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The EVERYONE IS LEAVING NEW JAPAN!!! Thread


RIPPA

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I think if they stay in NXT they'll do just fine, especially as it continues to evolve into a full-on touring brand... after all, those Bullet Club shirts don't buy themselves. All bets are off if they go straight to the main roster however.

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WWE.com just posted an interview with Balor about the Bullet Club.

Yep, just checked it out, fun stuff.  I'm highly amused at the idea of them letting Balor have tons of fun with this as well.  http://www.wwe.com/inside/finn-balor-shinsuke-nakamura-bullet-club-q-a-28515559

 

And I imagine this was in the plans anyway, but once word got out it's nice to see them running with it instead of denying anything.  The Rumble is going to be VERY interesting now, very interested to see how things pan out.  Even if it's just AJ going out that would be a huge deal.

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The rumor about Vince buying the Bullet Club rights has been outed as bullshit.

Which should have been obvious because the only source was a joke Pro Wrestling Tees made on Twitter.

Unless I missed something.

We live in a world where Rovert is like the second most respected source for wrestling newz. It's not surprising in the least that wrestling fans are fuck ups who take every tweet at face value.

He is?? Fuck. I see him chiming in on some of the Twitter accounts i follow and I cant...i just can't.

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Surely Anderson & Gallows will be NXT exclusive talent and Karl's most likely being hired because he's best buddies with Finn. Kinda like when Punk got Colt his WWE gig. According to the interview Shinsuke Nakamura was buddies with Finn to so it seems Hunter went to Finn and asked who they should sign from New Japan and he vouched for his buddies. I don't know whether the Bullet Club would translate well on the main roster but they would be perfect for NXT since 99.9% of the audience will no doubt be familiar with them already. But bringing them up on Raw most folks be like "Who?" and think they are a nWo knock-off or whatever. That's the #1 danger they have right now, signing top indie names or those like Nakamura who are top talented wrestlers but outside of the WWE and TNA bubble they are relative unknowns. Most WWE fans be like "Meh, Festus is back", or might be vaguely familiar with AJ Styles. Who again if he gets called up to Raw and/or SmackDown! might have a name change since there was already a AJ and there's a Styles (Joey) and historically they don't like having similar names, think they made Micky Jay the ref change his name because it was too similar to Mickie James. 

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Not a chance they're paying AJ and Shinsuke loads of money (presumably because they have name value) only to bring them to the main roster and have to repackage them with a new name. And while I'm at it, why put either of those two on NXT when you can put them on RAW and Smackdown and maybe lure the smart fans back to the show, just to see those two.

 

I know WWE's track record isn't the greatest, but I'm not going to go full cynical and say the main roster writers will completely fuck this up. I'm reserving judgement until it happens, which is what most people should do. I'm just happy that these guys get to show off their craft in the biggest promotion (in North America). Either they make bank and get even more over, or they get to go back to where they came from with a higher asking price and (presumably) more fans that might follow them and check out some indies or New Japan or whatever.

 

tl;dr - Sick of the negativity about the signings and the main roster shit. Just be happy for the guys, fuck. :P

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I found it interesting that Meltzer mentioned that Shinsuke could possibly headline Wrestlemania next year (with added caveat of "with the right booking"). What are the chances Nakamura is a top player in WWE this time next year and not just another guy? Is he good enough to force their hands? I thought the Rusev/Lana act was good enough to overcome shit booking but between splitting them up and injuries, that certainly didn't come to fruition. Nakamura, of course, is on another level.

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Rusev and Lana's act was borderline xenophobic and their ceiling was "dominating the roster until the American Hero, John Cena, comes to destroy the evil foreign couple." Not much longevity in an act that pulls most of the heat from the fact that A) the fans just want Lana in their bedrooms and B) the Russia VS USA stuff that was/is still going on. Rusev and Lana never had a chance because WWE had them in that position on the card (for awhile) for the sole reason of what I mentioned above. to be fed to Cena. I mean, you saw what happened to them when the Russian political stuff started to fade into the background in reality. Rusev was Bulgarian, again, and suddenly Lana was a face and no one mentioned that she was an evil Russian the week before, doing the bidding of Putin. It was all dropped so quickly because no one gave a shit about Putin anymore.

 

Nakamura could be different if they just let Nak be Nak and don't saddle him with stupid shit like they usually do. This is a Sink or Swim moment, especially if they want those WWE Network Japan numbers to be great.

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Honestly...who would remember Gallows as Festus??? Were people saying "OMG we can't take him seriously because he was Festus" when he was in SES?

Anderson and Gallows will be perfect playing the tag team enforcers/muscle if it comes to pass that Balor comes up with them as a group.

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I'm just posting to represent all the non-women/children/gay men that love good guy Balor in NXT. However, i doubt the same schtick would work in WWE without them pulling the trigger and making him Demon Balor pretty permanently so I do hope he gets sorted out as a heel if/when he gets called up.  

If I could ask, what is it about him that you love? Obviously a lot of people live and online are super into him, but it's something I don't understand based on my tastes. I never have really seen anyone explain what they like about him outside of "he'll sell a ton of merch", which is an odd way to judge if you like a wrestler or not.

 

 

Still getting back into being a message board poster so this could have probably been a little more timely. 

 

He's not my absolute favorite or anything, but he's been booked like a real champion since becoming champion. He's been more of a "final boss" character on NXT than say, Neville, who was just wrestling anyone every other week. Of course NXT was a whole other thing back then, but as far as booking goes, I like his championship run more than any other NXT champion so far. It's possible this booking is just because of timing and anyone could have been plugged into that position, but it does seem like they're really protecting him and not making him a typical WWE annoying babyface sore loser type.

