mikey

Who else is being sued or has been legal lettered? 

I thought that Ospreay/Okada is more likely to be a spoiler match. Okada goes in joint top and Ospreay finally gets the singles win. 

The baseline level of G1 Climax 30, even with the major players obviously slowing down, will still be very good.  I'm disappointed that they kept Yujiro in from their original no-gaijin plan. I would rather they'd put a young lion in there to job every night, that's how bad he is now.  No, it's probably not going to as good as anything from G1 24 to 27.  Personally, despite star ratings, I felt that 28 and 29 were a step down from the previous years and the middle shows seriously dragged.

Problem is, as Supremo alludes to, while Ospreay hasn't been cancelled professionally, he's been cancelled in a lot of people's hearts.  Maybe I've had some sort of brain function problem (certainly a possibility given the traumatising world we live in) but, in this specific case, it doesn't bother me and I can live with it.  It you've been capping his GIFs for the last three years, how can anything have seriously changed now?  That somebody won't shut up about it?

Mandy has a cool head in a crisis from the sounds of it. This guy is a sick fuck, it's fortunate nobody was hurt. 

3 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

They set that precedent long ago. No criminal charges, no problem. And if the criminal charges don't stick, you'll be back.

Except Rich Swann, who they fired even when his wife said it was a misunderstanding and she was blotto.

3 hours ago, Cannibal Man said:

WWE has absolutely no credibility to any fucker does it. If any other type of business did the exact same thing they'd be fucked alive if their summary was, after already putting him on TV or equivalent, yeah we had a look and nothing to worry about, yeah internal had a look yeah, yeah the D O DOUBLE G and KWANG had a nose.

Well, they've set a precedent where if you're in a position to deny any allegations or can just ignore them, they will sweep it under the carpet.   The only thing that will change that is if the police get involved.

On 8/15/2020 at 2:21 PM, The King Of Swing said:

So New Japan, Stardom and now TJPW have all had to cancel shows due to wrestlers testing positive for Covid or in New Japan's case a precautionary measure.

Surely it's only a matter of time until they pull the plug on shows entirely or at the bare minimum go back to empty arena shows?

How AEW have dodged an outbreak so far I don't know.

Well, AEW created a reasonable protocol.  They tested long before anybody else did.  They could get hold of the 1 hour swab test, which isn't perfect but was the best you could do in the time available, they tested everybody every time they came to Daily's Place and separated them while they waited for the results.  When there were suspected exposures, they kept those people far away from the bubble as they could, such as Moxley and QT Marshall.

I'm not sure what New Japan are actually doing as regards testing.

This will go the way of the u-30 championship.  Or Okada becomes a lucha brawler.

8 hours ago, Liam O'Rourke said:

Velveteen Dream is back, btw.

NXT is going hard after those teen demos f'sure.

1 hour ago, Chris B said:

Meltzer also cast aspersions on Ashley Massaro's account, and clearly wanted to go nowhere near it. This kind of thing is not his strong suit.

You're right. Rather than give him the benefit of the doubt, I'm defending the indefensible. 

21 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

Meltzer’s reporting seems to be tainted by his own biases, affecting who he believes and how he portray things. 

Meltzer is of the school where you don't report allegations.  He was trained in the late 70s IIRC, you'd go nowhere near a story like these, even with all these allegations, until it hit a courtroom.  There would need to be a lawsuit or an arrest or somebody would need to get charged.

For instance, he reported that Pollyanna wasn't credible because he was told that Pollyanna wasn't credible, which is where the frustration lies.  He'll offer the courtesy of credibility to the accused but not the accuser.

DavidB is right about how some on social media have reacted.  There has been an especially stark divide between the US and UK and between WWE and indy fans.  Look at Matt Riddle, who was clearly lying about not having an affair with Candy Cartwright from the very start and yet people have yelled "exhonorated" every time something comes along which confirms their biases that he's innocent and she's a lying whore.  It seems fairly obvious to me that her version of events - which hasn't changed since day one - is far closer to the truth than his.  However, right now, he has some form of plausible deniability, unless one of the guys in the van says "I only pretended to be asleep, he mouth-raped her".

