NJPW World Tag League 2018

[EVA]

LOL the crowd was so cold for the Young Bucks at the end, you could hear Kevin Kelly’s commentary on the Japanese feed.

[Raziel]

The better storytelling was Togi Makabe making a save for Toro Yano.  That's some deep layered shit there.

 

That building was quiet as a fucking tomb when The Elite came out for that 8 man, holy shit.

[Beech27]

The crowd felt very “midway through the G1” to me. They liked LIJ and Ospreay, but otherwise didn’t react to very much.

I liked the two singles matches as much as I’d hoped, and then I fell asleep, so maybe I’m not in a position to criticize tag league crowds. Mainly I’m stoked on how loaded the WK card is, even if the build hasn’t exactly been red hot. 

Couple more things about those singles matches, though:

—I thought Ospreay just about nailed the balance of sympathetic selling/yelping, though I didn’t like his huffy “come on motherfucker” tough guy stuff. But that’s nitpicking. He was great, and Taichi was perfect as an advantageous heel with just enough skill to remain a threat beyond his cheating. 

—Ibushi and Goto hit one another a bunch and really hard, which was cool. Goto went after the ~surgically repaired neck~ but Ibushi is creeping nearer and nearer to that main event tier where the superhuman is expected. Ibushi also leaned into the NEVER heritage with some headbutts and a very strike-centric finish. Cannot wait for him to treat Ospreay like Nakamura treated him. Have I said that several times already? Yes. But those are basically my favorite matches ever, and a clever inversion of that dynamic with flippy business as seasoning feels very MOTY to me, even underneath Tana and Kenny’s main event brilliance.

[Jiji]

That was one of the better Taichi performances in the second half of the year after he had that great start to 2018. Ospreay's selling was very good too. Super fun match that got a dead crowd into it. 

[Archibald]

I think this was one of the best Ospreay's matches in NJPW. Sure, his matches with other juniors were crazy and all that, but this felt to me like Ospreay getting very close to "I get it" territory. It felt like every little thing mattered and match had logical and strong structure.

Makabe saving Yano was funny, but then I remembered few years ago Fale and Makabe having singles match at WK and I got scared.

Rationalizations on reddit about how 3-way for the tag titles is better because running LiJ/GoD third time in a month doesn't make sense are funny. Like, if YBs wouldn't be inserted then they would have obviously ran different finals match.

Nothing was done for trios belts. Weird.

Yujiro met Naito twice this year and it looked like crowds were into it both times. Is it just me thinking that there might be something worth looking at? Obviously not a title match, but if Naito has few down months in 2019 then I think doing some short program with Yujiro might actually be cool. You know, like he had with Yoshi and Taichi this year.

And crowd was brutal. After this show you wouldn't think that Tanahashi/Omega was going to be the main event. If I remember right last year WTL finals also had dead crowd (with close to zero reaction when Jericho was beating the crap out of Kenny) until Naito/Okada did their thing and finals itself being ok like this year as well.

[Jiji]

Yup, I distinctly remember the same type of crowd last year. Even for long stretches of the finals they were dead. Nearly opposite ends of the country but same size building and reaction for the tag league finale. 

Will's had several performances of this ilk since the summer. He's really putting things together and spreading his shit out so it stands out more and we get more time to appreciate how great he is. As Beech said too, he is finding the right space for his selling. Earlier in the year it was over the top, now it's more fine tuned. 

[Jiji]

So'z for the double post but I gotta give Goto respect for his performance and how different the ending sequence was in this compared to their other matches this year. Great stuff. Very much a NEVER variant. Will and Ibushi are going to crush it at the Dome and make it way harder for Okada and White to follow them. I enjoyed how patronizing Ibushi was during UIRU'S challenge. 

[Beech27]

I think the Makabe save sets up a trios challenge for him, Yano, and... Goto, maybe? 

[FlaeBlazer]

1 hour ago, Archibald said:

And the crowd was brutal. After this show you wouldn't think that Tanahashi/Omega was going to be the main event. If I remember right last year WTL finals also had dead crowd (with close to zero reaction when Jericho was beating the crap out of Kenny) until Naito/Okada did their thing and finals itself being ok like this year as well.

Even at Power Struggle, OSAKA wasn’t that hot for Kenny/Tana confrontations. This match doesn’t have a lot of heat. This match might be the least over Dome main event on years. Okada/Tana, Okada/Omega, and definitely Okada/Naito all felt like way bigger matches and got better crowd reactions.

[Jiji]

Omega needs to be around more. I think it'll surpass all but one of those matches in terms of quality but Omega's extended absences really hurts the promotion. With AEW it'll probably get worse rather than better next year if that's how things unfold. 

[Godfrey]

21 hours ago, Oyaji said:

Omega needs to be around more. I think it'll surpass all but one of those matches in terms of quality but Omega's extended absences really hurts the promotion. With AEW it'll probably get worse rather than better next year if that's how things unfold. 

Agreed. I respected Omega doing a tour of the indies to promote New Japan, but if the result is the champ isn't over in his own promotion then it's not a net positive.

[Beech27]

A couple thoughts on the post-pressers:

—EVIL and SANADA try their best to make the Bucks make sense, saying they don’t mind the inclusion since they can now avenge their two previous defeats. They assert that, although they’re still singles wrestlers, they make the tag league a bigger deal by being in it, and that’s important to them. They take after Naito by critiquing the company but weirdly being very concerned for its welfare, by the standards of ungovernable persons.

—Speaking of big stars not in the tournament... both Kenny and Kota expressed that they’d have liked to do it, but of course they couldn’t take the prize, so why? They also referred to their singles defenses as the “next best thing” to tagging at WK, which is a slightly odd thing for the guy who will enter last on the whole show to say. Most notably neither one wished Kota had won the G1 so they could face one another.

[Jenalysis]

I agree on Ospreay turning the corner this year, and going from a guy I kinda loathed to a guy I now like (even if I wanted Taichi to win because I have a soft spot for Taichi because he's what I'd probably have ended up as if I tried it- a cheap heat-getting midcard heel who spends too much time on games)

Ospreay/Ibushi is going to be MOTN, and Ospreay will be in the G1 next year (and Taichi will be left out again)

 

[quackhell]

Watched every damn match of this tournament and after all that all I have to say is: "Fuck the Bucks."

[Jiji]

Just wading into this now but Chris Charlton with the call of his life when Yano tears off Taichi's pants:

"We nearly saw some dangerous D from Dangerous T!" Unbelievable, Jeff.