Tag: wrestling

WTF is AEW doing #666

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was aimlessly scrolling while slogging my way through the final episode of DTF St. Louis, I saw a spoiler-ey post about how Darby Allin was going to get his shot at MJF and the AEW World Championship; in the main event, tonight!!!  Seeing as how I was already in HBO Max watching DTF St. Louis, I thought for a second that I could just as easily switch over to AEW Dynamite, even if the app makes it impossible to find it without manually searching for it, but then I thought, nahhh, might as well cross this series off my list, and maybe I’ll tune in afterward, but that didn’t happen either because I then went into catching up with several episodes of Daredevil: Born Again S2 instead.

Regardless, after I had moved on from that post, I had this thought in my mind that I had this sneaking suspicion that AEW was going to have MJF drop the title to Darby Allin, because why the fuck not, Darby is one of the most protected and over talents in the company, he’s clearly over with the fans, and who gives a fuck about any sort of genuine buildup, and to go straight from a PPV on Sunday to a title change on television the immediate Wednesday?

Before I went to bed and was aimlessly scrolling again, I saw postings about how Darby Allin has defeated MJF to become the AEW World Champion (!!! And Sting came out to congratulate him!!!), and my immediate thought was that it’s clear that I still had, it, when it came to accurately being able to predict the outcomes of predetermined professional wrestling matches.

Full disclosure, Darby Allin isn’t my cup of tea; I think he puts his body through an extraordinarily excessive amount of punishment, and even though the perspective of the industry is endlessly trying to change the narrative of the importance of size, I’m old and I just can’t buy into some 5’8, 155 lb. emo band-looking edgelord being anything remotely close to a World champion in professional wrestling.

However, I do recognize that the guy has an immense passion for the industry, after all a person wouldn’t be willing to basically attempt physical suicide as much as Darby Allin did if he didn’t, and in spite of his limited physical stature, the guy is a hard worker who clearly puts 110% effort into his work every night he performs.

Darby Allin has an incredible mind for the industry, is clearly going to be a life-long idea guy in the business when his body can’t take it anymore, and most importantly, he has a connection with younger fans that just can’t be artificially cultivated.  He moves merch and captures the imagination of young fans, and those things by themselves are invaluable, even if an old like me isn’t a fan.

As a whole, Darby Allin absolutely deserves to be World champion in AEW; he works hard, has given everything to the company, is over, the fans are behind him, and there’s absolutely no argument from even me, that he should be rewarded with a run with the company’s top prize.

However, it’s just the way this all transpired that had me scratching my head, and triggered the want to brog about it, and continue on the use of the WTF Is AEW doing titling.

For starters, I’m going back to the fact that there was basically no build up for this whatsoever.  Over the last few months, the World title picture in AEW has basically been Kenny Omega, Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland, with talents like Konosuke Takeshita, Andrade and Brody King lurking nearby.  Jon Moxley is still strong, albeit tied up with whatever tier the Not Inter-Continental Championship is, and in spite of his own ballast with the International Championship, eventually Kazuchika Okada is going to be due a shot at the World.

Darby won a number one contender’s match at Dynasty against Andrade, so we all knew that he’d get his shot at MJF, but little did many of us realize that it would be immediately afterward, and on the very same night.  Considering MJF’s general history with the company has been under a colossal amount of protection, very limited appearances and a seemingly high amount of creative freedom, I figured Darby would’ve had to have gone through the cliched trial of tasks that most of all of MJF’s feuds ultimately have to go through before they’d have a match at whatever PPV they have to try and rival SummerSlam, where MJF would win after a 30 minute scrap, of course courtesy of a punch while wearing the Dynamite Diamond ring, like he’s basically won nearly every single match over the last five years.

I know Tony Khan lives to try to surprise internet wrestling fans, but I feel like he left a lot of money on the table by skipping the foreplay, and going straight for Darby vs. MJF, because one of MJF’s greatest attributes is his ability to cut promos, and by not building it up, viewers were denied at least 6-8 weeks of potential promos to hype up the match, even if it were going to end the way it did then as it did just yesterday.

