Puroresu General Discussion - 2025

[Teflon Turtle]

Running the Naito article from April 1 through an online translator yields results that are tough to understand. As far as I could make out, the article says it was Naito's preference to work a full schedule. This isn't really news in the sense that Naito has said this before - he prefers to stay busy and didn't like to take full tours off. However, the article also says Naito felt that the disparity between people like him who work every tour and the guys who get tours off is too great; the folks who take tours off also have the opportunity to heal from injuries and pursue other activities to prepare them for retirement from wrestling.

Seems like a contradiction to me, but it's hard to say for sure since I'm not doing the translation myself/am certainly not a native Japanese speaker.

Anyway, it's a bummer. I had taken a break from following puroresu during the first MMA boom of the late aughts. What got me back for a little while was seeing the Okada/Naito NJPW 40th anniversary match. After that, I fell off again and mostly only followed what Nakamura was doing in big matches. What got me back in to NJPW full-time was seeing what Naito was doing with LIJ. He shot up close to the top of my all-time favorite wrestlers list by 2018 and, like Bret Hart, now occupies a seat that can't be taken away. Dude's got tenure with me, personally.

That said, even as a massive fan of his, I hope he calls it a day. He sort of occupied the same spot in New Japan that Chono did for quite a while; I've seen that comparison a lot over the years. Chono never really got a proper retirement send-off - it wasn't official until Muto's retirement show. We've all seen what has gone on with Naito physically over the last year. Now that New Japan has reached the "rip the band-aid off" point without any doubt (I probably have a whole other post in me about that), I'd sort of like to see Naito do the same. Don't drag it out while his health gets worse. I feel like the landscape has shifted in wrestling enough that many wrestlers are learning not to stick around too long, but we'll see.

[Doragon]

Any infomation i got, i got it from Japan from their sites and books. I do not source online stuff alot because they don't source where they got it always, may rarely use pen names, no names mentioned in articles or webpages or i hate journalists which is ok. 

 

[Doragon]

Tokyo Sports is alright but it does kayfabe stories or news sometimes. What they post is not always true. The true retrospective and history stuff, awards, when they know who's leaving, records, general info in styles, information on actual real angles is what you read for when using that site.

There are other sites that don't do or really do Tokyo Sports Kayfabe. But they may recycle Toyko Sport news just because. And most players won't waste time debunking Tokyo Sports few kayfabe articles.

[Doragon]

I will post the AJPW Champion Carnival Final results later when it's all done.

[J.H.]

What's the word on the new Hayabusa who debuted against Masato Tanaka?

All I heard is that Ezaki's family gave their blessing

James

[Doragon]

On 4/30/2025 at 9:52 PM, J.H. said:

What's the word on the new Hayabusa who debuted against Masato Tanaka?

All I heard is that Ezaki's family gave their blessing

James

Fans liked him. I haven't digged into who it is. I left Tiger Queen as vauge in kayfabe for sometime though. So i may do the same.

[Ultimo The Great]

On 5/1/2025 at 1:22 AM, J.H. said:

What's the word on the new Hayabusa who debuted against Masato Tanaka?

All I heard is that Ezaki's family gave their blessing

James

Rumoured to be Astro who worked Zero-1 and BJW a few years ago.

Edited May 3 by Ultimo The Great

[Doragon]

NOAH Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan 4,521 Fans

Kenoh and Ulka Sasaki won the GHC Tag

Jun did the Sternness Dust α on DDT Player Endo.

Kaito beat Marufuji.

Ozawa retained the GHC. Kenta lost to him.

 

[Doragon]

NJPW 

Hot lost so they had to leave Bullet Club.

[Doragon]

Ozawa(c) vs Kaito is next for the GHC HW. I wish fans liked Kaito more. May have to double turn both, but heel aces aren't the norm for Japan. Even Okada was labeled the Strongest instead of the Ace but still the top guy over "Ace" Tanahashi. Okada wasn't full on heel either. NJPW wants Shota as ACE.

