as our podcast has covered in both part one and two of our episodes on MaruKEN, our episode The Aggression, and even the first installment of our “I AM NOAH” series. It’s pervasive, and in an industry driven by star-power, a company does need to appeal to an audience through its roster to stay afloat.
However, this story of destruction hasn’t been the case for many years now, after CyberAgent acquired the company in January 2020. And beyond that, the story of wrestlers like Kaito Kiyomiya, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Kenoh and Go Shiozaki have gone to great lengths to dismiss the idea that any one person can carry a promotion on their shoulders.
So, all of this to say: I find a lot of the discussion surrounding OZAWA to be pretty exhausting.
When Shukan Pro Wrestling first dropped this cover, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. In huge letters read “THE MAN WHO SAVED THE ARK”, with OZAWA front and center. The choice of words gained a lot of traction on Twitter, with fans arguing over whether this was in bad taste or not. Those conversations largely bore me, but I do want to highlight that OZAWA himself quoted the cover with his own thoughts:
Even though I had no intention of saving NOAH, it seems that I have ended up doing it anyway.
In other words:
“This broken boat would be better off being completely destroyed and rebuilt from scratch.”
I'm going to destroy it all. Everything for Noah.
I found these words compelling. On some level, OZAWA recognized that NOAH is not particularly in need of a mythical savior. However, he isn’t wrong in stating that it did need to be deconstructed and reconstructed. The status quo must be continually established and then torn apart, starting the stories again at ground floor. Jake Lee had done this in 2023, after defeating Kaito Kiyomiya for the GHC title on March 19th. He shook up a period of stagnant stories for NOAH by exploring the company’s history through his championship reign.
OZAWA has now taken on a similar role. By also defeating Kiyomiya, he too has torn apart the status quo, and established a new string of main eventers and rivalries through his title reign. He has undoubtedly churned the soil, but it’s soil that has been in the earth for a long time. It could never work if the promotion’s groundwork had been sowed with salt.
So in some ways, I can actually understand some of the narrative of OZAWA as a “savior”, particularly in the eyes of fans who were drawn to the promotion through his shock title win at the Budokan. Revitalization can often be equated to rescue. However, the savior narrative is unfair to NOAH, and in this case, I don’t even think it serves OZAWA’s character.
In wrestling, the word savior comes with this image of a dominant champion who wins decisively. Someone worthy of veneration, and idolization. A well-rounded athlete with top notch matches. A speaker who is flawless on the microphone. The word comes with this assumption that when you begin watching NOAH, you’ll be watching the most complete form of OZAWA.
The media continues to perpetuate this, from ShuPro issue 2348 claiming him as the “Ark’s Supreme Ruler”, to his recent Rolling Stone Japan feature introducing himself as a “dark hero”. It’s easy to get lost in the mythos, and it’s easy to tune into NOAH expecting a perfect and cool heel champion.
However, this is not exactly who OZAWA is yet, and when you watch him from show to show, it becomes clear that this is the point. He’s a rookie wrestler of two and a half years, and he’s always presented as such, even as he continues his remarkable title reign with the GHC.
There are any number of examples I can point out that highlight this in kayfabe. The most obvious being how he has never won a single title match without Yoshi-Tatsu pulling the referee out of the ring during a pivotal moment, but none of his matches are meant to make him look like a complete package. My absolute favorite example to date is from a match on March 9th, leading up to his GHC title defense against Masa Kitamiya:
In this match, OZAWA ran the ropes, preparing himself to do one of his athletic dives that helped skyrocket him to popularity. However, his feet got caught and after some truly comedic flailing, he fell face-first onto the ramp. He froze, looked up at his trainer, Masa Kitamiya, and started fervently doing pushups in penance for his mistake.
