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 the stuff I used to, 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.
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.
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.
For anyone out there who enjoyed Sasaki vs Desperado in the BOSJ but hasn't seen their previous singles match - DDT has it up on their youtube channel for free!
This match was the semi-main on Wrestle Peter Pan, DDT's biggest show of the year. They both took the gravity of this very seriously, and really delivered. I definitely recommend watching it, especially since you don't even need a Wrestle Universe subscription!
As a little backstory - Desperado requested this match by showing up as a surprise on DDT's special Tanabata show. Tanabata is a Japanese holiday celebrating one day out of the year when two star-crossed lovers can meet. Sasaki spent the lead-up to the match talking about this constantly and saying stuff like "Ours is a mutual love. Our love bashed down the wall (between promotions) and allowed us to meet in the ring on Tanabata" and so on.
The prize for winning the match was a year's supply of tequila.
Talking about Yoh's reference to Ping Pong Club got me thinking about another NJPW reference to an older manga / anime series.
Dick Togo's gimmick is a reference to the ultra-famous Duke Togo from the long-running manga Golgo 13 that started back in the late 60s. This series is extremely well-known in Japan but not as widely known elsewhere.
Their names are spelled almost identically (ディック東郷 vs デューク東郷) but Dick Togo used to make visual references to Duke in his merch and entrance gear too. Here are some photos to show what I mean.
The theme for this year's BOSJ photoshoot is juvenile delinquents / ヤンキー, which everyone has interpreted in a fairly straightforward manner. Except for Yoh of course, who has instead decided to recreate the panda car scene from the 90s manga/anime Ping Pong Club.
