I definitely did!! And I agree. Don't like nitpicking over ratings but it was an A/A+ match although not quite S-tier IMO.

G1 Block A is the grossest thing ever.

DGUSA card for NYC is starting to shape up a bit too.

Only 4 matches into the Climax tourney and it's damn good. This is going to be something special. Every match seems to be getting appropriate time.

Ishii vs Archer is a match to be seeked out. Easily over ****. Fantastic big man vs little man match. I was blown away by it and I'm a huge mark for Ishii. It went something like 15-20 minutes and every second was pure awesomeness.

G-1 tourney is so ****ing sick so far. I've only just finished Shibata/Ishii on Day 4. That match sick on so many levels. 14 minutes of pure epicness. It is absolutely must watch. One of the stiffest, sickest, no nonsense matches I've ever watched.

starts at 1:06:30 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyGwpDkxS-4

other must see matches so far:
Ishii/Archer on Day 1
MiSu/Nakamura on Day 2
Okada/Goto on Day 2
Ishii/Tanahashi on Day 2 (only match better than Shibata/Ishii)
Yano/Nakamura on Day 3

honorable mention to Naito/Nagata on Day 3 but the entire tourney is worthy of a watch so far. No real bad matches so far except a couple on Day 1 and 2 when people were holding back a bit.

Watching the Shibata - Ishii match right now. I am getting a headache from just watching that... They must have felt like **** the morning after...

unsurprisingly Dave Meltzer gave Ishii vs Shibata 5 stars.

Night 4 is without a doubt the best show of the year in any promotion so far. Watched the rest and Devitt/Tanahashi, Okada/Makabe, and especially Nakamura/Ibushi ruled the world. l don't think it's hyperbole to call this a top 15-20 show of all time.

One year to the day that this thread was last posted in and there is a very good reason for this, at least to me .

Today, 8/10/14, is the finals of the 2014 G-1 Climax tournament. NJPW has been keeping Shinsuke Nakamura and Kazuchika Okada away from each other since Okada's redebut on 1/4/12. They have been in the same stable since then. People have wanted to see this match since April of 2012 and today that match is happening...ON TWO DAYS NOTICE. This will be happening at a dome, not the Tokyo Dome, but a 37,000 seat dome nonetheless and this is to NJPW what Bryan/HBK (or w/e dreammatch you've had for years that would draw well) would be here. Some nice irony here is that they're both heels. one last note is that NJPW went so far as to not air their G-1 match or ppv in its entirety in 2012 so they could sell this at a later date.

In the undercard, Hiroshi Tanahashi will be facing AJ Styles for third place of the tournament. Another dream match for many many people. I have never paid attention to AJ before but in this tournament he has gone on a tear and even had what some have called a 5* match with Minoru Suzuki on Day 7 and been consistently awesome. Tanahashi has had 3 5* matches from Meltzer and even more ****3/4 matches.

Also on the undercard is Goto vs Shibata. This is their 4th or 5th meeting. They are real life best friends and started tagging after their match on 1/4/14. Been done to death but the match is always awesome.

Honma vs Naito. Naito had a helluva tournament and is a world class wrestler. Probably top 15 in the world. Honma is the underdog story. Out of ten matches in the G-1, he won none. The match should be great.

Here's the rest of the card. ROH collaborated with this Dome show after some NJPW stars went to NYC a couple months ago for two ppvs.

Ishii vs Anderson - should be ok. anderson has regressed he past year while ishii is more than capable of carrying anybody and is probably WoTY so far this year for any promotion.
reDRagon vs timesplitters - i've never seen redragon before but apparently they're good and they're the ROH tag champs vs the IWGP Jr tag champs.
Liger/CNJ vs Cole and Bennett - do not recommend.
YOSHI-HASHI/Yano/Sakuraba vs Iizuka/Shetlon/Suzuki - should be fine. heel vs heel match.
Nakanishi/Makabe/Nagata vs Gallows/Fale/Takahashi - **** this match
Taguchi/Tiger Mask/TenCozy vs El Desperado/TAKA/KES - see above

Everybody should seek out the first four matches mentioned before SummerSlam airs as a warm-up as those matches will rock and the crowd should be off the charts.

reDRagon is awesome. them vs the splitters can easily steal the show if they give them some time. 10-15 minutes will own faces.

cole and bennett... well, adam cole is awesome. and you will get a maria kanellis at ring side.

