NJPW Wrestle Kingdom X
NJPW Wrestle Kingdom X (1/4/2016)- Tokyo, Japan
NEW JAPAN RUMBLE- 1/10
So how do you think the rest of the ROH roster feels that f*cking CHEESEBURGER is getting to go over to Japan to wrestle at the Tokyo Dome?
I’m not going to do a â€"stupid announcer quotes†for tonight because that would mean I would actually have to pay attention to the commentary and thus subject myself to Matt Striker’s idiocy, which I‘m not really willing to do, but I would like to point out how f*cking annoyed I got when Kevin Kelly referred to CHEESEBURGER as â€"the heart and soul of Ring of Honor.†Not Roderick Strong or the Briscoes or Kyle O’Reilly or Nigel McGuinness. F*cking CHEESEBURGER.
Okay… so… stuff has been happening and I’m not going to lie to you: we’re over twenty minutes in and I’m getting pretty bored with this matc-HOLY BALLS HAKU JOINED THE BULLET CLUB!
I did enjoy the spot where everyone beat Taguchi down, but then the next entrant was Shiro Koshinaka, who made the save and then he and Taguchi ran wild on everyone with hip attacks.
They kept the cameras on the guys for their entire entrances, which took FOREVER due to the stadium-sized aisle, so we missed a lot of action.
Sakuraba is in this match, despite the ass-kicking he took less than a week ago at the RIZIN show. That’s impressive.
There were some fun moments in here, but for the most part, it was pretty boring, and the gang-pins looked ridiculous. At ten minutes this would have been fine. At over thirty, it was pretty bad.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: reDRagon(c) vs. Matt Sydal & Ricochet vs. Roppongi Vice vs. Young Bucks (w/Cody Hall)- 7.75/10
F*cking Matt Striker stooged off that Ricochet is Prince Puma. Kayfabe, motherf*cker!
The match is exactly what we’ve come to except from the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Division, and it’s always great.
MATCH TO CROWN THE FIRST NEVER OPENWEIGHT TRIOS TITLES: The Briscoes & Toru Yano vs. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, & Yujiro Takahashi) (w/Mao-Chan)- 4.25/10
Is the country of Japan in the middle of a shortage of blond hair dye or something? Because neither Yano or Yujiro or Fale had their hair dyed blond like they usually do.
The match was meh, and brought down from that by the fact that the babyfaces had to cheat to win. Adding to the problems, the announcers’ narrative only served to get me behind Tama Tonga instead of the babyfaces. What they do with Tonga next could be interesting. Or they could do what New Japan usually does and just keep things stale.
ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jay Lethal(c) (w/Truth Martini) vs. Michael Elgin- 6.75/10
The story of the match was Lethal having to deal with Elgin’s strength advantage. They didn’t get much time (only about eleven minutes, which makes sense for their place on the card, but not for the fact that this is supposed to be a big world title match), but they did what they could with it. The finish sets up a rematch, possibly at one of the ROH shows in Japan next month.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kenny Omega(c) (w/the Young Bucks) vs. KUSHIDA (w/Ryusyke Taguchi as â€"Doc Brownâ€)- 7.5/10
Taguchi played Doc Brown in KUSHIDA’s entrance, so I guess that means Shelley is just totally done with New Japan.
KUSHIDA barely sold the spray to the eyes, so now that gimmick is pretty dead. Omega also could have sold his arm better later on. The match got pretty great as it went on, but then ended poorly as Kenny’s shoulders were clearly not down during the pin.
IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (Karl â€"Machine Gun†Anderson & Doc Gallows)(c) (w/Amber Gallows) vs. Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma- 7/10
They still haven’t fixed that typo from Dominion where Amber’s name was misspelled as â€"Anber.†Either fix the typo or go back to calling her the Bullet Babe. The match was pretty great, with Anderson and Honma particularly shining together. A nice big babyface victory.
HIROOKI GOTO vs. TETSUYA NAITO (w/Los Ingobernables)- 6.5/10
Naito has ditched the Dr. Doom mask, so that’s good. BUSHI stablemates is carrying a giant scythe.
Matt Striker laughingly says that wrestling referees are the dumbest people on Earth. In pointing this out to us, Matt has completely failed in his job as an announcer by doing something that will likely cause people to lose their suspension of disbelief, which means that, ironically, by voicing this statement, Striker has proven it to be untrue by proving that he himself is the dumbest person of all.
In the end, Goto overcame all of Los Ingobernables cheating and won the match… which seems like a big waste considering how much time they put into building up this new heel Naito character and how much of his heat seemed to be with Shibata rather than Goto.
NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Tomohiro Ishii(c) vs. Katsuyori Shibata- 5/10
I would criticize the director for cutting to a long camera shot of the announcers while these two were hitting each other in the face, but it’s not like they were actually selling the moves or anything, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
Now they’re doing that idiotic spot where they literally just take turns sitting down and letting the other guy kick them in the back as hard as he can. Now they’re doing the chops version of it.
You know how Al Snow will say completely crazy sh*t like â€"Dave Meltzer ruined the wrestling business by putting the Savage vs. Steamboat match over so much that everyone started focusing on trying to put on great matches instead of drawing?†Well I’ll say that Dave Meltzer has damaged the wrestling business by putting over the crapfest that these two had in G1 in 2013 so highly because since then, there have been so many people just trying to emulate the lack of selling and psychology and common sense in that match instead of putting on actual professional wrestling matches where you’re supposed to pretend that you are two competitors each trying to win a sporting competition instead of playing â€"take turns to see who can hit the hardest.â€
After that it got better, but this was still a seventeen minute match that would have been much better without the first nine.
IWGP INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura(c) vs. AJ Styles- 8.5/10
This was a first time ever dream match, and it sure as hell delivered. AJ worked the knee, Nakamura worked the head and the back, they threw in some great false finishes, and it was fantastic.
IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kazuchika Okada(c) (w/Gedo)- vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (w/Captain New Japan)- a PERFECT 10/10!
Holy f*cking sh*t this match! With all of the build-up, we knew this had to be epic, and in the next edition of dictionaries, there is going to be a picture from this match next to that word. They told a fantastic story with working the body parts, and Tanahashi alternating which leg he was working over gave a reason for why Okada was still doing so much running and jumping long into the match (each leg would recover while Tanahashi worked the other). I can see some people complaining about finisher overkill, but to that I would say the following three things:
1. The kick-outs o heavily protected moves showed just how much heart these two had and how much each man wanted to win.
2. It’s the main event of the January 4 Tokyo Dome show. This is the exact time and place to do finisher overkill.
3. It worked perfectly for this match.
Everyone go check this match out. We have an early favorite for Match of the Year.
An awesome show from New Japan. The January 4th Tokyo Dome Show rarely fails to deliver, and especially now that they didn’t have any sort of PPV time constraints, they were really free to go all-out, and they did. This will probably be in the running for Show of the Year at the end of the year, but it’s not the juggernaut that last year’s show was.
NEW JAPAN RUMBLE- 1/10
So how do you think the rest of the ROH roster feels that f*cking CHEESEBURGER is getting to go over to Japan to wrestle at the Tokyo Dome?
I’m not going to do a â€"stupid announcer quotes†for tonight because that would mean I would actually have to pay attention to the commentary and thus subject myself to Matt Striker’s idiocy, which I‘m not really willing to do, but I would like to point out how f*cking annoyed I got when Kevin Kelly referred to CHEESEBURGER as â€"the heart and soul of Ring of Honor.†Not Roderick Strong or the Briscoes or Kyle O’Reilly or Nigel McGuinness. F*cking CHEESEBURGER.
Okay… so… stuff has been happening and I’m not going to lie to you: we’re over twenty minutes in and I’m getting pretty bored with this matc-HOLY BALLS HAKU JOINED THE BULLET CLUB!
I did enjoy the spot where everyone beat Taguchi down, but then the next entrant was Shiro Koshinaka, who made the save and then he and Taguchi ran wild on everyone with hip attacks.
They kept the cameras on the guys for their entire entrances, which took FOREVER due to the stadium-sized aisle, so we missed a lot of action.
Sakuraba is in this match, despite the ass-kicking he took less than a week ago at the RIZIN show. That’s impressive.
There were some fun moments in here, but for the most part, it was pretty boring, and the gang-pins looked ridiculous. At ten minutes this would have been fine. At over thirty, it was pretty bad.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: reDRagon(c) vs. Matt Sydal & Ricochet vs. Roppongi Vice vs. Young Bucks (w/Cody Hall)- 7.75/10
F*cking Matt Striker stooged off that Ricochet is Prince Puma. Kayfabe, motherf*cker!
The match is exactly what we’ve come to except from the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Division, and it’s always great.
MATCH TO CROWN THE FIRST NEVER OPENWEIGHT TRIOS TITLES: The Briscoes & Toru Yano vs. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, & Yujiro Takahashi) (w/Mao-Chan)- 4.25/10
Is the country of Japan in the middle of a shortage of blond hair dye or something? Because neither Yano or Yujiro or Fale had their hair dyed blond like they usually do.
The match was meh, and brought down from that by the fact that the babyfaces had to cheat to win. Adding to the problems, the announcers’ narrative only served to get me behind Tama Tonga instead of the babyfaces. What they do with Tonga next could be interesting. Or they could do what New Japan usually does and just keep things stale.
