pol

Rewatched Ibushi vs. AJ. Match was very good. Ibushi is looking like a candidate for both Wrestler of the Year and Most Outstanding right now.

AJ/Ibushi felt like the first 20 minutes of a good broadway. Maybe watching so much 90s All Japan lately has warped my expectations but it just never seemed to get out of second gear. The crowd being puzzlingly dead didn't help.

I didn't get the impression Keller was offended, more that he was astounded that Steph would publicly acknowledge that their philanthropy is a marketing deal.

Does anyone still expect a babyface Reigns 'clean in the middle' type victory? Just curious. To me that seems like the least likely of all the realistically possible outcomes.

Daiki Inaba vs. Shinjiro Otani from the 03/13 WRESTLE-1/ZERO1 cross-promotional show. Close to as good as what is essentially an extended squash can be, I think. Intensity in spades. I mark for working the hierarchy of guys into the match and it seems to be a dying art these days. My only complaint is that I would've liked Inaba to get in just a tiny bit more before the kill shot, and I can see some thinking his selling was way over the top, but all in all I really dug this. Inaba is so good for only having 2 years of experience.

The fact that they announced this prior to Mania has to mean either a Lesnar win or a Reigns heel turn, right? Just a week ago it seemed like they were trying to get heat on Lesnar by acting like he was going to leave.

I keep hearing that talking point, but doesn't how he's booked at Mania significantly play into his future value for the company? It might be in his interest to sign before in that case.

I'm more excited for Invasion Attack; AJ/Ibushi and Dorada/Omega have generated far more interest than anything on the Mania card, though I am interested in Reigns/Lesnar and Cena/Rusev to some degree. Still going to watch but will likely find some alternate means of doing so (and I have NJPW World and just paid for Rey de Reyes so it's not like I'm one of those 'will never pay for anything' guys).

Really enjoyed this. Not sure if it would be somewhat beyond the scope of what you guys are trying to do, but I've been thinking recently that I'd love to hear a podcast on the way economics influences the booking style of different promotions e.g. CMLL running the same building several times per week, the WWE's huge TV rights money and Network, the indie supercard model, etc...

The stuff they produce for WWE.com is consistently better than what's on TV. When they complain about how hard it is to fill those 3 hours of Raw every week you'd think they'd put some of this stuff on there.

Yeah, it seems pretty dubious to me that this of all shows would be a near sellout. At the very least it seems like it should draw a solid gate though, which bodes well for them rotating some different guys into the main event scene going forward and relying on the big three less. This is also noteworthy: Explains why the two NWA title matches are on Road to... shows. It makes sense that if they can draw with a big main event and not much underneath then they should use smaller title matches to prop up other shows on the tour. I do wonder if that might be a long term bad move though, in terms of eroding the baseline expectation of the quality of a big NJPW show.

Observer:

The perception is that he left to do MMA when times got hard and came back when business started recovering. He was supposed to be one of the "New Three Musketeers" with Nakamura and Tanahashi, so there seems to be a lot of resentment there.

That Heyman worked shoot promo was awful. Russo-level "everything else is fake but this is real" bullshit.

Not to say Bryan doesn't care about money, but I also get the impression he cares about being able to have great matches in front of appreciative crowds more than the average wrestler.

A lot of people (not here) are awful mad about WWE trying to 'kill the indies'. I'm about the least capitalistic person there is, but I think if you're going to have capitalism, it's to the benefit of the workers to have more competition and more places to choose from to work. It seems like a lot of people are siding with the indie promoters, for whom this is undoubtedly a bad thing, over the workers, for whom it's probably a good thing. If WWE drives up pay and forces more indies to give guaranteed contracts, that's a good thing. I guess the concern is that WWE uses its muscle to establish a monopoly on the indie scene, driving everyone else out of business and ultimately resulting in less choice for the workers, but is that really a concern? Sinclair is a bigger company than WWE and could easily go toe-to-toe with them at that level if they were willing to actually spend some money. I guess the worry would be that nobody else can afford to pay enough to compete with the promise of a main roster WWE slot (whether WWE actually plans on delivering on that promise or not).

I'm not getting an email... is it just me? Tried several times now.

Watching this Volk Han match, is that Dean Malenko in the blue shirt, front row at 5:48? And if so, who's the white guy next to him?

I thought the show was just a blow away great match away from being a Show of the Year contender. I enjoyed everything except for Yujiro/Makabe and Shibata/Goto. The show was really boosted by everyone in the undercard tag matches working hard, which is by no means a guarantee on New Japan shows. I agree with shoe re: really wanting to see KUSHIDA/Dorada. That has the potential to be a feud you could rebuild the Junior division around. I thought the young lions match and Fale/Naito were both really good. It was surprising to see how much they gave the young lions - makes me wonder if they're going to bother with the excursion deal or just promote them to 'real wrestler' status soon. Fale worked hard. I thought the match was possibly better than his match with Nakamura, which I guess would make it the best match of Fale's career. Yujiro trying to break Makabe's neck on the buckle bomb was scary. Shibata/Goto was as dumb as all their matches are, but lacked the heat that would normally carry them - it seemed to have that WWE undercard style crowd reaction, where the fans pop for the big spots but aren't actually hot for the match. Not only do matches between these two lean heavily on the most annoying tropes of modern New Japan, but they don't even utilise them correctly - the mirror suplex no-sell spot came at a completely random point in the match to little reaction from the crowd. Just doing stuff for the sake of doing it. That said, I do generally enjoy Shibata and Goto going over left a bad taste in my mouth to end the show. Not at all looking forward to a Goto/Makabe match and one of them being in the finals if not winning the whole thing. Either Naito or Ibushi (and preferably Ibushi) has to win this thing. The top of the card is so stale right now and adding one of those guys into the mix would really help shake things up.

I would think the fact that they already fired him would do significant damage to its value as a news story.

You think 2015 WWE has any idea who is going over in an undercard PPV match 3 weeks out?

I'm interested in when we actually see a callup for one of the indie draws. As I said in the other thread, with NXT showing the beginnings of being a touring brand, and a significant motivating factor there probably being providing HHH with an opportunity to prove his worth as a promoter to investors skeptical of his ability to fill Vince's shoes, I think they probably see a lot of those guys as far more valuable in NXT than on the main roster. Would Joe have been signed before these plans were in place? Was he even signed with the intention of having him on the main roster? Given what Meltzer has said about HHH and Vince sharing many of the same prescriptive notions of what makes aa star, could HHH's mentality with a guy like Zayn be "this guy could never draw big money, but I'll get behind him in NXT since he's a proven draw at that level"?

Any thoughts on what the plan to turn NXT into a touring super indie means for the future of guys like Zayn and Owens? Can we assume that a significant motivator here is to provide HHH with the opportunity to prove his promotional chops to investors harboring misgivings about his future ascendancy to Vince's throne and, if so, do proven indie draws like the aforementioned provide greater value in their current positions than they could on the main roster?

The Sexy Star stuff is goofy. So the idea is supposed to be that in the LU universe, women can be competitive with men, but then Ryck doesn't want to hurt her and manages to easily defeat her without doing so? I'd rather they just didn't do this stuff period, but if they must they should at least be internally consistent.

Since this is supposed to be trivial bitching, I guess I'll throw Bryan Alvarez's name out there. Awful writer, very limited knowledge of wrestling but still insists on debating Dave on issues where he's completely out of his depth and, worse still, once he gets an idea in his head he absolutely refuses to budge on it even after Dave articulates reasons X, Y and Z why it's nonsense, and will go running to his buddies like Vinny and Todd to repeat the same tired points to someone who isn't as capable of countering them.