#only about 1/2 of my golden lovers and kota ibushi posts are showing up in the tags

[breadclubrising]

What is Kenny wins, and he chooses to fight Kota? Especially since if he then loses, it strengthens Kota’s position where right now he’s a bit adrift and seems to be thrown under the bus a lot. (I don’t want them to fight but it seems inevitable that they eventually be forced to, surely it could be a positive if they played it right?)

Yeah, I’m not excited about this. I think Kenny will win at Dominion, but I don’t see any universe in which Kota wins the belt from Kenny in the event of an Omega vs. Ibushi match at Wrestle Kingdom. I actually don’t think we’re getting that match anyway; it doesn’t seem like Kota’s important enough within NJPW to merit main-eventing Wrestle Kingdom.

But if it does happen, I don’t think Kenny will challenge Kota outright. In-storyline Kenny is not in any way looking to fight his Golden Lover. And I don’t think that Kota would challenge him, either, nor do I foresee a heel turn or betrayal. I mean… I know it’s wrestling but they’ve been building an epic love story for the past nine years, and we’d be meant to believe that it would all end over a championship belt? I hope they won’t go that route.

But it doesn’t fucking matter how they get there, because all roads involving Ibushi lead to Omega winning at Wrestle Kingdom. The most likely way to get Kota as the challenger is to have him win the G1, and the G1 winner has never won at WK, for one thing. For another, Kenny’s like… the biggest wrestling star in the world right now. And Kota probably hasn’t signed a full-time contract with NJPW. Plus, Kenny’s never beaten Kota (they’ve had two matches against each other), so it’s probably time for that to come full circle. I guess. 

BUUUUUT below the cut are TWO booking ideas for Omega to retain the IWGP Heavyweight belt against Ibushi at WK 13:

One that’s in the realm of possibility and is interesting-ish, and makes Ibushi look as good as possible (which is not very good).

One that is completely batshit but super fun, is technically possible, and most importantly wouldn’t bury Ibushi or the Golden Lovers.

Here’s my realistic-ish booking, if we really have to do this: 

Give Ibushi a monster G1 run, but have him still lose, either in the final or in the block finals, and make it very dicey whether he lost because he didn’t want to fight Kenny, or because he just plain lost. 

Have the G1 winner call out Ibushi as the challenger for the briefcase defense, because it wouldn’t be believable that he’d make the challenge himself. 

Cody would be the best story-wise, although chances are basically nonexistent that he’d win the G1 (Kenny was the first gaijin to do it ever, in 2016). But you can totally see Cody calling out Ibushi just to fuck with him some more, and twist the knife by making Ibushi choose between losing to Cody or fighting Kenny at Wrestle Kingdom.

Naito and Tanahashi both have reasons why they’d call out Ibushi, and so would ZSJ or even Okada (he wants someone who’s going to give him a real fight, maybe). Basically, give Ibushi a situation where he can’t really let himself lose so he doesn’t have to fight Kenny.

Anyway, no one has ever lost their briefcase defense. Make Ibushi the first person to beat the briefcase holder and steal the WK main event.

Then you have the Golden Lovers, who tried everything to avoid fighting each other, forced to fight at WK. You get an angsty buildup where instead of shit-talking and peacocking it’s like, ‘well this is how it has to be and I’m gonna do my best’. (V says there should be at least one pull-apart but this is my crack booking and I don’t want that.)

Optionally, make it extra awful by at some point having them win the heavyweight tag belts and later have to vacate them so they can fight at Wrestle Kingdom. Very symbolic, being forced to give up something they won as a team so they can be opponents.

Yawn. I’ve got something much stupider in mind:

Here’s an impossibly cracky ridiculous booking that would still let Omega win at WK, but not bury Ibushi or the Golden Lovers:

Kota challenges Naito for the IC belt, and wins. (LET MY MANS WIN A FUCKING TITLE FOR FUCK’S SAKE. He has never won a heavyweight title in NJPW, and has challenged for all the singles titles except the US belt.)

Or, have him challenge for the US belt, and win it at G1 USA so I can cry about it in person, while wearing Kota Ibushi themed clothing. (The US belt REALLY needs someone like Kota. Omega vs. Jericho semi-main eventing WK has fallen within a few months to Jay White vs. David Finlay at a road-to show. It needs some help. And to not be the fucking Gaijin Belt.)

The Golden Lovers win the heavyweight tag belts.

Put Ibushi and Omega in the same G1 block, and have Ibushi win their match. (I know no one wants to blow this load in the G1, but I think it could work, especially if Ibushi wins, since Omega has never beaten him.)

