Royal Rumble 2021

In the course of being a living idiot in this whatever the fuck this community is you run into certain events and things that just can’t be avoided because they are part of the fucked up web that brought us all together in the first place and I have noted myself as one of our chroniclers of our shared adventures into heathen winds and things we shouldn’t watch anymore but we do because we just can’t stop ourselves, and such is this year’s Royal Rumble. Of course, you may remember that Kendall used to do these better and more organically livestream than me, but we are different voices, allegedly, and I have decided to be the guy that does that for you, for me, for all of us, for our entire fucked up family.

 

Now, here’s the thing: going into this I haven’t watched a millisecond of WWE content since, well, the time we did this last year, but wrestling is wrestling and art is art, and it can’t have changed that much, right. RIGHT????

 

Right.

 

 

Drew McIntire vs Goldberg

 

First off LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL VINCE WENT INSANE HE FINALLY DID IT HE WENT FUCKING INSANE. I had heard about this Thunderdome concept but never actually witnessed it and it is as grotesque and dystopian as only could come from the mind of a man who as a boy used to crush leaves to put into the vaginas of the alleged girls around him. The setup is ludicrous of course, wall to wall neckbearding and teenage affirmation shit that the WWE feeds off of as they double dip into the mental illness well again and again.

 

Second, WWE has always dreamed of just making the fans do whatever the fuck they wanted, so it makes sense that Vince has gone hypermode into creating a virtual audience that actually doesn’t do a horrible job of simulating what his fever dreamed ideal crowd would sound like. If you just try to forget about it, it becomes background bullshit you don’t need to worry about or ever think about again because the ramifications of thinking about it could turn you into a vegetabled newt ready to be eaten by a bird which will just shit all over your parked car at the beach and maybe even on you at the beach YEAH I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN

 

Thirdly, and this is where we need to be careful to not overthink think this, I noted at times that when Vince chased a balloon backstage that said MAKE NOISE X, the ALL IN FREAKS LIVECAMMING THEMSELVES WOULD START TO TAKE UP THE WANTED NOISE/RESPONSE and it was at that point that I was sure I was going to just have to post that gif of Martin Sheen coming up from the river water in Apocalypse Now, but no, we move on and try to get our heads around this or completely fucking out of it if we want to be safe.

 

Anyway, so I guess Goldberg is back making weird faces and snarly noises even though he is 70 years old, and the sad truth is that he still does exude a presence which would incinerate the juice boxes Vince hands out to his performers as they come to the ring.

 

McIntire is a dude who went through the WWE horror show vortex of existence and then remade himself on the other side with lots of drugs and the sort of shit that makes Vince McMahon think that you have a big penis. The two try to work out a short match of false and burned finishers because fuck it, just get to the last page of the script KEVIN Vince yells from gorilla, the position, not the Monsoon or even the animal although it would be likely that Vince actually transformed into a gorilla and just hooted and threw shit at the wrestlers as they made their last walk down a condemned road into the hell of the WWE experience.

 

Goldberg is old and hates these punks but he likes it when Vince gives him millions of dollars for being a dude who wrestled in a rival promotion back in the good old days when pro wrestling was still real. He huffs and he puffs but he cannot pin down the younger, hotter version of himself I guess is the story they are going with but lol remember when this dude was caddying for Heath Slater? Anyway, McInitire hits his moves to the awed reverence of the sold out tv monitor emporium and keeps his title which is the WORLD’S TITLE if I am not mistaken.

 

 

Sasha Banks vs Carmella

 

WWE and women’s wrestling is always a loaded box of YOU CAN’T SAY THAT ANYMORE or JUST THROW THE FUCKING ROSES YOU FUCKER, but all that aside, I thought these two did a pretty good job holding up the legit wrestling part of this that Vince probably doesn’t understand but Stephanie reads him a self help book loaded with buzzwords and community outreach goals while he sleeps and yes we’re just dispensing with the fiction that they don’t sleep together.

 

That one dive for Carmella was pretty lol though, she landed right on her fucking face. But Sasha Banks has a tight, lithe game that works nice with a similarly athletic body and I know certain hooligans are cynically wanting me to turn this into a WOMEN IN PRISON writeup which is understandable as I do the same thing for the men so why hold back but I do recognize and respect that no one has time with that horseshit in women’s wrestling anymore which is earned and acknowledged. And anyway, it is a pretty good match in the style of the day and hopefully I have escaped without Bill reporting me to the FBI. At least not for this.

 

 

WOMEN’S RUMBLE

 

This was fun and moved swiftly enough and I never know how to write about the actual rumbles and this is where it would be considerably easier done live. But anyway, lol it is preposterous that they are trotting out THE KING to call his part of the match given that he is so inextricably entwined with the whole HOLY SHIT JR DID YOU SEE THOSE TITS era of WWE. He kept his dick in his pants for the most part but did uptick noticeably when Torrie Wilson returned who is one of the women he kept on a verbal chain and leash for all those years.

 

Some who stood out to me were Rhea Ripley, who seems to be good at the whole wrestling thing, and is Alexa Bliss doing a possessed gimmick? Because in the no fans era I could see that going to wild and ridiculous places which I take it has already happened with Randy Orton getting burned alive or whatever the fuck happened a while back. Tamina gets to be a bully because Vince found her dad covered in blood and piss knives and me no speaky English in a hotel room back when Vince and Donald Trump just walked in on those things every so often as just having fun with the boys before they tried to pretend that they were grownups.

 

Nia Jaxx is big and fat and that’s okay but she also seems like the connected one who gets to be sloppy and legit hurt people and say stupid shit and be ennobled for it because of The Rock or I guess Yokozuna now is the dude they are pushing for whatever dumb reason behind the Pacific Islanders blackmailing Vince because there are probably more than just the one body out there.

 

I can’t even remember the name of the girl who won but I know it was some prefab ROAD TO WRESTLEMANIA OF LIFE productions that the marketing lizards who run this damn company are so proud to have put together. She seems pliable in the role which is all that they ask for like Starlight in The Boys, which is basically what Vince wants WWE to be. Not the actual The Boys show, but Vought International. I mean, it might actually be a biography, we just don’t know.

 

Who else was interesting? Charlotte is always on the periphery I take it as the BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY go to girl. Bayley as a mean girl or whatever is a thing, I guess. Victoria and Mickie James came back but I though Mickie James already came back but maybe that was during the time that WWE left the Neil reservation. Jillian came back to no one’s care except for Vince getting to say HEY YOU REMEMBER WHEN to JBL who was wandering around this monstrosity like a sober alcoholic.

 

Oh, I guess Ric Flair is fucking Lacey Evans now? Good for him, I guess. That was the only real spot where you could feel the old King trying to extend his tongue into Ric’s working neurons to live as a parasite for a few moments more. Why is he working against his daughter now? Does it matter? Do we care? Not really. Ric is just being plied with booze and women to literally drool on so he doesn’t get sucked into the AEW nostalgia machine.

 

It was a women’s rumble, competently held via the rules and regulations of the Heavily Corporate Sponsored America the Beautiful, a cultural event paid for by the people devoted to the election of Donald Trump.

 

 

Roman Reigns vs Kevin Owens

 

See, this is what they should have just done with Roman 6 or 7 years ago or however ludicrously long its been that they tried to turn that sausage factory into a WAR economy factory which failed miserably because the people only knew how to make sausages now and the people below them were fat and sausaged into oblivion.

 

But Roman as the successor of the Island Mafia is a natural and good way to go with him, and also I would be remiss in that I did not know that Samoa Joe had been retired to the role of commentary luke warm taker with Vince screaming in his ear for four hours and man if only his body held up and/or Vince didn’t just see the value of these dudes back when they were transforming pro wrestling.

 

Anyway, Roman is just the no nonsense mafia don now and has his weazely lawyer Paul Heyman along to handle the details in a fine casting decision, especially now that Brock is off to do whatever Brock does, fuck Sable and wrestle cows or fuck cows and wrestle Sable, I don’t know how it all works there.

 

Kevin Owens is neckbearded and t-shirted in a we just pulled this guy out of a bar way, but I like KO, it works for him and you might as well lean into that image and just be the guy who won’t stay down like a Mick Foley for new age nerds to love and champion.