Okada vs Nakamura: 8 billion ****ing stars, okay so I'd give this like ****9/10 and perhaps 5 on a rewatch. The ending of this ruled the world. The counters and ways they switched momentum in this match were brilliant.

Tanahashi vs AJ: ehhhh. Didn't really live up to hype though it was very good. ****1/4 for this.

Time Splitters vs reDragons: ****1/4. They got a good 15ish minutes to do their thing and they killed it.

Ishii vs Anderson: ***3/4. Ishii gets busted open the hard way on the nose and this match kicked ass. A stiff battle.

Naito vs Honma: ***1/2. Was good but never felt the underdog would win.

Shibata vs Goto: ****1/4. definitely not entertaining because it was a good wrestling match. This match is an exhibition on how NOT to wrestle. Every match of theirs had been stiff but this was ungodly stiff and both looked to suffer legit injuries (or they learned how to sell like gods over night...unlikely, esp for Shibata). Watch this if you want to see two guys hit each other really ****ing hard for 15-20 minutes.

That's all I've watched so far but jfc it's good and will likely easily be show of the year. It's sick that I think Brock/Cena and/or perhaps Dean/Seth could get up to Okada/Nakamura levels. Hope they're good.

I just realized now...12 minutes before SS would start, that it isn't tonight. I'm a sad panda.

Win.

It was. New Japan is not shy about showing TNA like WWE. The cameraman was fixated on Maria's ass the entire entrance...and it was a big ass dome.

Yea I haven't seen the clip of that match yet, but a friend of mine that watches NJPW told me all about this.

Found this and it's in english. Second best match of the G-1 tournament imo. Just for you LKJ.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x22...max-2014_sport

Fantastic

Dave Meltzer gave yet another match five stars. From "Destruction (in Kobe)" on 9/21, Tanahashi vs Shibata gets the honor. Tanahashi is pretty much my favorite wrestler ever along with Bryan and Kobashi but this is a match I wouldn't even pimp out to friends much less give it five ****ing stars.

Did anyone else watch that first episode of Lucha Underground?

Was the commentary in English or Spanish?

English, with commentary by Matt Striker and Vampiro.

Dailymotion link here.

We had the replay on some
Spanish channel that wasn't el rey I'll have to find it again

I thought Striker was great on commentary for that first ep.

l liked Lucha Underground much more than I thought I would. Striker with pretty good play-by--play commentary and Vampiro was solid too. Matches were great, only the cliffhanger was weak imo. Overall I am looking forward to the second episode

Del Rio interview was released today and he said he'll be working with Lucha Underground. He also talked about how little pay the lower and midcard wrestlers in WWE are getting and how they could easily make more with half the work on the indy scene.

Long long bump of this thread, but recently, I just got AXS TV and I'm watching NJPW on Fridays now, and, holy cripes, I'm hooked on it. I've been wanting to find a solid, and easily accessible, alternative wrestling product on TV to get into after being somewhat disappointed by the WWE in recent years, and I found it here.

Enjoyed this week's episode and what they showed with the conclusion of the G1 Climax 24. The top two matches Okada vs Nakamura and Tanahashi vs AJ were really great to watch and showcased a style of wrestling that I probably hadn't watched in recent times since probably Punk vs Jericho at Wrestlemania 28 (yeah, I'm really slow on the curve like that, but I'm watching it now then never).

So, what recent events since G1 Climax in 2014 should I watch, since then? Any particular matches?

Have you watched Wrestle Kingdom 9? It has an English commentary version with Jim Ross and Striker, and was an amazing show.

Okada, Nakamura, Tanahashi, AJ, and Ibushi are 5 of the top 10 workers in the world, so most matches with them are very good. Michael Elgin has been way, way better in Japan than he was in the US. Elgin is part of the talent exchange with Ring of Honor, and the matches Roderick Strong had with the Japanese wrestlers on ROH tv this year were outstanding.

I saw a gif on twitter of Elgin doing a sick catch into a german suplex but now I can't find it. Any idea what match/night that was from?

And yeah go watch WK9 if you haven't.