Have Omega win the G1 as champ, in which case he gets to choose his challenger. 

Omega says ‘hey babe, you wanna do Wrestle Kingdom? One more fight, for the fans?’ Kota having beaten him in the block matches means he has the right to challenge at some point.

Then these idiots together have the top two belts in the company (or the top belt and the US belt), the heavyweight tag belts, and in a sense they co-won the G1. TL;DR, book them as a monstrous unstoppable power couple fueled by the strength of their love and lulz.

Okada challenges for the briefcase, because he’s still salty over losing the belt to Omega. He loses, and it’s made even worse because Omega’s in Ibushi’s corner for the briefcase defense. We get an Okada vs. Ibushi match out of this deal, and Ibushi gets to win this time. (He’s had two matches with Okada, one in NJPW and one in DDT, and lost both. His friend Tiger Mask W also lost to Okada.) 

This would mean that Okada would be in the same G1 block as Omega, and would have to lose AGAINNNN to Omega. Extra salt. But it also means he’d have to beat Ibushi, for a third time, before Ibushi’s ultimately victorious when it matters most………… PARALLELS???!?! HARBINGERS OF WHAT’S TO COME!?!

Ibushi defends the IC/US belt successfully, so he has to vacate it, and NJPW has a fucking awesome ladder match for the IC/US title at Wrestle Kingdom. (PLEASE Gedo!)

Have the Golden Lovers lose the tag titles to the Young Bucks, basically as a subplot, have them keep trading the titles back and forth (this would elevate the tag titles because of the star power of the two teams, IMO).

Basically, they show up at WK ready to go nuts and have the time of their lives together. Their fight at WK is not angsty sad-we-have-to-fight, but a chance for them, at the top of their game, to put on the show they’ve always wanted to on the world’s second grandest stage. 

And book it like that, like they believe the outcome is almost secondary to them achieving their dream together. ‘Yeah I’m here to win, make no mistake, but I’m also so fucking pumped to main event Wrestle Kingdom with my bff like we used to talk about like 10 years ago when we were dumbasses in DDT.’ They’re opponents, and they’re playing to win, but they’re still, and always, the Golden Lovers.

And… make it A Thing that Kenny still hasn’t beaten Ibushi, and he’s the motherfucking IWGP heavyweight champion. Make that an important stake in this, because it would be to him/them.

This doesn’t bury Ibushi as much, even if (when) he loses, because he still looks like a fucking boss: he had a singles title that he did not lose (and could easily challenge for again), he beat Omega once in the process; part of Omega’s goal was just to beat him for once. And of course, the Golden Lovers remain as strong as ever.

Anyway that won’t happen and Ibushi is going to get buried and I’m already salty about it; having gotten a head start as soon as Okada called out Omega.

THANK YOU FOR COMING TO MY TED TALK AND FOR BELIEVING IN THE POWER OF LOVE.

[gdwessel]

Road to Tokyo Dome Night 2 - 12/15/2018; Podcast Recording Today

The final NJPW show of 2018 has taken place, and you can watch it now on NJPWWorld. Taguchi did the Santa Masked Horse bit again for today’s crowd as well.

- 12/15/2018, Tokyo Korakuen Hall (NJPWWorld)

Teruaki Kanemitsu Return Match: Teruaki Kanemitsu & Ren Narita TLD Ayato Yoshida [K-DOJO] & Shota Umino (15:00)

Rocky Romero, SHO & YOH [CHAOS] d. Jushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask IV & Toa Henare (SHO > Tiger, 3K, 9:23)

Tomohiro Ishii & Hirooki Goto [CHAOS] d. Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka [SZKG] (Ishii > Iizuka, Vertical Drop Brainbuster, 10:36)

EVIL & SANADA [Los Ingobernables] d. Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens [The Elite] (SANADA > Owens, Magic Killer, 9:44)

Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI & Shingo Takagi [Los Ingobernables] d. Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado [SZKG] (Naito > Kanemaru, Destino, 13:39)

Jay White, Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Taiji Ishimori [Bullet Club] d. Kazuchika Okada [CHAOS], Togi Makabe, Toru Yano [CHAOS], Tomoaki Honma & KUSHIDA (Loa > Honma, Apeshit, 14:45)

Kenny Omega [The Elite] & Kota Ibushi [FREE] d. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Will Ospreay [CHAOS] (Omega > Ospreay, Golden Trigger, 28:46)

And with the final win before WK13, the Golden Lovers hold hands in the snow, and we see out New Japan Pro Wrestling for 2018. 

Jay White took Gedo’s place today, and laid out Okada with Blade Runner post-match, whilst Ishimori hit Bloody Cross on KUSHIDA. Chris Jericho attacked Naito post-match, no real surprise there.

