Jmare007

Hash was top 10 for me in 2016. I wanna revisit him fully to see if he can keep that spot with a more critical eye. He's still one of my favorites but I wanna put him to the test just like Misawa.

There's the interview. He's not retiring and he's not "dead inside" lmao. He's puzzled at how he felt and took it as a sign that going part time is the best way to go. He never even implies he's retiring. He even goes into saying he didn't want to be in the Edge vs Roman feud because he felt it was strong by itself and that maybe that was why he felt "weird" that day.

That's not what happened at all, wtf.

Random mannerism theory.

Lol, if he pulls that shit off (working with WWE + multiple promotions) then he's beyond teflon in Vince's eyes.

I think this takes from the Okada thread could work better here. Takeshita is a worker that I "waited" for, for a long time until I just gave up. He's still very young so I don't deny he could've figured it out in 2020 but his run as Ace of DDT was mostly a disappointment to me. I think the biggest spark I saw from him during that period was in the 2018 Tag Team Shuffle tournament DDT did with Big Japan, were Takeshita actually worked differently and did great against very different opponents in fun tag matches (topping it off with a really good final). I thought he was going to shine from that moment on but it was once again same ol' same ol' with him as soon as he went back to solely DDT. Saying Okada is miles behind him playing different roles is kinda baffling to me because Takeshita has been always been a bleh Ace in my eyes -in terms of in ring performance- at least up until middle of 2019 when I just gave up and stopped watching him. Even reading Makai's nomination I thought every singles encounter he had with Endo as an Ace always lacked something to take it over the top and qualify as a legit great match, same with the Sasaki matches (though I have a bias against Sasaki as his strikes are so bad I can't into him at all, even though I know sucking at striking is kinda part of his character). I do like most of his matches with HARASHIMA and Shuji Ishikawa. though that's always been more because of his opponents than anything Konosuke ever did. I feel like Kono was never able to get out of a "go go go" style, as he's not good at selling and his matches are about bomb throwing and making early work rather meaningless. And I wouldn't be against that to be honest if it weren't for the fact that a lot of the times the crowd does not react to him as much as others. And that's mainly because he lacks in the in the charisma department. For that reason I think he works best in tag matches because his offense -which is probably the best Japan and has been for quite a while at this point- and overall style suits better when other people are doing the heavy lifting in the other parts of a match. This sounds way more critical than I intended to. I think it's because I've always had so much hopes for Takeshita as I saw him as a once in a generation prodigy and I just have never seen him rise up to that (admittedly stupid) expectation. Having said all that, I'm all for changing my mind. Specially if he turned things around since the 2nd half of 2019 till today. Any new recommendations? I've been meaning to watch the Akiyama match so I'll get to it.

If only we could have an "invader Okada" run in another promotion

Hugo is carnying it up 24/7, he's one of the least trusted "sources" out there so take everything he says with a grain of salt. I love the dude but that's just how it is with him. Edit: And yeah, he does have some scoops from time to time but that's always in the middle of a pile of bullshit he just says for clicks and attention.

Damn, what changed for you to then love Shibata concussing himself almost to death against Okada?

Has anyone this century been able to pull off a "hug it out" type of match/segment like Bryan and Kane did in 2012? It's pretty crazy to think they had a crowd go crazy over them trying to hug or not. Sure it was in Chicago, but that kind of crowd can just start trolling and making fun of it and make the segment all about themselves instead of being lead to react like Bryan and Kane did. Does that kind of stuff qualify more as a promo even though they didn't talk and it was all about charisma and body language?

I get it, but let's not forget New Japan sold out a Sumo Hall without a main event announced (it ended up being Cody vs Kenny vs Kota) less than 3 years ago and they constantly outdraw every other promotion in Korakuen without any marquee or title matches. I'm looking purolove and: -Three days after drawing 300 people at Korakuen twice, they drew more than 600 with Great-O-Khan & Henare vs Naito & SANADA maineventing. This was the first show to break the 300 people barrier in that building after four consecutive shows getting 300 people. Before that, they had 500 people on three shows that had New Japan Cup matchups. They have another big run of shows in KH this week with bigger cards so we'll see how they do. -In February they had 6 Korakuen Hall shows that drew in the 450-600 people range. -DDT had three Korakuen shows in March, two drawing more than 500 people and 1 above 600. That plus the 600 people in the one they had in April. Looking at the numbers, it's not that concerning as I thought in my first reaction to what MoS posted. Though it's evident there's less interest. Not sure overbooking the building is the answer as they've overbooked it since October last year and they are just seeing attendance drop since March and other promotions surpassing them.

I really liked the first half of his IWGP title match against ZSJ. Though a huge part of it was Sabre's work...me not liking the 2nd half as much was also mostly because of Sabre. RE: tag matches. I think the only really good tags Okada had were when he was a young lion in the NOAH feud. I think he kinda deserves some praise because of that year too.

