CerealKiller
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Wrestling thread
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CerealKiller
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A longer version
[DOUBLEPOST=1507598037][/DOUBLEPOST]That's what was needed to freshen things up. And hopefully Reigns will be more watchable now.
IceAgeComing
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So, em, an interesting announcement at Power Struggle this morning:
Will be Jericho's first match for New Japan since the 1998 G1 tour; and first outside WWE since 1999. Pretty big deal that no one really expected; they'd been working something on Twitter for the last week but everyone thought that was for Jerichos cruise thing, not the Dome. To provide context for non-New Japan people, Wrestle Kingdom is basically their big show of the year, always held from the Tokyo Dome on the 4th January so a pretty big deal, and Omega is very good, and is the leader of the Bullet Club which is a pretty big thing for someone to be (earlier leaders were Prince Devitt/Finn Bálor, Karl Anderson and AJ Styles so pretty well known guys).
For anyone who wants to see how good Omega is there's a whole litany of matches that he's had just this year to recommend; the Omega/Okada trilogy is the obvious thing to recommend checking out.
Will be Jericho's first match for New Japan since the 1998 G1 tour; and first outside WWE since 1999. Pretty big deal that no one really expected; they'd been working something on Twitter for the last week but everyone thought that was for Jerichos cruise thing, not the Dome. To provide context for non-New Japan people, Wrestle Kingdom is basically their big show of the year, always held from the Tokyo Dome on the 4th January so a pretty big deal, and Omega is very good, and is the leader of the Bullet Club which is a pretty big thing for someone to be (earlier leaders were Prince Devitt/Finn Bálor, Karl Anderson and AJ Styles so pretty well known guys).
For anyone who wants to see how good Omega is there's a whole litany of matches that he's had just this year to recommend; the Omega/Okada trilogy is the obvious thing to recommend checking out.
CerealKiller
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Could we see more crossover between NJPW and WWE in the future? An Invasion angle would be great.
IceAgeComing
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Nah; this is Jericho doing something on his own - the word is that he only works on short term deals when he's with the WWE and the last one ended around Mania (bar the one night deal in July) so he's free to do other things - like WK and the rock and wrestling cruise that he's doing with ROH.
Besides an invasion angle would make no sense for either company from a business perspective long term - New Japan want to crack America (they announced a second big US date two weeks before Mania today, plus they've been working a lot more with ROH recently) which makes them direct competition to the WWE and limits their ability to work together, plus the WWE never really give their competition more media than needed. Plus an invasion angle needs to have a clear winner at the end and that would not happen here for hopefully obvious reasons plus no invasion angle between two existing promotions (NJPW vs WAR, NJPW vs UWF, the 2001 abortion of a WWF/WCW one technically considering they initially planned to keep WCW going) ended with both lasted for long afterwards...
Besides an invasion angle would make no sense for either company from a business perspective long term - New Japan want to crack America (they announced a second big US date two weeks before Mania today, plus they've been working a lot more with ROH recently) which makes them direct competition to the WWE and limits their ability to work together, plus the WWE never really give their competition more media than needed. Plus an invasion angle needs to have a clear winner at the end and that would not happen here for hopefully obvious reasons plus no invasion angle between two existing promotions (NJPW vs WAR, NJPW vs UWF, the 2001 abortion of a WWF/WCW one technically considering they initially planned to keep WCW going) ended with both lasted for long afterwards...