Next, I have a lot of thoughts about MJF didn’t just lose the match to Darby Allin, but he was basically squashed.  Here’s a guy in MJF who has been through absolute hell in the matches that he’s had over the last calendar year, with multiple scraps with the likes of Hangman Adam Page, Samoa Joe, Swerve Strickland, Brody King and Kenny Omega.  He has taken some insane bumps, basically been strangled by ropes, taken avalanche-version of every high-impact slam, and had a large number of excessive bodily harm inflicted onto him.  Just a day ago, the internet was abuzz over a top rope One-Winged Angel he took from Kenny Omega, and that’s one of the most protected moves in the entire industry, when done regularly, but MJF kicked out of it from the top rope.

And then against Darby Allin, he basically takes a low-blow, four Coffin Drops, which I’m sorry, is a really lame finisher, especially considering the treasure chest full of moves in which other AEW talents, including Darby Allin are capable of performing, and to top it off, MJF is pinned after being rolled up in a side headlock takeover, which is like, the very first move done in any Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair match in history.

Basically just about everything about Darby Allin defeating MJF for the AEW World championship is head-scratching puzzling, and kind of reeks of being done for intentional shock value, but not necessarily any real long-term net positive.  To me, it completely derails MJF’s championship reign, which has seen him overcome an impressive list of names already, and even though I fully believe that the title will be back with MJF before the end of the year, once again, I’m old, and I believe that rapid changes of championships devalues them, and even if MJF gains it back in two weeks, the clock has already stopped on his previous run, and we’re onto reign #3, instead of continuing on the reign of terror that #2 was shaping out to be prior to this occurrence.

I may not be a fan of Darby Allin’s, but I respect the work and passion for the business, and I have no problem with him being given a run with the AEW World Championship.  I just wish it happened under more auspicious conditions, and not have been done to artificially shock fans for the sake of being surprising, and not at the cost of burning the equity of one of the company’s most protected assets, as well as passively burying an all-star team worth of talent in doing so.

But then again, this series of posts wouldn’t exist if TK weren’t always trying to be so disingenuously surprising.  Hopefully it leads to something better than I would surmise, and that Darby doesn’t have a completely forgettable first-ever World championship run, like so many in the industry have had before him.

When it rains, it pours

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This past weekend wasn’t particularly the best, and it’s almost comical at all the nonsense that occurred over it that has put me into this semi-dilapidated mood that I’m actually applauding myself for holding it together and not go into complete crash out mode.

Friday started off bumpy on account of #2 being sick, still recovering from one of those stomach ailments that kids pass around like candy, and it’s still to be determined on if it’s going to hit me at some point soon, seeing as how it’s pretty formulaic in how the bugs incubate for 48-72 hrs. before blowing out, but at least she was on the mend, and obviously kept home from school.

I saw my dad on Friday, where we watched Team Korea get obliterated by the Dominican Republic, or at least the first three innings before it was very obvious things were not going to go the way we wanted, but that wasn’t a bad thing at all, as much as it was something to be expected.  It was good to see my dad and spend some time with him, but seeing him on a Friday was deliberate in the sense that I had no intention of seeing him over the actual weekend days, because I knew I’d be busy.

All the same, regardless of the random lunch time hour in which I drove up to him, I still got annihilated in traffic since Atlanta’s rush hour is 7 am to 3 am, and there’s pretty much no time in the day where there’s not red on the Google map somewhere.  I had also intended to give blood, because I’m altruistic like that and am not the least bit influenced by the $40 gift card incentive + free t-shirt, but the donation center I went to didn’t have a chair available for me, so there was an L there too, so although it was good to get in a visit with my dad, the productive things I wanted to accomplish additionally fell through.

As for the weekend itself, it was pretty much spent almost entirely deep cleaning my house, which left me feeling some things, because I absolutely want to have a clean home, and prior to the cleaning, it was in a state of such disarray, it fed into a lot of my general unhappiness and cluttered state of mind, because I was always in a situation where nobody but me was willing to lift a finger to put any effort into maintaining the home. 

