2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

1. Kota Ibushi v. Shinsuke Nakamura NJPW 1/3

PAS: Solid start to the year, with Ibushi curtailing a lot of his more obnoxious juniors stuff and wrestling this like a nasty fight. I especially loved all of the stomps. elbows and knees both guys landed on the back of the head which really added a different level of viciousness absent from a lot of the endless New Japan elbow smashes. I also liked how they snapped and started throwing right hands, which was put over nicely by Jim Ross as something outside of the New Japan rules. I was let down a little by the finish, the crazy springboard german was an interesting idea, but didn't land well at all, and the finishing blows by Nakamura looked a lot weaker then the earlier stuff, you always want a match like this to build to something big, and this didn't really. Still very good and a fine match to lead off 2015.

ER: Awesome stuff overall but it's a shame the nastiest stuff all happened in the middle of the match. I loved that there were no "we take turns elbowing each other and scream" moments, and all the strikes all came off looking like illegal MMA. Nakamura does a cool front suplex and immediately starts blasting Ibushi with north/south knees, Nakamura locks on a slick rolling arm bar and Ibushi gets to his feet and breaks it by stomping on Nakamura's nose and face. At some point you can see visible boot scrapes all over Nakamura's forehead. The misses in the match were very important too as there were tons of nice kicks that came flying full speed, really lending to the fact that if one of them didn't duck things would have been over. I loved how that played out later with Nakamura ducking a low kick and Ibushi almost expecting him to duck and immediately hitting a standing corkscrew moonsault. Ibushi has some cool offense with effortless flying that can land with impact (sometimes) and cool little snap suplexes that he rips off so quick they're near impossible to block. The build up showed him surprising Nakamura with one of these and sure enough he snaps off a couple here. Nakamura has a great unique style, real slithery and jellybones. I love seeing his limbs flop around when he takes a powerbomb or rana, and loves how he uses that stuff to goad Ibushi into striking a couple times which then backfires for Ibushi. The strike breakdown in towards the end was awesome, with Ibushi throwing full follow through palm strikes that buckled Nakamura into the ropes, with Nak shoving the ref into Ibushi and then just blasting him with a right hand. So many great strikes throughout this, with nasty elbows and knees to the back of the head, kicks to the neck and little annoying stomps. If only things happened in just a slightly different order. Even so, a very good start to the year.


2015 MASTER LIST