Teflon Turtle

I got you - I was just coming to post about it: MJF is mostly in character, but still entertaining. And y'know...say what you will about Cole's wrestling, but between this and his video gaming stuff, he never fails to come across as anything less than friendly and personable.

Favorite AEW promo...probably the first time MJF told the story about the antisemitism he faced growing up. From the 2/23/2022 Dynamite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAf6epYTUAM&t=7s. An awful lot of that promo - minus the football - hit very close to home for me. It was raw, emotional, and it riveted me to the spot. At least for me personally, it had some interesting ramifications. And maybe it's time to get this out of the way: MJF has leaned so hard in to the heel shtick on TV, at public appearances, etc., that when he pulls back the curtain on himself (or if he wants to make it look like that's what he's doing), it still means something. He gets that where a lot of wrestlers don't. So when he delivered that promo, I bought in. I had to ask myself: should I, or any other Jewish wrestling fan for that matter, really continue to boo this man? I realize that out of character MJF will speak up against antisemitism and racism, but we're supposed to suspend disbelief as fans...cheer the faces, boo the heels. This promo blurred the lines for me in a way I didn't really have to reconcile with before. MJF succeeded in making me feel something using wrestling as the medium, which is the whole point of the enterprise. Now of course, MJF went back to despicable heel tactics shortly after he cut that promo. But: it showed what MJF's path towards a face turn would be, and served as a reminder of the fact that there's a real person under the character, which a lot of wrestling fans have forgotten in the social media era. Even without what it meant to me personally, I feel it to be a very effective promo. It gave that feud deep personal stakes that most feuds don't get to any longer. MJF clearly and emotionally explained why that match should matter.

Edit: double post. Sorry!

I'll stick with the spoiler tags too:

Nope, no excursion for Fujita yet. They did something a little different with him where TMDK essentially adopted him in to the stable without him having officially graduated from Young Lion status yet.

Pretty good card overall. I'm glad I didn't skip the undercard tags. The crowd really seemed to be enjoying the TMDK vs. Ishii/Kingston/Taguchi/Tana match. Something in that one for everybody.

I'm still playing a bit of catch up here. So at this point I think it's getting safe to say that ELP/Ospreay is one of the better matchups in modern pro wrestling. Those two seemingly can't have a bad match, or even a good match. Everything they've done against each other in the last few years has been great, and the match from this year's G1 was no exception. It built off of their encounter from last year (which I and several others on the board recognized at the time as having an incredible finish), and brought a tremendous amount of energy out of the crowd and the announce team. So far I've only watched the English version, but I don't think I've heard KK and Chris get that in to a match in quite a while.

I'm catching up on the G1 after spending a few days away. I think if NOAH and NJPW don't smell money in future Kiyomiya/Narita and Kiyomiya/Umino matches, there's a problem. Both matchups were really enjoyable this G1 (Kiyomiya's match with Tsuji was fun too, so we can throw that in I guess), but gave the distinct impression that all of the wrestlers have more that they can show against one another in an even higher-stakes environment.

So between Kaito Kiyomia’s matches in the G1, and some of these DDT match announcements, I’m contemplating a Wrestle Universe subscription. Anybody else on the board have that service/do you find it’s worth it?

Great Naito/ZSJ match from today's show. The excellence of their rivalry continues. Without spoiling anything, off the top of my head it's probably Naito's best match so far this year. I bit on a bunch of near falls and the finish wound up being brilliant.

Sitewide moratorium on discussion of the deliciousness of takoyaki. Can't have any octopi getting concerned for their safety. Anyway...since I should say something relevant to AEW: I haven't been watching much of the promotion this year. However - last night I caught the hour-long Cole/MJF "bromance recap" video that AEW put up on their Youtube page. Amazing stuff. If anyone reading this is in my position of not having kept up with AEW, track that video down and give it a shot.

Tony Bennett is - as far as I know, anyway - my dad's favorite singer. I sent him a text yesterday morning to ask if he'd heard the news. He replied that he had, and also wrote back "there is sadness in the kingdom." One of my favorite radio stations led off their morning show with this yesterday.

So a few days after he gets dropped on his head, HENARE goes out and has what I feel to be the best match of the tournament so far with Shingo, and by a pretty comfortable margin at that. I have yet to hit the point of diminishing returns with Eddie Kingston going up against Japanese wrestlers. I've seen some criticism here and around the rest of the internet about it, but I'm not in that camp. Eddie's in his element, doing something he's wanted to do his entire career and probably thought at many points he'd never get a chance to. He fits right in. The fans are getting behind him even if they're unfamiliar with him. Dude went out there against EVIL, sold like crazy. Kevin Kelly on commentary invokes Terry Funk as an inspiration to Eddie Kingston, then a few minutes later Eddie's selling like the Funker. Hard to beat it.

