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I loved Zack/Sanada match so much that I feel insane. It is legit my "best G1 match" contender at the moment. I loved their NJ Cup match and this built further on that with Sanada getting his win back, now I'm pumped for Zack/Sanada III whenever and wherever it is going to happen. I love chemistry between them. Firing Squad stuff is weird. They are kinda trying to achieve two things with them: 1. build heat and make them look dangerous 2. don't interfere with other people actually trying to win G1. This is weird mix of goals, but it is working to some extent. They got lots of heat and only couple of points. Danger here is that it we are not halfway thru and it has gotten old already. Something needs to happen I think to mix it up. Like, I wouldn't be against Tama or Fale getting DQ'ed from the tournament and everyone getting free points or something as ridiculous as that. And well something has to happen with them next. If white guy who is literally called White ends up leading them then it does look bad. On the other hand Japan probably has different ideas of what looks and what doesn't look bad than we. But then, what are really the alternatives? Them being released? Balor not resigning with WWE sounds crazy, but maaaaybe? Elgin/Yoshi was something else. Like, I can justify stuff like Elgin/Naito because it is Naito. You know, top tier wrestler speaking in kayfabe. So when you are against someone like that it is not enough to control 90% of the match, one mistake and you'll get killed. Not because you suck, but because Okada/Naito/Omega/Tanahashi are that good and if you want to win you have to make zero mistakes. But then you have Yoshi who is a pin eater, you throw so many bombs at him and in the end he just fucks you up like a little kid. And in kayfabe you are like two tiers above him, jesus fuck. Now I'm convinced 100% that arm work in Elgin/Evil match was Evil's idea because you don't see anything like that in other Elgin's matches. Like, if you are getting pinned by Yoshi then doing some arm/leg/whatever injury match would make sense and you'd protect yourself a bit in the process, but no, bomb away. It doesn't look like Elgin got hurt by accident or that he made some mistake, no, he threw everything and failed to beat Yoshi. And from what I have seen I'm higher on Elgin then others here, but this stuff is impossible to justify. Okay, next thing. As far as invaders go I'm 100% happy that we have none and I'll just paraphrase Naito who said that since they can run whole thing with no outsiders it shows that NJPW is doing great. And I agree with that completely, I'd rather get smaller blocks than people who don't really matter long term. Are blocks ideal? No, Taichi is not in it, Kushida is not trying his luck, Kojima unfortunately got hurt earlier in the year and Honma hasn't fully recovered yet (will he? thats another question), we don't have anyone from CMLL despite some of their guys having strong enough connection with NJPW crowds. And sure, couple of guys could have switched their blocks to create better balance. But all in all I don't see any real reason to have invaders/outsiders at this point. Goto/Ishii was great, I wonder if Dave will also give it 5 stars or he will, with serious face, claim that Omega/Goto was better.

Probably will confirm Rush/La Park only after Triplemania. Otherwise what would really La Park do at Anniversary show?

About AJ Styles in Japan: in recent TOP 100 popularity pool AJ got 32th place (31th if Mutoh wasn't placed twice) , which might not look great at first glance, but he is only non-Japanese WWE guy to even be there. Balor for example didn't make it. In fact, from Bullet Club related people only AJ and Omega make it. I think that AJ was just another gaijin in first year and NJPW bombing in Yokahoma could probably be attributed to him, but towards the end of his run he got over and most likely would have been first gaijin to win G1 instead of Omaga if he didn't leave.

Did Teddy drop him on his head?

The way it is worded it looks to me like Cobb kinda sees it as an opportunity to get more NJPW dates and not that he has anything offered at the moment. It is also weird that distinction is made between Impact and RoH in a sense that Impact wants their tapings to be the priority. So its like, you can work with RoH, but if NJPW calls you can skip their tapings/shows? Sounds weird.

Yeah, Omega/Goto was great match, but probably doesn't make Top 10 Goto's matches. But thats not a surprise, Dave always tend to rate high The Elite matches. As for today: Expected Elgin to win, now I wonder who is going to beat White first. I don't believe that he is going to the finals so he needs to lose 3/6 remaining matches. Fale, Suzuki and Evil? Or surprise Yoshi upset? Tanahashi/Fale was fun, ending in usual bullshit, but since Red Shoes said "fuck it" it ended up making sense and progressed "meta story" or however we should call it. Okada/Page really ended up feeling like "yeah, ok, lets ends this".

Well Sanada at least won in the end so refs being dumb wasn't as annoying. Thou I find it cute how Loa tried to explain that he was cleaning the dust and did nothing wrong. I don't like that Juice, new crowned US champ is 0-2. I understand why he had to lose to Tama and Ibushi, but I still don't like it. I honestly was a bit underwhelmed by Omega/Goto, but probably because I had very high expectations there. Towards the end when Goto did his past finishers, but couldn't connect his current one match kinda died for me since it was obvious that Kenny is going to do his comeback sequence and take a win. In my opinion ending stretch of Ishii/Naito was much stronger with that counter Destino coming out of nowhere. But thats really a nitpick, both ending 2 matches were fucking great.

Well he doesn't have any more main events in G1 so he should get less time for his matches now.

