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This was my first ever Japanese show. I’ve only seen a handful of NJPW matches over the years. Despite it being long as hell I was always entertained. A lot of commentary-bashing but (Dave meltzer 5/6 stars discussion aside) I preferred it to Michael Cole by an absolute mile. Also getting bashed is the Jnr 4-way, but my girlfriend was in the room for that and she really enjoyed it. So maybe it’s not something for the purists but it certainly has its place. I quite liked it, wouldn’t want to see a whole card like it but one match was fun. My favourite match was the hair match. Considering I’d never seen either of these dudes before, I really bought into the story (partly thanks to Kelly and Callis). I’m really sold on NJPW and even watched New Year Dash today. I’ve not seen Raw for a long time, WWE PPVs have bored the hell out of me for a while now (even though I still have a network sub and will watch the rumble), so NJPW has an opportunity to hook me in long term for my wrestling fix.

I believe this is what you're looking for:

I judge matches on a scale of "that sucked" to "that was really awesome"

El Scorcho.

Man, I only know 2 Ben Vereen roles off the top of my head and I am way too white to be cracking Roots jokes.

I feel like everybody is sleeping on some pretty awesome ironic psychology in the finish to Naito/Okada. If you've watched enough big Naito matches this year, you've probably noticed that the finishes in his victories can be a little formulaic: He hits some kind of counter variation of Destino out of nowhere and goes for a pin but his opponent kicks out. Naito calmly collects himself, picks his opponent up and very deliberately executes the "wind-up" Destino and that does it. That's how he beat Ibushi on opening night of the G1, Kenny in the finals, and Ishii in the briefcase match, to name 3 specific examples. Last night, it was different. The finish saw him counter the Rainmaker with a whirling Destino....but he doesn't go for the pinfall. He doesn't take his time. He immediately picks Okada up, frantically exhorts the crowd, and quickly goes for another Destino...that gets countered into a Tombstone and you know the rest. He rushed it. Mr. Tranquilo himself rushed it, and it cost him the match.

This reminds me

Titus Worldwide is a treasure.

I think that’s probably the most accurate burn I’ve ever consciously decided to take as a compliment. After all, stories are stories, and I wasted too much money on grad school learning to dramatically overthink those that were nothing but pop entertainment and dick jokes in their day. Old habits.

Everybody should have known Ben Vereen was bad news when he ran out on his son AGAIN and left Uncle Phil to pick up the pieces.

Wow. Again, let it be said: Regardless of what you think of him in the ring, the guy clearly has an eye for aesthetics and knows how to market the hell out of himself (and puts the work in to do it, clearly) and I can definitely respect that.

One of these days people are going wake the fuck up and realize that the Bucks are exactly as good as they want to be on any given night.

It appears that way. He attacked Naito today after the main event.

"She's so speechless, she's calling the Lord!"

Fuck, I love New Japan for the subtlety. Gedo and company do such a brilliant job of leaving some loose ends out there that we've grown accustom to having to ignore from other companies, but they actually leave them there for a reason. The constant talk of which WK match was the "real main event" between Naito and Jericho was purposeful and not just Jericho's egomaniac character work. A lot of people noticed it but I don't think (m)any of us believed it would come to fruition. I wonder if it happens at any of the big shows between now and LA or if they hold off until late March to do it stateside. I was so fucking ready for the big Kenny turn/Golden Lovers reuniting but they keep teasing us, closer and closer it comes. JERKS!

Speaking of kayfabe.

Callis doesn't bother me, which is high praise. On the other hand, #FreeSteveCorino.

"Hello...this is 911 speaking. What is your emergency?" "Hi, I would like to report a robbery."

I more love the Nia wanted Braun and gets fucking Apollo Crews

I finally saw it not going back through the thread to be told all the reasons I shouldn't like it

The limitations of the English language prevent me from registering the proper reaction to this news.

Okada's pants were fucking awesome. That is some Jin Kazama from Tekken type shit. Made me wish that Gedo had cosplayed as Heihachi. I mean, just look at those two! Gedo better be careful. Okada may throw him into a volcano at some point.

He's not gonna Billy Gunn his G1 Special in USA!

my god Fale must have enjoyed Christmas

"Forearm to the ass, you don't see that every day, Kevin" - Callis "I see that a lot" - Brandi

It's entirely possible.

PWG Young Bucks destroy ROH Young Bucks as well.

New Japan Young Bucks destroy Ring of a Honor Young Bucks

Another Rusev Day miracle!

"It may have felt like a 5.0 to others, but it was more like a 6.0 to me."

In contrast, the Goto/Suzuki match was very immersive throughout. It helped that I had English commentary on to explain the context but it would still have been visually impressive (due to Suzuki mostly) nevertheless.

She must have really hated Arnie Becker?

Why did your wife do that to Corbin.?

That Naitch figure is so much better than the skinny one Hasbro put out in 92

BTW, speaking of wrestling attire, was Jericho practically wearing pillows on his knees during his last WWE run? Dude looked like he was going to install wall to wall carpeting with those knee pads.

I want that Naito shirt.

yeah that made no sense - Cody beats a guy who beat him - Kenny runs out and stops him bcs feelings - "we need to stop fighting" - "let's get this guy in from New Zealand who claims he has a girlfriend, she's at another school, you haven't seen her, and she has D cups" - ??????? - profit

Air bill unpaid.

To get into this briefly with a number of points i. I think Tanahashi has a legitimate case as being the best wrestler of this decade so far imo imo do not @ me ii. I really really do not think that Tanahashi deliberately would try and piss on someone's bonfire like this and I can, if you like, point you to several key texts where he shows a deep understanding of the business and moreover the importance in its continuity in making stars, etc. (also if he really ever wanted to get political he would have completely ruined Shibata, he would not have ever come back, but he did not, and he put him over in the middle of the goddamn ring). Tanahashi has taken defeats from all kinds of people who were tiers beneath him such as ZSJr, Ishii back in 2013 when he was emerging from his 'decent hand' phase, I could go on iii. you are right though the match did sort of suck or under-deliver wildly iv. the match went 20 minutes which is pretty standard for a Dome Show IC title match or indeed an IC title match anywhere (short, even!) - against Nakamura in the MAIN EVENT slot at WK8 for the IC - 23 minutes. v. it is extremely weird, imo, to say that this match justified what you feel about him, this one match, this one match where he was so injured that he took December off, when his CV is resplendent with great Dome performances and indeed in the second half of 2017 he had idk at least 5 completely very good-great matches, this feels like confirmation bias and I shall have NONE OF IT. vi. the blame for the match is probably both guys and creative - Tanahashi for his dumb pride in wanting to go out there when hurt (and still doing HFF to the outside etc.) and White for exhibiting the kind of colourlessness we find when we do not know a wrestling character (how can we possibly cheer? Or boo? Or respond to your stuff). Truth be told I feel sorry for Jay here and blame him the least vii, if there is indeed to be blame for the outcome, it is too soon to say really, lies with the booker/creative. I have no idea why they even made this match at all and in previous dispatches have voiced suspicion at Jay White's retooling (it is not good) and think he looked like a geek from the moment he turned up trying to be a sexy sub-Callihan heel, some characters just ring false even in this ostensibly false world, this was one. viii in spite of this it was nowhere near as bad or dumb as the junior 4 way.

I bought the rope break as Jericho being so gassed he forgot that he couldn't be DQed.

Thank you for the kind words. Your approach to parenting sounds quite a bit like ours. We have never really put words to it, but if the young man, and at some point soon, his younger brother have the ability to pick up on something and question it, then we explain to them in a way that is appropriate for their age level. Obviously, that hasn't really come up with the two year old yet. We decided a long time ago that the lies that get told to kids to "protect them" are largely just used to protect you from an uncomfortable conversation with your children.

It's the most Goto thing ever that, still in the afterglow of his victory, Suzuki swoops in, shaves his own head to an enormous pop--bigger even than Goto got for winning--and ends up looking cooler anyway.

LOL “Cody vs Ibushi: Japan/USA HANDSOME BATTLE”

I think "a demon possessing him" also falls under the "Kevin Sullivan framed him" defense.

This is going to be a little long. I apologize in advance for that. Backstory: My brother and his wife are difficult people with challenging personalities. That's a very, very charitable wording. I love my brother but there are plenty of times when I don't like him very much - like last Christmas when he tried to ruin things by screaming at my wife & I or the time a few years back where he nearly got in a fight in a restaurant parking lot with a father who was angry at my brother for dropping f-bombs all through dinner right next to the guy's 9-year old daughter. I have never liked his wife. She's very, very abrasive and thinks "hey, I'm from New York" is a valid explanation for it. In short, it's a good thing that they live in San Diego and we live in Spokane. The Main Story: My sister-in-law, since retiring from the Navy, has been working toward completing a college degree. She's taken classes at a community college with the plan that they'll transfer to San Diego State or similar. She got hosed by one of the big college fraud things a couple years ago and found out a bunch of her classes would not transfer. So she's been taking classes. She's had trouble with one particular math class and has failed it 3 or 4 times. Over the last couple years, that class has come up in conversation multiple times as relates to her difficulties with it. And every time, I have offered to tutor her. Some of you may remember I was a math teacher at one time. A really, really good math teacher. My offers have always gone nowhere. Until this fall. My brother emailed me a couple months back to tell me his was at his wits' end trying to help her (my brother is also really good at math but is definitely not a teacher). She'd gotten a very low test grade and needed help badly and would I please help? I love my brother and would do just about anything for him, so naturally I said yes. So, over the last couple months, we have had once or twice-weekly, sometimes more, Skype sessions where I tutor my sister-in-law, to the tune of 50-60 hours total. To my surprise, the sessions generally went well and we got along fine during them. I give her credit - she busted her butt fighting her way through a class that she clearly did not understand and that she was always going to struggle with. And, to be fair, it was not an easy (Algebra) class. Fast forward to last week for our final tutoring session. It's the week of her final exam and she's got a practice test to go over. We work through the problems and progress is really slow. We're into a section on graphing and she's insisting we spend waaaaaay too much time on each problem. The instructions are to "graph the given function" but she's wanting to do all kinds of extra stuff on each one for some reason. I pushed multiple times to move on but she insisted we stick with those problems. We ended up spending probably 90 minutes on 5 problems during a 2-1/2 hour session. Finally, after that length of time, I told her I needed to go to bed (it was nearly 11pm). And she starts trying to lay a guilt trip on me because we only got through something like 16 of 37 problems on the test. And that pissed me off. Wasn't my fault we wasted so much time doing stuff she knew how to do and that wasn't even necessary and now you want to guilt trip me because we didn't finish the test? Uh...no. Come to find out it was NOT a practice test. It was actually a take-home part of her final. And she flunked that part of the test. Anyway, that's not even the reason I'm writing. I found out tonight that she passed the class. How did I find out? Did I get a super-excited thank you phone call from my sister-in-law? An "oh man, I passed!" text from her? A grateful phone call or text from my brother? None of the above. I found out because my brother told our mother and *SHE* texted me. So lemme get this straight - I give up 50-60 hours of my precious time to tutor you, you *PASS* the class on your now-5th try, and you don't even tell me? Fuck you. Fuck both of you.