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NJPW Power Struggle 2017 (With Super Junior Tag Action!)


Raziel

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35 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

No - different surprise

Switchblade was revealed to be

  Reveal hidden contents

Jay White

 

Yeah, I turned it off midway through because I wanted to finish iZombie (<_<). That's... considerably less surprising.

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People are already biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitching away about Jericho tainting NJPW and how the match will suck and how this will hurt the company. Oh fuck that noise. He will have his working boots on, lord knows Omega won't "wear his t-shirt" for a fucking Dome show match, and the company will make beaucoup money from overseas subscriptions. 

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23 minutes ago, Rick said:

As much as everybody wanted the Ibushi match, I'm all in on Jericho. Massive statement going into 2018 by NJPW.

That’s the right way to look at it. I’m trying to coax my rational brain into shouting it at the part of me that is admittedly a little disappointed—If you can book Jericho for this, you do it. 100% of the time.

I also thought Jay White looked a little “junior era Omega cosplay” with the leather duster, too-small gloves, silver hair accents... I’m not super stoked on him in general, but if they think he’s ready for this spot, I’ll trust the direction.

But, WK is still a ways off. This show happened! But I only woke up in time to see the last two matches.

—Omega and Trent was good, but I feel like we’re getting something of a trend now, where Omega matches kinda struggle to bridge the gap between opening work and the sprint finish. A twenty minute match shouldn’t need an apron piledriver, table bump, and jay-driller to transition into the v-trigger phase. But, that phase worked for me, which it basically always does. 

—I loved Tana/Ibushi. Which, I was always gonna. The usual things people might complain about were here—not selling the knee enough, too much move spamming from Tana—but I’ve never really minded those tendencies. The semi-sloppy avalanche rana and powerbomb counter(?) even worked for me, by way of communicating fatigue and damage. And the escalation! We get so many fighting spirit strike exchanges, it’s very hard to stand out; but this one really did, perhaps because Tana doesn’t usually go there. But this felt urgent enough to need it, and it added to that urgency, so I was really gripped by the whole finishing stretch. Ibushi is awesome, even if he limps really weird; and goddamn, Tana really doesn’t need to bump like that anymore, but.

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So I assume that the match is already 6 stars.  Hopefully Jericho is actually serious in this match.   seems like a real waste of Omega

To me this is New Japan doing their version of AJ Styles vs Shane McMahon on their biggest show of the year.   Except that WM it was the first match on show, here it will probably be the main event.

 

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1 hour ago, hammerva said:

To me this is New Japan doing their version of AJ Styles vs Shane McMahon on their biggest show of the year.   Except that WM it was the first match on show, here it will probably be the main event.

 

Do you seriously believe that?  I'm not a huge Jericho fan but this is a brilliant move by New Japan and it'll definitely get some outside interest.  And Jericho with a broken arm is a better worker than Shane McMahon.  I'm all for hyperbole, but c'mon.

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It wasn't about comparing the two wrestlers.  Everyone knows Jericho is better than Shane in almost everything wrestling.   It is about having your #1 or #2 guy  in a match on the show that is always called the show of the year months before it actually happens facing a one and done guy.   

At least we don't have to deal with the WWE logic of Jericho having to get his win in like most of his feuds.

 

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3 minutes ago, hammerva said:

It wasn't about comparing the two wrestlers.  Everyone knows Jericho is better than Shane in almost everything wrestling.   It is about having your #1 or #2 guy  in a match on the show that is always called the show of the year months before it actually happens facing a one and done guy.   

 

Okada’s the top guy, without question. After him it’s Naito, and maybe still Tanahashi. Omega is a star in Japan, but he’s only their number one in North America—which this is designed to emphasize. The thinking is that he’s their bridge, and Jericho is still a big name here who will help do that.

It’s still not what I WANT exactly, but let’s not pretend it’s bad business.

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2 hours ago, hammerva said:

So I assume that the match is already 6 stars.  Hopefully Jericho is actually serious in this match.   seems like a real waste of Omega

To me this is New Japan doing their version of AJ Styles vs Shane McMahon on their biggest show of the year.   Except that WM it was the first match on show, here it will probably be the main event.

You are 1000% crazy if you think anything other than Okada/Naito will main the Dome. 

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While I'm not thrilled with the prospect of the actual Omega/Jericho match, I feel like more outrage should be directed at Jay White getting the IC title shot.  I mean, it's become a standard Gedo trope to hotshot guys returning from excursion straight into title matches (and they usually win), but putting him straight into what will be the 2nd or 3rd match from the top at WK12 is a total WTF.

