Before Luke Gallows made it big in Japan as part of the Bullet Club, he’d had a rough go of it in the Land of the Rising Sun.
In fact, in one of his last matches before his Bullet Club stint, he faced Sylvester Terkay in a match so bad, it got both men cussed out by the country’s most legendary wrestler.
On camera.
While the match was still going on.
If it was any consolation, neither man used their most famous moniker that night. Luke Gallows wrestled as “Keith Hanson”…
…while Sylvester Terkay (best remembered for his forgettable WWE run, if that makes any sense) wrestled as “The Predator”.
The occasion: Genome 14 event, put on by Antonio Inoki’s post-New Japan venture, Inoki Genome Federation.
And boy did I have a hard time finding it. For instance, whenever I googled “Keith Hanson Predator”, all I got were a bunch of sex offender sting videos…
…most of which didn’t even involve wrestlers!
Finally, with just the right search terms, I tracked down the entire show on a, to put it mildly, less-than-reputable website.
Before the match, Luke Gallows’s entrance was met with apathy…
…which was still preferable to Sylvester Terkay’s entrance, which was met with apathy from some sections of the crowd…
…and annoyance from others.
As The Predator, Terkay borrowed heavily from Bruiser Brody, the legendary gaijin. The furry boots were just the beginning.
Just like Bruiser Brody in Japan, Predator used a brass instrumental cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”… or maybe it was the Get Smart theme.
And also like Bruiser Brody, Predator menaced the crowd with a chain. But unlike Brody, Predator got winded shortly into his rampage and appeared to get lost.
While Bruiser Brody came off like a madman, Sylvester Terkay came off like a giant toddler with inattentive parents…
…roaming around the playground knocking over all the smaller kids.
After Predator had double-checked the crowd for any remaining fans to knock over, he ended his Chris Farley skit and got into the ring.
Officially, this hoss fight was an Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye Super Fight…
…and no one expected it to be a technical classic. In fact, no one expected it even to be an entertaining hoss fight—the same two men had put on a fairly crappy big man match just two months earlier.
But still, no one anticipated a match, minute-for-minute, as bad or worse than Sid Vicious vs. Nightstalker. And here’s the kicker: Sid and Stalker’s infamous minus-four-star battle lasted only three and a half minutes.
Predator vs. Keith Hanson ran three times as long.
I suppose you could blame it on the culture barrier; if a Japanese crowd is silent during a match, American wrestlers can’t tell if they’re just paying careful attention, or if it really, really sucks.
After a few slams that popped the crowd a bit, the rest of the match was basically this:
Aimless meat-slapping delivered at half-speed while Predator caught his breath.
There were also bearhugs while Predator caught his breath…
…and body scissors while Predator caught his breath.
The only other parts of the match worth mentioning were this Texas cloverleaf that would make Dory Funk, Jr. turn over in his…
*checks Wikipedia*
…bed…
…this alleged spinebuster and missionary pin…
…and this splash to Predator’s knees, which he countered by putting his knees up.
Pretty clever!
But what finally took this match over the edge was this rope-running sequence ten minutes in…
…where even the comparative cardio machine Luke Gallows showed his exhaustion.
That axe-handle couldn’t even smash the glass to get to the axe.
At last, the fans came alive at the sight of Antonio Inoki himself, the company’s founder and namesake.
In puroresu, it’s a sign of respect when the other wrestlers watch your match at ringside.
But here, Inoki inaugurated a new puroresu tradition, one where your boss marches to the ring…
…clangs a chair against the railing….
…and yells “Stop it!” and “Bulls**t!”
At last, Terkay and Gallows got the message, wrapping up the match instantly.
Final result:
Keith Hanson X, Predator O, Antonio Inoki △.
While Luke Gallows enjoyed the world’s saddest victory celebration…
…Antonio Inoki, still irate that this travesty was the longest match on the card, yelled at some more people…
…then slapped Masahiro Chono for booking it.
It could have been worse for Chono—when the WWE’s 2005 Royal Rumble went awry, the owner stormed the ring and personally tore the booker’s quads.
Unsurprisingly, Sylvester Terkay never wrestled in Japan again. In fact, he wrestled only one more match ever, in Guyana, over a year later.
Luke Gallows, on the other hand, learned a valuable lesson: in Japanese culture, it’s considered rude to put on a really s**tty match.