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

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2015 MOTY MASTER LIST

1. Rey Mysterio vs. Low Ki JAPW 11/14
2. Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns WWE WrestleMania 31 3/29
3. Undertaker vs. Brock Lesnar WWE Hell in a Cell 10/25
4. Mil Muertes vs. Fenix Lucha Underground 1/25 (Aired 3/18)
5. Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns WWE Fastlane 2/22
6. Low-Ki vs. Chris Dickinson JAPW 3/21
7. Drew Gulak vs. Sami Callihan PWG 12/11
8. Mil Muertes vs. Prince Puma Lucha Underground 4/20 (Aired 8/5)
9. Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Katsuyori Shibata NJPW 7/5
10. Drew Galloway vs. Ricochet EVOLVE 37 1/10

11. Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena vs. Seth Rollins WWE Royal Rumble 1/25

12. Osamu Nishimura vs. GENTARO VKF 11/16
12. Speedball Mike Bailey vs. Trevor Lee PWG 4/3
13. Ultimo Guerrero vs. Rey Escorpion CMLL 7/17
14. Timothy Thatcher vs. Roderick Strong EVOLVE 37 1/10

15. Hechicero vs. Rush CaraLucha 5/30
16. Biff Busick vs. Mike Bailey PWG 2/27
17. Mil Muertes vs. Fenix Lucha Underground 11/22 (Aired 3/16/16)
18. Yuki Ishikawa vs. British Brawler BattleArts Academy 4/11
19. Young Bucks vs. Jack Evans/Angelico PWG 7/24
20. Will Ospreay vs. Mark Andrews PWG 8/28

21. Marcus Lewis vs. Timothy Thatcher PREMIER IX 6/7
22. Prince Puma vs. Pentagon Jr. v. Mil Muertes Lucha Underground 11/22 (Aired 3/9/16)

23. Kota Ibushi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura NJPW 1/3
24. Yuki Ishikawa vs. Freedom Wallace BattleArts Academy 12/19
25. Jeff Cobb vs. Kaimana PREMIER IX 6/7
26. Negro Navarro/Trauma 1/Trauma 2 vs. Ultimo Guerrero/Magnifico/Rey Hechicero Cara Lucha 1/31
27. Timothy Thatcher vs. Roderick Strong EVOLVE 41 4/17
28. Virus vs. Negro Navarro Lucha Memes 12/21
29. Jushin Liger vs. Yohei Komatsu NJPW 5/22
30. Eddie Kingston vs. Drew Gulak Chikara 6/14

31. Virus vs. Avisman Chilanga Mask 4/12
32. Jeff Cobb vs. Timothy Thatcher FSW 12/12
33. Negro Casas vs. Maximo CMLL 1/11
34. Aztec Warfare II Lucha Underground 12/12 (Aired 3/23/16)
35. Kevin Owens vs. John Cena WWE Elimination Chamber 5/31
36. Virus vs. Dragon Lee CMLL 4/5
37. Negro Casas vs. Dragon Lee CMLL 5/22
38. Hernandez vs. Prince Puma Lucha Underground 3/21 (Aired 5/27)
39. The Mack vs. Cage Lucha Underground 4/18 (Aired 7/29)
40. Kraneo/Morphosis/Olimpico vs. Blue Panther/Fuego/Super Porky CMLL 1/11

41. Preston Quinn vs. Damien Wayne VCW 3/7
42. Kohei Sato/Shuji Ishikawa vs. Ryuichi Sekine/Ryuji Ito BJW 10/29
43. The Crew vs. Angelico/Ivelisse/Son of Havoc Lucha Underground 2/22 (Aired 5/20)

44. Biff Busick vs. Andrew Everett PWG 8/28
45. Aerostar/Australian Suicide/Fireball vs. Steve Pain/Daga/Hijo de Pirata Morgan AAA 11/6
46. Biff Busick vs. TJ Perkins EVOLVE 41 4/17
47. Corporal Robinson vs. John Wayne Murdoch FWS 11/7

48. Joe Graves vs. Timothy Thatcher PREMIER XI 11/28
49. Da Hit Squad vs. Low-Ki/Homicide Beyond Wrestling 12/27
50. Fred Yehi vs. Slim J NWA Anarchy 3/28

51. Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus WWE Smackdown 3/31 (Aired 4/3)
52. Drew Gulak vs. Trevor Lee EVOLVE 49 10/17
53. Fenix vs. Mil Muertes Lucha Underground 3/21 (Aired 5/27)
54. Jack Gallagher vs. Chris Brookes Tetsujin 11/20
55. Chris Hero vs. Drew Gulak PWG 2/27
56. Villano IV vs. Blue Demon Jr. AAA 3/18
57. King Cuerno vs. Fenix Lucha Underground 11/21 (Aired 2/10/16)

58. Blue Panther vs. Satanico Cara Lucha 7/25
59. Titan vs. Barbaro Cavernario CMLL 5/3
60. Drew Galloway vs. Low-Ki TNA Impact 3/16 (Aired 5/1)

