2014 Ongoing Match of Year List

14. Meiko Satomura v. Hiroyo Matsumoto Fortune Dream 6/8

PAS: Always happy to see Meiko show up and this was a great example of what she brings to a match. I hadn't seen Matsumoto before, but she was very fun too. Really violent match with Matsumoto focusing on Satomura's stomach landing viscous double knees to the gut like she was trying to give her an in-ring hysterectomy. Meiko fired back with some nasty elbows and her cool pele kick and cartwheel knee. Really sort of a star making performance from Matsumoto as she overcame the veteran with just big bomb after big bomb. Happy to find some Joshi I dig

ER: Really fun, easily digestible match. I follow joshi less than any other type of wrestling, so I couldn't tell you whether or not this was a big storyline where the younger Matsumoto overcame the veteran Satomura. I assume Matsumoto has been at this for awhile though as a) she looked really good, and b) at no point did we get any sort of veteran bullying that you see in joshi (and Japan in general). The whole match was real snug and had some of my favorite grappling of the year (which is impressive since this is the year of Gulak). The grappling in this was all based around standing exchanges which all looked real impressive and added neat new things. I think we all got so used to the mechanical and rehearsed Dean Malenko style standing exchanges that it's not always as apparent to our brains just how rehearsed and pointless all of that really was. Here it actually looked like two equals battling for an upper hand, not necessarily through strength but with cool go behinds and just bending each other into odd standing positions. All of that stuff was really great and kind of unexpected, to me at least. We still got all sorts of stuff you'd expect, like some great on point kicks from Meiko, and some uterus crushing knees from Matsumoto. Meiko still has little ways of surprising me, and my favorite little "some guy should steal that" moment here was when she did a leg sweep to Matsumoto's shin. I don't think I've seen that before. Normally you do a leg sweep to literally sweep the legs out from someone, but this was just a stiff sweep right to the shin, buckling Matsumoto. Great stuff here.


2014 MOTY MASTER LIST