This week on Wrestling Omakase we're joined by returning guest and VOW contributor Thomas Fischbeck (@rasslingratings) for a trip around Japanese wrestling! It starts with a deep dive into All Japan based around their 9/3 Summer Explosion Korakuen show, though we also talk at length about their booking at the moment, Kento Miyahara's title reign, why we'd like to see more cooperation between AJPW and the other puro companies and whether things feel stagnant right now. But there's also much praise for two outstanding main events as well as a couple surprisingly good undercard matches. We wrap up the AJPW segment with a look ahead to the upcoming Oudou Tournament, going over all the first round matches and who are picks are to ultimately win the entire thing.

Then we turn to NJPW to talk the Road to Destruction tour, with our main focus being the Young Lions Cup, as we discuss all eight YLC matches so far. We don't do full match breakdowns for the three Korakuens but we do talk some of the major angles and feuds so far including a weirdly horny Naito-White IC feud, Ishii/YH-GOD, and more. And we do brief breakdowns of the three Korakuen main events as well as a couple other recommended matches from the shows. Then we turn our attention to the rest of the Destruction tour, specifically previewing the big matches from the Beppu, Kagoshima and Kobe shows over the next few weeks. We also give an early look at the King of Pro Wrestling card, speculate on what one of the key matches for the US Fighting Spirit Unleashed tour could be, and even give some fantasy booking for what might happen with the IC and US titles between now and Wrestle Kingdom.

Our last segments takes us to the land of Tokyo Joshi and DDT, as we talk two shows both from September 1st in Osaka. The TJPW review is full of praise for what was a really fun show up and down the card, including an amazing six-person tag with Yuka Sakazaki giving an arm wringer to a mop that John gave four stars, and another great Su Yung match. The DDT review on the other hand is of possibly our least favorite big DDT show in ages, with a lot of stuff on the card that disappointed. Once that's done we look ahead to TJPW's upcoming weekend back in Tokyo and DDT's next Korakuen show at the end of the month.

Finally we wrap things up with a short but spirited mailbag, including an insane question asking two people who do not watch WWE to name all 18 (!) current WWE champions. You'll have to listen to hear how we did! A really fun show!

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