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But we don't even know what exactly that means. Do The Elite decide overall storyline and how matches are laid out? Or do they actually book shows and decide who should go over? My assumption would be that NJPW want Kenny to be face and saw potential in Cody replacing him as the leader (or at least attempting to) so I'd assume that Gedo has said X and Y has to happen, what actually happens in the ring and overall storyline beats are up to you. And I expect that this is how NJPW works in general since it doesn't look like Tanahashi or Naito are reading from the script either.

Because they are filling up RoH and RevPro mania weekend shows with their guys. RoH - Cody/Omega, RevPro - Zack/Ishii as main events. And both shows already announced people like Tanahashi, Ibushi, Suzuki, Ospreay being there so I wouldn't be very surprised if final cards of both shows end up being something like 30% NJPW guys. With some creative liberty we could say that NJPW will have 3 USA shows in one month. If SSE was happening during mania weekend then Cody/Omega would be happening at it and what would happen at Supercard? Dalton/Lethal? I doubt that Omega would want to do Golden Lovers/YB immediately after his match with Cody either. Ishii maybe would still challenge Zack, but I'm sure that Tanahashi, Suzuki, Ibushi, Omega and Ospreay would be SSE "exclusive" in such case. Especially if they'd pick bigger arena. When Cody/Omega was announced to be happening at Supercard I wasn't very happy because I thought that NJPW match should happen in NJPW, but it all kinda fits together and there are only three (in my opinion) explanations here: 1. NJPW has very long term expansion plan and RoH/RevPro are part of it. 2. NJPW has signed some dumb deals with RoH/RevPro that force them to make their cards look better. 3. They are just doing random things.

Unfortunate timing that he is moving up to heavyweights now while Ropongi 3k started getting matches with Suzuki Gun juniors. Looking back, maybe they should have done Ropongi 3K vs Taichi/X finals for that Jr. Tag Titles tournament? I remember enjoying Super 69 team, but at the same time I don't remember anything specific about it and while Taichi/X would most certainly have produced match of lower quality it might have ended up being more memorable due to that connection and Taichi being heat machine in general.

Naito/Taichi a match of destiny. Sounds cringe and epic at the same time. Thou you have to give credit to whoever is searching old video archives to find 11 years old footage of Taichi superkicking Naito in the face. But I suppose they probably have every Naito (and other main eventers) match from 8+ years ago reviewed and with "If Naito feuds with X then use this footage to make it look important" labels. And while watching that part of Naito/Taichi I had one very weird thought. When Naito defeated Yoshi he teased putting LiJ cap on him, but instead decided to spit on him... what if he actually puts his cap on Taichi? And Taichi few months later ends up being sixth LiJ member? I know, sounds absurd, but for some reason thats what came to my head while watching that thing. For me Naito and Taichi have some weird chemistry.

First part makes sense and I agree with it as being realistic possibility, but when you would then place Naito/Jericho? Okada has 3 tags against Ibushi and 1 against Sanada. Ibushi/Sanada semi-final?

Well they continue to over-deliver so maybe next few times they'll sell out solely on the good will accumulated and won't have to depend as much on having big matches.

From what I remember last year lots of matches were on hard cam without any commentary and were posted on World like day or two later. This year everything gets streamed so I assume that shows that won't have English commentary will still have Jap commentary which means that NJPW is investing more in these shows. Okay, now I remembered previous Wonderland interview with Tana where he said that he wants to have champ vs champ match with Okada (it might have been a bit more ambiguous wording, but thats what he meant I think) so... Gets his revenge against Suzuki and challenges Okada? Yeah, there are lots of possibilities in this Cup.

Shouldn't Naito/Jericho happen at the Dominion? Or will they drag it even further to KoPW..? Besides Naito winning IC title would feel like character regression to me and I'm not sure if Suzuki beating Naito in a big match makes any sense at all. But I'm all for Suzuki/Sanada. Evil is not in it, but I hope they manage to fill enough content between now and his return so that Evil/Sanada don't have to drop their titles. Tana/Taichi is interesting match up since Tana often loses to someone participating in his first G1 and Tana has dropped out 3 last times in the first round so it all points out to Taichi winning. But at the same time everyone expects Tana to win this so this probably be the time that Tana bucks this bad trend. On the other hand idea of Taichi/Fale is hilarious. On paper B block has more "draws" since asides of Tana, I'd say, everyone is lower on the totem pole than Naito, Ibushi and Sanada. Even Zack could be argued to be on the same level as Ishii/Elgin/Juice. Since they are making this tour bigger than previous years (if I'm not mistaken all shows will be broadcast) I assume that it would make sense to keep Tana at least till the semi finals (assuming he is not winning entire thing) while either Yoshi or Zack will advance in the first round. Zack sounds more likely, but at the same time Yoshi needs a big win if he is to stay above pin-eater status that he is slowly approaching. But again, Zack picking up wins against Naito and Ibushi could really elevate him and, in theory, Okada/Zack could be very fresh match up. Anyway, lots of possibilities here. I even saw some theory that Tana might end up facing Taichi, Archer and Zack in the finals so that after winning entire thing he would go after Suzuki. Not what anyone expects I think, but looking at the brackets even that sounds plausible.

