NEVER Openweight Championship
If Ishii loses, he can never challenge for the title again
Jay White (c) vs. Tomohiro Ishii

Kazuchika Okada vs. Buddy Matthews

Juice Robinson vs. MOOSE

Ren Narita vs. Will Ospreay

Clark Connors & Karl Fredericks vs. United Empire (Jeff Cobb & TJP)

Fred Rosser, David Finlay, Rocky Romero, Alex Coughlin, and Alex Zayne vs. Team Filthy (Tom Lawlor, JR Kratos, Danny Limelight, Jorel Nelson and Royce Isaacs)

Violence Unlimited (Brody King and Chris Dickinson) vs. Stray Dog Army (Bateman and Misterioso)

Yuya Uemura vs. Josh Alexander

Figured I'd start a thread for the show nobody is talking about that takes place right after AEW Full Gear.

Doesn't look like much on paper but this show could be a pretty big deal for NJPW as there are a few key things to watch out for.

In the main event, Ishii has to win or he can never challenge for the...NEVER title again. His name is synonymous with that title, tied for the most reigns ever (5, with Hirooki Goto) and holds the record for combined days as champ (462). Ishii being unable to challenge for that prize would be a huge shocker for NJPW's faithful, especially now that they seem to be pushing it as a bigger deal than they have in the past.

Kazuchika Okada steps on American soil for the first time since the MSG show with ROH a couple years back, and he's facing Buddy Matthews in his first match since being released from WWE. There might be a lot to unpack after this match, specifically if Okada leans into another feud and if Matthews' friend Malakai Black shows up. Would be kind of hard for Black to show up at both Full Gear and Battle in the Valley, but hey...you never know. Video vignettes are a thing.

Will Ospreay will be fighting and considering he's calling himself the "real" IWGP World Champion there might be some shenanigans revolving around him. United Empire also have a tag team match and if I'm being honest, I didn't know TJP was a member. Totally missed that.

Violence Unlimited might also have some shenanigans. Could see some other Impact stars show up there.

Uemura vs Alexander could steal the show too. That match is worth checking out.

Aaaaaand of course there's KENTA, who has called out CM Punk since winning the US title. Does KENTA show up in some capacity? Or will he be at Full Gear?

Saturday could be yet another historic night in wrestling so I just wanted to make sure everyone knew this show was also happening. :lol:

Will Ospreay had a surprise United Empire member as a tag team member a few weeks ago on NJPW Strong. I tuned in to that because I was interested. The TJP reveal is one of the biggest disappointments I have experienced as a wrestling fan. It was a shock heel turn because TJP was one of the guys fighting against Ospreay, but I was expecting someone brand new, not an existing member of that lame roster.

Ren Narita is worth watching. A bit too much of a blatant Shibata clone for my liking, but to be fair he's very good at it and does have a handful of his own moves.

I hope MOOSE and Juice Robinson make a tag team and call it Moose Robinson.

Or JOOSE.

Muice?

I’m sorry I got drunk during Full Gear.

Nov 10, 2021 10:45:08 GMT Emperor said:

Will Ospreay had a surprise United Empire member as a tag team member a few weeks ago on NJPW Strong. I tuned in to that because I was interested. The TJP reveal is one of the biggest disappointments I have experienced as a wrestling fan. It was a shock heel turn because TJP was one of the guys fighting against Ospreay, but I was expecting someone brand new, not an existing member of that lame roster.

Ren Narita is worth watching. A bit too much of a blatant Shibata clone for my liking, but to be fair he's very good at it and does have a handful of his own moves.

Ospreay vs Narita was fucking great. If you watch any match from this show make it that one.

Jonah Rock AKA Bronson Reed is in NJPW. Attacked during Moose vs Joose

Okada vs Matthews was pretty good. Maybe I was expecting too much out of Matthews and thought I’d enjoy it more but it was still good. Matthews hasn’t wrestled a major match in quite a while and he’s in a new environment against a new opponent. It was fine.

I liked the finish with Okada maintaining wrist control as Matthews tried to pull away. It was like “no, new guy. The wrist control is real. You’re fucked.”

And Ishii is NEVER champ once again. Kinda figured he would win. Jay White needs to get his ass back to Japan so he can quarantine before Wrestle Kingdom.

I hope Ishii brings the title with him to Dynamite on Wednesday.

Nov 14, 2021 6:17:04 GMT RT said:

Jonah Rock AKA Bronson Reed is in NJPW. Attacked during Moose vs Joose

looks like Jonah got all his papers taken care of. He was suppose to make a appearance at Bound for Glory, but had some issues. I'm curious if he shows up at Impact's tapings this weekend.

