Archibald

I could see Murdoch/Dawsons team being a fun trio for a few matches. Murdoch is also kind of a babyface and Dawsons have problems with Wildcats so at least doing Murdoch/Dawsons vs Aldis/Wild Cards would make sense, I think. I don't get what they are actually trying to do with that Nick Aldis thing. I liked his character before this, an asshole who pretends that he is a good guy and a "face of the company". He would play fair and talk well, but at some points mask would slip and you'd see that he ain't that nice of a person. I guess eventually he had to fully go heel, but I don't feel like this was the right way or right moment. Entire thing and them "working everyone" feels very convoluted. Like, what was even the point of all this? For example, he deliberately pretended that he has problems with Kamille that lead to James Storm picking up the first fall in their title match. Why you'd do that? Only thing that resulted from that pretend conflict was surprise spear on Tim Storm that wasn't needed anyway and Aldis probably didn't plan in advance to beat the shit out of Tim Storm on next show for bizzare reasons. I know that wrestling to a large extent is about moments and what people will probably remember is Aldis turning on Tim Storm, but I think that the journey there was messy and illogical. Ok, I really like Thunder Rosa. And I don't really understand what they are doing here either. I mean, I get it, but I feel that I either missed couple of episodes here or they rebooted their storyline after PPV. What I mean by that is that in "first season" it felt like Thunder Rosa was a messenger who is basically recruiting people for some "higher power" or something like that. Whole drum things after matches, promo about phoenix and eventual Melina debut. Is it just me or did it feel more like some kinda of a cult? But after PPV it just feels like a regular women heel group with Melina being the boss, but Thunder Rosa doing great and Melina clearly being unhappy about it and trying to sabotage her. To me this feels like two different storylines that have same wrestlers in them. I won't complain if this all ends with Thunder Rosa becoming the champ and beating Melina, but this will be another case of a messy journey leading to, hopefully, a big moment. I like Stevens/Question Mark pairing, but you describe rather well what I don't like about NWA's booking. In first season we practically had same situation with James Storm, he was national champ and wanted a shot at Aldis. Eventually he lost to Colt and got his title shot against Aldis anyway. Now Steven talks about going after other belts and it doesn't look like they are trying to set up a title defence for him. So my question here would be, whats even the point of this title? And they are adding a third title now. I don't know, I have my doubts about them being able to book multiple title programs at this point. When national title was introduced they had Willie Mack as the champ and did one or two One Nation videos and I kinda could see what Corgan was trying to do there so I kinda wonder if due to Mack being unavailable to them the title lost its focus and maybe they are still trying to figure out what its purpose is going to be now.

So NJPW builds their USA expansion around The Elite, then The Elite announces that nah, we are leaving and starting our own company that will operate in USA... Why would NJPW be happy with that and continue promoting them past WK?

Good point, if people actually want every problematic person to go then NWA would have to close down. I don't know, as long as they keep their shit to twitter and Infowars appearances then I'm fine, just don't get your bullshit into the shows like Cornette.

UG is making sure that Bandido sticks around till he eventually beats him clean in singles match.

I think that he has done at some point that variation where he stands on opponents leg that theoretically forces opponent to stay put? Or am I imagining things?

Isn't Irie with Stronghearts? How that is going to work out?

I like your points about Aldis turn and reveal being a bit forced and illogical. While watching the episode I wasn't paying full attention to the commentary and at first I didn't even understand what caused this confrontation. And yeah, them beating up Drake probably would have been more logical, but I assume that Aldis/Drake is likely big title match thats coming after whole Marty thing wraps up and they don't want to start their confrontation too early. On the other hand I'm not sure what Drake is supposed to do now till stuff with Marty wraps up? Ultimately I think the problem is that they have only Tim as a babyface (and now Drake to some extent) that everyone loves, there just isn't anyone else for Aldis/Wild Cards to beat and get some heat from it.

You can't do Ingobernables without Rush and you can't do CMLL approved Ingobernables with Rush. So only real option is to do a different version of Ingobernables with Rush.

I think that proper pay off requires Nick to be humiliated and that includes losing the championship.

When you think about it they were teasing it for a while. Aldis likes to call himself the dealer and their tag team name is wild cards.

