#anyway i think this episode is about wales in a very significant way. we need more welsh people writing think pieces about it

[aerithisms]

rotating the pub scene from 73 yards in my mind i think there is so much being said there about wales and welsh/english tension that is so interesting and is going so under discussed

[gdwessel]

Rumors About Ospreay + Unrest In The NJPW Locker Room; Government Adds Okinawa to State Of Emergency, Another Extension Possible; Quick Review of DSOTR Collision In Korea; Shota Umino News!; Ren Narita on Dark Elevation; Satoshi Kojima In Impact Next Week

Strap in because this is going to be a long one.

There are rumors and reports coming out now (mostly from one source, the Voices of Wrestling website, from behind a Patreon paywall) that Will Ospreay's injury may not be what it seems, and there is growing discontent to the point of "mutiny" among the non-Japanese wrestlers regarding the state of emergency, the last-minute decision to resume touring when some were already travelling out of Japan, and the constant need for quarantining when coming back into Japan. Unfortunately this is as much as I can say, because this is behind a paywall, so until it gets made for public consumption I’m kinda limited in what I can say.

I can totally buy that all is not well within NJPW, especially after the COVID-19 bubble has burst. I've already discussed the creative malaise happening in the company right now. That there seems to be backstage dissent shows possible signs of trouble ahead for the promotion, and this golden period that we've been accustomed to is well and truly over. (I mean, it already was once lockdown happened, but they did the best they could, in my honest opinion, including a Pretty Good if not great WK15. Right now, creatively, we are below 2nd-half 2018 levels of poor.) But NJPW has weathered these storms before, although not with a global pandemic looming over everything. I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that Ospreay is indeed injured, because a) they haven't exactly been shy about wrestlers being injured and needing to vacate titles before b) if Ospreay is legit injured, he is far more likely to receive treatment as a citizen of the UK from the (somehow still alive if not totally hobbled by Brexit) NHS, as opposed to Japan's healthcare system which is far more like the US model. Some wrestlers are swearing up and down he is injured, from the rumors. Ospreay certainly hasn’t said anything in his own words, beyond RTing NJPW’s announcement of his injury and vacating the title, and posting a pic of himself kissing the belt. RevPro kinda sorta said something but were also pretty vague. But for an injury suffered on 5/4/2021, this pic posted on 5/18 does not look like someone who just had such a severe neck injury they need to fly back to the UK (mind you, it COULD have been taken much earlier than that). Indeed, Ospreay’s still-active Twitter is more focused on Hana Kimura at the moment*. All this said, professional wrestling by it’s very nature has a baked-in amount of bullshit as part of it, so that this injury might be phony is always a distinct possibility.

It is utterly believable there is conflict between wrestlers and management, and communication is piss-poor at best. It is also believable that NJPW and Bushiroad are only taking their cues from a government Hell-bent on holding an Olympics an overwhelming majority of those polled are against, and who are treating the extended state of emergency as a vague suggestion rather than as a, you know, state of emergency. Pretending everything is hunky dory hasn't worked so far, so not sure why NJPW, nor the Japanese government, think eventually it will. (And NOAH is on my shit list right now too.) On that note, the government has now officially added Okinawa to the state of emergency. There is also talk that it will be extended further, as a government subcommittee member is quoted in the article as saying “it is difficult to think” that it will be lifted on 5/31/2021. Among that talk is word that Tokyo particularly will be under a stricter lockdown if this goes on. On a piece of actual GOOD news, it has been announced that the government has approved both the Moderna and AstraZeneca versions of the vaccine, so perhaps the vaccination rates will start to go up at last.