 

As far as his actual wrestling skill, I always thought he was pretty good. Never my favorite. Then I caught the NXT house show in Albany last May and I don't know if it's like this for everyone else, but much like seeing a band, seeing wrestlers live to me is the true way of seeing if they "got it". His work was head and shoulders better than everyone on the card and he really won me over that night. I'm also still a huge fan of the 90's New Japan juniors style and while he's obviously not a Liger or an El Samurai as far as style, if you plugged him into a Super J Cup or J Crown, he wouldn't be out of place at all. Of course that's a backhanded compliment for someone they're trying to build into a main event heavyweight WWE guy, but that's still a long (maybe?) ways away. 

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I was referring to the talent of Rusev. His selling and psychology is really good and his character work is top notch. I don't think his success is tied to how America views Russia at the moment. He's a great brute character who's shown a wide range since losing to Cena. He can be so much more, but the same can be said of most of the roster (except Sheamus). I was wrong to think he could overcome the shitty booking though.

 

How is Nakamura's English? He'll probably struggle a little bit initially, having to work a very different style and not being able to lay in his strikes, much like Itami did right up to the period just before his injury.

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I was referring to the talent of Rusev. His selling and psychology is really good and his character work is top notch. I don't think his success is tied to how America views Russia at the moment. He's a great brute character who's shown a wide range since losing to Cena. He can be so much more, but the same can be said of most of the roster (except Sheamus). I was wrong to think he could overcome the shitty booking though.

 

How is Nakamura's English? He'll probably struggle a little bit initially, having to work a very different style and not being able to lay in his strikes, much like Itami did right up to the period just before his injury.

Nakamura speaks pretty good English.

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I'm really looking forward to seeing Nakamura come over here. Dude has so much natural charisma, even if he didn't speak a word of english I think he could still get over. If his english is good enough to cut promos... sky's the limit. 

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Trying to think of something for Nak to do - We still don't know who attacked Itami do we? The leading suspects were Owens and Balor, with the former "jumping the line" and the latter "taken over by the Demon" and out of control. But there were a couple of other guys in the parking lot. We see them in the video of Itami.

 

Dash and Dawson.

 

Maybe Itami looked at them the wrong way, maybe they just saw an easy target, but maybe they took him out. And now Itami needs a partner (Balor being busy defending the NXT Title) to help him get revenge and win the NXT Tag Team titles...

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It's one thing to say you don't like it. It's another to act like it's not working or not over.

 

What are the best Anderson/Gallows as a tag team matches? I wanna watch some.

 

I hate to say this because I like the team, am really high on Anderson and have tried real hard to like Gallows. However, the next good Doc Gallows match that I see will be the first. He's like a less-crazy Jim Niedhart in the Hart Foundation, he's a big guy that looks imposing, and yeah, he looks imposing. Just as could have swapped out Niedhart with any guy of his size and it would have worked just as well, the same can be said of Gallows. I'm not saying that Anderson is on the level of Brett Hart, but he is a very smart worker in tag matches that knows how to get the most out of his opponents and his partner. You could stick Bad Luck Fale in there (who I think is about as useful as teats on a boar hog) and it would work just as well. Watch any of their tag matchs and two things leap out, how good the overall quality of the match is and how limited Doc really is, but it doesn't matter; Anderson sets the tempo so that whenever Gallows is in, it's only to do the limited power moves that he can do and then he gets him the hell out before he can screw anything up. The whole is much, much greater than the the sum of its parts, and I really have to go back to the Hart Foundation for another prominent tag-team where there is such a talent discrepancy but the team still works in spite of it.

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On the one hand, "He's Japanese...let's pair him with our other Japanese guy!" is lazy, shitty booking of the sort that WWE has been far too prone to.On the other hand, that's what got us the New Day, so fuck it, make the best of it, I guess?

I still say he comes in as Enzo's cousin.

"And this right here? This is Cousin Sal. And he's Japanese. And I can't explain that."

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That said, as I mentioned in the Wrestle Kingdom thread, it's hard to imagine two worse guys for the WWE to pick up than Anderson and Gallows. Actually, Fale would be worse, and the WWE is supposedly interested in him. Anderson is a pretty good wrestler, but both guys don't have enough personality to fill a thimble. They're gonna flop like Tensai did upon his return. They're TNA-level, at best.

 

 

They're perfectly suited to be the muscle behind Styles/Finn/whoever else they put them with in the future and there's value in that. They're not gonna be top guys outside of a stable, but that's ok.

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Surely Anderson & Gallows will be NXT exclusive talent and Karl's most likely being hired because he's best buddies with Finn. Kinda like when Punk got Colt his WWE gig. According to the interview Shinsuke Nakamura was buddies with Finn to so it seems Hunter went to Finn and asked who they should sign from New Japan and he vouched for his buddies.

Not that Finn's word didn't likely help, but haven't Bernard and Bryan been pushing for WWE to go after Anderson & Nakamura for a while now?

 

On the one hand, "He's Japanese...let's pair him with our other Japanese guy!" is lazy, shitty booking of the sort that WWE has been far too prone to.

On the other hand, that's what got us the New Day, so fuck it, make the best of it, I guess?

New Day was Woods' & Big E's idea.

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INakamura entering The Rumble as The Authority's hired gun just makes so much sense. H looks so unassuming from a physical looking standpoint so no one will expect him to dominate Reigns. Playing him as a mercenary that wins the Rumble and then plays tweener champ by ignoring the Authority title would be amazing ... and thus will never happen

 

James

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