Teruaki Kanemitsu wrestled his first match in 25 months, and didn’t look too bad doing so! The crowd was welcoming of his return. He has some ground to make up, naturally. Hirai Kawato, who debuted at the same time as Kanemitsu, is on excursion in CMLL, and Tomoyuki Oka  is off in RevPro ahead of him as  Dominator Great O-Kharn. Sure he had some ring rust but that’s to be expected given how long he’s been out. Hopefully he’ll be able to get back to where he was before injury and excel beyond it.

It’s been... a year. Eventually I will get around to writing a piece here about my thoughts on said year, as well as another Upcoming NJPW Events post. In the meantime, @damascenocs and myself will be recording the next episode of the Podcast today, which will probably be a long one that we split in two, again, as it is not only WTL/RTTD review, not only is it WK13 preview, not only is it 2018 in review, but it’s also the 3rd Anniversary of this show, so yeah. Look out for that early next week at the Pro Wrestling Only podcast feed.

In the meantime, the next show is, well, Wrestle Kingdom 13! OK, there’s the Grand Puroresu Festival (or Fan Festa, as I guess is the official English title) on 1/3/2019, but nothing’s been announced for that as yet, and no word on any Young Lion debuts, that have usually come at these shows. I will of course keep you posted. But with no more shows until the calendar flips, and NJPW on AXS now in repeats until WK13, I may be posting here infrequently until then. Tumblr’s implementation of censorship is due to occur on Monday, so I am still looking to move this blog elsewhere, which I will of course make note of here.

Til then, hope you enjoyed NJPW in 2018, and see you at WK13.

[pwrestlingxpress]

Reddit Article about Golden☆Lovers History

Found this interesting column by WrestlingisJay on reddit.com about Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi’s history in which I felt compelled to share it here on the Pro Wrestling Express.  You can click here for comments on the article and if you a member, log in and make your own comment.  Anyway here is what WrestlingisJay had to say about the reunion of the Golden☆Lovers that occurred back on January 28, 2018 at New Beginning in Sapporo Night Two and remember, I take no credit in this.  The credit for this should go to WrestlingisJay on reddit:

Hello, I’m u/WrestlingIsJay! You may remember me from such walls of text as this post or this other post. Today I’m here to invite you to come with me on a journey… a Golden☆ journey! A lot of stuff has already been written on the greatest relationship in pro-wrestling, and I always make sure to send people looking for a quick fill-in to this excellent post from a while ago or this more recent Uproxx article, but what I really wanted to do was to create a place to also include all those little details and bump on the road that obviously often get overlooked for the sake of brevity in those kind of summaries but that I really think make up the soul of this amazing story. All the Small Things, basically (thank you Tom DeLonge). I’ll try my best and I hope people will come up with all those other things I’ll probably leave out in the comments, so to make this more and more complete. Let’s start, shall we?

2008-2012: Beginnings.

I guess pretty much everyone knows how it started at this point, so I’ll be quick: Kenny has a unique vision for pro-wrestling that sets him apart from most of his north American colleagues, finds a clip of Kota Ibushi having DDT-style matches on YouTube and immediately thinks that this guy from across the Ocean must thinks the same way he does, so he sets on a quest to face him no matter the odds. He films himself doing a crazy DDT-styled “Anywhere match to appease to them, cuts a promo on Ibushi and manages to get himself to become the one and only gaijin in DDT for quite a while. They have the match (DDT Universe link, it’s 9$ a month, first month is free), and it’s a rough sketch of everything Omega and Ibushi have in store for pro-wrestling: a perfect blend in of comedy, crazy high spots, unique storytelling and unparalleled athleticism. It ends up winning a MOTY trophy earning Omega his stay… the rest, as they say, is history.

I think one of the best “Small Things” about this is the way Kenny Omega retells it during his appearance on “Japanophiles”, a TV Show about foreigners living in Japan which dedicated an episode to him, in a somewhat-shoot interview he did while he was still in DDT (timestamped link) which really drives home how much of real life anime characters these two are: “I felt that my destiny, if there is such a thing, was to come out here and fight Kota Ibushi”.

He will later say that his first match with Ibushi was also the first time he cried after a match during a 2016 NJPW interview but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. They have the match and clearly immediately develop a strong friendship as early pictures and statements from Michael Nakazawa, a huge friend of both and basically the third unofficial member of their team (kind like a proto-Elite), attests. (shout out to @archaicbro by the way, who put together a most useful Twitter-sized recollections of their story). They join forces instead of facing each other again, as DDT originally had planned, and hit one homerun after the other: they even get a MOTY in New Japan in 2010 which, as Kenny recalled in the Edge & Christian Podcast, it’s something Jr. Tag Teams just “don’t do”. Their shenanigans both inside and outside the ring really depicts one hell of a great time for both of them, and Japan loves them as well.

