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NJPW Power Struggle 2018 Now with Super Junior Tag League Action


Raziel

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I kid but if this is what they're going to do with the guy he'd be better served going to AJPW and pissing off Akiyama in the upper midcard. 

Crowd was really quiet for an Osaka audience and I agree that Naito seemed uninspired. Post G1 NJPW is pretty rough still even when Gedo books big matches. 

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1 hour ago, FlaeBlazer said:

So I guess they’re hotshotting it onto Ibushi before the Dome to still get that Ibushi/Ospreay match. 

Unless the match is night of Tag League finals (removing Goto and Ibushi from the league), there's no place to actually run that match before the Dome.

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27 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Unless the match is night of Tag League finals (removing Goto and Ibushi from the league), there's no place to actually run that match before the Dome.

Road to Tokyo Dome shows? I remember they quickly did a NEVER Six-Man title change last year so they could get that match on the card.

I really hope they don’t do Ibushi/Goto at the Dome. I’ve never been impressed by their matches together.

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Wasn't their G1 match awesome? Either way, Goto hasn't really "earned" a marquee singles match with his output beyond some great G1 matches this year. He should be Yano's tag partner at this stage.

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3 hours ago, Oyaji said:

Wasn't their G1 match awesome? Either way, Goto hasn't really "earned" a marquee singles match with his output beyond some great G1 matches this year. He should be Yano's tag partner at this stage.

It was very good but I definitely didn’t think it was awesome. It felt pretty by the numbers. Definitely not Tokyo Dome worthy.

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This is overthinking things, but if Kenny and co leave, Ibushi/Ospreay is one of the few matches fans attending MSG would feel was new enough, big enough, and workrate-y enough to justify their purchase. So, accidentally saving it might be ok. Ibushi/Goto would be fine in the mid card of WK; Goto has been great there two years in a row anyway.

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16 hours ago, Oyaji said:

I kid but if this is what they're going to do with the guy he'd be better served going to AJPW and pissing off Akiyama in the upper midcard. 

Crowd was really quiet for an Osaka audience and I agree that Naito seemed uninspired. Post G1 NJPW is pretty rough still even when Gedo books big matches. 

 

At this point I think I'd like to see Taichi over there so he could get some decent respect.  His fight against bad netplay in Fire Pro World is inspirational.  ^_^

 

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Man, I read that and felt bad for Matsumoto. Guy fucked up and knows it then gets publically humiliated by one of the in-game wrestlers. This after I'm sure he's taken months of abuse by Japanese fans. In an honor culture with incredibly high suicide rates, I legitimately worry for Matsumoto. 

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4 hours ago, FlaeBlazer said:

So this was kinda buried early with an influx of posts, but anybody else notice that Naito has put on some pounds? That gut was really hanging out. Does he just not give a shit anymore?

Well his entire year was kinda pointless and he is on the road to begin 2019 with a title he never cared about and was done with in 2017. I doubt that he doesn't care anymore, but at the same time if he stopped giving a shit I could see a reason for that.

Show looked very promising and I can't really complain about overall match quality, but nothing interesting happened and I shook my head at some booking decisions. On one hand I thought that KoPW was overbooked in that regard, but surely there is a middle ground? PS shows from earlier years had some returns and surprises, this year it was pretty much straightforward card.

Undercard was okay and I'm also happy to see Omega wrestling again and not fighting the good fight on Twitter. Okada/White also looked rather hot, but I was expecting another betrayal and nothing happened.

Tag League finals were really a variation of what we saw few times earlier this year, just replace Hiromu with Shingo. I really, really hope that since Bushi/Shingo were not pinned that they are not going to get a rematch (meaning another triple threat) at WK. I'm not sure if R3K winning here was right choice, but at the same time I can see why that happened. On the other hand what I think is weird is that they pinned tag champs now twice in a row. Are they going to do it third time at WK? Or are Desperado/Kanmeru actually going to become longer reigning jr. tag champs in the NJPW's history?

I don't get Goto's booking. If he is going over Ibushi now then thats fucked up, if he is losing then it is another shit title reign for him. Oh, and I didn't understand the match at all. Maybe I missed some translations or something, but why Taichi had lots of help in his first match and no help in this one? And one backdrop killed Goto? And if you want to get NEVER title on Ibushi so that they could do title match with Ospreay then they could just have Ibushi say that he knows that Ospreay wanted to win it and challenge him so while Ospreay is recovering he is gong to win that title from Taichi and will wait for Ospreay.

Ishii/Suzuki haven't met in singles action for some time and this year we suddenly got three matches with them. And I liked their tag team action, where they'd have shorter, focused exchanges, way more. I don't know, I'd be fine if I never saw this match again. Also, was very weird that Ishii just stormed out leaving the title behind?

Zack/Naito was cool, but Zack no selling big moves is getting a bit annoying to me. He did it against Okada's tombstone and now he did it with Frankensteiner. I don't know, in theory I guess he supposedly "rolls thru it", but to me it looks like he got hit and no sold it.

Main event was solid and probably my favourite Jericho's match in NJPW. At the same time I didn't like that Jericho won. Sure, it was obvious decision, but it is boring decision and I don't really see what Naito/Jericho II does for Naito. Another thing that was annoying to me was that we are getting more "counter finisher doesn't work as well as regular finisher". Jericho did his counter codebreker here that Evil kicked out off and he did same against Naito in Dominion. After that Evil did his finisher and Jericho kicked out, I guess it was also supposed to be counter situation that made it weaker, but when he shouts before doing it then it is 100% more effective. And well, Naito and Okada are also guilty (and probably main culprits) of that with their variations of Destino and Rainmaker.

Oh and Jericho did take some nasty stuff from Evil and worked to get him over. So while I would have preferred if Evil simply won, I think that Jericho did a good job and Evil was elevated. Well as much as one can get elevated by losing/tapping out.

