We start this week off with huge congratulations to Konosuke Takeshita for winning the G1 Climax and saving us from a EVIL title run AGAIN.
AEW started the week off nicely on Collision with more of the Bucks’ former EVP money going to Kris Statlander as she earned 10K and started a new budding friendship(?) with Harley Cameron and building the potential first Women’s Blood and Guts match even more, an ACE new signing (pun intended) in Ace Austin as he wisely avoids the slow assimilation of TNA by the Fed and a fun main with Nigel Vs ZSJ happening at Forbidden Door (which by the time this is out is 24 hours away!) I also suspect Garcia might finally turn heel again at FD…
New Japan closed this year’s G1 Climax tournament with a lot of DISCOURSE online over EVIL making the final to take on Konosuke Takeshita – but before we get to that we saw YOUNGBLOOD return from their excursion as part of the WAR DOGS rechristened as the Knockout Brothers – Yuto-Ice and OSKAR. (Yes- people have already done the Enzo and Cass ‘comparisons’)
I was impressed by Dakai Nagai during his match with Hiromu, Shingo and tsuji against WAR DOGS and Gedo – curious to see how he does as the slight rebuilding of NJPW continues due to the loss of Naito et al.
Now to the G1 Climax final itself – to begin with I can see what the last year or so Gedo’s been trying to do which is make the House Of Torture the new ‘big bad’ in NJPW after slowly building them up for the better part of 5 years – for good and for bad – with their interference and cheap tactics, something that usually the fans hate as it mocks the great sport of puroresu but weirdly in this case we’ve had a certain subset of fans slowly coming around on EVIL despite the execution mostly being VERY repetitive because of his work ethic.
So it DOES make sense for the final to be what it was and thankfully Konosuke makes it all click together as he wins a shot (thanks to Rocky Romero and ZSJ stopping the Torture) at whoever the NJPW Heavyweight champion is after Forbidden Door (covered next week!) and following Zack’s cash in of his before WK last year Takeshita wants to do the same…
The go-home Dynamite for Forbidden Door had great talky-talk segments with Ospreay/Moxley and MJF/Hangman (MJF actually having a good promo for the first time in a VERY long time plus oh look villains working together to send a message - refreshing and even if the contract cash in has to drag on a bit longer… maybe at Full Gear given the history of the event for both men – and have Mark Briscoe cost MJF.)
The aftermath of the Jetspeed/Tanahashi vs Death Riders (a very fun trios match) gave me vibes of my favourite ECW segment (Manhattan Center where Cyrus cancels the TNN show) with the chaos that occurred with most of the War Dogs causing it, it was also nice to see Ospreay and the Opps get some form of revenge before the Lights Out match (Although Joe vs Claudio has to happen right at FD?)
Guessing the tag title match being a triple threat is the way for FTR to get the win against Brodido and Hurt Syndicate don’t have to job? If so… tad lame but if in the end Brodido get the belts for a short run I’m happy.
Happy to see Killswitch back (and as a friend pointed out – could that be Jack Perry help resurrect him?) as we continue the speedrun of Cope and Christian which I hope isn’t too long… hell have Brodido be the team that beats them.
Nice to see Toni/Alex vs Mercedes and Athena being the main event especially as we have the cliffhanger of Toni’s neck…
While ROH seems to have an issue with 3 titles having holders getting injured (TV, tag and trios) at least we saw a solution to two of them in this episode as Sammy Guevara is ‘freebirding’ the titles with the Von Erichs (something about that making me chuckle given the history of the Von Erichs and the Freebirds!) Hopefully Nick Wayne’s foot injury doesn’t keep him out for too long – the time frame minus surgery is 10 weeks…
The matches I’d say catch from this week’s are Beast Mortos vs AR Fox, Sons of Texas vs Adam Priest and his new allies The Workhorsemen (TK sign Adam Priest ASAP) and the CMLL World Trios Titles match between El Sky Team (Mistico, Neon and Mascara Dorada) vs El Depredadores (Magnus, Rugido and Volador Jr)