Edwin

This is a battle between one of the guys I enjoy watching the most in New Japan against one of the guys I like watching the least. I like Ishii quite a bit, but the thought of him going close to half hour with Elgin isn't something I'm looking forward to. With that said, this was not good. These two just spent the majority of the time trading big moved and Elgin's ridiculous top rope splash mountain was horrible. And the length of this was ridiculous which this seems like a common trend for most 2018 New Japan matches.

Another really fun multi man tag in the Choshu and Tenryu feud. Compared to the other matches in this rivalry, this somewhat lacked the heat and intensity the other matches carried, but it did give us more interactions between Choshu and Tenryu, although they're smart enough to tone it down and save their best for when they get to dance as singles. Ishikawa putting Teranishi in the sasorigatame and pointing over at Choshu was great. Another wild finish that leads to more chaos and awesome brawling.

Not exactly wrestling related, but does anyone know whatever happened to Ditch? I remember him being a huge All Japan dude over at DVDVR and I saw he posted here regularly too. I checked his profile on here and on DVDVR and he hasn't been on either site in almost 2 years.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Just came across that on YouTube... I remember him blocking me on Facebook because I called him out on his buffoonery, but I didn't know he released that...

Yeah, my urge to watch 2018 New Japan lasted about 4 hours. Already bored and done with them. I guess I'll keep NJPW World until I'm done digging out the classics.

This was great. Hashimoto is the best. Seriously. He comes into Noah and totally wrecks Omori, but he also allows Omori to get some stuff in that actually has the fans believing he's going to pull off the upset. The length of this was perfect for the match they worked too.

Not to be THAT guy, but I'm not sure what you mean exactly by You know a match is good when it has a Canadian Destroyer spot in it that isn't bad! Canadian Destroyer spot or no Canadian Destroyer spot, this was a below average Jr. match with a crowd sitting on their hands for the majority of it. This was also way to long.

Did New Japan eliminate count outs from matches? The Young Bucks and Roppongi 3K should've been counted in their match and so should've Tanahashi and Taichi here. This felt pretty spotty and was the Ganso Bomb really a necessity here? Mainly as a throwaway move... Yeah, this is another pass from me.

I rarely have the time to watch full shows anymore -- except for EVOLVE and WWE PPV's which I can watch in full because my wife luckily is a fan and watches them. I took my wife with me to an NXT Live show three years ago and she became a fan so she watches RAW, SDL and the PPV's, so I just watch them with her and she accompanies me to the MLW and indie shows I get to go to (and she's also a football fan so she also goes with me to Orlando City games and watches the games with me on TV) and we have a blast together. From the streaming services I got, I just check the cards when they add new stuff and just go and watch the matches on their that intrigue me which is usually one or two matches per card. I do a lot of my watching at work as it's been really slow for the past 3 weeks, so I have at least 6 hours to watch stuff.

Joe's ROH world title run wasn't full of 10 star classics or whatever, but a lot of the success he's encountered in his career is due to the reputation he obtained with that lengthy dominant title run. Tanahashi is exceedingly overrated. Sure he appeals to the locals, but his matches leave a lot to be desired. AJ on the other hand has provided quality matches in different settings against a diverse set of opponents as proven by his current WWE run. I mean, the dude got a very good match out of Shane McMahon which is quite the accomplishment.

Almost 13 years since this took place and it's still awesome. Shibata dropping Akiyama on his head and then punting him into oblivion and busting his head in the process only to piss Akiyama off and have him go crazy on Shibata was the perfect way to start this match. Akiyama continues to reck havoc with a chair, brutal looking knees and Shibata continues punting Akiyama whenever given a chance. Honestly this is great. Just a hate filed, brutal brawl.

Not a shoot interview per se, but...

Talk about it here.

So it's been over a year since this thread was created. What streaming services is everyone still registered to? I have the WWE Network, Powerbomb.TV, Highspots Wrestling Network and I signed up to NJPW World today. These are the four I plan on keeping as there's more than enough between these four for me stick around and not have to change my subscriptions. Edit: In 4 hours I had already cancelled NJPW World as I didn't really dig the current product and I cancelled Powerbomb.TV because I noticed I was mainly using it just to watch assorted matches from Beyond and old IWA-MS and CZW shows and the Highspots Wrestling Network has a ton of old IWA-MS and CZW shows and I don't think paying $10 a month for a random Beyond match here and there is worth it.

