lostinube

WWE jobber Shinsuke Nakamura will be back in NOAH for their New Year's Day show to face former MMA guy Ulka Sasaki.

I'm going to assume that since Max is not a streaming service in and of itself in Japan this won't really affect the weekly shows getting put on NJPW World (on a delay and depending on how busy New Japan is at any given time). In order to see all the seasons of Larry's Midlife Crisis, people here have to subscribe to U-Next, which is a mish-mash of the old U-Next which had like movies and stuff, TBS (the Japanese one), some NHK and some Max (and not TV Asahi, New Japan's main TV partner). On the other hand, U-Next does handle PPV (UFC, Bellator) and currently, other then Forbidden Door, you have to get the AEW PPVs via Fite. So as a U-Next subscriber I would at least have an easier option (and also a way to use my monthly points) if they started carrying the PPVs there. Similarly, unless something has drastically changed Netflix Japan is not getting the WWE anytime soon as it appears that ABEMA has the WWE locked in for the time being. And just as an fyi, when it becomes time to go to PIP on the AEW episodes, NJPW World just shows a title card, like someone at TV Asahi was offended at the very idea of PIP.

Longtime Hong Kong actor Norman Chu passed away at 73. Shaw Brothers fans will know him from the Bastard Swordsman movies and the various parts he played. He is one of the students recruited by San Te in the 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Outside of Shaws, he may be best known for his role as the Japanese swordsman Hashimoto in Ching Siu-Tung's Duel to the Death. He kept making movies up until last year. He was the Black Judge in 2022s CGI kung fu fest Song of the Assassins. https://www.hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=4442&display_set=eng

Jake Lee has officially signed with New Japan.

Didn't see this at the time but Naruki Doi plays a bad guy who gets to throw down with Saori Izawa of the Baby Assassins movie (and soon TV) series.

Much like Voldemort, JKR has risen...to tweet out an article about Khelif and her photoshoot from a substack so pretentious it should be a Nick Bockwinkel heel promo. JFC. This and the Raygun story have fueled separate machines that will keep chugging until the end of the internet.

Not to be crass but JK Rowling is rich enough to afford protection, unlike the boxers at the Olympics that she pointed her keyboard at and tried to cast "transphobius!" at. Anyway, clearly, the only solution to all this is for Elon Musk to have to box Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting in a triple threat match.

Tsuji/Takeshita is the main event tonight with Takagi/O-Khan as the semi-main. Before that, Hartley Jackson, who has been doing shots with AJPW, GLEAT, Zero-1 and others, will be teaming with Zack against Finlay and Gedo in a meeting of the block winners.

The diver case was in the US though. She's filing this in France. And Elon didn't own his own social media platform at the time. And he's already in hot water with the British government over misinformation. https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/jk-rowling-elon-musk-imane-khelif-lawsuit-1236105185/

Block B is set:

Different kanji for Yuki, so no foul.

Dunno but it's kind of sort of associated with GCW? Anyway, the long sleeved version costs 7,700 yen (can't find the short sleeved one). https://store.haoming.jp/?pid=178410472 That reminds me, in the early Marigold behind the scenes training stuff, someone (Mirai? I forget) was always wearing WWE t-shirts that were most likely souvenirs that Rossy brought back from Wrestlemania.

There's a Eurosport piece of art that has memorable moments from the Olympics that has gotten criticism online because it completely ignored the Chinese and Japanese teams (the only Asian is Kim Yeji, the Korean shooting gold medalist who went viral) but does have Raygun.

With a couple of exceptions (mainly the situations happening in their home countries), most of the competitors on the b-girls side were in the upper ranks of the World Championships held in 2023. Raygun and her main competitor, Holy Molly are way down there. I've seen stuff online that say it should have been Holy Molly but either way, Australia was going to get smoked. At least this way it was memorable, I suppose.

It was confirmed by the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers Jackie Chan mentioned his passing very briefly in a post he made to Weibo about celebrating the anniversary of the Yuen Clan and that was how the general public found out. Of the "bunch of HK martial arts movies" that he directed: Ninja in the Dragon's Den, Yes, Madam!, Righting Wrongs and the Fong Sai Yuk movies. He was the martial arts director on Dragon Lord, Zu (the original one) and Eastern Condors. He was also the action director for John Woo's Red Cliff movies. And he introduced Jean-Claude Van Damme to the wider world via the first No Retreat, No Surrender movie. https://hkmdb.com/db/people/view.mhtml?id=4786&display_set=eng

They actually did it.

And also Americans getting whiny about how China racks up medals in sports that are either too niche or aren't "real" sports. MFers, if you stopped treating badminton and table tennis like they are backyard sports and took them seriously like Asia and Europe (you know, most of the world) maybe you'd be more competitive in those areas. Japan almost doubled it's total number of fencing medals in this Olympics, picking up 5 in Paris after coming in with only 3. They missed out on a couple of judo medals but overall they got a lot of medals that they were favored to. Still can't break through against the Chinese in the women's table tennis team final though. It was the third time they've met in the finals. The new system of allowing the host countries to pick and choose which events will be interesting. Baseball and softball will be back in 2028 and the US will look to avenge their finals losses in both to Japan in 2020. With all it's internal turmoil, boxing has not been officially announced. But I imagine that if Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting came back the outrage machine will be ready to fire-up. Or maybe not. Also, no breaking although now all the Americans complaining about it should be actively trying to "bring it back home." It may come back in 2032 in Brisbane so we may get..the return of the Raygun.

Also, Embiid getting caught flat-footed at the top of the key.

The G in G1 is for Goto! Block B now has five guys (Goto, Finlay, Tsuji, Narita and Takeshita) with 8 points and Jeff Cobb with 10 with two nights left.