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Puroresu Love & Resources V3

Baby Shoes

Baby Shoes
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I get it's a heel trying to make me mad but I think using alt right insults (albeit dated ones as has been pointed) is pushing the wrong kind of buttons. Ala Bully Ray & Jay Briscoe's homophobic insults 10ish years ago.
I get that to me it’s on brand since he’s just being unlikable and out of touch and isn’t on the slur level of some of those examples.
 

King Kamala

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yeah. That was a bit overdramatic but probably a better comparison would be when Corey Graves used the term cuck during that godawful Rusev-Lashley feud. Like I go to wrestling to avoid those types of terms. But maybe I've just been easily triggered these last few years!
 

King Kamala

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ELP had done a great job on commentary. My guess is they pulled him since Chris will be back after the next tour, which only has Japanese commentary (at least when I checked this morning). Much like Gino, he put over the faces while still going for the heels. He's got a future in it if he wants.
Next tour is going to have English commentary but it'll be added at a later date. I hope that means we get Kevin and someone (hopefully Gino) doing color commentary with him remotely. I think Kevin Kelly is a very good PBP guy but mannnnn, I've had more than my fill of him calling shows solo during this pandemic.
 

JHawk

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Actually going to wake up to watch night 2 live. Curious how the main event goes even though I doubt the result is in doubt
 

King Kamala

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I highly highly doubt Ibushi is going to lose his first title defense but based on how lame and uneventful this feud has been, I wouldn’t be totally shocked if he loses it at Castle Attack or the anniversary show (though that usually has a non title match main event). Everything about the way he has been presented since 1-5 has made it seem like he won’t have a long run with the belt. The Double Title match is like the best 4th most interesting match of these New Beginning shows.

With Forbidden Door opening, you think they would have something more interesting for Ibushi to do. Maybe I am overreacting or writing him off too early and something amaze balls will happen tomorrow or in next month of shows. I would love to be proven wrong. Ibushi is one of the the best in the world today and is way too good to be farting around in bleh programs!
 

JHawk

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These last two matches better deliver because this is been an average show so far.
 

cobainwasmurdered

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If they were just going to have someone challenge Ibushi for one belt to stop him from unifying the titles it should have been SANADA instead of having him lose for the seven billionth time in a IWGP challenge no one believed he could win. Even if he did lose in a IC challenge match (which ideally he would have won to finally give him a title) at least people might have thought he'd win). Instead it sounds like Naito wants the IC title (WHY?) which is just a demotion for him.

The Okada/EVIL segment is something Russo would book. YOSHIHASHI continues to be amazing though. Crazy fucking times.
 

King Kamala

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Turns meter from “New Japan is back!” To “New Japan is in trouble!”

I read results and not sure if I even want to watch today’s show. Bring on Go Vs Old Man Mutoh tomorrow.
 

King Kamala

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Final card for Pro Wrestling NOAH's first card at Budokan since 2010. A few ways you can watch the card (legally) in North America. WrestleUniverse is airing the last five matches of the card with Japanese commentary. Fite TV has entire card available for $19.99 with English commentary. 2:30 AM EST/11:30 PM PST for undercard matches but last five matches have an advertised start time of 3:45 AM EST/12:45 AM PST. Idk if anyone is up that late except @cobainwasmurdered. I'll be watching a replay tomorrow evening.

Pro Wrestling NOAH Destination 2021: Back to Budokan
Febuary 12th, 2021
Live from Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, Japan


GHC Heavyweight Championship Match
Go Shiozaki (c) Vs Keiji Mutoh

GHC National Championship Match
Kenoh (c) Vs Masakatsu Funaki

NOAH Generation Tag Team Match
Naomichi Marufuji & Jun Akiyama vs Kaito Kiyomiya & Yoshiki Inamura

GHC Junior Heavyweight Title Match
Daisuke Harada (c) vs Seiki Yoshioka

GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles Match
STINGER (Yoshinari Ogawa & HAYATA) (c) vs Kotaro Suzuki & Ikuto Hidaka

Twelve Man Tag Team Match
Sugiura Army (Takashi Sugiura, Kazushi Sakuraba, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazunari Murakami, Kendo Kashin & NOSAWA Rongai) vs Kongo (Katsuhiko Nakajima, Masa Kitamiya, Manabu Soya, Tadasuke, Haoh & Nioh)

M’s Alliance (Masato Tanaka & Masaaki Mochizuki) vs Muhammad Yone & Shuhei Taniguchi

Six Man Tag Team Match
Daiki Inaba, Atsushi Kotoge & Yasutaka Yone vs FULL THROTTLE (Hajima Ohara & YO-HEY) & Kai Fujimura

Akitoshi Saito vs Kinya Okada
 

King Kamala

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Instead it sounds like Naito wants the IC title (WHY?) which is just a demotion for him.
Chris Charlton needs a pay raise for trying (and occasionally succeeding) to make sense of illogical NJPW storytelling.