The big question here would be if those New Japan, DDT and TJPW shows had the same crowd capacity limit. If they did, then hell yeah that's a red flag for New Japan, doing Big Japan/Zero1 like numbers is never a good sign.

Is the Tenryu match and the MiSu match in the pouring rain add or go against Okada's case? What do y'all think? I remember the Tenryu match being kind of sad seeing him in that state but Okada did try to make it as interesting as possible. The MiSu match I honestly don't remember shit besides the visuals of the rain lol, but I do recall a lot of people loving it.

Imagine the level of greed this is when the people wanting to shaft UEFA and FIFA are the bad guys in the eyes of basically every fan.

Florentino leading an NFL-like european football league backed by US capital and a lot of club owners and them just expecting the whole continent to bow down and let them have their cake and eat it too is the type of fuckery I never thought I'd see in my lifetime.

From the 2016 poll I can see a lot of the 20-25 guys dropping from the top 25 with new names coming in (or coming back from 2006). My guesses would be Austin, Hashimoto,, Arn and Regal and even Barry could get dropped a few spots just of the strength of people watching other stuff. I also think Joshi workers will be back strong after getting the shaft in 2016. Not sure why that happened? I remember not being much talk about them, their threads show that, but it would be interesting to know if it was a case of people from 2006 ranking them lower or just more people voting in 2016 and a majority of them not ranking them (at least to a point of not feeling confident on putting them in their ballots, I was one of those).

I was a fan of the Young Bucks in PWG, specially their heel work. But that's about it, didn't think much of them in TNA or ROH. They didn't make me care about the Jr. scene in New Japan either. And some of their most praised tag matches in the last few years were never close to the praise I read from some places -though I did think they were fun to watch-, mostly because as strobago said it felt like they were trying some "dramatics" that were closer the HBK's middles school theater plays than anything else. Not even close to enough for me to consider either of the Jackson's as GWE candidates.

Add me to the group of people being baffled and disappointed a guy like Yehi doesn't get more chances to shine in more high profile promotions. Dude is a breath of fresh air and it's hard not to be entertained with the matches he has and the creative shit he pulls off. I haven't followed him as much as I'd like to but I'm always impressed by him. Maybe this project will make me be less lazy and do a legit deep dive on him to see if I can put him in my ballot somewhere. I also hope these next 5 years have him in more prominent roles and high profile matches outside of a few indies.

How high can Kento get will depend on how much you like or dislike his formula, he very rarely goes away from it so it's kind of a make or break thing. One thing I think it's undeniable though is how charismatic he is and his ability to connect with a crowd no matter what role he's playing in the ring. As Boss Rock says in his nomination case, he can be a great underdog and annoying cocky heel. I feel he best suited as an underdog as up until early 2020 (when I kinda stopped following him) his match mostly consist on getting one body part worked and shrugging it off any time he's on offense, which often comes as spurt of energy. His banter with Wada never gets old for me, though I can totally see others being annoyed with it. I was really high on Kento from 2016 to 2018 or so then I became kinda tired of his schitck though I still enjoyed matches like the ones against Okabayashi and specially the one against Naoya Nomura.

The watch party was a perfect introduction to her. I'm not sure I'm gonna be that into the style, as crazy as it felt it being early 1980's they were doing a whole bunch of stuff and not a lot was able to breathe. But Jaguar stood out at pretty much everything: facial expressions, intensity, selling, playing her role ("heel", face, dominant, underdog, etc.) and some of the stuff she was pulling off was pretty damn crazy for an 18-20 year old kid in a the early 1980's. The Monster Ripper match was fucking outstanding and my favorite of the ones I was able to watch in the WP.

That was great. Thought it was a perfect "meet this candidate (and her peers)" watch with the match choices.

He's probably gonna be higher on my list than last time. The more I see of him the more I like him, and he's still so fucking good in the ring.

I remember Liger giving Marufuji a very good match in the 2010 at a point were I couldn't stand Maru. If cagemstch is correctvthe date is 4/4/2010. Also did Liger give Tyler Breeze the best singles match of his career at that Takeover? Wouldn't call it a must watch but an old ass Liger coming to NXT randomly for 1 match and putting e "***-***1/2" match like it was nothing was pretty damn cool.

See, that's what I get lost because I not sure what's dumb about Strong Big Japan's style. Slow? sometimes yes, but when they do slow down is because they want to do smart shit like work a hold and make it mean something, or do an exchange that will pay off later. There's no question that there's a lot of "hosses clash against each other over and over until one can't go anymore" but I find that has fazed out A LOT in the last 6 years. And Nomura has certainly not been a part of much of those. I guess this is a discussion for another thread though.