FlaeBlazer

Old individual matches are pretty easy to find. All the famous ones are either on YouTube or Dailymotion. But shows are much harder to track down. For these shows specifically, I found this Dailymotion playlist with the entirety of NOAH Departure 2004. There is luckily a YouTube video with the entirety of the NOAH Destiny 2005 show. If you wanna watch current NOAH, Puroresu Dream posts the shows.

How’d ya get the Samurai TV version? I thought DDT Universe was the only way to see it and that aired the Abema TV version, right?

Card looks great but I’m not excited for the main. It’s possible that Jericho/EVIL could be a pile of shit. Jericho was great at WK12 but was in terrible shape and had a bad performance at Dominion. I don’t think EVIL can carry him like Naito did.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw they voted RUSEV over Okada one of those years.

If I’m correct, both shows sold out the Dome, right? Didn’t 2005 draw more? Because on paper, the 2005 looked way more star studded and while I know the numbers are worked, NOAH claims 2005 drew 4000 more people which is believable because of the card.

Can you elaborate? I wasn’t around for it obviously. I think 2016 was the 2nd to last one. How did it get to you?

So apparently DDT Sumo Hall and AJPW headlined by Kento vs. Zeus are airing head to head... Whew. I’ve never really paid attention to DDT shows. I’ve watched a few matches that are acclaimed but that’s really it. Is this card considered to be great? CIMA vs. Takeshita interests me as I love CIMA and I’ve heard lots of good things about Takeshita. But what about the rest of the card, any must-watches? Is the main event expected to be great? I don’t really know what to expect because if I’m correct, Danshoku Dino is a comedy wrestler, right? Has he done great serious work before? Anything else? I won’t be able to see the show in full so I’m wondering. I see that DDT is airing it free only for live viewers so I plan to set my alarm to wake up on time for the must-see matches.

Yeah, reading those threads and it seemed like a lot of those guys hadn’t even watched the NJPW matches and were voting against them out of pettiness because they hadn’t liked the small amount they had seen instead of ya know doing the rational thing, and abstaining from the vote if you haven’t seen enough work from one of the wrestlers.

I just watched both of them in full for the first time and I’m wondering what y’all think. What’s the better NOAH Tokyo Dome show? Departure in 2004 or Destiny in 2005? Both great shows and they’re about equal for me. The Kobashi matches were obviously the MOTNs but I think I like Kobashi/Akiyama more than Kobashi/Sasaki. When grading shows, I tend to put a lot of weight into the quality of the main event because that’s ultimately the match that leaves the taste in your mouth at the end, good or bad. Departure main event of Kobashi/Akiyama smokes the final Misawa/Kawada encounter but I think the overall Destiny card top to bottom is considerably stronger so it’s about a push.

Isn’t PWO kinda the sister board to this place? How do they feel about NJPW?

Does Rippa have an anti-NJPW thing? Because you seemingly hinted it at it. Also you were talking about anti-NJPW ring leaders that went somewhere else? Who were they? Where did they go to? PWO? I saw names like El Dragon and Matt D were pretty vehemently against the NJPW guys.

Does Rippa dislike Okada/Omega or NJPW? Also was contrarianism a big factor in this board’s old anti-NJPW bias? Because that was when NJPW was starting to get really hot in the West and this forum seemed to not be having it.

This is off-topic as hell and I’m relatively new to this forum but I just looked at the old March Madness tournaments here and I was very surprised to see how bad the NJPW guys did there. Okada who I’ve considered to be the very best in the world for several years now never got far in those tournaments. Tanahashi was a complete non-factor. Ishii who has possibly been the most consistently great worker of this decade never got past third round, I think. I audibly laughed when I saw Kenny Omega lost to Miz in 2017 in the quarterfinals. Coming from somebody who’s been down on Kenny recently, he was a fucking machine that year. The only NJPW guy to get respect in those things was Nakamura and he won in 2015. Even NJPW AJ which is the best run of his career didn’t do well in March Madness and then when he jumped to WWE, he suddenly won the whole damn thing. Can anybody explain what was going on there? I was really surprised when I saw those tournament results.

So I assume some of y’all heard about the lawsuit against Charlotte Flair from her former husband that claims there is police dashcam footage of her going on a “racist tirade”.

Can you elaborate on this? I always thought the issue with those matches was how ridiculously long they were more so than the wrestlers themselves. Rock/Cena II was a great example of bad match structure, it’s basically the go to example of a bad finisher fest. Triple H/Shawn matches were all ridiculously long and slow. I thought the match structures for those were bad. What makes you think it fits this case?

Oftentimes, we lament the times that great wrestlers are put in badly structured or booked matches where they don’t get to showcase their talent to the fullest. What are some examples of matches that were structured excellently but were let down by mediocre to bad performances from the wrestlers?

What are the best examples of excellent match structures let down by mediocre to bad performances from the wrestlers?

So who actually is going to make it to the top level?

Ishii would be the ideal guy for this role.

So they’re hyping if up as a dream match card? Interesting. Maybe we do get a few singles. Gimme Tanahashi vs. Kento and I’m happy.

YES! YES! YES!

Wouldn’t this be NJPW?

So is BFG still being treated as Impact’s #1 show or has Slammiversary passed it? Because Slammiversary this year felt like a way bigger deal. The show felt bigger, the card was far stronger and felt more important. It got way more hype. I had been hearing about Slammiversary for weeks ahead and the hype behind the revival of Impact. While I genuinely didn’t know this show was happening until like the day before. I don’t watch Impact TV and only saw these two PPVs but from an outsider’s perspective, Slammiversary felt like their Mania. I know historically BFG has been the big one for years but maybe something has changed under the Callis regime?

What was the attendance for this show?