Console-wars aside, why did you stop watching it?

console-wars aside, why did you stop watching it?

Attached: NJPW.jpg (1024x684, 172.96K)

Lacks any sort of soul. It’s just the same guys and same match formula over and over again.

Elite left, injuries, cringe fake power rangers belt, awful corona crowds with clapping

I just lost interest in wrestling in general about a year before the pandemic hit, then I tried getting back into it but most of their shows in 2020-2021 were absolutely horrible and it seemed like they were just having Naito vs. Ibushi 300 times in a row. I'm getting back into them now but Japan's covid restriction still hamper them.

Everybody was squinting too much and I was worried the were going to hurt themselves.

I started to sour on it when Gedo didn't pull the trigger on Naito at WK12, just so he could extend the length of Okada's title reign (a record no one gave a fuck about).

Unironically the shitty booking of Evil.

Because THEMATCH just made me realize how fucking uncool pro wrestling is

They pushed that no yen shitter EVIL.

/thread

what the fuck is THEMATCH

>Start watching in 2014
>Top guys were Tanahashi, Okada and a gaijin Bullet Club leader with Naito and Ibushi on the rise
>By the time I gave up in 2021 the top stars were still Tanahashi, Okada, a gaijin Bullet Club leader, Naito, and Ibushi
Big Dick Shingo is a welcome addition but were it not for COVID and injuries he would have never been IWGP champion and probably never will again.

Couple of gaijins was fine and exciting.

Suddenly it was all Bullet Club with guys that were too small, bland and uninteresting to make it in US, to cash in on western interest.

Now they're in AEW, and I'm losing interest in that too.

clapping crowds are brutal. so sad that so many greats are burning through there final good years in it.

Unironically, the only thing I was invested in was Kenny, and he left. I also kinda cared about Naito and he just kinda went nowhere.

Shingo was the only good thing about the COVID years. I really liked Naito and Ibushi as the next top stars too but they wore out that matchup quickly and they both ended up injured. I like Okada a lot too but he went through a long stretch where he clearly got bored with wrestling. Jay's match with Ibushi also got me really excited about him as a top guy but then he couldn't even enter Japan because of COVID. And of course Evil's push was the absolute worst thing to happen to the company in recent memory.

I grew out of wrestling in general

it is THE MATCH

I got tired of any form of Combat sport in General whether it's real of fake. Even THE MATCH 2022 doesn't excite me despite you guys hyping it up to the moon

Njpw became fresh and interesting in 12-15 with their own “attitude era” of sorts — Michael jackson nakamura, heel yano, retard honma, pimp yujiro, nihilist naito, undertaker evil etc. made the undercards hella entertaining and then randomly having fuckin aj styles win the iwgp title was like the fuuuuuuck at the time and you couldnt help watching. Young bucks and roppongi vices best of seven million series always stole the show, then you had Shibata, sakuraba and goto as the strong style gatekeepers making sure it didnt go too far into russo territory. You had random ass feuds between guys thats youd never wanna watch now that were so fuckin good like tanahashi/yano or kushida/desperado.
Styles, nak and the good bros leave, elgin gets cancelled and cole/redragon/mike bennett sign the mark contract and you get kenny and ibushis sudden push outa seemingly nowhere aswell as hiromu and jay white becoming megastars. After naito loses his redemption ark match its pretty much all downhill from there aside from the occasional shingo/ospreay or naito/ibushi sawdust kino. Why? Cos the midcarders are boring no gimmick faggots like sanada who people were sick of in other promotions back in 2010 rather than giving their homegrown guys interesting gimmicks to get over with. Roppongi 3k is a death sentence for tanaka and komatsu, while uemura and umino are lost to the plandemic, oka came back kinda kino but 70s asian monster gimmick isnt gonna fly in 2022. Also rather than doing entertaining tongue in cheek heel shit like original bullet club theyve got hhh’s evolution part 2 in house of torture thats got literal go the fuck away heat, adding to the fact that besides united empire (not a gimmick btw, although i am a dan of ospreays coked out bong character) the stables havent fuckin changed since like 2009 and theyre all stale as fuck without any direction or central theme at all. Chaos hontai jobbers? Suzukigun with a geriatric jobber leader? Balls.

I still watch it.
I have NJPW World even.

Evil
Evil's skirt
Evil Two Belts
Dick Togo
House of Pain
Diva Belt/Unification
Okada doing wrestling injured for a year/money clip matches
Shingo being Ospreay's personal jobber
Squandering Despy when he was white hot by cooling him down
Killing O-khan's streak in the most anti-climatic way possible

Just a lot of really bad booking decisions

covid restrictions prevented me from following it regularly, but still watched the big shows.