New Japan 2018 -- They pushed Kenny! You bastards!

I think Gedo can stop with the disqualification finishes now. We got it.

Great pic! Minoru is still bae

Yesterday i watched Resolution from 2009. Okada, Yoshi-Hashi & Harasawa as a Young Lion, great time. One of my favourite scenes was when Watanabe returned as EVIL in 2015 and nobody recognized him because of the hair lol

I could not agree more! One of favorite moments is Ishii no selling Goto's chops and it's not until he knocks Goto down that he winces his pain. Two stable mates trying out tough each other, Ishii waits until Goto can't see him feeling his strikes. That whole night may be my favorite night of the G1 so far.

Side note and I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but I find myself more invested in this G1 than previous. I have only been really following the product for about a year or two, but I think it's because of the english commentary on all the nights. It's probably because I'm a bad wrestling fan, but Kevin Kelly holding my hand through the tournament has been a real treat.

Funny story about Tama. I've never directly interacted with him once. Yet, I've been blocked by him on Twitter. Twice.

Why, you might ask? Well, honestly I'm not 100% sure but best guess I got is at some point I said G.O.D. wasn't very good and I guess he spends his time looking himself up on Twitter hoping to get mad at something. So far he's yet to lay down some high school level insult game like he had previously done to some military veterans the other day.

I know some people are gonna talk about how cool he is for working people on social media, but honestly most of the tweets make him sound less like a brilliant heel and more like a massive tool.

I think my favorite G1 is still the one from last year. While the english commentary is really good in comparison to what's happening in other promotions and really is a good complement to the matches, the japanese one is still more involved emotionally in the vocal excitement in following the action going on the ring.

Now that said, i am a bit puzzled with Juice Robinson in this G1.

At some point NJPW were happy they managed to successfully push him as a popular face, they even had him beating Jay White for the US belt, the guy seems to be over for the NJPW fans in Japan .
But after those 4 matches he had in this year G1 i'm not sure what NJPW is planning with him after that.

The ref bumps are never ending.

I feel like NJPW is entering the Attitude Era, if it already wasn't there. If you think about it, the gaijin are all of the age where they were the perfect age to love wrestling during the Attitude Era and Gedo has given them control over their angles, for the most part.

So we're getting Attitude Era nostalgia, which is selling t-shirts like crazy to, get this, people that grew up in the Attitude Era. On top of it, they're literally doing the nWo split angle with somehow more fuckery than they had previously.

I'm sorta tapped out here.

Kenny and Cody booked their own angle and they instead stretched it out well over a year, had it extend into ROH (which is logical, considering the core NJPW audience in America is the ROH audience) and it feels never-ending. The match at the Cow Palace was good, but honestly, if you have a big, crazy feud culminating in one big, crazy match, putting on a Hardy Boyz trying to steal the show at Wrestlemania on the undercard probably isn't the way. This is why Jericho in NJPW was a real breath of fresh air for his two matches: he brought actual intensity with him. The Omega match at WK and the Naito match had this sense of danger to them that weren't based around "I hope these guys don't get hurt on these bumps" as much as "these guys are going to kill each other." Kenny and Cody should've had a crazy, bloody brawl where they tried to murder each other, instead it was a fairly typical Kenny Omega match with a few big, centerpiece spots. It just didn't feel like the culmination of a giant story line as much as it felt like "we have the spotlight, let's do a lot of stuff while we have it."

They aren't clawing for the spotlight anymore, New Japan has given that platform to them. They don't have to fight for attention, they have it. 

My biggest issue is how far from New Japan's style they've drifted in the last few years. Kenny as a major player has almost entirely changed the promotion's style what feels overnight. Part of what rubs me the wrong way about him is that most of your major gaijin players have always adapted to the promotion's style. Look at Juice Robinson. Juice has adapted New Japan's style while adding his own flourishes, but I don't feel like Kenny and them have adapted at all. New Japan style has always utilized a lot of mat work and a lot of stiff striking, both of which Kenny is flat out bad at, so he doesn't bother doing. Instead he focuses on pacing, workrate and execution, all of which he does well. That's fine, but it's hard not to miss the stuff that Choshu, Fujinami, Masa Saito, etc. were all really good at.

That's why I've really been loving ZSJ, Yano and Sanada in this tournament. They all are working in a way that's more of a throwback to what is hilariously considered a more classic style of strong style.