lostinube

Stardom's All-Star Grand Queendom card for the 27th Maika vs Momo Watanabe Mayu Iwatani vs Sareee Saori Anou vs Hanan meltear vs Kaoru Ito/Aja Kong Rina vs Sayaka Kurara Syuri/Ami Sohrei/Konami vs TBA Konami is apparently coming back full-time to Stardom

Night 2 is tempting. It will probably be my only chance to see Mox as IWGP champion live. There is no way he is losing to Narita so I figure Shota helps him fight off HOT and set up their match. And Shingo vs Gabe will probably be violent. I can't see Nemeth losing to oldfat so the tag will probably set up SANADA trying to get back a version of a title he had. New Japan has tried to make the Dontaku an event where things happen but I haven't gone since they moved to two nights. Due to the Dontaku festival happening, hotels are already pricey and the recent tourist boom plus the weak yen has just made things worse.

So the AWG wrestlers are not part of Marigold. Not yet anyway. Fuka denies that they were poached by Rossy.

The cards for Satsuma no Kuni on 4/29 and the two nights of Dontaku on 5/3 and 5/4 have been announced if someone wants to make a thread about that. Satsuma no Kuni will be headlined by Hiromu/BUSHI taking on the War Dogs and DOUKI versus SHO. Night One of Dontaku is ZSJ and Cobb for the TV title and oldfat Tanahashi versus Nic Nemeth for the IWGP US title. Night Two is Gabe Kidd and Shingo fighting for the NEVER Title and Mox versus Narita for the IWGP title.

That AWG released an actual statement and not a gif of ACT saying "Fuck you Rossy" on a loop is amazing restraint on their part. Anyway, here is the inspiration for the promotion name:

Her only defense was yesterday. Cagematch lists the title as vacant but I don't know if that's just someone being proactive based on the news. At the very least, she wasn't carrying the belt to the press conference.

His new promotion is called Marigold. At the press conference there was Giulia, Utami, MIRAI, Mai Sakurai, Nanae Takahashi, Yuzuki (now called Victoria Yuzuki) and Nao Ishikawa. Their first event, "Marigold Fields Forever," will be held on 5/20 at Korakuen and will be streamed on Wrestle Universe. The one match announced is Giulia and X vs SAREEE and X. There will be foreign talent on the show. During the photo op, Fuka and some..Actwresgirlz (I think, maybe, I dunno) showed up and..took part in the picture. Oh, OK. Earlier in the day, Fuka, CHIAKI, Kouki, Chika Goto, Misa Matsui, Natsumi Sumikawa and Miku Aono all announced that they were leaving the promotion and I guess they are now a part of Dream Star Fighting Marigold. The foreign talent are: Bozilla, Myla Grace and Zayda Steel. The Actwresgirlz thing is pretty messy, it seems. They might have given notice yesterday and it was announced that they were leaving a half-hour before the press conference started. The Judas Fuka if you are an Actwres fan, I guess.

Rossy Ogawa will make an announcement about his new promotion tomorrow afternoon in Japan (Monday, 4:30 PM JST). It will be live on the Wrestle Universe youtube channel.

The grind thing couldn't have been about Okada since New Japan guys generally work over a hundred matches a year. Japan is smaller though and maybe if someone told HHH that having high speed rail that generally runs on a reliable time schedule cuts down on road time we would see a WWE campaign to bring the shinkansen to America. The only way people like Fuminori Abe and Kaori Yoneyama amass matches over or near 200 is by doing double shots. Looking at cagematch, Abe would do a show at Korakuen and then mosey on over to Shinkiba (or maybe vice versa). Sometimes they don't even have to move as indies will sometimes split a building to do morning and afternoon shows. Star Lane in Hakata would have this a lot. I'm amazed Sakura Hirota only hit a hundred matches in a year a few times because it felt like she was there every time I went.

El Desperado is going to have a show called the Despe Invitacional on 6/10 at Korakuen. The gimmick is no participants and no card will be announced beforehand. https://despe-invi.com/ Completely unrelated but because I saw it at the same time, GLEAT's Check Shimatani went to Uganda to see that SGW thing you've probably all seen online by now.