* - The anniversary of Hana Kimura’s tragic death is tomorrow (5/23/2021). I still sometimes struggle with the idea she is gone. Tonight at 10:30pm EDT (which is 5/23/2021 12:30pm in JST), FITE TV will be showing a live Hana Kimura tribute show put on by her mother, Kiyoko Kimura. Have a look in if you can

I was able to watch the Vice Dark Side Of The Ring episode on Collision in Korea, the two-night joint NJPW & WCW show from May Day Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea, on 4/28 & 4/29/1995, as it aired Thursday. It will hit YouTube here pretty soon. I am working on a podcast project about this documentary, and the (WCW version of the**) show itself, with the good lads at the Days Of Thunder podcast, so I won't talk too much here, but I will say a few things about it:

I did appreciate the detail here, as well as being able to get an interview with Antonio Inoki for this, especially as he was the principal driver of this show happening. I did also like that they took time to detail Inoki's mentor, and the "father of puroresu," Rikidozan, who himself was a North Korean national by birth. I did not appreciate the mythical pathos they added to the death of Rikidozan, which by all accounts was a random street fight with yakuza over a perceived insult (stepping on Rikidozan's shoe). I also felt they could have done a better job explaining the situation between Japan and North Korea at the time. When the event was first proposed to the NJPW roster, Scott Norton recounts Masahiro Chono telling Norton that "they want us dead," but it took until introducing former CNN foreign correspondent Mike Chinoy nearly halfway through the documentary to (briefly) explain the brutal colonialism that Japan wreaked on North Korea in the first part of the 20th century.

Also, as salacious as DSOTR can get, I am very surprised one of the most famous rumors/stories about this show did not get discussed, the internet wrestling legend that Kensuke Sasaki and Akira Hokuto were, erm, Quite Vocal when they were together, which of course did eventually lead to their marriage four months later which continues to this very day. But that was also part of another critique I had, which is, they mainly focused on the WCW part of the events, when this was an NJPW promoted show. The way it was told on DSOTR, the only Japanese wrestlers there were Antonio Inoki, Shinya Hashimoto, Akira Hokuto and Bull Nakano. I'd love to hear more from the NJPW side of things, besides how proud Inoki was of this political stunt that did not get him re-elected to the Diet anyway.

Overall, I do recommend watching this when and how you can, because it is absolutely bonkers. I will definitely keep you posted on when the podcast project for this drops. ** - I've tried looking for the NJPW version and have failed so far. NJPWWorld only has two matches from this, Antonio Inoki v. Ric Flair, and Akira Hokuto v. Bull Nakano. The WCW version is not officially released, even on WWE Network, so yeah search the internet to see it.

We finally have an update on Shooter! That is, Shota Umino. Earlier in the week, RevPro's official Twitter had a tweet saying This Summer, showing Umino in not only his white/pink Tanahashi-esque tights, but holding his Death Riders jacket from Jon Moxley, that Shota retweeted, making this his first tweet since September 2019. Two days later, a hype video appeared with footage of Shooter, including performing Death Rider. Now a Sports Illustrated article is claiming that Shooter was supposed to have reunited with Mox on the NJPW Strong episode that had Mox & Chris Dickinson face Yuji Nagata & Ren Narita, but Umino had an unspecified injury preventing that. (They further say that Mox v. Nagata’s IWGP US title match was originally set for Strong but Tony Khan convinced NJPW to hold it on AEW Dynamite.) Umino's last match listed on Cagematch was on 3/14/2020 in ATTACK! Wrestling in Cardiff, Wales, on the winning side of a 6-man tag match with Kyle Fletcher & Kid Lykos II defeating Shigehiro Irie, Chief Deupty Dunne & Los Federales Santos, Jr. It's great to have him back wrestling again, and I hope we get that reunion with Moxley soon enough too.

As an update to an item from an earlier post, it appears that the Ren Narita v. Royce Isaacs match that was teased but then not aired on AEW Dark this past Tuesday will actually be on AEW Dark: Elevation this coming Monday instead. Also part of that will be approximately 35 other matches (I only slightly kid), one of those being Rocky Romero v. JD Drake. This usually drops on YouTube at 7pm EDT / 6pm CDT Mondays.

This past Thursday on Impact, a video package showed that Satoshi Kojima would be appearing on next week's episode. This will be Kojima's first time ever wrestling in Impact under any name, as the last time NJPW and TNA were working together, Kojima was still away in All Japan Pro Wrestling. No word as to what he will be doing or whom he will be wrestling.

