13 Ups & 3 Downs From NJPW Dominion 6.9 2019

1. To What End?

How on Earth could Tetsuya Naito and Kota Ibushi possibly escalate their rivalry in this, their third IWGP Intercontinental Championship clash of the year? Risk characterised the previous two. The duo's often ghoulish displays saw them set out to obliterate each other's necks, and obliterate they did, with both yielding the kind of career-shortening bumps that cause many to wince and turn away from the modern NJPW product - and not unreasonably.

This was how they escalated:-

For f*cks sake.

The conversation on the danger of these matches is absolutely worth having. Naito and Ibushi attempting to kill each other for our entertainment will almost certainly come back to bite both men later in their careers, and their toughest bumps are hard to watch. That's their purpose, but at what point do we draw the line on their recklessness?

Naito and Ibushi are two of the best wrestlers in the world. They don't have to work like this, and they might not stop until one of them suffers a broken neck. We certainly hope and pray that it never comes to this, of course, and we'll have more to say on this bout later in the column, but it'd be irresponsible not to mention this troublesome aspect of today's New Japan style.