A.M.B.

Ospreay looking a lot more British now.

Schaub’s an easy target, there’s plenty of better educated people that agree with him. However you feel I think both sides have an arguement. The first knockdown is one of the most bizarre reactions I’ve seen in a fight in a long time.

Never mind there was a Craig H(erwill?) I used to buy bootlegs from back in the day. Definitely not Ditch, a lot of the BJW on Ditch’s site was uploaded by me. But Craig H brought classic Big Japan to the masses. Anyway. Can’t wait for Ryan Hall’s next fight in two years. Hope I’m wrong.

This year I’m most interested in the 145 and 155 pound divisions and where they’re gonna go (as usual). That said, it sucks that there’s such a log jam at 155 and now Dana’s talking about doing Conor/Khabib rematch. It really shouldn’t surprise me, but I just want to see Khabib defend his belt against fresh blood and different styles. Specifically wrestlers. Would love to see Gaethje pick up a few big wins and get there, while he may not be the overall number one contender there’s something I really like about that fight, as we’ve never seen Gaethje get held down. Somehow I see that being a tougher fight for Khabib than Tony or Porier. Really excited to see Gregor Gillespie’s next fight too, it kinda bums me out that Alexander Hernandez is getting the Cowboy fight at just 2-0 in the UFC vs. Gillespie’s 5-0. Yancy’s a decent name but Gregor’s 31, undefeated and unranked in a lighter division with great credentials and hype, so I’d be booking him with a tiny bit more urgency. Hopefully he dominates his next fight and gets a guy like Kevin Lee after that, dude has been nothing but impressive.

Random af but it’s good to see you still posting here Craig H, haven’t been on this board in years and finding your BJW vids on Limewire back in the day was what got me into puroresu. Jon Jones is likely taking Cheque Drops, I can’t believe there is any doubt he is dirty when he’s popped 3 times and has 2 brothers who have popped as well. How is any of this hard to wrap your head around? Not to mention Jamie combs through and deletes every single comment mentioning Cheque Drops on Joe “You can’t stop the internet” Rogan’s podcast with Novitsky.

Going to see Sekimoto/Okabayashi vs. Sato/Ishikawa for the BJW tag titles in two days, might as well reserve this spot for our new MOTY.

Doing a presentation for a Japanese culture class on puroresu and Japanese MMA and how they are intertwined, was wondering if all you kind folk could help me out with some of the most quintessential puroresu and JMMA photos. Like Kobashi getting back dropped kind of stuff. FMW, Pride, Joshi, all that good shit.

Repeated injuries combined with being in NOAH, which gets very little attention. Can't think of anything he's done post Misawa that really stood out, and while I feel sorry for him having to deal with retiring, I can't say I'll miss him as he never seemed to take off like he should have after the ROH title run.

I know very little about WAR but have been wanting to check it out for a long time, as my impression of it is that they had a whole bunch of super heated quality tags with a random assortment of wrestlers.

Naito is really frustrating to watch. He has all the tools to be the best. Great move set, athleticism, and if landing on your head is a skill, he's second to none in the business, but goddamn does he need some charisma.

Well Ishikawa vs. Okabayashi was amazing. I can already see this being the most overlooked match of the year. Get on it, people.

Okabayashi vs. Ishikawa....WOW http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2hv9l1_shuji-ishikawa-c-vs-yuji-okabayashi-bjw_sport My goodness. Was expecting this to a nice, stiff, fun match, but nothing on this level. So many bombs thrown in this match, this might have surpassed Ibushi/Nakamura as MOTY for me.

When Bryan was slapping around Reigns it took me back to watching Gaea Girls, I was screaming for Reigns to hit him back. Bix relayed a story from Samoa Joe recently about how Shinya Hashimoto said the most important aspect of wrestling is THE FIRE and I thinks that's why I haven't connected to Reigns' character.. He has his few big spots and his posing between them, but I would love to see a more competitive edge from Reigns, especially if he's gonna be shoved down our throats as a babyface. I'm not asking him to no sell a back drop driver but c'mon, a little fighting spirit would go a long way. He reminds me of Orton in that they would greatly benefit from working a more aggressive style but they instead work slow, plodding matches where they pander to the hard cam way too much.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2fcghe_daisuke-sekimoto-yuji-okabayashi-vs-shuji-ishikawa-kohei-sato-bjw_sport This thread needs more STRONG BJ!!! Okabayashi killing it here! He's coming for the Strong Title! Yuj vs. Shuj for the title to be uploaded soon!