Also on Impact, Juice Robinson & David Finlay Jr. successfully defended the Impact World Tag Team titles against Ace Austin & Madman Fulton... before getting blindsided by two members of the Violent By Design unit (in this case, ECW veteran Rhino and former AJPW Triple Crown champion + cancer beater Joe Doering) with whatever Impact's version of a Anytime Anywhere Challenge is, and took the belts from FinJuice. They claimed FinJuice were going back to Japan, but, erm, who knows if that's the case or if it was for a time period when Wrestle Grand Slam was still a thing that was happening.

Also also, it seems Don Callis is no longer in any executive capacity at Impact. This is a little significant as it seems it was Callis who opened the negotiations back up for Impact to work with NJPW. Of course, lately he's spent more time as an on-screen heel manager for Kenny Omega, the Good Brothers and now the Young Bucks on both AEW and Impact programming. We'll see how much longer Kenny Omega's belt collector shtick goes on for with Callis no longer part of creative or management.

And that is actually it for now! Yipes!

[emilyrumboldt-blog]

This time last year, I was nobody.

  Of course, that’s not entirely true. I was getting by, so to speak, minding my own business whilst coasting along in my own little fantasy world. Think of a cloud: drifting way up in the sky, no anchors or weights holding it in one place. Gravity is a stranger up there, so it would seem. What I am trying to say is that, in many ways, I was that cloud once upon a time. The funny thing about clouds is that they are so much bigger, so much more significant, than they originally appear; apparently the average cumulonimbus is about 1000 feet thick. And to think: before NCS, I didn’t even know that clouds had names! This cloud had a name, too. Emily. In fact, that might be the only thing about me that hasn’t changed, because this time last year I was preparing for the biggest, most life-changing opportunity which has ever found itself lying on my doorstep. NCS: The Challenge.

  My experience with the National Citizen Service has been, in many ways, the key to the locked door labelled “FUTURE” which I had been vacantly gawping at for so much of my adolescent life. It’s not that I wasn’t trying to get through; it was more like I had been brainwashed into thinking that life was easy, and that any door in the world would eventually open up for me given enough time. I could mutter Alohomora under my breath a million times and counting, though. That door needed a key, and that only came with experience. At that point in time, I only associated “experience” with work. Ah, work experience. By the time you reach my age, even the thought of the term work experience begins to tickle your nerves. Everybody wants it! Employers, Universities, UCAS: in fact, I have heard that godforsaken word so many times that I wish I could lock it inside Room 101 for all of eternity. Ah!

  All of a sudden, during one of those dreary Year 11 assemblies we used to have, a virtuous symphony of fanfares exploded upon us. The sky, previously murky and grey, was blanketed in a warm ray of light, and from the heavens above fell my guardian angel. An NCS worker by the name of “Pete” stood before us, singing a divine chorus about experiences and challenges far beyond the likes of anything our normal lives could offer. NCS: The Challenge. Of course, Pete wasn’t really an angel, but oh how much I wanted to get involved with this so-called “NCS” business. I practically ran home that evening – a miraculous feat in itself, considering my particular dislike of all things active – and forced my mum to sign the consent form. Before that day, I hadn’t even thought about the summer following my GCSE exams, but from then on my experience with NCS was all that I could think about for months.

  On the morning of August 11th, 2016, I felt more sick-to-my-stomach with anxiety than I had when coming out for the first time. I remember my alarm screaming obscenities at me for the fourth or fifth time that morning, promising an endless, terrifying wrath upon everything I loved if I didn’t get my lazy self out of bed, for the last time, woman! Well, something like that. It was stupid o’clock in the morning; the sun had barely risen above the line of conifer trees at the end of my back-garden, and both of my eyes were plastered shut with sleep. I sat up, and at once my ears erupted with a sharp, drilling pain, like a pair of needles were being shoved through them. Ear infection. Brilliant.

