Archibald

Well they have been teasing Okada/Ibushi for a while now and it is probably last match up that hasn't really been done so I think that either: a) Omega beats Okada and Okada/Ibushi is G1 final with Okada going over. or b) Okada retains, Ibushi wins G1 and Okada/Ibushi for WK main event.

Do we know for sure that this was Vampiro's idea? I somewhat got the impression that this might have been done for Alberto so that he can present himself as this big Mexican hero that still seems to work in Mexico. As for AAA announcement, it is weird situation. It looks like Fenix is still booked for this Friday and it still is strongly implied that Penta is coming to Arena Mexico too. Argument also could be made that CMLL didn't announce hair/mask match for Rush/La Park because they knew that La Park would be part of TripleMania's main event and it would be bad business to advertise La Park mask match when few weeks earlier he'll have another mask match and might theoretically not even have his mask by that point. I'm trying to stay optimistic here and hope that all of this will somehow work out. As for CMLL/AAA crossover event. Not very fond of that idea, I like CMLL for its mostly straightforward style and AAA is very opposite of that. For me La Park in CMLL works since rest of the show is usually clean so when La Park/Rush do some weird thing it actually stands out. In AAA environment La Park's tricks aren't that interesting to me because bullshit is happening in 3/4 of the matches.

I don't know. Here comes wrestling company from Japan and most of their champions are Americans. Weird visual.

Can't first fall end with submission? Suppose Okada gets Omega with Cobra Clutch and instead of trying to endure it and potentially risk injury Omega taps out knowing that he still got two 2 more rounds to get back at Okada. So my wild prediction would be: Cobra Clutch, OWA, Rainmaker.

I know one, I liked that in match against Taguchi he lost his boot. But yeah, thats a bit little for a guy who for last 8 or so months was one of the top 4 juniors.

His last match against Yoh was also better than his starting matches in my opinion. Maybe he needs babyface or popular guy to work against or maybe he just started figuring out how to properly do his act towards the end of the tournament. Time will tell.

For last 5 or so minutes I was marking out like little kid. Honestly I'd prefer if Hiromu cut back some of his crazy stuff like that spot on the stairs that can't be good for his health, but what can you do. Man is crazy and I enjoy watching him destroy himself and his opponent simultaneously. And I think Ishimori deserves some props here too. While he had somewhat underwhelming tournament he did bring it for the finals and I probably wouldn't have been very mad if he won after such match. But still, person who needed to win won.

I believe title match was announced just before they started selling tickets. But yeah, I don't think that anyone really bought a ticket due to that announcement.

While not as good I thought that RPG3K also had decent to good tag matches last year in the tournament and before that winning those belts. Maybe I was still in "young lions returned and they are pretty good" phase, but for me really something changed only after their program with Young Bucks concluded. I thought about posting after the tournament, but probably nothing will happen that will change my mind on the last day: Overall, while tournament delivered some great matches and Desperado surely raised his profile, I didn't like it a lot. One reason being that A block didn't really have anything and another reason being overall booking of the tournament. WWE gets a ton of shit for their 50/50 booking, yet I didn't saw anyone mentioning how 11 out of 16 competitors ended up with 6 points. That is, 3 wins and 4 losses. It is cool that Ishimori and Ospreay got their 10 points each, but what does it really mean for rest of the block? Everyone is equally bad? And situation is only slightly different in Block B with Kushida and Scurll getting 8 points. G1 usually (and older BotSJ) manages to give more varied results that can allow us to kinda put wrestlers in NJPW hierarchy to see whats what. But here we have guys like Dragon Lee and Desperado being in "everyone else" camp. While I liked Sho, I don't understand why he had to end up with same amount of points as Dragon Lee. Another problem with booking for me was people going 3-0 and then going 0-4. Main problem with going 3-0 is that if you win on day 4 then very likely you are mathematically eliminating someone from the tournament and NJPW clearly didn't want that to happen. So it kinda made endings of Tiger Mask, Dragon Lee and Bushi matches predictable. First two couldn't win anymore and last one couldn't lose anymore. In other words, I wish we would get more varied final results and I see nothing wrong with lower tier guys getting eliminated early. Alternatively, if you don't want them eliminated then maybe you shouldn't give 3-0/0-3 booking that will force your hand. And I guess I should mention that I didn't like the booking of Block B last year either where 4 people ended with 3-4 record while other 4 got 4-3 record and on last day basically every match was "wrestler who defeated Kushida earlier has to lose now".

No shame in disliking bad matches

He might, but I think it also reasonable to expect announcement at BotSJ finals since if he is facing Scurll (due to mask pull at SSE) then it is logical to wait till tournament is finished and it is official that Scurll didn't win anything. Either way it is smart decision since it gives us lots of room to speculate about. But main thing working against Ospreay facing Mysterio at Dominion is that Ospreay/Mysterio would probably be their biggest Jr. title match for Cow Palace show. Kanemaru in general is underrated mostly because he never tries to steal the spotlight from guys that need it more.

In no particular order: Hiromu, Ospreay, Kushida, Scurll, Dragon Lee, Desperado, Sho. I think those guys had better tournament than Taiji so it would be weird if he is the one to win it and beat Ospreay at Dominion. If I'm not mistaken Dragon Lee can win it if he beats Kushida tomorrow. If Hiromu can't win for mysterious reasons then I'd much prefer Dragon Lee taking whole thing over anyone from Block A. Ospreay going over Dragon Lee at Dominion would also be completely fine I think if they want to continue his reign.

I guess it is safe bet that something fundamentally changed in CMLL's approach? You kinda could rationalize away La Park since Rush/La Park is huge money match and that both sides managed to come to some sort of agreement because, again, big money match. But Fenix and Penta aren't on that level and they are still supposed to work some AAA shows from what I understand.