 

Of course, the first half or whatever of this match is just a numbing pointless hit em with everything debris nonsense drag along which is how these No Fan Cinematic kind of EPICS are built now. Business does pick up as the stakes keep being raised, and at a certain point you are invited to think upon the simple eloquence of Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard fighting to the DEATH over a wooden shard to spike the other guy in the forehead because of course no one would want to be put through that shit. But I also recognize that those days are mostly gone and now it is just this virtuouso bozo superheros hitting each other with their superpowers matches which if you let yourself drift into the medium is effective at creating the requisite drama even if it does feel mostly paint by numbers.

 

The old handcuff angle is nearly botched when Paul Heyman can’t pick a fucking lock which Vince must have just assumed he could do as a Jew lawyer, and that is not my take but Vince’s, remember that. And, for some reason, the match ends when one of them, Roman, remembers that you can just choke a guy out and leave him snoring for the ten count. Why not fight for that at the beginning, you cretins?

 

Anyway, EPIC in a way in which EPIC is sold on every street corner.

 

 

MEN’S ROYAL RUMBLE

 

So, lots to unpack here. Anyway, it was a rumble suitably rolled. The Randy Orton injury angle could be seen by the guy the farthest away from his PC cam. I didn’t hate it in the storytelling way of These Two Dudes Just Inexplicably Hate Each Other Forever kind of way. Christian returning to play a role was one of the few that could move the proverbial needle of hey yeah okay I like this. Still, it is striking how Vince is so easily leaning on his tried and true hands who weren’t even the biggest stars from Vince’s DISNEYFICATION of his company. Edge and Orton just out there brawling with each other because Vince doesn’t give a fuck about any of the wrestlers who have shown up to work in the past 15 years.

 

Oh, I forgot to mention in the women’s title match that I guess Carmella has a slave now? I am only reminded because, well, AJ Styles has a slave. Let us not try to sugar coat it, this is how Vince McMahon sees it and sees the world. It is kind of extraordinary that they are still doing this kind of shit, especially in a New Day WWE World in which those dudes bonded together to survive and thrive despite Vince’s existence as Vince. Big E’s visceral anger at AJ’s slave was a poignant moment during the match that of course was not at all what they were trying to convey, although maybe Big E was, I don’t know, those dudes have somehow managed to live a bubbled autonomous life away from Vince being Vince, which is hard to do, but if you are extra good or extra special like New Day or Daniel Bryan you can pull off.

 

Speaking of, I was maybe talking myself into getting behind a poetic Daniel Bryan takes the title from Roman at Wrestlemania moment, but lol fuck all that, it isn’t happening and DBry seems set to take his place on Vince’s carefully manicured windowsill of miniatures of dudes he actually respects and will do almost anything for save of course for running as the face of the company.

 

Kane coming back was not at all surprising and the requisite Team HellNo moment was played okay, but lol Kane is just a fat old goober with horrible beliefs, his irl persona is probably worse than his fictional one.

 

A lot of shine seemed to be put on Damian Priest, who seems like a big chunk of something that Vince will surely ruin. Bobby Lashley as ersatz Brock is mildly interesting until it is not and I thought for a moment they would go with Seth Rollins because when Vince spins in a circle he always ends up staring into the SHIELD corner like at the end of the Blair Witch Project. But it was all for naught as Randy Orton OMG WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEEN THIS runs in and flails around at Edge but Edge dumps his ass anyway and wins the Royal Rumble because hey fuck it, someone had to.

 

And that was the 2021 Royal Rumble. See you at Wrestlemania… maybe.

 

 

 

 

 

G1 Night 8 B Block

 

What is this, night 8? B Block? Sound right? Woefully behind, and yet I guess I am still hammering away at this. Perhaps it was best to let the insane ravings of the last G1 breakdown in which one armed women and dogs in reservoirs tangled with Antonio Inoki and too many versions of Octopi pluralosity, which is a word I just made up, linger in the collective psyche for a long moment before delving into whatever the fuck this is gonna be. Let’s find out together.

 

 

Juice Robinson vs Toru Yano

 

Yano, of course, is a walking poem, a man who will one day walk into the clouds and never return and people will wonder whatever happened to Old Yano and then his face, his giant fucking face, will appear on the moon for a second and the whole world will laugh and cry and go insane, but for now he is still trying to use his tricks to get over on yet another rube.

