The Phantom Stranger

On August 13th, 2024, Pro Wrestling NOAH announced Yoshinari Ogawa’s immediate retirement following a neck injury in a tag match the prior week. According to NOAH’s social media, Ogawa strongly requested no retirement press conference or ceremony. 

And the wrestling world kept moving.

You could attribute it to the turbulent cycle of world news in the weeks surrounding the announcement, blame NOAH’s stagnation as a promotion in the last few years, or even claim it fell between the cracks of other wrestling retirement announcements from bigger names in the industry that year. Ultimately and unsettlingly, few even batted an eye at the Rat Boy hanging his boots up.

It felt like such a non-headline that I forgot he retired altogether. I remember doing my usual NOAH 4-5 month check-in last December, asking myself, “What’s Ogawa been up to?”. It took around 10 minutes of scouring cards to remember that he was no longer an active performer. My memory isn’t perfect, but I felt slightly put off by how little of an impression this news made on me as someone who adored his whole body of work, to the point where I gaslit myself into believing I dreamt his retirement up. 

Ogawa’s insistence on zero fanfare for his retirement is surely by design, fitting accordingly with his reserved professionalism. Was the lack of acknowledgment or celebration of his career from the wrestling world part of a collective, unspoken gesture to respect his wishes? I’m skeptical here. There’s a fine line between a wrestler not wanting fanfare organized by the promotion and fans not affording even a small share in the marketplace of attention to appreciate their legacy. 

No, I don’t believe there’s some covert attempt to undermine or downplay Ogawa’s accomplishments or strengths as a pro wrestler. People simply do not give Ogawa his flowers to the degree he deserves. Call it selfish of me to shine a small spotlight on someone who’s more than content to spend the rest of his days in history’s shadows, but it feels almost like an injustice to play along with this humble wish. What did wrestling audiences truly grasp about Yoshinari Ogawa? What did they get right about him, and what did they misunderstand? Moreover, what makes his career and legacy so fundamentally important?

Iron Head

Ogawa was a fascinatingly strange case, in both physical appearance and in-ring style, given the direction of the business as his career progressed. He’s scrawny by wrestling standards, lacking the assets and gifts of his contemporaries. His fashion sense grew more grungy into the late 1990s and early 2000s. Undersized wrestlers typically use athleticism and flashiness to compensate for their lack of size, but Ogawa lacked even these traits. He had to invest all his energy into an acute mastery of the fundamentals, peppering in underhanded maneuvers like eye-pokes and messing with the referee to bridge the disparate gulf in size and strength between him and his opponents. This disparity still existed during his earlier Jr. heavyweight days but grew astronomically wider as he mixed it up with Japan’s mountainous heavyweights. 

Wrestling fans understood this much about Ogawa, though their mileage may vary on how much they enjoyed his general lack of flash. What goes unspoken that I find especially fascinating, even by those who grasp Ogawa at face value, is how he uses these aspects to suck his opponents into an infuriating black hole of “basics.” Ogawa slows down his opponents’ momentum at every turn with simplistic holds that may feel “beneath” a cockier, seasoned wrestler. I can almost imagine their inner monologue as Ogawa’s control segments torture them. Are you really gonna get put in a headscissors prison by some freak 30 kg smaller than you? Are you an amateur?

Meanwhile, Ogawa pulls every cheap, nasty trick in the book to maximize his chances of securing victory. Were it not for his professional selflessness and willingness to make his opponents look credible regardless of the outcome, one might liken his punishing segments in control to a humiliation ritual. To best understand this and witness the progression of Ogawa as a character, it’s crucial to observe several key points and matches throughout his career.

You won’t find Ogawa’s affinity for endless, limb-wringing entanglement in his early years. However, it’s still worthwhile to watch him long before his prime to see how his rawer, unrefined style matches up against the trends and expectations of Jr. Heavyweights in early 90s AJPW. In July 1992, he teamed alongside Masanobu Fuchi versus defending All Asia Tag champs Kenta Kobashi and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi in a great match, though largely not because of Ogawa himself. Ogawa’s appearance is rather awkward here. His reddish-orange knee and elbow pads are ill-fitted and seemingly oversized, and his perm feels untrue to his nature (based on how we know him in retrospect). 

