Hello! I figured I should make a pinned post, so here goes.
Call me Thistle. This is my pro-wrestling sideblog. I watch NJPW, DDT, other stuff sometimes, and the Colony wherever they go. Suzuki Gun is still my favorite faction. El Desperado is my favorite wrestler.
I am friendly! You can send me a message, ask me a question, or just talk about wrestling. Even if we aren't mutuals, or even if you don't follow me!
日本語を勉強していますけど、僕の日本語能力はまだ弱い。 I am not a professional translator, just a wrestling fan who is studying Japanese. I'm not great at translating, so I only translate stuff if it seems like nobody else is gonna do it. Somebody else started translating exactly what I used to translate, so I don't post many translations any more.
I tag all gifs with #gifs and #animating gifs, and I tag anything deathmatch-adjacent (blood, weapons, etc) with #deathmatch
I block accounts that frequently repost work stolen from other fans.
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This made me extra happy because I'd been hoping this would happen since their first singles match was announced back in 2019. Here's a little doodle I drew back then.
Wolf was just overtly staring at Kasai before the match even started, but at the end of the match he just went for it and started touching him? I guess he wanted to know what his scars felt like?
Wato has a unique German Suplex variation, where he does the move at a very high angle.
Japanese commentary call this the "Tsutenkaku German Suplex Hold" which is a name I had never heard before. Japanese commentary also refers to it as "Wato's own technique" which made me even more curious about the meaning behind the name.
It turns out the move is named after the Tsutenkaku tower in Wato's hometown of Osaka. The form of the move is intended to reflect the height of the tower, and the name is representative of Wato's love of his hometown. Very cool!
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Wolf was just overtly staring at Kasai before the match even started, but at the end of the match he just went for it and started touching him? I guess he wanted to know what his scars felt like?
Yoh is referencing another weird old 90s manga with his DDT vs NJPW uh... gear (?) so once again, I will explain it for anyone who doesn't get the reference!
Last time he dressed up as a character from the Ping Pong Club manga but...
This time he's cosplaying as the main character from the 90s comedy manga Hentai Kamen!
For anybody who missed the Chaos era or who just didn't get the reference at the end of Yoh's victory celebration, I will explain it!
The pose they all did at the end of the show is called the "Sushi Zanmai" pose. For a while Chaos was doing this pose after group or tag victories, especially Goto and Yoshi-Hashi. I think (?) it was because Sushi Zanmai was sponsoring New Japan back then, but I'm not going to look it up to double-check. They got very enthusiastic about it, and it was very funny.
Sushi Zanmai is a popular sushi chain in Japan. The founder's "Sushi Zanmai Pose" became a meme in Japan. There are statues of him doing the pose in front of the restaurants, you can get toys of him doing the pose in gachapon machines, he had a cameo in one of the Yakuza games, and so on.
In real life he tends to do this pose in front of giant and impressive tunas.
Which is what Douki and Sho are supposed to represent here!
El Desperado's 2019 match (technically speaking, pair of matches) against Kasai was a huge turning point in his career. It left a permanent impact on him, not just emotionally but physically - during that match Kasai broke Desperado's jaw with a punch to the face.
The fallout from this unfortunate injury ended up bringing the two of them closer together.
Desperado would go on to incorporate the injury into his own mask, as a gold-joinery series of cracks along the left side of his jaw.
But Desperado also incorporated his relationship with Kasai into his moveset. After his jaw healed and he was able to return to the ring, he added some new moves to his arsenal.
One was a punch to the jaw, named "Loco Mono" in homage to "Crazy Monkey" Kasai.
Kasai would go on to name his own right-fisted punch "Picaro" (rogue in Spanish) in return, an homage to "Rogue Luchador" Desperado.
Desperado also incorporated Kasai's Reverse Tiger Driver into his moveset, building it into a combination that leads to his own finisher, Pinche Loco.
