NJPW New Beginning Tour Thread
 

New Japan Pro Wrestling announced the cards for the New Beginnings tour for this month and it looks like a cracker, especially the final Osaka show. Highlights of the headlines are below, along with links to the full card for each night.

<strong>The New Beginning in Sapporo 2018 (Day 1)</strong>
January 27 (English Commentary Available) @ Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Center, Sapporo

Katsuya Kitamura 7-Match Proving Series (Match 2): Katsuya Kitamura vs. Michael Elgin
NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship Match: Bad Luck Fale & Guerrillas of Destiny (c) vs. Togi Makabe, Toa Henare & Ryusuke Taguchi
Jay White & Roppongi 3K vs. The Elite (Omega & Young Bucks)
IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match: Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) vs. Minoru Suzuki
<a href="http://www.njpw.co.jp/tornament/117878?showCards=1">View Full Card</a>

<strong>The New Beginning in Sapporo 2018 (Day 2)</strong>
January 28 (English Commentary Available) @ Hokkaido Prefectural Sports Center, Sapporo

Katsuya Kitamura 7-Match Proving Series (Match 4): Katsuya Kitamura vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan
David Finlay vs. Jay White
Ten Man Elimination Tag: CHAOS (Okada/Goto/YOSHI-HASHI/Ospreay/Gedo) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Naito/EVIL/SANADA/BUSHI/Hiromu)
<a href="http://www.njpw.co.jp/tornament/117887?showCards=1">View Full Card</a>

<strong>Road to The New Beginning 2018</strong>
February 6 @ Korakuen Hall, Tokyo

Katsuya Kitamura 7-Match Proving Series (Match 5): Katsuya Kitamura vs. Satoshi Kojima
IWGP Tag Team Championship: SANADA & EVIL (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada & Hirooki Goto
<a href="http://www.njpw.co.jp/tornament/117888?showCards=1">View Full Card</a>

<strong>The New Beginning in Osaka 2018</strong>
February 10 (English Commentary Available) @ EDION Arena, Osaka

Katsuya Kitamura 7-Match Proving Series (Match 6): Katsuya Kitamura vs. Yuji Nagata
Gedo vs. BUSHI
Tetsuya Naito vs. YOSHI-HASHI
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: Will Ospreay (c) vs. Hiromu Takahashi
NEVER Openweight Championship: Hirooki Goto (c) vs. EVIL
IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. SANADA
<a href="http://www.njpw.co.jp/tornament/117890?showCards=1">View Full Card</a>

Pretty good stuff. I'm curious to see how things really work out between Okada and Sanada.

I've also got no clue whether or not Tanahashi will drop the belt, because he's apparently advertised for ROH's WrestleMania weekend shows.

My god. take some time off and heal, you crazy ace bastard.

I've been all in on Sanada since he reinvented himself and joined LIJ. Okada match should be great.

Wasn't Tanahashi supposed to get surgery like a fucking year ago?

I think creature is a njpw fan now.

Hopefully this will be the last tour for shitbag Elgin.

GO (heal) ACE

Sounds like CMLL are taking Kawato with them after the tour to begin his excursion.

Yeah, I hope he loses. People expect Kanemura to lose a lot of his trial series matches. That's usually the thing, yeah? I can see Tenzan and Kojima winning theirs, but I kind of think they're strapping a rocket onto this guy. But that might be what this trial series, in general, is. I expect big, big things from Kanemura though.

Sanada is, in my opinion, going to be one of their top guys very, very soon. That sounds daft, but I think it will be bigger than people think and sooner than people think.

You mean Kitamura? Kanemaru is an older guy from Suzuki-Gun.

I'd expect him to beat Elgin pretty emphatically and go over at least one of the New Japan Dads, Tenzan doesn't really work singles matches anymore so he'd be most likely to take a loss. Cozy and Nagata could go either way.

SANADA is great, his original LIJ look was so much cooler though.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6517/7543e6e3...9202b79_hq.jpg

Yeah, I did. I just remembered the "mura" part. Actually never heard of Kanemura, I just pulled out a Japanese surname that began with "K." My bad.

I like Sanadas current tights, but that weird horned mask isn't as cool as the skull and leather jacket.

Are we gonna treat this as the New Japan thread or should we get one of those started formally?

In any event.....

<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd8Dd5QHqta/" data-instgrm-version="8" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:62.5% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GP T6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAA AElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; ██████████relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div></div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bd8Dd5QHqta/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">🗡</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/jaywhitenz/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Jay White</a> (@jaywhitenz) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-01-14T17:31:24+00:00">Jan 14, 2018 at 9:31am PST</time></p></div></blockquote>
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Mr. White, that's not wise.

He's trying.

I give him credit for trying. Just not sure there are many good reasons to get a permanent scarfication.

Jesus.

Also, there already is a general new japan thread

somewhere

I'm sure he's cool with it, or else he wouldn't have done it.

Maybe he's trying to land in the DC Movieverse as Zsasz.

That's about, but there's enough of us now where we can just have threads for major goings on, or for stuff like Jay scarring himself, 100,001 replies or just wherever would work fine.

Not digging the Rumble so much, but between the first two days of this and NXT, it's going to be a great weekend.

Jesus, so much wrestling this weekend. Between all this and DB Fighterz I'm gonna be neck bearding til monday.

https://i.imgur.com/HgBjwyl.jpg
Derp face

Day 1 tomorrow morning
Takeover tomorrow night
Day 2 Sunday morning
Rumble Sunday night

If it was any other WWE PPV I'd probably just not bother but the Rumble's one of the few things I still want to watch live even if it isn't good.

Just going to see how tired I am Saturday since Takeover will finish at 3am and then day 2 of New Beginning will be only a couple of hours later. So I'll only watch one live.

Rumble I'll watch while working on Monday.

Really shouldn't have been drinking last night, but I'm up. I'm up godammit.

No way am I making it to Takeover tonight.

Looks like someone else is a little tranquilo

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NXTChampion?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NXTChampion</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/AndradeCienWWE?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AndradeCienWWE</a> is feeling confident ahead of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NXTTakeOver?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NXTTakeOver</a>: Philadelphia, but <a href="https://twitter.com/Zelina_VegaWWE?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Zelina_VegaWWE</a> wants her business associate to be FOCUSED, too! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WWENXT?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WWENXT</a> <a href="https://t.co/6ybvs2xnie">pic.twitter.com/6ybvs2xnie</a></p>&mdash; WWE NXT (@WWENXT) <a href="https://twitter.com/WWENXT/status/956904828881592320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Great hype video, and here comes the Kitamura in his proving series.

Hope he beats Big Cunt Mike

Big Mike feeling it like he just told someone to suck his dick or stop talking

Booo Elgin

Yessss, always love it when Taichi gets his entrance

Lyger, Tiger Mask and Kushida are a helluva team.

That Kushida/Taka segment in this match was fantastic. I want a proper match.

Kushida makes Taka tap. Kevin Kelly calls it as triumphing over eeeeviiiiilll, which made me laugh.

The Tokyo Pimp coming out without the bunny. Fuck this.

Yano and Ishii seem like they should be a great odd couple team.

Damn, Tama Tonga has a submission finisher too now

Marty, Cody and Hangman Page are kind of the elite 2