mikey

10 minutes ago, simonworden said:

I guess in terms of product but I always got the impression Scott wasn't particular keen on Dixon perhaps as they were direct rivals. I know he was friendly with the Knights and WAW and he used a lot of FWA guys in latter years especially by giving younger FWA matches on shows including Alex Shane, Mark Sloan, James Tighe, Raj Ghosh and Andy Simmons 

Scott would've had an irredeemable falling out with Brian on Friday but be ring announcing Dartford or Croydon on a Tuesday. I believe that he sourced his own guys that Brian wasn't so keen on but he was also getting booked by Brian. 

I apologise in advance for the essay but I've basically replied to the thread in one fell swoop.

CyberFight

This seems to be just the next step in the integration of Noah and DDT (and TJP).  Corporately, Noah doesn't have the muscle it once had and DDT has been very effective at punching above its weight.  I struggle to see how both promotions could sit on the same marquee.  They're very different; Noah still bobbing along as a serious puro fed, DDT is essentially a Japanese funhouse mirror parody of attitude era WWE (or doing what WWE is trying to achieve, considering that WWE itself feels like a funhouse mirror parody of attitude era WWE right now).

However, while Noah has been in decline, DDT has established itself as the clear number 2 in Tokyo, though Dragongate has a wider geographic reach and is probably number 2 in Japan as a whole.  Does that tell us that there's only room for one "serious" puro promotion, New Japan, and that everybody else is just wasting their time?  DDT are viewed as comedy wrestling, Dragongate are still ploughing their lone lucharesu furrow, everybody under six foot and almost entirely people who wouldn't get a push elsewhere.

If anybody can make a go of bringing Noah bang up to date and bringing energy to their show, you'd think it would be DDT.  Look at how Jun Akiyama, seemingly broken after dragging All-Japan back from the brink, seems to be having the time of his life.

Noah

Noah went down for a number of reasons.  Their best guys were juniors and they weren't accepted on top in that era.  They lost a couple of generations of heavyweights due to injuries.  Misawa put guys on top, didn't really push them there probably and then lost his arsehole when they didn't draw (plus some of the guys didn't meet him halfway - yes, you Takeshi Morishima).  Carbomb is spot on in that regard.

Plus you had hangover issues from All-Japan, where Akiyama in particular was carrying a lot of "nearly man" baggage which wasn't helped by not going with him from day one.  Can't underestimate how much bad TV slots crippled them too.  Matoko Baba was right, they were going to be reliant on foreigners.

Now, I just feel depressed watching Noah.  It's not terrible, they have some decent guys.  It's just you watch it and, unless it's a big match, it doesn't feel like people care. I love Sugiura but he also feels like an emblem of their decline.  He should be a grizzled popular midcarder but he's a perennial main-eventer.  Nakajima is still amazing but he's no bigger than Kenta or Marafuji, both of whom were considered too small 12 years ago.

All-Japan

All-Japan built itself back by accident.  It became Mutoh's lifeboat to escape to when New Japan went MMA crazy after a period of inter-promotional cooperation.  However, there was a period after Akiyama and his boys left Noah but before Mutoh and his loyalists left to form Wrestle-1 that they had probably the best roster in Japan when it came to star power.  Like everything related to All-Japan this century, it didn't last.

The last time All-Japan nearly went down, Akiyama rearranged their finances, killed all of the contracts and started paying nightly.  Some guys left, Go Shiozaki went back to Noah for instance, but some of the older guys who were loyal and some of the younger guys stayed.  They've rebuilt around former Kensuke Sasaki/Katsuhiko Nakajima trainee Kento Miyahara.  He's very good but, after an 18 month reign on top of a 15 month reign back in 16/17, it has all become a bit samey.  Akiyama burnt himself out on finding a second ace, with his main candidates Jake Lee (charisma vacuum) and Naoya Namura (too midcard) never managed to step up.  Some wounds are self-inflicted though.

Shuji Ishikawa is the new booker and he booked his perennial tag partner and homegrown ace from 10-15 years ago, Suwama, to end Miyahara's reign.  It's not that bad an idea because he's still a player, the Violent Giants are perennial tag contenders but the view was that the guy to end the reign was going to be the anointed one.  Then, Shuji hit the fucking jackpot.  A new second ace just landed in his lap from the ashes of Wrestle-1, who went bust this year; former Wrestle-1 champion Shotaro Ashino.

Ashino is only 5'9", has only been a pro for 5 years and had only been training for six months.  He's basically a wrestling savant, works a strange hybrid of classic strong style and Gotchism.  If you love the NJ vs. UWFi feud from the mid-90s, Ashino is very much a "trousers round your ankles, hand cream at the ready" kind of wrestler.  He proves just how King's Road and Strong Style no longer exist as promotion-styles but as wrestler-styles now.

Anyway, he looks the part, he wrestles the part, he's charismatic as fuck and he's absolutely the prize from Wrestle-1.  Plus he has a unit with the coolest fucking name in history; Enfants Terribles.  Arashi and Kodama joined him and they go on a tear in the Covid empty arena stuff.  They pushed Ashino all the way to a title match, the best match Suwama has had in years and then jobbed him.  Now they're treating Les Enfants like any other unit.  They had a star, now they've fucked it up.  As I said, some wounds are self inflicted.