Any time I see anything NWA related on a New Japan card I skip it. That Bruce Tharpe dude is super annoying, way too many cocky gaijin heels in New Japan now.

Yoshihito Sasaki has been removed from Big Japan's roster page. I think I'm going to cry Maybe he has secretly retired. Uuuuuggggghhhhh.

It definitely could alter your performance, for better or worse, if you are high at the time of fighting, and it's kinda hard to pin point when the last time someone smoked is just by a drug test. So I think that's some of the problem. But yeah, the current standards are pretty silly, especially considering it's basically legal in California and legitimately legal is a few other states.

I remember on my 16th birthday I saw him vs. Kevin Steen in PWG 8 years ago, and on that same show El Generico won the world title. Steen put over Pac after the match, telling him to throw some money his way when Pac is rich and famous one day. I remember thinking, well, that's a bit of a stretch Maybe he'll make some decent money in Japan, but WWE wouldn't be interested in his style. And here I am now eating my words, and to think that Generico and Steen are employed by WWE as well is really just mind blowing, and such a happy ending even if they don't make it far.

Watching BJW 12/30, the opening rookie match is lots of fun as the super green young boys have discovered FIRE. They've been pretty timid and vanilla in their first few matches but up the intensity here and look significantly better because of it. Good to see Big Japan pumping out three new rookies who are all distinctly different from each other. Oshita is a good kicker, Sakuta is a surprisingly agile little pitbull, and Sekifuta is an agile albeit unpolished flyer. I think Sakuta, the one in the singlet, is gonna be their next guy to enter deathmatches. This SAGAT dude is terrible, the one time I want to see Ito recklessly stiff someone and he only does one move on him, which is his finish.

Some I haven't seen mentioned yet Samoa Joe vs. Jay Briscoe, At Our Best (An obvious candidate IMO) Austin Aries vs. Samoa Joe, Fina Battle Low Ki/Homicide vs. Lethal/Samoa Joe, Manhatten Mayhem Low Ki/Homicide vs. Lethal/Samoa Joe, Punk: The Final Chapter Kobashi vs. Joe Roderick Strong vs. James Gibson, Unforgettable Danielson vs. Strong, This Means War Embassy vs. Gen Next, Steel Cage Warfare KENTA vs. Low-Ki, Final Battle Danielson vs. Strong, Supercard of Honor Do Fixer vs. Blood Generation, Supercard of Honor Cabana vs, Homcide, Better than our Best Danielson vs. Delirious, 100th Show (Forget which of this series was best tbh but I remember loving the matches) CZW vs. ROH, 100th show Homicide vs. Necro, Ring of Homicide Aries/Strong vs. Briscoes, Destiny CZW vs. ROH Cage of Death BJ Whitmer vs. Necro Butcher, War of the Wire Danielson vs. Nigel, Unified Joe vs. Strong, GBH V Night 1 KENTA vs. Danielson, GBH V Night 2 Aries/Strong vs. KENTA/Davey, Honor Reclaims Boston Morishima vs Joe, Fifth Year Festival Cabana vs. Jacobs, FYF Chicago Nigel vs. Rave, FYF Liverpool Morishima vs. Nigel, Fighting Spirit Morishima vs. Aries, Battle of St. Paul Briscoes vs. MCMG, Good Times, Great Memories Morishima vs. Shingo Good Times, Great Memories

Pretty much. Seems like he always wants to return but is very injury prone. We could see him back for a few more matches but I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't.

The match caption in the intro basically translated to man on man man-meeting.

What Japanese wrestler doesn't? Seriously, that was one of my first impressions when I saw some of the merch being sold in Korakuen. Every wrestler is gay4pay. Thanks for the pic though. The moonsault one of course...

Echo all those sentiments. Started out alright, but once things got grumpy everything was taken to the next level. Can't wait to hear JR call that one on rewatch. So goddamn crazy.

Anyone have a good pic of Ibushi's balcony moonsault from Peter Pan 2012? You would think finding a pic of a spot that crazy and memorable would be easy but can't find one anywhere, looks like Yahoo Sports doesn't archive that far back.