Their peak probably comes in 2012 when, as many will already know, they main evented DDT’s most important show of the year, Peter Pan at the Nippon Budokan arena in Tokyo. There the “sketch” that was their first match together gets refined and they put up one of the greatest matches of all time (here’s another DDT Universe link) battling over the KO-D Openweight Championship, DDT’s top singles belt. One very interesting note: Kota Ibushi wins the match after having kicked out at 2 from a One Winged Angel in the center of the ring, the only wrestler to ever having done so without interferences or rope breaks.

At this point, life couldn’t be better for them, as Kenny himself will say to Meltzer in an interview in 2017 that he felt his career had peaked at that point, having gone all out at such a legendary arena, within a company he helped grow, with Ibushi. Despite that though, unfortunately trouble was brewing not so far on the horizon…

2014-2017: Paradise Lost?

2014 comes, and with it the biggest turn in Kenny Omega’s career arrives. He signs a contract of exclusivity with New Japan Pro-Wrestling and decides to stay a Jr. Heavyweight for the time being: with Kota already a Heavyweight in New Japan, this effectively breaks up their team and sends them separate ways. After an emotional (and pretty crazy) farewell match (rutube link as I couldn’t seem to find the match on DDT Universe), Kenny’s conference with NJPW is unusually cold when he talks about the fact that he will stay separated from Ibushi going forward: whether something happened behind the scenes or Kenny’s just preparing to become the evil Cleaner, we may never know, but the Golden☆Lovers are no more.

This is where turbulent times start for Kenny, and this is where the “Small Things” really shine. You’d be hard pressed to find an interview without a shout out, a quick hint or a monologue of the Cleaner towards his former tag partner, and what it all adds up to is a compelling depiction of someone clearly dealing with a lot of unwanted thoughts in his head. Kenny’s constant wandering with his mind towards Ibushi is so powerful, so humane that the lines between reality and kayfabe gets very blurred, and it’s astounding.

The first big crack in the “wall” Kenny put up to forget about his past obviously comes at Invasion Attack 2015, when in a wonderfully put-together segment wanted by all three involved, Kenny finds himself between a rock and a hard place when he has to help AJ Styles retain his IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Kota. He doesn’t go all out in helping his Bullet Club brother, but the split second hesitation he causes in Ibushi is enough for AJ to turn his Phoenix Splash into a Styles Clash for the 1, 2, 3. After the match, Omega is definitely not thrilled about the outcome and his part in it. Some say this even started (in kayfabe) his path towards the inevitable takeover of the Bullet Club against AJ Styles: even when they just graze each other, Ibushi always has a huge impact on Kenny’s psyche and career.

They will stay apart for all of 2016, the true breakthrough year for the Cleaner, and this seem to weigh in deeply on Omega. After winning the G1, he states to having finally surpassed Kota, but he’s also clearly hurt at his disappearance at such a pivotal moment for him. He will start antagonizing him more and more, building up basically a feud with Kota’s shadow that will accompany him throughout all of 2016 and shape his interactions with him when Ibushi will finally return to New Japan later (as himself, although Kenny didn’t refrain from throwing shade at him with a couple of ironic comments on Twitter about Tiger Mask W’s performances being “a little green”). One important moment comes almost six months later, in March 2017, when TV Asahi hosts a ceremony to make a list of the greatest wrestlers in history and Kenny Omega, ranking #15, ends up standing in front of Kota who is amongst the judges. The look Kenny gives Kota here speaks for himself, but he also doubles down on Twitter, truly opening up for the first time in a while.

Keep in mind what he says here, as it’s one of the greatest details of this whole thing: Kenny clearly sees standing in the ring with Kota as the only way to truly be able to communicate with him after all this time. He doesn’t know how to tell him all the things he would like to, and he doesn’t even know if he would be able to, but he knows damn well how to wrestle, so that’s how he wants to speak to Ibushi – by fighting him. He will say this again later, and he will ultimately state as much after the reunion. But once again, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

WrestleKingdom 11 comes and goes, and Omega becomes the hottest topic in the world of pro-wrestling, but he doesn’t forget Ibushi, not even after his war with Okada: in an exclusive interview he states that the WK11 main event brought him to a ”magical [state of mind] where wrestling didn’t hurt”, something he only felt one other time in his career, ”when I was still in a tag team with… an old friend of mine”. Whatever happens, Ibushi is still there, always lingering in the back of his mind. This becomes evident when the rumors get more and more loud until yes, it’s revealed that Kota Ibushi will indeed be a part of the 27th edition of the G1. Kenny doesn’t hide his intentions: he will take part in the G1 because he wants, because he needs to be in the ring with Kota again. Maybe it’s because he really wants to prove himself he can surpass him, but mostly it’s because he’s aching for that chance to talk to his old friend in the only language he would be able to – that of professional wrestling.