So between the increased number of participants, the shorter match lengths, and the addition of the knockout stage like this year's BOSJ had, the G1 has been generating a lot of talk. Wrestlers discussing who should be in, and who should be out. Outside of kayfabe, I think it's really being done to hurry up and get the next generation some big match singles experience and exposure. It kind of seems like NJPW needs or wants to have guys like Narita, Tsuji, and Umino get to the point where they can start drawing and carry cards very much sooner rather than later. I think they got themselves on the path tonight. I'll co-sign all of the above as matches of the night. There were a few spots in Umino/Narita that looked like they didn't quite go as planned, but I think Umino especially was able to adapt on the fly remarkably quickly and salvage things. There are still some rough edges and questions I have about how both of them are presented (at least from my perspective, I feel like a lot of the issues that wrestlers like Tsuji have brought up with respect to their characters are valid), but as far as kicking off an Umino/Narita rivalry goes, they did a good job. Y'know what, I liked Gabe Kidd vs. Chase Owens, too. Not a classic, but it got off to a hot start, which I think was necessary (might just be my crappy old laptop speakers, but the crowd sounded really tepid to kick off the show). Nice brawl, a story was told, and it got me interested in what Gabe Kidd will get up to for the rest of the tournament. Plus, it set the stage for some prior-era BC vs. new-era BC stuff, which I know many are tired of...but, it seems like NJPW needs to do something with the old guard + House of Torture. Guess we'll see.

Yeah...even if that Sanada shirt is a play on the Cena "The Champ is Here" shirts with the belt design, that's bad. I feel like I've become one of the board's bigger NJPW apologists, but it seems to me a lot of their merch design has taken a nosedive in the last few years. It's weird...it's almost like they play a joke on people where the higher up the card you go, the worse your merch design gets. Yano and (at least in my opinion) Taguchi always get fun shirt designs, with the occasional miss. On the other hand, Okada has practically never had any good merch put out. I don't fully understand it, but the "37" is apparently a numerical play on Sanada's name. "San" = 3, and one way to say 7 = "nana." Some wrestlers get closer than others, I think? This is the same reason why Tomohiro Ishii has "141" on a lot of his merchandise over the years, for example. Take ichi (1) + shi (4) +another ichi and smash it together..."Ishii," 141.

To add to my previous comment about Shingo being one of the guys not getting the Forbidden Door spotlight: he's clearly in character here, but in reality he'd have every right to feel this way. He put on great matches all through the pandemic, was at the top of his company as their world champion. That can't have been easy given the restrictions he was operating under. His reward for that was to be shuffled down the card, seemingly to try and bring some interest and value to the KOPW belt. But now, nobody's predicting him as a G1 winner, and he's not on the Forbidden Door PPV even though he's one of the best pro wrestlers on both the NJPW and AEW roster. It's been said multiple times by multiple people, but he and El Desperado were probably the two wrestlers most responsible for carrying NJPW during the pandemic. And they were both on the preshow. (Though I think Despe tried to make the most of it. I watched Zero Hour yesterday and his mannerisms walking out with Rocky/Best Friends were hilarious, so was his place in their usual hug spot.)

Yeah...I had this whole big post typed out last night about Forbidden Door viewers not understanding the guys coming over from NJPW or getting the 2016-2019 hype, then the board ate it. Anyway - age and injuries do play a huge part. But, with the exception of a few guys, New Japan's house style has de-escalated quite a bit in the last few years. Things were getting to the point where you were seeing apron spots in seemingly every other match on a big card, numerous big in-ring bumps right after, and so on. A few reasons have been cited for that (The Elite leaving, NJPW's then-president also leaving or being ousted). Regardless - though it was fun to watch at the time, it was never sustainable. It's not that the wrestlers suck - they aren't wrestling much in that style any longer. Also...for Forbidden Door, AEW or NJPW have chosen to not spotlight many of the guys who still wrestle a fast pace or who still have a more high-impact style (EDIT: except Ospreay, obviously. Also, I have no idea how Kenny is still pulling out these huge matches at all, after what he got up to in NJPW). Shingo hasn't had a high-profile singles match in AEW. Neither has Hiromu. Pretty much the entirety of the jr. heavyweight division is left off of matches where they can show what they are really capable of.