But when the cleanliness of the home was reliant on someone else, everything gets done, but on their terms and not necessarily collaboratively with me, and I do feel a sense of bitterness that I don’t feel like my own household respects me enough to want to give a fuck about the home for my sake, until they need to give a fuck for their own purposes.

I’m talking about mass de-cluttering, filling up the entire bin with shit getting thrown out, shampooing carpets and clearing counters and shelves, and I’m glad that a lot of this shit finally got accomplished, but at the same time, I’m annoyed that this never gets done when I want to have an orderly home, and only gets done when it’s on someone else’s terms.

Such, were the resentful thoughts swirling through my head, as I worked basically sun up to sun down each Saturday and Sunday.

Except Sunday, I did have a little reprieve and a hard stop, on account of a localcar wrestling show that I was going to hit up with some of my friends.  It was a fun show, and I dropped a little cash to meet Shotzi Blackheart, since I’ve long been a fan of her and her work, and I was thinking to myself, for all the hard work and negative thoughts of the weekend, this was a pleasant way to wind things down.

But then when I’m pulling into my driveway, I’m looking at my car (I had taken the third car), and I can’t help but think it looks off-kilter.  I pull closer, and I see that the rear passenger tire is completely flat, and I’m like wtf.  My knee-jerk reaction is fear that the tire was slashed or something malicious, but cooler heads prevailed, and as I was examining the tire, I could see the silver of a nail that I had picked up, at some point on Friday, as it hadn’t been driven at all on Saturday, and over the span of the last 43 hours, it completely bled out.

Again, I have to applaud myself for keeping somewhat calm in spite of the obnoxiously inconvenient revelation, but we also had company over, and I didn’t want to be in a state of distress in front of a bunch of my wife’s friends.  But fortunately, the tire wasn’t in such a state where it couldn’t inflate, and I quickly deduced a plan to play some car Tetris the following day between mythical wife and au pair, and I could take my car to a local joint and hopefully get a patch, since the location looked like it might still be able to be patched.

However, those plans were derailed in the middle of the night as it became quickly apparent that #1 had caught the dreaded tummy bugs from her sister, and they had incubated and blown up, and at like 2:20 in the morning, I wake up to find my child standing next to my bed in discomfort, and I have to heap praise onto my eldest for keeping it together long enough to prepare for the unfortunate vomit party that began shortly afterward.  #2 just exploded like the kid from The Exorcist, in contrast, but the silver lining is that we did not have a repeat with #1.

Obviously, she was not going to school in the morning, but this did put a wrinkle in my hopes to get my car fixed.  And at 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the morning, it’s hard to have much coherent thought on pivoting, but I was ready to punt on car repairs for a day, because obviously my kid was a higher priority.

Fortunately, mythical wife called in, and with enough coverage between adults and kids, I was able to field the tire issue.  The drive there was tense, seeing as how I had a tire actively leaking air, and I could hear it hissing before I got into the car, but thankfully I made it to the Costco where I got my tires, dreading that they’d tell me that my 2-month old tire needed to be replaced for some bullshit reason.

After dropping off my car, I thought this would be the perfect time to treat myself after all the nonsense that I’d been going through, and get an iced coffee, since Costco food court iced coffee is surprisingly delicious, like maybe two tiers beneath a Tim Horton’s ice capp.  But naturally, for whatever reason, their machine was down or gone, but the point remains that I could not get what I was hoping to get.

Yes, that last one is about the first world of first world problems there could be, but hey, I’d been going through a lot of shit over the last few days, and I just wanted some fucking coffee.  Fortunately, the tire was an easy patch and without incident, and one of the two major red flags that I had to deal with was immediately wrapped up.

Either way, to add insult to injury, the headline of this post wasn’t just a figure of speech, because amidst all this bullshit, the weather decided to go full Georgia fake spring meme, and spontaneously drop into the 30s and 20s as the day progressed, with thunderstorms and freezing rain, so it quite literally was pouring during the worst events of this post.

I may have barfed out 1300 words summarizing how obnoxious the last few days have been, but again I want to pat myself on the back for at least having the gumption to not take it out on others, and not let it affect my blood pressure too much, but I’d be lying if it weren’t mentally, and physically taxing, seeing as how I’ve been getting even less sleep than ordinarily, in order to take care of sick children.