Ospreay vs Narita was excellent. I'm not sure how I feel about a young wrestler whose gimmick is "I am a Shibata clone", but at least he's bloody good at it. I like that Ospreay didn't need the Stormbreaker to win and that the Hidden Blade was enough. We need more sub-finishers ending matches.

Okada vs Buddy was a bore. Honestly, I'm getting bored of Okada in general. He main evented pretty much every G1 show but only had two really good matches. I'm sure if you watch any one of his G1 matches in isolation I'd think it was great, but they do get very very samey. He doesn't have the versatility of the other top NJPW wrestlers. Now I'm thinking - was Okada always like this? Even in his God-mode IWGP Heavyweight Championship reign, were all his title defenses the same but just more spread out? Or has he just gotten more complacent recently? I'm not sure. Buddy Matthews did nothing to impress me either. He has a great presence and look, but nothing remarkable between the ropes.

Out comes Ospreay. So NJPW's top storyline involves the real IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Shingo Takagi, and two guys carrying fake championships. It's kinda dumb. The point is we're getting Okada vs Shingo and Ospreay is going to face the winner on the second night of Wrestle Kingdom.

Not see Jay White vs Ishii yet but I already know the result. Ought to be a banger though.

I just think Okada had a better array of opponents.

Granted I haven't watched a lot of NJPW recently but just looking at his G-1 it's a lot of the same names and I don't think I could sit through a 17 minute Chase Owens match. Also I'm sure it was really really good but YOSHI-HASHI does nothing for me, a 27 minute match with Okada sounds like it should be illegal to subject somebody to.

Looking back at that 2016-18 run where:

He won the belt against Tetsuya Naito who was at the peak of his Los Ingobernables de Japon gimmick. His G-1 matches were kept relatively short with the exception of the Tanahashi match (30 minute time limit draw), Tomohiro Ishii (who he put over) and Naomichi Marufuji (who he also put over) who was the NOAH representative in the bracket. He faced Fale in a typical G-1 return bout and it was better than Fale's lower standards. He had a longer bout with Marufuji which was a good match before the Omega bout which really changed the landscape of wrestling criticism.

As an aside, it's kind of crazy how Okada/Omega completely buried Ricochet/Ospreay which at the time felt huge but now rarely gets mentioned despite being a really divisive match.

Back to Okada, Suzuki made his long awaited return from NOAH only to lose to Okada in his first match back in a real slog of a match. However before that could really hurt his reputation he fought a returning Kota Ibushi (as Tiger Mask W) and later Katsuyori Shibata in one of the most memorable bouts in NJPW history. He fought Fale again in another surprisingly solid Fale match before the second Omega bout.

I think his reign lost some steam around there outside of the Zack Sabre Jr match. I remember the Naito WK match being really underwhelming (although I was glad Okada won and I think I argued for it on this very iteration of PW) and then there was the 2/3 Falls match with Kenny which I think may have set a new standard for a title change in the modern era.

I think it's more the ' NJPW Style ' than Okada. The WWE has it's own style too and when John Cena was at his peak, and doing it better than anyone else on the roster, he took a lot of criticism. 

I find with a lot of NJPW matches, they're repeating the same spots over and over. The ' FIGHTING SPIRIT ' trading of the fore-arms - complete with the no-sells or to mix things up, trading chops. Followed by the ' Irish-whips and reversal routine ' a lot of ducking and running and catching each other and whipping them again, and most of the time, unless it's an open palm strike, the offence looks weak.  

With Okada especially he's somebody who sticks to the NJPW style and doesn't really experiment with it at all. It's actually fitting that he borrows a lot of Randy Orton's offence because he really is their version of Randy, except they actually pushed him as a star whereas Randy was always the 1B.

Meanwhile somebody like Tanahashi was more versatile and could wrestle that Bret Hart style where he could easily be the heel in a match if need be or the sympathetic underdog babyface.

I've always felt like there's been better in-ring talent than Okada, but nobody presents themselves as a bigger star. Just watching the little nuances in Okada's performances made me appreciate him more, kind of like watching The Rock or Austin and the choices they'd make in terms of how they'd register their opponent's offence and make their stuff look good.

It's interesting you compare Okada to Randy, as Randy would be the one WWE guy almost anyone could have a good match with.

Is Randy incredibly exciting? No. But fundamentally, he's hands down the best " basic " worker in the company and always has been. You can put a good worker in the ring with Orton and he's the perfect base to make them look great.

So if Okada is his NJPW equivalent, potentially that's the reason why. And why Omega was on a different level during their matches.

