Click here for this week’s full recap, or keep reading for some supplemental thoughts on Lord Tensai!
This is Lord Tensai. He’s a white guy who used to wrestle in WWE as Prince Albert, then in Japan as Giant Bernard. Now he’s back in WWE as Lord Tensai, with a face covered in Japanese symbols, a Japanese manservant and Asian Mist that he spits on his hand to rub in opponents’ faces, causing “impaired vision.” He’s also everything that I love about professional wrestling.
He skirts a fine line between homaging Japanese culture and wearing yellow-face, but personally, I think Lord Tensai is on the right side of things. I love that WWE is playing off the real-life background of the wrestler whose mama named him Matt Bloom, while also exaggerating his time spent in Japan to be some type of life-altering experience that netted him his very own Japanese assistant and the secret of my favorite wrestling move ever this week (Asian Mist, natch). It’s this hyperbolic style of reality that wrestling does best, and when it does it well, there’s kind of nothing better.
Also, it certainly doesn’t hurt that Tensai is absolutely incredible in the ring. What I like most about his work between the ropes is that it’s so different from what we see on a regular basis. Tensai doesn’t work like anyone else currently in the company, but it’s not just his impressive, fascinating, unique arsenal of moves (the aforementioned mist, running senton, face-claw) – there’s also something very different about the pacing of his matches, which can most likely be chalked up to the Japanese influence in his work. It’s an entirely different feel from what the rest of WWE’s FCW and/or OVW-trained roster brings to the table, and I’m thrilled that he’s back in the company.
Its nice to see Albert back but I’m not even amused with the whole Lord Tensai gimmick. Tatsu’s rants, either works or shoots, are well founded in this case.
Albert’s moves are wrestling moves so him making the 70s kung fu movie hand gestures every so often is really ridiculous, and he does them like after thoughts. Like, “Oh shit!, I forgot to be Japanese” and makes the gestures.
He’s good in the ring, so why not make a believable gimmick for the guy ? Even a wrestling hippo might work better than this one. Heck, we have a funkasaurus, why not a hippo ?
Lord Tensai should be made to face a great wrestler where nobody not even his manager would be allowed to interfere. If he wins, then you can call him a champion. For now it seems the scripts are written in his favour.
People like Stone Cold, The Rock, S. Michael, CM Punk, Triple H and Undertakes are my known great wrestlers