But it was just too much nonsense to not summarize and make brog content out of it, and here we are.

Unsurprising, given her track record

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fightful: Persephone defeats Mercedes Mone for the CMLL Women’s world championship in La Noche de Las Amazones

And pretty much nobody is going to know about it, because CMLL is big in Mexico, but has yet to get much traction in Los Estados Unidos yet; but given the fact that this match meant Mercedes Mone had to take an L, such circumstances hardly seem surprising.

It’s funny because I think anyone who has followed the career of Mercedes Varnado probably saw this coming; loud, insufferable, on television every week with some rando new blet from some rando indy-tier promotion nobody has heard of, inflating her collection of titles with the obvious intention of surpassing Ultimo Dragon’s ten-concurrent title reign, which wasn’t hard to do, considering the majority of her titles were from barely above-backyard promotions.

With the loss of the CMLL title, it’s safe to say that Mercedes has lost all the blets that actually held any weight, between the CMLL title, the TBS championship, as well as RevPro’s women’s championship, and the remainder of all the straps she’s carting along are all basically a bunch of Popeyes Championships.

But to no surprise, whereas the rise of Mercedes was obnoxiously loud and often televised, her inevitable downfall has been anything but; rather it’s been quiet, fragmented, mostly untelevised.  No tweets from any official channels, reporting only done by outlets way more into professional wrestling than the casual viewers are, even AEW fans.

And speaking of AEW, I feel like the booking of Mercedes’ downfall has been pretty lackluster, and I’m curious to know who’s been in charge of it, given the constant rumors out there of Mercedes having creative control, or if it’s been Tony Khan doing the booking, but this is situation where neither should want to take credit for it, because it’s been nothing short of underwhelming.

If it were up to me, it should have started with the loss of the TBS championship, because being a native AEW talent, their title should have been the one to be treated with the most reverence, the one most desperate to protect.  And once she loses it, it creates somewhat of a trauma effect for her persona, to where she then begins to grow overprotective and unstable over her remaining titles, which creates a domino effect of making escalating mistakes, where she starts going on systemic losing streak where she begins dropping titles left and right, hitting bottom, and creating a perfect opportunity for Mercedes Varnado to take one of her signature sabbaticals after being unhappy with losing in a predetermined industry.

But instead, it was a random loss of the ROH Women’s TV title to a still-really green Red Velvet, then a loss of the RevPro women’s title to Alex Windsor which was more like a fan service move considering it was in England, and then she finally lost the TBS title to Willow Nightengale, that kind of had almost no buildup or story built up, which brings us to the present, where she’s now dropped the CMLL Women’s title, which like I said, now clears the books of any of the blets she was carrying that actually had any clout.

At this point, it doesn’t even matter what happens to the remainder of the blets, because they’re all for promotions almost nobody outside of their respective regions have heard of.  I get that the objective of letting her carry their blets was to give them exposure, but I don’t really think they gained much of that in return, of the course of her blet collector gimmick, and I think it’s safe to say that when she does begin returning titles back to their respective promotions, the L’s she’ll be taking will be horsey and convoluted, because how are people supposed to believe that these low-tier indy talents can upend a global star like Mercedes Mone?

But that’s assuming that we’ll hear much of these title changes in the first place, because the rise was loud and insufferable, but the fall has been low-key and quiet, and really nothing about such should be surprising considering the history of Mercedes Varnado.

I wonder what her $99.99 a month text service is saying throughout the downfall?

Is there a more perfect show than Batman the Animated Series?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is more of a rhetorical question because the answer is no, there really isn’t.  Obviously this is subject to personal preference, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only one out there who has this particular opinion.

I had finished watching WWE Elimination Chamber, and it was a pretty mediocre show overall; although the men’s and women’s chamber matches had outcomes that I didn’t get right, the Becky vs. AJ and the Balor vs. Punk matches were very obviously predictable.  Danhausen being the mystery crate reveal made me feel like the whole buildup is this generation’s Gobbledy Gooker, but probably more accurately the WWE’s need for a wacky character they can push towards the younger audiences and kids to help move merch and gain wider appeal.

