You have to be member to watch their streams 

https://evolutionofficialfc.com/movie/X96BdJtsiuvQKiZSNToFY2

They're also not affiliated with AJPW anymore. The plans to make a womens PWF belt was aborted, and turned into a new belt instead. They had their falling out with AJPW because of the Actrwress thing with AJPW.

A GLEAT/DDT joint show is set for 2.15.

A sumo hall show is set for NOAH for their 25th anniversary, called Memorial Voyage.

The Champion Carnival participants will be announced at the Korakuen event on Feb 9.

New rookie for BJW debuted, his name is Koshiro Asakura.

Here's the Baba memorial show card, the one where Kea is retiring 

https://i.ibb.co/Vpv7xS43/1738089367909359.jpg

Lot of old names.

I guess they will use a ring closer to AJPW 90s.

Kasai's appearance will make Baba's corpse explode from the grave-spin. I hope he uses the Northern Chop and pins someone with a Neckbreaker Drop.

Edited January 31, 20251 yr by Curt McGirt

Yeah they used ring closer to old 90s AJPW. There's various pictures online, but this board has the options disabled. Anyways there was a card board cut out of Baba and his wife.

The Great Nita reappeared.

Fujinami replaced Nishimura on the Baba card. Fujinami is trying to make up for Nishimura, they had issues.  Perhaps Nishimura doesn't have much time left, he did had parts of his brain removed and has stage 4 cancer.

Nishimura once owned the Muga trademark and took it with him in the past and once shooted on Fujinami and wife in the past and joined AJPW later, thanks to Muto. Caused financial damages to Muga which had to change its name. So Nishimura was essentially dead to Fujinami for some time. Nishimura wanted to coup Muga too before all that, but it failed. 

Anyways that's all old news. And Fujinami encouraged Nishimura to keep going in his own way on the 25th Baba show.

Dragon Gate USA is getting revived.

Yeah I was shocked to see Nish on the card at all. Good of Fujinami, old grudges need to go if his time is winding down. 

Onita makes Baba even more mad from beyond the grave by using NJPW/garbage wresting gimmick instead of '80s AJPW light heavyweight champion trunks 😄 As if Kasai and the other guys weren't enough! 

Garbage Wrestling and especially Onita's "the Evil Ways" or the Evil Road is a dark and inverted version of Baba-ism. It retains stuff from the "dark wrestling" from the AJPW 80s. Like blood and brawls.

Unlike Inoki, Baba would had complained about women wrestling on the card. Women on men cards wasn't traditional. Putting women on the cards is more of a Mutoh thing, and Mutoh was more liberal in his ways and less traditional. There were bunch of women matches in Mutoh era AJPW. And the actwress deal these days sorta carries on Mutoh's own stance on Women on AJPW shows.

So there is also Puroresu Love on the 25th Baba card. Some of the men onnthe card were wrestling in that era too.

Most of these Baba shows are also celebrations of anything related or linked to any era of AJPW. At least before Jun leaving AJPW again.

Seems Kenta and EVIL are done with NJPW. Kenta is freelancer. The EVIL thing could be a work.

 

I had no idea about any of that heat between Fujinami and Nishimura somehow, even though I would have been following Japan fairly closely at the time it went down. Crazy that two guys whose in-ring presence exudes "chill" on pretty much every level would have so much beef with each other. 

I've been trying to catch up on 2025 puroresu all week. My MOTY right now by a pretty wide margin is Nakajima vs Minoru from the recent GLEAT show. Not sure how easy it is to find online atm (I'm depraved and pay $14CAD/month to watch GLEAT when it airs), but all their stuff goes up for free on YouTube after a few months so definitely bookmark that one. It's short in a good way (i.e., an antidote to every title match needing to be "epic") and as you can probably guess they absolutely kill each other and it looks scary at times. It's a tragedy of our age that Nakajima doesn't play well with others because if he'd stayed in AJPW and agreed to cooperate on doing the occasional high profile job could be the hottest heel in Japan.

Edited February 5, 20251 yr by dorfus malorfus

Also anyone know if you can stream the Baba Memorial/Kea Retirement show anywhere? I'm trying to watch it spoiler free but ajpw.tv didn't stream it. 

Probably on those Chinese or Russian websites? I haven't checked yet. I dunno if baked still exists, they used to stream Samurai TV. It aired on Samurai TV so the show should be available out there somewhere.