Also according to Chris, Ibushi insinuated in an interview that he saw the Intercontinental Title as the title of Nakamura and that pissed off Naito who saw himself as being the definitive IC Champ (...even though he hated the belt almost the entire time he had it?)
 

King Kamala

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Thing I don't get (and Chris Charlton talked about as well in that Twitter thread) is that NJPW has done so much in the last year to build the NEVER Openweight and to a lesser extent the NJPW US Titles as strong secondary titles and now if the IC Title returns, all that hard work seems like it'll be basically erased.
 

Big Beard Booty Daddy

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What if Ibushi wins, retains the IC title, and then they have it dissolved into one title, leaving the NEVER as the secondary title (especially since Tana holds it)? We're all just supposing that Naito is winning.
 

King Kamala

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Two straight clean wins over Naito in a short period would really do a lot to establish Ibushi as the man in New Japan but it would also kind of imply that Naito is in first stages of downswing of his career which Idk if he is. It is a legit intriguing matchup when you put it that way, BBBD.
 

Slayer

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WrestleUniverse is airing the last five matches of the card with Japanese commentary. Fite TV has entire card available for $19.99 with English commentary. 2:30 AM EST/11:30 PM PST for undercard matches but last five matches have an advertised start time of 3:45 AM EST/12:45 AM PST. Idk if anyone is up that late except @cobainwasmurdered.
I go about half-and-half on live watching puro (benefit of living out west!), dependent on the combo of how hyped I am for the card and how I'm physically feeling that evening. It hasn't been uncommon though for me to start watching live and bail halfway thru, watching the rest on VOD later that morning

WRT tonight's NOAH card I'll try to watch at least part of it live. I already have WU so I'm not paying for the FITE stream but will probably still try to find a stream for that lower card, though admittedly the only things I want to see from the pre-WU portion are the Mochi/Tanaka team and whether the MMA Boomers vs Kongo match descends into trainwreckness
 

cobainwasmurdered

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Final card for Pro Wrestling NOAH's first card at Budokan since 2010. A few ways you can watch the card (legally) in North America. WrestleUniverse is airing the last five matches of the card with Japanese commentary. Fite TV has entire card available for $19.99 with English commentary. 2:30 AM EST/11:30 PM PST for undercard matches but last five matches have an advertised start time of 3:45 AM EST/12:45 AM PST. Idk if anyone is up that late except @cobainwasmurdered. I'll be watching a replay tomorrow evening.

Pro Wrestling NOAH Destination 2021: Back to Budokan
Febuary 12th, 2021
Live from Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, Japan

GHC Heavyweight Championship Match

Go Shiozaki (c) Vs Keiji Mutoh

GHC National Championship Match
Kenoh (c) Vs Masakatsu Funaki

NOAH Generation Tag Team Match
Naomichi Marufuji & Jun Akiyama vs Kaito Kiyomiya & Yoshiki Inamura

GHC Junior Heavyweight Title Match
Daisuke Harada (c) vs Seiki Yoshioka

GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles Match
STINGER (Yoshinari Ogawa & HAYATA) (c) vs Kotaro Suzuki & Ikuto Hidaka

Twelve Man Tag Team Match
Sugiura Army (Takashi Sugiura, Kazushi Sakuraba, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazunari Murakami, Kendo Kashin & NOSAWA Rongai) vs Kongo (Katsuhiko Nakajima, Masa Kitamiya, Manabu Soya, Tadasuke, Haoh & Nioh)

M’s Alliance (Masato Tanaka & Masaaki Mochizuki) vs Muhammad Yone & Shuhei Taniguchi

Six Man Tag Team Match
Daiki Inaba, Atsushi Kotoge & Yasutaka Yone vs FULL THROTTLE (Hajima Ohara & YO-HEY) & Kai Fujimura

Akitoshi Saito vs Kinya Okada
ogawa 54, mutoh 58, funaki 51, akiyama 51, sugiura 50, sakuraba 51, fujita 50, multiple guys over 45 too. Some of these guys can go still or bring star power but the majority bring nothing. NOAH has an excellentcrop of young talent that are completely overshadowed by all these guys.

so basically I won't be rushing to watch this.
 

King Kamala

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More trivia/salt in CWM's wound....for all of the "NOAH is WWE now" jokes. WWE has never had a champion as old as Mutoh rn. Goldberg is three years younger than Mutoh. Even Vince McMahon's one day novelty reign in '99? He was four years younger then than Mutoh is now (and Vince was the same age that Goldberg was last year which is kind of hilarious tbh)!
 

King Kamala

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I thought Soyboy is out of fashion. Or at least it peaked in 2016 or 2017. I guess if they are having an old timey Mongolian gimmick, there's nothing wrong with dated alt-right insults.
Wrestling Merch I would not encourage ANYONE to buy.
Yeesh. Is every gaijin heel in NJPW besides ZSJ & Jeff Cobb right now an alt right creep?

Also Ospreay's hand gesture looks like an inverted version of the alt right A OK sign. Eee yi yi.
 

