Example as to why I love the Young Bucks (oh and Adam Cole is there too, can’t wait for WWE to ruin him.)
In the Netflix show GLOW I recognised two wrestlers from Lucha Underground. Did anyone else spot them?
Joey Ryan won’t shut up about episode 5 so yeah.
The G1 has started and I just finished the first night. Holy crap that match between Ibushi and Naito. And they gave it away for 0 fucking dollars. And it continues on Thursday with Omega vs. Suzuki!
I haven’t watched Night 3 yet but the first two nights of the G1 have delivered big time. The match between Minoru Suzuki and Kenny Omega had a couple of awkward moments but the drama was off the charts with Suzuki going after Kenny’s bad leg.
Watching Battleground from last night. Started well enough with a great tag-team match between The New Day and the Usos which had two amazing spots, both involving Xavier Woods doing his rope dance jump elbow. Unfortunately then it turned into pretty much a shitshow. Nakamura vs. Baron Corbin was really bad. Mostly I lie this blame on Corbin and the WWE itself. The match was slow, boring, and had a garbage finish that helped nobody. The women’s #1 contender five-way elimination match was pretty decent.
Then Styles vs. Owens which was promising but kind of slow, and then had an absolutely terrible finish. First the referee gets knocked out after Owens throws Styles into him and I think “Okay, here we go with the shenanigans”. Instead the two start to ground-grapple which makes no sense because both know the ref is down and won’t see any tapouts. Styles gets a calf-crusher on Owens, Owens escapes and puts Styles in a crossface. Styles gets out and puts Owens himself into a crossface. Meanwhile the ref slowly gets to his senses. Owens rolls Styles over into a weak pin which takes like six seconds for the ref to get there and make the count. At ANY point Styles could have easily kicked out. It’s not even a good rollup. But Owens still gets the title. Just WTF. Nothing in that sequence made sense. I wasn’t sure whether this was supposed to be a double pin or whatever.
Next was the Flag match beween Cena and Rusev. This was also really slow and kind of boring. This was Rusev’s first match in a long time on the account of injury. And they made him lose. Maybe they wanted to cultivate one feel good moment there but still makes no sense. I also still have no idea why so many IWC people like Rusev. Then a match I didn’t even know was on the card with a rematch from the previous week’s Smackdown between Sami Zayn and new arrival Mike Kanellis. As much as I love Sami, this match made no sense to be on the card whatsoever and it also makes no sense for the WWE to make Kanellis lose, but they did.
And then we had the Punjabi Prison match. I’ve never watched one because I heard they are terrible. And this one wasn’t good either. It started slow and neither Mahal nor Orton are all that great to begin with. The crowd was also definitely bored, probably because they couldn’t see shit of the match, and started chanting stuff like “trust the process” (a Philadelphia sports mantra). It picked up a little once they made it out of the first cage. In the end Mahal retained because The Great Khali showed up out of nowhere, shook the cage and then grabbed Orton by throat through the cage.
Massive props to one of the Singh brothers though because he took a nasty bump off the top of the outer cage through the announce table.
I’m a bit worried about that bump with the shigh brother, usually they show people after a nasty bump like that, but not this time, could be that he actually did get hurt.
Didn’t think about that. Hopefully he’s okay.
I’m kind of angry about this fucking PPV. All downhill after the Tag team match. Comparing it to the 4+ star quality matches NJPW currently puts on five times a day and five times a week makes it seem even worse.
Oh yeah, NJPW is now on Amazon Fire TV. Cheers!
Lets see how long NJWP can keep that up, they are overworking their wrestlers while injured and most of their top talent is aging at this point, they are doing the exact opposite of what WWE is.
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I heard this rumor about a lot of people in the G1 being kind of injured too, but not sure what to make of it really. They’re now in the third round of 9 basically so the G1 is 1/3rd done. Still three weeks to go though I guess.
As for age, I have no idea what you are talking about. I did a quick check on the approximate top 30 wrestlers in both companies and didn’t really see a big difference in age profile. Maybe slightly because NJPW likes to keep its vets around but they are hardly the top guys in the company.
