Boss Rock

Oh God.

Exactly. She's not believable at all as a face.

That is incredibly stupid. And hilarious how these things happen when the popular babyface loses to the very bad babyface.

Hahahaha the cheers.

Was that actually a rope break?

#HeelOffense

Massive whiff.

That tea stuff is so stupid.

Outside of the women's division until Bayley's call-up and outside whatever #DIY and the Revival were doing, I felt like the product was pretty stagnant from the first Brooklyn until after Takeover: Orlando. There was too much of a focus on "dream matches" rather than character development and stories. They seemed to turn ship almost immediately after that.

Adam Cole to me is a guy who's in-ring work is pretty unremarkable yet almost always finds a way to have good matches. I think a lot of that has to do with his dance partners, but it's a credit to him for being able to gel with them. His character and promo work is also top-notch in an era where so many indie darlings struggle with that.

I actually liked this show a lot but the ending to the main event was indeed incredibly dumb and felt like your typical main roster BS. This obviously isn't the end to Gargano-Ciampa but they need to keep them separated for a while.

I don't really have a problem with doing another Ciampa-Gargano singles match especially considering it wasn't the plan (although a last-minute replacement probably would have been better), but I think if this isn't the feud-ender they should probably wait until the Rumble or Mania Takeover before running this match again.

I don't think so, most star rating discussions these days seem to be how silly and ridiculous they've gotten (which they have) and that NJPW is overrated.

New picks for 2005, 2010, and 2018 (as of now). Daisuke Ikeda has been a tremendous discovery.

"Trick or treat mother******"-this Haunted House Match will either be awesome or terrible.

My thing with Naito isn't just that he was at his hottest and was the biggest reason for the attendance surge at WK 12. It was that the story leading up to that was perfect for him to win. It all went back to getting rejected by the fans after winning the 2013 G1 and losing the WK 8 main event to Tanahashi, Nakamura, and the IC belt. So after his brief title run that was again foiled by Okada, he gets revenge for everything that happened to him. First, he wins and disrespects the title that took his main event. Then, he defeats Tanahashi (the guy who's shadow he was always in) and rejects the notion of a fan vote to take a possible WK 11 main event from him. He defeats Tanahashi again 4 years to the day after he won the 2013 G1 and wins the tournament again. And this time, he has the entire crowd's love and support. The only person left in his way was the guy who beat him at WK 8: Okada. That was brilliant storytelling and they completely blew it. So while I wanted him to win the G1 this year, I sort of agree him winning wouldn't have been quite the same if they had just done the damn thing when they were supposed to.

Half of the stuff that I thought would make my list are no longer contenders, so it just goes to show how much great wrestling there is that I've missed out on.

I'm generally very down on Striker and Vamp's commentary, but that aforementioned exchanged as well as "The smell of burnt hair!" line from the 5-0 match are proof that they have some gems. I dig XO Lishus a lot. Dude is super charismatic. Glad Drago is out of the Reptile tribe. It was an interesting story but I think he makes for a much better babyface. Hopefully he and Aerostar resurrect the tag team. Loved the proposal bit. Taya was tremendous and the Macho-Liz homage was cheesy yet delightful.

That's my thought as well.

Yeah, I can sort of see him as a Bryan where no matter what they do the fans will still love him. And agreed that there's no real point in waiting when it should have been done already.

Overall thoughts on the tournament. B Block largely killed outside of all the Firing Squad Bullshit, but to NJPW's credit the angle actually seems to be pretty over with the fans. Still sucks though. A Block was basically a BOSJ block with only 3-4 "must-see" matches and everything else ranging from solid to entirely skippable. I will give props to Okada for getting good matches out of the most sub-par of opponents and I think they started to pick things up around the end of the tournament. Tanahashi winning the whole tournament is disappointing but I sort of understand what they're going for. It's a match they haven't done in a few years and Tanahashi still has that level of credibility that never goes away, similar to Cena. But like Cena, it's a tired option when you have guys like Ibushi and Naito (the latter who was largely responsible for the surge in attendance for WK 12). It also goes against the whole "Ace" story they've been telling with Tanahashi in that he's never come to terms with the fact that he's not the top guy anymore and deludes himself. That's a really good character right there that's kinda been rendered moot now that he dominated the A block and won the tournament. And speaking of Naito, I don't know how much longer they can hold off on him winning the big one without him cooling permanently. Business is still really good and he's still arguably the most popular act, but if the plan really is for him to beat Okada WK 14 then that's still a bit of a big gamble considering he was at his hottest last year.

Yep, definitely got that impression.

I think he was just sent home.

Yep. Rochelle Loewen, who was a contestant on the Diva Search, said he poured baby oil and tanning lotion in her bag.

This was good but never quite clicked for me. They took a little while to get going and while the finishing stretch was good, I thought the action was rather underwhelming compared to their match last year.