Archibald

I think this is important point and likely main reason why many old fans are now disappointed - booking is changing to prepare new generation. I kinda suspect that this booking is somewhat motivated by Naito, to be more specific, by his failure to replace Tanahashi way back then. When he was given more "freedom" he become very different character and likely is still their #1 money maker. I think the lesson here is that you can never replace something great by copying it. Replacement has to be just as great and, most importantly, different to what it is replacing. So they are not trying to create a new Tanahashi or new Okada or new Naito, they are trying to create new X and many older fans don't really like it. For example, Evil always dealt in bullshit. Cheating, gear that was bought from cheap Halloween shop and whole "king of darkness" character always felt like it was out of place in "sports focused" NJPW. It is clear at this point that NJPW sees him as one of the key guys going forward and what do they do with him? In the past many heels would drop amount of bullshit that they use when going up the card (Taichi, Desperado, Naito, even Omega or Suzuki changing his style after NEVER title reign when he became IC champ). They might still cheat, but they cheat way less. Evil goes the opposite, he is moving up the card and he is cheating more, he is even edgier clown than he was and he is doing more bullshit (for those unaware we got multiple "lights out" moments recently). And his next match, if I understand correctly, will be wrestling Yano with a blindfold. He is likely winning and as a new KOPW trophy holder will have even more bullshit matches. Instead of forcing him to fit the usual heel progression NJPW is enabling him to go full out. Is it working? I think we can all agree that his push has been controversial. But the point is that they don't want a new Kojima from him. And I think we can see similar things from other new/returning wrestlers and thats why many of them receive backlash. They still operate in the world created by Tanahashi, but we can all see that they don't really fit in into it as nicely as wrestlers of yesterday. White, at this point, I think has carved out his own niche and convinced most of his haters that they were wrong, can Evil and others do the same? Only time will show.

While everyone is complaining about Ospreay winning my biggest disappointment was Henare being X. At least they are not treating it very seriously since he picked up a win only after Cobb already did his finisher on Sanada.

So Mox/Nagata for USA title? Sounds somewhat interesting, but where would it happen? I could see Nagata getting a trip to USA. I think that Strong and RoH (was supposed to be in Pure tournament from what I recall) could use some of his wrestling.

Yeah, feels like the long term plan for USA title is to be "main" title and for this to be midcard title. I wonder if we are going to get some kind of a junior title as well? So that both "branches" would have junior, openweight and heavyweight titles.

I don't see the connection. Strong Openweight's purpose is clearly very different to IC's.

Why USA needs something more? Whats wrong with US title asides of it being on Moxley?

It does feel like it has more symbolism attached than previous versions, but that is neither good nor bad I think. Overall it looks worse, but it is not a tragedy and maybe it'll grow on me.

Looks a bit better than previous one (that we can see in the first post) and I don't really see a clear favourite to win? I could see Lio, Brody, Dickinson and Lawlor taking it. On the other hand Narita is getting wins so its possible that he takes it as well. My predictions: Lio over Clark, Chris over Brody, Lawlor over Narita, Fred over Hikuleo. Then Lio over Dickinson, Lawlor over Fred and finally Lawlor over Lio.

Gresham/Draper and Rush/Lethal are worth tracking down. I heard that Bandido vs Rey Horus vs Flamita was also great, but I have hard ceiling for such matches so I'm not sure how it really compares to other flippy stuff.

Henare is probably lowest tier wrestler who isn't a young lion. If he joins bad guys it should be him betraying good guys in the middle of the match or something like that. Him just walking out as an X is going to look lame. Oh, look, a jobber joined United Empire. I know that timing doesn't really work out, but I still hope it is Andrade (maybe WWE agreed to announce his release a bit later and he is already in quarantine), it would make sense why they are matched against LiJ and it would create an obvious Naito/Andrade program for rest of the year.

Whenever someone talks about dead silence I remember Jericho attacking Omega at WTL finals and crowd being silent.

Yeah, it feels like this year so far we don't have obvious fall guys.

And we know now the second semi-final. A bit surprising results to me, but both matches were good fun.

Can anyone explain to me the logic of this title reign?

Kratos booking is kinda weird, I think he doesn't have any singles wins, but is presented as this monster guy.

Maybe Kenny win and they do Kenny/Moose with Moose "saving" Impact's title?

White was criticised as well for not really fitting into NJPW's style.

Fun show, I thought that all main matches delivered and Khan continues to improve. I also love how Ibushi is doing Tanahashi's bit where is purposefully acting like a dick to "motivate" his opponent.

Previous one was good, but this one topped it. I could have lived without that fake out with King, but other than that it was as close to perfect as you can probably get in this format.

I'm not sure now who, but one of wrestling podcasters has said some time ago that it feels like NJPW has been transforming after Naito defeated Okada and became double champ. Obviously COVID and injuries made things difficult, but when you now look at last year you can kinda see it.

I was rather surprised that Narita picked up a win. Won't be surprised if he'll go deep into NJ Cup USA.

I think it is about time Khan beats someone who is not a jobber and Ishii is probably going out in first round.

I think we should rule out Naito, White and Sanada since they recently had matches against Ibushi. Okada looks like the favourite to me so... he is probably losing to Shingo.