Teflon Turtle

@w. josh: We start our own fed + this above. Somebody on this board has to have less than six degrees of separation from Daiju Takase and Ikuhisa Minowa.

If only there was someplace on the internet that has spent literal years coming up with alternative names for Braun Strowman to use in his post-WWE career... Hope all of these folks land on their feet. If/when the world gets back to a place where NJPW starts thinking about running tours in North America again, between Black, Murphy, Samoa Joe, and (I realize that he's been gone from WWE for a while) Andrade, there are suddenly a lot of names on the market that could anchor shows over here in conjunction with the talent they've been building up on Strong and whoever they decide to send over from their main roster. Wouldn't be a shock to see some of these folks try to get deals that would allow them to split time between AEW and Japan, kinda like Moxley. Please end, pandemic.

Just to add to this a bit: the use of "Peruvian" in the name of the move isn't really a random choice because "Columbian" was taken, and doesn't have anything to do with Thunder Rosa or pro wrestling. The choke comes from Brazilian jiu jitsu, where it was originated (or at the very least popularized by) Peruvian mixed martial artist Tony DeSouza. If he didn't give it this name himself, it's named such in his honor. Applied correctly, it feels as unpleasant as the legacy of the original term implies.

So many questions. Is any Packer fan anything but incredibly frustrated over the whole Rodgers saga at this point? Dude doesn't want to play for them after years of shenanigans, but if they let him go having yielded but one Super Bowl with missed opportunities for another...well...several, at least, I'd have to think it would definitively go down as one of the biggest wastes of a GOAT candidate in football history, if not all of sports (granted I suck at sports trivia). So irritating to imagine how this era in football could've been regarded if Rodgers also had multiple Super Bowls to his credit, never mind the fact that he and Brady could've conceivably been competing against each other for these titles for most of their careers to date.

Best looking Tiger Suplex I've seen in a long time. I've been saying this for a while, but SANADA should be picking up the occasional win with that, even if it isn't his main finisher. I'd be fine with him as a sort of face version of ZSJ as the guy who has multiple ways to beat you because his fundamental techniques are so solid.

I've been trying to find out if anywhere on the internet has them listed, and am coming up empty on a full list so far. I think the most recent one might be Thiago Moises vs. Michael Johnson from last year (I'm seeing some sources that also initially classified that one as a heel hook, seemingly incorrectly as just like what happened tonight). Otherwise, everything I'm turning up supports your "last ten years" timeframe. One happened in Arlovski vs. Sylvia I, way back in 2005. EDIT: Holy cow. I don't see one on Mir's record, but good call on Gamburyan. I forgot that dude even existed, but sure enough: ankle lock vs. Nate Mohr at UFC 79. Well...we've now accounted for over 33% of straight ankle/footlock finishes in the UFC.

I'll just toot my own horn for a second: That aside, this was one of the craziest cards I've seen in years. Maybe ever. Every weird thing that could possibly happen pretty much did, short of a "fan man crashes in to the ring" incident. My roommate's brother was over for the fights - he's not an MMA fan, and has no martial arts experience. By the end, I said "Imagine being a new fan to MMA and this is the card you come in on."

Roberson served that one up on a silver platter. Leglock game is dangerous if you aren't aware of your own foot position. As many times as I saw that replay, it didn't look like a heel hook finish to me. Was hoping for another angle. Almost appeared to be a straight footlock with the views we had.