 

Juice is a natural jackass who plays well into Yano’s shenanigans, but he also doesn’t like being caught out as a jackass and so he starts bellowing at Yano in savage American English and Yano doesn’t know what the fuck to do other than to try to tape this jackasses leg’s together. But Juice beats him to the punch, quite literally, and then poor Yano is left to wonder what he did wrong, and wallow in the shame of being outdone by an American Jackass who probably would have been machinegunned right off the fucking boat at Guadalcanal.

 

I like both of these dudes for both of their touched ways. Yano is Yano and if you can’t take five minutes to Yano it up, you lead too high-strung a life and probably get nose bleeds and can’t get your dick hard without help from medicine which is no shame if you take it so you can fuck longer or to counteract the stifling nature of other drugs, but it is kind of a shame if you need it because you are a nervous punk who drinks too much coffee and doesn’t have time for a Yano match.

 

Juice is building a quality tournament for himself, at least results wise. Quality wise is always up for debate with Juice, but I like the dude and think he can bring it if and when it gets hotter than a Yano mashup session. Also, he likes to swear a lot and so do I, so let’s not pretend there isn’t some kinship here. Juice is a fucking jackass and so am I.

 

 

Hirooki Goto vs Zack Sabre Jr

 

This is almost too dark to write about. Goto’s shoulder or arm or whatever is so fucked and he can’t do anything and so it is only a matter of time before ZSJ tortures him like Goto’s granddad probably did to ZSJ’s granddad in fucking Burma or some place like that. Goto gives it a try, but it’s no good, and ZSJ doesn’t even do him the honor of submitting him by ripping his shoulder apart, he just uses one of those tricksy pins he learned avoiding pedophiles in grim English basements during his “training.”

 

Goto is pretty much a ghost for this tournament, just a wrecked man with no shoulder who has let down Shibata again, and even the LA Dojo kids are probably like lol this guy can’t fuck while Goto stares at them solemnly, and it’s just not a good time in his life right now, which sucks because I like Goto, he can kick people in the chest and face and also throw them around a bit and he is always up for a Spirit Warrior Fight To The Soul Death kind of match which makes New Japan so compelling. But these are Hard Times for Hirooki Goto and he doesn’t have Dusty’s charisma to carry him through and so this could get very bad for him and he might find himself where he always seems to find himself, searching for a reason for his near pointless existence.

 

That is harsh, but a man’s got to start fucking sometime. ZSJ is of course a mousy pest who should be drowned in a bucket, but he is what he is and I will not argue with you about it. I wish I liked him more, I really do, as leftist submission machine should always work for me, but it’s too hard to see any of it as real for whatever reason, maybe it’s the birdcage chest or maybe it’s the cockiness that seems like a false front, I don’t know. I am likely just being stubborn.

 

 

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Yoshi-Hashi

 

I am in the tank now for Yoshi-Hashi, who has taken his whole Spooked Nerd Reaches For An Inner Fire thing to a point where the Spooked Nerd isn’t even seen at all and instead it’s this dude reaching into the deepest places of himself to slay his heroes and icons, the men who have playfully goofed him around over the years, maybe made him do some things in the locker room that aren’t talked about. Yoshi-Hashi has left that Dark Nerd in the past and is bringing the fire you would expect from a legit G1 warrior.

 

He even tries to savage Tanahashi’s knees, which a scared young boy of old wouldn’t have done, and Tana knows he is in a fight with Yoshi-Hashi, and it is a good fight, as Tana draws on Yoshi-Hashi’s New Energy like a vampire, feeding off of his youth so that he may wrestle and fly like a goddamn man again. And Tana of course gets the win because Yoshi-Hashi can only take this so far before his elders remind him that he still has to mop the toilets with his tongue after the show.

 

But you have to feel for Yoshi-Hashi now. Before he was just some geek who deserved to get beat on, but now he has earned a moment that has not come yet, at least not in my week or two behind ravings, and now I want to watch Yoshi-Hashi win these matches. I tweeted something like this a couple of nights ago and it got no response, no favs, nothing, so it is clear that poor Yoshi-Hashi has not yet made inroads into the Collective Heart or maybe everyone has muted me, who is to say? But I will be the dude who takes up the flag for Yoshi Fucking Hashi.