61. Eddie Kingston vs. Silas Young AAW 3/21
62. Rey Horus vs. Steve Pain OWA 3/14
63. Daniel Bryan vs. Dolph Ziggler WWE Raw 3/30
64. Blue Panther/Rey Cometa/Angel de Oro vs. Virus/Polvora/Dragon Rojo Jr. CMLL 9/11
65. Drew Galloway vs. Roderick Strong EVOLVE 36 1/9
66. Genichiro Tenryu/Akebono/Ultimo Dragon vs. Atsushi Aoki/Suwama/Hikaru Sato AJPW 1/31

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MLJ: 2010: Invasores Interlude I: Shigeo Okumura, Taichi, Virus vs Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara, La Sombra

Taped 2010-04-12 @ Arena Puebla
Shigeo Okumura, Taichi, Virus vs Hijo del Fantasma, La Máscara, La Sombra

3:03 in

http://youtu.be/bTe9kb_kykY

http://youtu.be/0-NFrnKuvBY

I know what you're thinking. Why the heck am I watching a Taichi match for no apparent reason? There's no Volador here at least (I'm on anti-Volador, Jr, kick right now and will avoid him when possible), but Taichi is definitely there and Mascara is looming too. Even 2010 Virus isn't enough to offset that. There's a method to my madness, though. This isn't any match but the start of a fairly big angle (I say fairly big because while it had a big footprint, it started in Puebla and there just seems to be something off about that).

The entrances were pretty great. Virus' look back then was awesome. He had this cool robe, a mask over that, some spiky arm things. I get that there's a sort of maestro feel he has now, where some of this might take away from his skill or distract from it, but it was a really great look and it's a shame he went away from it. Kemonito, carried by someone, came out wiht Mascara, wearing a shirt. More on this later. Sombra and Taichi were captains. I have no idea how Taichi gets to be captain of anything.

I quite like Fantasma; he never really wows me but he's always more than solid, someone who was ideal in matches like this because he could really serve as the glue, as someone who knew his role and could play it well and by doing so, helped to keep everything together, usually without going into business for himself like Wagner or someone. He was fairly young at this point too. I've said it before but it's a shame that they didn't keep him around (he jumped to AAA in 2013). Okumura, on the other hand, never really makes an impression on me.

The structure was a little weird here, which is quite often a red flag for the finish of the match. I've seen people complain about the typical CMLL structure lately, but I've kind of come to love it over the last year. It's the ebb and the flow and it provides a great point of comparison because you get to see how a number of different wrestlers work within the same constraints; more often than not, to reach this level, they know how to do great things within it.

Whenever the match diverges, it changes the mood because it raises your attention a little. That was the case here. They went through the motions of a standard back and forth opening with a rudo takeover. Fantasma carried Taichi to something halfway tolerable. Sombra and Okemura turned up the pace a bit,  but the rudos swarmed immediately thereafter so we never got to see what Virus would have done with Mascara.

At this point, in a normal match, we'd skid to a relatively quick rudo taking of the fall, ride the beatdown into the segunda, have a tecnico comeback, an then reset for a lot of tecnico-vs-the-world antics, some posturing, and a few dives for the finish. Instead, Virus, directing traffic, set up Fantasma for an Okumura missile dropkick and the pin, but then Sombra ducked past everyone to tope Virus and planchaed his way back in off the top onto Taichi. He ducked a double team kick and hit his split legged moonsault on Taichi (still inexplicably the rudo captain) to take the fall. They basically rushed through the beatdown to the comeback in one fall. It was a sign that either this was going to go two falls or that it was going to have that added loop of a second beatdown.

As it was, the segunda was mostly everything you'd want in a tercera from these pairings. Virus got to stooge a bit. We had those tecnico-vs-the-world spots where one tecnico fought off all three rudos. There were dive cutoffs to cycle to the next tecnico. Kemonito got to do the shirt-take-off spot where he can't get it off and then recovered to hit a legdrop. Someone hit that lightning flip over backdrop counter sunset flip I really like. They made Taichi look stupid, and finally, Fantasma and Mascara hit tandem topes. That left Taichi and Sombra in there and almost immediately, the former fouled the latter and the tecnicos got the DQ win.

All well and good, right? Once the match was over, the real fun began. Out of nowhere ran in luchadores who had, until recently, been working for the independents, Perros Del Mal and other places: Psicosis II(Reaper/Ripper), Histeria, Manico, Alebrije(Kraneo) and his mini Cuijo. The post production called this the "Invasion en Puebla" and the fans were unsurprisingly going nuts for it. This was about as formula breaking as it got, a mauling from a group of wrestlers not even in the company.

Eventually, the tecnicos set to wrestle the next match, Strongman, Porky, and Mistico hit the ring to chase them off (with Mistico being so good and aware of the situation that he was quickly able to get all attention himself by press slamming Cuije to the outside; he had a chant shortly thereafter). In one of the biggest Crash TV segments I've ever seen in CMLL, the rudos they were to face: Terrible, Averno, and Texano, Jr. followed them right out and started the match. I decided that Strongman and Porky together were probably not something I was up to perusing and decided to move on.

This was certainly a match rushed through to set up an angle, but as such things went, it was an enjoyable one and I thought the angle came over extremely well, the mood set by the weirdness of so sudden a two fall match.

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