Puroresu Love & Resources V3

[King Kamala]

I’d be piiisssed if I was Tony Khan seeing the result of that move.


Scott D’Amore (seeing Jay White become IWGP Champ again): Hey! HEY! I know him! He worked here a few weeks ago!!! Maybe he’ll defend the title against Eric Young. Gedo! GEDO!

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Lol Tony knew that was going to happen and Jay has been on Dynamite tv a bunch. It isn't a big deal at all.

Fantastic match and great show.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

NJPW reveals 28-man G1 Climax 32 field - WON/F4W - WWE news, Pro Wrestling News, WWE Results, AEW News, AEW results

Twenty-eight entrants will compete in four blocks in the largest G1 field ever.

www.f4wonline.com

3 blocks of seven, bolded are first timers

• Kazuchika Okada
• Hiroshi Tanahashi
• Tetsuya Naito
• Hirooki Goto
• Tama Tonga
• Shingo Takagi
• Chase Owens
• Bad Luck Fale
• Yujiro Takahashi
• EVIL
• Tom Lawlor
• Juice Robinson
• JONAH
• YOSHI-HASHI
• Toru Yano
• Tomohiro Ishii
• Jeff Cobb
• Great-O-Khan
• Will Ospreay
• Aaron Henare
• SANADA
• Jay White
• KENTA
• El Phantasmo
• Taichi
• Zack Sabre Jr.
• Lance Archer
• David Finlay

some fun additions and a lot of good returns as well. Making this 3 blocks will hopefully give guys some more chances to catch their breath as well as some interesting scenarios.

 

[King Kamala]

Lol Tony knew that was going to happen and Jay has been on Dynamite tv a bunch. It isn't a big deal at all.

Fantastic match and great show.

I mean obviously Gedo gave him a heads up but considering how Okada/Hangman Page for the IWGP Heavyweight title was going to be a selling point of card, it's got to be mildly annoying. Maybe not. People whine about AEW featuring too many titles anyway!

 

[909]

I do not think Okada vs Hangman was the actual point given Jay's promos after the match. He immediately started five or six feuds. But if it was the point it doesn't matter because one of the sticking points of this show was Punk beating Tanahashi and look how that turned out.

 

[King Kamala]

Maybe I'm being irrational and CWM is justified in calling me an idiot but at this point, I'm more than a little concerned this'll be closer to G1 Supercard than the slam dunk we were all hoping for!

 

[Slayer]

Funny enough, in going down the YouTube rabbit hole sometime earlier this year I rediscovered the press conference promo for the White/Page IWGP US title a few years back where White savaged Page on the mic (below), thinking about this was a feud that needs to come back especially given both their respective arcs/growth and the changes in their associates in the time since

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

yes, kamala you're being very irrational. both companies are clearly on the same page and are working on a laid out long term plan.

 

[909]

Fwiw it’s in everyone’s best interests to have Bullet Club beat up Hangman and have a big moment in the US. Tons of money to be made. You could then let’s say have certain New Japan guys confront BC. A lot of what Jay says in his promos about Bullet Club is true too. Basically everything post-Shield can be tied back to then either in influence or directly.

They also pulled a good swerve in convincing people Bullet Club wouldn’t be featured in Chicago even though it would make no sense for them to not be featured. And White was also prominent in the announcement of this show and was treated great from the start. Later on TK might claim they didn’t know this would happen just to work everyone but if they didn’t know then they accidentally booked the last few months of these appearances by coincidence and I doubt it.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

this show is going to have
tana vs mox
danielson vs sabre
either page vs okada, page vs jay, cole vs okada, cole vs jay

that's just the top 4 matches. there's still a ton of other stuff they've already been setting up.

 

[Broward83]

I know people have been down (always down?) on the Bucks/Omega, but does Forbidden Door start as a way to begin the face turn of The Elite?

 

[909]

I know people have been down (always down?) on the Bucks/Omega, but does Forbidden Door start as a way to begin the face turn of The Elite?

