Pro wrestling is full of guys who are bigger and stronger than Minoru Suzuki, especially now that the Japanese legend is 56 years old. But few, if any, can top him at the much more coveted wrestling skill of getting people to believe you can kick anybody's ass.
Suzuki's resume from outside his worked-wrestling career is imposing enough to give him tough-guy cred for the rest of his days; the young hunk was a co-founder of the trailblazing MMA promotion Pancrase and submitted Ken Shamrock twice, among other victories. But plenty of wrestlers can boast about a "real" fighting background—it's Suzuki's aptitude as a performer that's made him a beloved icon on multiple continents. Suzuki the wrestler is a tireless bully, a crafty technician, a demon who loves to both give and receive pain. And, at a moment when retirement seems like the obvious option, he's taken some thrilling creative risks that have both freshened his presentation and added another layer of depth to what was already a sui generis life.
For English-speaking fans, Suzuki's image likely crystallized when New Japan Pro Wrestling was at its hottest. The promotion was a groundbreaking alternative to WWE during the window between the start of widespread internet streaming and the 2019 launch of the new American No. 2, All Elite Wrestling. Suzuki was already the company's reigning old bastard by then. Despite never being pushed as the very top guy, "The King" maintained a larger-than-life reputation. He was a vicious gatekeeper whose grueling style was a rite of passage for any competitor looking to prove they belonged in the main event. The final stretch of this 2017 half-hour draw between Suzuki and NJPW franchise player Kazuchika Okada shows so many of the qualities that impressed him upon fans' psyches—the rabid intensity, the apparent full-speed strikes, the sheer menace latent in his lanky figure. Suzuki wasn't standing tall at the end of the exchange, but he was every bit the ideal counterpart to a clean-cut warrior.
Matches like these granted Suzuki a permanent made-man status on the U.S. indie circuit (and in AEW, where he makes guest appearances). The crowds sing along with the climax of his theme song. People online lovingly refer to him as "The Murder Grandpa." And Suzuki has his pick of opponents, both young and grizzled, who will proudly wear their participation in a match with him as a badge of honor. I could show you many examples of these kinds of nights, but instead I will attempt to make you watch the entirety of Suzuki vs. Bryan Danielson in Miami from Oct. 2021. This was the most "we're so goddamn back" match of that initial post-vaccine season, and these dudes just keep trying to whale on each other. They love every minute of it.
So Suzuki is awesome, and his work is immortal. But while his workload continued to top 100 matches per year, Suzuki lost some of his capacity to surprise and intimidate with age. Particularly after closing up his New Japan faction, Suzuki-gun, in a bombastic ally-vs-ally tag in Dec. 2022, Suzuki's character seemed oddly aimless. In NJPW, he was most often deployed as midcard filler, phasing out like all the company's other wrestlers in their 50s. And in the States, he came off like more of a meme and less of a force of nature—pay him his fee, and he'll show up, shout some curse words, make the faces, no-sell some strikes, and hit the piledriver for the win. The performer across from him mattered less and less as the formula became stricter.
All of which is a perfectly fine way for an in-ring run to wind down. I did not expect a man of Suzuki's age and mileage to suddenly decide that he should start doing 450 splashes off the top of a cage in matches against high-flyers young enough to be his children. But Suzuki in 2023 had a kind of Mets-era Willie Mays feel—it was great to see him, and he still sparked the interest of a live crowd, but there was something melancholy about it given how his prime had receded in the rear-view. The most memorable part of his year, however, seemed to suggest an alternate path. This was his one-of-a-kind match on a moving bullet train, which made up for a few kinks in its execution with an irresistible concept.