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8 minutes ago, Archibald said:

L

I don't get Goto's booking. If he is going over Ibushi now then thats fucked up, if he is losing then it is another shit title reign for him. Oh, and I didn't understand the match at all. Maybe I missed some translations or something, but why Taichi had lots of help in his first match and no help in this one? And one backdrop killed Goto? And if you want to get NEVER title on Ibushi so that they could do title match with Ospreay then they could just have Ibushi say that he knows that Ospreay wanted to win it and challenge him so while Ospreay is recovering he is gong to win that title from Taichi and will wait for Ospreay.

Ibushi on Twitter actually rejected Goto’s challenge so that definitely changes things now.

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The following matches have been announced for WK13:

Naito vs. Jericho (IC Title)

Okada vs. White

KUSHIDA vs. Ishimori (Jr. HW Title)

Despy/Kanemaru vs. RPG3K vs. Shingo/BUSHI (Jr. Tag Titles)

LMAO, Gedo really couldn’t help himself and he had to make the Junior Tag Titles a 3 way. LIJ has no case to be in that match. They lost to the champions and lost in the final.

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I really hope that someone else is booking these tag matches. While I never bought into "Gedo is best booker in the world" narrative this is still very, very dumb.

I'm going to do a quick math here, after winning titles back from YBs:

R3K lost two non title matches to LiJ and SG teams.
Which lead to Anniversary triple threat and a triple threat rematch at Sakura Genesis.
After that we had SG/LiJ during Dontaku tour and SG/R3K at Dominion.
Each team faced each other in Tag League and all three teams made into the finals causing another triple threat.
For WK we get triple threat rematch.
Only other junior team do anything this year was Tiger/Liger and their two matches against SG team.

In something like 10 months we are going to get 11 matches from these 3 teams. And I think it is very likely that team that won't get pinned will ask for a rematch on one of the New Beginning shows. So possibly 12 matches in less than a year. It is as if someone looked at heavyweight tag team division last year and thought that hey, I need to double down on that shit. At least 3 junior teams are way better than KES/GoD/War Machine.

Speaking about heavyweight tags. When LiJ lost the finals and main event my initial thought was that maybe Bushi is going to pre-show rumble again and Evil/Sanada/Shingo will be in the gauntlet. But now Evil and Sanada don't have a match. So my guess would be that they are either going to win WTL again or will politicize themselves into the tag titles match at WK. And you know who else is going to do that? Young Bucks because "YOUNG BUCKS ARE THE BEST TAG TEAM IN THE WORLD". So I think that at a minimum we are going to get LiJ/YBs/GoD triple threat at WK as well and I won't be surprised if fourth team will get added to the mix.

This is not NJPW not having enough good tag teams, not giving enough time to them or not caring about the division. Gedo, or someone else responsible for this, clearly thinks that this is how this thing is supposed to work and this is what people want from NJPW's tag team divisions. And if NJPW one day decided to merge both tag team division then only thing that would change is that instead of triple threats we'd get Fatal 5-ways.

And going back to junior tags. Now I kinda feel that LiJ are winning at the WK. R3K won the tournament, Desperado/Kanemaru will enter as the champs and LiJ will walk out as the champs so each team will get something and will be somewhat "protected". And after that R3K will go back into chase mode again since they are yet to pin LiJ team.

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If not Gedo, who is the best booker in the world? I don't think anybody is saying he is not without flaws (particularly tag divisions) and he hasn't had an excellent 2018, but the state of booking is so bad right now across the board. 

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21 minutes ago, Oyaji said:

If not Gedo, who is the best booker in the world? I don't think anybody is saying he is not without flaws (particularly tag divisions) and he hasn't had an excellent 2018, but the state of booking is so bad right now across the board. 

NXT booking  ).

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Yeah, I am leaving for work but I disagree big time about that. Plus it's a lot easier to build to four or five big shows a year without worrying about making money than NJPW's schedule and roster size.

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4 hours ago, Oyaji said:

If not Gedo, who is the best booker in the world? I don't think anybody is saying he is not without flaws (particularly tag divisions) and he hasn't had an excellent 2018, but the state of booking is so bad right now across the board. 

I don't know honestly and it is not that important. I'm not annoyed by people who say that Gedo is good booker that sometimes makes mistakes, but other bookers tend to fuck up more often. I'm fine with that. What I don't like is some NJPW superfans dismissing any criticism of the booking by saying that Gedo is the best and that maybe you should be more patient.

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I've usually been one for "Patience with NJPW Booking", but fuck the sucking up to Elite booking mixed with sticking the IC title into limbo with Jericho and his only showing up like 4 times, with a side of uninsprired US shows because of the Elite ass kissing and an extra helping of Okada as Ricky Vaughn finding his fastball again having no logical end unless White's going over him at the Dome. It's gotten annoying that NJPW went from can't miss a couple years ago to "maybe I'll check out a couple matches that were nicely reviewed" because I just can't stay into a whole show anymore.

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Patience usually pays off with NJPW a hell of a lot more than the competition because they have a good record with long term booking and there are examples of results getting fan blowback at the time that retroactively turned out fine. This doesn't really apply to the years-long neglect of the tag division. Giving the tag titles its own 'division' of teams assembled from singles nearly-men to make room for a trillion singles belts is one of the Americanisms I never wanted. With the swelling of talent vying for the top of the card pre-assembled into factions you'd think a stronger set of tag titles would be a no-brainer.

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3 hours ago, Raziel said:

 an extra helping of Okada as Ricky Vaughn finding his fastball again having no logical end unless White's going over him at the Dome. 

I actually think Okada’s winning at the Dome. It bet it will be the return of “the Rainmaker”.

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