395 Super J-Cast - Year End Awards

January 16, 2026·1 hr 27 min·2 clips

Yuto and Oscar beat Yohei Oiwa and Zack Jr. in 26 minutes, and Oiwa “found something in himself.”

Episode 395 turns from New Year Dash toward the question of who is ready to step forward. Joel and Damon McDonald open by soaking up the praise for the previous show. The discussion quickly lands on Oiwa. The hosts hear a wrestler who may have found another gear. They connect that shift to the love of the crowd he seemed to feel at New Year Dash. Comments from Utah and Oscar during World Tag League stay in the mix. Those comments frame Oiwa as a salary man wrestler, settled into his paycheck, his apartment, and his place in the company. The hosts push back on that comfort by picturing someone backstage grabbing him by the lapels and telling him to take the opening. Zack appears as one possible teammate in that imagined intervention. Oiwa's growing rivalry with Yuto Ice gives the whole argument somewhere to go. The Knockout Brothers bring a brighter turn. They say they have interest from abroad, including WWE. They also say they are staying with New Japan. The hosts hear good vibes in that choice. Yuya Uemura and Shota Umano come up next. Umano gets booed when the tag team appears, and the reaction lands as strange to the hosts. They consider whether the foreign presence explains it. They also weigh the gap between being booed in a pushed main-event spot and finding a useful lane as a tag wrestler. A number one contenders match is mentioned as another pressure point in the tag scene. The conversation circles back to the state of the heavyweight tag division.

As heard by us

A loose but sharp read on Oiwa, Umino, and New Japan's post-New Year Dash tag-team questions.

Episode 395 uses New Year Dash as a way into the larger question of which New Japan wrestlers look ready to fill the space opening around them.

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Why you'd press play

You want New Japan talk where Oiwa's New Year Dash reaction feels like a door opening, not a final verdict.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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