Countless “Small Things” are littered among the interviews, tweets and shoot Q&As Kenny did around this time, but two of the most intense statements can be easily found on New Japan World. The first happens during a Skype interview Kenny did to promote the G1 USA Special. At the 22:53 mark, he gets asked about Kota being in the G1 and cuts a short, but awesome promo. I’ll transcribe here some of the best lines for those unwilling to click the link, as I believe it’s one of Omega’s best mic work I’ve ever heard:

“Look… Ibushi. Yeah, I’ll say his name, Ibushi. It’s been a while. I was waiting… I wondered what it would take. […] after I’ve won the G1 I thought for sure, you would come back to me. After I had the greatest match of all time at the Tokyo Dome, something you could never do, I thought you’d come back. What makes you come back now? What makes you want to challenge the G1 after everything we’ve been through. Is it something that you’re doing for yourself? Are you trying to challenge me? […] Questions that are running through my head. You know… I could always call you, I could always contact you, but I wouldn’t know what to say. […] Let’s do the talking in the ring. I want you to promise me… be a man of your word, promise me Ibushi, that you would make it to the finals. It’s the only way we can meet. Show me how much you’ve grown, and I’ll show you how much I’ve grown. You’re not the man anymore… I’m so much more than what you are now, and I can’t wait to show you the difference in that power.”

This is enough to make the situation look even more like a real-life anime rivalry than already is, but Omega wasn’t finished yet. During his appearance at a NJPW World’s one-hour show called Wonderland (it’s on their streaming service but the clip itself is free, so you can watch it without having to pay the monthly fee), where he was asked to go through all his adversaries for the upcoming G1, he stated multiple times that the only reason he was joining the tournament was Ibushi. In the end, around the 55:00 mark, he addresses Kota directly and cuts another gem:

”A-Block? There’s only one… there’s only one. […] There’s only one I want to beat, there’s only one I want to meet. And It’s you Ibushi. It’s a different world, and I saw your training video. You can’t just wake up one day and say, ‘I’m going to win the G1’! It isn’t that easy… but Ibushi, somewhere in there, I know you have it in you. [If it’s] really is your time, take it. Because I never stopped after you left. After you left me all alone, to fend for myself, I never stopped training, I never stopped sacrificing, I never stopped feeling the pain. I never ran away like you did. If you can make it to the final, that’s where I’ll be waiting. And then finally I’ll make you feel the pain Ibushi, and I’ll show you through my actions everything that I felt while you were away, after you threw me away.”

After these two pieces of work, hype was through the roof, but alas, Ibushi didn’t manage to reach the G1 Finals, and the Golden☆Lovers seemed destined to stay apart… for a little longer.

2017-2018: Reunion.

The finals arrived, and after them, the unexpected happened: a beaten Omega clad in gear that was an homage to his former partner met Ibushi backstage, even if the encounter lasted only for a few, seemingly misunderstood, seconds. A failed connection if there ever was one, for sure. But despise that, things kept moving and Kenny kept going there: in an interview with Kevin Kelly (another free one!) months later, when he was about to defend his IWGP US title against Juice Robinson, he reiterated that his only regret for the G1 Finals was the opponent. He wanted Ibushi, he needed to meet him in that ring, and that need was still there, clear as day. A need that would have been answered months later, in a truly unexpected fashion, amidst the snows of Sapporo.

…and here we are, at last, at the final reunion. At that single shocking moment, ten years in the making. With some unrequested help from the villainous Cody, Omega and Ibushi are standing face to face in the same ring again. It’s nothing like Kenny had thought, there are no wrestling moves involved, no fighting. It’s just his old friend, lending a helping hand, and for him it’s his whole world coming down hard. There’s no more feigning indignation, or hatred, or masquerading the pain of having been left alone. It’s all thrown in his face and the Cleaner’s metallic exterior gets shredded by the events. Underneath, the “real” Kenny resurfaces and after some hesitation, he gives in to a liberating hug. The Golden☆Lovers are back.

Again, click on the link (or here if confused) above to comment on this very interesting article from reddit by WrestlingisJay.