W2BTD

This show was setup for 6300 with the giant stage, so this was a legit super no vacancy full house.

A couple of shows are in the books already. - Non-Wrestlers w/David Bixenspan - Modern US/Canada w/Kris Zellner - Mexico w/thecubsfan Tentative guests for the rest of the regions: - Japan (Alan4L) - Historical (Matt Farmer) - Australia/Africa/Europe (Matt Farmer) The shows are on the $5 tier, all six will be released before the end of the month, so you can listen to all of them for $5. The first three all knocked it out of the park. https://www.patreon.com/voicesofwrestling

From what I understand, the DDT Sumo Hall show is very likely going to sell out, which is huge for DDT, and the real drawing match on that show is CIMA vs Takeshita (the company ace) even if it's officially slotted as the semi. Tickets sales spiked when the match was announced, and it's considered a dream match of sorts. DDT posts their weekly TV show on YoutTube, and the two episodes featuring CIMA's invasion angle & match are by far the most viewed eps by a mile. 40-50k views for what typically averages about 1,000 or so. Same for the Wrestle-1 invasion (CIMA is working invasion angles in both places). It's spiking their YT, and as InYourCase mentioned, CIMA is popping a dying promotions houses to the point that fans are leaving in droves after his matches end. Combined with the DG Korakuen streak ending (it was way longer than two years) and overall attendance plummeting since he left, the old narrative of DG drawing as a collective has sort of been destroyed. It's pretty clear CIMA was pulling the cart to a significant degree. A HOF degree? That's for voters to decide, but we have ample evidence this year that CIMA wasnt simply a cog in the DG wheel.

Promise me you follow through with this one, brother.

This is how I took it. I didn't take it as some scale breaking/altering thing. He wanted to convey how great he thought it was, and that's how he did so. I've given something like 10 matches ever 5-stars, I could probably rank them if I had to. He thought it was better than just about any match he'd ever seen, and that's how he conveyed it.

Why on Earth would you do this? You are really going to take this all the way because dave wanted to emphasize how good he thought one singular match was? You are cutting off your nose to spite your face here. Stand down, my man.

I agree with every single word of this, to the point I almost think you may hive ripped it from one of my old posts somewhere as a rib. Terrifying. I rarely go below **1/2 or so for "major league" wrestling. I think for the most part, most major league wrestling these days produces average matches at minimum. I rarely think I see anything terrible like we would see in the 80's or 90's.

Better matches, or at least looking like he gave a shit in the ones that weren't good. idk, I feel like we're derailing things here. I found him boring outside of two or three bouts. I do think the Shibata match is worth a watch for Parv, though.

That's how I saw his run. Off the top of my head, Sak had two good matches (Shibata, one of the Nagata bouts) and one great match (Nakamura). To me, the rest of his run was largely shit, with Sak looking bored & uninterested. People use the term "playing pro wrestler" a lot, and to me that perfectly described his run. It looked like it was all tongue in cheek to him, like he wasn't ever taking it seriously. Shibata quickly blew by him in popularity because regardless of real life ability, Shibata came off like the real life bad ass, while Sak came off like a dude doing half ass loose as fuck grappling that didn't get over. He was good for about one good match per year. And I say all of this with Sak being my favorite MMA fighter of all time. Sak the pro wrestler can kick rocks. He was carried a couple of times to good matches, and outside of that, he was below average.

I was never very high on pre-NJPW SANADA either, beyond thinking he was a decent worker with some upside in that regard. He's like a new person in this setting.

Based on what I've read from you here, don't listen to these guys. When Shibata & Sakuraba first came back in 2012, they were pretty dull. Shibata adjusted and became the uber masculine, more-guts-than-brains, dick measuring asshole that you seem to be enjoying in these reviews. Sakuraba stayed dull, didn't get over, never got out of the midcard, and is now out of the company. I don't think the style gets redundant like others are saying, either. I though the Dome match was fucking awesome, just like the Ishii Dome match, just like all of the 2015, 2014, 2013 G1 stuff... You should watch the Ishii/Goto matches, too. More pure, unadulterated, stupid men doping stupid things and defiantly no selling until one guy dies. How that can ever wear thin is a mystery to me, but to each his own.

Completely agree. The Bucks/RPG Vice match is the obvious example. Even the English commentators missed that it was basically a payoff to the months long Rocky Romero redemption story.

I know people have this idea that the NEVER is a meaningless/extraneous title and all of that, but it simply isn't true when you study the booking. The NEVER is used to draw third string houses. Not to repeat myself, but Shibata saw more singles mains this year than he ever has before previously combined, and that's because the NEVER was built around him. NEVER has either been booked as the first steps of an elevation, or been centered on people like Makabe who are popular secondary level draws. NEVER title bouts are used to headline shows like Kizuna Road or Road To house shows in larger than normal buildings (like Shibata vs Kojima this year in Aichi, which drew 4000, which is big for a house show). It's the title they use to headline smaller buildings when they don't want to burn a bigger match, but still need to sell a decent amount of tickets, like Shibata vs EVIL in Singapore. It's not a throwaway belt, and it definitely isn't a punishment.

Also NJPW fans are conditioned to know when to react in main events. To me that is to their credit in this match, because the rhythm of this main event was completely flipped on it's head, which is why the crowd was going so mental for what turned out to be an incredibly long closing stretch. I think it's a weird talking point too, because they actually did a great job manipulating the crowd. It feels like a nit pick to me. It's only worth mentioning in the context of people calling it maybe the best match ever and in the context of the show. As an isolated point it's kind of a shoulder shrugger, but when you compare it to the reactions in the opening moments of the match that immediately proceeded it (which had similar pacing) there is a noticeable difference. I'll grant that there could be a variety of reasons for that, and to me it's not really a serous criticism of the match. I would deduct exactly zero stars or whatever for it. But when people talk about the opening minutes and how invested they were - and in many cases act confused or annoyed that others say they weren't - it's worth noting that the live crowd was pretty clearly "down" as well. I think your other post is a relatively good breakdown, and is in line with some of the things I've been saying the last few days myself. I do cringe a bit at being categorized as primarily a 1 in this case, but that might have to do with my comments on Twitter in real time v my comments here, and the fact that I don't know if I like the idea of 1 as the bastion of "intellectual" critique. There is a sense in which 2 feels like it could be labeled "narrative building/narrative reading" which is as post-modern intellectual as you get. Yeah, I was really only going off of your real time comments on Twitter, and I used you as my example because you've admitted to being disconnected to NJPW this year, but unlike Phil I know you have been very well versed in it recently so you weren't coming in as blind as (I assume) he was. I haven't read this entire thread. I don't think the "First 15" as they have become known were particularly compelling, especially in real time. There was rudimentary back work by Omega, which he continued pretty much through the entire match as a wear down for the OWE he was never able to hit, but other than that I think the primary purpose it served was to set up the final 15 to look even more frenetic than it was. Who knows if that was even intentional, but that's how it ended up playing out, at least to me.

Shibata? Nope. He wasn't officially under contract until this past February, I believe (may have been March). He was working as a freelancer, even though he never worked anywhere else. This was a big reason he was hitting a glass ceiling.