 

 

KENTA vs EVIL

 

I’m not sure if this was interesting or trash. It is obviously a Bullet Club Civil War match which is for sure interesting as we finally get a look at how the hierarchy maybe shakes out. I’ve talked about this a bit, as KENTA made the move last year and became the Hot Shit and then Jay White was lost to Covid shit for a while and so EVIL was brought in to fuck things up. But then Jay White comes back and he still has Gedo with him, marking him as the Ace of Bullet Club still, and EVIL is gifted Dick Togo befitting a dude who has his own designs on being Top Dog, and KENTA . . . KENTA is left with nothing. He is the forgotten man, a hired hand, forced to eat lunch with Yujiro and his tricks.

 

So, it was interesting to see KENTA kind of become his own man again for a moment here, messing around with Dick Togo and Evil for a while and then finally just beating on both of them, but of course, it doesn’t work out well for him as he gets the symbolic punch to the dick and eats the loss and goes back to Yujiro’s rat table.

 

It even seemed like The People were starting to get behind KENTA which is ironic given that was the entire reason he was thrown to Bullet Club last year, their cold hearts refusing his comeback from years of diabolical soul raping in America. But The People and KENTA’s pride are not enough to overcome the dick in the ring and the Dick outside the ring. To be fair, KENTA also cheated it up a bit because he’s still a snake, but snakes eat rats and EVIL right now is pretty much a rat, and so you root for the fucking snake.

 

EVIL is kind of lost here still, I think. His gun poses are corny and lame and he has lost the gravitas of his prior persona. Now he’s just an asshole, and not a very compelling one. I want him to start throwing guys around again instead of hitting them in the junk. It is sad that it has come to this, perhaps a Poor Choice even if it did get him momentary champ status. He is clearly better positioned than he was before, but life is all about momentum and right now his is kind of rolling back on him a bit. But he’s gonna get time to figure out what this new EVIL looks like and wrestles like and I just hope it gets better, you know?

 

 

Tetsuya Naito vs Sanada

 

Naito has been, so far, for me, the Best Dude in this G1, which is not my usual stance as some of you dirtbags know. I’m sorry for calling you dirtbags since the people reading this are almost all Dear Friends unless someone lets this shit out into the wild which I don’t even know is a good idea and what the fuck am I talking about? Oh yeah, Naito, who has won me over and is representing the company as champion like a boss king.

 

This was always gonna be Sanada’s moment, though. It had to, right? Hometown boy hadn’t won a match yet and was facing his Fucking Boss. Gotta win that one. And Sanada did, redeeming his shitty tournament and possibly setting up even more friction in LIJ, although probably not because Sanada is pretty passive and Naito is secure enough in his own cajones as he would probably call them thanks to his Mexican experience to not let this become A Thing. Sure, it might lead to a match down the road, but it won’t go down like the EVIL shit did.

 

I always like Sanada matches that go deep into the night, both dudes exhausted or wrecked, and while it maybe quite didn’t reach those epic heights, which no match in this G1 really has yet to be honest, it was still compelling and still very much what you would expect to see in a Naito vs Sanada match. Things even got a little dangerous with Naito getting brought down from the top rope on his fucking head by Sanada, and if any two dudes are gonna start cracking walnuts like Ibushi, it’s these two, but it didn’t really degenerate into anything more than that, again a theme of this entire tourney, which has been fairly subdued in just about every way you can imagine, from the fans to the ring work to the fires which never quite get started. It’s being played off as a STRATEGY thing, but I don’t know if that’s just a cover for some listless work. Of course, I’m probably being worked.

 

I don’t want any of that to diminish this match, which was perfectly fine, and Sanada gets to go to the back knowing that he just beat his boss man, and Naito knows that he has to keep an eye on Sanada now, especially after the shit that went down with Evil, but Naito is Tranquilo and maybe no other LIJ member reps that as well as Sanada, and so everything’s cool, baby. For now.

 

 

 

G1 Night 7

 

G1 Night 7 gets underway as I write this ten days later and since last year I would watch them and then write them on the same day , I feel as if I have failed you a little maybe. But then again, I have been churning out lots of words instead of a couple of flimsy paragraphs which seemed to suffice last year but maybe that is the trade off we are making idk I just work here, right underneath Pieter’s assssssss.