The first technique, with a vertical drop, is a Reverse Tiger Driver, one of Kasai's signature finishing moves. The second, with a horizontal drop and rotation, is Desperado's Pinche Loco.
In combination, the two moves feel seamless, like they were meant to go together. It makes me wonder if Desperado got some inspiration for his own finishing move from Kasai, years before they ever shared a ring.
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For people who aren't aware: Most of those gorgeous wrestling photos from Japanese wrestling promotions that you see reposted on tumblr and elsewhere were taken by fans. They look like professional photos, because the fan photographers are just that skilled. But they are fan photos, taken by wrestling fans just like you.
Most of those fan photographers don't want people taking their photos and reposting them elsewhere without permission.
Fan photographers will generally clarify this in their profiles. They often even go out of their way to write this information in English too. But even if they don't, you can run their profiles through machine translate and check, and if you're still not sure, you should ask the photographer for permission directly before reposting their work.
I've seen fan photographers lock their accounts, stop posting new photos online entirely, and delete their photo archives due to rampant reposting. If you enjoy the work of wrestling fan photographers, you should respect their wishes regarding that work.
I'm gonna go ahead and reblog this again since it's been a while, with a small addition/clarification.
If a fan photographer says that reposting their work elsewhere is prohibited, that doesn't mean that they want you to repost their work elsewhere with a link back to the source - it means they don't want you reposting their work elsewhere, so you should not repost it elsewhere.
You should treat fan photographers with the same level of respect that you treat fan artists, fan writers, and other creative fans. You should also treat other fans with the same amount of respect regardless of what language they speak.
What does this mean? I don't have any special business knowledge or anything, but I'm seeing a lot of stuff that's just flat-out wrong, so here's a little information.
Bushiroad announced that they're selling their NJPW shares to TV Asahi and to CyberAgent. After the sale goes through, NJPW will become a subsidiary of TV Asahi.
TV Asahi was already a partial owner of NJPW and has had a lot of involvement in the promotion's operations for a long time - they own and run NJPW's streaming service NJPW World, and the camera / production crew at NJPW shows in Japan are also TV Asahi employees.
CyberAgent is the company that owns CyberFight, which owns DDT, TJPW, and Noah. But NJPW will be a subsidiary of TV Asahi, not CyberAgent - so at least for now, it's not existing under the same umbrella as the CyberFight promotions. I wouldn't expect it to start showing up on Wrestle Universe anytime soon either, since TV Asahi owns NJPW World.
What does this mean for Bushiroad's other wrestling promotion, Stardom? They separated Stardom out from NJPW a while ago, and Stardom is not included in this sale. For now it will stay with Bushiroad. (I have to assume this will mean that strange NJPW Stardom title will be retired at some point as well.)
I have a few of my own thoughts on this...
Personally, I feel like this isn't a bad thing.
There has been an increasing amount of tension between the wrestlers at NJPW and the management at Bushiroad, and specifically the president Kidani. It had been starting to feel unsustainable, especially after Tsuji called them out for it. But since Kidani owns Bushiroad, it felt like nothing would change as long as he remained president and Bushiroad owned NJPW.
Kidani seems to have been one of the driving forces for multiple wrestlers leaving NJPW, and wrestler complaints about him go way back. He also seems to have had an increasing amount of influence on the booking as the booking has gotten worse. I hope that without his influence on the booking, the booking committee at NJPW might change and the booking might improve.
Mostly, I just wish Bushiroad had sold the NJPW before Kidani and the Bushiroad management drove a lot of wrestlers out of the promotion...
Also! Abema (a popular streaming service owned by CyberAgent and TV Asahi) had a deal with WWE to air WWE shows on their service in Japan - but the rumor is that their agreement will be ending soon, and that WWE has a deal lined up to start airing WWE shows on Netflix Japan instead. I feel like the timing of Abema's WWE deal ending must have influenced the sale of NJPW to CyberAgent and TV Asahi, since Abema is owned by both of those companies.
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