I think @John E. Dynamite's posts could warrant a thread unto themselves. Great discussion so far. As an addendum to the take: I feel it's hard to underestimate the lure of simple nostalgia when it comes to things like this, even for those who harbored no real dreams of being a professional wrestler. (Not to discount the value in tracing the evolution of one's own appreciation for the artform.) Despite all of the horrible things we've learned about this industry, many of us still get a kick out of watching pro wrestling. I suspect the reasons behind that are different for everybody, as has already been written about - for some it's the armchair booking, others still live vicariously through the action. Now that I'm older and have been in the workforce for over a decade, I'm back on the board because I wanted to occasionally write about something that isn't health insurance. Just my personal nostalgia example, though: Many people will complain about the video quality and overall poor functionality of NJPWWorld. I, however, take comfort in the fact that there are still some "primitive," low-def elements to it. It reminds me of the times where I would run in to the house to see that my package of bootleg puroresu VHS tapes had arrived, throw them in the VCR, and watch something brand-new and exciting through a grainy lens (I should note I discovered puro in my early teens, for those of you who find bounding in to the house in search of a package to be unacceptable adult behavior). That's it. It relaxes me and brings me back to a bygone, simpler time in my life without necessarily having a participatory dream/element to it. Though if I ever get to wrestle a match, I'm totally gonna spit the Muta mist and do Tanahashi's flying body press to the outside ?.

This reminds me of something I posted under a lost username years and years ago that I suppose qualifies for this thread and reinforces your take. Though I think at least a few others agreed with me at the time, so maybe it actually isn't that "hot." You can all be the judge. Ric Flair is basically Al Pacino. Same career arc. Did their best work in the first couple of decades of their careers, both considered at the pinnacle of their respective crafts. Once we get in to the 90s, both start chewing scenery, parodying themselves, and do more or less the same thing every time out regardless of what the situation actually calls for. Once we get well in to the 2000s, well...less said the better, for the most part. (I suppose the counter-argument is Flair doing that RAW TLC match with Edge and going the hardcore route with Foley in the early/mid-2000s, both of which were novel for him, and which, frankly, I enjoyed.) So: your tolerance for Flair from the 90s onwards probably depends on how much you can tolerate Al Pacino from...say...'95 or '96 onwards (If you want to go back to "Scent of a Woman" for the start of Pacino playing "Al Pacino having a 20-course scenery tasting menu" every film, I won't argue with you despite being a fan).

KUSHIDA with all the tributes. I agree that it's different seeing him in trunks, but it's an homage to Kazushi Sakuraba. Any time any wrestler wants to give Saku props, I'm there for it.

Now that you mention it, I'm really starting to wonder if other wrestlers will make hay with this "custom belt" idea in promos. Given what guys like Jay White already said (in character) about what Ibushi was doing, I could see it happening. It makes me wonder if we're even seeing the final product, or if this is another part of the story. (The fact that I'm in denial about this belt being the final version of what NJPW intends for its world title probably tells you all you need to know about what I think of it, deep down.) I had just about the exact same thought yesterday. The V4 belt is at the very least in the same tier of those two, and for me, may have topped them. For the last however many years, when I thought "wrestling's true world champion," the image of that particular version of the IWGP belt is what materialized in my mind.

Right on. We are likely closer to being in the same boat as I may have first thought. There's a seeming lack of nuance everywhere. What I didn't have room to articulate before is that I felt Ospreay's situation to be more in the grey than some of the other wrestlers implicated in Speaking Out. My intention was to wait to see him wrestle again after that to see how I felt. When I did... didn't feel quite right, and still doesn't. That said, things like this angle don't really help get me over to a particular side of the fence.

See, my problem is that I don't necessarily always have the time to separate the wheat from chaff. I was under the impression that people were pissed at Ospreay for several reasons all tied to the same issue: A) the "blackballing" which has since been debunked. Fair play, he didn't do it. B) Ospreay initially coming out in support of his friend - the alleged perpetrator - and dismissing the victim. C) this one I'm foggier on, but I swear I recall reading at some point that Will either worked with his friend or got him on a show after the allegations came to light, at least once. First item has been debunked. The only thing I'm aware of explaining away the other two, if true, are Ospreay's crummy apology - If I'm wrong on items B and C, that's on me and I'm willing to be enlightened. I don't hold Will to be on the same level as Scurll or Starr, for instance...but I still don't feel all that great watching him any longer, either. Even if he isn't on Scurll's level, with all the stuff that has followed Will and Bea around these last few years (even if some of it has been debunked), running an angle like this with the two of them is unnecessary. As others alluded to: what positive results will it yield you? Nobody will care about the title match more as a result, and nobody is rushing to subscribe to NJPWWorld now that they know New Japan is putting out content like this (at least I'd hope not).