I have thoughts on the Pollyanna/Ospreay thing but I'm not sure I dare.

Also for a man who loves darker skinned ladies, he's remarkably racist. 

The Murder Squad podcast have a new case... 

They've had a lot of wastage in a system which isn't designed for any wastage at all. They lost Honjo, Yagi, Kanemitsu and, most crucially, Kitamura in the last 4 years. He was a stiff, he wasn't really improving. He could've been the Japanese Brakus or the Japanese Lesnar but Kitamura looked the part, that couldn't be argued.

He won the revived 2017 Young Lion Cup. Kawato was second, Oka was third. Neither look like world beaters. This is why the people I listen to have their hopes pinned on not just this class but the diversification of the system as a whole because wastage is built in. 

In the 2019 Young Lion Cup, the rookies churned out a slew of good to very good matches. Alex Coughlin is a bad bad man, he looks like he could go toe-to-toe with anybody in the company and throwdown. I don't see it with Clark Connors so much, he looks like the worker in a tag team. Shota's excursion is being ruined but he has "the face" and the run as Moxley's second gave him a personality.

Tsuji's thing is that he sells like a mofo. He's perfect for the dads 8-mans because he makes them look godly but he's also still big enough to stand up to them. He has a future.

The thing about Uemura in YLC19 is that he's so much better now, it's completely irrelevant. He looked like a junior, now he's clearly a heavyweight. He was stilted, whereas now he's smooth. This is why everybody is high as giraffe pussy on Yuya. 

Michael Richards might be the odd man out and given they're pushed for numbers, I don't see why they don't bring him over from New Zealand ASAP, unless he can't come for personal reasons. He has a good base, he hits hard, he looks like he'd headbutt you in a nightclub. 

19 hours ago, RedRooster said:

AEW is inconsistent. When it’s good it’s really good and when it’s bad, it’s horrendous. I suspect if you’d watched last week’s show you’d feel very differently.

I’d suggest trying it again, next week’s show looks like it could be a lot of fun. 

The "girl with a little curl" of wrestling promotions, for sure. 

7 hours ago, danlewis said:

I think Uemura is the pick of the young lions, although it is fair to say a lot of that may be projection. He just looks like an ace these days. In a way that Kawato never did, with his odd eyes and that.

Somebody on Twitter told me that if I can't see why Yota Tsuji is going straight to the top then I don't understand puroresu. 

6 hours ago, Michael_3165 said:

I think they are far from running out. They have this mental ability to pick out decent talent and run w them. For all White's faults he is one of the best heels I believe. Give him a few years and he will be having classics consistently. They also seem to really pick their new signees well. Ospreay, Shingo etc have all proven to be great shouts over the past several years. I have faith in their ability to make stars. Its just the time it takes. Ibushi (barring neck injuries) has a decade on him as does White, Okada and others. Protect Suzuki and Tanahashi and they could have give years left each. I'm unsure about the Evil experiment but it's best they try new stuff when crowds are low, their fans arent going anywhere. 

That's my point though.  These guys have had their bump card stamped a lot more than you might think and/or they're older than you think.  Shingo is 37 and Ibushi is 38, both have had serious injuries, both have worked a high-paced, high-risk style over the last 16 years.  Okada is apparently fucked because he's been running himself into the ground over the past 8 years.  Sure Tana is going to say he's the ace and people will pretend he's the ace but he's not the ace.

My argument is they're in a precarious position because their current batch of native stars are aging out and the response is that those guys are fine and that Ospreay and White will fill the void.

5 hours ago, danlewis said:

Hiromu is the next big star, there’s also Karl Fredericks, Jay White, Umino and Uemura.

If the main events consisted of them in 5 years time I don’t think it’d be a problem at all.