For me Timebomb only works in a sense that it is the last nail to the opponent and I like that he usually hits 2-3 big moves before finishing it with Timebomb. But yeah, triangle choke allows him to get good looking wins out of nowhere and thats good.

Kushida/Sho was pretty cool match and my faith in Sho as singles competitor was restored.

For block B another solid match (at least on paper) on final day is Dragon Lee/Desperado. It shouldn't and probably won't main event, but I think that going to final day it is possible that there will be some scenario where Dragon Lee or Desperado can also win block B if, lets say, Kushida/Hiromu ends in a draw. As for block A. Flip now is 3-1 so it is possible that Flip/Ospreay will decide on who wins the block. Possibility of Flip being in the finals of BotSJ is amazing, in a bad way. Some thoughts on the matches: 1. Hiromu delivered another exciting main event. It had everything you'd want from Hiromu and Dragon Lee yet at times I would wander back to Hiromu/Desperado thinking about how that match was better. Basically what I'm saying is that I'm now more interested in Hiromu/Desperado than in Hiromu/Dragon Lee. 2. And yeah, Sho struggled with some spots against Dragon Lee and it was same against Desperado. Can't remember now if it happened against Sabin too, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Similar for Yoh to be honest, he had some slips against Ospreay and so far is showing way less fire than Sho. I'm sure that they'll improve, but at the moment I like them better as tag team than as singles competitors. 3. Ishimori/Kanemaru was probably my favourite Taiji's match. Big part of that was that Taiji wasn't a heel in this. More I look at his interviews and matches more I don't care about his Bone Soldier persona. And he got rolled up again. To me it starts to look like he isn't going to win the tournament or even his block so they are kinda protecting him with cheap Ls to "keep him strong" for eventual title match against Ospreay which he probably should lose. And well it is hard to get excited for that. Thou obviously nothing is decided yet and he might end up winning at least his block, but I'm more pessimistic now than optimistic. 4. Bushi started with impressive 0-3 and then picked up a win against Ospreay. Probably safe bet that Bushi ain't dropping more matches this tournament asides of possible L on last day so that whoever needs to win block A ends up winning. Match itself was another case of "LiJ are over and nobody cares that they play heels" with nobody really reacting when Ospreay was being worked over and even popping when Bushi misted Ospreay.

A block is doing some weird things like Tiger Mask IV being 3-0 and Bushi being 0-3 and first Taiji's loss being against Flip.

Desperado had some cool things to say after his victory: "I hide and I run and I lie, too. Do you know why? Because I'm a champion." And other part is a bit longer so I won't quote it, but basically he hopes that all those juniors talking about elevating the division will succeed and then he'll just conquer everything they built.

Thanks, I have fully watched only 2018 Fantasticamania and probably haven't seen that particular moment at all. But now knowing that, I guess that his win over Bushi makes a lot more sense. Sometimes I wonder how many details we end up missing in NJPW shows due to lower card guys usually referencing some obscure, relatively speaking, moments. I don't really understand why he has to prove anything to be honest. Talent, connection with the crowd and popularity in general is there and makes him superior to every other Junior by big margin. If Gedo doesn't see him as the face of the division for some reason then additional few high end matches probably won't change anything.

What is his history with Naito and LiJ? I don't recall anything for some reason.

While I also don't see much in Aldis I'm not sure that PJ Black/Cody would be any better. From what I have seen nobody is really "revolting" against it being Aldis so probably makes sense to keep it as it is.

Lots of great action, lots of small details, lots of good visuals and lots of character. This match was perfect example of why I watch NJPW. And best part about all of that is that while at times it looked like they legitimately wanted to kill each other it never felt like they were "overdoing" it like Elgin or Scurll with big movez.

I agree with GIFs part. I have been running thru my head this "conspiracy theory" for a while now since nothing else really makes sense. Thou I'm not sure if it is really self-sabotage. I mean, it is to me, to you and few others that I have seen here write about it, but you look at reddit or some other places and you see guys claiming that Elgin/Ishii was their MOTY or at least MOTYC. And crowds pop for that stuff. And more movez you do more likely you are to get high rating from Meltzer which tends to help people financially. And I'd argue that it isn't just Elgin or Scurll. We would be saying same things about Omega if he wasn't one of the top guys which meant that he is usually winning his matches. Imagine if he had 40-50% win ratio, we complain now about him spamming his V-Trigger, but if it didn't end up with him winning? Problem really is wrestling style. I remember someone pointed out in Dontaku thread how fundamentally different White/Finlay was to something like Omega/Elgin. Anyway, my takeaway from third day was that Yoh was better with Tiger Mask than with Bushi, but not by much. So far he really isn't standing out to me and it looks like Sho is the one who might eventually get singles title shot while Yoh will remain as tag guy. But obviously it is still early and things might change. And well I hope that they will.

Dragon Lee/Sho was fun. I would have liked if they sold their arms a bit more and couple of catches by Sho looked iffy, but overall was probably my match of the tournament so far. Kushida/Sabin had smart match, but at time Sabin wasn't able to keep up and I don't know. I will be surprised if this will make Kushida's top 4 matches when tournament wraps up. Not sure whats next for Scurll. He again got all of his shit in and was chocked out rather convincingly. And with Taiji now being in Bullet Club I wonder if Scurll will be getting many singles opportunities once this tournament ends. Not that I'd complain about that, not a big fan of his.

CMLL gets often criticized for their booking, but this whole angle came together perfectly and nobody (well at least in English speaking side of the world) saw it coming. Rush was "feuding" with Kraneo and Volador/Flyer were in the finals only to give Templario/UG a good match. Nope. If things don't fall apart at some point then this will certainly be a big thing. You know, looking back even that Rush/Terrible win against Volador/UG was kinda part of this.