I feel like the Shingo/Cora the monkey incident still comes up relatively frequently. Every time I've tried to look in to it further, I've read that Shingo's involvement seemed unclear beyond him catching the monkey after it had gotten loose, with most of the actual abuse coming at the hands of other wrestlers. If he truly was involved more deeply, it's extremely disappointing at the very least. As a wrestler, Shingo is one of the best out there. It helps me a little that there have been no further whiffs of any kind of impropriety from him in the 10+ years since (at least none that I've heard of)...but I've still never been able to put the issue sufficiently to rest in my mind one way or the other just due to how much conflicting information has been put out there over time. As for Ospreay...I had seen it eventually come out that he wasn't involved in blackballing anyone, but there's still something about that issue that I just can't shake - there were other aspects to it that I don't recall were answered for. I don't enjoy watching him any longer. I would personally be fine with NJPW cutting him loose at this point. Of course, the after match stuff...as mentioned above, it's crass and tone deaf. It almost felt like NJPW deemed Scurll expendable, Ospreay less so. "If a segment of the fan base is going to hate him for misogyny and ignorance anyway, might as well run with an abuse angle." Oof. Bad, bad decision. Bringing the show to a sudden halt afterwards was also wrong, I felt. For as much as I like and champion NJPW as the best wrestling out there, it absolutely isn't perfect. I don't get Gedo's seeming obsession with sending fans home on such bummer endings every few months. Also...I get that in-character, Ibushi doesn't know Bea Priestly from anybody else. They aren't friends. Fine. But in a time where fans have already started turning on him due to the title unification, why just have him stand there and shrug after having witnessed his new title challenger attack his significant other, then just leave the ring? You're supposed to be the babyface champion who finally made it to the top - do you not even give a little bit of a damn about what just happened there!? It went from crass and bad to crass, bad, and nonsensical.

Right. Like I said - infrequent AEW watcher, but I'm aware they did that. I may still be missing a few puzzle pieces as a result, but from the perspective of a casual AEW viewer, I still don't see how it makes sense. If I have to sit here asking myself why AEW was obligated to use whatever loony nonsense Kenny Omega cooked up in his lab without having any kind of signoff/final say over safety measures, well...then the concept is still kinda half-baked. I suppose the entire concept of an exploding ring deathmatch requires a suspension of disbelief I haven't allowed myself, but I still didn't care for it. It's a shame. I say it as as fan who usually greatly enjoys Omega and Moxley. Not their fault, sorry they got caught up in that after they worked hard on the rest of the match.

Man...I don't want to be this guy since I watch AEW infrequently at best, but am glad the promotion exists as an alternative to the rest of North American wrestling. But - and I hate to admit it - it was wrestlecrap quite a ways before the "explosion" went off. You have the commentary team talking about how there are "no failsafes" at the end of the match before the explosions are set to blow, and that the explosions are still in play even though the match is over...? Huh? So...not to go too far in to Cornette territory, but what were we then supposed to believe would happen if the match would've ended on a flash OWA/Paradigm Shift at the, say, twelve minute mark? The ring would've still blown up after the fans had filed out of the building? Why on earth would there not be an "off" switch if the decision of the match has been rendered? If a wrestling ring blows up in Jacksonville and nobody was around to see it, did it really make a kaboom? Unless your story really is that Omega and Don Callis had a fun weekend playing around with explosives and were allowed to rig up...whatever that was with no safety features...it makes no sense from any angle. My initial reaction was seriously that they were doing a parody of the "exploding ring" matches in Japan where the final pyro amounted to nothing. I am pretty much never the guy to get up in arms about "postmodern" pro-wrestling, but "underwhelming" doesn't cover half of it. Wait...I think I solved their problem. Kenny and Callis cut a promo about how the ring explosion was intentionally bad to make a mockery of the "fact" that Moxley's entire career as a "hardcore wrestler" is a joke, and he had no business being in the same promotion as a wrestler the caliber of Omega.