ROH WORLD TITLE MATCH: Jay Lethal(c) (w/Truth Martini) vs. Michael Elgin- 6.75/10
The story of the match was Lethal having to deal with Elgin’s strength advantage. They didn’t get much time (only about eleven minutes, which makes sense for their place on the card, but not for the fact that this is supposed to be a big world title match), but they did what they could with it. The finish sets up a rematch, possibly at one of the ROH shows in Japan next month.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kenny Omega(c) (w/the Young Bucks) vs. KUSHIDA (w/Ryusyke Taguchi as â€"Doc Brownâ€)- 7.5/10
Taguchi played Doc Brown in KUSHIDA’s entrance, so I guess that means Shelley is just totally done with New Japan.
KUSHIDA barely sold the spray to the eyes, so now that gimmick is pretty dead. Omega also could have sold his arm better later on. The match got pretty great as it went on, but then ended poorly as Kenny’s shoulders were clearly not down during the pin.
IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Bullet Club (Karl â€"Machine Gun†Anderson & Doc Gallows)(c) (w/Amber Gallows) vs. Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma- 7/10
They still haven’t fixed that typo from Dominion where Amber’s name was misspelled as â€"Anber.†Either fix the typo or go back to calling her the Bullet Babe. The match was pretty great, with Anderson and Honma particularly shining together. A nice big babyface victory.
HIROOKI GOTO vs. TETSUYA NAITO (w/Los Ingobernables)- 6.5/10
Naito has ditched the Dr. Doom mask, so that’s good. BUSHI stablemates is carrying a giant scythe.
Matt Striker laughingly says that wrestling referees are the dumbest people on Earth. In pointing this out to us, Matt has completely failed in his job as an announcer by doing something that will likely cause people to lose their suspension of disbelief, which means that, ironically, by voicing this statement, Striker has proven it to be untrue by proving that he himself is the dumbest person of all.
In the end, Goto overcame all of Los Ingobernables cheating and won the match… which seems like a big waste considering how much time they put into building up this new heel Naito character and how much of his heat seemed to be with Shibata rather than Goto.
NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Tomohiro Ishii(c) vs. Katsuyori Shibata- 5/10
I would criticize the director for cutting to a long camera shot of the announcers while these two were hitting each other in the face, but it’s not like they were actually selling the moves or anything, so I guess it doesn’t matter.
Now they’re doing that idiotic spot where they literally just take turns sitting down and letting the other guy kick them in the back as hard as he can. Now they’re doing the chops version of it.
You know how Al Snow will say completely crazy sh*t like â€"Dave Meltzer ruined the wrestling business by putting the Savage vs. Steamboat match over so much that everyone started focusing on trying to put on great matches instead of drawing?†Well I’ll say that Dave Meltzer has damaged the wrestling business by putting over the crapfest that these two had in G1 in 2013 so highly because since then, there have been so many people just trying to emulate the lack of selling and psychology and common sense in that match instead of putting on actual professional wrestling matches where you’re supposed to pretend that you are two competitors each trying to win a sporting competition instead of playing â€"take turns to see who can hit the hardest.â€
After that it got better, but this was still a seventeen minute match that would have been much better without the first nine.
IWGP INTERCONTINENTAL TITLE MATCH: Shinsuke Nakamura(c) vs. AJ Styles- 8.5/10
This was a first time ever dream match, and it sure as hell delivered. AJ worked the knee, Nakamura worked the head and the back, they threw in some great false finishes, and it was fantastic.
IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kazuchika Okada(c) (w/Gedo)- vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (w/Captain New Japan)- a PERFECT 10/10!
Holy f*cking sh*t this match! With all of the build-up, we knew this had to be epic, and in the next edition of dictionaries, there is going to be a picture from this match next to that word. They told a fantastic story with working the body parts, and Tanahashi alternating which leg he was working over gave a reason for why Okada was still doing so much running and jumping long into the match (each leg would recover while Tanahashi worked the other). I can see some people complaining about finisher overkill, but to that I would say the following three things:
1. The kick-outs o heavily protected moves showed just how much heart these two had and how much each man wanted to win.
2. It’s the main event of the January 4 Tokyo Dome show. This is the exact time and place to do finisher overkill.
3. It worked perfectly for this match.
Everyone go check this match out. We have an early favorite for Match of the Year.
An awesome show from New Japan. The January 4th Tokyo Dome Show rarely fails to deliver, and especially now that they didn’t have any sort of PPV time constraints, they were really free to go all-out, and they did. This will probably be in the running for Show of the Year at the end of the year, but it’s not the juggernaut that last year’s show was.