IceAgeComing
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For those interested this is the video of the challenge; it was rather quite shocking when I was watching live:
The Tokyo Dome show looks like its going to be incredible this year: main event is Kazuchika Okada defending the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Tetsuya Naito which should be an incredible match (the end of a three year story; at WK8 they planned this exact match to be the main event but they moved it to semi-main below the IC Title match between Hiromu Tanahashi and Shinsuke Nakamura because the audience did not accept Naito at that level because they preferred Tanahashi; after the formation of LIJ especially he's been accepted at the top level); you've got Omega/Jericho (which might be for the US Title; they haven't said whether its a title match yet) and those are currently the only two announced matches. However the booking suggests a fair few others and NJPW generally book in a very sensible way and Power Struggle was the last big event before the Tokyo Dome so you'd expect nothing big to change: the Intercontinental Championship match should be Tanahashi/Jay White which should also be good: White's only just come back from his foreign excursion and that's generally when you get your first major push in New Japan and going right into an IC Title match is pretty impressive: especially since the switchblade videos teasing him have been playing since... the G1 finals in August? The IWGP Junior Heavyweight match should be a four way between Marty Scurll(c)/Will Ospreay/KUSHIDA/Hiromu Takahashi; IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag titles should be Young Bucks/Sho & Yoh; the Tag Team Tournament they always do in November/December should come up with Heavyweight Tag challengers for K.E.S., Cody (we aren't allowed to call him Rhodes) vs Kota Ibushi for the ROH World Title; plus whatever they're doing for the NEVER belts: probably something fun with Suzuki and another gauntlet team for the trios titles, and the New Japan Rumble for everyone else. Might be some other matches on that card because they tend to go long (not quite Wrestlemania long; plus they have a fifteen minute intermission in the middle and a lot less video stuff between lower card matches which really helps) but nothing that really comes to mind at this point...
In terms of how to watch it if anyone is interested: every major New Japan show is streamed worldwide for 800¥ a month on NJPWWorld.com (works out to something around £7/month for me; depends on the exchange rate); along with access to the archive of stuff back to 1972 (although sadly not that complete in some years) which is a great bargain for the big shows;
And yes, New Japan has way, way too many belts - although saying that all of the IWGP singles belts have main evented big shows this year so clearly they mean something. One major difference between NJPW booking and WWE booking is that all of the belts aren't always defended on every big show and they try to build up every IWGP Heavyweight Title defence to be a big thing to both make the belt itself a draw and also to make sure that people won't be annoyed if one of the lesser belts main events their show - which also means that guys like Zack Sabre who aren't yet at the level of challenging for the top belt get to have experience working big main events for a lower title. What they usually do is what they did on Power Struggle: Okada was in an eight-man tag in the mid card with Naito on the other team, which both means that the fans get to see them wrestle, but they can work easier and increasingly build the match between the two. It helps add to the more sports-based feel of the thing - just limiting the number of title matches that you have and making sure that there's a reason for each title match (they have a big tournament called the G1 Climax in August that's a round-robin thing which they'll have a few people beat the Champion in to set up future title matches; the winner of the G1 is in the Wrestle Kingdom match and they'll also try and set things up so that you can explain why a certain person got a title shot rather than in the WWE where, well, its often very odd - like take AJ and the title match on Tuesday: why is he being given a title shot after his last big (non-Singh brothers) matches have been him losing to Baron Corbin and Finn Balor?) means that you get that big fight feel a lot more than you do in the WWE where really the only matches to have had that this year for me has been Brock/Golberg and AJ/Finn (and the latter was funnily enough based on their New Japan stuff). This video is very good at explaining NJPW's basic booking philosophy and why they rely on factions a lot more than most.
Oh and its also Bound for Glory tonight; for the ten people in the world who still care about GFW/Impact/TNA/whatever they are called this week.
The Tokyo Dome show looks like its going to be incredible this year: main event is Kazuchika Okada defending the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Tetsuya Naito which should be an incredible match (the end of a three year story; at WK8 they planned this exact match to be the main event but they moved it to semi-main below the IC Title match between Hiromu Tanahashi and Shinsuke Nakamura because the audience did not accept Naito at that level because they preferred Tanahashi; after the formation of LIJ especially he's been accepted at the top level); you've got Omega/Jericho (which might be for the US Title; they haven't said whether its a title match yet) and those are currently the only two announced matches. However the booking suggests a fair few others and NJPW generally book in a very sensible way and Power Struggle was the last big event before the Tokyo Dome so you'd expect nothing big to change: the Intercontinental Championship match should be Tanahashi/Jay White which should also be good: White's only just come back from his foreign excursion and that's generally when you get your first major push in New Japan and going right into an IC Title match is pretty impressive: especially since the switchblade videos teasing him have been playing since... the G1 finals in August? The IWGP Junior Heavyweight match should be a four way between Marty Scurll(c)/Will Ospreay/KUSHIDA/Hiromu Takahashi; IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag titles should be Young Bucks/Sho & Yoh; the Tag Team Tournament they always do in November/December should come up with Heavyweight Tag challengers for K.E.S., Cody (we aren't allowed to call him Rhodes) vs Kota Ibushi for the ROH World Title; plus whatever they're doing for the NEVER belts: probably something fun with Suzuki and another gauntlet team for the trios titles, and the New Japan Rumble for everyone else. Might be some other matches on that card because they tend to go long (not quite Wrestlemania long; plus they have a fifteen minute intermission in the middle and a lot less video stuff between lower card matches which really helps) but nothing that really comes to mind at this point...
In terms of how to watch it if anyone is interested: every major New Japan show is streamed worldwide for 800¥ a month on NJPWWorld.com (works out to something around £7/month for me; depends on the exchange rate); along with access to the archive of stuff back to 1972 (although sadly not that complete in some years) which is a great bargain for the big shows;
And yes, New Japan has way, way too many belts - although saying that all of the IWGP singles belts have main evented big shows this year so clearly they mean something. One major difference between NJPW booking and WWE booking is that all of the belts aren't always defended on every big show and they try to build up every IWGP Heavyweight Title defence to be a big thing to both make the belt itself a draw and also to make sure that people won't be annoyed if one of the lesser belts main events their show - which also means that guys like Zack Sabre who aren't yet at the level of challenging for the top belt get to have experience working big main events for a lower title. What they usually do is what they did on Power Struggle: Okada was in an eight-man tag in the mid card with Naito on the other team, which both means that the fans get to see them wrestle, but they can work easier and increasingly build the match between the two. It helps add to the more sports-based feel of the thing - just limiting the number of title matches that you have and making sure that there's a reason for each title match (they have a big tournament called the G1 Climax in August that's a round-robin thing which they'll have a few people beat the Champion in to set up future title matches; the winner of the G1 is in the Wrestle Kingdom match and they'll also try and set things up so that you can explain why a certain person got a title shot rather than in the WWE where, well, its often very odd - like take AJ and the title match on Tuesday: why is he being given a title shot after his last big (non-Singh brothers) matches have been him losing to Baron Corbin and Finn Balor?) means that you get that big fight feel a lot more than you do in the WWE where really the only matches to have had that this year for me has been Brock/Golberg and AJ/Finn (and the latter was funnily enough based on their New Japan stuff). This video is very good at explaining NJPW's basic booking philosophy and why they rely on factions a lot more than most.
Oh and its also Bound for Glory tonight; for the ten people in the world who still care about GFW/Impact/TNA/whatever they are called this week.
Na Maloom Afraad
Man of Tomorrow
Time is a bitch.
zwarrior
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Cena retired ?
Na Maloom Afraad
Man of Tomorrow
Almost. He's a part-timer now, only wrestles 4-5 times a year. And will only for the next few.
Na Maloom Afraad
Man of Tomorrow
AJ vs Brock.
We're getting AJ STYLES VS BROCK LESNAR!!!
We're getting AJ STYLES VS BROCK LESNAR!!!
CerealKiller
Staff Member
Finally they got rid of Jinder. Worst WWE Champion of all time, without a doubt. Watching him against Brock would have been ridiculous.
Na Maloom Afraad
Man of Tomorrow
AJ Styles vs Brock Lesnar at Survivor Series.
AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura at WrestleMania.
Don't screw it up, Vince.
CerealKiller
Staff Member
Or injuries
Na Maloom Afraad
Man of Tomorrow
Fudge me, this PPV has become must see in two days.
This 5-on-5 match looks freakin' amazing, now!
And we're getting AJ Styles vs Brock Lesnar.
And we're rumoured to be getting New Day vs The Shield as neither team is on the card officially, yet.
Umair7
El Presidente
HOLYSHIT!!!!!!!! MATCH OF THE YEAR! COMING UP :')