  Looking back now, I can’t help but laugh at my last-minute aversion towards the whole thing. On that morning, I just didn’t want anything to do with NCS! “I’M NOT GOING!” I would scream at my poor mother as she hammered on my bedroom door, fighting with all the strength she had to get me to cooperate. The thing about my pre-NCS self is that, unlike now, I had next to no control over my mental health. I was riddled with anxiety, with generous helpings of depression, PTSD, and OCD mixed in. My brain at that point was like a cocktail of negativity, garnished with whipped cream and a scattering of rainbow-coloured sprinkles. Meeting new people was one of my biggest fears, succeeding my crippling phobia of judgement, and so I was practically drowning in the proposal of meeting an entire wave of complete strangers.

  What did I think would happen? I have no clue. Whatever it was, however, it couldn’t have been further from the reality. I stepped foot through those doors, both hands shaking as I hauled behind me the most tragic offense of overpacking known to man, and I found myself greeted by the most sympathetically sweet smile I had ever seen. That smile belonged to an equally sweet woman, who took that stupid yellow suitcase of mine and led me to my group.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  Before me sat the most incredible group of people I have ever had the honour to meet. No monsters. No ruffians or thugs. Just real, INCREDIBLE people. People who wanted to get to know me, who cared about me and the constant film references I make. People who would grow to be my fiercest friends, who in the next few weeks would learn more about me than I knew about myself at that point in time. People who, for the first time in my life, I could connect with.

  I have spent hours deliberating the best way to tell this story. NCS really was the best experience of my life; even now, a year on, I can’t stress that enough. Of all the places I’ve been, all the memories I’ve made, nothing quite compares to the independence and sense of worth that The Challenge gave me. In fact, I have so many priceless memories thanks to NCS that I can’t possibly share them all. This blog would be infinite! Instead, I have tortured myself by coming up with a Top 3, a decision which was incomprehensibly difficult to make. My chosen three are not just stories: they are anecdote ROYALTY. They are nostalgic, filled to the brim with banter, affection, and cringe-worthy soppiness which my NCS team will probably curse me for sharing. But first, here’s a little context.

  NCS: The Challenge is an experience like no other, and I don’t mean that in the horrifically clichéd way. What I mean is that, unlike anything else in this big ol’ world, NCS actually gave me the motivation to stop bingeing Netflix in the sun-free zone that is my bedroom, and instead put on a pair of trainers and DO SOMETHING. The course is split into three phases: adventure, skills, and social action. Phase 1 is exactly what it says on the tin: an adventure. They ship you all off to Wonderland – South Wales, in my case – to take part in death-defying challenges, by which I mean a series of perfectly safe activities such as rock-climbing and coasteering, all of which are run by trained and experienced practitioners. In Phase 2 we stayed in accommodation at Reading University, where we spent a few days learning our chosen skill – photography – to present to a dauntingly-large audience of parents at the Showcase. Finally, in Phase 3, we took to Reading town centre to raise awareness of an amazing local mental health charity, Compass Opportunities, who work with adults in Reading to help improve their mental wellbeing. Our plan was to run a dramatic flash mob in town, but you’ll hear more about that later.

  At the end of all this, we graduated NCS with an impressive skillset appealing to any good employer, an INCREDIBLE addition to our CVs and UCAS applications, and a set of friends to last a lifetime. But you don’t really care about that, do you? I promised you my top three NCS memories. So, without further ado…

  3: THE LAST DAY™

  Alas, the last day. It seems weird, really, that the day which put an end to this magical adventure would find itself in my top three best-days-ever. But hey, not all finales are as dreadfully disappointing as the final episode of ‘Pretty Little Liars’. No, this was a finale for the Gods. Think of the ‘Friends’ finale, with its soppy goodbyes and happy sadness galore. I had never seen any of my new friends cry until that last day. They’d all seen my ugly, Kim K cry-face plenty of times, of course; I am nothing if not an emotional wreck. It had taken until that last day for us to process that, after all this was finished, there was a chance that we would never see each other again. That, of course, was a load of rubbish: NCS had made us inseparable, a band of warriors sworn to protect one another from the big bad world. We barely go a day without talking to at least one other Team SPICYyyy member (our team name was one of a selection of wonderfully wacky nicknames which have somehow stuck after all these months).