In fact I would say that WWE is far more putting on “aging” guys when considering that they regularly take talent that established themselves elsewhere for their company. Lesnar, Cena and Styles are all 40, Samoa Joe 38, Orton and Nakamura 37, Balor 36. The only younger top tier guys in WWE are really the former Shield, Owens, and Strowman, but even they are all in their 30s. In NJPW Ishii is 41, Tanahashi is 40 and Suzuki is 49, yes, but Naito is 35, KUSHIDA 34, Omega 33, Elgin 30, Okada and SANADA 29, Hiromu only 27. (I include SANADA here because I believe he is the next guy getting pushed).
Here’s the list of 30 wrestlers from each company with their age. The average for NJPW is about a year and 2 months older and I purposely included guys like Yano, Nagata, Makabe and Kojima because they are in the G1 but there is absically no chance they are going to hold a major belt in the near future.
Watched today’s G1 climax. The match between Kenny Omega and Toru Yano was pure comedy gold. I laughed the whole way through. The main event between Okada and SANADA was also very, very good. SANADA’s definitely getting a big push at some point.
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Yeah, you’re right. My conclusion was drawn from incongruent thoughts. Although I still think NJWP’s work ethics will bite them in the ass as their top drawers get more damaged do to injury. On the flip side WWE has been all about safe working conditions ever since Benoit, and while I fully support that it’s made their in-ring work suffer.
Things are pointing towards lesnar leaving WWE for good, lets see how that fairs out with the incoming Summerslam fatal four way. It’s the most hyped I’ve been for a wwe match in a long while.
So I saw a live show from my semi local federation Beyond Wrestling this Sunday and it was without a doubt the most bonkers show I’ve ever seen and really drives home that the best way to watch wrestling is to watch it live. Brian Cage is even more of a freak in person, if a little bit shorter than Lucha Underground makes him out to be. Pentagon Jr is exactly as cool as you think he is, and watching Fenix do his rope shenanigans in person had me screaming. Also is an excellent way to introduce yourself to new people. There was a lot of local New England talent I was introduced to this weekend to keep an eye on. Support your local shows if you can guys!
I have tickets to see WWE Raw in Boston next week. I hope it will be worthwhile!
When I bought tickets a week ago, they still had 2nd row tickets facing the camera available. $500 each, and that includes a custom chair you can bring home as well as a signed autograph picture (probably of Roman Reigns). I would have considered it, if the WWE product was actually high-quality enough lately to be worth $500 each.
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Oh man, how much are regular plebs tickets? I wouldn’t mind going to raw, just have to make sure I can stay on budget.
I haven’t actually paid attention to or watched pro wrestling since I was a kid in the '90s with the Hulk Hogans and the Ultimate Warriors and such. But I do see via Twitter, this forum, and other social medias, all the nerds talking about pro wrestling due to crossover. It’s really terrific. This crossover is how I know all the good stuff that is going on in the world.
However, I have noticed something unique about pro wrestling fans that I do not notice in any other fandom or community, and it is happening here right at this instant.
For at least as long as Twitter has existed, I have only ever seen wrestling fans say negative things about WWE(F), and positive things about other organizations, especially New Japan. Those exact same wrestling fans then turn around and constantly patronize the WWE, that they profess to hate, instead of those other organizations.
Other fandoms don’t do this. When you see a music fan who claims to like one band and hate another band, they listen to the band they like. They do not listen to the band they hate. When a gamer kid says they like SONY and hate Nintendo, it means they have a PS4 at home, not a Switch. Some anime kid who likes One Piece and hates Naruto, is not watching Naruto. They aren’t cosplaying as Naruto. They aren’t buying Naruto merch. They are wearing a straw hat.
Why of all fandoms, are wrestling fans so dishonest to themselves? If they are actually patronizing WWE and excited to go see it, then just admit that it is actually good! If you like it, admit it! I want to see some tweets about how terrific it is and such. Otherwise, stop going to see it. Stop watching it on TV/Internet. Stop giving it any moneys.
From someone on the outside, wrestling fans as a group, appear to be dealing with a decade+ case of denial. Enough already!