On the flip side, I at least understand the logic of booking Jericho in this spot if you can get him.  That's going to drive way more buyers to WK than Omega/Ibushi, even if Jericho "with his working boots on" still won't be capable of putting on a match 1/8th as good as Omega/Ibushi*.

(*Actual scientific data)

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People criticized Omega for going 100 mph with Suzuki during the G1 when Suzuki was not capable of going that fast. It'll be fascinating to see how he adapts to Jericho. Chris is kind of delusional (and that's probably how he got so far in the first place) in that he was trying stuff his body couldn't pull off all that well this year in WWE. Does he try to keep up with the young athlete? Do they slow it down and work a different match? Or do they find a comfort zone in the middle? 

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5 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

People criticized Omega for going 100 mph with Suzuki during the G1 when Suzuki was not capable of going that fast. It'll be fascinating to see how he adapts to Jericho. Chris is kind of delusional (and that's probably how he got so far in the first place) in that he was trying stuff his body couldn't pull off all that well this year in WWE. Does he try to keep up with the young athlete? Do they slow it down and work a different match? Or do they find a comfort zone in the middle? 

I can't see Kenny slowing down for anybody, especially not in a huge WK match where he knows there will be a lot of NJPW laymen tuning in for Jericho who want to see what all his hype is about.  And Jericho will 100% try to keep up and just be an awkward, flailing mess.  It's going to be just like the Jericho/AJ matches where it's just a matter of if the other guy can be amazing enough that you overlook the out-of-shape middle-aged dude trying to wrestle like the cool kids.

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So how about thoughts on the show?

-I thought Tanahashi/Ibushi was great.  I've never been one of those guys who seems to think that just because you get a body part worked over, you should never be able to use it.  As long as you remember that it hurts and act like it's causing you at least some hinderance, I'm good, and I thought Ibushi did that here.  I thought they had a really good structure, with Tana owning him until Ibushi was able to hit the top-rope rana, lawn dart (RIP Tanahashi's vertebrae), and dead lift German in pretty quick succession to get even going into the finish.  Ibushi holding Red Shoes' hand to stop the count and staring him down while continuing to kick the shit out of Tanahashi was first-class pro wres.

-Omega/Beretta was probably the best case scenario for what it was.  The crowd bit a couple falls on the Dude Buster and a late roll-up, which is more than could be said for poor Yoshi-Hashi when he got his shot.  I enjoyed Kenny in cocky asshole mode in the beginning and kill mode at the end, but there was still a lot of the usual Kenny weirdness, like Jay Drillers being used in the middle of a minor title defense and huge moves being used as transitions to other huge moves.  In this case, the piledriver on the apron (which has been put over as death in the build up and during the match by the announcers) should be a big swing in the match for Beretta, but only ends up being a transition to Kenny moving out of the way for Beretta to crash and burn through the table, so Kenny can go right back on offense.  *shrug*

-Suzuki/Yano was exactly what it needed to be, and short of Yano winning, I was pretty happy with it.  As long as Suzuki-gun shenanigans are confined to just a couple of matches, I'm fine with them.  Although I'm wondering where literally any other member of Chaos besides Goto was when the 2nd round of run-ins started.

-Ospreay/Scurll was exactly what I expected it to be, and that was the same brand of dogshit they always peddle out there.  That 4-way at WK could be pretty fun, though.  And what a difference a year makes for Hiromu, right?  Last year, he debuted as a borderline psychotic weirdo, now he's a goofball who does comedy bits.  He seems to make it work for him, either way.

-Bucks/Lee&Titan was a fun sprint, if a step down from the great match Lee and Titan had with LIJ a week ago.  And Bucks/R3K makes a lot of sense for WK.

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Your World Tag League entrants:

Bracket A:
Juice Robinson/Sami Callihan
SANADA/EVIL
Yuji Nagata/ Manabu Nakanishi
Yujiro/Hangman Page
TenCozy
Bad Luck Fale/Chase Owens
Minoru Suzuki/Takashi Iizuka
Hirooki Goto/YOSHI-HASHI


Bracket B:
Killer Elite Squad
War Machine
Jeff Cobb/ Michael Elgin
Best Friends
Henare/ Togi Makabe
Toru Yano/Tomohiro Ishii
Guerrillas of Destiny
Katsuya Kitamura/David Finlay

 

Sami Callihan, Chuck Taylor, and Jeff Cobb making their NJPW debuts.

 

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