Another solid main event with rest of the show being forgettable. Anyway, I think getting Golden Trigger in the face should make Scrull fully team Cody and Kenny calling Golden Lovers best tag team in the world caused some drama with Young Bucks. I think it could be interesting if Golden Lovers managed to get a shot at Evil/Sanada before Young Bucks which would make it look like Kenny is stealing their spotlight just like situation with Hangman. Speaking about Hangman, still not very happy that White/Page is happening, but at least he brought some heat today. And RoH world title... Yeah. Fact that they needed to drag in BCB to take a pin says a lot about how much they care about that title. Castle getting overshadowed was bound to happen because Kenny/Cody is hottest thing right now, but this made it look completely irrelevant. I'm not sure if his defence or tag match last night even makes TOP 3 matches of each day. And thats on shows that each essentially had one match.

Crowd was hot for main event and I gotta think that they won't finish with Kenny/Cody at RoH Supercard and we'll get at least one match in Japan too. Baffled a bit that Flip got the win. I guess that is a strong hint that he will participate in BotSJ? Not a fan of that. Goto is having exact same year as in 2017, first decent defence against Juice/Evil followed by irrelevant stuff in RoH show. So probably couple of more months before he loses the belt again. Nothing else really got my attention asides of thinking that White/Lethal would be way cooler match than White/Page. Meanwhile Castle looked rather irrelevant even in his own match let alone the show itself.

As a bonus, with more and smaller factions they could do... faction tournaments? These 5vs5 elimination matches that they do from time to time could use some improvement, but at the same time audience is (or at least looks like) interested in them and doing some tournament with these rules to determine "best faction" sounds like something fun for smaller tour. And I'm unsure if it really would be any more confusing, while there aren't any hard rules in the undercard we still can see mostly same people teaming up with same people so not that much would change if they actually got a proper faction. Yeah, I forgot about that while writing my previous post, but IIRC one of the Bucks has said that they created The Elite so they would have their own brand while NJPW owns BC. In part this is the answer to "merch money" argument, because The Elite brand is more important to them long term.

Does Cody really need a stable? He isn't regular and when he needs to be in tags they could book someone like Page or Marty with him. And yes, by that I mean that Page and Marty should be thrown out too. And same really for Young Bucks, in past two years they have been mostly challenging and defending junior belts while most of their multi man tags were with Omega as The Elite. If it was up to me I'd remove Omega, Cody, Young Bucks, Page and Marty from the group. Omega could obviously be unaffiliated and tag with guys like Ibushi and Juice while rest of The Elite cast could have a pseudo faction with which they'd appear whenever they are needed. A bit similar to Taguchi Japan I'd say just obviously less regular thing. Remaining BC members would obviously lack in star power, but I think that Tama and Fale should be given opportunity to swim. Will they drown? Very likely, but at the same time current situation isn't really good either I'd say. And yes, Tama was probably weakest overall performer in G1 and Fale is Fale. But I was thinking, does every faction leader really needs to be a contender for Okada's title? I don't mind them holding trios belts (eventually replacing Fale with their third brother sounds like obvious decision) and maybe it would be good for those belts too if important people (in terms of kayfabe, faction leaders basically) held them and weren't used just as a filler for guys that don't have anything else to do. So my crazy fanfiction boils down to this: Omega as unaffiliated Cody, Young Bucks, Page and Marty as The Elite 2.0 4 Tongans + Chase + Yujiro as Bullet Club 4.0

For me it starts to look like Tama needs to become new BC leader and if he doesn't then it will be a letdown.

How long broken orbital bone usually puts people on the bench? It is okay for this show since Goto/Yoshi vs Evil/Sanada wasn't that exciting anyway, but if he misses more shows then it is sad news.

Well it is similar to Ellsworth situation I think, but instead of your promotion looking like a joke it might end up looking like bush league if your top guy ends up with something like 4 wins 5 loses in G1. This is really same reason why I wasn't big fan of NWA titles being showcased in NJPW few years ago. They were constantly having matches with Kojima/Tenzan/Liger and I love all of them (well I don't care much about Tenzan), but even then NJPW was clearly sending signals that they are past their prime and they were getting matches in the undercard for those NWA titles and IIRC almost every time NJPW guy lost it was protected loss via fuckery. It just made whole thing look irrelevant and I never felt like I needed to find more NWA content.

I imagine that main problem might be money. Someone like Cody will want way more money than someone like Aldis (or Storm). After all we are not sure how much money Corgan really has and is willing to spend on NWA.