Spoilers are out and I don't really see anything interesting outside of Thunder Rosa. I hope that she eventually moves to a promotion that I find more interesting.

Finlay and Juice talk about their WTL and other related things if anyone wants to listen:

Lifeblood probably sums up RoH 2019 in general pretty well, they still provided some good matches, but storylines and the booking in general was falling apart.

I'm not sure, last year we didn't have it either.

I'm not sure that I follow. If midcarder can work both companies for couple of months (I'm not sure if Cabana is back for NWA tapings? or he is gone from there as well?) then why top star wouldn't be able to? Kinda how Jericho, Moxley and Omega can work AEW and NJPW?

It doesn't really make sense to me. First of all this will likely end up being three appearances: one we saw, on the tapings and on the next PPV. And I don't get why RoH wouldn't let him do this? From all we know they had friendly split earlier this year and if Marty says "I'm staying with you but I want to do few dates for NWA" then I can't see why RoH would object to that. After all Cabana was doing both RoH and NWA at the same time and it didn't look like RoH had problems with it. I think if he showed up on MLW or Impact show then it would make more sense to me as a sign that Marty is leaving RoH.

I think it has been known for a month or two now that Rush has still one year on his deal. By the way, Dragon Lee is still TV champ and Marty didn't do anything to indicate that he is leaving.

NJ Cup this year again has 12 shows so likely 32-man bracket again? And two finals shows are again taking place in Niigata. So all things considered I don't see how Sanada is not an early favourite to win it?

It was a show. Marty making an appearance might lead to something interesting, but other than that and Thunder Rosa being cool nothing really clicked for me. I don't want to say that it was a bad show, but I don't think that it really stood out in either match quality or story/characters from other wrestling that we have available. Unfortunately "remember the good old days?" is still main point about NWA. Is it enough for me to continue watching? Not sure, I guess it will depend on who is on the next set of tapings.

Will be interesting to see what happens on the fallout show because some of the booking decisions will either be reversed in short order or they might mean some interesting things.

British J-Cup tournament matches have been uploaded on NJPW World: https://njpwworld.com/pg/s_archive_135_1 It doesn't really have much to do with WK, but it possible has some BotSJ 2020 implications. Anyway, this Sunday they are doing another show that will have Evil/Sanada vs ZSJ/Suzuki teaser for title match at WK and deal with some fallout from British J-Cup show.

No, I'd say that their NJ Cup and G1 matches were better. I feel like this being match of the year tells us more not about that match being really good, but how industry sees Sanada. I will be surprised if in 2020 he doesn't get IC title run.

CMLL is doing new years show (1/1), main event of it will be Kawato/Dulce Gardenia in hair vs hair match. Kawato is getting shaved 100%, but this will likely be his career highlight in CMLL so you might want to check out how he does in that spot.

There is always a risk of Okada winning everything because he is the guy that wins everything, but on the other hand this year he feels less relevant than in previous years and thats by design. He got that historic MSG win, but other than that his year has been "empty" asides of trying to elevate Sanada. He was also removed from WK main event last year, which is kinda important since he now likely can't match Tanahashi's 5 back-to-back WK main event wins. His title defence against Jericho wasn't even about him, but a set up for Jericho/Tanahashi. Maybe if Jericho sticks around they'll have Okada get his revenge, but if not then he got nothing out of it. He does not feel like a protagonist this year, more like a roadblock. Naito's booking in last few years has been rather simple, if he loses two times in a row then he finally beats whoever he is feuding on third attempt. White going 3-0 against Naito would break that pattern. I also think that they got away with WK12 ending because they were able to move on and immediately gave Jericho for Naito on NYD. This time it is problematic because you have second day that you hope to get good walk up number for, you also don't want some of the hardcore Naito fans skipping the show. Naito/Ibushi is nice, but we saw it three times this year so I doubt that many people would be very interested in that. In other words there is more financial risk here. What I think is most likely to least likely: Okada/Naito Ibushi/Naito Okada/White Ibushi/White

Here we go again: No idea how big/small these buildings are, but NJPW announced as well that all visas are in order this time so we'll get what we are supposed to get.