The rare perfect two night wresting PPV. They struck lightning in a bottle with this one and it's so good that I wish I could erase my memory and watch it again for the first time. Emotional, powerful, and overwhelmingly thrilling.
Don't get me wrong, I'm loving these current G1 matches and I watch every major NJPW event, but I long for the days of peak because this is a show my mind refuses to forget the greatness of. If only the roster stayed the same and Ibushi and Naito never got injured…
Only other show that equals this one in my opinion is Dominion 2017 because the main event of Okada vs Omega in a 60 minute draw is still my favorite wrestling match ever, and Kushida vs. Hiromu was a masterpiece.
What are your thoughts and memories of this legendary show?
by DeepWebHorror
11 comments
Dominion 2017 is the best wrestling show ever
It’s going to be hard to top anything from 2017. An incredible year for NJPW.
I preferred WK10 tbh
The show was amazing but i wasnt fond of the double gold dash concept which eventually led to two of the most iconic championships ever to be retired. My favorite of all time is either WK11 or Dominion 2017. WK10 and WK9 are close aswell.
Two nighters do very little for me.
I honestly think 2017 NJPW was the most I’ve enjoyed wrestling since the late 90s boom. It was the lighting in a bottle and it will be a while until any promotion matches it. Someone will though, have faith, give it a decade or two.
I’m terms of the level of investment and the amount of big matches & stars invovled on both night was there. New Japan peak in the modern era overall was WK14.Â
I’d say it was the Best 2 night show in any company
Yeah potentially, they just need to have four guys in rarified main event territory cashing in on years of storyline build as a massive climax
The building blocks are there with Tsuji, Uemura, and Kidd already looking incredible and improving rapidly with great rivalries between them. Umino, Narita, Oiwa, and Oleg are behind them but gaining, and we already have some great rivalries building there with Uemura/Umino, Kidd/Umino, potentially Umino/Narita, etc
Whether they’ll reach the heights of the all-timers that featured at WK14 who knows, but if handled well they could have their own peak era of crossing rivalries like the AJPW Four Pillars era having all started around the same time
They could also cash in on Shingo or ZSJ as mega heels in the mix but they’ll need to build very strong narratives from here since their rivalries aren’t on that level yet
The only other major emotional cash-in they can do is Hiromu’s dream of being Heavyweight and Jr Heavyweight champ at the same time, which is the closest thing to Naito’s arc they’ve got, but it seems like they’re shying away from pushing Hiromu as an openweight guy – really hope he makes it into the G1 next year and they just didn’t want to crowd out the guys they were already building this year
Not in this decade.
They simply don’t have the talent.
If you combined the best wrestlers from AJPW, NOAH, and Dragon Gate into NJPW today, you’d then have a roster almost as good as NJPW had at Wrestle Kingdom 14.
It really is hard to overstate how stacked their roster was back then. NJPW’s *upper mid card* was full of wrestlers who would be – and some cases went on to be (looking at you, Kojima) – world champions in other promotions. Guys that, as good as they were, weren’t even in the discussion of being main eventers because of how good NJPW’s main event scene was.
It was a special time.
They did top it three years earlier with wk 11
They need recognizable Japanese stars and gajins who fits the bill. A more streamlined TV show built to get us engaged. I only watch big PPVs and G1. Also bargain a better deal with AEW. NJPW has helped AEW tremendously but idk if it’s been an equal exchange.