 

 

Minoru Suzuki vs Yujiro Takahashi

 

Poor Yujiro makes some Poor Choices, both in the context of trying to out-ghoul Minoru Suzuki with strikes and kicks and such and in the context of life, as there are no women here for him to sell for pennies on the yen or whatever the exchange rate is over there for a dick in the mouth which I imagine is more than pennies, although pennies *are* from heaven according to that one song and so is Pieter’s delightful ass so maybe this is what the G1 CLIMAX is really all about or maybe it is about men in their underwear hitting each other really hard, who is to say???

 

But The Tokyo Pimp seems to understand that he must kick people in the face sometimes because it’s his JOB in every sense of the idea but that is something that Minoru Suzuki also understands because he has been doing this a long time, perhaps longer than Yujiro’s been working those streets, going back to a time in which he wrestled Dutch Kickboxers and American Degenerates in Pancrase because he liked to hear their joints pop more than he liked to hear the crowd yell out the names of Chono or Muta or Hashimoto or old man Inoki who would ask you to smell his fingers after you wrestled him or help him with his Octopus which never ended up like eight pussies like the name foretold but you smelling his fingers again as he stretched parts of your body that Minoru Suzuki does not like to remember. Or maybe they all fucked Octopuses and yes that is the correct plural form but I bet Yujiro has fucked one or all eight of them (they come as a set) and does he remember this as he drifts off to sleep in the coiled arms of another man or do all those memories blend with the memories of the rest of the heads which have been dropped in Korakuen through these many years and many tournaments of men and octopi holy shit there is more than one pluralization!!!!!!!!!!! And thusly is the essence of the G1 fulfilled.

 

 

Kota Ibushi vs Jeff Cobb

 

Ibushi and Cobb are friendly which seems strange as Ibushi’s only real friends are those wild dogs he played with up by the reservoir last week and maybe that crazy lady with one arm who lives in an old Wisteria Tree and knows how to use that one arm. It certainly isn’t some GEEK named Kenny and lol why do all these gaijin have to have crazy names like Kenny or Jeff especially when they all get kicked the same way as Ibushi caught his dad kicking his mom or wait, was it his mom kicking his dad? It doesn’t matter as all faces break and he definitely remembers the bone-er.

 

Cobb, sadly, is not a striking young man, at least not in the sense of hitting people real hard, he may be a striking young man sartorially tbh I don’t know what he does on his days off, maybe round up those dogs at the reservoir and no I won’t bow to the commercialism and refer to them as Reservoir Dogs although I guess I just did, it’s all a trap, folks, not unlike the trap Jeff Cobb walked into or knelt into called the Kamigoye which Ibushi ruins him with after Jeff made a pretense of being able to toss Ibushi around which that lady with one arm can’t do but she sure does toss him off another way. (She plays with his penis until it ejaculates semen)

 

 

Kazuchika Okada vs Taichi

 

Maybe I’ll talk about the wrestling in this one, you just don’t know, just as Okada doesn’t seem to know what the meaning or purpose of the G1 life is because is it about trying out new submissions or is it about making sure you don’t tweak your bad back like that one-armed lady that Ibushi fucked too hard that one time lol and Gedo didn’t even get her company insurance. It’s hard to Book these matches and tournaments and fucks year after year.

 

Okada is just maybe too lazy this year, or not inspired or maybe those two ideas are the same idk, but Taichi is not a degenerate who you can just fuck around with and expect to come out of it okay or oh wait, Okada just chokes Taichi’s ragged ass into a place where Miho Abe’s shadow dwells, waiting to tease him in his sleep while her corporeal form tries to figure out how to fly me directly into her even with this pandemic, don’t worry, baby, these things figure themselves out.

 

But until the Dream Time can make the G1 something really special, we probably should talk about how listless Okada is, no? Part of it is Okada himself, fucking around with the Money Clip almost obsessively, but I wonder how much is that the Korakuen faithful almost shockingly don’t know how to make the Right Noises for this show, which is their Whole Deal but given the Covid of it all they are off their game, unable to shout names or scream their banshee wails when someone gets dropped on their heads, the rhythmic clapping almost desultory, uninspired, a sad echo of what passions might have been.