  But the Last Day™ was also quite possibly the most hectic, stress-inducing PANDEMONIUM to ever hit our busy little lives. Why, you ask? Well, cast your minds back a couple of paragraphs to when I mentioned our social-action project. Why we ever thought we would be able to pull off a flash mob was beyond me, but heck, we did it anyway. The plan was fairly simple: we would scatter ourselves around town dressed in hoodies and eerie facepaint, all surrounding our leading lady Ashley, who was dancing to grab people’s attention. Slowly, we would close in on her until she was completely overwhelmed by hooded figured, representing different mental health conditions and the effect they can have on the most innocent of people. After the demonstration, we would talk about the importance of Compass Opportunities and hand out leaflets.

  The problems started with the weather. Rain. Lots of it. I guess we should have planned for a downpour, really – we live in England, after all. This, however, was as though Mother Nature was performing a flash mob of her own, namely a modern rendition of Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’.  By the time we even arrived in town, the whole lot of us were soaked through from head-to-toe. To make matters worse, I had broken my toe a couple of days prior in a freak makeup accident, rendering me useless, our “loudspeaker” wasn’t exactly very loud, and our spot in town had been high-jacked by a friendly busker named Jack. Yikes. Team SPICYyyy, however, are no quitters, and so we spent the majority of the day singing acapella with Jack, helping him raise money whilst promoting Compass Opportunities at the same time. Success!

  To find out more about Compass Opportunities and the incredible work they do, please click here.

  2: THE VERY STRANGE EASTER EGG HUNT

  Imagine this: you are a normal person, minding your own business as you make your way through the bustle of your local high-street. It is coming up to midday, the sun is blazing, and you have just left MacDonald’s with a fist full of Big Mac when you see it. Right in front of you, barreling down the road, is a technicoloured Leviathan! You choke on your Big Mac, for you have never seen such insanity in your life. You blink: once, then twice, until you FINALLY realise that Leviathans do not exist, and the entity charging towards you is, in fact, a team of hyperactive young hooligans dressed in onesies.

  Yeah, we were the hooligans. Now, believe me, in normal circumstances I in no way condone the heinous act that is public onesie-wearing. Never. That is a privilege awarded only to the most special of occasions: Pride, pyjama parties, pretty much anything beginning with the letter ‘P’. However, when NCS threw a very strange Easter-Egg Hunt at us, Team SPICYyyy went all out. The challenge was simple, really: each team was given 100 tasks, and we had the rest of the day to complete them. Let the games begin!

  I could sit here listing every ridiculous thing we did that day, but as Fred R. Barnard said: a picture is worth ten thousand words!

  Cheeky Nando’s with Team SPICYyyy

Abbey Road

Mannequin Challenge: Family Edition

Eleanor and I – 100 Challenges

Yes, we’re twins

Squirrel, Celery, and Dobby

Team SPICYyyy

Yes, that’s an egg

Maddie and I – 100 Challenges

    1: THE METAPHORICAL CAMPFIRE

  I adore metaphors. My writing, by nature, is full of them; a trick for dealing with anxiety that I learned on NCS, in fact, is to turn all of your negative thoughts or experiences into metaphors and create stories out of them. My favourite metaphor of all, however, was born on the night of August 13th, 2016, two days after I had met the people who would change my life forever. Team SPICYyyy had spent the day rock-climbing and abseiling, which for me had been a metaphor for life in itself, leading to the discovery that I am much better at falling down than climbing up. I also found myself pretty badly sunburned, which was odd as I had become obsessed with a bottle of glittery sunscreen which transformed its wearer into a real-life Edward Cullen. Anyhow, by the end of the day, I had become such a scratching post for the claws of the cliff-edge that my fingerprints had been scraped off. The last thing I needed was a night in a muddy Welsh field, but that was exactly what I got.

