This past weekend, New Japan wrapped up its New Beginning series of shows with events in Osaka and Niigata, ultimately crowning a new IWGP Intercontinental champion. The New Beginning series started at the end of January, with the company’s Road to New Beginning shows, stretching out over seven nights before they arrived in Osaka on Thursday.
In the week since Bryan Danielson announced his retirement, I’ve experienced a wide range of emotions, as have quite a few wrestling fans. From the initial shock of the announcement, came the denial – the internet rumour mill had been saying for weeks that the only thing holding back his return was the WWE’s own doctors. Even without an official statement from Danielson, WWE or anyone connected to either party, the rumour was so prevalent that fans were taking it as the gospel truth.
Following the retirement of Bryan Danielson, we continue to reflect on his career, looking at a selection of matches from throughout his time in the ring. This week, we take a closer look at some of Danielson’s work from the Philadelphia-based group CHIKARA, primarily his appearances in the 2009 King of Trios tournament, featuring some very familiar faces!
Following the announcement on Monday that Bryan Danielson/Daniel Bryan has been forced to retire, it’s time to reflect on the career of the former American Dragon. Over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll be going through the career of the future Hall of Famer and recapping several matches that made Bryan Danielson at his peak one of, if not the, top wrestler in the world. In this first part, I’ll be taking a look at Danielson’s first matches on WWE TV, a good 13 years before his eventual retirement, plus his only televised match in WWE developmental, and…
On Monday, February 8, 2016, almost nine months after his last match, Bryan Danielson announced his retirement. With twenty-one words, including a hashtag, the much speculated future of the former WWE champion was revealed: it’s all over.
Up until recently, being a fan of wrestling could be a very expensive and space-filling hobby. If you were interested in having copies of events to watch on-demand, then a home video library would be the order of the day, especially if you were a fan of multiple promotions. Whether they were obtained legally or otherwise, wrestling fans around the world would have had to keep piles of VHS tapes and later DVDs in order to keep up to speed on their favourite groups.
On Friday, WWE released five talents from their NXT roster, including someone who was something of a comedy figure, and a former tag team that had really been forgotten about. These releases were a reminder of just how hard it is to make it, particularly in the current NXT climate.
As a wrestling fan, one of my personal goals for this year has been to broaden my horizons away from the current-day WWE product. Whilst the in-ring product isn’t bad (and with the quality on the current roster, how can it?), the creative tied to those matches can often be deflating. So, to provide some variety, I’ll be trawling the internet and reviewing random matches from around the world (as opposed to entire shows).