On Day 1, we showed up at the Meet n Greet and were greeted by a snaking line coming out of the convention center and almost into the parking lot - you've never seen so many Bullet Club shirts in one place, there were at least 250 people wearing them (or a Scurl/YB variant) out of the 400 or so people who were ticketed for the Meet and Greet.
The MnG was held inside the arena, so we got an early look at the stage setup. It was a little staggering how it really looked just like a traditional New Japan setup, with a ton of folding chairs set up next to each other all on about the same eye level.
The MnG provided first crack at the merch table, which provided for some initial confusion because some of the workers didn't speak English and you had a few poorly socialized neckbeards basically yelling at them for which shirts they wanted which made me cringe. They tried to stop the merch sales to sell more MnG tickets but fukk that, I stayed til I got my shyt.
The wrestlers in attendance taking pictures with/signing autos for fans were The Young Bucks, Kenny, Kushida, Tanahashi and Will Ospreay. The YBs and Kenny (predictably) had by far the longest lines and Kenny was barely able to keep up with the demand - his signature was just a K and an Omega sign. Kushida had the most robust signature, and he and Tana were letting people hold the belts - you don't realize how heavy those belts are until you hold them and some people legit couldn't hold both of Kushida's titles.
I got to meet Ta-Nahashi Coates and hold the new IC title - that baby was gleaming and damn was it heavy, seing Naito flick it around like a toy makes you underestimate how much that thing weighs. Autographed an 8.5x11 and took a pic with me. Tana was nice as hell man, true babyface that I feel Western wrassling is missing right now. Ospreay's line was pretty sad with no one in it, although there's one pic someone took with him where he's holding up a WWE title.
Another interesting note was that some of the questions that they had on a survey collecting fan demographics were directly related to complaints people have about WWE. The very last question was 'what do you like about NJPW as compared to WWE?' Seems they are well aware of the discontentment many fans have with WWE and are trying to angle themselves as the alternative.
The show itself was something else - they were selling beer and liquor inside of the venue so right then you knew the crowd was going to be on one...or three. The merch line was absolutely pants-on-head crazy, shyt was snaked around the venue and my homie and I were glad we got ours early. people were for the most part respectful about not standing up for too long and letting everyone see. Some Luke Harper blockhead two rows in front of me was standing up a lot but he fell into the abyss of that merch line never to be seen again.
Yall saw the show so I'm not gonna go into every match in this post, but let me tell you that KUSHIDA, Liger, and Tana were super over. I've said this before but their reception really made me miss over as fukk classic American babyfaces like early 90s Sting. What I don't think made TV was Red Shoes reception - he came out and fans loudly chanted 'RED SHOES! RED SHOES!' and he pointed to himself as if to say 'Me? really?' then bowed to the crowd. Dope moment. Also over as fukk was Hiromu's cat Darryl.
Pics of the venue and my merch haul (wore the Okada shirt to the event)