Two more matches were added to the 5/6 All Together show: SANADA/KAI vs ZSJ/Chris Brookes KENOH vs Kosei Fujita

Konishiki was close to becoming a yokozuna in 1991. By 1992, the trio of Konishiki, Akebono and Musashimaru were, if not national news in the US, at least regularly in the news in Hawaii. Yokozuna (the wrestler) was closer in size and look to Konishiki because Akebono was basketball player tall. I remember being at this Dragon Gate show and whenever Akebono was on the apron for a six-man tag match I couldn't see anything going on because my seat was on the floor and diagonal to the ring and his big butt blocked my view.

Naito wins in a good match and the match with Moxley becomes a title match with Mox coming out to make the challenge. Shingo should be the only person to wrestle HOT as only a DG guy can actually do overbooked run-ins well. He won the NEVER title and then Gabe Kidd came out and made the challenge while calling NJPW a joke, something that western fans will probably see as truth-telling. Post-show it looks like it'll also be Tsuji/Finlay and War Dogs/BUSHI & Hiromu. Bishamon actually got a decent match out of the Chasing KENTAs and won the tag titles. YOH screwed up his shoulder at the beginning of the match and the match got stopped. DOUKI and Kosei Fujita came out to kill time on the mic and challenge SHO, who stayed in character the entire time and mocked YOH. BOSJ Line up was revealed. https://www.njpw1972.com/174074

Dunno if the Baystars are actually going to battle without honor or humanity this season though. Seems like it would be against the rules.

Oh yeah, they also announced the venues for the next G1. 19 dates in all. A bunch of first time venues. They will run the KDDI Hall in Yamaguchi so I might actually go to that show depending on how bad of a main event they decide to give us. They are opening in Osaka this time around and doing two days at the Kokusai Center in Fukuoka which means they will be running there four times this year (two for Dontaku and two for the G1). https://www.njpw.co.jp/488176

Well, they didn't half-ass the LIJ vs LIJ tag (Naito kind of three-quarter assed it but the other three at least put in effort). And they even gave BUSHI the win over Hiromu. The junior tag title match is now a Tornado tag title match.

Marika Kobashi was injured during a match she had in Korea. According to her someone (the promoters, I think) didn't want to get her an ambulance or take her to the hospital themselves.

The Dragon Lives Again is on one of the discs. https://severinfilms.com/collections/pre-order/products/the-game-of-clones-bruceploitation-collection-vol-1-exclusive-8-disc-blu-ray-box-set-book

People were getting bent out of shape on twitter about the stips and it's like, chill out people. They're not even showing this show live on NJPW World. The only Road to show that will be aired live is the Korakuen show where LIJ EXPLODES and Naito gets to pin BUSHI.

Must have been watching too many Britpop videos recently because I'm watching Robbie Avila and thinking "What if Jarvis Cocker of Pulp was a center?"

One thing I've noticed over the years is that the Bruceploitation fillms often have decent action because they were peppered with people like Lo Lieh, Phillip Ko Fei and Michael Chan doing work between bigger movies for Shaw Brothers and the like. Of the guys shown, Bruce Li was probably the best. Dragon Lee was too short to be a believable Bruce but he was ripped. Bruce Le was in Inframan! Bruce Liang/Leung was so fondly remembered (for various things) that Stephen Chow used him as the baddie in Kung Fu Hustle. I'm not sure why there is a clip of Heroes of the East in there.

May 6th (the last day of the Golden Week holiday) at the Budokan UJPW will hold it's first show, an All Together charity show for the Noto Earthquake that occurred on January 1st. Shota Umino/Kaito Kiyomiya/Yuuki Ueno vs Yuya Uemura/Shun Skywalker/Konosuke Takeshita Tomohiro Ishii/Daisuke Sekimoto vs Masa Kitamiya/Jeff Cobb Naomichi Marafuji/Sanshiro Takagi/Hiroshi Tanahashi vs HOT (EVIL/Narita/Takahashi) The show will be on ABEMA PPV.

I think there are enough freelancers who can fill out cards for a couple of months without having to raid other promotions all at once. Or god forbid, put some dudes on some shows. But perhaps Stardom giving Saori a contract (albeit a short one) was them announcing to those interested in becoming Global Amazing Hathletes or whatever it will be called that Bushi Road is open for business.

Or they got orders from above for a preferred outcome. All I know is that this story went warp speed from "something is fishy" to "ban him for life" and/or "he has MJ-esque gambling addiction." Were that many people waiting for him to stumble? If he were still on a bad Angels team would people be charging into this story with their knives out?