New Japan PPV

Fozzy

There's a New Japan PPV being held on the 17th, which will be early Sunday morning here. This is their biggest show since the January 4th Tokyo Dome event and it also features some TNA wrestlers

I've got higher hopes for this show than the last big one, I think that suffered from wrestlers who weren't familiar with each other. Here's the card:

Manabu Nakanishi, Takashi Iizuka, Koji Kanemoto & Tiger Mask vs. Ryusuke Taguchi, Yujiro, Taichi Ishikari & Tetsuya Naito

Should be a fun, fast-paced match with these six junior heavyweights and two bigger guys. The big guys are the first two listed. Tiger Mask has been on Impact recently but he's not the most talented guy in this match. You could be seeing some of these guys in TNA for the World X Cup soon. Apart from Tiger Mask the most likely candidates would be Kanemoto and Taguchi I would say

Wataru Inoue vs. Christopher Daniels

This was meant to be Inoue defending his IWGP Junior Heavyweight title against Low-Ki, but he got injured a couple of weeks ago, tearing his ACL I believe. So this is a rematch from last month with Daniels representing TNA. The belt's not on the line. Their match wasn't great last time so hopefully they can improve on it

Riki Choshu, Masahiro Chono, Shiro Koshinaka & Super Strong Machine vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Jado, Gedo & Tomohiro Ishii

This is Tenzan's return match, he's been away from the ring for a good while. The Legends team, the first four guys listed, surprised me last month, hopefully they can do something similar here

IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Minoru & Prince Devitt (c) vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & AKIRA

This is Devitt and Minoru's first defence of their belts since they won them last month. It's the first title that Devitt has won in New Japan and he's certainly in favour there. This should be a good match, AKIRA is the only possibility of bringing it down but he's looked good the last few times I saw him. He's older and bigger than the rest. Liger's still got it. Should be good

Yuji Nagata vs. Hirooki Goto

Both guys had brilliant matches with Tanahashi last year and I'm hoping for something similar here

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. AJ Styles

These two had a match in TNA just over two years ago. Tanahashi is now a real star and AJ is sort of at the same level talentwise but less of a star in TNA now. Their last match had a crap finish with Shannon Moore interfering, something that won't happen here! It has the potential to be very good. Tanahashi was actually on WWE.com during the week in a photo with Jeff Hardy. It was captioned "Jeff Hardy and a fan". Same thing with Flair and Nagata, with Devitt in the background

IWGP Tag Team Title: Giant Bernard & Travis Tomko (c) vs. Togi Makabe & Toru Yano

This will be better than the matches these teams had last month with the Steiners and the Dudleys. That's a guarantee

IWGP Heavyweight Title Unification Match - IWGP 2nd vs. IWGP 3rd: Shinsuke Nakamura (c) vs. Kurt Angle (c)

Nakamura's winning! I doubt that this will be as good as either of their matches last month, I'm just not sure that they're two guys who'll blend well together. Tanahashi vs Angle would've been so much cooler

TNA are sending one camera over as far as I know, so they may show some of this stuff on Impact. Maybe they'll use it to set up the World X Cup. I doubt it'll be to show Kurt losing anyway!

Machismo Fan

I'll probably try to catch Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kurt Angle. Maybe Devitt to if I have the time. I'll watch Nagata as well because him and Angle was unreal last month.