Hello SquaredCircle! Welcome to our Weekly Discussion Thread!
What have you watched lately? Seen any great matches? Have suggestions for things to watch? Anything not getting covered in other threads that ya wanna fill people in about? Questions about promotions, wrestlers, ‘the business’ or more?
Feel free to post below!
(Reminder, this thread can and will contain spoilers for possibly any show. Spoiler tags are not required in here, but if the show just happened try and keep spoiler talk it to its respective discussion thread for the first day).
I’m gonna be real with you; if you are swearing off TNA because of your moral objections, then you should probably also avoid any WWE product. Vince may be gone, but it’s still tied to some absolutely horrible people.
Yeah I was actually kinda thinking that while I was typing it. It’s probably going to be difficult finding a wrestling promotion where pieces of shit haven’t been involved in some way. It’s just that the TNA thing is fresh and blatant and the timing of them hiring Tessa Blanchard, right when a bunch of companies were bending over and removing diversity and fairness, was fucking awful.
But I agree, I have felt a bit like a hypocrite saying that I’m gonna drop TNA for NXT. I’m just not sure where else to go for good women’s wrestling from the USA. Maybe things have changed but I very much have the impression that it’s an afterthought in both AEW and ROH. And I’m not prepared to put up with people like the Young Bucks just for one women’s match in 3 hours lol.
But I’m hooked on Stardom right now anyway and haven’t even been in the mood for TNA or NXT. And I found a website that also has TJPW and a bunch of Japanese stuff. So it might be keeping me busy enough in the next few months to not even miss American pro wrestling.
There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism! (outside of piracy lol). Try not to worry about it too much, all you can do is talk with your wallet, try to limit who you pay for and go from there.
As for US women’s: NXT/TNA have routinely been the best for a while stateside, I give em the edge cause they give them a decent chunk of airtime. AEW has 1 match a show frequently, but a lot of the women are cooking when they get a chance, ROH gets a lot more time for women’s matches so hopefully the network their TV deal ends up at enjoys women more than WB does. Can’t talk WWE main roster as I just watch clips on Bluesky and occasionally Reddit lol.
Japan wise, TJPW is another great option since ya found it. Neon and a few of the others here will have better knowledge regarding them than I do, but their shows are always awesome and TJPW is pretty much always the #2 to Stardom’s #1.
While I’m kinda between promotions and exploring my options, I might as well throw hearsay and assumptions out the window and give AEW and ROH a decent shot again. Probably gonna burn myself out in a few months time lol but it’s been a long time since I’ve made the effort to check out everything else and I’m enjoying it for now at least.
Oh and quick useful update as I just saw it, re: Stardom subs and their time frame, at least as of today I can say they seem to have about a 5 day turnaround when it comes to the backstage post-match interviews. This past Sunday was the Supreme Fight event, Stardom World just uploaded them with the full subs, so they seem to be fairly on the ball!
Oh very cool. I’ve actually been considering giving the Google Translate app or something similar that can translate speech a try lol.
I would honestly prefer just subtitles to gaijin commentary. I went back and watched Historic X-over 1. Thought I might as well seeing as there’s only been two so far and watched the English commentary. And while it was nice getting an English break down of Mayu Iwatani and Kairi’s backstories for example, those commentators were such fucking dorks lol.
I think it has the same problem for me as English commentary for Mexican stuff has been in my experience so far. They don’t come across as part of the show but rather tourists or outsiders, or fans, which I guess they are. So I don’t believe them when they start putting on their ‘emotional’ big fight Michael Cole voices.
It’s better than nothing but if Stardom were to ever get English commentary or at least show hosts, I would way prefer if it was someone homegrown that can speak English, even if it’s not perfect English, over Americans or Brits that come across more like people who post in wrestling forums than a part of the show.
I know we aren’t gonna get it cause they aren’t play-by-play/color commentators nor do they really have the skills at it (yet 👀) but I’d love to see them have shows called by some of the wrestlers that are fluent in English (Mina, Waka, Momo Kohgo) plus the foreigners like Xena/Thekla/etc. Not gonna be worse than the NJPW guys at least lol
Based on what I’ve seen so far, Thekla would immediately add a strong language rating to the show lol. She could definitely work as the heel commentator that makes excuses or looks the other way when someone does something bad though.