Ogawa plays second fiddle to Fuchi as part of their heel team, and the gap in their presence feels significant. Ogawa’s role in tag team matches for most of his career was in the shadow of a star, but his shadow’s functional and symbolic value felt equal to that of his team’s star. That sadly isn’t quite the case here (yet), as Fuchi’s mannerisms and demeanor are so magnetic that it pulls the audience’s attention solely in his direction. Despite this, there are glimpses of promise in Ogawa, from the heated pre-match scuffle with his Jr. rival Kikuchi to him pulling out Kobashi’s leg from the outside during Kobashi’s hot tag in the back half of the match. The latter spot highlights how Ogawa is the only wrestler on his team to garner any heel heat, as the crowd praises Fuchi’s antics despite his role. 

Ogawa’s underhandedness here aligns with a more formalist expectation of wrestling, spoiling Kobashi’s grand comeback and denying the audience immediate satisfaction in the short term to lead to a more rewarding payoff down the stretch. As Ogawa’s flavor of cheating grew over the years, so did its intent. He wasn’t playing spoiler to deny the audience their desires, but as a means of survival, something the audience in term responded with amusement rather than frustration. He never marinades in his trickery with constant, heavy-handed gestures to the crowd to signify his scumminess, as many modern wrestlers are encouraged to between every cheapshot. At most, a quick pointing to his head during instances of clever trickery suffices to convey the confidence in his strategy to the audience without these moments turning grating. 

Mechanically speaking, the Rat Boy’s style may be par for the course for the more grounded nature of mid-late 80s junior heavyweight wrestling in All Japan, which borrows significantly from the catch wrestling sensibilities of Dory Funk Jr., Karl Gotch, and Lou Thesz, passed on to Jumbo Tsuruta, Fuchi, and other institutions of the company. In that sense, wrestlers like Ogawa preserved the foundational style of the prior decades, inheriting the technique of early career Jumbo (minus the size), along with Billy Robinson and other catch savants who toured the company. This steadfast preservation of the fundamentals stood out, especially as the in-house style of AJPW shifted at the top of the card in the 90s, a new concept of the “King’s Road” philosophy featuring more over-the-top and hard-hitting offense to escalate the drama. 

Though the de-facto leader of this evolution, Mitsuharu Misawa remained well aware of the purpose held in these olden values embodied by the current crop of talent, forming the “Untouchables” tag team with Ogawa. Misawa didn’t build their team out of thin air but from their mutual stoicism. This “stoicism” was and is still considered one of Misawa’s most polarizing traits, one that’s been both lauded and picked apart over the years. I’ve always interpreted Misawa’s reserved and stone-faced nature as him internalizing the overwhelming burden of his role, struggling with the expression required of a role he was meteorically thrust into. Ogawa did not carry the same burden as a junior with a particularly niche style. His nonplussed attitude contrasts his underhanded habits, putting far less stress on his shoulders. Ogawa works in a vastly different style from Misawa, yet they share a similar outlook and approach to the labor of wrestling. Perhaps the pair were known as “The Untouchables,” not from Misawa’s near spotless record or their perceived synergy but because of how the presence of opposition deflected off the pair, failing to shake their shared resolve. 

As layers of Ogawa’s personality began to peel back throughout the 90s, even before the formation of Untouchables, Ogawa ironically began to add new layers to his apparel. Leather vests and his iconic Zebra print trunks demonstrated a newfound self-confidence. This confidence afforded him the gall to step up to established heavyweights and put his bag of tricks to use to mind the obvious physical gaps, as highlighted in his rivalry with fiery straight man Jun Akiyama. Many associate the pair with the major upset victory Ogawa gained over Akiyama for the GHC Heavyweight Title early on in NOAH’s history. Still, my favorite example of their dynamic emerges in their All Japan match from September 1998.