Three things for me pop out from that list: 1. Naito and Tanahashi are still very close to each other. 2. Naito and Tanahashi are so way ahead of everyone else. 3. There really isn't big gap between Okada and Omega. If I'm not mistaken voting was already going before Dominion so likely they'd be even closer since Omega got that huge win there.

Well thats what a good friend would do. Idea of Omega/Tanahashi WK main event sounds interesting, but... wouldn't that just lead us to another Tanahashi/Okada series? That isn't good for Okada.

Everything is real with La Park.

What a spoiler.

Interesting comment I found in Elgin/Page post match interview on youtube: Little things.

If I remember right Makabe took some bumps for Suzuki during their IC title match so this was probably Suzuki returning the favour.

I hope they dial down a bit with blatant cheating. I'm ok with 1/5 matches having fuckery, 2/5 is pushing it. Other than that, yeah, Okada looks weird. It is hard to see now how he goes from this to main eventing WK.

I think Okada should win. Otherwise it would look like he'd have to go 7-0 streak to get to the finals and that would remove lots of drama from the tournament.

Well basically anyone would have better match with Juice than Tonga, but I doubt that this is their primary concern. Bullet Club members will get featured heavily on probably every USA show. And you know, Juice is good babyface so they'll get good reaction for all the fuckery that Tonga and his family will do. I hope that Gedo goes into "plans changed" mode after seeing that Juice/Tonga match, but I'm not hopeful. Worst case scenario he ends up with something like 6 G1 wins. One thing that I forgot from undercard. White refused to break a pin for Yoh because he didn't use a chair against Finlay. That looked good.

Honestly I'm more fascinated by the fact that Volador dropped 3 titles in couple of months.

If WK main event is to be Omega/Okada V then doing Omega/Ishii would make sense. But we also probably should add one of the Destruction shows to the list as well since Jericho won't be for those and they'll need a big match to replace IC title defence. If Omega gets two defences then I think it would be more likely for Omega/Ishii to happen on Destruction show than on KoPW.

Juice/Tonga sounds like a suitable semi-main for upcoming USA show. Gedo immediatelly threw away possibility of Omega/Naito title match at KoPW which makes things interesting, but... I started thinking whats next for Naito and there isn't much outside of winning G1? Alternatively if Ibushi ends up winning G1 then Naito still could be his challenger, but he is probably losing that then. What else is there to do for him? Feud with... Goto? And you know, possibility of Jericho match at WK kinda puts Naito into the box. He can't go anywhere. Would be rather weird booking if their most popular guy ends up having, in essence, empty 2018.

Speaking about undercard, Zack used Michinoku Driver/Saber Driver to win his match. This is so obvious that I was surprised a bit that it didn't happen earlier. And yeah, crowd was like 90/10 in favour of Naito when he was in ring with Omega. Maybe this was this specific crowd or maybe they'll react differently to actual singles match, but at the moment it feels like only Tanahashi is able to get something like 50/50 split against Naito. And well Osaka, where Naito does 50/50 split on his own.

I thought that his new pants looked somewhat similar to Jay's. And they are advertising Okada/Yoshi-Hashi as a revenge for Yoshi-Hashi so it would make sense probably. Heel Yoshi couldn't be worse than what we have now. I think White still has lots of stuff to do and I probably preferred Minoru/Tanahashi as my MOTN, but White was good as well. On the contrary, I didn't feel Okada at all. He is doing some slight changes to his character now and I think he hasn't arrived there yet so it feels a bit less than what he was few months ago. Elgin/Evil was also pretty good. I wonder if it was Evil forcing Elgin to not do 50 different bombs in 4 minutes or did Elgin figure it out himself finally? Either way I hope that we will see more of this Elgin.

NJPW released translated promo videos and I found Page's pretty good. It is about stepping out of the shadow of The Elite guys and I think it makes sense. But funny thing, hist last match is with Yoshi. I wonder if they both won't go 0-8 till last day?

NJPW's youtube video comments are dominated by Japanese people. I think it is reasonable to expect that since they comment the most then they are the ones giving most likes/dislikes as well. Besides, Taichi has mentioned multiple times in his post match interviews that NJPW fucked up and people now are pissed. Sure, all this is circumstantial "evidence" at best. For all we know Taichi is lying because he is a heel and most of those dislikes/apathy is coming from western fans or Japanese fans who don't attend big shows either way. But at the same time we don't have any "evidence" that anyone actually likes Yoshi so I'm more eager to believe Taichi in this case.

I think fear might be that if they don't deliver a big match then fans might be reluctant to buy next year. And I remember same things being said about finals last year too, don't need a big match since it is sold out already, but we got Naito/Omega. I kinda wonder if ticket sales would be going as well if last year we got something smaller. And well you build a pattern and then you can do a surprise here or there (like Omega/Goto finals) without really hurting the bottom line. As for Omega, this year is going to be interesting to me because we will be able to compare him to Naito and Ibushi since they'll be facing same opponents. Last year he was with Okada in same block and I think that Okada had better match with every opponent, only arguable case being Omega/Juice mainly due to surprise finish. I expect Omega to fare much better this year. And yeah, I think he probably has lots of creative control and he is not going to change his matches unless he is facing someone like Okada/Naito/Tanahashi who likely have some veto power.