I'm a bit pressed for time and will probably have more to say later, but there's one thing about Omega/Ospreay that I wanted to get out there now. I don't know if the commentary team was not supposed to mention Kota Ibushi at all, but the entire commentary desk missed the call on the Kamigoye. Excalibur referred to it as a V-Trigger. To me it fouled up a story moment in the match that should've been called out: Kenny once again growing enraged at someone invoking Ibushi, just like how he kicked out at 1 after the Young Bucks hit him with a Golden Trigger in the tag match with Hangman. And really, this led directly in to him kicking out of the OWA at 1 that many of you mentioned as a big moment.

Agreed. I think he's in a really rough spot. He's still very popular in Japan, and probably is still putting pressure on himself to help draw crowds, but the years have taken their toll. It's extra sad to me because he demonstrably did very well in leaning out during the pandemic and had a fantastic match with Shingo, really not all that long ago. But...whether his knees won't allow him to do cardio now or whatever the case, the weight seemingly came back and he's now visibly slower. And honestly, I would think he's not really being set up for success having to sit on a long flight with the state his body appears in. Most normal folks are stiff after having to sit on planes for hours at a time and spending the remainder of a long travel day navigating through airports. For people in pro-wrestling...their knees, hips, and back are probably killing them after these trips, and they still have to wrestle. And in someone like Tanahashi's case, he has to live up to an impossibly high standard.

I don't know when it started, but you can get an idea of what the current procedure is (at least in NJPW) during the Hiromu Takahashi/Taiji Ishimori match from this year's BOSJ when Ishimori got hurt. Ishimori goes down, and Red Shoes kneels down to talk to him. All Red Shoes does is signal for the bell to be rung. But: after he does that you can clearly see the timekeeper put up the "X" signal on camera as the two of them make eye contact. The bell gets rung once Red Shoes nods "yes" at the "X" the timekeeper gave. The only other recent major injury stoppage I could think of was the Kota Ibushi vs. Okada G1 final from a couple of years ago. But on that one, most everything happens off-camera. All we see there is the referee again calling for the bell, with no "X" put up in the ring. Maybe there's another angle out there I'm not aware of?

The Moxley/Desperado match that I mentioned a few posts up just went up for free on NJPW's Youtube channel:

It got talked about on the board a little at the time, but ZSJ's 2022 New Japan Cup run is pretty legendary. If you go by WON ratings, 4 matches at 4.5-stars or higher over the course about three weeks, with two five-star matches happening within a week of each other. - ZSJ vs. Ospreay, 3/21/22 - ZSJ vs. Shingo Takagi, 3/26/22 - ZSJ vs. Tetsuya Naito (their rivalry is really fun, watch any singles match they have), 3/27/22 - ZSJ vs. Okada, 4/9/22 (technically not part of the tournament, but the match happened as a consequence of it) After or instead, just watch all of his NJPW TV title defenses.

Yeah, some of the block assignments have me scratching my head, but I think it's a pretty safe bet some of the outside wrestlers are getting through the block stage. It has been pointed out that the only way Kiyomiya can meet up with Okada in this tournament is in the semifinals. I feel like that one is pretty much a lock, and it'll be weird if it turns out not to be. Also...it has been twenty years since NOAH representative Jun Akiyama made the finals of the G1. I'd be surprised if that doesn't get brought up, and I could see the story leading to Kiyomiya getting there too. I even find it pretty interesting that NJPW didn't wall off SANADA, in the sense that someone from NOAH is guaranteed a match with the current NJPW champ. EDIT: The 20 minute time limit has me excited, honestly. Looks like NJPW has learned their lesson about match times and saw how well overall this year's BOSJ wound up going.

There is some history there already. Moxley and El Desperado wrestled on one of the NJPW shows in the U.S. 07/30/2022 - No DQ. I watched it a while ago and remember liking it. The match is still up on NJPWWorld. Sort of deathmatch-lite, I guess? The fact that a match like that happened under an NJPW banner is a pretty rare thing, anyway.

This was a very good show. For me, the time flew by. The only match that kinda dragged for me was ELP vs. Finlay. Overall, though, it was still effective. I thought ELP looked kind of awkward trying to work as a full-fledged face, but on the whole I think I was supposed to think that as ELP slipped in to some of his old shenanigans at some points. He's now a man without a country and doesn't know what else to fall back on. The rest I will spoiler: