rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

oh and Ambrose / OWens ofc

but yeah is it worth sitting and watching the whole show?

Watch the gif of Kalisto and Jey Uso. Nothing else was worth a toss.

ah man really? :(

p. sad how over the years they've been making their own content superfluous. happened first with the C-shows, then with Smackdown, then Raw and now with most of the PPVs. so stupid, it ought to be the easiest thing in the world to put together compelling matches for these shows with the talent they've got

The tag match is that gif and Xavier Woods on commentary so is worth watching. Otherwise, mostly sad and perfunctory.

onwards and upwards tho! NXT Ldn is gonna be a good show I'm sure. Feel like quite a lot is riding on Samoa Joe bringing his A-game and going in unforgivingly stiff on Balor, Bayley vs Nia Jax might be quite a fun Sting/Vader match but it'll be interesting to see how compelling Bayley can make things when she isn't working with one of the other big four

http://i64.tinypic.com/15xo2v4.png

Tlc & raw both enjoyable. Raw has vince for the first time in over a year.

http://s22.postimg.org/tuzcqwovl/somoa.png

knew they wouldn't let him keep the name for long

gable gable jordan gable gable gable jordan jordan gable jordan

takeover london was predictably excellent. bayley has now turned out two excellent matches, one with eva marie and nia jax, which is making my wrestler of the year honor hard to decide (her or sasha).

err i meant to say she's turned out two excellent matches that i underestimated (being eva and nia). obviously she's turned out like 101984 amazing matches in 2015.

Both those matches were as good as they possibly could have been, mostly thanks to Bayley.

Joe vs Balor felt like it was lacking an extra gear. It was stiff and heated, but not heated in the sense of being a grudge match with a guy who turned on his best friend and was choking him out on TV every week just to be a dick.

omfg i have just discovered Breaking Ground tonight IT IS THE BEST why did no one mention this on here?!!!!

just finishing up with the 3rd episode and at the moment Tyler Breeze and Jason Jordan are getting into it in the gorilla position (Jordan wants to know why Breeze is wearing amateur wrestling boots if he never wrestled at an amateur level, Breeze wants to know why all the fans are chanting for Gable and not Jordan lol) and Adam Pearce is dancing along to theme tune. other observations so far:
- Robbie Brookside seems like a cool guy, I would like to be trained by him I think
- Apollo Crews really is as nice as he comes across on screen
- Baron Corbin is an ASSHAT and I'm considerably more interested in him than I was before I'd seen this show
- the winner of the most recent series of Tough Enough was a guy called Josh and he might just be the absolute worst promo guy I've ever seen in my entire life - case in point, the promo he cuts here from 40 seconds onwards omg you guys just get this guy out there on tv ASAP, build it and they will come

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHLMNqRBGW8

man between them ZZ, Sabby and Josh have gotta be the biggest bunch of clowns out there, it's hilarious seeing Asuka and Biff Busick sitting next to these chumps in group meetings as if they're all on the same level.

William Regal starting out apparently quite zen and then getting immediately furious at tryout guys completely failing to do what he tells them, never once demonstrating or varying his instructions, just getting louder and louder, increasingly sarcastic and aggressive, and he's right, bcuz some of these guys are IDIOTS, shit this is just great, great television.

I do NOT like the office suit guy whose name I didn't recognize who gave a little speech to the cameras about how passionately devoted he was to all of the talent that passed through the NXT system before coldly firing poor Devin Taylor without batting a fucking eyelash, I bet if you worked at NXT you'd fuckin hate that guy

i can't watch it without getting the feeling that it's total divas for the NXT crowd and nothing i'm watching is accurate and it's all probably gonna get in the ways of storylines/literal careers (in devin's case, for example)

ah well sure, it's just a reality TV show, everyone's working all the time. doesn't bother me at all, it's still making quite a few of the guys (especially Corbin) way more interesting to me

made it to the 'debate' between lawler and paul e dangerously and am absolutely blown away that paul was 31 years old in 1997

he was 25 during the dangerous alliance!

did he come out of the womb looking like a 45 year old or what

and sounding 45, more importantly

I finally decided to sign up for NJPW World so I can see WK 10 (and other NJPW shows) without having to track down iffy streams. Same goes for all the archived shows.

I find myself rooting for Tanahashi to beat Okada one more time, although it almost certainly won't happen.