Man...I have so much to say. I've been in my feelings a bit the last couple of weeks...but I really needed an escape today, and NJPW gave it to me. The spoiler-free thoughts I can offer: night 2 of Castle Attack was the most well-shot, well-directed, well-produced pro wrestling show I've seen in a very long time. At the very least, since the beginning of the pandemic. I felt more during this show than even the last Wrestle Kingdom (though in fairness...my wrestling consumption nowadays is limited to NJPW, the occasional bit of AEW, and old puroresu on Youtube). NJPW is so far ahead of all other promotions in terms of how their camera work complements the action, I have no idea how other companies will ever catch up short of outright copying whatever the NJPW/TV Asahi crew is doing. Also credit to the English announce team. I craved English commentary for puroresu from the day I bought my first "Best of Great Muta" VHS tape twenty years ago. This is not to say the matches were incomprehensible without it; the wrestling spoke for itself even back then. But - there's no denying great commentary adds to the presentation, and this team has been on point for a while. Spoilered thoughts:

The cross promotional thing is with NERDS Clothing, for any of those curious. They've been doing other stuff besides the jackets, too. https://www.nerdsclothing.com/collections/new-japan-pro-wrestling?page=1 About the price: when NERDS first started offering NJPW jackets, some of them were being sold as bundles. I picked up the Hiromu jacket on their first run of them, and it was shipped with a pretty cool cloth Daryl/Naoru Takahashi mask, an enamel pin, and several stickers. It seems like they've gotten away from this on subsequent jackets, though you all may want to watch their website in addition to the NJPW global store to see if they bring that back (mostly baseless speculation on my part: it seemed like they may have had a tough time sourcing all of the items for the bundle plus the jackets during COVID. It was roughly 2.5-3 months between when I placed my order and when I actually got the jacket, and much of that may have been out of NERDS' hands).

While I maybe don't 100% agree with the first part, the second part is dead on and everything is well worth considering. I don't know how I feel about the idea that NJPW's standing hinges on EVIL and SANADA alone. SANADA didn't come up through the NJPW dojo - historically speaking, it isn't a surprise that he isn't being given the ball to run with. Ibushi wasn't homegrown either, but he had to truly sign on before he was let in to the upper echelon. Any real or perceived failure of EVIL and SANADA shouldn't detract from what wrestlers outside of those you mentioned have accomplished over the last few years. I don't know how controversial this may be, but Kenny Omega likes to refer to himself as a MOTY factory. In reality, that guy is actually Shingo Takagi, who has been on an absolutely ludicrous run ever since he joined the promotion. Maybe I'm just misreading it (I'm definitely not trying to be unfriendly or even start an argument), but I think NJPW still sets the standard for what "the best of the best" in pro wrestling really is even if a couple of their wrestlers aren't launching themselves to the moon. The six wrestlers you've mentioned have set a nearly impossible standard to live up to. We are in total agreement and I have no argument there. Hiromu Takahashi is coming close to consistently doing something at that level of quality. Shingo too, but he probably doesn't reach the "big four." What freaks me out is that it's entirely possible that Tanahashi, Naito, Minoru Suzuki, and all of the third generation NJPW dads plus dudes like Honma who fill out the undercard will all be retired in the next five years. By that time, it's not inconceivable that Okada, Shingo, Ishii, Ibushi (if he is in fact mortal, as he's the youngest-looking 38 year old I've ever seen), and Hiromu could all be slowing down or also retired depending on injuries or wear & tear. Jay will likely still be around and in his prime, but the rest of the younger undercard and the Young Lions will pretty much need to develop literal superpowers to reach or exceed the NJPW main event level that has existed over the last decade.