Ogawa had developed a penchant for jumping his opponent before the bell when he knew he’d be outmatched, especially here, given how Akiyama pushed Kobashi to his utmost limit for the Triple Crown just months prior. His quick instincts to create space, dodging out of the way of incoming attacks so the ring post or other parts of the environment hurt his opponents. Ogawa out-edges Akiyama at nearly every turn and counters by putting his whole body into his double-foot stomps or cranking on Akiyama’s arm. As mentioned before, Ogawa’s hijinks, like punching out Akiyama’s feet from the top turnbuckle so he lands painfully, aren’t drawn attention to in a way that presents him as unforgivable or reprehensible, but rather to level with the audience that these are the necessary measures to level the playing field with his opponents.

You see a similar approach against fellow juniors, including then-former UWFi shooter Masahito Kakihara in January 1999. Given the discrepancy in their aggression and offensive ability, it makes sense for Ogawa to initially play defense and wait for windows of opportunity, like in the Akiyama match. It’s evident from this match that the way Ogawa engages in cheap tactics feels as instinctive to him as breathing. He uses eye rakes and pokes to interrupt strike sequences as if they were elbows, breaking the monotony of aimless, reciprocal back-and-forth exchanges. Even as his heelish tendencies have flourished with time, you can still see room for growth, as his legwork still isn’t quite as creative or smothering as it’d become in his older age once his identity is fully fleshed out.

Scum of the Earth

The last pivotal piece in the Ogawa puzzle came with the formation of Pro Wrestling NOAH in 2000: His new entrance theme, “Scum of the Earth” by Rob Zombie, blends perfectly with his grimy, tainted aesthetic, donning the aforementioned zebra print beneath a leather duster. One might refer to his appearance as “sleazy”, a term liberally thrown around to describe wrestlers with an undignified sense of taste and behavior.

Most modern depictions of sleaze are shallow performances. Both with wrestlers and everyday people, it’s an aesthetic to farm for a sweet taste of clout. Thick mustaches, mullets, and a perverse fixation on ethical non-monogamy may be the stereotypical aspects, but the underpinning idea threading together all these traits is an ironic, woefully self-conscious disposition. There’s an unspoken acknowledgment among young men who safely don the “sleaze aesthetic” that they are performing a character and do not embody the more unsavory bits of the archetype. In their attempt to tightrope between “selling a look” and not being perceived as truly heinous, their entire performance is built on half-measures and inauthenticity. 

Ogawa certainly plays a character and performs a lie, as all wrestlers and actors do. One look at Ogawa’s persona may harken back to an early 2000s brand of sleaze, but the masturbatory irony that plagues modern depictions of this character is absent. The Rat Boy doesn’t choose his gear or music out of an explicit need to convey an idea he won’t fully commit to, nor does he exaggerate his mannerisms in a way that conflicts with his career-established values. The Rat Boy follows his concept of “cool” with absolute sincerity. He is, at least from bell to bell, really about that life.

The novelty and buzz of early era NOAH saw plenty of cross-promotional action with companies like Shinya Hashimoto’s ZERO1, which gave Ogawa even more chances to showcase his strengths against new foes, as evidenced in the Untouchables tag match against Hashimoto and Alexander Otsuka from January 2001. What’s especially noteworthy in Misawa and Ogawa’s partner dynamic is how Misawa often leaves Ogawa to the wolves, opting to discuss strategy with Ogawa when he moves into Misawa’s corner rather than tagging in immediately and bailing him out. This atypical chemistry aligns with their shared values, both willing to fall on their sword before abandoning their principles, even as Ogawa is like a fly to be swatted away by Hashimoto. Ogawa’s stubbornness is the source of his subsequent championship successes and failures. 

I’m not here to interrogate whether or not Ogawa’s infamous 2002 GHC Heavyweight Championship upset and brief reign at the top was a net positive for NOAH’s business, nor do I want to ruminate on how this decision may have affected Jun Akiyama’s career momentum. Ogawa’s accrued credibility as a potential spoiler against heavyweights starting in the mid-90s, alongside the full-fleshing out of his wrestling identity made this massive victory all the more rewarding in retrospect. It speaks to the talent and dynamism of NOAH’s roster, especially their original stars, that someone as visually unassuming and quirky as Ogawa could contend with wrestlers just as capable and far more imposing. 

Of course, there’d be no fun to the Rat Boy character if he reached Misawa levels of infallibility or if his strategies were entirely foolproof. For as much as Ogawa could close the gap between his opponents with scummy tricks, sometimes he was outmatched from the start. Yoshihiro Takayama had been through far too much in the three months leading into his September 2002 title challenge to be outmatched by such an undersized opponent. The match came hot off the heels of his iconic MMA defeat against Don Frye at PRIDE 21, a fight that bolstered both Takyama’s notoriety, which NOAH surely planned to capitalize on. Despite Takayama’s reputation as an ass-kicker willing to go 50/50 with those liable to cave his face in, it’s this warped, twisted David vs. Goliath matchup that proves his most interesting bout of the year. Ogawa realizes throughout his reign that while not a fluke, his role as champ puts him in treacherous waters his skillset can’t fully prepare him for. Takayama’s size snuffs out any initial attempt to rally offense until Ogawa catches him in the tree of woe and works over the big man’s arm. Takayama can settle with outmuscling Ogawa for some time, lifting the smaller wrestler whilst trapped in a keylock. Still, Ogawa’s adaptability can’t be understated; able to maintain the hold through the clean break and fall back to the mat in the hold after Ogawa pokes Takayama in the eye. 

The backdrop on the outside and count-out tease do a lot to give Ogawa some false confidence. It quickly melts away when Takayama gets off one of his patented knee lifts and quite literally tosses Ogawa into the air, knocking the wind out of him. Ogawa, desperately searching for flash roll-ups, serves only to delay the inevitable, as a second knee lift to the jaw shuts the door on his time in the brightest spotlight. 

It’s funny then that Ogawa’s true peak, and arguably his greatest career singles match, came not during his brief stint on top of NOAH but amid another’s legacy run, where he utterly went for broke. It’d be slightly controversial to call the title defense against Ogawa the best of Kenta Kobashi’s historic 735-day GHC Heavyweight reign, but no other match across his two years of dominance offered as burning an incentive to floor his opponent with a lariat. Given that this pair has a history dating back to the late 80s, this match is the ideal showcase of how they’ve grown and grown apart in their styles. Kobashi had put on considerable mass since his early All Japan days, injuries forcing him into primarily a powerhouse role. Ogawa sunk further into his trademark habits but appropriately harkens back to 1992 tag matches, where his cheating carried a more malicious edge. 

There’s a greater urgency in Ogawa’s approach to the match than usual, spitting water in Kobashi’s face before the bell rings and laying him out before the champ can get his bearings. Ogawa gives little time to even his posing on top of Kobashi before he shifts back on offense. These antics annoy the weathered Kobashi until Ogawa pushes the envelope further by removing the brace on Kobashi’s surgically repaired knee, tapping into the nastiness that Ogawa had locked away for over a decade. From his strikes to the torque he puts on Kobashi’s knee, each point of attack is aggressive, uncharacteristic of most of his NOAH run up to that point. For as far as Ogawa was willing to go to reclaim his glory, Kobashi barely selling an eye poke felt like a warning sign about the shortening shelf life of Ogawa’s tricks, which prompts Ogawa to take things a step further by grabbing the timekeeper’s bell. That’s as much punishment as Ogawa successfully achieved, as brawling on the outside leads to Kobashi’s disproportionate comeback. Karma comes for Ogawa in the form of blood drawn from Kobashi’s backfist to Ogawa’s head as he’s leaned up against the ring post. The moment the blade job occurs is rather conspicuous, but the brutality of the spot and volume of blood spilt is enough to cause gasps across the Nippon Budokan audience. It’s the kind of comeuppance that’s gratifying and earned in its early moments but turns to uncomfortable overkill as Kobashi smothers his smaller opponent. 