Oh when is the new WK?

also considering getting njpw world again (after forgetting to cancel my free trial last time) but it's a bit of a confusing hassle without a fully translated mirror

made it to the 'debate' between lawler and paul e dangerously and am absolutely blown away that paul was 31 years old in 1997

he was 25 during the dangerous alliance!

did he come out of the womb looking like a 45 year old or what

― qualx, Thursday, December 31, 2015 6:33 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's crazy, he turned 50 a few months ago and it was hard to believe it had taken that long

There are some interesting promos on the recent-ish Heyman DVD from I guess AWA where he hasn't yet developed his cartoon pro-wrestling promo voice and sounds like a different person altogether; my recollection was that his voice had the exact same tone and style as Sting, which was really jarring

A related weird old-seeming-wrestler thing which I am fairly sure is true is that John Cena is now older than Arn Anderson was when he retired

well arn anderson was a professional dad and cena dresses like a 12 year old

watching old wrestling brings up the old time vortex brain processing problem that i'm not sure other people have, where it's really difficult to properly process the ages of people who were younger than where you are now, decades ago. rocky maivia was 24(!) in 1997, but i have trouble watching him and seeing a person 3 years younger than me. and when i can actually see it i just start to feel bad.

Oh when is the new WK?

Right now!

trying to watch this right now with Kevin Kelly and Matt Striker together on commentary, it's like some kind of special torture designed to punish anyone too pussy to just watch it in Japanese

god almighty these opening four-team jr. tag matches are unbearable. i don't get how the Young Bucks have the following that they do if they're always like this. i suppose it's kind of admirable that they've been able to carve out a niche as this self-aware post-modern thing but everything they do takes you out of the match completely.

I watched with English commentary, partly because Yoshie Tatsu was there to provide translations (in theory), but he didn't say much the whole night. Kevin Kelly was surprisingly good, and Striker was unbearable as usual. During Styles-Nakamura he kept asking Tatsu stuff like "how do you feel watching AJ Styles in the ring after what he did to you?" and it was clear that Tatsu really wasn't comfortable talking about it or at least didn't want to have it become a running thread in their commentary of the match. But Striker never could take a hint -- he always overdoes things.

No spoilers but I can't see any NJPW fan being disappointed with the show. It was definitely near or at the level of last year's WK.

should we have a 2016 thread?

As long as you make the thread look strong

rolling roman's reigns

so was wk10 fun?

personally would go with 'rolling sheamus still a thing in 2016' or just 'rolling new day 2016'

rolling don't you dare be sour 2016

rolling armbars with pentagon jr.

wrestle kingdom was fun, yes, definitely worth checking out all of the big singles matches. Shibata/Ishii was dumb as shit but good fun all the same. Styles/Nak was my personal favourite, but the main event was suitably epic. I hope they're done with Okada / Tanahashi for good now.

shinsuke nakamura may be on dis ting 2016

I'm kinda too confused about which New Japan guys have actually been reported to have given notice though, Gallows/Anderson/Styles/Nakamura seems a bit too good to be true, or bad depending on your pov

Court Bauer with the reported reporting in question

court bauer has never said a true thing in his life

meltzer seems to confirm though so yeeeeeesh welcome to wwe nakamura

nakamura in wwe fills me with dread but who knows maybe he'll be boma-ye'ing john cena's nose into oblivion every week.

wrestle kingdom was indeed good fun. alongside the matches windsor mentions i also liked the jr heavyweight tag match (though sometimes almost too smoothly executed) and the jr heavyweight match. worried for the state of shibata's and ishii's organs and brains though.

Jericho calls The New Day trap queens

Nakamura in WWE!!

The timing makes sense for all four of these guys. Nakamura has been considering this for a while I think, and he's at the age where it's now or never if there's any hope of becoming a star in the US.

Daniel Bryan would probably sign a waiver absolving WWE of anything they ask for if they bring him back to wrestle Nak.

i'm pretty sure he'd already have done that if it were a possibility

it's hard to even imagine nakamura as a regular in full sail, it seems so small time. he and tana might be the only current wrestlers in the world with the aura to make me think that. i can even imagine okada down there but not those two. i CAN see jericho calling them whip nae naes

there's no reason for it to ever happen again but i wish WWE would go back to cross-promotion cooperation and actually do it right this time. introduce the big guys over there as actual competition for the big main roster guys over here, actually spend time with their characters and build cross-promotional feuds. in my dreams.

Have the WWE ever really done it? Was always more of a nwa/wcw thing I thought.

Nakamura in WWE would be incredible. I think wrestling fans, adult ones anyway, would give him respect. Itami's start was done so well, and its a shame he got injured, because the two together* could come in like post-wm raw and run fucking cray cray and we'd all love it.