Tamon Honda to second NOAH's Daiki Odashima at the next Fortune Dream show. Daiki was trained by Tamon Honda in Tamon's Gym for wrestling then entered the NOAH Dojo for Pro Wrestling training.  Tamon has his hair cut and facial hair shaved these days.

 

For NJPW, I'm not sure if Gotoh wins the IWGP World HW, if he does then the title is easier to win than the previous defunct predecessor. 

I noticed on a recent NOAH show that Odashima used Honda's Rolling Hell and the English commentators didn't catch it (fair enough), then after the match they freaking zoomed in on Honda in the crowd looking stoic for like a solid 5 seconds and the commentators just fell silent and seemed confused by the close up. Hopefully if they do an English broadcast of the Fortune Dream dates someone tips them off and they don't just avoid referencing him. 

Edited February 5, 20251 yr by dorfus malorfus

Shuji Kondo will wrestle in AJP again. He mainly been working for NOAH and Dragongate.

https://www.all-japan.co.jp/news/news/5348/

 

The AJPW logo like the NJPW logo were slightly modified in the 00's.  They usually use the yellow colored logo for press confrences instead of the red, and the black and white is used for the website.

AJPW Pro-Wrestling Love in Ryogoku Vol. 5, 08 31 2008

 IWGP Heavyweight Championship 

Keiji Mutoh (c) vs. Hirooki Goto

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7u8rk5

Wasn't the main event but the secondary main event.  It is actually the Championship run that saved NJPW's tv deal with TV Asahi. 

The defunct IWGP HW and IWGP IC were combined into a new title years later, into the IWGP World Heavyweight. The lineages of both defunct titles continues on in the sense of linking, but the combined title's history and records started over. AJPW did the same with the Triple Crown decades ago. 

 

All Japan's Champion Carnival lineup for this year ...

Block A:
- Kento Miyahara
- Jun Saito
- Hideki Suzuki
- Shotaro Ashino
- Kuma Arashi
- Kengo Mashimo 
- Xyon
- Cyrus
- Davey Boy Smith Jr.

Block B:
- Yuma Aoyagi
- Rei Saito
- Hokuto Omori
- Yuma Anzai
- Ryuki Honda
- Ren Ayabe
- Aigle Blanc
- Mike D Vecchio
- Madoka Kikuta

 

"Xyon" appears to be former NXT wrestler Xyon Quinn. 

4 hours ago, colonial said:

All Japan's Champion Carnival lineup for this year ...

Block A:
- Kento Miyahara
- Jun Saito
- Hideki Suzuki
- Shotaro Ashino
- Kuma Arashi
- Kengo Mashimo 
- Xyon
- Cyrus
- Davey Boy Smith Jr.

Block B:
- Yuma Aoyagi
- Rei Saito
- Hokuto Omori
- Yuma Anzai
- Ryuki Honda
- Ren Ayabe
- Aigle Blanc
- Mike D Vecchio
- Madoka Kikuta

 

"Xyon" appears to be former NXT wrestler Xyon Quinn. 

Aigle Blanc is an exciting addition, anytime I'm catching him in a European promotion it's great work.

Madoka Kikuta is a Dragongate Japan Pro-Wrestling player. He is 25 years old.

Saito Bros broke the defense record held by Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu. I'm not sure if it's totally true, but whatever they can retcon what they want for those world tag belts. One defense by Jumbo Tsuruta and Yoshiaki Yatsu was on a house show. Really they would still be tied.

Anyway i treat the 3rd AJPW differently at this point.

 

The new Zero 1 had a show. Seems all the old Zero 1 belts are abolished. They're using white mat canvas with the new Zero 1 logo.

Here's the X account 

https://x.com/ZERO1_Wrestling

Unless things change, Go of NOAH was the last Zero 1 WHC holder and it's goodbye to the AWA design.

I just saw Aigle Blanc for the first time when I watched the GCW London show. Thought he was solid and neat seeing a high flying guy with so much height. 

Xyon is also married to Harley Cameron though I doubt Fukuda has the stroke to bring her in for the Carny tour...

There will be a new Hayabusa. He will debut at the "Lucha Fest Special" on April 27, Ryogoku Kokugikan, in Tokyo

And he will be wrestling in the new Z1 later.

Tanaka is the ace of the new Z1.