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14 minutes ago, Boss Rock said:

Unless Gedo continues to go against pattern, I think it's likely he or Okada beats Ospreay in the Dome or Dominion. Then the other wins the G1.

I meant from a character direction standpoint... there seemed to be a lot of story in the Ibushi going mad with greatness/power ("I am God") thing they were doing, and that kinda gets cut off with the title loss. But maybe he just gets the belt back at Dominion and we continue from there.

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Loved the match, another MOTYC in Ospreay & Ibushi's wallet, loved the result, that's a holy shit moment if there ever was one. Marked out for that finish.The post-match was indeed crazy stuff. Takagi again ? Then Okada. That's about a hundred step up from last's year bullshit.

The junior tag team match was very good too, but watching this, the one thing that struck me was that Kanemaru was easily the best worker of the four. Talk about a guy who's been consistently very good for more than 20 years now, with a peak early in NOAH. Totally overlooked because of his lack of charisma, but that guy has been good forever (yeah, that damn GWE poll mentality creeps everywhere already).

Also, Mox vs Nagata ? Cool. Nagata is one of my favorite veteran workers.

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What's people's verdict on Ibushi's reign? Lots of people were down on it but I thoroughly enjoyed it, unification notwithstanding. Every match was at least good, and the match with White was a MOTYC. I'd say it's the best title reign since Okada's.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am not keeping up with all the business reports of New Japan, but apparently, they drew just 300 in Korakuen, and got outdrawn heavily in that building by DDT and a bunch of other indies like TJPW. I get all the external reasons but this is still terrible news for New Japan and further proof that perhaps Gedo's booking style has jumped the shark

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28 minutes ago, MoS said:

I am not keeping up with all the business reports of New Japan, but apparently, they drew just 300 in Korakuen, and got outdrawn heavily in that building by DDT and a bunch of other indies like TJPW. I get all the external reasons but this is still terrible news for New Japan and further proof that perhaps Gedo's booking style has jumped the shark

The big question here would be if those New Japan, DDT and TJPW shows had the same crowd capacity limit. If they did, then hell yeah that's a red flag for New Japan, doing Big Japan/Zero1 like numbers is never a good sign.

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Isn't New Japan running Korakuen into the ground with seemingly multiple shows per week as opposed to once or twice per month?  Not to defend NJPW's booking of late because other than putting together main events that consistently deliver in the ring it hasn't exactly been creative to write home about.  But I believe DDT, TJPW and the like are still running Korakuen essentially monthly for the equivalent of their PPV shows, as opposed to NJPW's Road To shows, which might be at Shinkiba or similarly small buildings for DDT & the like.

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11 hours ago, WingedEagle said:

Isn't New Japan running Korakuen into the ground with seemingly multiple shows per week as opposed to once or twice per month?  Not to defend NJPW's booking of late because other than putting together main events that consistently deliver in the ring it hasn't exactly been creative to write home about.  But I believe DDT, TJPW and the like are still running Korakuen essentially monthly for the equivalent of their PPV shows, as opposed to NJPW's Road To shows, which might be at Shinkiba or similarly small buildings for DDT & the like.

Yeah, this has nothing to do with the booking and everything to do with New Japan trying to make up for capacity limits on big shows by running an endless series of Korakuen house shows. They must have made the decision that drawing whatever for these is profitable, but a New Japan house show without a title match is not a fair comparison to other companies' big shows.

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2 hours ago, Migs said:

Yeah, this has nothing to do with the booking and everything to do with New Japan trying to make up for capacity limits on big shows by running an endless series of Korakuen house shows. They must have made the decision that drawing whatever for these is profitable, but a New Japan house show without a title match is not a fair comparison to other companies' big shows.

I get it, but let's not forget New Japan sold out a Sumo Hall without a main event announced (it ended up being Cody vs Kenny vs Kota) less than 3 years ago and they constantly outdraw every other promotion in Korakuen without any marquee or title matches.

I'm looking purolove and:

-Three days after drawing 300 people at Korakuen twice, they drew more than 600 with Great-O-Khan & Henare vs Naito & SANADA maineventing. This was the first show to break the 300 people barrier in that building after four consecutive shows getting 300 people. Before that, they had 500 people on three shows that had New Japan Cup matchups. They have another big run of shows in KH this week with bigger cards so we'll see how they do. 

-In February they had 6 Korakuen Hall shows that drew in the 450-600 people range.

-DDT had three Korakuen shows in March, two drawing more than 500 people and 1 above 600. That plus the 600 people in the one they had in April.

 

Looking at the numbers, it's not that concerning as I thought in my first reaction to what MoS posted. Though it's evident there's less interest. Not sure overbooking the building is the answer as they've overbooked it since October last year and they are just seeing attendance drop since March and other promotions surpassing them.

 

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I don't know. My whole take on the past 14 months of New Japan is that every bad booking decision has been made because of the pandemic and when the world gets back to normal then New Japan will get back to normal. They want to save big matches and feuds until after capacity restrictions are lifted. At the same time if gives them an opportunity to elevate some underneath guys and some young guys without hurting at the gate, because there is limit to what they are able to draw. And as long as they can't fill bigger venues might as well run Korakuen to death and pick up some crumbs where they can. That's my take.

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3 hours ago, strobogo said:

NJ has had consistent bad and lazy booking for like...5 years, though. 

Consistent and predictable isn't bad or lazy booking, its a good thing. Still even during the pandemic NJPW is probably the best booked major promotion in the world. Has been for nearly a decade. There are small indies that have had better booking at points like CWF or OTT. And thats all Gedo. I think people forget how bad New Japan's booking  was before Gedo took over. I also think people fail to recognize just how bad the booking is in every other major promotion around the world the past decade.  

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It took them 8ish years to finally do something I truly haven't liked with the World Title introduction. 

Having a stable direction that takes you somewhere, makes you want to see it and then gives it to you isn't lazy or bad. Most of the best angles in wrestling were simple concepts executed well. 

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