Non-WK time is for food I can’t get in Nagoya. That website is a great help though, so thanks for that.
Oh hey shockingly I have something to post here. Last night I was part of something called Bards of Brawl. We do slam poetry in the style of pro-wrestling promos. Despite this troupe being less than a week old, we got booked at a Wikimedia fundraiser and killed. It’s still very much in it’s infancy and we’re gonna need to give it more structure (I’m certainly not cut out to be a wrestler so we’re gonna need to find some other role for me), but like five people asked when our next show was so I think we have to keep doing this.
Wrestle Kingdom was fantastic. I felt like an 8 year old, when wrestling was still real. All the title matches went how I wanted them to (except TJP winning).
I do feel sorry for Jay White and Okada, though. They put on a fantastic match, but the crowd was exhausted after Osprey and Omega.
1 Like
Wrestle Kingdom 17 was a fantastic show, you should see it if you can.
SPOILERS AHEAD
The three matches on the pre-show were all okay, but all had their minor issues. It is crazy though just how stacked the NJPW roster is seeing how many big names they had to stash in the NJ Rumble just so they could appear at the dome. The weird breaks between the matches and then the actual show was also weird.
First match on the main card is TJP and Francesco Akira vs. Yoh and Lio Rush for the Junior Tag Titles. Was a good match but I hate it when matches on big shows end in rollups. I also thought Yoh desperately needed the win here and it was odd his team didn’t get the title.
Second match was for the recently introduced IWGP Women’s World Title, which is basically a Stardom Title. Kairi (nee Sane, nee Hojo) defends against my favorite Stardom member Tam Nakano. Match was fantastic but had way too little time. Definitely respect for what they could squeeze out of just five minutes. After the match, Mercedes Mone, f.k.a. as Sasha Banks (holy crap) comes out and challenges for a match in the U.S. in february.
Bishamon (Hirooki Gotoh and Yoshi-Hashi) are challenging FTR for the IWGP Tag titles. FTR had an amazing year in 2022 full of fantastic matches. Unfortunately the IWGP Tag titles were largely an side thought their with them based in the U.S. They had a great title match against Aussie Open in the UK, but that’s about it. It was obvious Bishamon was going to win, and unfortunately it felt undeservedly so because FTR looked a lot better in the match, but titles returning to Japan is very much necessary. I do wish NJPW would put more effort in the tag division though.
Zack Sabre Jr. against Ren Narita to crown the first ever NJPW Television Champion was great and it’s nice to see some young talent breaking through. Obviously though ZSJ won. With Suzuki-gun being dissolved, he joins TMDK after the match, which I find a bit of a shame because ZSJ almost deserves to lead his own faction, but that would make two factions in NJPW headed by British wrestlers which would be a bit odd.
Another obvious result was Tama Tonga beating Karl Anderson for the Openweight title. Anderson did well for his heel persona, but unfortunately he isn’t exactly a standout as a singles wrestler. Decent match but didn’t think it needed to be at the Dome, and the time could have been added to the Women’s match.
The only non-title match on the main card was Keiji Mutoh’s final match in NJPW, alongside Hiroshi Tanahashi and Shota Umino against LIJ’s Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI and SANADA, the last of which being one of Mutoh’s students. It was fine, but really a wrestler should go out on his back and I think the better finish would have been for SANADA to pin Mutoh. Mutoh now primarily works for Pro Wrestling Noah nowadays, and there seem to be further implications as after the match during a backstage interview segment, Noah faction KONGO attacked the LIJ guys.
The Junior Heavyweight four-way match between title-holder Taiji Ishimori, El Desperado, Hiromu Takahashi and Master Wato was very good. Master Wato is surprisingly over and played his underdog role very well to the point I am surprised he didn’t win.
Match of the Night with flying colors goes to Kenny Omega vs. Will Ospreay for the IWGP United States Championship. Those two gave everything, but the match was also quite dangerous, particularly the DDT on the unprotected turnbuckle was quite yikes. Someone on Reddit also mentioned that Omega might have broken his orbital bone in the match which is quite scary, so I hope not. Kenny won which surprised me a bit, but I guess it also sets up a rubber match in the future. Kenny was extremely brutal in the fight, and Ospreay’s fighting spirit coming through makes me think that they are turning Ospreay face. The performance would definitely warrant it.
