WingedEagle

Where's the blood?

This is basically where I landed on the match. A really fun ***3/4 outing that was really fun and is hopefully yet another step towards making the 6 man straps a regular and big defense at Korakuen, but this was just a bit too long for me to rate as a truly great match. Who would've thought that Yoshi-Hashi and Douki would be responsible for heating a main event match like this? Between this and the G1 its been Yoshi-Hashi season!

I thought this was a big comedown from the April matches. Solid shine, good heat and Eaton remains one of an all-time underrated worker. But this didn't have the same energy or flow as the earlier matches and as a result it was a far cry from great. Very much a good match but given what these four have done it still came across as a letdown. ***1/2

Ditch is back up for the moment. Grab what you can in case it goes down permanently.

As great as it would be to see this company face a proper regulatory reckoning, I sure hope this isn't near the top of the list of issues for the next administration. There are unfortunately quite a few others that require more immediate attention.

Ha good call!

I'm a little curious how they're going to shoot angles for 2 nights worth of WK given the calendar. No Destruction of KOPW tours this year and BOSJ/WTTL can set up title matches in those two divisions but not necessarily more. So we've presumably got 1) Naito vs. Ibushi 2) Okada vs. Ospreay 3) Hiromu vs. BOSJ winner 4) ZSJ/Taichi vs. WTTL winners 5) Evil vs. White 6) Tana vs. KENTA or Moxley around the US Title seems like a possible direction. But, again, that's over 2 nights. Lot of gaps to fill there. What do you do for the top of the card on the second? Even if they want to, treating the Dome like a New Beginning/Destruction tour where you've got a couple big matches every night will be tough this year because they unified the IWGP & IC Titles.

I stayed offline until getting a chance to watch the show unspoiled this afternoon and did not expect to find myself the high man on the main event. I absolutely loved this match. The first 25 minutes flew by while trying to put over Sanada as a striker capitalizing on Ibushi's injured leg, and also how the bad leg weakened Ibushi's overall offense. The stretch run is what happens when a New Japan main event clicks with great timing, counters and near falls. The added wrinkle here was the use of cradles for some insane kickouts rather than heavyily relying on finishers. Did I love the match because I expected Sanada to win and generally find his work to be incredibly vanilla except when carried by an Okada or Tanahashi? Perhaps. But whatever the reasons I was biting at every near fall down the stretch and thought they efficiently and logically built to what they pulled off there. Hell of a match and among the 2-3 best in the entire tourney.

This was an intense of flash of awesome, but Jetlag nailed it by saying this was played out more as the angle to build a big match rather than a proper match itself. Incredibly heated and compelling while it lasted, but its tough to feel satisfied by what was maybe three minutes of actual action that seemed geared to whet your appetite for something else. After wrapping up NJPW in 2000-01 its clear that I've underrated Sasaki historically. Really looking forward to watching him throughout the rest of the decade as he's a lot more versatile than I thought and very much seems a forgotten name throughout NJPW's run over this last decade.

That was an awesome episode of Smackdown. New Day 6 man is among the best TV matches all year and helped by genuine emotion and a moment that can't be manufactured but all too often can be spoiled or entirely denied. Roman/Braun was also surprisingly strong given how long they went. It furthered Roman as a heel and effectively built the PPV match. You know its a good night when the latest Sasha/Bayley segment isn't the highlight. A truly fun and satisfying show that you can plow through in under half a Raw if you want.

I have absolutely no idea what is going down on Sunday. Did not see Ibushi coming out of the A block under any circumstances after toiling in the tag division all year without even a tease of something more. Naito/Ibushi for the big show? Sure, why not. Presumably they'll run the Dome although who knows how that works with COVID and the expenses associated with running the building given limited capacity. Just please, please keep Evil and Sanada away from the briefcase. I can live with anything else!

Why can't Moxley work here like he did against Chris Dickinson at the Bloodsport show?

So I was prepping a longer recap of the show but my man here basically hit the nail on the head. Ishii brought us the best match of Cobb's career other than maybe Ospreay at MSG. Ibushi and Suzuki gave us the best of Suzuki vs. Ishii or Nagata but with better pacing and more dynamic offense from a fresh opponent. The main event finally unveiled *basically* vintage Kazu with the tape on his back coming off, the fire, Euros, Tombstones and execution coming back, while also holding back a few tropes like vintage Rainmaker counter action and the flying elbow drop. Shingo's presence and offense belong in the mix at the top of the card and hopefully he gets the chance to dip in there after the G1. An outstanding G1 show that would rank with the best nights in any year.

Today's show was a really pleasant surprise that generally overdelivered. Getting the drivel out of the way first -- Sanada continues to deliver the most bland performances of anyone with a semblance of a push. Talk about him winning the tourney is scary as hell but I just can't see it. Okada regularly works miracles with him, but when else does this guy really shine? Yoshi-Hashi continues to be the most pleasant surprise in the entire field. He's the underdog basically every time out and works well paced matches every night to overcome that while his opponents put him over with credible selling and near falls before prevailing. Today's outing with Goto was the latter's best of the tourney and built really well without overstaying its welcome. Naito/Juice started out slow but built incredibly well with Juice looking like a real threat to the IWGP champion down the stretch even if in the back of your head you knew there was no way this would be revisited as a title match before Wrestle Kingdom. This also benefitted by audibling from the template we've seen in the tourney thus far where one clean finisher ends the match.

Its been fine. But given the standard that he and the others at the top of the card have set over the last decade its been a disappointment thus far.

I actually preferred the Tanahashi match a couple days ago, but had the same general thought. Simple layouts for all of his block matches but he and his opponents have made the most of them. Crazy to think that at the halfway point you can easily argue Y-H has had a better G1 than Okada, but here we are.

With Ospreay and Shingo graduating to HW I'm curious how they'll round out the top of the BOSJ field beyond Hiromu.

A couple small details about Evil's presentation have really stood out to me. As a now former IWGP champion, his block matches are always well positioned on the card. They'll typically be behind a Naito match as he's the current champion, or a marquee affair like Tana/KENTA today, but will generally be high on the card because of that status. Similarly, when firing up the NJPW app on Firestick, he's now in the opening graphic along with Okada, Naito, Tana, Ibushi and White. I wasn't a fan of his brief run with the belt this summer and am not sure it'll result in him becoming a meaningful part of the top of the card rotation, but you have to admire their effort to position him that way even after dropping the belt.

It probably was the single best Finals game since Lebron dropped 51 and still lost game 1 in 2018.

It appears as though talent can continue to Twitch using their own names. That doesn't rebuild the audiences they've built overnight, but the company is certainly within its rights to participate to the extent that the wrestlers are using company IP, i.e. their ring names. Curious how this would affect someone like Samoa Joe where the company doesn't own the name.

When did Vince retire?

Good to know. A lot of the audio does look interesting but I'm having a tough enough time as it is staying current on podcasts.

Is this online anywhere?

This might work if Kawhi had PG's resume, but the man still has a pair of rings and Finals MVP's. Maybe Cena's Mania run the last couple years with the Taker & Bray "matches"? Or better yet post-2015 Brock! That's my call for now.