Coffey

There are some posts on the last page of the Current New Japan thread in the Megathread Archive about the G1 Climax but I think it deserves its own thread. Going to be a barn burner this year. A Block: Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, Kazuchika Okada, Will Ospreay, EVIL, Sanada, Bad Luck Fale, Zack Sabre Jr, Lance Archer & KENTA B Block: Juice Robinson, Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano, Hirooki Goto, Jeff Cobb, Jon Moxley, Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, Jay White & Taichi Pretty stacked. They did a good job with the blocks, too. You have some money matches in the A Block & you have new & interesting matches in the B Block. Then they have guys like Yano & Fale in there to switch things up so it's not just a bunch of workrate matches. I'm really digging the line-ups. There's definitely some matches that catch my eye. Anything having to do with Jeff Cobb or Shingo, in example. I'm also curious on who is going to win it all this year. I want to say they're going to pull the trigger on Ospreay but it might be too soon & NJPW seems to wait awhile longer than most before trying things. Jeff Cobb Vs. Jon Moxley is going to be interesting. I'm really looking forward to Shingo Vs. Naito. You know what you're going to get with Tanahashi, Ibushi & Okada, so some of the intrigue there is gone for me but you know the matches will be good. Curious to see how KENTA looks nowadays, healthy & away from NXT. <Opening Day> Saturday, July 6th (Local time): American Airlines Center in Dallas TX, the USA ・Saturday, July 13th: Ota City General Gymnasium in Tokyo ・Sunday, July 14th: Ota City General Gymnasium in Tokyo ・Monday, July 15th: Hokkai Kitayell in Hokkaido ・Thursday, July 18th: Korakuen Hall in Tokyo ・Friday, July 19th: Korakuen Hall in Tokyo ・Saturday, July 20th: Korakuen Hall in Tokyo ・Wednesday, July 24th: Hiroshima Sun Plaza Hall in Hiroshima ・Saturday, July 27th: Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium in Aichi ・Sunday, July 28th: Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium in Aichi ・Tuesday, July 30th: Takamatsu City General Gymnasium in Kagawa ・Thursday, August 1st: Fukuoka Citizen Gymnasium in Fukuoka ・Saturday, August 3rd: Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium in Osaka ・Sunday, August 4th: Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium in Osaka ・Wednesday, August 7th: Hamamatsu Arena in Shizuoka ・Thursday, August 8th: Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium in Kanagawa ・Saturday, August 10th: Nippon Budokan in Tokyo ・Sunday, August 11th: Nippon Budokan in Tokyo ・<FINAL> Monday, August 12th: Nippon Budokan in Tokyo

MLW is fun but they're not good top to bottom. There's a lot of hit or miss. Including with the roster. Usually, from what I've seen, there will be one good act or hot match & then another either right before or right after that just bores you to tears. Gringo Loco is a good example. That guy is never going to do anything for me. I just kind of zone out when he comes on screen. And he often gets 10-15 minutes.

I like the Damien Priest name. OK, I'm not positive what has or has not aired yet, so to be safe I'm going to put this next part in spoilers.

Where can I find old wrestling merch? Specifically that ROH Takeshi Morishima Backdrop shirt that he had during his ROH Title run. Or the Muta in Car shirt.

And it seems to grow with each passing week as WWE continues to shit the bed with their shows & chase off more fans. It's amazing how it feels like they're either pretending to not care or genuinely have no idea how to try something new. It's just the same shit, every week.

I too also enjoyed the 205 Live finish because it was different. Amazing how something as simple as a close-call count out can feel so different when everything else in WWE is so stagnant.

They should go all-in on Tony Nese looking like Scott Stapp from Creed. Book him as a self-centered asshole that can't even give credit to his band mates & pretend to be a good dude & singing about Jesus while getting toasted & cheating on your wife. Everyone hated Creed, so he would be such a dastardly heel! This is a sarcastic post.

