Shinsuke Nakamura can be classed amongst the most charismatic, dynamic and unique performers in the history of the professional wrestling industry. With his rise in the amateur wrestling ranks (first in high school before attending university at Aoyama Gakuin University) to the Toyko Dome and Wrestlemania, there isn’t much that the ‘King of Strong Style’ hasn’t experienced.
This leads us to the release of Nakamura’s English language autobiography ‘King of Strong Style: 1980-2014.’ Chronicling his aforementioned rise in the amateur ranks through to his days as the IWGP Heavyweight and IWGP Intercontinental Champion in New Japan Pro Wrestling.
The book is presented as a Q+A throughout and whilst the material is translated from Shinsuke’s native Japanese this is no way hinders the storytelling. You can almost feel the passion that oozes from the page when Nakamura talks his love of Fire Pro Wrestling on the TurboGrafx-16 all the way through to winning his first IWGP Championship against Hiroshi Tenzan.
There are some incredible stories from the earlier days in Shinsuke’s career, his chance encounters with two of New Japan’s most revered stars Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata during his Amateur wrestling days, which included a match against Shibata at a national meet in Niigata make fascinating reading and Nakamura’s ability to recall such chance instances flesh out the story perfectly.
There’s more than enough material in the pages that will appease newer fans of the Japanese star as well as the more hardened puroresu veterans. The more ‘mainstream’ newsworthy pages chronicling his bout with Brock Lesnar in 2006 at the legendary Tokyo Dome first spring to mind where he describes the ‘temperature difference’ between himself and the now ‘Beast Incarnate.’ Nakamura claims that “That match was seriously rough. First, Lesnar was saying all this stuff about how he respected New Japan, but it felt to me like that was just for show, that he didn’t really respect the promotion. Like, somewhere, he was looking down on Japanese people. I lost the match, and that was the first time I cried at pro wrestling after a match. It was the main event at Tokyo Dome. This was a pretty hallowed stage, and I knew I hadn’t fought the way I imagined I would. And there was, like, this temperature difference between me and Lesnar. I didn’t get the sense he had any love for pro wrestling. It felt like he was just doing his job.” Here’s hoping that we someday see the rematch in a WWE ring…
Some of the more intriguing elements for the New Japan leaning audience come with Nakamura’s debut match at the Nippon Budokan, his thoughts on Kota Ibushi’s “awakening” and his time in Masahiro Chono’s Black New Japan and his time teaming with the Japanese legend in the G1 Tag League. Again Shinsuke delves deep into his thoughts at the time and gives specific details which bring the stories up a level.
Another of the book’s brightest highlights comes in the chapter entitled ‘First G1 Conquest.’ As you can imagine this looks at Shinsuke’s G1 Climax tournament win where he defeated Los Ingobernables leader Tetsuya Naito in the finals and Shinsuke described Naito at the time as being a “human guinea pig.” Shinsuke humorously describes how he tested “how much of my internal malevolence can I spit out in public?” This comes after Shinsuke loses in a tag match against Naito and screams “I’ll f*cking kill you” before launching a chair at him. Obviously this was a very different Naito to the one we see in New Japan currently…it’s fair to say he’s had it a little rough over the years.
The final chapters covering Shinsuke’s IWGP Intercontinental Championship win and feuds with Kazuchika Okada, Karl Anderson, Kazushi Sakuraba and his first Katsuyori Shibata match ‘in a decade’ are covered at length with special prominence given to the aforementioned Okada.S Nakamura also describes how he felt taking the IWGP IC Title, stating that “when I took the Intercontinental it was like,’I can use this and do something new.’ I wanted to really use it to my advantage, as a tool I had no experience with.”
“What is Strong Style?” is a question tackled in the book. The Japanese based style has become somewhat ‘commercialised’ according to New Japan stars such as Will Ospreay and here Nakamura determines it as “something emotional or instinctual you transformed and applied through the act of pro wrestling.” Shinsuke offers further discussing through the book alluding to ‘strong style’ not just being “merely an expression of strength” and it being an “application of emotion” within the art of professional wrestling.
Whether you are a longtime fan of the ‘King of Strong Style’ or you’re only aware of his WWE and NXT work then this book certainly has something for you to seek your teeth into. The Q+A format breathes new life into the story of an amateur wrestler turned pro BUT as Shinsuke himself says “there isn’t another wrestler who’s come up like this.” This unique tale of possibly the most charismatic performer in New Japan’s history is gripping and unlike any other. If you are a fan of pro wrestling then this is absolutely essential reading.
King of Strong Style 1980-2014 as a Hardback cover is available to pre-order now via Amazon and is set for US release on August 7th. You can find more information via the publisher Viz Media.
