W2BTD

The consensus on Twitter last night was that Chrome seems to work the best. There were some issues with video playback on some other browsers, too.

All of the recent vintage PPV's that never emerged in the west (2012 G1 Night 1, and the 7/22/12 show with Tanahashi vs Tanaka, Nakamura vs Goto are the obvious ones). Meltzer was listing a bunch of matches on Twitter last night that were previously hard to find, most with no commentary since they never aired anywhere.

It took my debit card.

Seriously, once you translate (which is literally two clicks), the site may as well be an English language site. Don't let that be your barrier.

Which is why it will be great when Reigns beats him at Fast Lane as his "final test" before Lesnar at 31. You're probably right, but at least it won't be Cena.

Where are you right-clicking to translate? I'm using Chrome, so anywhere on the page brings up the option.

Exactly, the old footage is great for nerd types like us, but the live events will drive this, just like the Network. The big difference is that where the Network gives one one PPV per month, this gives you the PPV, every Korakuen show, and also the major tour stops from the bigger buildings. Check out the live schedule: http://njpwworld.com/schedule-1412-1501

It couldn't be any easier to navigate. Just right click to translate, and its basically an English language website. You can sort by year, wrestler, venue, match type, or even color commentator.

Click the wrestling ring icon next to "LIVE" to sort by event. It goes all the way back to 1973, with many of the shows being complete. When you click a show, each match can then be clicked individually.

Rusev has been the most interesting wrestler in WWE this year. Like Bill noted, he was nothing more than Lana's sidekick in NXT & when he first got called up, and it was obvious she was the star of the act, but now he's right there with her thanks to his rapid improvement. The Big E series was great. GREAT. Perfect pacing, just two big guys mauling each other, with one going over clean and moving on. I loved the Big E/Titus matches on Superstars, but I disagree strongly with GOTNW, because the Rusev/Big E matches were on a completely different level of intensity & violence. Loved the Swagger series, too. Again, hard fought, intense matches where the right guy went over. Perfect opponents style wise for each other. I'm not as high on the Sheamus match as some people here, but it was very good. I liked the Big E & Swagger stuff a little better, especially the Big E matches. Rusev's worst stuff has been against Reigns (who stinks), Big Show, & Henry. I knew the Henry matches would be shit, because that's a bad style matchup. Rusev excels vs other big hosses who are willing to work a hard pace, and give & take stiff offense. Henry is too methodical, and when things slow down, this is where Rusev is exposed a bit (see the Reigns matches). The Show matches simply didn't work. Sky is the limit with this guy. The Reigns matches had no chance, since Reigns is extremely limited as a single to begin with and can't work the pace Rusev needs, and the Henry matches had no chance because again Henry has one speed (a very slow one), and really needs to be carried at this point and Rusev can't do that at this stage.

Disclaimer - my absolute favorite wrestler growing up. I fall into a similar place where a lot of you apparently do, which is that Hennig might be the most talented wrestler ever who has the least amount of great matches. He'd make my list, because even without the file of highest level stuff i'd have a hard time finding 100 guys I think were better pro wrestlers. But he really should have been an elite top 20 level guy, and he wasn't.

The promoters and the politics. No one from the deathmatch scene, minus Hayabusa, ever really got a fair shake in any other Japanese promotion. Masato Tanaka had a hard time finding home when FMW closed, did some indies, joined up with Zero-1, was misused, then joined NJPW and was misused as well. Kanemura did some Z1 and FMW knockoffs but never got anywhere further after FMW. Mr. Gannosuke? Same thing. Interesting theory with the deathmatch guys, but I disagree when it comes to Tanaka. It may have taken a few years, but I don't think he's been misused in Z1 or NJPW. In NJPW he was a secondary title guy and tough gatekeeper of sorts, which I think was perfect slotting for him. He's also being used very well in NOAH these days. As for Honma, he'd have to be considered. There seems to be this idea that he emerged in 2014, but he's been this good for several years now. The forced sabbatical made people forget about him a little bit, and the G1 was obviously huge in terms of exposing him to people for a two week period when everybody is paying close attention to all of the shows. What also hurts him a bit is that he really excels in random tags, the kinds of matches that non hardcores of the promotion are likely to skip if they're cherry picking cards. He was just as great in 2013 as 2014, minus the G1 of course. And watch the 12/23/11 IC Title match from Korakuen vs Tanaka if you are looking for something a few years older to show that he's been at this level for a while now.

It's actually a perfect show for focused binge watching because of the way it's structured. I could see someone easily losing track of time on a Saturday burning through half of a season.