He stated both after the match and on twitter that simply looking at Kitamiya after falling filled him with a sense of dread, and he blacked out and started doing the exercises that Kitamiya would make him do every time he fell in practice. He insisted that this moment is born from trauma:
“At the Noah dojo, whenever I failed at something, I was made to do squats or push-ups…
When I turned around, I saw Kitamiya looking my way... and before I even knew it, I was doing push-ups…”
However, what’s interesting about this moment is not only OZAWA’s charming and comedic recovery, but the contradiction in the fall itself. He landed exactly on his shoulder blade, protecting himself from the brunt of the impact. It’s the kind of ukemi that is only born from constant drills, and it could have only been achieved thanks to the efforts of his dojo coach. I was immediately reminded of Kenoh’s assessment of the 2021 cage match between Masa Kitamiya and Katsuhiko Nakajima, where Masa threw himself off the cage in a thunderous diving senton that broke the ring:
“Taking falls is an advanced technique that one begins training long before their debut. He must have practiced it over and over and over in the Kensuke Office Dojo. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to get his body to be parallel to the canvas when taking the fall from the cage. He’d never be able to stand up again unless he had a dedicated trainer, making him repeat it over and over. In that way, Katsuhiko Nakajima dug his own grave.”
Similarly, if Masa Kitamiya had not continually tested and pushed OZAWA, then even that simple fall from the ropes could have severely damaged him. OZAWA neglected to acknowledge that truth, because OZAWA only ever sees himself as a victim.
“Whenever I'm in front of Kitamiya, I get flashbacks of this painful past. That's why, in order to get over my painful, painful memories, I must exact revenge on Kitamiya.”
This shows how overwhelmingly naive OZAWA can be. He doesn’t understand why the dojo works the way it does. He trips, and stumbles, and falls, and he always survives and comes back stronger, and it’s all because of the training he endured to get where he is now. This doesn’t mean that Masa Kitamiya is a good senior, but it doesn’t make him a bad one either. It just means that there are undeniable truths about the nature of wrestling that OZAWA refuses to acknowledge. You can’t improve without pain, in a world where you must sacrifice your body for your art.
That, to me, is the essence of OZAWA. He is strange, and charming, and intoxicatingly free-spirited. But he is also inexperienced, and thoroughly convinced that he can change the world he lives in without actually understanding it.
All of that just makes me ask: how can he be a savior? He’s barely even gotten a chance to be a wrestler.
I get asked what I think about OZAWA pretty frequently. I’ve talked about this with Alicia, and she’s gotten the same question several times as well. We both arrived at the same answer: OZAWA is a young, incomplete wrestler who has an understanding of storytelling and entertaining that very few others can claim. He’s consistently compelling, entertaining, and evolving. What mystifies me is why people feel the need to ask in the first place.
I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that people tend to be afraid of liking an “imperfect” wrestler. However, in the end, that’s really where NOAH thrives. OZAWA is not meant to be a hero, or a villain. He’s simply meant to be human. It just so happens that he’s a human with a penchant for breakdancing and a very clean phoenix splash.
So to me, there is simply a mismatch in the way the fans and media present OZAWA, and the way he presents himself in the ring. These things have a way of righting themselves over time though, so I’m curious to see how his story unfolds, and what might be written about him 5 years from now.
What’s important is that no matter what happens, OZAWA as a character simply works. And he wouldn’t have worked without Kaito Kiyomiya becoming such a believable Ace to overthrow. Kiyomiya would have never become that Ace without Kenoh pushing against him every step of the way. Kenoh would have never become the man he’s become without Go Shiozaki acting as a steadfast guardian to the promotion through the Pandemic. Go Shiozaki would have never become that guardian to NOAH if Naomichi Marufuji hadn’t accepted his handshake on January 31st, 2016, allowing him to come back home after his time in AJPW. And so it continues.
Pro Wrestling NOAH is strands, and it is connections. NOAH is the year that OZAWA spent staring up at everyone else from ringside, wondering when it would be his turn. NOAH is also the people he’s grown to trust in his unit, and it’s the people he’s grown to resent through his time in the dojo. It’s Galeno, it’s Manabu Soya, it’s Masa Kitamiya, and very soon it will be KENTA. NOAH is every story that OZAWA has built, and every story we have yet to watch him build, hands over our hearts, smiles on our faces.
The one thing NOAH is not, however, is a sinking ship that needs saving.
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