The Suzuki Incident — Wrestling ring photograph showing Minoru Suzuki and another wrestler performing live.

The Suzuki Incident

2021Parody quote / fake documentary captiondead

Published March 24, 2026

The Suzuki Incident is a professional wrestling meme from September 2021, born when AEW Dynamite cut short Japanese wrestling legend Minoru Suzuki's entrance music before fans could shout the iconic "Kaze Ni Nare" refrain. After a fan account dramatically dubbed the production blunder "The Suzuki Incident," wrestling Twitter ran with it, creating fake documentary-style quotes from wrestlers treating the minor slight as one of the most infamous events in wrestling history.

wrestling memes fake quote memes absurdist humor memes ironic memes fandom discourse memes

Overview

The Suzuki Incident meme takes the format of a faux-documentary interview, where a professional wrestler or wrestling figure delivers a solemn quote about "The Suzuki Incident" as though it were a watershed moment in the sport's history. The format directly parodies the tone of Vice's *Dark Side of the Ring* documentary series, treating a minor production error on a weekly wrestling show with the same gravity reserved for actual tragedies and scandals like the Montreal Screwjob2.

Each post typically features a photo of a wrestler alongside a fabricated quote written in first person, recalling where they were or how they felt when "The Suzuki Incident" occurred3. The humor comes entirely from the absurd contrast between the mundane reality (a shortened entrance) and the overwrought emotional testimony.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter
Key People
@NJPWFanClubNA, @BotchGoblin
Date
2021

On September 8, 2021, New Japan Pro Wrestling veteran Minoru Suzuki faced Jon Moxley in the main event of AEW Dynamite2. Suzuki's entrance song, "Kaze Ni Nare" by Ayumi Nakamura, is famous in wrestling circles for a moment where the entire crowd shouts the title lyric in unison. It's a beloved tradition that fans consider a key part of any Suzuki match4. But AEW's production team cut the entrance short. Moxley's music hit before the song reached its climactic refrain, and the crowd never got their singalong moment2.

The match itself was also shorter than expected, leaving fans feeling the whole segment had been shortchanged for time1. On September 9, AEW's official Twitter account posted a teaser suggesting Suzuki would address the "preferential treatment" given to Moxley on the next episode4. Two days later, on September 11, the Twitter account @NJPWFanClubNA praised AEW's willingness to work the botched entrance into a storyline, but their phrasing is what lit the fuse. They called Wednesday's disappointing main event "The Suzuki Incident"3.

How It Spread

Most replies to @NJPWFanClubNA's tweet pointed out that calling a shortened entrance "The Suzuki Incident" was wildly overdramatic4. That dramatic tone became the joke itself. Within hours, parodies started rolling in.

The first came from @BotchGoblin, who posted a silhouetted anonymous face with a fabricated quote: "When we saw the disappointment wash over the crowd and the entire nation of Japan, I turned to the rest of the production team and said 'my god, what have we done? May the lord have mercy on our souls'"4. The format clicked immediately. Other users began writing their own quotes in character as real wrestlers. @BroomMega posted one as Kenny Omega that pulled in over 120 retweets and 840 likes4.

The joke spread fast across wrestling Twitter, with users inserting references to The Suzuki Incident into iconic wrestling moments. Photoshopped images showed a tearful Hulk Hogan, a pensive Triple H, a fed-up CM Punk, and a weary Bret Hart all apparently reflecting on the incident3. By September 13, 2021, "The Suzuki Incident" was trending on Twitter4.

AEW leaned into it too. The promotion confirmed that Suzuki and Lance Archer would appear on the following week's Dynamite to issue a new challenge to Moxley, folding the real fan frustration into an ongoing storyline1. Archer had already forked Moxley back in July to win the IWGP United States championship, so the angle had built-in heat1.

How to Use This Meme

The Suzuki Incident format works like this:

1

Pick a photo of a wrestling personality (or any public figure, if you want to go off-template).

2

Write a solemn, first-person quote where they reflect on "The Suzuki Incident" as if recounting a traumatic historical event.

3

Use documentary-style framing. Think talking-head interview, confessional tone, long pauses implied through ellipses.

4

The quote often references specific details like "when I heard the music stop" or "I'll never forget where I was that night."

Cultural Impact

The Suzuki Incident is a textbook example of wrestling fans turning a minor production error into community comedy. ComicBook.com covered the trend, noting how fans had created "some hilarious tweets" by swapping the Suzuki Incident into quotes about actual infamous wrestling moments2. Distractify ran a feature calling the memes "incredible," framing the incident as evidence of AEW's ability to generate organic fan engagement even from mistakes3.

AEW's decision to acknowledge the botch and write it into storyline showed a promotion willing to work with its audience rather than pretend the error didn't happen1. The real-world payoff came the following week when Suzuki appeared on Dynamite to properly address the situation, giving fans the cathartic moment they'd been denied1.

Fun Facts

Suzuki's entrance tradition of the crowd chanting "Kaze Ni Nare" is so well-known that compilation videos of it exist on YouTube, showcasing crowds from around the world joining in4.

The meme trended on Twitter just two days after the original tweet that coined the term4.

AEW reportedly crammed so many different stories into the September 8 episode that Suzuki vs. Moxley was shortchanged for time, making the entrance cut a scheduling issue rather than a deliberate creative choice1.

The @BroomMega Kenny Omega parody quote picked up 120+ retweets and 840+ likes, making it one of the most popular individual entries in the trend4.

Derivatives & Variations

Dark Side of the Ring parodies

The primary format, mimicking Vice's wrestling documentary series with somber interview-style quotes about the incident[4].

Classic wrestling moment swaps

Users took famous images from wrestling history (Hogan's retirement speech, Hart's post-Screwjob reaction, Punk's pipebomb) and captioned them as reactions to The Suzuki Incident[3].

Cross-character quotes

Fans wrote in-character statements from wrestlers who had no connection to AEW, imagining how figures across all of wrestling would have reacted to the entrance being cut short[2].

Frequently Asked Questions