 

Before he went away (and went backwards), Kawato was a better worker than Umino was when he went on excursion.  Uemura is good but everybody projects what they want to see onto the young boys. I always say that if you go back and watch Okada in TNA, there's no way you'd think that this chubby-faced kid would steal the Pope's gimmick and become the biggest star they'd had since the 90's.  No freaking way, no freaking how.

Fredericks is good, though the revamping in Lion's Break Collision makes him look very 80's.  He needs that beard back, that bit of bad boy roughness.  The clean-shaven look with the hair and the tassels all feels like he's going to start doing a dance like Gigolo Jimmy Del Ray at any moment.

I love Hiromu but he's really small.  I don't see how he ever looks like a credible heavyweight.

In any other wrestling culture, New Japan would be looking at freelancers to fill out their roster or looking to smaller companies but they'll do neither.

Just now, Tommy! said:

I think I say it every time it comes up but that's always what drives me off on the rare occasions I do look in on something recommended as a must see. It's genuinely uncomfortable to watch and I'm very much of the opinion less is more and pissing about with a million cuts, zooms and wobbles does more harm than good by detracting from the story being told. 

When I was a kid, I'd read those stories about people who'd get motion sickness on the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios because the ride was 0.1 seconds desynced and think "what a bunch of pussies" but Kevin Dunn's production genuinely gives me motion sickness.  I honestly don't know how it's not more of an issue.

What would I do with 43.8m?  Pay out a bigger interim dividend?

To answer DavidB's question, I would say three things:

Firstly, they don't have anything that draws anymore.  Nothing, nada, zilch, not even old guys.  Does anybody think a random Stone Cold appearance could pop a hotshot weekly rating right now?  I know that quoting Jim Cornette is something that wankers do ("well if the cap fits") but it reminds me of a story he tells about Jim Barnette being put into a WCW booking committee meeting to antagonise people on Jim Herd's behalf and asking "what's going to draw the houses this month".  Cornette told him flatly that nothing will draw the houses this month.  However, IIRC, if they made some moves that month and the following month, they might be able to heat something up that'd draw something three months later.

Secondly, there was an era in the Monday Night War where WWF was consistently more entertaining than WCW.  However, WCW had the existing stars and they could move numbers with a swerve or hotshot something.  It took years and a great number of things to come into place before they could bring out somebody like Tyson to have the impact that he ended up having.  However, they were better for at least a year before that.

Thirdly, we cannot underestimate the impact of the numerous decisions that WWE has made that have driven away fans.  From going to Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi (and justifying it using ridiculous logic) to welcoming Hulk Hogan back to firing people during the Covid pandemic to meet quarterly profit projections that you were going to blast through anyway.  There are so many scumbag decisions that they've made down the years that some people just got tired of justifying them to themselves.  The last batch have come at a time where there is an alternative in mainstream American wrestling that isn't an utter dumpster fire and pro wrestling worldwide is more accessible than ever.  There is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism but that doesn't mean you have to follow the least ethical company and turn a blind eye to their complete lack of ethics.

Fourthly, they need to realise that the structure isn't working.  They have the highest production values is wrestling and they piss it away on nonsense.  The camera work is horrible.  The commentary is horrible.  It feels like watching a wrestling show in a crash helmet and having somebody beat you over the head with Jim Duggan's 2-by-4 (which I recently found out is a 4-by-2 in the UK).  I remember watching that Buddy Murphy/Roman Reigns match and said it was like "watching one guy spam Golden Lovers moves while the production gives my fucking arsehole a headache".  The scripted promos don't work, the way they book doesn't work.