I’d still love to actually learn Japanese though. I say that but my life is basically full of unfinished projects and plans with no action lol so, we’ll see if that ever actually happens. But one thing that I still feel like I’m missing out on that subtitles and commentary will probably never fully cover is all of the shit talking in the ring. Which there is a lot of. And a lot of these women seem fucking hilarious.
Which right now, makes Thekla’s chirps especially funny because it’s a rare time I can understand exactly what someone is saying. The latest one I just saw was her saying to the ref “why are you always on my ass, bro?” None of the audience reacted but I thought it was fucking funny.
Hope you don’t mind but I just want to come back to the commentary thing now that I’m done with the 7 Golden Week shows (I actually didn’t end up skipping through much at all, so it’s taken time). But I’m realising that as a noob, bad English commentary is actually better than no English commentary. At least when you’re first getting into it.
I’m thinking of how when I watched NJPW for a while a few years ago, by now I would’ve known everyone’s name by memory and probably also their motivations and shit. Those commentators were actually ok when they’re just being wrestling nerds with stat sheets and bullet points and not trying to do the Michael Cole big match voice and acting like they’ve been friends with these people backstage for decades.
But on the Stardom side of things, the majority of my viewing has now been without any commentary at all and without any match graphics or graphics of any kind (and if there are match graphics, it’s a 50/50 if you’re even going to see a wrestlers name in the Latin alphabet). So I’ve been switching to another web page throughout that has the match card written down but is pretty inconsistent in listing faction associations and champions.
So while there’s definitely wrestlers that I can name on sight, it’s taking me much longer to get to the point where I don’t need a quick reminder of someone’s exact name or the spelling while I’m watching. But I’m getting there.
Just wanted to say, I’ve sightly changed my mind regarding commentary since last time. I think these no commentary shows will be more enjoyable once I know everyone properly but as a noob, a bit of English is super helpful.
I’d say that’s understandable. I’ve been watching for about 3y so my own experience won’t match a new watchers. When new wrestlers come along I get the benefit of just need to learn 1-3 new names at a time, you’re stuck with most of a full roster’s worth of learning atm lol.
The Stardom website’s roster page was one thing I had to cross reference like crazy trying to memorize peoples names (even if the name is in kanji, the page url is in English so you can see their names there easily) and learning who goes where faction wise, if you have not visited yet.
(Mind you unlike NJPW who lists everyone who ever blinks inside a NJPW venue regardless of company affiliation, freelancers aren’t listed on Stardoms page so people like Tomoka and Azusa Inaba aren’t listed despite being on almost every show for a year now, as they work for JTO).
AEW’s women’s division has been on a steady upswing. It hasn’t had the kind of spotlight that WWE gives their women, but they have some great talent there and they’ve been telling some engaging stories.
I’m honestly not sure where else to go for American women’s wrestling these days. EVE has been putting on some amazing shows, but they’re UK based. Still very worth checking out.
I’ll get around to checking out AEW again. I’m going to be watching the crossovers while I’m catching up with Stardom here for a bit of variety, which gives me Forbidden Door 2024 to still get to.
And maybe I’ll check out EVE some time. UK wrestling in general seems to be rare to come across in the wild on the internet.
EVE does post their shows on YouTube, but some require a paid subscription. https://youtube.com/@prowrestlingeve
Nice, thanks. I never think about checking YouTube for wrestling. I think a few smaller / indie promotions use YouTube. And TNA of course.
No worries. Glad to help!
If you’re interested in more indie stuff, there are also streaming services that feature that sort of thing, though I haven’t delved too deeply into them. Fite.tv, IndependentWrestling.tv, and highspots.tv are the ones I’m aware of.
Don’t look for it any time soon as the adhd is strong, but eventually I plan to have youtube links side-by-side with the website links for all the promotions in the sidebar, to make it simple.
Actually this might be what fuels me to hyper-fixate on it and do it sooner lol