He's a culture war brained team sports guy who has his own doxing server and has sent actually organized harassment campaigns against the families of people he is beefing with online.
That guy shouldn't manage a Target, let alone have a platform.
Good to see Calandra getting blasted publicly, the man is a humongous piece of shit so I hope yahtzee follows suit and I can go back to watching his stuff too.
Gonna sub to frost meanwhile.
I know it's likely to be about media contacts and shit, but I would have an aneurysm if he actually came back to the ring just to piss literally everyone off.
The Flintstones taught me that no traditional family is truly complete without their pet dinosaur.
And it was fucking phenomenal.
Gotta get it and watch it still, but so I heard.
Oddly I feel we had this exact same convo a year or so ago about them needing to rebuild lol. Yamashita
We did have that, it was a "they need to rebuild since they will lose these people" last year LOL.
And to their credit, they did pull the trigger on a lot of pushes since then (unfortunately one of them crashed and burned hard with Free WiFi, whose presence will be sorely missed) and every current champion is either someone who never held that particular belt, or any belt, so the work is happening, it's just that they don't have a lot of shows a year, and most non-marquee shows have no defenses and few singles matches, so it's hard to establish someone as a proper star.
I understand the logic, their main income is still the live shows, and people want to know what they are buying, so you want everyone on the card as much as possible, but you can't put on 3-4 hours show every weekend, on the other hand it's still not great for making singles stars, whatever the underlying reason.
Now for my speculation:
Given the fact that the TPC leads to a shot in september-ish, I don't expect whoever wins this to cap off Miu's reign. It's possible but it would end it at ~150 days and 4 defenses which is not suitable for the first person ever to kick out of one of Yamashita's Skull Kicks.
So, with that said, I don't expect the winner to be any of the rookies, repeated challengers, or outsider (which rules out Tatsumi, Nakajima, Zakher).
The following scenarios are in no particular order.
::: spoiler Scenario 1 Yuki Aino: She's a good powerhouse, and they don't have a lot of them, and Miu hasn't fought one yet.
She's been kinda aimlessly filling in whatever gap they need her to fill, she was tag champ again for a hot minute with a different sibling-like figure (Ryo Mizunami) early this year, she's put on a very aggressive matchup with Runa where she showed off a lot of fire, and Koda has tried to push her as a singles performer before. I could totally see this happening but I would never expect her to win the title off of Miu. Though I also didn't expect her and Mizunami to win the Tag Title three-way, so what do I know. :::
::: spoiler Scenario 2 Mizuki: Former champion, also basically a non-entity since her reign was unceremonoiusly ended by Yamashita, could be poised as a serious threat, but ultimately I don't expect her to win either with how her reign went. :::
::: spoiler Scenario 3 Yuki Kamifuku: She's very over and has improved leaps and bounds from 2023 onwards, but she's also currently a champion in 2 different promotions, which would complicate shit with putting over other talent while being the top champion (I expected her to win the IPC in her match against Arai last time they fought, but it's clear they wanted the rookie lineup of champs for the final shot of the event).
This on the one hand means you could have her at least go the distance and challenge, as that shows her more dominant than just losing in the tournament itself, on the other hand unless she wins the loss would be more high profile and public, so it really depends on what the agreements are between the promotions (if any).
I would, however, absolutely die if I got to see Belt Collector Kamiyu live in October, so hope springs eternal that I'm wrong and it's finally time to push Kamiyu, dammit. :::
::: spoiler Scenario 4 Ryo Mizunami: Much like Aino, she's a big powerhouse who can go and can put on a fun match with anyone, and Miu still hasn't been out-powered in her matches thus far. I wouldn't expect her to win, as she's not signed, but having her challenge for the belt could be a way to bridge-build with Sendai Girls Pro where she wrestles a lot, now that it's also on Wrestle Universe. :::
::: spoiler Assorted scenarios I would be flabbergasted to see Watanabe herself: That would be boring, please don't. It wouldn't be the first time but Miu is not an underdog and it would just suck to see the tournament wasted on somethin like this, especially since the only sensible choices for Miu to make would be re-threads: Yamashita, her eternal rival, or Tatsumi, her tag partner.
Yuki Arai: She's the current IP champion, she's gonna go far but I don't expect her to be even in the finals, it would be mental to have her get to the end and tease a possible belt unification considering how green she is, but she is a draw, so that's not impossible, and Miu seems to be situated to become the next big thing, so they could unify the belts on her.
Wakana Uehara: She's extremely good at self-promotion and she's clearly a future winner, might be they decide to already pull the trigger on her.
Toga: Same as Wakana, though even less likely. :::
A good litmus test is that seniority weights a great deal.
If you're someone's senior you're likely to go over them 90% of the time, with the exception of pushes like we've been seeing recently due to the top of the card being suddenly decimated during the last year.
With Saki Akai, Yuka Sakazaki (one of the most decorated champions in the company), Juria Nagano, and Nao Kakuta graduating or retiring, and Hikari Noa seemingly fired behind the scenes, the top of the card is suddenly a lot thinner than it was.
For reference, of all 8 PoP title winners, only 5 are left in the company, and 1 was crowned for her first time this year, of the remaining ones the only multi-time winners are Yamashita and Nakajima.
Though, the real massacre was in the tag division. By losing Sakazaki they also lost their top tag team (MagiRabi, with Mizuki) and a second very highly placed one (Miraclians, with Nakajima); they lost Neo Biishiki Gun when Saki Akai retired, and they lost Free Wifi when Noa got fired and subsequently Kakuta retired. That's 4 top tag teams gone in less than 6 months, and they also lost Team Karate (Juria Nagano and Moka Miyamoto) but that one was lower on the card and Miyamoto is still a rookie so she'll be fine.
My logic for the current tournament is that I don't expect whoever wins the cup to win the title, so I'm looking at it as "who's gonna be a draw for the match-up?" more than "who's taking Miu's place?" because if you look at the title reigns, they rarely (but not never) keep them this short.
With the defenses only being at the bigger shows people expect to be able to see at least a few unless it's particularly effective for the characters, like how Yamashita and Itoh hold the record for the shortest tag team championship reign, at less than 2 weeks and 0 successful defenses.
Also it's important to consider that TJPW is getting a lot more eyes on it and Yamashita is becoming more and more famous in the US too (recently had a match against Shayna Baszler at Josh Barnett's Bloodsport) and there's a real chance she might get scouted, so TJPW needs to fill up the card and pass torches as much as they can now, because their developmental process is slow.
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