G1 CLIMAX 25: DAYS 2 to 5

Fujiwara Armbar is a professional man with a filofax and many meetings to take and right now does not have time to provide premium express content solutions on the matter of New Japan Pro Wrestling's annual heavyweight wrestling tournament. However he was good to fax me the following comments on the back of what appears to be the invoice for 365 pairs of size M black underpants with a note made out to 'John at Bearhugger'.

G1 CLIMAX 25: DAY TWO
Twin Messe, Shizuoka
23rd July 2015

The opening round of Block B fixtures are being presented by a single camera with no commentary in a venue with little atmosphere. Hmm. As much as some may say this is more of a pure experience, I return with i. fuck purity and ii. the televisual production is what replaces the atmosphere of being there. This feels more like standing near the hard camera wearing ear defenders.

G1 CLIMAX 25: DAY 1

G1 CLIMAX 25: DAY ONE
Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Centre, Sapporo
20th July 2015

Press conferences watched, alarm clock beeps at 7.30am, coffee is made, where is the bread, where IS my sodding bread? I'll do this on an empty stomach then. Assholes. ANYWAY. 364 days after the commencement of last year's tournament, in the same venue, the enlarged charabanc containing the New Japan roster rolls back into Sapporo to commence another edition of the greatest wrestling tournament shut UP PWG fans. 

This review should be a rather short entry in the canon. The new format of the G1 has taken the sting out of the chances of any one night being completely blow-away awesome. At first I received the idea well, because I do believe it is important to spread these guys' workload out and let everyone recover, talk about what they're going to do out there and generally give everyone a great time. But they're all working every night, half of the time in tag matches, so it feels almost like a cruel joke.

G1 CLIMAX 25 PREVIEW

One year ago the beginning of the greatest wrestling thing that has happened in my experience of watching this sometimes baffling pseudo-sport began: the tournament to top all tournaments, 111 beautiful golden memories culminating in a pulsating, trouser-rendering final that left me giddy and bereft of three weeks of my life but also strangely elated beyond any place art or sport had taken me before.

2014 winner Kazuchika Okada

All of this madness was simply for the right for one guy to go to Wrestle Kingdom 9 with a gaudy briefcase containing a contract stating his legitimacy as title challenger, which he promptly lost, bursting into tears having shinned up the biggest mountain in sight and finding, after several exasperating months, that it was a mere foothill.

NOAH Great Voyage in Tokyo

Pro-Wrestling NOAH
Great Voyage in Tokyo
15th March 2015
Ariake Colosseum, Tokyo

Invasion and takeover angles aren't all they've cracked up to be. At best they have lost their potency in the greying of the years. Many of the famous storylines of outsider force tackling monolith company, in addition to the countless ones run by collaborating small independent companies on any given weekend, approximately end with the mild disturbance in their midst eventually reset, the foes vanquished and reduced and the order restored (counterpoint: a great deal of cinema does). Which is sort of stupid. Why would the sanctioning body allow it?

As much as UWF vs New Japan, nWo vs. WCW and WWF vs WCW/ECW may have set tongues wagging, nearly all petered out after the initial hot shot, unable to sustain momentum. In many cases these fissures between the lines of real and storyline inadvertently lifted the lid on the falseness inherent and in their own scramble to do big business, end up half-throttling it. Let us now pour one out onto the kerb for UWFi.

DDT Saitama Super DDT 2015

Dramatic Dream Team
Saitama Super DDT 2015
15th February 2015
Super Arena Community Hub, Saitama

Dramatic Dream Team, to many the fools-at-errand of contemporary professional wrestling, are daring to dream big once again. Their successful show in August 2014 drew a sold-out house to Tokyo's Sumo Hall for what many take to be their annual excursion beyond the confines of the Korakuen and several countryside campsites. It's tempting to be patronising toward the largely independent company trying to present in-jokes and dick jokes and sex jokes on a grander scale but here they are with another show of allegedly 6500 butts on 6500 seats (caveat: the venue is scalable). Can many companies say that over the last 5 years?

NJPW New Beginning in Sendai

New Japan Pro-Wrestling
New Beginning in Sendai
14th February 2015
Sun Plaza, Sendai

The supposed new direction of NJPW in 2015 after part one of this two-part event feels a little familiar, but as Geoffrey Boycott said 'you have to see both sides bat'. I think I can just about shoehorn that one in here.

NJPW New Beginning in Osaka

New Japan Pro-Wrestling
New Beginning in Osaka
11th February 2015
BODYMAKER Colosseum, Osaka

As Dinah Washington did not sing, and as Maria Grever did not actually write, what a diff'rence a month or so makes (just 912 little hours). In the early joustings of 2015, New Japan Pro-Wrestling could not have been arrested anywhere from Sendai to Saratoga. Look:

http://t.co/VSu3CxRNR4 - 2 NJPW novices gush about the awesomeness that was #njwk9 on this week's episode of @GNetworked
— Dustin (@DSpenceCantLose) January 7, 2015

Professional wrestling at its finest #WrestleKingdom9 #WK9 #njwk9 @njpwworld pic.twitter.com/JLvjJn5HX3
— Arthur Shimko (@artshimko) January 7, 2015

#njwk9 pic.twitter.com/0pVEKLOiTt
— DP1? (@WV_CAWS) January 7, 2015

NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 9

New Japan Pro-Wrestling
Wrestle Kingdom 9
4th January 2015
Tokyo Dome, Tokyo

Have you ever tried to explain wrestling to someone who doesn't like wrestling, or worse, have you ever tried to explain why you like wrestling to someone who has for whatever reason decided to kneejerk stance against wrestling? I'm sure you have and are familiar with that sense that, despite being an articulate and otherwise respected human being, the words are sticking in your throat/keyboard fingers and you're slipping on the edge at some recently-erected social cliff-face. 

NO TEXT

From now on here is my advice: don't explain, don't apologise, don't suggest that the so-called of wrestling 'actually hurts' or that the theatrics of wrestling and longform storytelling can ultimately appeal to a sense of our better selves. Just yell 'applesauce', shove them in the dirt and tell them to watch Wrestle Kingdom 9 from soup to nuts and if they don't like it then shrug and say eff you hombre and if they do share a cigar and recall in a bro-ish way the days they were wrong.

DDT God Bless DDT

Dramatic Dream Team (DDT)
God Bless DDT
30th November 2014
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo

As we slope toward the end of 2014 we can begin to reflect on the kind of year that individual promotions have had in terms of business, art, the flow of talent, the health of talent and prospect for the future (amongst other criteria, I suppose). DDT, who often resist comparison to traditional promotions in a lot of respects, can't escape this particular microscope.

Business seems pretty healthy in DDT. Their Sumo Hall show did well and they're having a gallant crack at selling the Saitama Super Arena out in February when New Japan are out of town with a headline match of Kota Ibushi vs. whoever the KO-D Champion is, presumably HARASHIMA. They're not catching NJPW any time soon and their junior guys are still working in restaurants to pay the bills, but morale appears to be pretty much up.

Matches of note vol. 2

FUJIWARA ARMBAR'S MATCHES OF NOTE VOL. 2

Continuing to cherry pick the recent in-ring highlights and noteworthy events around the Japanese scene. Not reviews, rather these are spoiler-free recommendations and overviews from events I haven't reviewed in full. These selections pick up in early October with a couple of slightly earlier picks.