 

But they are not here and Okada has yet to be Enraptured by Mania in this G1 tournament, which is a problem he faced the last time he lost the title, to Ibushi’s geeky friend Kenny and even that dork is finding something, anything, with those dogs down at the reservoir like Moxley and Hangman Page. Okada, though, can’t even get a one-armed woman to jack him off, literally or spiritually, and all of Korakuen lazily claps this into oblivion like they all have one goddamn arm, maybe they stole the other one.

 

 

Will Ospreay vs Jay White

 

A song, sung by Jay White and okay that Ospreay jackass too, as they put on quite the lovely wrestling match and there are no wild dogs running reservoirs here or one-armed jackoff artists, just good wrestling being done as it should. Ospreay’s bleating idiocy can’t even ruin it and this is his lucky day as he somehow magically countermands the brass knuckle buffoonery of Gedo and also the attempted Dick Punchings and rumor is that’s how that chick lost her one arm.

 

Ospreay beats Jay White and come on we all knew he would because he is destined to be Jay’s Yin or perhaps Yang who is to say who is who just yet as the Westward Expansion Dreams are Dreamed although Big Harold just Harry Carryed himself and by that I mean he ate about a dozen hot dogs with some actual dogs down at this reservoir he knows about.

 

White’s throws are sick here, his uranage remaining the best in the world, and the wheel work on Will Ospreay isn’t completely ignored which is nice to see as sometimes the PSYCHOLOGY does get ignored no matter how hard those Psych students are working on their books when they should be cheering for Quality Wrestling like this. That is probably unfair as they want to get into this but can’t ALL THE WAY and I am just picking nits at this point so everyone settle down, okay. SETTLE DOWN.

 

These are two dudes who are the future(ish) for New Japan, especially as they try to conquer distant shores, but the future might also be now, here already as Terminators look for Sarah Connor who rumor has it lives in an old Wisteria Tree, but don’t quote me on that. What’s important to take away is that this Delivered in a tournament which at least thus far – THUS FAR – has not been that great for me. Damning words? These things must be taken in Context as this is still the best pro wrestling in the world if you dig the style and fortunately I do. Maybe that is what has been lacking a bit, New Japan’s signature style and EPIC BIG BOUT feels, but maybe that is also slightly intentional as everyone and everything builds to an exciting climax which hey is part of the G1 name, is it not? Perhaps dudes getting head-dropped into the Oblivion of becoming Future Benoit as he hunts baby Daniel should be saved for bigger matches and later dates, but New Japan also needs this to be good as they try to pull everyone out of a pandemic funk, but the crowd is kept from being fully engaged by that same pandemic and it’s RULES so I don’t know, I am just thinking and writing aloud here as is my wont and Inoki just asked me to smell his fingers but so far I have REFUSED.

 

 

Tomohiro Ishii vs Shingo Takagi

 

My previous caterwauling aside, this match also Delivered which it very much needed to do, with Ishii and Shingo doing what everyone expects of them at this point which is maybe A WHOLE LOT but such is life when you are perhaps the greatest G1 performer ever like Ishii YEAH I SAID IT and his LIJ nemesis and in many ways doppelganger in Shingo.

 

That is a weird thing to say given that the two don’t share too many similarities aesthetically aside from maybe both being weird creatures who are not maybe Leading Men handsome, but they are both outsiders from the company’s snug SYSTEM of Young Lions training by fighting dogs in reservoirs and what not, they both like that I HIT YOU YOU HIT ME LOL LET’S DO THIS UNTIL NEITHER OF US CAN SEE OR SPEAK WITHOUT BELLS GOING OFF IN OUR HEADS AT ALL HOURS style, which at least in this match included a bunch of sick and mutual chops and punches right to the fucking throat. Called upon often to deliver, both are perhaps destined for an endless career of this sort of thing without ever getting to The Top, which isn’t that fucking bad, I mean Jake the Snake wasn’t exactly awash in titles either even if he did once steal a woman’s arm to pay for crack cocaine which is a scourge amongst minorities in the USA or at least was possibly perpetrated by the CIA who have never EVER performed weird experiments on those dogs down by the reservoir or held onto damaging photos of Antonio Inoki with OCTOPI for potential blackmail reasons and anyway both Ishii and Takagi don’t care about ANY OF THIS as they just beat the shit out of each other for damn near a half an hour until Ishii finally gets the pin he needed, while Shingo skulks off to climb Wisteria Trees in search for meaning and also this one lady Ibushi told him about.