But the overall feeling I had once the show was over was general disappointment and apathy, but mostly disappointment that mythical wife had actually paid real money for ESPN Unlimited so that I could watch PLEs, and it just so happens that the first one I come across is a relative clunker.  I think it might be a safe bet that once Wrestlemania passes, to pull the plug on the service since we already have like four other services we’re subscribed to.

Anyway, seeing as how the night wasn’t quite too late even though I would benefit from getting more sleep than I do on the regular, I felt like I didn’t want to end my television watching experience with an underwhelming wrestling show, so I switched to HBO Max where I knew that they had the entire library of Batman the Animated Series, and where I’d been watching an episode here or there, because it was perfect in the sense that it was high quality content that I’d already seen a million times and could multitask during, and the episodes are just 22 minutes, which means they’re no major time commitment.

It was while watching the episode of Clayface’s debut, it dawned on me that the reason why I seem to feel that Batman TAS has become somewhat of a default fallback, is because of what I just said, that it was the perfect show.  Not just for the aforementioned reasons, but holistically, the show is just perfect, in just about every other way as well.

Art direction, execution, writing, music, an entry of DC comics storytelling, light years ahead of its time, parading around as a kid’s show.  Believe me, I have seen every single episode of the show, and I’m having a really difficult time at thinking of any episodes that are actual 100% clunkers, with no redeemable quality to them, and by that criteria, I can’t say there are really any.  Sure, there are some episodes that I may want to skim or possibly skip, like the one where Batman is gassed by the Penguin, and he has to be saved by some kids, but by and large, I anticipate myself going to really enjoy the steady, gradual and methodical rewatch of Batman TAS with an episode or two every now and then.

And anyone who knows me knows that I almost never rewatch anything, because there’s so much content out in the world, lots of which I want to watch, that I very seldom go back and rewatch anything, because that time could be spent imbibing on something I haven’t seen before.

But Batman TAS?  It’s perfect in just about every subjective and measurable metric, and the most important thing is that it’s extraordinary ability to chase any shitty example of viewing media and bring me back believing that there’s good television out there, and that there’s really no bad time to catch an episode of the TAS.

Mina Kimes destroyed Dan Orlovsky like Sting vs. The Demon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This would have been a little bit better had Drake Maye not shit the bed so badly, and the New England Patriots actually won the Super Bowl, but I don’t really want this to go unmentioned, because it was truly a masterclass in pwning a noob.

But prior to the actual Super Bowl, ESPN analyst Mina Kimes absolutely unleashed a massive pwning onto fellow analyst, former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky, on the subject of why Drake Maye received her MVP vote over Matthew Stafford.  I admit that I have a lot of reasons why I’m fond of Mina Kimes, from the Korean heritage, that she shares a name with one of my kids, is a pretty girl that likes and knows sports, the fact that mythical wife and I met her before she really broke through covering a League of Legends event, but biases aside, this was truly a demonstration of a person completely dominating another person in a debate.

It was like when the KiSS Demon had a 1v1 against Sting in WCW, one of my friends then whom was watching the event with us, was talking about how this was the night, this was when The Demon was going to break through, he was going to upset the legendary Sting, etc, etc.

They brawled for about a minute outside of the ring, but once they got into the ring, Sting dropped the Demon in like 43 seconds, after some quick Stinger Splashes and a Scorpion Death Drop.

Kimes vs. Orlovsky was kind of similar, but in reverse, where Kimes just buzzsaws the shit out of Orlovsky in about a minute first, and ol’ Dan sputtering and futilely swinging wildly, trying to salvage any sort of face at getting completely wrecked, but basically getting shut down repeatedly.  Honestly, he would’ve looked better and cooler had he just sat there silent after Kimes’ onslaught and just said that he had no rebuttal.

