Gordi the former AEW fan

I pity Gary Hart. Imagine the awful humiliation of having your head shaved bald!

As I said in the G1 thread, this match gets stiff enough to make Shinobu Kandori puke:

Looking forward to Tana v Naito tomorrow.

Very very good first night of action. Spoiler-free thoughts: Young Boys match was perfectly cromulent. I'm looking forward to seeing more out o these guys as the tournament goes on. Ospreay has obviously added a LOT of muscle to his frame, but he can still fly. Jeff Cobb has a very weird-looking body, like he's made of stuck-together parts of different action figures. He hit some very impressive-looking power moves in his match with Taichi. MiSu v Ishii was everything i hoped it wold be. They just beat the living shit out of each other. It was glorious. Totally agree that it was MOTN. I am one of the very last people to jump on the Jay White hype train and I have been disappointed by his p[erformance fairly often in the past, but I really liked his match v Shingo. It suffered a little by going for "hard-hitting" in the wake of the previous harrowing battle, but they both looked pretty damned good in there anyway. I was sure that Okada v Ibushi was going to be a "NJPW Epic Match Spectacular" and I literally made some (microwave) popcorn and settled in to watch it. To my surprise, the match felt succinct (and suitably violent) to me. Looking at the clock I'd say they went about 20 minutes but it felt shorter than that to me. The finish felt abrupt, in a good way. I was really pleased that they didn't go in for finisher overkill. Not a big fan of Okada going for the Cobra Clutch so often, but I still enjoyed this match a lot and it didn't overstay its welcome. Great start to the tournament.

Good Lord! Suzuki v Ishii was stiff enough to make Shinobu Kandori puke.

It seems totally appropriate that a guy named Hayabusa should feel an urgent sense of concern about the possibility of pro wrestlers getting injured.

I'm pretty damned excited for tonight. Okada v Ibushi! Shingo v Jay! MISU v ISHII!!!!!

Watching The Roadies in Japan is just tremendous fun. They had such a great aura and were so incredibly over everywhere they went. You can hear how excited the Japanese crowd were to see them. I was lucky enough to get to hang out and go to a couple of shows with Yuji Tsuruta back when he was living in Osaka around 2013. He told me a story of watching his dad fight the Road Warriors when he was a kid (perhaps that very same match that you posted)! He asked his dad why he didn't beat them and Jumbo's reply was basically "Did you see the size of those guys?" and Yuji, at the time, was like "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." There have been wrestlers since then that are even bigger or more muscular than them, and there have been guys their size who were better at the technical parts of pro wrestling... but, man, they were just a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. Nobody can touch the mystique they had at their peak. Just unreal. (That's Yuji on the right):

I'd be pretty satisfied with that, actually. I had a fair bit of of fun with that game.

If that game is playable offline - and if it is anything at all like EWR - it's gonna be right up there with playing Stardew and watching matches as my favourite time-killers on my weekly train rides to and from Osaka and Kyoto. On the other hand, if it turns out to be a piece of "freemium" garbage I'm gonna be furious.

Wait! What? That is awesome.

That skit with him wolfing down those two cakes was so goofy, but I just could not stop laughing. Now, he's cutting classic fired-up underdog babyface promos, too? Congrats, AEW, you've got me caring about yet another wrestler who has been flying completely under my radar. I sincerely hope he does well in there and this won't be the last we see of him.

Death Valley Driver -> Velvety-haired lard

re-evaluate my life choices.

Gin and Tobacco Juice

Bob Sapp and Tank Abbott in NWA Wildside? You'd best believe that's a clubberrin!

Maybe the ne plus ultra of what this thread is about, and the fact that it's only clips of film with two Japanese guys talking over it makes it even more tantalizing:

This is * definitely * two pro wrestling machines facing off... but it might not be the match you'd most like to see out of them. (On the other hand, maybe this is * exactly * what you'd want to see) It is very much a clash of styles as Fujinami seems determined to work a pure "Dragon Tradition" style of match but Tully keeps trying to inject his brand of beautiful southern (West Texan?) bullshit into the proceedings. In certain moments, the ref is the best thing about this match. And it probably goes without saying but when Tully isn't messing around he shows that he can really work this style, too. Damned interesting to watch, if you are into hypotheticals like "What would happen if Tully Blanchard tried to heel it up a little in a self-serious pro-wrestling-is-a-sport-damn-it Muga setting?" This is the answer: Also: it's a long video but the first ten minutes are a mini documentary of Fujinami training and the last five minutes are mostly a Fujinami talking-head bit, so the actual match doesn't overstay its welcome.

I think my first "favourite move" was probably Dyno's gutwrench suplex. It seemed more real to me than, say, the high vertical. I'd mark out every time I saw him use it.

The great thing is, this totally ties in to AEW: Back in, say, 2016, I was totally the guy saying that Kenny and The Young Bucks were doing pro wrestling all wrong and should work more like my generation of wrestlers. But, I have a gaijin friend who also like pro wrestling and he was way into modern NJPW and we'd watch shows together... and I had to get over myself and stop being a grandpa about the go-go-go high-risk CrossFit style so that I could enjoy those shows with my friend. And, if I hadn't had that particualr epiphany, I'd probably be unable to enjoy AEW today... and I enjoy AEW a lot.

So, A Block has got MiSu v Shingo, MiSu v Ospreay, MiSu v Ishii (!), MiSu v Okada, MiSu v Cobb, MiSu v Ibushi, Shingo v Ospreay, Shingo v Ishii, Shingo v Okada, Shingo v Cobb, Shingo v Ibushi, Ospreay v Ishii, Ospreay v Okada, Ospreay v Cobb, Ospreay v Ibushi, Ishii v Okada, Ishii v Cobb, Ishii v Ibushi, Okada v Cobb, Okada v Ibushi, and Cobb v Ibushi to look forward to, as well as the Jay and/or Taichi matches if those are your bag. And B Block has Naito v Tanhashi and Naito v ZSJ and, uh, maybe Yano v Juice or v KENTA might be fun? ?

Oops. Hang on. OK. Here ya go. Arguably the squashiest squash that ever did squash: Although the question remains: They Annihilate the Mulkey's... what? Their souls? I'm guessing it's their souls.

And a cool thing about it is, because of how he came up from jobber status, he can have that precious underdog aura despite being such a massive dude.

That is delightful, but: I have to imagine that there was someone in the crowd, a young woman maybe, who lived in a rural area in Japan and made a long and expensive trip to see her favourite wrestler, Akira Hokuto, live and in person for the very first time. I wonder how that young woman felt. (Note: Back in 2005, I made my first trip to Japan, with the woman who has now been my wife for well over a decade. I went to a New Japan show in Osaka. I got to see Liger live and in person for the very first time. He was booked against Tiger Mask IV. There is a rumour that, at the time, TMIV was being punished for a bad attitude by being jobbed out in short matches. My first ever Liger match went about four minutes. I was not delighted).