Nov 20, 2021 13:07:00 GMT NATH45 said:

I find with a lot of NJPW matches, they're repeating the same spots over and over. The ' FIGHTING SPIRIT ' trading of the fore-arms - complete with the no-sells or to mix things up, trading chops. Followed by the ' Irish-whips and reversal routine ' a lot of ducking and running and catching each other and whipping them again, and most of the time, unless it's an open palm strike, the offence looks weak.  

Wrestlers who rely too heavily on those strong style patterns get stale very quickly for me. Hirooki Goto being the prime example. However the style isn't itself the problem - it's really exciting when done right or when melded with other styles. Ishii is as pure strong style as it gets, but he knows how to work those cliché spots to make them interesting, and he's incredible at working different styles and speeds of matches while not changing anything about his fundamental moveset. He just switches the parts around in different ways. Guy is a magician. Same with Shibata. Takagi has also become very good at this recently.

Then you have the anti-strong style guys like ZSJ and Jay White who sort of wrestle against strong style in a trope subversion manner. Great O-Khan proved in his G1 run that despite his clumsy appearance he can wrestle just about any style extremely competently. Guy has a huge future.

Okada and Tanahashi are the two top guys who don't dip into those strong style clichés too often. They work a much more basic traditional style.

Nov 20, 2021 14:36:24 GMT Big Pete said:

With Okada especially he's somebody who sticks to the NJPW style and doesn't really experiment with it at all. It's actually fitting that he borrows a lot of Randy Orton's offence because he really is their version of Randy, except they actually pushed him as a star whereas Randy was always the 1B.

Meanwhile somebody like Tanahashi was more versatile and could wrestle that Bret Hart style where he could easily be the heel in a match if need be or the sympathetic underdog babyface.

I've always felt like there's been better in-ring talent than Okada, but nobody presents themselves as a bigger star. Just watching the little nuances in Okada's performances made me appreciate him more, kind of like watching The Rock or Austin and the choices they'd make in terms of how they'd register their opponent's offence and make their stuff look good.

I agree that Tanahashi is a far superior worker. Give Okada the right storyline and a meaty rivalry and he can produce magic. His feuds with Tanahashi and Omega will go down as two of the company's best ever. But put him in a one-off match against a guy who isn't a supreme worker and you more likely than not get a dud match. Tanahashi's quality has fallen recently but he's still capable of magic as evidenced by his matches with Taichi and Cobb in the G1, both displaying tremendous psychology.

As you say Okada doesn't change it up at all, and now that he's back on top beating literally everybody, and without that Kenny/Tanahashi level of rivalry, his shtick is getting very boring very quickly, especially since we've seen it all before many times. Maybe Will Ospreay is his next super rival. The Okada/Ospreay match at Wrestle Kingdom was the best match Okada has wrestled since the pandemic started, and I'm not sure second place is even close.

Yet somehow Okada is able to convince everyone he's the biggest star in the company. He does have some intangible quality about him. I want to watch his matches despite the fact that I know they're probably going to be boring. But I do feel his reputation as an in-ring worker is far above his actual ability.

The Okada/Orton comparison is a logical one, and it certainly holds true for the pure in-ring work. However I never felt Orton truly connected with the fans. They popped for his RKO-outta-nowhere act and gasped in horror as he punted people's heads off, but that's about it. Okada has always had a more fundamental connection with the audience where they buy into his every move. He has a very odd personality, not the most likeable, but you cannot deny his authenticity, and perhaps that is the key.

That's what I meant by Randy being presented as the 1B. When Okada returned to New Japan in 2012 they pushed him right out of the gates and made it clear that he was the star and after a tepid start the fans bought in because Okada played the part.

Meanwhile Orton had his wings clipped. After beating Benoit, HHH jobbed him out on the next PPV and ended up abandoning their storyline to work with Batista instead. He then turns heel and has to do the favours for The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, D-Generation X etc. Then when he was supposed to get a big win over Cena, Kennedy injures John and Orton has to beat HHH...but only after losing to him first.

If the WWE had have really committed to Randy I think he would have resonated more with the WWE audience.

But yeah, even so it wouldn't be a 1:1 comparison but just in terms of how Okada works there's that Randy Orton style comfort zone which can get stale especially if he's in the ring with a so-so opponent.

To be fair to Okada, he was 24 years old when he was IWGP Champion and NJPW started to make waves internationally. Whereas Tanahashi was 30 when he won his first IWGP Championship and 35 when he had that match with Suzuki which was what helped propel NJPW to a global audience. Fans largely missed Tanahashi's growth as a performer and how he was looked over for Shinsuke Nakamura who played a far more serious character than he's known for.