Around this time, I think Suzuki felt a sort of weightlessness in his professional life. But instead of accepting his fate as an old-timer, he decided to take a big risk this year and go all in on his status as a freelancer. The bulk of his matches in 2023 were a series of mind-numbingly meaningless tags on tours for NJPW, where he appeared 73 times; this year, Suzuki is picking his spots with purpose and crafting a ridiculously varied schedule that has included New Japan just twice in 29 outings. He's faced ex-WWE superstar Adam Copeland in Georgia, fellow legend Satoshi Kojima in New York City, highly touted French flyer Aigle Blanc in the suburbs of Lille, and girl-group-singer-turned-pro-wrestler Maki Itoh in Tokyo. Like the bullet train match, every Suzuki appearance is a story unto itself. He's consciously put himself in a position where his primary employer won't just hand him work by default, and it makes every sighting a little more special.
Of course, just plain showing up to these cities isn't the point. You gotta bring the goods, too. A pair of wildly different, equally fantastic matches in the past month have given me new excitement for the territory Suzuki has left to conquer as a performer. I won't say that either turned back the clock, exactly, but they highlighted Suzuki's ability to be a compelling wrestler in his 50s and not just a guy trying to relive the greatest hits of his past.
The first, from May, is Suzuki's return to the Pro Wrestling NOAH promotion after seven-and-a-half years away. The political background to that prior run is too much to get into, but suffice it to say that Suzuki very much entered this match as an outsider who represented the rival NJPW to the fans. That he was facing an icon of NOAH, the lemon-haired kick fiend Kenoh, allowed fans to imbue the encounter with a genuine atmosphere of antagonism. As a result, I saw Suzuki as a legitimate heel for the first time in what felt like forever—not just a lovably nasty dude but a truly provocative villain. At his most rote, Suzuki wrestles like an actor playing Captain Hook for a crowd of children. But against Kenoh, as he gushed blood and searched for chairs while tossing the company man all around the outside of the ring, he reminded anyone who forgot that he can most convincingly play a destructive spirit of violence.
The other match, from last week, is the tonal opposite and a showcase for Suzuki's underrated sense of humor. He has always understood how to put his tough-guy persona into funny situations without sabotaging his own gimmick, and this hardcore-match-of-sorts threads that needle brilliantly. This was Suzuki's first NJPW match in Japan in 2024, but the event has a different flavor than anything else the company puts on; it's heavy on outsiders and stunt matches as opposed to NJPW's typically serious sports production.
This particular portion is a two-on-two affair where Suzuki teams with the pretty goofy Takayuki Ueki against junior heavyweight ace Hiromu Takahashi and deathmatch legend Jun Kasai. The match's A-story is that Hiromu spills a bunch of toy building blocks out on the mat at the start, and the wrestlers one by one challenge each other to take off their boots and endure the pain of those blocks under their bare feet. Suzuki, more than halfway through the match's allotted 20 minutes, is obviously the last to do this, and the crowd goes nuts when he relents. (At one point, per the English announcers, they were chanting in Japanese for "bare feet.") Suzuki played the removal of his footwear as a deadly serious challenge to his manhood, and because of his image as an unflappable monster he's able to lend gravitas to a moment that's otherwise just some guys being fools.
I get nervous about performers I like wrestling into their 50s. Copeland, just last month, put his future in doubt by snapping his tibia after leaping from way too high up, and even though Suzuki doesn't take those kinds of chances, his is unavoidably a physical job that can only increase the stress on his body.
In 2024, every serious wrestling fan is glued to their seat for every Bryan Danielson match, because the all-time great has announced his forthcoming retirement from full-time action; he's 43. It's notable because every Danielson match is glorious, but also because calling your finale like this (and presumably meaning it) is unfamiliar terrain. Few wrestlers get that privilege, and even fewer want to abandon the bright lights while they can still walk.
Suzuki has absolutely earned a retirement tour like Danielson's, with the same kind of fanfare from the hardcores. He could check off all the matches he still wants to do, and then he could rest. But even at 56, he doesn't seem interested in that. Instead, Suzuki will likely keep confronting the danger all over the world until the danger wins. The magic of this year so far is that, when he's in top form, you can convince yourself that we've just crossed the midpoint of his career.