Both are heels. Muertes is mad at Chavo for getting involved with his post match match attack on Blue Demon. Meurtes wanted to "kill" Demon, and Chavo stole the kill. Catrina & Muertes confronting Chavo on that issue was one of my favorite scenes of the first four weeks. I love the idea of heels not just automatically getting along just because they're all heels. Wrestling characters behaving like real humans instead of face/heel robots, imagine that.

Disagree that there are no long term directions. They've planted seeds for a ton of stuff moving forward. The entire roster hating Chavo, Muertes coming after Chavo, Konnan & Puma not being on the same page, Cueto talking to the mystery man in side the cage, etc. Even after four weeks, I trust what these guys are doing long term far more than WWE.

This is the most interesting Chavo has been since forever, doing the bitter, jealous, failed legacy role. Pentagon Jr became one of my favorite wrestlers this year and i'm glad he's being seen by a wider audience. The show has delivered at least one really good match each week, sometimes two. Nothing has been bad. It's fresh & different & fun. It always leaves me wanting more, and I don't feel like watching is a chore like most other TV wrestling these days.

Just trying to make it fair for every category. Obviously it easier get in some places than others. He does this make it unfair to Americans? It doesn't. Eliminating the categories makes in unfair for everybody else, not the U.S./Canada.

So you don't want it to be fair? That's an odd stance.

I believe it's people who don't vote lucha, but have heard Cien Caras is a slam dunk and don't want him to fall off. So, they vote for him in the lucha category only and no one else. I guess to see that is see how many total voters there were this year in lucha compared to last year. This illustrates a problem with allowing such fluidity in self selecting where to vote. The problem is if you give ten votes to a person and say they can only vote in one category, what will that do? I think you do something like this: at most you get 10 votes. You are set into certain categories that you can only vote in those. Each category gives you a certain amount of votes (Say 2, 5, 3, etc.. based on how many people in that category). So, say A is allowed to vote in Category 1 & 2, he would get 5+3 votes, so 8 votes to use anywhere. Say, B is allowed to vote in Category 1, 2, 3, & 4, he would get 5+3+2+5, but the max is 10, so 10 votes. Well the easy way of handling this is eliminating categories This would hurt all candidates currently in categories aside from U.S. tremendously.

Problems like this occur because people vote strategically, when the system isn't set up for strategic voting. People allowed the 15/50 to cause them to panic. What confuses me, is if you didn't vote for Caras the year before, what is the motivation to "save" him if you don't vote for him anyway? I guess there are scenarios where people may think more than 10 candidates are worthy. Would anyone be in favor of unlimited choices? I don't believe any other HOF of note operates that way to my knowledge. I don't think i'd care either way. If your hypothesis is correct, the 15/50 actually saved Caras to live to fight another year, because last year he was below 50%, and it likely didn't keep anybody out because the next closest Mexico candidate Lagarde was only at 48. It definitely didn't keep anybody out below Lagarde. It may have caused Ciclon Negro to get dropped, but if he was that close to 10% to begin with, he wasn't a serious contender anyway.

People who cite headlining modern WrestleMania's as a major feather in a candidates drawing cap. The Rock has won Best Box Office Draw in the Observer Awards, essentially based solely on Mania. Even in a year he didn't actually wrestle.

But Mania never bombs. That's like saying a team should be considered a great team because they were in the Super Bowl. Mania draws on being Mania. I agree. Not everybody does.

I think no matter what dave says, clear directive or not, people are going to do whatever they want when it comes to Brock's unique scenario. If Brock headlines Mania this year, he's getting in unless the show bombs. And that isn't happening.

The fact that there are no slam dunk candidates coming down the pike if the foreseeable future may be an indictment of how voters are looking at modern candidates, in terms of holding them to drawing standards that are no longer relevant or fair. I think some of the shockingly low percentages for modern candidates bears that out. Now, full disclosure, I didn't vote for Punk or Edge or Nagata or Batista last year or Lesnar this year. Does the thinking need to be readjusted? I don't know. How do you compare being the #2 guy in modern WWE to some 70's territory guy who worked #2 in most places but maybe had a few headline runs?

When it comes to legitimate candidates, the big ticket ones that have real cases, modern U.S. candidates do far worse than anybody else. Batista, Punk, Hardy, Nash, Goldberg, Edge, etc etc etc don't even sniff knocking on the door. I find this idea that cutting the fat by getting rid of perpetual limbo status candidates like Moolah, Snuka, Murdoch, Monsoon, Ventura, etc is going to result in people falling over themselves to vote for CM Punk to have no basis. I guess we'll find out, but I just don't see it. People like Batista & Jeff Hardy can't even stay on the ballot, and they have as good of a case if not better than a lot of these historical candidates who hover at 30%. At some point, you have to trim it down, it makes no sense to leave these people on who are never getting over 60 or dropping below 10.