This Week in Puro: 14/10/2014

[cero2k]

source: http://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/c ... _14102014/

The biggest news of the week was, of course, the set-up for the New Japan Pro Wrestling Tokyo Dome show in January at their 'King of Pro Wrestling' event. Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated AJ Styles to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for a record seventh time, putting him on the road to meet longtime rival Kazuchika Okada on January 4. The main event also saw Naofumi Yamamoto — the one-time Yoshi Tatsu — make his return to the promotion.

The first few matches have also been booked for the next NJPW event, 'Power Struggle' on 8/11. Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi will meet YOSHI-HASHI and Kazuchika Okada in a tag match that looks set to impress, and Shinsuke Nakamura will defend the IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Katsuyori Shibata.

This week also saw Dragon Gate star YAMATO make his long awaited return from injury, picking up the win in an 8-man tag at 'The Gate of Victory'. The reinvigorated Akira Tozawa also picked up two wins over the past week, continuing his momentum as his shot at Open the Dream Gate Champion BxB Hulk draws nearer. More details on this week's events can be found on the IHeartDG blog.

Kenny Omega's final match for DDT will be a falls count anywhere tag team match, pairing him with Kota Ibushi against Danshoku Dino and Konosuke Takeshita at the 'DDT Special 2014' show at Korakuen Hall on 26/10. In other news from the promotion, it's well worth trying to make sense of the results of their 'Sapporo Beer Garden Wrestling 2014' show on the Dramatic DDT blog .

TNA's 'Bound For Glory' show co-hosted with Wrestle-1 was well attended but wasn't without its confusing points — for one, Team 3D seemed to tease a run with rivals NJPW by calling out Bullet Club. Both companies shared wins on the show evenly, with three a piece to keep things fair. The live crowd had El Patron, AKA Alberto Del Rio, confirmed for the W-1 show on 1/11 .

The Stardom 'Goddesses of Stardom Tag League' got underway this week, with the teams of Star Fire & Mystique and Io Shira & Mayu Iwatani both picking up wins and earning two points in the process. The other side of the bracket saw Nanae Takahashi & Kairi Hojo draw against Takumi Iroha and Risa Sera, earning them a point each. More details are available via Solo Wrestling .

[Big Red Machine]

The first few matches have also been booked for the next NJPW event, 'Power Struggle' on 8/11. Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi will meet YOSHI-HASHI and Kazuchika Okada in a tag match that looks set to impress, and Shinsuke Nakamura will defend the IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Katsuyori Shibata.

Huh. I could have sworn they were going to save this for the Tokyo Dome show.

[cero2k]

The first few matches have also been booked for the next NJPW event, 'Power Struggle' on 8/11. Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi will meet YOSHI-HASHI and Kazuchika Okada in a tag match that looks set to impress, and Shinsuke Nakamura will defend the IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Katsuyori Shibata.

Huh. I could have sworn they were going to save this for the Tokyo Dome show.

Shibata vs Nakamura? yeah me too, unless they wanna free up Nakamura of the title so he can get into something else **cough**AJ's ROH title **Cough**

i've been thinking for a while that with the NEVER title and the IC title, they should unify one of those with the world title since it's a bit too much. If Shibata takes the IC, I'd love for Shibata and Tanahashi to do it at Dominion

[Big Red Machine]

The first few matches have also been booked for the next NJPW event, 'Power Struggle' on 8/11. Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi will meet YOSHI-HASHI and Kazuchika Okada in a tag match that looks set to impress, and Shinsuke Nakamura will defend the IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Katsuyori Shibata.

Huh. I could have sworn they were going to save this for the Tokyo Dome show.

Shibata vs Nakamura? yeah me too, unless they wanna free up Nakamura of the title so he can get into something else **cough**AJ's ROH title **Cough**
That'd be a match with a lot of politics. ROH would insist on AJ winning clean, but the only way I can see New Japan letting Nakamura lose cleanly is if AJ is a full time guy over there, and they plan on using him A LOT in the future. Remember that they haven't let him beat any of their top starts cleanly, and he has lost cleanly to Okada, Naito, and Tanahashi (twice).
AJ being a full-time guy for New Japan (by which I mean all of the PPVs and biggest shows- I don't think they'll mind him missing some "Road to..." shows would likely cut into his ROH dates. The only time this has really happened before was Morishima, and at that point ROH had an EXTREMELY strong field of guys to build up for title shots while Morishima was away (Nigel, Dragon, Claudio, Aries, Roderick), they had a SUPER-hot tag team title feud going to between the Briscoes and Steenerico, did all of their business through DVD orders rather than needing to focus on iPPV/PPV buys (meaning that people buy the show AFTER it comes out so you can make sure to have some awesome matches and still sell DVDs even if you don't have a big title match on the show, rather than with PPVs, which people mainly buy before the show happens, based on whether or not the card looks good/important). In addition to all of this, AJ Styles is a MUCH bigger draw in the US (and maybe even Japan, too), than Morishima was, so AJ missing shows will hurt ROH a lot more than Morishima missing shows did.
So in short, I don't see it happening.
I think it might be more likely that they are freeing one of them (hopefully Nakamura) up for Kurt Angle.

i've been thinking for a while that with the NEVER title and the IC title, they should unify one of those with the world title since it's a bit too much. If Shibata takes the IC, I'd love for Shibata and Tanahashi to do it at Dominion

The NEVER Title (in my estimation), really depends on who is holding it Ishii made it feel like a big deal. Naito didn't. With Yujiro it was an undercard act because a cocky douchebag who uses "sports entertainment style" overbooking to retain the the title will never be more than an undercard act in Japan, and that is what Yujiro's gimmick is (and he ROCKS at it). With the elevation of the IC Title to main event status, I think they could turn the NEVER title into an undercard title (of which New Japan technically doesn't have any), and the "openweight" part of it lets it be used to elevate both Heavyweights and Jr. Heavyweights.
The IC Title they made a concerted effort to MAKE it a TOP belt. They gave it the main event spot at the Tokyo Dome last year, they had Tanahashi and Nakamura trade it back and forth, and even had Nakamura choose to challenge for it instead of the IWGP Heavyweight Title after winning the New Japan Cup. It got the Main event spot of both Invasion Attack and Dominion, as well as one of the New Beginning shows and one of the Destruction shows.
They have a roster deep enough to support two top belts, so why not have two top belts. All you have to do is not call out the fact that there can theoretically be only one top belt. Then let the anticipation build and unify them when you aren't doing well and need a huge buyrate.