I don't use the term Royal Road for NOAH, fans who do are in the wrong like cagematch users. That's AJP current term, again. NOAH had other various terms in the past.

[Doragon]

BJW's Strong Style is different from Strong Style Pro Wrestling and whatever's left in NJPW. Nakajima uses his own censored term. Sometimes AJP lets certain players label themselves(ex NJPW or trained at least by NJPW guy) as Strong Style in the past. 

Some more Strong Style and NJPW remnants were folded in CyberFight NOAH. Not much again anymore compared to as it was from few years ago. NOAH is another variant of Puroresu Love now.

 

[Doragon]

From Purolove 

Champion Carnival - Semi Final: Kento Miyahara vs. Ryuki Honda
2. Champion Carnival - Semi Final: Hideki Suzuki vs. Rei Saito
3. Davey Boy Smith Jr., Ren Ayabe, Atsuki Aoyagi & Ryo Inoue vs. Kengo Mashimo , Madoka Kikuta , Shuji Kondo & Seigo Tachibana
4. Fuminori Abe 10th Anniversary Debut Match ~ AJPW TV Six Man Tag Team Title: Yuma Aoyagi, Fuminori Abe & Hikaru Sato (c) vs. Hokuto Omori, Kuma Arashi & Takashi Yoshida 
5. Jun Saito, "Mr. Saito" Naruki Doi & Senor Saito vs. Shotaro Ashino, Xyon & Dan Tamura
6. All Asia Tag Team Title: Rising HAYATO & Yuma Anzai (c) vs. Mike D. Vecchio & Aigle Blanc
7. AJPW World Jr. Heavyweight Title: MUSASHI (c) vs. Seiki Yoshioka
8 Champion Carnival - Final:

[Doragon]

AJP

Rei Sato won the Champion Carnival.

NOAH 

Ozawa retained the GHC.

I'm not sure abour modern Puroresu. Probably lower period than the 00's.

 

[dorfus malorfus]

Getting caught up on my viewing but MUSASHI vs Yoshioka is an incredible spectacle that everyone should seek out. A rare time when finisher overkill actually adds to the match by playing into the story of how evenly matched they are and how familiar they are with one another after teaming for so long (plus they still protected the Niten Ichiryu). Just a fantastic match between two of the hardest working, most criminally overlooked guys in the business. 

[dorfus malorfus]

Also slightly even better than the AJPW Jr title match is Astronauts vs Sato and Hara from the main event of Fighting Detectives III. Admittedly I'm biased to all things Bati-adjacent but this is all four guys killing each other for nearly 30 minutes in the most idiosyncratic way possible with room being made for the weird quasi-comedy and everyone selling the violence to the point where by halfway through the match you're expecting a double KO finish at any given time. MOTY so far for me. Ishikawa looked real good for his age on the undercard too. If Abe and Nomura can ever get a money mark to back them and make FD a full-time promotion, especially if they can raid the GLEAT roster and rescue Ito and Iizuka and all those guys, then in terms on in-ring product they would be in a class by themselves as far as men's Japanese wrestling goes these days.

[Doragon]

I dunno why i feel disconnected from current day AJP. I always been more of a HW division watcher too, theyre still the last true tall Heavyweights promotion. At my older age i only really like certain wrestlers from various current day companies and not the whole of their cards. 

I'm fine with the comedy though in AJP, that stuff was in AJPW 90s in diff way and bunch apparently never made tape. I don't agree with cagematch hating comedy, comedy helps add variety to the cards.

 

[colonial]

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/1ky9gg4/daisuke_sekimoto_seriously_injured_at_bjw_show/

Looks like Sekimoto was seriously hurt at today's Big Japan show. Just a random six-man, nothing that was hard-hitting or featuring weapons.

[A.M.B.]

Scary to see Sekimoto’s situation. People were raving about his match with Jeff Cobb in January but to me I couldn’t get past how much older and slower Daisuke looked. Few wrestlers have wrestled a more physical, punishing style than him in the last 25 years, I think he should hang it up.