Maybe, but they're better as heels, they're natural heels, and if they go back to Japan they'll be heels. If anything they should tease them helping whoever Bullet Club is fucking up...only to have them rejoin Bullet Club. Nothing would surprise me at this point though. This is one of the best versions of Bullet Club so I do think they need to go over strong in two weeks.

 

[King Kamala]

It'd seem counterproductive and shortsighted to turn them babyface. It's only in the past 8-9 months that AEW's gotten a lot of their fans to boo them.

If people think those three are annoying, imagine how much worse they'd be if they were even more explicitly trying to be liked!

 

[Slayer]

Watched the top matches from Cyberfight (so no word on how RVD looked, will circle back on the low card later)

That said, speaking of the GHC title...after the main Go's first challenger showed up and it is... Satoshi Kojima, set for the CyberFight Festival on 6/12. Naturally love me some Kojima and will be watching, buuuut at the same time it doesn't detract from the cracks about NOAH becoming NOSAWA's Senior League the last couple years, even if Kojima is on the list of 50+ y/o guys who can still go

Well NOSAWA may not be the booker anymore but the Senior League is still running strong as Kojima ends Go's reign after a month, and my feeling is pretty much along what I said above: glad to have Kojima in the elite club of IWGP/GHC/TC champions (what would you call that anyways? Can't call it the Triple Crown when that's already a component!), but not at the expense of Go, esp after going thru this with his prior reign. Complicating matters for me is his first challenger being Kenoh for 7/16 at Budokan. I've been wanting to see Kenoh get his second GHC reign for awhile now but at the same time want Kojima to get more than a month himself, and then on top of that I just plain don't trust current NOAH mgmt either way to not do some shit like having Mutoh in his final match beat whoever is the champ

The other big fallout, which we did discuss earlier in chat after it happened, was maybe the second biggest slap of the year with Katsuhiko Nakajima accidentally knocking out and concussing DDT champ Testuya Endo. Here's the Reddit thread with video of lead up and aftermath with what I assume is Jun dressing down Nakajima with the latter clearly trying to suppress his "in that moment he knew..." face. I imagine this will eventually be made into an angle for a match down the road but for now I'm more curious what the professional fallout may be for Nakajima

Fun show overall though and holy shit did they go balls out for their entrance productions on this show. At six hours long however for casual fans I'd just say check out the last three matches (no-DQ, TJPW title and GHC title) then cherry pick whatever looks interesting from the rest of the card

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

Not sure what they can really do to punish Nakajima. They fire him or try to punish him in any real way and he can walk over to NJPW and be a mega-star. Based on how these incidents have been handled in the past they usually just push the guy harder because now he has SHOOT cred. If Naka had clearly gone into business for himself it might be different but it was obviously just one of those things.

 

[King Kamala]

Watched the top matches from Cyberfight (so no word on how RVD looked, will circle back on the low card later)

Apparently, RVD looked way better than he did during his Impact run in 2019-20 (although that's a fairly low bar to clear). That should put him in line for a GHC Heavyweight title shot. Although at 51, he might be a bit too young.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1535885054248894464

 

[King Kamala]

 

[King Kamala]

G1 Climax 32 Blocks are announced
A Block
Kazuchika Okada
* Toru Yano
* Tom Lawlor
* Jeff Cobb
* JONAH
* Bad Luck Fale
* Lance Archer

B Block
* Jay White
* Tomohiro Ishii
* SANADA
* Tama Tonga
* Great-O-Khan
* Chase Owens
* Taichi

C BLOCK
* Hiroshi Tanahashi
* Hirooki Goto
* Tetsuya Naito
* Zack Sabre Jr.
* Aaron Henare
* KENTA
* EVIL

D BLOCK
* Will Ospreay
* YOSHI-HASHI
* Shingo Takagi
* David Finlay
* Juice Robinson
* El Phantasmo
* Yujiro Takahashi


Matches I'm looking forward to most are the Jeff Cobb-JONAH Twin Spiderman match and the Ospreay-El P edgelord junior showdown.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

a lot of really fun matches in there and I like how they've spread things out.
Any combo of Jonah/archer/Cobb sounds great and it;ll be interesting seeing Okada work with all of the guys in that block as aside from Cobb/Fale he hasn't really done a lot/any singles with them.
B Block has the perennial MOTYC Jay/Ishii matchup but really everyone other than Chase has shown they can deliver big, this is probably the block most capable of delivering big matches almost every time out.
C block has a lot of classic matches/rivals Tana/Kenta re-match imediatly stands out but you also have Naito/EVIL, Tana/Naito, Goto/Naito, etc.
D block is a big mix. You get Ospreay/Shingo which will be huge, Finlay/Juice in former partners collide, Phantasmo will have a lot to prove as he moves up to heavy (Finlay does too but Phantasmo is marked out to be a star), YOSHIHASHI and Yujiro will be who they always are aka solid and shit.

 

[King Kamala]

KUSHIDA returned today and immediately challenged Taiji Ishiimori for the Junior Heavyweight Title then said he was never leaving NJPW again.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

really happy to have KUSHIDA back, and it looks like the crowd was packed in there too.

 

[King Kamala]

He said in the post show press conference that he’s relocating to Los Angeles so I imagine he’ll be one of the faces of the STRONG brand as well. Hopefully he can do some stuff with AEW and Impact as well.

 

[King Kamala]

G1 Climax 32 Blocks & Full Schedule

NJPW's G1 Climax 32 will take place over 18 cards between July 16 and August 16 wrapping up August 17 & 18 in Budokan Hall.

www.voicesofwrestling.com

Kicking off the tournament with a loaded card to no surprise.

 

[King Kamala]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543567464604246018

CWM weeping.

 

[Broward83]

So when can Kushida come for All Out?

 

[Slayer]

wasn't discussed earlier but due to the concussion from the Second Biggest Slap of 2022, Tetsuya Endo unsurprisingly had to forfeit the KOD title after Cyberfight, which DDT in turn changed the KOD single-elim tournament from "winner gets title shot at Peter Pan" to "winner is the new champion". At the Korakuen show this morning, in the semis Naomi Yoshimura scored a huge upset over Yuki Ueno while my man Kazusada Higuchi finally got his big win over Akiyama in the other, and then HIGUCHI FINALLY WINS THE KOD TITLE. Afterwards, in a beautiful callback to their Judgement 2021 main when Akiyama successfully defended against Higuchi and then made him strap the belt around Jun's waist after, Akiyama enters and respectfully puts the strap on Higuchi's waist. Finally after a heartfelt promo, Higuchi offers an open invitation for Endo to challenge at Peter Pan on 8/20. Just an excellent end all around

(choice tweets spoiler tagged for space)

Spoiler

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543574095614431232

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543461802142572544

Speaking of Endo, he came to the ring earlier in the show to announce he had recovered well from his injury and expects to return by month's end

Other notable happenings included Andrew Everett making his DDT debut and already showing himself to be a great fit for their style, and Takeshita making an announcement (clearly filmed in front what appeared to be a display from the Red Wings museum at Little Caesars Arena) that he would be returning for Peter Pan

 

[King Kamala]

So Satoshi Kojima showed up as a last minute replacement to wrestle Taka Michinoku in an undercard match on today’s Road To... show. And he wore the GHC Heavyweight title and a NOAH shirt!

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1543894804874293248

 

[Epic Springs]

I was thinking about this recently: Excalibur calling Okada "a once in a lifetime talent" at Forbidden Door got me wondering, where would you place Okada in the GOAT list (if at all)? He's amassed an amazing body of work over the past decade but still might be "too new" to really think of his overall legacy. Would you like him in the top 20/25 ever?

 

[King Kamala]

I really hate rate current guys on GOAT lists because we don't know whether Okada has 15-20 years left or will end tomorrow. And we don't know what if any influence he will have on wrestling in 25-30 years.

That being said, if someone rated Okada Top 10 GOAT, I definitely wouldn't cry foul.

 

[Valeyard]

I think Okada is probably the best in world right now and has been for the last several years.