Chad Gable's new look, with the tan, better physique, new haircut & new gear... makes him look a lot like Brad Maddox. I actually think he stands out less than when he had the singlet and headband. I wonder if that Gallagher/Gable match ended with the planned finish. If so, kudos to them making it look so real.

It's funny because I think Jack Gallagher is the strongest in the entire division but most people just talk about him in passing while singing the praises of others. He's not chopped liver out there! Dude is a star. Of course, I don't think 205 really even needs to exist. Guys like Jack Gallagher, Chad Gable or Tyler Bate should be stars anywhere, regardless of their size. And I say that as a self-professed fan of hosses.

To bring this back to Pro Wrestling The KISS Army started in Terre Haute, Indiana. The city I was born. Also the same city where Shawn Michaels won his first Intercontinental Championship Title. Fun fact.

That fifteen minute opening, or however long it was, pretty much sums up why WWE is currently so trash. Baron Corbin, Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins & Kevin Owens. Just fuck off. A bunch of geeks. Not interesting whatsoever. Never going to have a money promo. Never going to have a match I care about. Just interchangeable dweebs that kill TV time for the sake of killing TV time. No star power or charisma. No drawing ability. And completely clueless as to what good wrestling even is. But I'm sure they'll kick out of twenty finishes, shake off their selling to get their shit in & hit some fucking floatover superplexes and apron powerbombs and shit. Fuck off.

Well, they've not put the world title on Corbin... yet.

This is one of my biggest issues with modern pro-wrestling & one of the things that worries me about AEW. Especially since Dave Meltzer & I seem to be near polar opposites on what good professional wrestling is.

Kudos to that fan because "Tramp Stamp Trio" is a money line! Too bad a worker didn't say it on an actual show.

I refer to this as early ROHitis. Some of those shows, especially after Joe, were exhausting because every match was trying to be Match of the Night & it was just too much. The first match was trying to be the main event. Every match was full of false finishes & 2-count kickouts of finishers & it was just too much. The card of a show needs to tell a story as much as a match individually needs to tell a story. Coincidentally, there's quite a few ex-ROH guys on the current WWE roster... AEW:DON good example of what I'm talking about: Cody/Dustin was the old school bloody match, Lucha Bros/Bucks was the move/spotfest match, Jericho/Omega was the name value main event match, etc. Those early ROH shows are like if every match on DoN was trying to be Bucks/Lucha Bros. Which was my same prob. with TakeOver last weekend. It can't just be matches in a vacuum, regardless of if a match is good or not. There has to be stakes. The stakes are what make people care. Because it's not about just getting people to ooh & aww for this match, they need to want to see what comes after too. WWE right now has a lot of guys where you think "Oh, he's pretty good" but it doesn't go beyond that. Like here's a question: what is Ricochet's gimmick? He's literally just ex-NXT guy that is acrobatic. That's it.

Wait...

Bray Wyatt's first feud will tell us everything we need to know about how serious WWE are about him this time around. If they slap him with someone like Matt Hardy or whatever, he's dead in the water.

Yeah, I've been following that story today as well. Feels like the biggest wrestling news of the day. But I'm also waiting for more information because that fan feels to me like he's really leaving some information out to paint himself in a prettier light. Not like the solution is ever to take him backstage to intimidate him, if that happened. Just kick him out... but still.

Well, you'll be happy to know that she's returning to RAW tonight again as an on-air character! Because the dastardly Money in the Bank briefcase holding Brock Lesnar dared to not announce when he was cashing it in so he has to be punished, or something.