*sure its the wwe and all ppl who look alike/are the same race go together but also theyd be so dope, with like paul e as a voice piece too. Lol fantasy booking

that's an interesting point about the cross-promotion cooperation as they've clearly had their greedy little eyes on NJPW for quite some time now. it's interesting to see this news remembering how WWE reportedly wanted to strike up a deal to show New Japan stuff on the Network and NJPW refused on the basis that they had no interest in becoming a developmental territory for WWE to just swoop in and snatch up anyone who started getting any kind of global traction. i understand the sentiment i suppose, but lol all the same.

these are really intriguing signings in so far as Styles and Nakamura are supposedly both broken, with Nakamura in particular only up to having a limited number of big outings each year. I hope they don't completely neuter his style (though of course it'll be toned down a lot).

Maybe this signals a big push into Japan to try and flog the Network to a different market and they're going to save all the big performances for shows over there? Nakamura, Styles, Balor, Itami, Asuka - they could run some pretty massive Japan shows as 'Beast In the East'-style Network specials with all of that talent.

I'd be really surprised if Nakamura signs or has signed with WWE. It just doesn't make a lot of sense on paper--he's 35 years old, doesn't speak fluent English, isn't immediately physically impressive, is weird in a way that might not work for a mass U.S. audience, doesn't promise to attract a large or lucrative demographic (the way a major Mexican star might, c.f. their gamble with the original Sin Cara), would have to change the way he works to suit the WWE house style, might also have to change his ring name, and would be leaving the biggest promotion in his home country where he's a huge deal to work for a company that has never made a major star out of an Asian or non-Anglophone wrestler, ever.

Add in the infamously grueling WWE main roster schedule, and stuff about his injuries (which I wasn't even aware of), and it looks even more unlikely. I can't see why WWE would want him, nor why he would trust them to make good use of his talents.

And if the idea is to bring him in to NXT, then presumably they'd be offering him good money (at least as much as he makes in Japan, one would think) to come work for their unprofitable, internet-only developmental league, a move which isn't likely to increase viewership at all since the kinds of fans who follow Nakamura watch NXT already.

I know they signed KENTA/Hideo Itami, but I don't think he was ever a star of Nakamura's stature in Japan. I'm guessing it's easier to lure a main eventer away from NOAH than from NJPW.

I can only really understand it as an ego thing: WWE signs Nakamura because they like the idea of being able to poach the top stars of any promotion anywhere. So they promise him whatever combination of money, light schedule, and push it takes to make the deal--even though, from a dispassionate business perspective, there's not much reason to think he's worth it.

All of which is to say that it would be super interesting if he did sign, so I hope it's true.

They have a bit of a problem generally where the guys who get most over with the core, vocal fanbase are well-travelled indie/international guys who are 30+ with 10+ years of topes and stiff kicks on the clock, whose bodies are going to immediately start to disintegrate on contact with the WWE's road schedule. It's basically in the fans' interest to learn to like reigns and Baron Corbin because they probably won't die in the ring or become depressingly deluded burnouts like Bryan (and Zayn and Balor soon enough)

Nakamura will probably be way more over than Itami in NXT from day one just shouting yow and kneeing people but yeah it's a bit hard to envisage a long term career path for him in wwe. Their apparent determination to make Itami seem like a big deal in the build up to Wrestlemania followed by him getting flicked out of the battle royal by big show was.... yeah

Kenta kanna devitt and nakamura all sign to nxt within a year or so. Network in Japan gotta be seen as hella lucrative. Also the main roster is REALLY depleted atm, this seems like man city or real madrid buying a squad of stars cos a starting 11 cant cut it if you have a few injuries or poor form etc.

As shit as this year has been, its been the first year in like ten that Cena, Orton, Kane, Big Show, HHH or Punk havent been the main event. Hopefully one day soon this rebuilding will pay off.

Btw i still know this is all gonna go to shit.

At this point NXT is more of its own touring brand than a purely developmental division within WWE. They keep adding house shows to their schedule and they sell out quickly, so they need to add more established talents to keep that going. The Takeover specials are a big drawing card for the network (i.e. where they need to make their money in the long term). Most NJPW house shows are in halls with 500-1000 fans, the PPV's are in larger arenas with a few thousand people (sometimes more), so it's essentially the same as what NXT is doing. For Nakamura that's a lateral step at worst, with a chance of being called up to the main roster and becoming a much bigger star.

Yeah the WWE's record of making stars out of foreign wrestlers (or any visible minority) is horrible, but Nak is the kind of OTT, charismatic character that could work in front of American audiences.

FWIW, I think he speaks English reasonably well. He did some training in the US and is supposed to be close friends with Finn Balor and Karl Anderson. Cutting a promo in English is a different story obviously. He's way better than Hideo Itami. It might not even matter -- Asuka delivers one word promos and is as over as anyone in NXT. If Nakamura throws knee strikes and yells yeeeoh all the time he'll probably be fine. That's pretty much all he does in Japan right now!