WingedEagle

For those on the fence, the Fighting Spirit show last night was a huge home run. Some quick hit thoughts: The lineup was hardly all that exciting on paper, but basically every undercard / nonsense tag was quick with solid action and almost no fat. Ospreay/Scurll may not have approached their Sakura Genesis classic, but it was hot from the start and a sound, logical match with big spots, great selling and transitions and a convincing finish. Plus no nonsense antics from Scurll. Bucks/GOD was hands down my favorite NJPW tag of the year. Another incredible sell job by Matt Jackson while the GOD played their part well and didn't bring things down at all. Cody/Juice was also solid even if it didn't touch the evening's big matches, and had a fun finishing stretch. The main event may not be memorable 6 weeks or 6 years from now, but if you enjoy these four in big singles matches you should love this as well. Great job teasing Okada/Omega without giving away too much, just like they did with the Ospreay/Ibushi pairing in the 9/7 tag. I went ****, ****, ***1/2 and ****1/2 on those last four matches. This was no doubt a show that benefited from low expectations, but wow did they ever smash them. It even felt like a pretty quick show despite having a 10-15 minute intermission. Nothing like a few great hours of wrestling on the couch on a Sunday night.

Thanks, resources like these are always much appreciated. Nothing like one-stop shopping for this kind of info.

Very interested in hearing what folks think about the Nitro and Hornbaker books. Both sound promising.

Haven't read the latest yet, but am really digging these. Whether I remember the matches vividly or hardly at all, its thus far been tremendous fun to revisit these takes.

Melatonin?

They worked that well to incorporate the women without overexposing them and their limitations. Finish was weak though.

That's exactly how I saw it as well, so it came off as a bit of a disappointment given how much I loved the Summerslam match. Still very good, but they set a pretty high bar.

Its been pretty damn good from the couch as well. Crowd seems dead for it though -- fatigue or something else?

Why are they working this like a straight title match rather than the opening stanza of what should be a heated feud?

I appreciate the blood, but the back half of that match was as boring as the first half wasn't.

This has gone on too long. Now its basically what I was afraid of.

Okay so its not just me. I'm not about to say this match is anything all that special by normal terms, but given I expected this to be your prototypical bathroom break its overdelivered.

Ha it very well may be, but I was actually about to say its better than I expected to this point.

Battle of the Days was a fun tag match that took great advantage of the new mats to feature some wild dives without going overboard on them. Didn't love or hate the finish but enjoyed the journey. A really solid 3-3.25 star affair. This red cell is not a win. Looks pretty terrible when they use any camera that isn't inside the cell.

Its a copy/paste from Wikipedia.

This lineup looks pretty great on paper and I'm thus very excited for the show. That's incredibly worrying because when expectations are high this company usually fails to approach them on PPV. Its not hard to envision scenarios where just about every match other than Orton/Hardy delivers, even if I know that won't happen. Plus a realistic chance that this ends by, much less before, 11? Fingers crossed.

He tapped out someone who had a ticket and took it, naturally.

Anybody eyeing the Okada/White interactions ahead of Okada/Tanahashi's briefcase match next weekend? That match is absolutely the first of the "G1 winner gets a WK title shot" era where the outcome feels like a real tossup. Its hard to envision Okada taking a decisive loss after the path he's traveled since dropping the title at Dominion, but on the other hand there's no program or issue remotely big enough for Tanahashi if you push him out of the Dome main event. If this were a domestic promotion, it wouldn't be hard to envision a scenario where Jay White gets involved to cost Okada the match, preserve his own shot at the case and create an issue for a potential WK match between those two. It'd be a rare enough angle that perhaps NJPW would consider it, yet it does feel like a natural way to tie together these storylines. Any thoughts or predictions?

Will this show go up on New Japan World like Friday Arena Mexicos typically do, or will it be different/delayed since this was a PPV?

That looks amazing, and it hasn't even started yet. More to come all night?

Sounds like one hell of a weekend. Can't wait to hear more about it.

Wow. 64! Looking forward to reading along.

Just wanted to add I'm a big fan of these blurbs. Keep it coming!

To be fair, they're doing the same thing with the Australia show as well. Announce the match online and then cut some promos for it after the fact. No less frustrating there, but it is consistent.

How do more wrestlers not clip the ropes and kill themselves on dives?! This never ceases to amaze me and are why I found Samoa Joe's so impressive. On another note, Bryan/Almas was one of Bryan's matches since returning, along with the AJ Smackdown outing after Mania and Miz at Summerslam.