Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
WrestleMania is within spitting distance, and the card for WWE’s biggest show is taking shape. We have Randy Orton vs. Bray Wyatt, Brock Lesnar vs. Goldberg and AJ Styles vs. Shane McMahon and I could not give less of a shit.
Ring of Honor is in trouble. While nearly every wrestling promotion has been hurt by WWE’s sweeping up of talent for NXT, they have taken the brunt of the attack. The company that set the template for modern day American wrestling is struggling.
At the start of this year, I made a decision. A decision to no longer spend at least five hours of my week plugging myself into the WWE Universe. While I would still catch every PPV, (I’m not going completely cold turkey) Raw and SmackDown were consigned to the bin, because life is quite frankly too fucking short.
After the madness that was Fantastica Mania New Japan gets back onto the serious stuff with The New Beginning in Sapporo, a show that kicked off Suzuki-gun’s invasion of New Japan proper. Even with a second event next weekend this was a stacked card and gave me plenty to think about as I continue my New Japan education.
Continue reading “10 Observations From The New Beginning in Sapporo”
While Flair has been a regular in this series so far, we are now hitting what many might see as his heydey. His feud with the Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat is still spoken about in hushed tones, and there are three five-star matches between the two in 1989. The first one is for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and took place at NWA Chi-Town Rumble.
Continue reading “Meltzer’s Classics: Steamboat vs. Flair 20/2/89”
Two weeks ago Kenny Omega walked out of Wrestle Kingdom as the hottest thing in wrestling. Ignoring the fact that Kazuchika Okada was as important to that match as he was and that Omega has been brilliant for years, it suddenly felt like the world woke up to The Cleaner. Yet, rather than turn his sights towards a potential rematch with Okada and a chance to become only the seventh non-Japanese wrestler to hold the belt and help spearhead New Japan’s push into the US, he began talking about taking some time off.
The UK Championship worried me. It worried me because I saw a future when WWE stepped into the British market and ripped apart something that has taken decades to build. That they would cherry pick the best talent and walk away having added nothing to what they left behind. It wouldn’t be the first time WWE played the big bully. Thankfully, it looks like I was wrong.
Coming into 2017 I made the decision that from now on I was going to watch less WWE. With five hours of Raw and SmackDown and two PPVs a month enough was enough, and it was dampening my enthusiasm for other wrestling. Alongside that, I vowed that this would be the year I finally got into New Japan. I’ve watched a couple of Wrestle Kingdoms in the past, but it is time for me to give it the effort it deserves. With that in mind, the last two days have seen me sign up to New Japan World and tune into Wrestle Kingdom 11 and New Year Dash and as this is the internet in 2017, here are some things I learnt.
‘This is War Games,’ as we dive into 1987 we hit our first five-star match which would feel at home in the world of sports entertainment. War Games sees two rings sit side by side with a giant cage covering both. Two teams of five go head to head, taking it in turns to have a man enter the structure until all ten men are in the ring at which point the match ends when someone is knocked out, surrenders or submits.
There was a time when people questioned whether AJ Styles could make it in WWE. Did he have the charisma and even if he did would Vince see in him what countless others always had? Well, that view looks pretty fucking stupid now.