Slayer

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so last night/this morning I took a nap and tuned just in time for the end of the MMA Seniors Club vs Kongo match, missing most of the first half (insert "aw shucks" finger snap here). Really enjoyed the junior title match, generational tag and the National Title match... then it came time for the main. I steeled myself waiting for the seemingly inevtiable Mutoh win, slowly got my hopes up that maybe Go was going to pull it out... and then Mutoh wins oofn with possibly the. worst. huracanrana. I've ever seen. With the immediate response after I can't tell if that was the planned finish or a botch end, but either way it was all so bad I gave it about ten seconds before clicking the red X. Checking around Twitter this morning I was pretty surprised at seeing fewer "lol wtf NOAH" responses than I would have expected and more "Fuck yeah Mutoh!", at least for western fans (curious about the native response though)

After getting the negativity out of the way up front, some compliments about the show. I caught the tail end of the first half elsewhere via Abema stream and switched to WU for the second, and the first big thing was Abema having horribly obtrusive text/logos taking up a good chunk of the screen that WU did not. I didn't know much about the British guys working English commentary (a Welsh dude and a Scotsman, a combo which was mildly amusing to my Yankee ears) as they're MMA guys mainly, but they did have good enthusiasm/energy behind them and called the show well plus provided helpful promo translations throughout. Lastly I liked the venue setup with the concentric diamonds framing the entrance, the old school elevated ramp and the hard cam facing down the entryway like old WWE MSG shows, all of which did give the event a big show feel

As for the new logo, it's not great that they felt the need to rebrand again so quickly barely two years after the last one. In retrospect too it was amusingly ironic they were trying to distance themselves from the Misawa green at the same time they had their young champion with a heavy green motif, followed by Go rebranding himself with his own green motif before winning the GHC belt. Best argument I've seen for the new logo that makes sense is to have it jibe with the DDT logo now that they're under the same corporate umbrella, which I think does work in that regard. The main thing I'd think to improve the new logo would be get rid of the silly "teeth" at the ends of the N and H and just have those letters terminate at the corners
 

King Kamala

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New logo reminds me too much of the Alliance era/WWE retconned WCW logo tbh.

Also most of the card from reading a quick recap was 10-15 minute matches but somehow old man Mutoh had to go a half hour. I know he was going against one of BITW but um, wouldn't 15-20 have sufficed? Mutoh looked like had a bucket of water dumped on him after that match.
 

Brocklock

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New logo reminds me too much of the Alliance era/WWE retconned WCW logo tbh.

Also most of the card from reading a quick recap was 10-15 minute matches but somehow old man Mutoh had to go a half hour. I know he was going against one of BITW but um, wouldn't 15-20 have sufficed? Mutoh looked like had a bucket of water dumped on him after that match.
I remember thinking it was ridiculous for NJPW to have Mutoh go 30 minutes against Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom. THAT WAS 2009!!!
 

King Kamala

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Turning from upsetting CWM about NOAH back to upsetting him about NJPW.

Cards for Castle Attack look way better than New Beginning. I'm hoping there'll be a sweet castle set but this is NJPW not '90s WCW.

Also El Desperado & Taiji Ishimori defending the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles against Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI on the last Korakuen show before Castle Attack. And an old dog that's actually still p. good, Yuji Nagata is teaming up with Kota Ibushi on a bunch of the Road To shows. I wonder if he's replacing Honma.
 

Valeyard

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I couldn't make the Noah show but man. I don't know how I'd feel seeing it live, but right now, good for Mutoh. Now go home.
 

King Kamala

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Watching NOAH right now. @Slayer wasn’t lying about those obtrusive graphics. They take up like 3/4ths of the screen at time.

I’m really digging the English commentary team. Never knew I wanted to hear Korakuen Hall pronounced in a thick Scottish accent. Really doing a great job of introducing the product to new viewers (viewers like me).
 

King Kamala

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Tried to go in that main event with an open mind and try to look for positive. Um. Mutoh's Rick Rude-esque airbrushed tights looked cool. Why oh why they decided to go 30 minutes is beyond me. God bless Mutoh but he actually get take a lesson from his old tag team partner Goldberg and just get in, do his 2 or 3 big spots and get out. It was made worse by fact that National Title match directly proceeding it really was a damn good example of an OLD DAWG matchup.

My only explanation for why they did this is maybe they thought the Kiyomiya winning belt back would mean more to the casual fans if he beat all time GOAT Vs current GOAT. But I feel like winning it in a MOTY candidate will mean more than beating gimpy gorilla Mutoh.

I did really enjoy p. much everything on the card besides that though. Very much enjoyed aforementioned National Title match and the Generations Tag Team match. That Mutoh win wasn't enough to turn off this first time viewer. Now if he successfully defends the title...

Fake edit: amused to like at Kiyomiya's Cagematch and see that he was perhaps the latest Japanese wrestler to be misused by Impact Wrestling.
 
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