lostinube

Not much by way of surprises at New Year Dash.

Speaking of commentary, because this was a "joint" AEW/NJPW/CMLL show Miki Motoi got to do the show for the Japanese side as she is one of the hosts of NJPW World's AEW recap show. Like the Fantastica Mania shows, her role is to provide background info on the outsiders for NJPW fans. I don't watch that much AEW or WWE but I'm pretty sure this is the only major show involving either that will have a female commentator on it (as opposed to someone doing a guest spot).

With regards to rocket strapping, pretty much every other big Japanese promotion has done that in the past couple of years. NOAH, AJPW and Dragongate have all put their main belts on guys with less than five years of experience (the Saito Brothers are nearly 40 though). The only trend New Japan has been following is putting guys into units really early or even before they go on an excursion. Dragongate has taken that to a new level with putting a guy into ZBratz on his very first show.

Good thing someone saved all those because he deleted all his tweets once the show was finished.

New Year Dash is coming up tomorrow so we'll see a bit more of what is to come in 2025 then.

Show is over:

Is it the first time having the beer girls during WK? I don't remember seeing them before. They are usually a baseball thing so it makes sense that they have them on call for anything at the Dome. I think because I was unsure about who was going to win the main that it didn't feel that long to me.

Whew.

There's not much of an archive right now. The easiest thing is to just go with what they recommend by decade. They have a bunch of older shows but they are not in full.

They are an upper mid-tier j-rock band. In Japan the biggest acts can do dome tours (six domes in all). Base Ball Bear is more of a Zepp level band. Zepp is a network of concert halls across the country. They usually hold about 2000 or so each. In wrestling terms, it's kind of like a promotion that can reliably run Korakuen but beyond that is probably not something they can do on their own.

Nathan Rabin: On The Wings Of Pretension Case File #5: Kiss’ Music From “The Elder”

Sekimoto had a run with the Kyushu Pro title this year: The title win: Versus Mentai Kid The title loss (it's the entire anniversary show)

I think they record their shows but as far as I can tell, they have no streaming service and they've only put out an Onita 50th Anniversary DVD. I don't think we've seen footage of the Dory Funk Jr match from this year, only photos.

Taichi has come a long way since the crowds were constantly chanting for him to gtfo. The SANADA turn doesn't work nearly as well if the crowd didn't totally buy into Taichi winning.

Shota vs Claudio Castagnoli for Wrestle Dynasty is set. Probably means Shota is losing to ZSJ but you never know.

At the very least, Ralph Macchio and William Zabka were not there because they are fans of the sweet science.

At some point, Jake's team had to know that Mike was not the Mike of old. They really really could have shown that they support women's boxing by putting Serrano/Taylor as the main. Netflix wouldn't have wanted it but they could have tried or made a show of trying to do it.

The inter-promotional match up the world is waiting for. And by inter-promotional I mean Prime vs Wooooo.

He probably never wanted to actually KO Mike because he knows that all that would do is generate sympathy and concern for Mike.. Getting the fight and getting it on Netflix was enough of a win for Paul.

All I wanted was for Jake to not knock Mike out. Good enough.

Oof. Mike looked old in Round 3.

So far it's fine for me but that may be because no one in Japan really cares about the fight.

Konosuke Takeshita vs Shingo Takagi, has possibly been added to Wrestle Kingdom post Fighting Spirit Unleashed. Jack Perry challenged Yota Tsuji to a match at Wrestle Dynasty while David Finlay issued an open challenge for the 5th. All that together means it doesn't look like Tsuji is winning on the 4th.

NJPW World Tag League Teams Block A Goto/YOSHI-HASHI Umino/Honma Alex Zayne/X Takagi/Tsuji ZSJ/Oiwa Cobb/Callum Kidd/SANADA KENTA/Owens Block B Tanahashi/Jado Yano/Oleg Naito/Takahashi Taichi/Taka Nicholls/Haste O-Khan/HENARE Tome Fillip/Stevie Fillip EVIL/Narita