I know nothing will change but to me, the obvious things are:

1. Stop focusing on short termism.  Pick your best guys under some arbitrary age/number of miles on the clock.  Pick guys who can theoretically go for five years who haven't been on top and push them instead.  They're going to get their arses kicked between now and November because all the sport that was going to happen between March and November is all going to happen at once, every night of the week, and people are rabid for it.  Nothing will draw now but when we hopefully get past this once in a century phenomenon, something will and it will be something new.  Maybe keep going with Drew McIntyre on Raw, I don't know.
2. Ratings don't just rebound immediately, it takes time to rebuild trust and takes even more time to rebuild the habit.  I don't know when it'll be back but the 18-49 demo are going to watch Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood instead of Raw because eventhough L&HH is garbage, they book more compelling storylines FFS.
3. They need to rebuild their corporate image.  Not by issuing press releases or having Bindi Irwin-McMahon go out there and fake her way through a speech but by fixing their corporate practices.
4. Fire Kevin Dunn, put NXT back to how it was, only move the camera when it needs to move, STOP FUCKING SHOUTING ALL THE TIME ON COMMENTARY.

15 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

As fantastic as he is, and has been for so long, they definitely need to be moving past him as someone they can build the company around. Or they'll end up in real trouble like WWE in terms of not having any true stars going forward. I don't know how the next few years are looking for them, but it does feel like they don't have enough people ready to step up and be as big as they need them to be right now.

This is kind of my point. All of their domestic stars are old and/or are running on empty. The guys who people assume would probably be the next generation have done so many jobs, you wonder if their credibility is even salvageable.

Okada has seemed a step off, Naito is held together by duct tape. Another person is needed in the short and long term if both are too screwed to really go right now. 

Apropos of nothing, just conjecture, but rather than Covid being the cause of all the weirdness going on in New Japan (currently it feels like when Superman goes to Bizarroworld), could it be that the major players finally be falling to pieces?  At G1 Climax 28, despite all the high match ratings, I thought there was a number of notable matches where the big stars were coasting.  Tanahashi was dogging it with three star specials through the middle and Ibushi's face was finally looking its age.

In the NJ backstage documentary, Okada looked physically destroyed outside the ring.  Naito looks physically destroyed within matches.  Naito has probably been working around his own body for 2-3 years at least.  Put "No Limit TNA Xplosion" into Google and it's startling just how explosive Naito used to be.  Now he can barely slingshot over the ropes for the wrecking ball dropkick and he's pushing off the bottom rope.  That's New Japan's "big four" right there.  Even as a freelancer, Ibushi was there or thereabouts for years.

The only native heavies below that who aren't at least knocking on the door of 40 are EVIL and SANADA, who are the same age as Okada but with way less miles on the clock. Even Shingo is 37.  Everybody else is foreign or a junior.  Who else am I missing?  They lost two generations of heavyweights from the dojo, Oka is still out on excursion and looks awful.  If I am right and the belt has gone on EVIL because Okada wants to do the KOPW thing so as to become a lucha brawler and Naito is screw, where's the challenger?

12 hours ago, Carbomb said:

I remember that, sometime during the mid-2000s, there was a short-lived attempt to have professional, paid Olympic/amateur/Greco-Roman/freestyle wrestling, called, unsurprisingly "Real Pro Wrestling". They had teams of wrestlers, and I think it was done in a seasonal tournament structure. Given the rise of MMA, I guess it made sense at the time, and it did get some plaudits, but it just didn't get the numbers.

Big Mo and Daniel Cormier acting like complete knobs in the promos to be the heels was hilarious.

I had a search but didn't see any love for the increasingly-occasional Monumental Podcast.

Started a couple of years ago. A guy explains a topic he's done a lot of research on to his idiot friend, who has done none at all. Repeated topics include: the history of TNA, trips to GCW shows, the champions of ROH, WWE being scumbags, Ultimate Warrior being a scumbag, Hulk Hogan's writing skills and, my favourite, Eric Bischoff lying for 20 years about Fusient Sports Ventures (spoilers: Jamie Kellner was the good guy).

Some of it has aged (like the GCW reviews and the Erick Stevens pre-comeback interview) but the historical stuff can be listened to at any time. 

5 minutes ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

Isnt Scott Conway the bloke who has been alleged to have set up the Jonny Storm paedo tours of Thailand?

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