  I hated camping. Actually, I despised it. The single other time I had slept outside had been on my Year 6 Residential trip to, wait for it, SOUTH WALES. Renowned for its sheep overpopulation and consequent poop-minefields. So, forgive me for being a little apprehensive when being told that I would be spending the night in a two-person tent with three other girls, a blanket of clouds threatening to burst over our heads at any moment. As it happened, however, our little camping trip became the mother of a million memories. We weren’t allowed to light a fire as the campsite didn’t allow it, but we quickly made our substitute. Shoving a torch inside an empty water bottle and dubbing it our metaphorical campfire, we sang and joked and laughed the night away. It was in this beautiful moment, all of us sat in our little circle with a ball of light at our heart, that I realised how special our connection was. The other teams were close – my twin sister was even in one of them, not that we spoke much – but not one of them had what we had. In two days, we had become family. No metaphor is needed to express that.

  Good morning Wales

  The funny thing about NCS is that, for me at least, it never seems to end. It’s like going to Disneyland, only for the magic to return home with you and slip into your mundane life, opening up doors to fantastic opportunities which you would have only dreamed of before. Since graduating, I have had my first part-time job, helped The Challenge to choose this years’ batch of Senior Mentors, and even begun to launch my writing career. It astonishes me that, a year ago, I was one of the shyest kids I knew – a cloud with no destination – and now I am on my way to publishing my first novel and getting my A-Levels! Now, free of the shackles of my mental health, I am able to pass through that door into a world of possibilities, and NCS: The Challenge was my key.

  Day 3

Day 3 – Pre-camp

We set our kitchen on fire…

Cheeky Nando’s with Team SPICYyyy

Wet suits

The dreaded hike

The girls

Yes, we’re twins

Light painting

Day 1 vibes

Eleanor and I – Showcase

Camping food

Abbey Road

Day 1

Eleanor and I – 100 Challenges

Beach babies

Good morning Wales

Mannequin Challenge: Family Edition

Day 2!

Yes, that’s an egg

When I couldn’t swim because of my ear infection

Day 3

Ready for the Showcase!

Maddie and I – 100 Challenges

Wet wet wet

This took longer than expected

Squirrel, Celery, and Dobby

Pre-Finding Dory

Team SPICYyyy

Day 3

Maddie and I – Showcase

Tired after day 1

Squad goals

MY NCS experience: a year on. This post is so nostalgic it brought tears to my eyes. @NCS This time last year, I was nobody. Of course, that’s not entirely true. I was getting by, so to speak, minding my own business whilst coasting along in my own little fantasy world.

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

#blahs#dw#dw spoilers#the whole thing about castles in wales being english torture centres. much to unpack#i think it's easy for most viewers to watch it and see that the characters are taking the piss and write it off#but what's interesting about it is i think rtd is basing that on real exaggerations of oppression by welsh people#most castles in wales WERE built by the english and they WERE designed to oppress the welsh. except that was like 800 years ago#and some people use this as an example of welsh oppression /now/ when it's like. not relevant to modern wales really#and 'torture chambers' is a wild exaggeration that dangerously tries to compare wales to much more recent human rights violations#i think rtd is trying to caution against a romanticised or sensationalised narrative of old wales that certain welsh nationalists have#this is also what he's doing with roger ap gwilliam#i keep seeing people say his character is 'just nukes' and i'm not gonna pretend it's The most complex politics ever#but it's also not just nukes. it's about specific political tensions and attitudes in wales.#rtd's viewpoint reminds me a lot of my dad#my dad's a proud welshman he's a native speaker he grew up in a welsh speaking community#but he doesn't really care about old welsh history about llewelyn ap gruffydd or owain glyndwr or anything like that#he doesn't see it as relevant. to him what's important is modern wales and the tensions of the 20th century#i'd wager rtd probably feels the same#and what with doctor who being produced in wales being rtd's doing i think he's enthusiastic about collaborating with england#rather than being like. isolationist about it. (that's the wrong word but i can't think of a better one)#WHICH INCIDENTALLY ties the political strand of the episode with the personal strand about ruby#who is also dealing with a self-fulfilling sense of isolation#anyway i think this episode is about wales in a very significant way. we need more welsh people writing think pieces about it#honest to god i don't think any analysis of it that doesn't talk about its welshness is quite Getting It (via @aerithisms)

rotating the pub scene from 73 yards in my mind i think there is so much being said there about wales and welsh/english tension that is so interesting and is going so under discussed