[Ultimo The Great]

Apparently he's fine enough to be back at home.

Google translation from Tosaka We apologize for the inconvenience. Please check the official information from our company. I spoke clearly and walked well and have just returned home. Thank you to everyone who supported me. I'm slowly recovering, so please continue to support me.

https://x.com/tosakaeiji/status/1928132668144951705

[Doragon]

GLEAT is ok, but i only care about the shoot and UWF parts.

DDT is underrated. 

NOAHs booking is on and off good. Been a problem since 25 plus years. Lot of failed Aces and faces. They do have good matches but not as good as the 00s or even the 10s.  

NJPW is not so bad but Im not too into some aspects. its best days were the 90s to me. 

AJP usually has the better booking these past 20 plus years and pushing of aces over NOAH. I preferred the split days of AJPW and the entertaining Mutoh AJP days, then the "work rate" Jun days. The stuff after Jun is ok but not as good. 

DragonGate isnt for me. Only watch it rarely. 

BJW was a lot better in the 90s. I like the deathmatch parts over the Strong parts.

 

 

[Doragon]

Jun Saito defeated his brother Rei Saito and retained the Triple Crown. 

 

[Doragon]

Active Advance Pro Wrestling is other promotion to follow. There's alot promotions in Japan. So check out whether floats your boat.

 

 

[Doragon]

Suwama only wrestled for AJP 4 times this year, he last wrestled for AJP in March. I think him not being regular player put a blow in my AJP watching, he is closer to what Baba wanted and closest modern thing to the old Royal Road (skunk hair aside) and one of the last links also to the Mutoh Era AJP.

 

[Doragon]

The Strong Style look used to be primarily black and trunks they say in Japan, then red trunks secondary for NJPW says some people in Japan. They used wider variety of colors for 90s NJPW guys like 2 out of the 3 musketeers and more for early 90s. But those 2 musketeers also switched to black pants later.  Shinya was both the Ace and Strongest of NJPW 90s, he wore both mainly black and red.

AJPW guys had black trunks too, Jumbo and Tenryu.  But the newer guys stuck with the color coded wear in the 90s, Kobashi, Taue, Jun had their own colored trunks. Misawa and Kawada wore their color coded pants. Kawada retained the strongest color, so black. But with yellow.

There isn't consistency for the why of wrestling fashion styles, or what is the strongest means because expecting same meanings is delusional for different promtions and they're carnies anyways usingt their own kayfabe meanings, and there are changes over the decades.

The AJP meaning of the Strongest was different from NJPW. So Jumbo and Kawada and Suwama meanings and others, vs Inoki's and Shinya's more fighting orientated meaning.

The Ace and Strongest doesn't have to be the same person either. And you can book the Strongest over the Ace too. So the Ace is secondary sometimes.

Or the Rival role which was originally Kawada as well.

Stardom had Icon for Mayu. And Trueheart for Momo W before they Goto'ed her. Rossy didn't want to use the Ace role term anymore.

NOAH had additionally "I am Noah". 

There are other old roles, like Absolute Champion to give Kobashi when he has the GHC in NOAH. It was coined in 2004 but it existed nameless before that. So he or any other Absolute Champion is a bigger deal as champ or because of many defenses or many belts won. https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/絶対王者

AJP experimented with two aces for awhile with Kento and Jake Lee. But that was dropped of course with Lee leaving.

[Horangi]

5 hours ago, DragonZombie said:

Active Advance Pro Wrestling is other promotion to follow. There's alot promotions in Japan. So check out whether floats your boat.

 

 

2AW is the one indy I wish I could follow more (I'm sure there's ways, looks like they upload a a few matches on YouTube. Mashimo had been one of my guys since probably 2004, and nobody snapping up Yoshida feels like a huge miss.

My upcoming WK trip i wasn't going to attend any non-Dome shows, but I'm making a special point to try attend theirs if try run that week.