I'm going to take a bit of a risk and hope this qualifies. This is a clip from Letterkenny. No actual wrestling occurs, but it's basically a crossword puzzle of pro-wrestling references and puns recited verbally over the course of two and a half minutes. I also feel it worthwhile because K. Trevor Wilson, one of the actors in the clip, is a big wrestling fan. Most of the photos posted to his social media are of him showing off various wrestling t-shirts. (He's also good friends with fellow comedian and wrestling superfan Ron Funches, if you care.) Spoilered for some NSFW language:

Is saying what WWE produces is soft or has changed necessarily the same thing as saying that the wrestlers themselves are soft? (I realize most all of you are just riffing now, but still...) If Taker's claim is that there are guys who lack in-ring storytelling ability, or that how WWE shoehorns wrestlers in to a role and structures their matches prevents wrestlers from turning out pro-wrestling with substance, then he's arguably correct. Mick Foley talked about this in his first book when he said Undertaker would get a louder reaction doing a dive once a year than the cruiserweights would get doing the same dive (or things that were arguably more dangerous and complex) every match, because the difference was that Undertaker got people invested in his character and storylines and saved the big stuff for the big matches. He mentions that there's "guys that have an edge to them," so I could just as easily say he's inveighing against the PG era or the overly-structured cookie cutter matches that some other wrestlers (such as TJP) have talked about when it comes to WWE. I should probably just go ahead and listen to the rest of the podcast instead of the Twitter clip from above. If he really is just doing the "back in my day men were men and we had more boobs on TV" thing, then I have far less to find correct about Taker's comments. EDIT: Just found a source that's claiming Undertaker went on to say "I liked when men were men." I didn't know that when I wrote my closing sentence. Ugh. Thought Taker knew enough about football to avoid blowing the game in the second half.

The vibe I've been getting from both Wato and O-Khan is that they're gimmicks designed to appeal to kids. So...Bushiroad, maybe? To my eyes, they kind of stick out in NJPW now, and not in a good way. Great Muta, they're not. Another note about who comes up with the gimmicks...I wish I could find the interview again, but Jay White once claimed that most of what he was doing was left up to him. Upon returning from excursion, he said NJPW came to him with "We're going to call you Switchblade. We want you to be 'razor sharp strong style,'" and not much else. Given what he turned in to, I'd have a tough time believing he didn't keep working on it with people like Gedo...but he made it sound like creating the character around the prompt was mostly on him. So, could be these guys are still mired in the "well, you gotta figure it out" phase.

So I'll probably have to come back later to give full thoughts on both nights, but since there has been some discussion about post-event promos and such, I wanted to quickly talk about something along those lines. It feels ridiculous to use the words "Tanahashi" and "underrated" in the same sentence, but is Tanahashi an underrated promo guy? Virtually every time in 2020 that he (either on his own or responding to a question) has discussed what it has meant to him to be wrestling during the pandemic, dude has gotten emotional. Now...it could be Tana has just really been putting his acting boots on, or that wrestling actually means that much to him. Either way: his promos have been one those rare things that has helped me with suspension of disbelief, and has been instrumental in making me a bigger fan of Tana's work. If the tears are part of the act, it's still entirely in keeping with his character, maybe even more so now that he realizes he's on the downswing of his career. He's the most fitting wrestler in NJPW to convey such a message. He has been absolutely note-perfect.

There were other things that I felt affected the fight, namely the seeming injury to Hermansson's right leg/foot, and the knockdown in the first round. Had Hermansson been able to kick with his right leg, he could've continued to throw it to the shouthpaw's body, probably keeping Vettori's left hand in check a bit better. Vettori reacted to one of those body kicks after he was forced to block it. I don't know that we would've seen the Hoost/Lebanner finish from K1, necessarily...I've no idea of the actual state of Vettori's arm. But, had Hermansson been able to continue to kick away, perhaps there would've been a different course to the fight. I also felt like Jack never quite overcame the big shot in round one. It was a great fight, but Hermansson was more or less a headhunter after surviving everything. Felder also raised a good point: Hermansson would've been better served by straightening up his right hand vs. throwing hooks. Lord knows where his head was at after absorbing some of those punches, though.