Even Ogawa’s last-ditch efforts to distract the referee, hit low blows, and rope-assisted flash roll-ups are futile attempts to stall out someone who can put Ogawa away at any time, similar to the Takayama match. The damage Kobashi sustained throughout the match still made Ogawa a credible threat despite the loss. Ogawa would never challenge for the GHC Heavyweight title again, sporadically challenging for the GHC Jr. Tag Team belts after the mid-2000s until his last handful of years. He would still get occasional singles matches that showed off his versatility against heavyweights, from Genichiro Tenryu to Takeshi Rikio. Ogawa’s time in the biggest spotlight remained a small thread in the tapestry of his career.

Of course, the tragedy of Misawa’s passing in 2009 had a massive impact on the NOAH landscape. Ogawa’s presence continued to wane in the following years, settling further into his role as a Jr. Heavyweight veteran. Misawa had paid the price for living his principles with his life. Though Ogawa wasn’t taking the same degree of physical punishment without a break, which cut his former partner’s life short, he abided by the same root philosophy.

Rat Regeneration Vendor

Just two weeks after Ogawa’s retirement announcement, Zack Sabre Jr. won the 2024 G1 Climax Tournament. In the post-match presser, ZSJ thanked Yoshinari Ogawa, among others, and congratulated him on his retirement. In an interview with NJPW the following day, ZSJ shared his experience teaming with Ogawa in NOAH during the early-mid 2010s and shared insight that Ogawa provided him:

“And the key thing he would say was that it was all ‘basic wrestling’. It sounds cliche, but if you do the basics perfectly then you almost don’t need much else. Even top wrestlers will disregard the basics, but until Ogawa retired, he was still able to wrestle 30, 35 minute matches because he has the basics down so well. That’s something that still echoes in my head when I hear ‘technical wrestling’; Ogawa saying ‘no, it’s basic wrestling’.”

It’s interesting to note how Ogawa draws little distinction between what’s “technical” and what’s “basic.” To broaden this beyond Ogawa for a moment, it’s as though the more frantic labyrinth of movements and holds often attributed to flashier, “higher concept” subgenres (eg. shoot style) are no more or less effective in capturing an audience than the simpler fundamentals. There persists a quiet but problematic notion among some fans that complexity correlates directly with purity. Some may consider the style found in RINGS to be the platonic ideal for pro-wrestling grappling, while others believe the more traditional catch style to be shallower and more antiquated. Even a kayfabe parallel to this lesson exists in Ogawa’s dynamic with ZSJ during their Jr. Tag Team run. The pair initially began reluctantly, Ogawa unimpressed with Zack’s youthful cockiness and unwilling to show an inkling of camaraderie. Even after Zack managed to pull off a clutch victory against Roderick Strong and Slex in July 2013, Ogawa beat Zack down as punishment for not following his orders. Funnily enough, it was only after their loss in a heated Korakuen Hall brawl with Jushin Liger and Tiger Mask the following week that they managed to get on the same page. 

Wins and losses matter to Ogawa, but that willingness to die on his sword before abandoning his principles reflected his need to preserve these crucial basics. Ogawa is fighting not just for a W in the moment, but an ideal that transcends the bell, and neither is worth sacrificing for the sake of the other. It’s a lesson Zack would demonstrate as his own submission and grappling style matured in NJPW and the later years of his career.

With the changing times, age too came for most of the original NOAH roster, prompting many still active wrestlers to adapt their style to accommodate their physical limitations. Aging became a twofold blessing for Ogawa. Unlike his peers, his fundamentals-oriented style meant he wouldn’t need to regress or physically pull the reins to continue wrestling into his old age. The other half of his fortune was how age reinforced his character traits. Given how vain and image-concerned professional wrestling is, many in the industry try to foolishly outrun the inevitable by altering their image in various ways. Being the “Rat Boy” meant embracing the wrinkles, atrophy and thinning of hair to maximize his sleazier traits.

Into the late 2010s, as ownership of the company changed hands multiple times, NOAH’s Jr. Heavyweight scene developed an odd reputation. Wrestlers constantly turned on one another with seemingly little rhyme or reason, hopping back and forth between stables. It was easy to look at the chaos and deem it one big, carelessly booked mess. I chose to see it more like the Wild West of Japanese juniors, where partnerships are fleeting or conditional and rivalries volatile. It slowly morphed into an environment requiring wrestlers to look over their shoulders constantly. In the center of this maelstrom of athletic, new-age juniors, the old-school and seasoned Ogawa sat unmoved. His expertise and ageless tact made him the charismatic leader of the “STINGER” stable that dominated the singles and tag team scenes, taking under his wing newer imports like Chris Ridgeway the same way he had done for Zack Sabre Jr. years earlier. As Ogawa’s role as a junior gatekeeper further solidified over the years, so did the collective curiosity about him not holding singles gold as a junior. The irony in Ogawa’s reputation as NOAH’s stalwart lightweight, or perhaps a consequence of his rep as a heavyweight spoiler, is that he’d never won the actual Jr. Heavyweight singles title in the company’s nearly 20-year lifespan. It wasn’t till January 4th, 2020 that Ogawa even challenged for singles gold since 2004, yet it kicked off what would be a renaissance year of Ogawa– a second peak which nearly rivals his 2000s greatness. 

Despite a similarly brooding personality, the Jr. champion, HAYATA, is the aesthetic antithesis of Ogawa in many ways. HAYATA’s “cool” factor is more cosmetic than an abstract state of being like Ogawa. A sleazy mute in trash-bag pants printed with a Kagome crest, he’s a distillation of the 2010s J-Indie pseudo-sleaze that grew under the nose of the big league puroresu landscape. HAYATA’s a “low flyer” of sorts, not as extravagant with his aerial offense as his contemporaries, but eager to maintain a constant, quick pace. The match doesn’t succeed strictly because of this contrast, but thanks to Ogawa’s insistence on cutting off HAYATA at all turns. Every bit of Ogawa’s tired body language and dulled expression illustrates his attitude towards the younger generation, cemented further as his body continued to break down. Ogawa actively suppresses most of HAYATA’s attempts to keep the match’s pace up through unexpectedly placed cravats, grounding him without losing the audience’s attention. The audience is firmly behind Ogawa, partly because HAYATA has struggled to connect with the crowd for much of his career but mainly due to their awareness that this is Ogawa’s first real branching out as a Jr. singles star.  

There’s an assumption that “limb work” is only as compelling as the recipient’s ability to sell or treat the damage with consequence. Some may interpret a recipient’s eager no-selling of a worked-over limb as a sign of poor instincts or decision-making by their opponent. Ogawa manages to avoid these trappings, as his flavor of legwork isn’t strictly meant to render his opponent immobile or constantly writhing in pain after every attempt to use said limb, but rather to soften his opponent up for one of his opportunistic finishes. HAYATA sells this…passably through a conventional lens. He struggles after landing awkwardly on the apron but may move too frequently on it for most critics’ liking, especially when it’s followed by the unburdened string of kicks used in the closing stretch. Ogawa’s leg work ultimately pays dividends through the leg-clutch pin used for the finish, the damage keeping HAYATA from being able to kick out properly in time. The pop from the crowd emphasizes how perfect a finish this is for a long-awaited Ogawa title victory. It parallels his flash roll-up against Akiyama in 2002 and demonstrates the development of his wrestling IQ over the years by playing into the established legwork.

The leg-clutch pin would become the most significant motif of Ogawa’s singles matches for the remainder of the year, even more evident in his first title defense against Daisuke Harada in March. This match occurred on one of the first empty-house shows of the COVID lockdown era. While the lack of a live audience was a death sentence for many a wrestling promotion and wrestler alike, it paradoxically allowed Ogawa an opportunity to emphasize his well-honed technical talents, forcing the remote viewing audience to engage with the finer details of his work without the pageantry of a crowd. Harada makes for a fitting opponent, better able to match Ogawa on the mat than HAYATA, which, in turn, provides more resistance. Once again, Ogawa manages a sneak win, taking advantage of Harada slipping during a double foot stomp attempt for a roll-up. Though his title reign would end unceremoniously in the next defense, the quality of Ogawa’s output continued into the following year as he began to test NOAH’s newer generation of heavyweights.

Ogawa’s match against Kaito Kiyomiya in June 2021 may be his most acclaimed since his challenge to Kobashi. Nearly 38 minutes of classical mat wrestling worked to a trademark Ogawa heist-like conclusion. Though not for the faint of heart or those accustomed to NOAH’s traditional, bomb-heavy big match style, the pair fill their time effectively going back and forth in a way that makes sense of the discrepancy in their age and physical gifts. Starting in 2020, shortly after losing his first GHC Heavyweight title, Kaito began to shed his Misawa Make-A-Wish Kid persona to re-embody and preserve the brand of catch wrestling that traces back to All Japan’s inception, the same tradition upheld by Ogawa and those before him. As NOAH’s de-facto gatekeeper of this style, it only makes sense for Ogawa to test Kaito as unforgivingly as possible. 

Kaito puts his newly honed skills on display, seamlessly rolling out of an armbar into a headlock, providing more resistance to Ogawa’s tricks and technique. However, the longer his attempts to outsmart the veteran continue, the wider Kiyomiya’s margin for error grows, eventually entering himself in Ogawa’s dual physical and psychological prison. Such an anguished state amidst the cold silence of an audience-less venue is reached because wrestlers like Kiyomiya and Ogawa refuse to take the basics of chain wrestling for granted.

Today’s chain wrestling is often treated as perfunctory and rushed through to reach the immediate payoff of a dramatic stare-down (typically absent of any actual drama). Ogawa was one of the best at subverting expectations built from years of side-headlock takeovers reduced to early match filler. How often have you seen matches begin with these headlock sequences immediately transitioned into headscissors quickly kicked out of, traded back and forth before wrestlers pose to wait for applause? To some degree, it’s a simple form of punctuation in the broader language of wrestling, nothing too worth harping over. What purpose does it provide the audience, though? It’s ostensibly meant to convey a shared competitive spirit and the pretense of technical proficiency, but instead reads like an uninspired warmup for the inevitable, greater action the audience expects. 

Ogawa is guilty of these habits at times, as almost all wrestlers are, but his matches frequently build around the same style from start to finish. He wrenches on holds and forces his opponents to earn their comebacks. There’s no expectation that he’ll win off these basic holds alone, but he applies them to frustrate his opponent, taking advantage of their relative inexperience to expose holes in their ground game. Ogawa is a disruptor of the highest order, masked in the lowest form a wrestler can take. There’s a sense of humiliation in being bullied by someone significantly smaller and more frail. Ogawa highlights the gap in their experience while taunting Kaito as he teaches him lessons in the carny, old-school way. Even as Kaito nearly leaves Ogawa gassed out, taking advantage of the limited endurance that comes with age, the Rat Boy’s mind stays sharp, able to edge out a win in a finish nearly identical to the HAYATA match the year prior. 

Over the following year, the pair would have two more singles matches, less lauded but still solid. Ogawa and Kiyomiya would wrestle to a draw in the immediate follow-up, and Kaito would eventually pick up his first win against Ogawa in a 40-minute war in 2022, avoiding the mistakes he made in his first bout and earning his keep as the bearer of the technical tradition that lived in the shadow of the King’s Road. This same shadow is where Ogawa slithered back into for the remaining years of his career.

