Eric's Working 2009 MOTY List!!

I've decided to hop on the neat trend of compiling an ever-changing MOTY list, so as I watch more and more stuff I can still remember the stuff from the beginning of the year that I enjoyed. Phil decided he was too good for his list a long time ago, and the blog has been feeling kinda empty and sad because of it. It's been like a best friend's funeral around here and I'm gonna spice it up with my super list of wrestling that I enjoyed from 2009. Then we can get rid of that death smell. Maybe.

Eric's 2009 MOTY List!!

1. Osamu Nishimura/Masa Fuchi vs. Minoru Suzuki/NOSAWA (AJPW, 1/3/09)

This on paper looked like it had potential to be really fun. Whenever 75% of the workers in a given match are old and surly types that wear tiny black trunks, that's almost guaranteed to be awesome. And this was completely awesome. Nishimura keeps getting older and his European uppercuts keep getting more and more painful. He would have been such the wonderful Claudio replacement in the Team Uppercut trios. Masa Fuchi is right pasty and every chop makes his chest redder and bloodier. NOSAWA comes in selling a leg injury, and I imagine his leg must have been legitimately hurt, as I didn't think he could sell a leg this well. Suzuki is one of my favorites. At the end of every year, when looking over the matches he had, he very rarely ranks in my favorite matches of the year...but damn if I don't look forward to every single Minoru Suzuki match I see. I love everything about him. His ridiculously unique charisma, his hair that only he could pull off, his refusal to rope run, sticking his tongue out when he's getting the duke. Every snotty movement reminds me of that moment of the Backlund/Funaki match where Backlund is just teasing and making faces at Funaki.

These guys beat the shit out of each other. Fuchi's selling is absolutely stunning in spots, it was really fun seeing him not as the veteran picking on younger guys (although he does stretch NOSAWA's leg at all sorts of unnatural angles), but as the Osamu Kido-ish old man being picked on by Suzuki. Fuchi falling down and struggling up after taking Suzuki's beating was great.

Nishimura destroys NOSAWA's bum leg and again, if NOSAWA actually had this leg injury then Fuchi/Nishi are supreme dicks. IF he was working it, then kudos to him, cuz I bought it.

This was too much fun.