Going back to the styles thing, the cross-promotion in the 00's broke down the walls between the different styles.  Ashino has come through the Wrestle-1 dojo, notionally an All-Japan offshoot, but he was trained by Keiji Mutoh, who was a product of Hiro Matsuda's era in the NJ dojo and took his excursion in the United States, and Kaz Hayashi, who was out of Michinoku Pro and was steeped in Lucharesu. Yet Ashino does rolling knee bars.  Okada's matches more closely resemble classic All-Japan than classic New Japan.

EDIT: All that and I missed my point. I think there's an untested hypothesis that New Japan have absorbed "straight" puroresu and the only other thing that sells is something different. DDT and Dragongate is different. At this point, Noah and All Japan (and Zero1 and the dearly-departed Wrestle-1) aren't different enough. Big Japan is a mess and what makes them different and has kept them going is the deathmatch division. As I said, untested hypothesis that is waiting to be picked apart. 

TWA was more of a Dixon adjacent thing. 

You have to love any wrestler who has a body count attached to him.

On 5/18/2020 at 8:54 AM, LaGoosh said:

I find it so weird that Al Snow turned into a jacked, tanned miserable hardass years after his career ended and during his career he was a chubby, pasty goofy comedy guy. 

Sorry to drag this back up but I was always a big Al Snow fan.  He was the smark's choice for years.  He had a great series of indy matches with Sabu, he was great as a snarky, sinister heel in Smoky Mountain, his character in ECW had such great potential.  However, WWF never saw anything in him and he just gave up.  However, after retirement, he seems to aim all his anger and vitriol at the people who wanted to see him given a chance.  The people who hated Lief Cassidy and wanted to see creepy Smoky Mountain Al Snow or who wanted to see crazy Al Snow, the man who takes orders from a mannequin's head.  That's some Son of Sam shit.  Instead, he turned back up on WWF TV with no explanation as a comedy character and they beat him the second week back.   And yet the smarks who loved him and thought he could be an asset as a serious character are the problem.

I don't know if it's an unpopular opinion or not but Al Snow's a fucking prick who aims his hatred at the fans who advocated for him when he should aim it at the visionless promoters who passed over him.

At the time, there was a massive backlash of "this motherfucker is killing this company for his own amusement". Whether he actually was is another matter but there was an anti-Nash agenda backstage that worked its way back to all the sheets.

Pro-Nash revisionism is relatively new but started with a Bam Bam Bigelow shoot before he died where he was adamant that Nash tried to turn WCW around but the workers wouldn't play ball.

If we're going to talk about WCW commentary, despite (or maybe because of) his rampant misogyny, racism and homophobia, I always liked Stevie Ray. 

Konnan had way too much access to premium cable.  I'm pretty sure that Kevin Nash and K-Dogg's "bond" and "chemistry" was entirely based around their shared puerile sense of humour.

Oh, that's another one that used to make me switch off.

Kevin Nash's skits when he was booking WCW.

There was a point where Konnan would tell people to peel his potatoes and toss his salad, which came from the HBO prison special in the mid 90s. The former meant to lick balls, the latter to eat somebody's arsehole with jam or syrup. The guy in the documentary preferred syrup. 

WCW standards and practices clearly hadn't seen that show. 

The Job Squad meetups were in a Star Trek theme bar in Pimlico, which had a model of the Starship Enterprise suspended from the ceiling. 

It comes back to the "what is this promotion" thing, WeeAl.  If this is a babyface territory, why are they not doing it in a classic Memphis style?  Bring in the heel hot, kick the babyfaces arse and then he eventually gets to give the heel what's coming to him.  They seem to rush everything.

Joey basically Weinsteined these women.  He trapped them in a situation, groped them, got his dick out, whatever.  He's admitting it too.  If the victims can either sue him or get him on a criminal charge, I hope they do.  This shit is inexcusable and it's beyond sociopathic that he thinks he can explain it away.

3 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

So you put WWE on just to turn it off again because you don't like it?

Every once in a while, I'll give it another try but it's less tolerable than the time before. 

i)

Justin Credible's "It's not the coolest, it's not the best" catchphrase - fucking die, bag-carrier.
Any Jeff Jarrett catchphrase (spelling out his name, slapnuts, etc) - just because I hate it, doesn't mean I want to tune in to see you beaten.
Paul Heyman's "Brrrrrrrock" schtick - it was stale before Lesnar retired to try out for the Vikings.
 

ii)

WWE in general - it's like watching dreadful wrestling whilst having somebody whack you over the head with a drum beater.
Mad Mikey Nichols - a disgrace to the name Mikey
Guerillas of Destiny
Jake Hager
Jake Lee

I won't lecture you on how you should feel but I was talking to somebody on Twitter about Britwres and I told him that I wouldn't recommend promotions post-Covid who I didn't feel were decent people pre-Covid.  One of those promoters booked David Starr and has said they'd never book him again.  If they were unaware of his real personality or had been taken in by his charm (which is a theme with abusers) but they are willing to put things right in future and put them right for good, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.  If said promoter was a shit, I wouldn't give them the benefit of the doubt.  It's a case-by-case basis certainly, just as wrestlers are.

