Jmare007

I thought it was tremendous but the crowd having no clue who Thatcher was nor buying for a second he could win made his awesome, relentless work on the arm underwhelming. Love the little things Danielson did selling and adjusting his offense so he could do shit even with a bad shoulder. This Takeshita twist is interesting. I guess he's gonna play a big part in the PPV match? Maybe he gets the title shot on a Dynamite after Danielson.

Why the hell does Ricky need to run a gauntlet? He already beat Jericho clean.

I felt real emotions from Billy...when he slammed that bad mic.

And get a rematch.

Bleh, I don't want a 4th match...

Jeff Jarret's role in the company continues to grow bigger If they keep it small and simple this could help a good number of wrestlers.

Isn't Daniel Makabe retired? That would be such a cool matchup though.

I just don't think Kota is signing with anyone anytime soon. My guess is that he's gonna be a freelancer for a while.

If they can book him immediately I can totally see Tony Khan making Danielson's final opponent on Feb 8th be Kota, man that would be incredible.

Seems Ibushi is officially out of New Japan. His contract was supposedly up today and GCW immediately announced two bookings of him (he's gonna be in Bloodsport!) for Mania weekend.

Lol at Danielson finally getting his match with Thatcher but wanting to make it different by working without 1 arm.

BCC continues to be one of the worst stables of all time in terms of kayfabe. 9 out of 10 times they just let their members get fucking destroyed by whoever they are feuding with

I love Okada going really old school with a similar outfit of his 09' matches against NOAH guys. Now he's beating the fuck out of someone else other than Sugi but that Kitoyima stuff took me back to when Okada showed everyone he had next. It also had that "wait, what is going on" vibe KENTA and Nagara had in that early 10's tag match. Soooo happy to see interpromotional fuckery back in our lives.

Who could've been a good opponent for Saraya then? She's not very good in the ring and a lot of the ladies in the AEW roster are pretty average themselves so the pool is very limited for her "long awaited" return. I guess Tay Melo could've done some fun stuff as a heel and make the crowd want to see Saraya beat her. But that's about it. Someone like Serena Deeb would've turned babyface just off the strength of her wrestling ability

I think it's a mix of him facing babyfaces that the fans want to see more from and fans knowing that these matches are a mere formality. They know Danielson is facing MJF at the PPV, there's no real stakes as no one believes Dragon is losing the title shot (even more so because there's no one else to challenge Max if Danielson fails on this quest). So they root for the underdog babyface because they kinda know Dragon is already set for the PPV.

I'm actually interested if he can make the David vs Goliath formula work with Cage. If he actually gets the crowd to respond, boo Cage and get hot for Dragon's eventual comeback and win, it would be pretty damn impressive. I thought he was going to ask for Lance Archer for this spot though.

Give us a best of 7 between these two!!!!

Absolutely adored that struggle during the surfboard spot.

Fuuuuuck. I hope Mark and the whole family have a strong support system, they are still very young

I also plead ignorance on the matter, this is what Thurston had to say about it.

Dave's reporting on Japanese wrestling has been iffy for as long as I've been paying attention (15 years or so). But I didn't know there was a whole thing with Dragon Gate and now Bix wrote this: Prominent Wrestling Journalist Dave Meltzer Accused Of Publishing Stories Based On False Information

This time it wasn't even that. It was like a Bray Wyatt version cheap heat. Maybe the point was to annoy people that just wanted to watch Danielson vs Takeshita? lol. I'm normally OK with his shtick but this wasn't it.

I liked it a lot more than the opener but it was still weird because it kinda made Mox/Hangman look inferior for no real reason.

Very weird they basically had two very similar matches (Mox vs Hangman and Danielson vs Takeshita) in the same show.

It makes zero sense Danielson hasn't come out and make Max shut the fuck up. This is going way too long and I'm a huge MJF fan.