The Powerbombcast 27: The Wednesday Night Wars

Another one. Surprise!

Give me a shell yeah!

Just re-upped my subscription! Keep em coming guys this is the most interesting wrestling has been in years!

Stealth Powerbombcast!!!!!

oh ok

So is Alex just not involved in this anymore?

Yeah, they didn't even mention him at the beginning. Is he not watching (I mean, he is doing stuff with his new band, after all) anymore?

Dan loves Ramps.

Unfortunate they're talking about how Dean Ambrose is doing in the indies and now gets hurt. Hopefully he makes a full recovery.

I watched every bit of the G1. Standout stories:

- Everything with Jon Moxley. Match-wise, Moxley vs Ishii was incredible. Outside of the ring, his story with Shooter was incredible. Shooter's corruption to the side of violence and his shunning by his fellow young lions was so well told.

- Tomohiro Ishii's matches were all fucking amazing. He was my MVP of the whole tournament. He is so good and I would not have complained if he won. (Note for the hosts: his name is technically pronounced ee-shee-ee, but the double "i" can become one long syllable and it's fine.)

- THE TRUCE ACE OF NEW JAPAN, SUBLIME MASTER THIEF, TORU YANO!!!!! I am a gigantic Yano mark. He will win the G1 one of these years.

- ZSJ's petulant meltdown was great because I think he's a shithead.

- Juice Robinson's revenge quest against both Moxley and Jay White, who broke his hand before last year's G1 (which itself was last year's G1's best story)

- Minoru Suzuki was not included in the tournament this year, and so he spent all of his appearances in the tag-team "preview" match parts of the show on a fuckin rampage and it kicked ass. Ultimately at the end of the tournament he called out Okada for a championship match.

-KENTA joining the Bullet Club! holy shit. I admit I have not cared much about the Bullet Club since the Elite guys left but the angle with Shibata was so amazingly done. I'm not super familiar with Shibata's work but that POP!

- YO, HOLY SHIT, LANCE ARCHER IS SO FUCKING GOOD!?!

As for the NXT stuff... I feel so bad for those guys. I should be happy for them but. NXT is fucking doomed. Vince McMahon is going to take over and ruin it. RIP NXT.

HELL YEAH, DAN! IO SHIRAI KICKS ASS!

@threeoct said:

He seems busy lately (i.e. not being a part of Burgle My Bananas) but also I think he was tweeting about catching up on the Best of Super Juniors when the G1 was getting started, so he's probably pretty behind on NJPW stuff, which might be where the bulk of his contributions to these chats would be.

But I don't want to speak for Alex so I'll stop speculating.

Sorry to spam the comments but I just finished the episode and wanna say great job hosting the podcast @janman!

Alex?

@garwalk You love Yano as much as I do. You are a good person. YTR!!!!

What timing after the Observer report (Wednesday) on Jon's elbow and now him announcing on Friday that he can't make the match and will be replaced with PAC.

I forgot this was a thing again, so this was an extremely pleasant surprise. To "join the conversation" I'll add: Toru Yano rules, Io Shirai rules, that Shibata/Kenta spot ruled!

Outta Nowhere

Dan Ryckert, stop cutting in line to pee. You're not special

In my veins!

I fear the next one of these is going to come with some truly severe disappointment. All 3 guys seemed to be under the impression that NXT on USA is gonna be very similar or identical in booking and style too what NXT was/has been.

Where as, from where a lot of us are sitting, it's going to be nothing like it. Instead, it is going to be more akin to the difference between a superstar on NXT as it was, vs how they are on the main roster. Only it's the entire NXT roster being called up and given the Vince treatment, and also the entire show itself.

If they are right in their prediction that AEW beats NXT week 1 in the ratings, the idea that NXT remains Vince-free is alarmingly unlikely. It would be much better, I think, to expect the NXT on USA to be more like WWE's ECW, or again, the call ups from NXT to the main roster as of late.

Given in this very same episode they lament how former NXT talent is being treated on the main roster, I foresee a severe disappointment in terms of what Vince does with the entire NXT roster and the show come a few weeks/a month or two into NXT on USA's run.

Likewise, I fear they might know what to expect. Given Jan's immediate reaction to the Fiend is not "I can't wait to see what they do!" but "Gosh I hope they don't mess this up!" implies to me that their default assumption is "Everything WWE Creative/Vince touches turns to shit". Given how, to hope they don't mess up the fiend, is to assume the default will be that they do.

Applying that kind of logic to NXT on USA, I should think the (not likely to happen) hope is that NXT remains like it is. While the default should be "it will change for the worst, and drastically." On the same scale at least of how NXT call ups to the main roster have gone, only bigger cause its all of NXT.

The assumption from them that NXT will remain like it was is beyond unlikely. Would be great if it did, but so would Raw and Smackdown not being bad most weeks, and that's not been the case.

Ibushi is still challenging for the Heavyweight Title at Wrestle Kingdom on January 4 (the contract for that match is the big prize for winning the G1), but he also wants to challenge for the Intercontinental Title on January 5, and proposed the idea to New Japan brass.