Watched the actual match. It was what could be expected, really could have spent those 15 minutes doing something more productive, but oh well. Anyway, with how it was presented it didn't look like Aldis was ducking legitimate challengers or anything like that, it just happened because it happened. The way it looks to me they will try to present Aldis as a legitimate world champion who is asshole and doesn't mind taking short cuts if they present themselves. Weird thing is that, at the current time, their match has 180k views (way more than anything else they have released) and their channel got few thousand extra subscribers. I don't have any idea if that is considered "good" conversion rate or not, but probably this thing did what it was supposed to do. I hope that this was one off thing to bring more eyes to NWA and Aldis doing his crusade thing and we will go back to "serious" stuff, but at the same time if something like Aldis/Bram gets 15k views then won't Corgan be tempted to go back to this well again? And if you drink one time too many from that well then, in my opinion, entire thing turns into shit and you can forget about being "legitimate" promotion. It is still not clear what exactly they plan on doing further, but I'm not thrilled that Aldis will be the focus for at least next few months. I'd take another Storm/Jocephus "program" over that easily.

Realistically speaking there are only two reasons why this thing has gotten out of hand: 1. Elgin got himself a bit of a name while working NJPW shows. 2. His brand of awfulness is "popular" in the mainstream culture now. Does anyone, outside of hardcore wrestling fan community, even know who Ian Rotten is? Attacking or boycotting him won't make it feel like you are part of mainstream cultural wave. I really like that people are now being more aware of sexual harassment/assault problems, but at the same time it feels like this entire thing is being turned into some sort of sick parody where it is okay to be an asshole as long as you are not popular or if your brand of awfulness is not in the news now. It boggles my mind how same promotion can work with Ian without problems, but when it comes to Elgin they suddenly have to take high ground.

Thats true, but if they don't draw a huge crowd without Punk or Daniel then next time they'll have even harder time with "indie wrestling is hot thing" slogan.

I'm not sure if this was posted already or not, but I found Sanada's words pretty cool: In the end the belt still shined very brightly at me, I was right to make this challenge.

He mentioned Young Bucks few times and that he values their friendship, but at the same time he said that he was always alone while he was in BC. So he either isn't very consistent here or he is just bidding his time till YBs decide who they'll support. Frankly potential of one YB/Golden Lovers match far outweighs, for me at least, all their The Elite multlman tag matches that devolve into parody almost always. If we get something like 3 match series out of that? Even better. And Golden Lovers vs Evil/Sanada sounds interesting too.

Not only, he also had that funny spot where he threw chair at Okada when he tried to do crossbody (I think thats how it is called?) over the barricades and something else I think. This was played up further in their KoPW match where Okada countered his counters. Also, Okada came to Suzuki match with tapped neck/back so I think idea was that Evil fucked him up, Suzuki tortured him further and he just couldn't hold it up against, relatively, healthy Omega. That spot with "doctors" checking on his neck during the match with Omega was I think them recognizing Evil and Suzuki matches. From what I remember this whole theory about Okada getting tired started after Dominion and his other matches that he barely won before were used as additional "evidence" that his time is running out. But if we now look back to his title defences then most of them go down to the last minute reversal. So I'd argue that it is not him getting weary, but thats just "Okada title defence" match. As for Okada not taking Evil seriously enough, well that was his entire G1 where he was in every promo saying that he is on another level and questioning why some wrestlers are even in G1 (Kojima).

Didn't he (or Chuckie) "invent" that Knife Pervert name in the first place? As for the cards, looks weird that first Golden Lovers match is in Korakuen Hall for a joint show with RoH. I really thought that they'd do it on one of their bigger shows. This happening now and Omega/Cody happening at Supercard makes me feel like this thing is a bit rushed and they want it done by, probably, Dominion. Overall I'm not a fan of RoH and most of the announced matches are meh for me. Would honestly have preferred if Jay/Page happened here and Jay got something better for SSE show.

Was it the actual story or was it something that fans built on their own? Guy went, if I'm not mistaken, 7-0 before Evil upset him mostly via countering his signature spots. It doesn't look to me that he was weary or lacked focus.

Hey, sounds like another opportunity to pitch my "Naito should be a tag team division ACE" idea... But yeah, I also think that best thing would be someone like Sanada eventually winning it due to his age. But if thats not in the cards then probably Omega to get some extra exposure for USA market. If not that then Ibushi? Basically my list in order would be: Sanada, Omega, Ibushi, Naito. As for Sanada making those few additions. Well he did add (and remove) some things that made him look like more of a main eventer so I'm optimistic that in few more months he'll fix some other issues too. It is not Goto or Yoshi-Hashi situation after all where it looks like both guys are frozen in time and are completely fine with that. But I was also wondering about people saying that Okada probably drops it at Dominion... Wouldn't it make sense to break the record at second biggest show of the year? But obviously if he does it at Dominion then there isn't much time for him to drop the title to anyone before G1 and WK... unless he ends up winning G1 as the champ and picks his own challenger?