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Surprisingly Desperado/Kanemaru lost Jr. tag titles to TigerMask/Eagles. One last run for Tiger?

First major show after NJPW decides to have more matches on shows: Fujita/Oiwa vs Kanemaru/DOUKI TigerMask/Honma/Makabe vs Gedo/Jado/Tanga Wato/Taguchi/Nagata vs Hiromu/Bushi/Sanada Yoshi/Goto/Ishii vs Sho/Yujiro/Evil for trios titles Yano vs O-Khan for KOPW thing Eagles vs Desperado for Junior title Tanahashi vs KENTA for USA title Okada vs Tama for briefcase Shingo vs ZSJ for world heavyweight title We'll get three Road To shows streamed, two of them have elimination main events, while last one (10/26) has Eagles/TigerMask vs Desperado/Kanemaru for jr. tag titles. And Henare is back. I don't know, I could have lived without these three undercard tags. Only the one with young lions makes sense to me. To me good thing about "less matches" cards were that lots of fat was cut. If it was me I'd just move trios title match to one of the Road To shows that has elimination match for main event and drop second and third matches entirely.

Did everyone really want it? I don't really remember having problems with this show: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Struggle_(2020)

Very likely that Tanahashi/Chase will happen here and maybe Cobb will challenge him for USA title at the dome.

I'm not sure if it makes sense to analyse promotional talk like this. Its not like he is going to say "we peaked, I'll try not to screw it up".

All their shows are shorter. But yes, years of high end matches were bound to take their toil, unfortunate that it happened for multiple guys in the same year.

To me it sounds unlikely that all his talk about V4 wasn't prepared in advance. It sounds like very deliberate story direction for WK.

Silver lining in Ibushi getting injured is that I can pretend that I wasn't completely wrong about everything and plans had to change due to the injury.

How exactly you'd know that by following only results? Anyway, my last MOTN is ZSJ/Shibata, it was short, it was sweat and nobody got injured. Overall match of the tournament for me is O-Khan/Ibushi and I'm going with ZSJ as my MVP. ZSJ/Shibata match explains very well why ZSJ went nowhere despite having a hot start. I remember writing that this year probably had more injuries than few previous combined so in a way its not really surprising that we got another injury. Bad year is bad Edit: I also found it rather funny that KENTA sidestepped Chase and he is going to actually challenge Tanahashi first.

Well heavyweight tag teams being shit was one of the common complaints before pandemic. Maybe its good that now tag title holders and challengers are actual stars and not "guys not good enough for singles"?

My MOTNs: Naito/ZSJ, Tanahashi/Okada, Shingo/ZSJ, Sanada/Taichi, Ibushi/ZSJ, Tanahashi/Tama, O-Khan/ZSJ, Taichi/Yoshi, Shingo/Ibushi, Taichi/Cobb, O-Khan/Ishii, Okada/Taichi, O-Khan/Ibushi, Okada/Chase, Shingo/O-Khan, Okada/Tama, ZSJ/Tanga, Okada/Cobb. This was pretty good show, I think that every single match delivered.

Another Tekkers/GoD tag titles match is likely precisely the reason why ZSJ's early rush went nowhere.

From what I understand they do it for all their properties and they are likely not going to make an exception for... wrestling.

Well, Naito got hurt after first show so I'd write it down to that and NJPW not valuing ZSJ high enough for finals or maybe they just have pencilled him in for tag titles matches till WK and don't want to adjust those plans. As for top 5, in my opinion: O-Khan/Ibushi, Naito/ZSJ, Tanahashi/Okada, O-Khan/ZSJ, O-Khan/Ishii. If nothing surprising happens on next two shows then O-Khan is likely going to end up as my MVP.

My MOTNs: Naito/ZSJ, Tanahashi/Okada, Shingo/ZSJ, Sanada/Taichi, Ibushi/ZSJ, Tanahashi/Tama, O-Khan/ZSJ, Taichi/Yoshi, Shingo/Ibushi, Taichi/Cobb, O-Khan/Ishii, Okada/Taichi, O-Khan/Ibushi, Okada/Chase, Shingo/O-Khan, Okada/Tama, ZSJ/Tanga. ZSJ/Tanga wasn't amazing, but it was solid wrestling match on a show that was full of bizzare decisions. Ibushi/KENTA had lots of cool things in it, but I can't seriously say that it was a good match when it had 3 (I think) obvious countouts with Red Shoes waiting 4 seconds before counting 20. Makes me think that original plan might have been for Naito/O-Khan to main event because this just didn't work for me. So yeah, Ibushi is again in G1 finals. 4 in a row has to be some kind of a record?