The video game poses thing really stuck out to me. It's one of the first things I noticed about Tessa Blanchard - and she's not even in WWE. But it's like she's trying to condition herself the same way. Do everything exactly the same way every single time, so it doesn't feel organic but becomes muscle memory. Come out, turn your ass to the camera, look back over your shoulder and wink. Walk to the ring. Get into the ring. Turn your ass to the camera, look back over your shoulder and wink. Every. Single. Time. It's like she's posing for a video game designer to add her animation into the computer. And EVERYONE in WWE does this. It's like they literally count their steps when walking to the ring. "OK, step number eight needs to be on my left foot & I make a slight hesitation before giving a head nod to the second row..." The only thing missing is masking tape on the ground to tell them where to stand for the shot & some off cam jabrone with a cue card reminder saying HARD CAM to tell them where to look. It doesn't feel like an organic wrestling shows with stakes on the line, it feels like an overproduced high school play where the director is expecting these seventeen year olds to become the next Bob DeNiro while reciting lines from a Troma movie. Regardless of what Vince McMahon wants to believe or tell people, these are still professional wrestlers on a wrestling show, not actors making a movie. It's just more homogenization. One of the perks of going to a live show used to be that you might get to see stuff that other people have not seen. Like look at all the different Undertaker entrances over the years. But if then they make it so it's exactly the same every time, how is that any different than what you've just watched from your couch every week? Why would you be more enticed to buy a ticket? WWE used to have different sets with different entrances & wrestlers doing different things. Now all the shows just feel like RAW, look like RAW & never feel more important than a RAW. Including Wrestlemania. Which now even seemingly takes a backseat to the blood money Saudi house show.

When I was watching AEW Double or Nothing, it felt like they were doing a very specific, something for everyone style approach. I'm not the type of fan that a Young Bucks match is going to appeal to. That, to me, is the antithesis of what is good pro-wrestling. However, there's a market for that match style. My preferred match style would be the Cody/Dustin match. The blood match. The old school Southern wrestling feeling heated match with good story-telling. That's the match that was for me. So on Double or Nothing, as a fan, as a viewer, I was happy. I got Cody/Dustin and the other fans got Bucks/Lucha Bros & everyone is happy. Last night on NXT TakeOver, which match was supposed to be for fans like me? The closest one is probably Shayna/Io & I think the wrong person won. I didn't get a Cody/Dustin match. I got car crashed & false finishes & a ton of moves. It DEFINITELY wasn't the main event, which was just their version of the Young Bucks modern-day Indie style match. With six-thousand moves that don't mean shit, kicking out of everything & waiting for crowd chants. Who is NXT trying to cater to? What's the demographic? I've been watching pro-wrestling for thirty years & that show didn't feel like it was for me. And I usually love TakeOver. I've liked I think all but two of them. They're usually above-and-beyond. But last night, I wasn't feeling it. So it's not a case of just being negative for contrarian sake on my part or whatever, there was a real disconnect last night.

If you like fucking superkicks though, boy howdy was that match for you!

This show has sucked. Everyone has felt a step slow & like they're moving in molasses. Also there's been a lot of ugly bumps & what I think, wrong booking decisions. But the live crowd is eating it all up, so maybe I'm just really out of touch. How many fucking superkicks has this main event had? Why did Io not win?

Jim Cornette's entire rant during that part of the podcast was pretty much about how the pre-show is supposed to sell the viewers on the show & they were marching person after person out there that no one knew & they didn't tell us shit about any of them. Which was why Cornette was describing Sonny in the first place. So if you're unfamiliar with him, or any other wrestler, and you have to describe them - because the commentators aren't - what do you come up with? That's all he was doing. Same with Sunny Daze, Luchasaurus, & the other people he wasn't familiar with.

Size is for sure an issue. But that's not exclusive to Joey Ryan nowadays. Even in WWE, the previous Land of the Giants, the majority of their roster are pretty small people. The bigger issue for Joey Ryan to me is what does he bring to the table that you can't get from someone else that wouldn't also have the added bonus of not bringing the circus & drama with it? Like, why would you bring in Joey Ryan would you could get, say, Marty Scurll? And it's not like I'm a big Marty fan but you're not going to get the dog & pony show with him. In that regard, I kind of think the Adam Cole comparison is apt. Who wouldn't take Cole over Ryan from a promoter standpoint?