sevendaughters

yeah it was the first song that drew me in, but most people I've played this to prefer the last track. glad you got round to it, lamp!

I read that this deal covers the UK as well (or is a separately-negotiated deal) and we don't have HBO Max.

i love this thread every year so i hope things are all in order for your return. best wishes to your sister. i even like it when you don't like records i like! the Cindy Lee album was top 10 for me. really gorgeous songwriting. would have gone higher but noise interludes wear thin on me. my #1 is All Hands Around The Moment by Richard Youngs and Raül Refree

someone does need to lose the briefcase but it will be such a blow to anyone who does, a perceptible loss of confidence in someone who wins a gruelling tournament. they've painted themselves into a corner with the G1 winner = Dome main event. There's less time between now and then so might not seem like as much of the year is pointless.

I think Ibushi goes over there. Ibushi beat him in the G1 final but Jay has two (admittedly lesser) wins since on night 2 of the Dome and in the G1 blocks this year. I hope Jay tries to outwrestle him, ie. no interference.

They should look to move forward with Ibushi-Naito-Okada as their three pillars, Sanada, Shingo, Tanahashi, EVIL, and White are top class heaters and gatekeepers.

That's possible, @Teflon Turtle. To be honest, I don't need to see every match be this crazy all-out war. I still recall how absolutely brilliant AJ-Suzuki was with maybe 3 bumps and a whole lot of character work and classic pro wrestling dynamics. Yes, some of the guys do need to get wild for me to get into them because they're not as smart as Tanahashi or able to do what Sabre or Suzuki can with matwork, but I reckon you could have a thoroughly-entertaining night of G1 with PG rated violence. I believe some of the diktats surrounding violence came from Meij, who is now gone. Whether this changes will be interesting.

What frustrates me about Sanada beyond the two atrocious moves that he does is that I feel that, piecing bits of his career together, be it the babyface we saw in TNA, the wrestling we saw in Wrestle-1 and AJPW, and the persona we see through his social media, there is a megastar there. He is handsome, he was trained by Muta, and he can really work. I still have hope for nearly anyone in NJPW because they've shown they can heat people back up. As for EVIL - he's not a main-eventer yet. I have hopes for him beyond being a bruiser, but I am fairly bored of interefering cheaty shit, and I don't think Bullet Club signifies anything now. What I took to be an interesting and slightly post-modern gimmick is actually, in hindsight, the beginning of a conveyor belt of fairly goofy shit that leads to O Khan and Master Wato.

This is a card that could have six good matches on or only one. Imagine we're going to see some monkeyshines in the O Khan match unless Ospreay is booked elsewhere. In fact the last three matches combined could feature more interference than a '98 Nitro.

Back to Osaka for another minimal-looking card with a bit of interest scattered NJPW "POWER STRUGGLE 2020", 07.11.2020 EDION Arena Osaka 1. KOPW 2020: Toru Yano (c) vs. Zack Saber Jr. 2. NEVER Openweight Title: Minoru Suzuki (c) vs. Shingo Takagi 3. Special Singles Match: Kazuchika Okada vs. Great-O-Khan 4. IWGP US Heavyweight Title Contendership: KENTA (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi 5. Tokyo Dome IWGP Heavyweight & IWGP Intercontinental Double Title Contendership: Kota Ibushi (c) vs. Jay White 6. IWGP Heavyweight & IWGP Intercontinental Title: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. "King of Darkness" EVIL (from purolove.com)

Feel like NJPW set such a high bar with the G1 that this tournament - to me at least - feels a mite disappointing. Maybe if the crowds had been able to vocalise it would have been different. There were some things to do with match patterns and interference that I would have disliked even if the matches were taking place in front of 100000 of the loudest people on earth. For the most part I felt detached, aside from a half-dozen matches that really drew me in (I haven't finished yet, and I will). Taichi and Cobb went up in my estimation, while Juice and Evil went down. The rest stayed approximately the same, which is fine, because I like nearly everyone in the tournament to some degree.

am way behind here (don't mind spoilers, as a superior being I am here just for the art of Yujiro trudging slowly) but I skipped on to Day 13, which I heard some of the most amazing rave reviews for. I liked the show a lot but 5.25 for Ibushi-Suzuki is the final nail in the coffin of believing DAVE as an accurate match-rater. As for his claim that it was the best night of G1 blocks ever, then I just think he must be on glue.

The opening seconds of KENTA v EVIL have me thinking that while fans can't actually boo they need to limit the powdering and shitcanning the early sections of matches. There's a thousand ways to be heel but right now your job is to get these people involved. Heel vs heel match and the crowd were clapping like crazy, then KENTA rolls out of the ring and flattens them. Hope it picks up. Maybe silence is his true home, coming from NOAH.

This was the most recent match I watched (gonna try and watch the last two Night 8 matches on the train to work now) and I looooved it. Tanahashi worked Yoshihashi like he was the second coming of Kensuke Sasaki or something, working that crowd as if he could only win with them on his side, and they ate that shit up. As I get a bit older I start to feel like the mark of a great wrestler has something to do with how they get you involved in a reasonably low stakes match (like, ok, Tanahashi kayfabe needs to win, but really Tanahashi doesn't NEED to do anything) like this. Objectively it wasn't as good as Tana vs. Naito or a couple of high-end Ishii matches, but as an expression of how wrestling can be really GREAT, I loved it as much as anything I've seen since the Dome.

Up to Day 7. I'll just keep to the notables for now. - Is it me or is Yujiro showing some mild babyface fire and sympathetic traits? - Cobb v Ibushi was what this tournament perhaps needs more of: short, energetic, clean finish with not too much spam. - Willing to be patient while Okada does the 2020 version of the balloon gimmick. Bad back, new finisher (which I like!), go with it, use the G1 to test it. - Ishii v Shingo was a delight for me. Fair enough if you couldn't buy any pinfall attempt pre-finish but I just like seeing them mix it.