Support bWb & NJPW by purchasing WK14 & NY Dash on PPV through Fite TV.Technology is an amazing thing. Every week we are watching live streaming wrestling from IWTV.live and chatting about it via Twitter or Discord or various message boards found around the internet. We make friends and we make enemies, mostly faceless, but some are famous ... How you doing Jim Cornette?
But for the most part, we do this within a community that thirsts for creativity at the highest and lowest levels of humanity.
Yesterday/Last Night/This Morning, technology and creativity of the highest levels came crashing towards each other so powerful we were thrown back into the 56k baud modem era and it sent heated shock waves throughout our various wrestling communities.
However, when it was all said and done, we said goodbye to one of the absolute legends of the mat and air game. Last night Jushin Thunder Liger wrestled his last match. Now, like most legends do these days, Liger let us know before hand that we were on borrowed time, announcing his intentions in October of 19' that his matches during the weekend of Wrestle Kingdom 14 would be his last.
And as tradition would have it, Liger ended his decades of in-ring action on his back, with Hiromu Takahashi ending the legends career after hitting his Time Bomb finisher. Ironic, really, when you think about it.
The only reason Liger is retiring is time dictates it. In his heart he is still a champion, but at fifty-five years old, time has grounded the former high-flyer - the Liger we see today isn't the same Liger we saw ten years ago; and there is nothing wrong with that. You see, we all end up on our back, jobbing to time.
I became familiar with Liger during a midnight viewing of the George Michael Sports Machine. Michael would play sports clips from around the world in various sports. This was long before YouTube existed and how I kept up on sports around the world. One night and exuberant Michael's brought us footage from Japan as Jushin Thunder Liger took on World Championship Wrestling's Brian Pillman. I was very aware of Pillman, but had never seen Liger before. I may have read his name in a PWI magazine but had never witnessed him wrestle before that clip. I was amazed at what I saw - this was before the word Luchadore was made known in the states by WCW, and I know he wasn't a luchadore per se but he was amazing regardless.
Years later, the internet would allow me and you to peruse his matches in a way we weren't able to so many years before, so while last nights buffering and dropped frames were an annoyance, remember ... there was a time we weren't able to even be apart of last night.
Thank you, Liger.
WK14 over all was a success, with night one breaking attendance records and the weekend thus far has garnered over 70,000 fans in attendance. From all accounts, the match of night one seems to be the matches of Takahashi defeating Will Ospreay for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title and Kazuchika Okada defeating Kota Ibushi to retain the IWGP Heavyweight title. All Elite Wrestling superstar Jon Moxley grabbed the IWGP US title while Tetsuya Naito defeated Bullet Club's Jay White for the IWGP Intercontinental title.
The big news though came on night two. On night two, Naito became double champion, ending Okada's fifth IWGP World championship reign of 274 days. It is Naito's second reign as IWGP World champion. His celebration was short as KENTA attacked him from behind to thunderous boos. BUSHI ran to ringside as KENTA escaped without catching harm.
I expect more of this story line to play out at NY Dash.
xxx
It was another exciting weekend of action on the Indy circuit as well, with the highlight coming from ICW New York, highlighted by a quick, but eventful Tessa Blanchard v. Nick Gage affair that saw the future Impact Wrestling world champion defeat the most over indy wrestler in the world. After defeating Gage, Blanchard called out Amazing Red. This chick just doesn't stop!
Killer Kross, looking like BILLION bucks, used Tony Deppen as a shot put ball, breaking the olympic world record in doing so. SHLAK defeated a sickly looking Necro Butcher. bWb favorite Mance Warner fell to Dan Maff while Low Ki defeated Masashi Takeda. You can watch the replay at IWTV.live