My main takeaway from the show is that Moxley felt like the only true star to me.

43 minutes ago, The Dart said:

I do enjoy AEW.   I'm just not overly excited by much of it.

I think that sums up my feeling for AEW.  I really want to like it way more than I actually do.   However, I find myself defending it on Twitter because American WWE fans on Twitter are nasty morons.

Still though, some people couldn't help themselves, especially on the NJ Cup Final night.

4 hours ago, CavemanLynn said:

Like a lot of things in NJPW, because of its habit of longterm booking, the EVIL run seems a year or two late. It was a G1 either last year or the year before that he was having solid bangers with everyone, had the mad look and the crowd on his side. After a year now of treading water in tags, that momentum and spark isn't there. 

It almost feels like a deliberate swerve to hold off pushing the real star of that team, SANADA. Since his Mohawk days (he needs that back), he's clearly been tipped for a big run at some point, but it seems they wanted a big talking point as shows spun back up but didn't want to go with Cold Skull just yet. It makes sense - SANADA's stoic charisma was pretty similar to Naito, and one of his big "spots" involved getting a crowd cheering, which is pretty hard to do with half a crowd.

I agree with this, largely.  From mid-2017 to mid-2018, EVIL felt like he could be a big deal.  Win over Okada in G1 27, main eventing King of Pro Wrestling 2017 and then going into a successful team with SANADA where they won the tag league and then the titles.  All of them were good match too.  However, too many singles jobs outside the G1 (he was 1-6 since G1 27 in non-G1 singles matches until this New Japan Cup) and being the strong back of the tag division mean he's colder than cold asparagus soup.  I know Gedo thinks he can reheat anybody but you can't reheat cold asparagus soup.

In saying that, I would be a hypocrite if I criticised AEW for heating people up to just job them and not give credit to New Japan for putting EVIL over after trying to heat him up.  I guess they think this Covid thing is going to affect them not just this year but next year too and taking EVIL out of LIJ, where he had a very definite ceiling of being Naito's little brother, and putting him in charge of his own faction is the way to have him ascend to the next tier.  SANADA's issue is that he too is Naito's little brother and, realistically, SANADA should be heading to the Hontai to make the same ascent.

I was saying last year on Twitter that the whole promotion has been built around Okada since 2012.  Naito has largely felt like a bonus, Tanahashi holding on has been a bonus, Omega was a bonus, landing Ibushi was a bonus.  However, Tana has slowed down, Naito's knees are clearly screwed, Ibushi isn't quite what he was and Omega has left.  They basically lost almost a generation of young lions, Master Wato being the only guy who has graduated since Jay White, having lost Honjo, Kitamura, Yagi and Kanemitsu in the meantime.  They're reluctant to go outside their dojo so they have to go back to the guys who should've been pushed years ago.

I don't disagree with anybody posting but everybody is making different points from different angles, which is part of the problem with AEW.  What sort of territory is it?  A babyface territory or a heel territory?  With Jericho as champion, they did excellent stuff in those feuds and the problem was elsewhere.  With Moxley (and with everything Cody has done except MJF), it suffers from the same issue as everywhere which it's a babyface territory that needs to understand how to book a babyface to draw. It's nice to see the good guy win but he also has to overcome something, which is part of what made the Moxley title win memorable and good.

Too often, I watch AEW and I am unsure as to what they're trying to achieve.  I can guess they're trying to achieve something, like trying to turn tag teams into a draw and somewhere you can develop singles stars, but I'm not sure they've gone about it in completely the right way.  I watch it, it's not a turn off but I don't think everything is pulling in the same direction and it's not doing everything successfully as a result.

Hope that makes any sense, it's just a brain dump.

6 hours ago, Maverick said:

Tony is still the MVP though, seems to be genuinely having a ball. His interactions with the talent are great too. 

Good point. The reason why the Britt Baker notes work is because Tony reads them. He doesn't oversell it, he doesn't eyeroll too much, it's right about perfect. 

1/3rd capacity at Osaka Jo Hall apparently.

I'm pretty sure the brain sides thing was debunked because you can rehearse and remember a lie.

An APPG would be as powerful as you want it to be. I've been to the Rugby League APPG's receptions. I thought it was a good networking event but was ultimately useless as a body for change. However, with the covid crisis, those MPs lobbied the government to bail out professional Rugby League. If it's treated seriously and taken seriously by the industry, it has merit. 

Ambrose going heel on Rollins after Roman Reigns' leukaemia announcement.

Rikishi doing it for the Rock. 

Kane going babyface to go up against Snitsky.

Any time Arn Anderson went babyface.

9 minutes ago, PowerButchi said:

Welcome back 

Thank you Butch.