Kazuchika Okada against Jay White was also great, but as ruffas stated the crowd was exhausted. Myself included as by the end of their match I had been watching wrestling for essentially six hours non-stop. Great match by two great wrestlers but unfortunately overshadowed by the match before it.
After the match Shingo Takagi comes out to challenge Okada, which I am very interested in because those two are always good for a fantastic bout, though I wish they would save these moments for New Year’s Dash instead of spoiling the victor’s speech after WK.
1 Like
New Year Dash just finished and it was the best in years.
SPOILERS
With the dissolution of Suzuki-gun I fully expected some new developments and changes in allegiances. I was also eyeing House of Torture to possibly go away, as the faction is easily the worst in New Japan and the company’s biggest detriment. Unfortunately no such luck as in the opening bout EVIL, Togo and Yujiro defeated Honma, Tiger Mask and Ren Narita. However, the first interesting thing happens right after. HoT single out Narita for a beatdown in the middle of the ring, only for Minoru Suzuki to come to the rescue, followed by El Desperado as backup. No full exploration but it is interesting.
Afterwards basically the rest of the remnants of Suzuki-gun appear, lead by a very sharply dressed TAKA Michinoku with Taichi, Kanemaru and Douki in tow. Unfortunately the appearances are kind of spoiled by TAKA’s ridiculous hair and his speech were for now he calls the faction “Just Four Guys” which immediately made me think of a jobber faction, much to the detriment of Taichi. TAKA is not wrestling though, as their opponents are TJP, Akira and a very beat up Will Ospreay who immediately makes fun of TAKA. However, Douki (of all people) manages to get the pin on one of the Jr. Tag champions, apparently a mirror of what happened in the Junior Tag League, so new challengers are set but The United Empire beats down this new faction afterward.
TMDK with Shane Haste, Mikey Nicholls and its new member Zach Sabre Jr. show up and take on Bishamon and Tomohiro Ishii, setting up two challenges at once with the TMDK tag team against Bishamon for the Tag Belts and Ishii vs. ZSJ for the new TV title. Afterwards something odd happens as TMDK recruit young lion Kosei Fujita into the group, handing him a T-shirt. Fujita had served as ZSJ’s lackey during the G1 last year but it is pretty unprecedented for a young lion to join a faction.
YOH, Taguchi, Shota Umino and Togi Makabe take on LIJ, with YOH pinning new junior champion Hiromu to set up a title challenge. Thankfully they seem to be finally doing something with YOH but I don’t expect him to win.
Tama Tonga, Hikuleo, Hiroshi Tanahashi and Master Wato are up against Bullet Club with a pissed off Jay White at the front. I also do not get KENTA’s new look or his power-walking BS. I forget how exactly the match ended, but Wato looked good and his team won. After the match there is a rough beatdown on the face team, and White singles out Hikuleo for turning his back on BC and joining his brother Tama. He challenges him for a “loser leaves japan” match, which is rather interesting. Questioning whether Jay White will remain with NJPW is almost routine at this point of the year, but I also find the wording peculiar, with “leave Japan” and not “leave New Japan/NJPW”. We could very well see Jay White moving to the U.S. full time and splitting his duties between NJPW Strong and perhaps another promotion.
The KOPW 2023 championship match was surprisingly excellent, as Shingo, O-Khan, Yano partially teamed up to cut off the BS by SHO who had the entirety of HoT at ringside. Shingo however wins by pinning Yano, fulfilling his promise to Okada yesterday of taking the KOPW belt to their championship bout.
Main Event time. Jeff Cobb and Aaron Henare show up for a tag match, leaving questions who their opponents will be. Suddenly, Devil’s Sky starts playing and out walks Kenny Omega with a very rough looking right eye, but otherwise not much worse for wear. And then suddenly, a coin drops! Yes, we are getting Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada as a tag team, holy crap. The match is of course won by these mega-powers, Okada pinning Henare, though the UE team looked good and Cobb makes his intentions known to challenge Kenny for the U.S. belt. After the match, Shingo comes back out to reemphasize his designs on Okada’s title.
Vince McMahon is back in WWE.
IexpectedNothingAndIamStillDisappointed.jpg
Stephanie McMahon has resigned from WWE. Vince has been elected chairman to the board, and the company has supposedly been sold to a Saudi investment group. Now every WWE PPV is a Blood Money PPV.
Yikes.
I had a good laugh at this.
