WATCH ALONG: Wrestle Kingdom 9
Added 2025-06-29 22:33:28 +0000 UTCCome watch Wrestle Kingdom 9 for the first time with me!
Comments
You should def watch Apollo 55 (Prince Devitt and Ryusuke Taguchi) vs Golden lovers, prob my favorite tag match of all time
zombiechane1
2025-07-03 16:54:45 +0000 UTCThis is the first new japan show I watched live so it will always hold a special place in my heart. I'll try my best to give you some backstory for most of the guys. I'll add context as I watch along with the show. - Shelley and Kushida are almost as good a tag team as MCMG. They had amazing chemistry and it's definitely worth checking out the Jr Tag Division more from this time. - Please call them wrestlers and not superstars. If they don't work for the WWF they're not superstars. They're professional wrestlers. - Jarrett was barely a member of BC, it was really just this show and a couple others. Very insignificant run he had. One member that is kinda interesting is Cody Hall, Scott Halls son, he wasn't very good. - Bad Luck Fale was one of the 4 OG members of Bullet Club alongside Devitt, Anderson, and Tama Tonga - Yujiro Takahashi was originally Tetsuya Naitos tag partner in the late 2000s. They had some matches in TNA during their partnership. But basically as soon as their team ended Naito shot to the moon and Takahashi stayed bumming around in the lower card for the rest of his career. - It'll definitely be worth it checking out more of the work from prime Tenzan and Kojima. Both of those dudes were ballers during the early 2000s. - And Honma omg, you definitely need to watch more Honma. I'd recommend doing a watch along for him vs Ishii from New Beginning 2015, which is the tour after this. Peak Honma is legitimately incredible - Bald bearded crazy dude (Iizuka) was low key insane during his prime. He takes part in New Japans only 5 star match within like a 20 year period in I think 2000. Masanobu Fuchi & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Takashi Iizuka & Yuji Nagata. It's a fantastic match, kind of a deep cut but definitely worth seeking out. - TMDK was known as TM61 in NXT. They reached the final of the second Dusty Rhodes tournament vs Authors of Pain. They had a fun little run there if not a little underwhelming. - Naomichi Marufuji isn't a super significant part of this show but he plays a super significant part in wrestling history. His tag team and rivalry with KENTA (Hideo Itami in the fed) from the early 2000d is insanely innovative and is what 90% of indie wrestlers stole their movesets from. Definitely recommend checking out some more Marufuji. He has a bunch of fun stuff in New Japan (amazing matches with Okada) if you don't wanna branch out to NOAH quite yet, but I'd highly recommend the aforementioned KENTA stuff. - As you watch more New Japan you're gonna learn to love Toru Yano. He's one of the few comedy wrestlers where his shtick actually works. Not exactly a 5 star wrestler, but he has a lot of fun stuff. - A bunch of the music you hear is dubbed, as they didn't have the copyright for new japan world. So redragon, forever hooligans, Tenzan, Marufuji, and Sakuraba all have dubbed themes. - Sakuraba has an incredible match with Shinsuke Nakamura from the Wrestle Kingdom 2 years prior to this. I'd highly recommend checking that one out. More prime Nakamura is never a bad thing. - That match felt like shoot fighting because those two men are shoot fighters lol. Sakuraba is famous for being the Gracie Hunter in Pride, embarrassing the family which to that point had been the royal family of MMA. Suzuki himself left pro wrestling to create Pancrase, one of the first MMA promotions on the planet. If you want more context their shoot stuff is pretty fun. Plus you get to see young Suzuki who was very sexy. - Another Nakamura match recommendation. Check out his stuff with Makabe from 07-10. They had a ton of fun incredible matches that were really the turning point of Nakamura's career. - Makabe gets a lot of his aesthetic from Bruiser Brody. The chain, the music (which you can't hear because of copyright), even his knee drop. Bruiser Brody tribute gimmick is Makabe, and it rocks. - Omega stopped wearing the trunks when he moved to heavyweight (366 days after this, though iirc he didn't start wearing the long boys until the tour after New Years Dash 2016) - Taguchi was formerly a tag partner of Devitt before his Bullet Club days. There's actually a series of really fun matches with them vs the Golden Lovers from the early 2010s. Taguchi was also Devitts final opponent of his New Japan career. I will say though, they're much better partners than they were opponents. - Shibata and Goto went to high school together. When Shibata came back to New Japan it was all about proving his loyalty to the company and to his friends. This was basically the final stepping stone to fully re-establish himself. - Thick boy Karl Anderson is so much better than skinny "the club" anderson omg. Definitely recommend his match vs Okada in the G1 Finals. Fantastic match. - Shibata's finisher is the PK (Penalty Kick). He usually sets it up by choking out the opponent first, but it was a pretty protected finisher in his time in New Japan. - Naitos theme might be my favorite ever. It's so good. - I feel like Naito didn't go full insane mode until he became ingobernable (which happens later this year). Before that as the stardust genius he still had a handful of 5 star classics, but the heel turn really turned him into an all time great.
Rhys Withhisspoon
2025-06-30 10:48:32 +0000 UTC