Honestly though, this doesn’t make the brog had it not been for Kimes’ absolutely brutal and personal approach.  People get owned on television and on the internet countless times every day, but seldom is it so surgical, so precise and so targeted as Kimes carved into Orlovsky.  And it was this specific line in which she started her vicious assault that I loved the most:

I’m a voter, and I voted for Drake Maye. And I’m right. And I’m going to explain to Dan Orlovsky why he’s wrong,”

It doesn’t even matter that she rattled off like 17 reasons that validate her claim.  It’s the fact that she anticipated all of Orlovsky’s or any detractor’s possible rebuttal points and preemptively shuts them down with tangible evidence and statistics and puts her opponent into a checkmate position before he can even make his own opening move. 

It’s like when I’m playing Aether Keeps in Fire Emblem Heroes, where the carefully curated enemy team from some player in Taiwan kills five out of seven units before I can even make a first move, but unlike Orlovsky, I just stare at the screen for a second and then just surrender the match without wasting anymore time.

Instead, Orlovsky tries his best to rebut anything, and even adds a little anecdote:

This is my biggest pushback to you, and this is where you lose it.

Except what he says next was something that Kimes had already anticipated, already got in front of it and shut it down, and had to remind him that she had done so, leaving Orlovsky to just sit there looking like he had shit his pants.  It’s very, very, very apparent that Mina Kimes knows what the fuck she’s talking about, especially when it comes to football, but regardless of just how bright she is, she’ll never not have the gender bias from her peers and most ESPN viewers that assume she’s wrong solely because she’s not just a woman, but isn’t a former player or team personnel.

But if those passive slights are what is fueling such surgical brutality from Mina Kimes to all her naysayers, I’ll be waiting with popcorn for the next time she murders someone on the stick.

Ain’t nobody ready, for Mina Kimes.

I guess OnlyFans wasn’t as lucrative as she had hoped

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s a lot of turnover in the professional wrestling industry.  Budget cuts on account of oversaturation, poor television ratings, general societal changes where the industry just isn’t as hot as it once was, etcetera, etcetera.  However, I have this belief in wrestling that even if a talent is released, they are always one idea and a phone call away from being brought back into the business.  Over the years, we the fans have witnessed such revivals countless times, and as long as a released talent doesn’t go out of their way to scorch earth and set fire to any bridges they used, there’s always the possibility that they will be back, and hopefully to more success in the future.

Well, when the WWE released Cora Jade, she didn’t take it particularly well.  From the moment she was released, she was up on social media taking shots at the company, vaguebooking over some of the colleagues and personnel she wasn’t a fan of, and after the initial shock and resentment period that most people whom might have been fired from their jobs might harbor, Cora Jade didn’t really stop.  Seemingly at times, she would go out of her way, or inject herself into debates and discussions about the business in order to keep taking digs at the WWE, and how she didn’t need them, and how her future endeavors would definitely be more lucrative or make her more famous and in demand than if she had remained a WWE superstar.

Needless to say, it’s apparent that nobody in her personal life had ever told her the importance of not burning bridges, and that there is definitely a time and place for popping off, but it’s really generally not wise most of the time.

Regardless, with her bridge particularly singed, she embarked on an endeavor that would mostly ensure her being able to generate income utilizing one of her more prominent wrestling attributes: her body, and starting up an OnlyFans account.

Of course, she went way out of her way to put over OnlyFans while still taking digs at the WWE, as if she were trying to convince herself on top of all of her social followers that OnlyFans wasn’t something to be ashamed about.  Unsurprisingly, she seemed to be shot out of a cannon when she started, because of course she was quick to boast about her earnings by making a post about the luxury car that she was now capable of affording.

I mean, Toni Storm and Jordynne Grace both made gobs of money when they were on the platform, however, neither of them were shitting on the business while they were doing it, they were just capitalizing on a money-making venture while they awaited their next opportunity, which inevitably came, since the two of them were way better wrestlers than Cora Jade was, and they actually had something to offer their respective companies.

So honestly, it was a little surprising to see Cora Jade emerge back in TNA, under her old name, Elayna Black.  She had made such a big deal about how much she was over the professional wrestling industry, that even if she really didn’t want to step away, many in the business might be turned off by her general lack of appreciation for the industry, but here we are anyway.