Thankfully the report about the Saudis buying WWE turned out wrong. At least one ray of light on that front.
I am still not going to give WWE any money, but I did try and watched some of their programming simply for the reason that one of my favorite wrestlers is at the focal point of the company at the moment: Sami Zayn. Thankfully and should have happened a long time ago. So I have been trying to catch up with the storyline.
If you are unaware, WWE is currently dominated by Roman Reigns’s stable The Bloodline. Roman has held both top titles for more than two years, and the Usos are holding both Tag Championships, they have Paul Heyman as an advisor and mouthpiece and the Usos’ younger brother Solo Sikoa as muscle. In about April last year Sami tried to court favor with them, became a hanger-on and later an “Honorary Uce”, but there have always been questions about his true loyalties particularly with one of Roman’s most tenacious challengers, Kevin Owens, trying to pull Sami away from the group (Sami and Kevin having a long and tumultuous history I’m not going into here). However, Sami has also repeatedly proven his worth by helping in key situations such as for example the War Games match at Survivor Series.
Sami has been getting a lot of babyface reactions now and for good reason given the incredible promo work he has dished out throughout the past year. Just his facial expressions in backstage conversations with Roman Reigns and his verbal eloquence is great. There are rumors that he may be a prime candidate to win the Rumble tomorrow. Or at the very least there will be a blow-off confrontation with him and Roman building toward Mania.
Also, since Triple H took, the production of WWE has vastly improved. I tried watching Money in the Bank which happened before then and it was in a word unwatchable. Camera cuts on every goddamn action in the ring. I had to turn it off a couple of minutes into the first match because it was just attrocious. Survivor Series on the other hand was completely different in that regard. They still do some cuts on impact trying to sell their severity, but they have toned it down a lot to basically the same amount that AEW employs and it is just a world of difference.
I also watched the 30th anniversary edition of RAW, which had some great moments such as The Trial of Sami Zayn where Heyman almost managed to excommunicate him from the group, as well as the DX segment which was incredibly funny in a Looney Tunes sort of way. However, they also brought back just so many god-awful people for nostalgia pops I could have done without (e.g. Hogan, JBL, Flair, Ted DiBiasi, The Undertaker). I understand that they are heavily entwined with the history of wrestling and the WWE, but I guess that’s another reason not to give the company any money.
So I watched the Royal Rumble.
The Men’s Rumble Match was really damn good, but I was surprised they opened with it. My countryman Gunther entered the match #1 and they gave him a big spotlight with him lasting a long while and several high profile eliminations.
Kofi’s usual escape spot unfortunately misfired and I think he hit his head badly. Hope he is alright.
I hate Logan Paul as a person, but he is a good wrestler. That mid-air collision spot with Ricochet was absolutely nuts.
No Bloodline involvement in the Rumble at all which I found surprising but is a good decision to spread storylines out. Bigger importance was given to other stories like the return of Edge and him taking revenge on Judgement Day, eliminating both Balor and Damien Priest before being dragged out himself. They brawl out the very long entranceway and Edge is attacked by Rhea Ripley, only for Beth Phoenix to show up.
At #30 Cody Rhodes entered and got several good eliminations. He has a face-off with Seth Rollins as expected and they go at it for a bit before Logan Paul involves himself and throws out Rollins, but is himself eliminated by Cody.
It comes down to Cody vs. Gunther, #30 vs. #1. They have a great mini-match to close things out with Gunther setting the record for ring-time in a 30-man rumble. However, as expected, Cody wins.
Next they had a gimmick match for Bray Wyatt, with black lighting, neon ring-ropes and the opponent LA Knight also having neon gear. It looked kind of cool and I guess better than the red-light Hell in a Cell, but you still can hardly see any of the action. It was at least mercifully short. Post-match there is a big stunt-drop with someone playing the Uncle Howdy character making a big drop onto Knight.
Women’s match between Bianca Belair and Alexa Bliss was fine, but as expected no changes. Post-match is a small vignette show on the titantron with Bliss possibly returning to her Wyatt-related persona.
Women’s Rumble match is mid-show. Much less buzz around this one going in. Rhea Ripley enters #1.
The majority of the match is dominated by Bayley’s action Damage CTRL, at least until Becky Lynch shows up. They beat her down on the outside, but eventually she makes her way back into the ring, eliminates Dakota and Iyo but gets tossed out herself by Bayley, only for Bayley herself to get immediately eliminated.
Somewhere in the middle Chelsea Green shows up, only to be immediately removed from the ring, which I found a waste. Piper Niven also returned and fared much better, with commentary making repeat allusions to her former ring-name of “Doudrop”. The nostalgia pop goes to Michelle McCool who enters the ring from a ringside seat in the audience. #30 entrant is Nia Jax, who sucks. Oh well. She gets some power-spots but is thankfully quickly eliminated after everybody gangs up on her and a Rip-tide from Ripley.
The match comes down to Ripley, Liv Morgan (who entered #2) and Asuka. They all end-up on the apron. Rhea dodges Asuka’s mist which blinds Liv. Ripley kicks Asuka off the apron. There is a hope-spot where a blinded Liv hits Ripley with a codebreaker, but she hangs on and head-scissors Liv off the apron. Ripley wins as she should have last year.
There is a concert by some musician called Hardy that I have never heard about.
Finally, the title match between Roman Reigns and Kevin Owens. Reigns arrives with only Paul Heyman and Sami Zayn. I expected Sikoa and the Usos to ambush Owens already in the ring but nothing happens.
The match is good, relatively even. A ref-bump happens. Owens has a visual pin but no ref to count it. Roman low-blows Owens and a one-sided beatdown on the outside happens. Sami pleads with Kevin to just stay down but no such luck. Eventually a pinfall is counted in the ring.
Subsequently, the Usos and Sikoa show up and further beat down Owens with zero resistance. They handcuff Owens to the ropes and take turns super-kicking him. When Roman is about to hit him with a chair, finally Sami steps in and pleads to stop, that it isn’t necessary. Roman hands Sami the chair to prove his loyalty by delivering the final blow himself.
They argue back and forth. Sami takes a swing… at Roman. Incredible pop from the audience. Subsequently the Bloodline beat down Sami as well, tear the “Honorary Uso” shirt off him and leave him and Owens wrecked in the ring. Interestingly, Jey Uso extracted himself from the situation, willing to dish out the punishment to Owens before but not able to go after Sami.
Notably, there has been some promotional stuff leaked about next month’s Elimination Chamber PPV, with Sami being strongly featured in it.
2 Likes
Someone on Reddit put together a video about the interactions between Jey Uso and Sami Zayn through the entire storyline, and it’s really good. In wrestling, promo skills are often reduced to having good rhetoric, but those two really do a fantastic job just selling the moment with their facial expressions and body language.
Elimination Chamber was fine. Not earth moving but good. SPOILERS AHEAD
The women’s chamber match was good. That Sunset Flip Power Bomb by Liv Morgan off the pod was ridiculous. Other than that the expected winner won, with Kana the Killer Klown going on a rampage.
Didn’t care for either Brock vs. Lashley or the Mixed Tag match. Skipped through both. However, I found it interesting that the PPV only had five matches in total on it. This gives the matches more time to breathe, and you can afford it with several multi-person matches on the card and not relegate too much of the roster.
Men’s chamber match was great. Starting with Gargano vs. Rollins allows for some technical stuff before everything breaks down. Theory being a smarmy heel played his role well. Monez Ford is a madman dropping himself off the chamber. Don’t care for Damien Priest but he’s okay.
I do feel kind of bad for Bronson Reed fka JONAH. I didn’t write about the G1 this year but he very much impressed and got over in New Japan. Then he wen’t back to WWE and the crowd couldn’t care less. He did have some good powerspots but you can hardly build your reputation as a monster if you are the first to be eliminated.
Main event time with a hot Montreal crowd behind Sami Zayn facing Roman Reigns. Sami even got his old theme back, which ever so slightly suggest the idea that WWE is willing to back Sami as champion by being willing to spend money on him. Sami had a good start but Roman got back in and then the match started to drag a bit as Roman pulls heat with pushing a beaten up Sami around the ringside crowd including Sami’s wife. Sami makes a comeback but a ref-bump happens and the visual pinfall is of course not officially counted. Jimmy Uso interferes but Sami perseveres.
Another ref comes to the ring but he too eats an inadvertant superman punch. This time Jey Uso shows up and positions himself between a chair-wielding Roman and Sami. Roman tries to bring Jey to hit Sami with the chair but Jey refuses and gets admonished by Roman for his reluctance. Sami accidentally spears Jey and gets beaten down with the chair by Roman, who scores the fall after the first ref recovered.
After the match, Jimmy Uso starts beating down Sami but Kevin Owens shows up and lays into them, stunners Roman, puts Jimmy through the announce table and even gives Paul Heyman a stunner. He allows Sami to hit another Helluva Kick on Roman, and though he didn’t win the hometown boy stands tall at the end.
As unlikely as it was, it’s still kind of a shame that they didn’t pull the trigger and we are likely headed to what was always the rumor: Mania consisting of (among other things) Sami and KO challenging the Usos for the tag belts while Roman faces Cody Rhodes. Unfortunately that also means that probably one of the best storylines WWE has ever produced will end with kind of a whimper instead of a bang. At least the match at Elimination Chamber was good and helped to further elevate Sami as a credibly main eventer. We definitely do need a bigger resolution though for the hidden storyline and the one that should end it, with Jey finally overcoming Roman’s domination which is where the whole Bloodline faction began in the first place.
1 Like
Asuka winning was no surprise, but Carmella had some great heel spots.
Brock learned that he’s allowed to hit people in the nuts, too, which has dangerous implications.
The men’s match made everyone look good, but Bronson Reed and Montez Ford stood out to me. Reed did lots of BIG STRONG MAN things, and Ford dropped himself from as high as he possibly could.
The mixed tag match had some fun spots, and Dominik continues to play a good chickenshit heel.
I knew in my head that Sami wasn’t going to win, but my heart held out hope for him, and yelled at my computer (and KO) during every ref bump. I’m glad that Sami got his music back, and I hope he’s part of WM, either with KO or in the match with Roman and Cody.
The main event was also unusual in that Sami’s family didn’t get wrestle murdered; having family at ringside is usually a death sentence for them.
I’m putting this in the pro wrestling thread because it comes from a pro wrestling podcast. During this episode, the anime Lupin the 3rd comes up, and it is interesting to listen non-anime fans talk about it.
I’ve seen tons of pro wrestling talk in the normal media, so I knew something had to be up. Vince is somehow back in charge. I still don’t fully understand how that happened. The new book about Vince is out, which I think is on the best seller lists, so that has a lot to do with it. But now this?
Normally I’d be screaming about anti-trust or monopolies or something, but nah. When two evil empires become one, it reduces the number of targets. Makes life a little bit easier.
He’s not dead and the rest of the board figured the company would sell for more with him on it, so back he came.
He’s got a pencil mustache now and looks even more like a carny than he used to.
1 Like
It’s a good thing that Wrestlemania is two days now.
They have one day to prove that they understand long-term storytelling, doing ridiculous spots, passing torches, and making people cheer for a father taking a belt to his son.
And they have a second day to demonstrate exactly what not to do. Night 2 was just so sooo bad. Except for the big meaty men slapping meat and the Snoop Dogg Slapstick Show, it looked like they asked themselves “what can we do to piss off fans?” and went with that.
In other news, this
Major wrestling companies need to have more events outside the lower 48. The crowds add so much. Puerto Rico was on fire for two nights. Europe serenaded Seth Rollins for more that 12 minutes. Montreal yelled at Roman forever.
Backlash under-promised and over-delivered. Io Shirai looked like a star, even in defeat. Omos hurled a man into the ring from the outside, which I’ve never seen before. A 300+ pound man did a moonsault from the top rope! Zelina (who’s of Puerto Rican desecet) looked strong in defeat got to bask in home-town love after losing. Bad Bunny and Damien Priest may have had the match of the year (hometown boys + hometown crowd + biggest artist in the world). On top of just being a good match, it had lots of surprises to make the locals pop. The trios match moved the Bloodline storyline onto the next best.
And boy did the main event happen. It was just there. It did nothing progress Cody’s story, and it didn’t even let Brock get home to Saskatchewan in time for bedtime.
5/7 of the show was great, and the crowd was the MVP.
Wow, I had no idea anyone outside of US, Japan, Mexico, and recently Saudi Arabia, cared at all about professional wrestling. Usually when I think of other countries and cultures I think about their own unique fighting sports and martial arts, which are mostly real. Brazil has Capoeira, Turkey has oil wrestling, Korea has Ssierium, Thailand has kickboxing, Greece obviously has just plain old wrestling.
Now I’m Googling to check out pro wrestling in various countries.
You reminded me of this TV series that was on vice. It’s focus was international differences between wrestling companies.
1 Like