So not only are EVIL, Finlay, Maloney, Conners, and Kidd likely on their way out, supposedly Hiromu is as well. Supposedly NJPW wanted him to move to heavyweight but he declined, which seems odd.
He's top 15 for me. One of the most consistent big match workers of the 21st century. All-timer babyface and a sneaky good heel when the time called for it. The last 2-3 years were definitely rough, but there's still at the very least a phenomenal 14-15 year run.
I don't think he was necessarily in the shape to wrestle every night, but at the very least they could've done way more dates with him strictly doing promos.
Perhaps neither here nor there, but I've always found both guys' drawing power pretty comparable, relative to their respective promotions of course. Both guys stopped the bleeding, but you could probably point to other folks who really turned things around (Okada for NJPW, Cody for WWE).
According to Dave, Tenzan is also retiring at the Dome. At first I thought this was a case of being massively overshadowed, but taking advantage of a 55k crowd situation to retire is actually pretty smart. Hasn't wrestled since April anyway.
That would be funny as he had previously said he had no interest in wrestling for another Japanese promotion. Wonder if visa issues have been that bad.
I've been tuned out of NJPW for a few years now, but I honestly think Zack has been one of the most consistently great wrestlers of the last decade. He'll rank for me.
Darby is out of the CC and is being replaced by Jack Perry. I would have thought reforming Jurassic Express was TK acknowledging that Jack is not a good singles wrestler. Could have easily put Brody, Josh Alexander, Hechicero, Rush, Mortos, Ace Austin, Shelton, Bandido, Ricochet, or Yuta in there instead. Or give an ROH guy like Lee Moriarity or Lee Johnson a chance.
I actually kinda warmed up to the Righteous a bit when they actually got TV time on Collision. Mostly Dutch being a pretty solid big guy, but Vincent's snapping entrance was catchy.