The funny thing is that over the last few months before the return of Black, I actually hadn’t heard much from her, as far as the algorithm went at feeding me content.  And considering that she came crawling back to the industry that she said she didn’t need anymore, it leads me to believe that perhaps the OnlyFans train wasn’t doing as well as she had thought it was going to do, and that perhaps it might not be a bad idea to remain in the pro-wrestling space.

Either way, it must kind of suck to be Elayna Black/Cora Jade.  She had a great big Gen-Z crashout after she lost her job, and made herself look like an idiot with all of her bridge burning on social media.  Relegated herself to selling risque pictures of herself to creeps, but when that well seemingly began to dry up, she came crawling back to the business she had spent the last year trying to bury.

Owned.

WTF is NJPW doing #082

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Among the other things that happened at Wrestle Kingdom 20 aside from Hiroshi Tanahashi’s final match everrrr, was IWGP Global champion Yota Tsuji defeating AEW’s Konosuke Takeshita for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship, thus creating a scenario where there is a unification of titles.

The thing is, it hasn’t been that long since the current winged design IWGP World Heavyweight championship came into fruition, barely five years prior, when Kota Ibushi won a winner-take-all match and decided to unify the WHC with the IWGP Intercontinental championship, and the winged blet was created, much to the dismay of fans and industry folk alike.

Sure, New Japan Pro Wrestling has been in a bit of churn over the last few years, with their rosters having been gutted a few times, a little bit of scandal, and just questionable management at times.  And chaos tends to lead to reactionary changes, but five years seems like a really short amount of time before the championship array of a promotion needs to come into play; it’s like late 1999 WCW and current AEW kind of scrambling if they’re deciding to start unifying off titles that have barely existed, in the grand spectrum of the industry.

To make matters more complicated, Tsuji exorcised his right as a new World champion by declaring the winged IWGP WHC now defunct, and immediately brought back the universally beloved V4 of the IWGP World title, to which then opened up the question on if he would be willing to break the unification, and allow for NJPW to reinstate the also-beloved IWGP Intercontinental championship.

Tsuji said no, and we’re left in this fuzzy situation where NJPW has a number of championships with questionable lineages and little direction on what lies ahead for the company as a whole.  I’m trying to wrap my brain around their title hierarchy, and writing all this shit down might help gain some clarity.

  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship (the ugly-ass winged blet) – Dead. Not merged with the IWGP Global championship.  Amalgamation of the old V4 and the IWGP Intercontinental championship.
  • IWGP World Heavyweight Championship (the V4) – NJPW’s current World Championship, held by Yota Tsuji. Was deactivated in 2021 by Kota Ibushi when it was merged with the IWGP Intercontinental championship.
  • IWGP Intercontinental Championship – Dead. Yota Tsuji had the opportunity to bring the much beloved 1B title back, but declined to.
  • IWGP Global Championship – Active, also held by Yota Tsuji. The spiritual successor to the IWGP United States/United Kingdom championship, the theory is that this blet will be the de facto championship that is up for grabs whenever non-NJPW talent wants to challenge NJPW.  The company has been trying to really sell this as a true WHC equivalent, but much like AEW’s struggles with their litany of secondary blets, it’s just not catching.

And as if NJPW needed any more titles in spite of their proportionately small roster, they still have:

  • NEVER Openweight Championship
  • NJPW Television Championship
  • IWGP Tag Team Championship
  • IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship
  • IWGP Jr. Tag Team Championship
  • NEVER Six-Man Tag Openweight Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Tag Team Championship
  • IWGP Women’s Championship
  • NJPW STRONG Women’s Championship

So for those keeping count, NJPW has 18 titles in circulation, which is pretty high considering their roster is like, 25 full-timers, about as many in their dojo system, and heavy reliance on outside collaborations.

The bottom line is that it was a good thing that the Tanahashi farewell really took center stage at Wrestle Kingdom, and has all of the NJPW Universe occupied with tributes, because once all the emotion and sentiment have died down, the reality is that the company is kind of in this churning clusterfuck, and for blet buffs like myself, wondering just wtf they’re doing to do to justify all these blets and unifications and rebrands. 

They’ve clearly been taking notes from AEW on how to really devalue championships, and it sucks for a company as renown as NJPW, and all the history they have behind some of their own championships.