As New Japan continues to trundle down the Road To Destruction, we shall keep our focus on the important stuff, the opening two matches. It’s been so far so good for the cubs in front of the Korakuen crowd, so let’s see if they could keep that up.
After impressive performances from the Young Lions on day one of the Cup, we’re back with another two matches and a new selection of rookies who will be looking to impress. Will they? Let’s find out.
Having done such a wonderful job with my TJPW review (by which I mean no-one has actively shouted at me, although someone did very kindly point me in the direction of a beginner’s guide to the company), I’m back with my first DDT review. Well, that’s not strictly true, I reviewed their show in America. It’s my first of a Japanese DDT show, and not one of you gives a shit about this, so let’s get on with it.
Umino and Connors apparently don’t like each other. Credit: NJPW
You might have noticed this says Young Lion Cup at the top rather than Road to Destruction. I am not going to write about/watch the Road to Destruction shows because life is far too fucking short. However, I do want to catch the Young Lion Cup, so I will be doing a series of quick reviews covering their matches before doing full coverage of the actual Destruction shows. Sound good? It better.
After talking about doing so for forever, I have finally subscribed to DDT Universe. That means you can probably expect reviews of Tokyo Joshi Pro and DDT going forward, plus anything else that catches my eye. I’m going into these promotions with little to fuck all knowledge of how things stand, so don’t expect anything detailed to begin with, but we’ll get there eventually. If you’re a hardcore fan maybe leave it a few reviews because I’ll most likely annoy you at the beginning.
If Suzuki ever asks you to hit him, maybe don’t hit him. Credit: NJPW
Having put on two successful shows with RevPro’s assistance last year, New Japan came back to the UK to do it all by themselves. Royal Quest came from the Copper Box in London, and it’s worth pointing out that I was there live. That means this review is conducted purely by the memory of what I could see from my floor seats after the visual aid of many a pint of beer and while being overwhelmed with the excitement of my first New Japan show proper. That means that it will all be getting the famous live bump, making matches that might have appeared merely fine at home, a lot more exciting to witness in person. Understood? Great, on with the show.
Every AEW show feels like a big one this early in their fledgeling life as a wrestling company, but with their TV debut drawing ever closer, keeping the momentum up has to be their prime goal. Could All Out do that? Or would it be their first major misstep?
Well, this took a while to turn up, didn’t it? Not only that, it’s apparent some changes are going on behind the scenes in Stardom, and I don’t think they’re necessarily good ones. The quality of the presentation on these videos, especially the subtitles, has dropped and, by the sounds of things, Sonny (who runs the English Twitter and I believe does the subtitling) is no longer doing it. I’ve no idea why, but he’s asked if anyone has complaints to Tweet at Stardom, so if you feel similarly to me, maybe do that.
Anyway, this is the third show of the 5STAR Grand Prix and the first of two that Stardom held in Osaka that day. Christ, just thinking about that sounds exhausting.
The first of GCW’s shows in Japan was a whole load of fun, so night two had something to live up to. With the way this company has been going recently, you’d have been daft to bet against them keeping the good form up.
Towards the end of 2014, Kota Ibushi announced that he was moving to New Japan’s Heavyweight Division. Kota was no stranger to Heavyweight competition, he’d competed in the 2013 G1, but he’d done so while still officially a Junior (much like Will Ospreay and Shingo Takagi did this year). Now, he was only wrestling the big boys, and for his first challenge? He went after Shinsuke Nakamura’s Intercontinental Title.