Take Your Boots Off! That’s the End of Rock and Roll

Yoshinari Ogawa was 57 in his last match, in an undercard eight-man tag for an underwhelming Yokohama Budokan crowd. Given his abrupt and unplanned retirement, there was no fanfare or notable interest leading in. Funnily enough, the narrative thread of the match is around Ogawa’s ongoing feud with YO-HEY, rushing outside of the ring to attack him amidst the action. English commentary even makes clear that he doesn’t care for the pinfall either way, a microcosm for the Rat Boy character’s biggest vice and a nice bit of consistency to top off his career. This conclusion is hardly a neat bow to wrap the story of NOAH’s most unique legacy performer, as few careers conclude with the same pageantry and grace of a Kobashi or Keiji Muto. Then again, pageantry was never Ogawa’s primary concern.

He was not shouldering the same burden as Misawa, unable to rest due to pressure to keep the company afloat amidst a struggling younger generation. Ogawa was allowed to let things end without running the spokes off his wheels, even if it wasn’t on his terms. If I were to try and romanticize an otherwise dry reality, I’d interpret Ogawa’s retirement as a lesson learned from his late Untouchables partner. His retirement may have been a practical, necessary move on NOAH’s part to avoid liability on the scale of Misawa’s tragic passing in ’09. In spirit, he demonstrated growth past the old-guard mentality that Ogawa coveted. No matter how strong your conviction or how much you mask your feelings behind a stone face and relentless work ethic, it’s not worth gambling your last breath on. The decision to hang up the boots is not a rejection of resiliency, nor a sign of cowardice, but acceptance that you’ve done your part for the world. I suppose it isn’t so damning that the world didn’t stop for Ogawa’s retirement. It doesn’t mean his legacy will be bypassed or ignored. The world doesn’t need to recognize his achievements; it can only continue forward with the lessons he left behind.

I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about wrestler’s nicknames. Part of my curiosity in the presentation of wrestling is understanding how wrestlers, companies, or even fans arrive at the naming conventions for talent. I did this with Hiroyoshi Tenzan years ago on my blog, trying to make sense of his Bull/Anaconda hybrid by noting both animal behaviors as studied by zoologists. The parallels in Ogawa’s case are admittedly less intricate. The common brown rat is known for its adaptability and ability to thrive outdoors and indoors. Despite this, their impact on both environments differs significantly. In more natural ecosystems, rats may be beneficial as prey for larger creatures or by aerating the soil and dispersing seeds for future plant growth. Conversely, rats have a massive stigma in urban spaces, as they may carry harmful diseases that can contaminate human food, damage property, and disrupt civilized life. This stigma is so prevalent that “rat” has become a suffix of sorts with a largely negative connotation. 

That said, how this term has been used to describe Ogawa feels less critical and more endearing. “Rat Boy” occupies a niche as a fan-designated term used almost exclusively by Westerners. While it isn’t canon to NOAH per se, one look at Ogawa’s aesthetic choices makes the name speak for itself. All the previously mentioned visual attributes, accentuated by age and his crafty resourcefulness in the ring, make this the perfect analog for Ogawa.

Symbolically speaking, the contrast between a rat’s positive and negative ecological impacts almost mirrors Ogawa’s presence in the NOAH landscape. The “urban environment” he threatens to me represents the modern NOAH house style, which abandoned the principles Ogawa embodied throughout his career. For every Yoshinari Ogawa, there are several fresher faces with flashier forms, built for the Rat Boy to gnaw at and dismantle. It’s not a perfect metaphor, of course. Ogawa’s intent is more constructive than destructive, but he disturbs the status quo as a rodent chewing away at cables, compromising any institution it weasels its way into, including the most regressive. 

The “seeds” he disperses to create new life are his gifts to younger wrestlers, be it Zack Sabre Jr. or Kaito Kiyomiya. The lessons that uphold wrestling’s essential values are the Rat Boy’s greatest gift. We’re often told by our elders when we’re young and bright-eyed that we have to eat at least a bit of dirt in order to grow. That resistance, or even a sprinkling of filth and torment, help build our character enough to endure future hardship in our lives. Maybe they didn’t mean it this specific way, but sometimes it takes the absolute Scum of the Earth to enrich us.