The Z

Oh man, if only Takayama hadn't suffered that horrible injury, imagine if he was one of the five labors. That was a feud like 20 years in the making, that we never got the pay-off to. ?

Well, they also played this song in the arena before show start: I don't know, if you can read too much into that, but it's funny none the less.

Alexander Wolfe had his first match back for wXw on Saturday and apparently held a promo saying he came back from what he thought was a dream, but turned out to be a nightmare. Remember that wXw is a WWE-affiliated promotion that airs on the WWE Network. Awkward. They'll probably just cut that part out, when the show airs on the network.

Masato Tanaka vs. Fuminori Abe: I have been waiting for this match to show up online. This is very good! I guess this dude is just uploading full shows to YouTube now: Day 1 has Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Hajime Ohara (starting at 1:15:30). Nakajima matches are always worth watching. The Semi-Main and Main Event of Day 2 are both well worth seeing: Takashi Sugiura & Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Masato Tanaka & Masaaki Mochizuki (1:48:00) Keiji Muto, Masakatsu Funaki & Naomichi Marufuji vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima, Kenou & Manabu Soya (2:09:30)

Mostly a good line-up, but I'm sad that Yoshiki Inamura can't take part this year. ? Also surprised that Akitoshi Saito will be in the tournament, but not Shuhei Taniguchi. Would have liked to maybe see another young guy in there like Kinya Okada, instead of Saito or Kotaru Suzuki. I'm putting my money on Masa Kitamiya to win the tournament this year.

Good, everyone can finally start ignoring WWE entirely and cancel their Peacock/WWE Network subscriptions. Good wrestlers won't be wasting their best years in a shitty company anymore. Hopefully companies like AEW, NJPW, ROH, Impact and others will profit and expand their business even further. Vince will probably be surprised, when their ratings go even further down the drain instead of up.

Remember that Raven/Jake Roberts/Kevin Sullivan discussion-style shoot interview, where Sullivan was sleeping throughout the entire thing? That was like 15 years ago already.

Careful, on the previous NOAH shows the announce team was Stewart Fulton & Mark Pickering. Stewart Fulton is Scottish, Mark Pickering is Welsh. On the more recent NOAH shows (like this one) the announce team was Mark Pickering & Bailyan Akki. Baliyan Akki is a wrestler from India who lives in Japan and apparently also does commentary now.

Considering the relationship they have with Impact now, it may well be Sami Callihan.

Just came in here to post the NOAH that I expected @DEAN to have already posted: Short, but sweet. Excellet, as one would expect The NOAH Juniors are often maligned, but don't sleep on this 8-Man Elimination Tag Match. I couldn't find Kenoh vs. Masa Kitamiya, but if you can find it it's Must Watch.

Whatever brings us closer to the possibility of WALTER vs. Samoa Joe.

I noticed that, too, but he does have a profile on WrestlingData and on Wikipedia. He's an MMA fighter, but he also has a long history with shoot-style wrestling as he wrestled for U-Style way back in 2004/2005 and more recently for Hard Hit and HEAT-UP. He joined Sugiura-Gun in a 14-Man Tag last December, but this was only his first match for NOAH since then.

This was a match I was looking forward to and it turned out to be pretty good: Hopefully Nakamura will wrestle more frequently for NOAH in the future, would love to see him against Nakajima.

OK, I trust you on that one. ? But technically Marufuji, Ogawa and Inoue are the only three still left from the first show. Akitoshi Saito also joined NOAH before Sugiura. (I admit I had to look that up.)

The last three who have been with NOAH since the beginning? Never forget about Masao f'n Inoue!

Masahiro Takanashi Return Show: Card: Baliyan Akki & Minoru Fujita VS Chris Brooks & Sakaguchi Yukio "Neo Biishiki Gun" Mei Saint-Michel & Saki Sama VS Yuna Mizumori & Emi Sakura "Beauty As Is" Fuminori Abe VS Masahiro Takanashi Andrade El Idolo vs. Laredo Kid from last weekend. This is apparently just mediocre.

I'm pretty sure they signed the Matt Striker they intended to sign. Striker was a school teacher at the time and made some national news headlines, because he called in sick to his school to drive to some Indy show he was booked for. WWE being all like "all publicity is good publicity" decided to sign him, because of that.

The thing that's making me laugh right now is that they announced the full field of the Breakout Tournament, when they already announced on last week's 205 live that two more qualifying matches would be happening on this week's 205 live. According to some reports they actually did tape those two matches yesterday (Grayson Waller vs. Odyssey Jones and Asher Hale vs. Josh Briggs). So they just went ahead and spoiled the results of those two matches, because nobody watches 205 live anyways, I guess?

Another great show from NOAH today! Nakajima vs. Kitamiya totally lived up to the expectations, but the Junior rumble and Marufuji/Mochizuki vs. Inamura/Kiyomiya were a lot of fun as well.

Well, that's exactly what it is, except for the back-up cancers:

I don't know. I have an NVIDIA Shield personally, which I can recommend, but I stream Wrestle Universe to it via Chromecast through my PC as I explained above. I tried it on my phone, but I ran upon the same issue that you have.

I got in the mood to watch some DDT after the Cyberfight Festival and the tournament matches of the King of DDT tournament are indeed very good for the most part. However, the comedy side of DDT is really almost completely unwatchable to me at this point. Back in the 2000s I used to like both sides of DDT, but back then the comedy used to be universal, nowadays it seems like you're completely lost, if you don't speak Japanese. Two guys oiling each other up so they slip through their opponents hands? That's hilarious and requires no explanation! Now it's never-ending PowerPoint presentations, Antonio Honda stopping matches midway through to tell some long-winded story, there's a guy doing a Magnum TOKYO tribute gimmick and I have no idea what his whole deal is etc. Of course there's still Danshoku Dino, but he's been doing the same old shtick for the last 20 years and I just think I've seen enough of that gimmick at this point. The only DDT comedy I still enjoy is happening on the special shows (like the one at the water park) and the Chris Brookes Produce shows (Mecha Mummy vs. Mokujin Ken? Yes, please!).

They introduced a new video player that supports HD at the end of May. Do you have to do it through your phone? Streaming to your TV via Chromecast still works on PC. You just have to right-click on the video and select "Stream...". I don't know how do it on Andoid Phones, though.

The match wasn't bad actually and Kiyomiya has been on a losing streak lately. Another sports-entertainment-trope that has made it's way into NOAH.

WALTER vs. Marcel Barthel from 2012