pol

Why would they tease the Mizdow tag and not pay it off?

Pretty fun spotfest. I wish they hadn't gone to the ladders so early. Dolph's bumping can often be over the top but it's perfect for matches like this. Harper's facial expressions were great.

I remember there being a lot of mainstream buzz for that angle, the most there had been around WWE in years.

...which is weird, because creative is obviously incredibly risk-averse. To the point where they won't keep a top guy off TV for more than a week to enhance a storyline, even though whatever money they lost there would be a drop in the bucket of the potential losses of the Network. I think their massive hubris ("62 million homes have an affinity for WWE content") convinced them the Network couldn't be anything but a huge success, so they didn't see it as a risk.

Whoops, you're right. My bad

Definitely the 2012 one - Tanahashi wins. Haven't seen the 2013 one yet.

...and that's why RINGS put a limit on that nonsense

Saw someone ask elsewhere: how did Rudo and Tecnico become on-screen distinctions in Mexico, while their English-language equivalents are considered insider terminology? I have no clue, but I imagine a few people here might.

If you look at how they book the NXT vs. main roster matches they obviously feel it's important to put over even the bottom rung main roster guys as superior to everyone in developmental. I can see where they're coming from and I know from Japan that the 'climbing the ladder' approach to building someone up can work but I don't know that it's ever worked in WWE.

do you like spot fests or something? That aimless mat work helps tell the story of big man/strong man dominance in the matches Even if that stuff did enhance the story of the match (and I don't think it did), if it isn't interesting in its own right, who cares?

A lot of guardrail irish whips. Going through the 2014 G-1, I started a counter and almost every match had at least 1. Often followed by a double count out tease

I'm only up to 93 in my All Japan watching and he only just seems to be getting consistently good. Anyone agree/disagree with that assessment?

I'm eagerly awaiting seeing the whole show whenever it shows up online... very frustrating that there was no streaming option at all.

Working my way through all the Okada/Tanahashi matches to prepare for the Dome show. I thought the 2012 Dome main event was very good. Here's what I wrote elsewhere: First Okada match I can understand the effusive praise for. To me this felt a lot more like a Tanahashi match than an Okada match in terms of how it was laid out. Kinda like a WWE epic Wrestlemania main event in the sense that while on the micro level none of the individual things they did were particularly interesting (mostly just a lot of signature spots), the big picture story was very well told. Likes: - Tanahashi going back down to the ramp to drag Okada back into the ring like "oh hell no son you aren't getting counted out". - Okada actually dominated most of the match with Tanahashi having to be opportunistic and find spots to get offense in (which seems to be a standard Tanahashi trope). They saved the back-and-forth for the end, which made it more meaningful. - I don't think it's appropriate for the climax to every big match to be this epic selling deal with lots of trading big moves interspersed with laying around, and they do probably overuse that trope in NJPW, but for a Dome main event you certainly can and maybe even should do that. - They didn't do a bunch of near-falls that nobody would have bought anyway because of how modern NJPW main events are always laid out. Dislikes: - Limb work that went absolutely nowhere. Not sure if it's an Okada or a Tanahashi thing or just a trope of the modern NJPW main event style in general but it does come up a lot. I guess the idea was to have drama by teasing Okada submitting to the Texas Clover but who actually buys that possibility? - Tanahashi is so incredibly limited as an offensive wrestler - how many Sling Blades do we really need to see in one match? Luckily this match was more about structure than Stuff. - Finish was pretty predictable since you know the match will only end on a finisher and there's going to be at least one finisher kickout. - Might not be fair to judge a match from 2012 for this, the constant Rainmaker reversals in the latter third of a match are soooo played out at this point. Overall, very good match. Probably better at the Dome than it would have been any other time of year because of intangibles like big match feel. Both guys came off as huge stars in that setting. Not FIVE STARS good to me but I can at least understand where people are coming from with that.

What are the alternatives for New Japan? There's no TV rights deals, no huge PPV numbers. If you're New Japan you should at least try to get people to pay for this stuff instead of watching it for free on streaming sites. They did 100k iPPV buys for the January 4th Dome show the past 2 years, it's going to take a lot of subscriptions for them to reach parity with that. Meltzer has a good analysis of the subject in the latest Observer; he doesn't sound particularly positive about it.

Given how it's gone for WWE, and given that NJPW seems to be doing this more because of a cargo cult mentality that aping incidental traits of WWE will bring them WWE's success rather than sound business reasoning, I wouldn't expect to see another one for a while.

Surely JR is the main draw of the GFW PPV anyway?

I think at this point Nakamura may be the #3 star in terms of presentation but he's the #1 or #2 in terms of actual drawing power. He's the most searched for on NJPW World, for whatever that's worth. Okada is still probably not quite there yet as a draw. He's been able draw well in mid-sized venues vs. upper midcarders like Goto and Makabe, but flopped this year when asked to main event a large building against a then relatively unknown quantity in AJ Styles. The true test of him will be when he's asked to main event a Dome opposite someone not called Tanahashi or Nakamura. They should (and obviously will, since he's Gedo's boy) keep trying with him becaues he's already 75% of the way there. I agree that the future doesn't look so rosy for them talent-wise. Ibushi and Shibata are the obvious young guys who can main event (Shibata isn't really young but his body isn't wrecked from years of working the NJPW style). But that's just two guys and you can't assume everyone you try to push to the next level is going to stick with the fans, or draw. The NJPW dojo guys are more junior-sized, though of course there's ways of changing that. With Devitt gone and Ibushi now a heavyweight it's hard for me to see any of the juniors as potential main event guys - even someone like KUSHIDA, who I thought was one of the best workers in the world this year, just doesn't have the charisma, the look or the size to main event. I don't know what's going on with the Dojo but apparently the last batch of trainees all left? Given Kidani's obsession with doing whatever Vince does to the point of aping a money-losing over-the-top video venture, you'd think they'd try to establish something like an NXT or OVW to build their future.

Less to do with how they feel and more what the buyrates have shown for years now. The February 2015 PPV is the awfully-named Fast Lane now though. EC will presumably resurface elsewhere in the year.

Unless you're using 'big show' to mean every PPV/'special event', Survivor Series is no longer really a big show. Rumble/Mania/SummerSlam/Chamber are the new big 4.

Where the hell would you even get accusations of anti-semitism from? Because someone used the word 'shyster'? I think you are reading way too much into that.

I don't think GFW's partnerships with other promotions exist for any other reason than to provide a bullet point on Jarrett's pitch to the TV networks.

As we talked about on WTBBP, the Van Hammer push was really brief shutting Meltz up when the company saw the same things he was. Dylan was discussing the misuse of Cesaro at least a year ago when he was building him up as wrestler of the year. This isn't some flavor of the week narrative that has just surfaced up. Guess the point is: if it wasn't that, it'd be something else. "Guy not getting the push he deserves / Guy getting push he doesn't deserve" are basically permanent narratives in smart fan discourse. Literally two-a-penny. If it wasn't Cesaro, it'd be another guy. Just happens to be Cesaro right now. I think not following the current product is really hurting your argument here. From around the Rumble to WrestleMania people were very excited about the creative direction with Cesaro looking like a million bucks, the Bryan vs. Authority angle being great TV, The Shield and The Wyatts being engaged in a fantastic feud, etc. People weren't complaining then (except about Batista), when a bunch of young guys were being put over strong and were getting huge reactions from the live crowds. People were talking about how fresh and exciting the product felt and what a good job WWE was doing building for the future. When Cesaro was put with Heyman rather than the obvious move of turning him babyface, people weren't complaining, there was so much good will towards the product that they were falling over themselves to justify the decision. When Heyman spent most of his promo time talking about Brock while Cesaro stood there looking like a goof, everyone was sure that the fantasy-booked scenario of Cesaro eventually having had enough and giving Heyman the Giant Swing was going to happen. All of those guys (except Reigns and Rollins) have since had their legs cut out from underneath them to varying degrees and have suffered a noticeable decrease in crowd reactions. It's not like I have to strain to remember this stuff, it was 10 months ago. Yes, there's always going to be "where's this guy's push?" complaints, but I think it's disingenous to dismiss any and all such complaints due to that. You have to look at it in the context of the overall level of positivity/negativity towards the product. And yeah, them dropping the ball with Cesaro is a minor issue in a vacuum, but he's just one of so many guys they've dropped the ball with this year alone. Who knows if any of them could have developed into major drawing cards, but when crowds start to seriously respond to a guy, why would you not even try? It's not like Cesaro lost out because all the protected spots were taken; nobody outside of Cena, Reigns and Rusev (who they have done a good job with - probably because he's either going to be used to make Reigns, or is Cena's Mania opponent) is protected at all. The entire midcard - we're talking like 90 minutes of TV time on their A show here - is full of guys trading wins in meaningless matches. The IC and US champions lose on TV more than they win. Why would you not pick a couple guys out of that morass to at least try and do something with? Finally, had, say, Cena been jobbed out right as he began to get over, don't you think you'd be saying "this won't seem like a big deal in 10 years" about that too? It's not like Cena was a guy like a Hogan or Rock with obvious era-defining superstar potential. It's hard to see a guy's upside if you never give him the chance to show it.

It took my debit card just fine.

New Japan apparently did 100k iPPV buys for a couple of the Dome shows so there is some pretty serious cannibalization going on here. It's not where the Network is technologically but this still seems pretty progressive for a country that is famously reticent to adopt any new technology that isn't phone-related.