Kobashi -- to me, Danielson's peak was during his mid to late ROH run and my favorite Kobashi run was during his early to mid 2000's Noah run and in my opinion, Kobashi had the better run. I know others will say Danielson's best run is probably his WWE run, but I don't agree Eddie -- I'm a big fan of Bret's, but Eddie had better matches against more diverse opponents in more diverse settings than Bret. Kawada -- Charisma aside, Kawada to me was better overall than Misawa. Benoit -- HBK had bigger and better opportunities, but on a constant basis, Benoit was far better imo. Akiyama -- Nakamura has had some good to great runs, but I don't think he's had a run as good as Akiyama's 2000's run. Nakamura also coasts on matches whenever he wants to as he's doing currently in WWE. Styles -- Not even comparable. Styles is just far better in every aspect. Joe -- I'm sure this will be closer to other people, but in my opinion Joe's ROH world title run and his involvement in the ROH vs. CZW feud put him above Hennig for me and I'm a huge Hennig fan. Hase vs. Angle -- This an interesting one and should be a lot closer than the rest and will pass on voting here as I'm not sure at the moment who I'd choose comfortably.

I haven't followed New Japan regularly since around 2004 and even then I thought Noah was far better. I'll give the G1 a shot this year as long as I don't have to sit through a Goto 30 minute time limit draw. Also I like Ishii a lot, but I prefer watching work against Japanese indie scum like Sekimoto or Mammoth instead of American indie scum like Elgin.

Watched a lot of the matches ShittyLittleBoots posted about and am less than thrilled with the majority of them. Glad he enjoyed them, but they're not my thing. And even though I'll most likely continue some new NJPW stuff, I'm not sure how long I'll stick around if a lot of those matches I watched are their best stuff. I still haven't watched anything from the Dome show, however. Suzuki vs. Tanahashi was the best out of the bunch from the ones I've seen and even then that was good at best, but way to long. I'm a big fan of Ishii, but I'm not thrilled about watching a close to 30 minute match with Elgin who's pretty terrible from what I've seen.

Liger vs. Rey has potential of being far better than this was. Ospreay is a very athletic dude, but I've never seen a performance of his that's particularly blown me away. This wasn't that performance either. Even the fake ankle/knee injury didn't stop him from doing one too many flips and that bump off the shotei is Shawn Michaels bumping for Hulk Hogan's punches levels of goofy. Thought this was pretty forgettable/skippable.

I thought this was OK at best and rather heatless for the most part. I wouldn't say SANADA's selling was particularly out of this world great or anything and the botched three count on the tiger suplex was really bad. Skippable, unless you're a massive ZSJ fan.

This lacked structure to me and was just all over the place and not in a good way. Scurll faking he was going to give the Golden Lovers t-shirt to the fan and then tossing into the crowd was a pretty cool heel'ish moment and Omega's early big dive into the crowd was pretty cool. Cody and Scurll just standing around waiting for the Omega and Ibushi to figure out how they were going to do the stereo moonsaults was kinda lame, but it got over with the crowd, so more power to them. I'm not someone who particularly dislike Jr. matches, but this really wasn't anything special to me and just a standard Jr. tag match.

This is worked at the old IWA Arena which was most likely some old barn somewhere in Indiana and there's around 45 people in the crowd and it's pretty awesome. This is Ian totally out of the hardcore environment we are used to seeing him as the match develops mostly on the mat and it features some pretty awesome work from both sides with some cool submission attempts and some pretty awesome selling to get these submissions ever. There's some pretty gruesome headbutt battle where you can clearly hear the thud of their heads colliding. The finishing stretch is awesome with Ian countering a pin with a gator roll and an anaconda choke and Tarek just knees him on the head from the bottom and Ian then locks on an anaconda vice. Great match.

Standing around and just waiting for a guy to dive is just as a bad as walking around a building during a brawl and holding onto a guy by his hair. Obviously the Bucks and whoever they are working with aren't the first guys guilty of doing this, but it looked really goofy here when one of the Bucks ran all the way up the ramp while the rest of the guys just stood there waiting for him to run down the ramp and do the dive. Psychology? This was just a standard Jr. tag match. This is the first time watching Roppongi 3K and they did nothing for me here. I will credit the Bucks for having amazing cardio and being a really athletic. This was also really long and I never got the sense of the amazing performance Matt Jackson put on. The dude fell from a Sharpshooter because he had injured his knee or back early in the match, but it was no issue for him when he was running with a dude on his shoulders across the ring to Powerbomb him in the corner. Anyway, I thought this was forgettable.

Did Rush really try and have the crowd chant "Cochina" when they were brawling on the outside? Cochina is female pig... Anyway, this was OK. Rush constantly taunting Kojima was great and easily the highlight of this. I'm not a fan of Kojima and he did nothing of note here.