kas

Really hope he re-signs, he can only go up from here in New Japan whereas I don't see much upside in him going to WWE.

Watching Jay White go from stinking up the place with Tanahashi at WK 12, to putting on a main event clinic against Ibushi has been great. His rise and improvement has been incredible and he can only get better from here.

Well, Ibushi Vs White absolutely ruled. I think that might also be the longest WK main event ever.

Main event was MOTN for me, but Okada/Osprey was great, and the undercard was solid. Here's hoping Ibushi walks out still champ

Okada's big matches always have slow starts and I can usually get into them, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get into the first ten minutes of Okada v Ospreay. Everything after the backdrop was really good stuff though (except for the strike exchanges).

Both of these guys are in my top 10, but I'd go Bryan by a hair. None of these are top tier, but I enjoy the Flair, Savage, DDP, and Hennig matches. I also enjoyed the Goldberg match, and think his match with Booker T is probably Booker's best match.

Absolutely horrible news. RIP.

Failing upwards

On paper, the card is actually pretty good (except for the waste of Tanahashi), but how we got there has been poorly thought out. I imagine that Okada will bring back the rainmaker at WK, just like at WK13 when he came back with blonde hair and shorts. Also, a BC implosion has to be coming soon right? It's way bigger than it ever was with two former IWGP winners - one of them a double champ - vying for leadership. Mind you, me wishing for the end of BC will probably be a Monkey's Paw situation where the split happens and produces two heel factions and even more interference bullshit occurs.

I really enjoy Mauro's commentary for Pride, NJPW on AXS, and the early days of SDLive. His NxT work suffers mainly from him leaning into his overactive tendencies.

Tremendous final, up there with the best matches of the year for New Japan.

I kinda wish there was a compromise i.e. give Ibushi an ic shot on night 1 and do the White match on night 2, to at least separate the belts

A good show overall today. Hopefully Naito and EVIL never wrestle each other again though.

Kylie Rae seems to have retired https://itrwrestling.com/news/kylie-rae-retires-from-wrestling/. A huge shame, the sky was the limit for her.

I am in pain just watching this. WALTER is at his best when he's completely unrelenting, and the way he mauls Ilja, with a laser focus on the chest and neck, is just incredible. Few in wrestling today can fire back as Ilja can, and he gives almost as good as he gets, with some brutal offence of his own, all while selling the damage wonderfully. About my only major complaint is that WALTER gets suplexed too early, and a bit too many times. My instant reaction is that this is my 3rd favourite match this year behind the WK main events and a top 10 match in WWE history.

I've seen it said that they want to run the Tokyo Dome with 20k so it's entirely possible

It was genuinely incredible.

I fully agree, 4.25 is a good rating for it I think. I'm higher on SANADA than most so I think he's had quite a few better matches, but it was still a great final.

While the worst final since Tanahashi Vs Naito in 2013, this was still a great match with an insane finishing run

IIRC their original story was always that the venue had contacted them on behalf of Ospreay and they heavily implied that Ospreay was the one behind it all. Now they've backtracked on the second part of that and are saying that Ospreay had nothing to do with it, only the venue.

So is Ibushi losing to EVIL or to SANADA

If you want to go with STARDOM, check out any combination of matches between Io shirai, Kairi Hojo, Mayu Iwatani, and Meiko Satomura. Their best wrestlers right now I'd say are Momo Watanabe, Jungle Kyona, and Mayu Iwatani if you want more recent stuff.

Tana-SANADA was pretty great, SANADA'S best this tournament

AEW's been awesome. Moxley's title reign is the reign he should have had in WWE, it's been great. Still a few mis-steps, but the future is certainly bright for them.

EVIL beats Naito meaning we're probably getting another EVIL title match, what fuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn