2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

15. Tomoaki Honma v. Katsuyori Shibata NJPW 8/3

PAS: Really awesome balls to the wall sprint. Probably the best short Puro slugfest since Ikeda v. Ono. Honma is a dude I dug back in the BJPW Yamakawa days, and is great in NJPW as a Kikuchish underdog who absorbs a whomping and keeps going. Shibabta is a bit dry, but he works great as an asskicker who is looking to put this little punk down. I loved him cornering Honma in the corner and just pounding him with one-two elbows, meanwhile Honma was great at finding moments to get in his own shots, his Chico Che style in ring tope was fucking awesome, as was his running clothesline. Finish was great as Honma was starting to elbow out of the fireman's carry, before Shibata just mushed him with a back fist and then Go-To-Sleeped his head off. Really enjoyed this, this kind of thing might get me back into Puro

ER: What a bizarre and mostly unheralded career Honma has had. Everybody first heard of him 15 (!) years ago when he was the wild young stupid death match worker, and then he basically spent all of the 2000s doing opening match jobber duty in AJPW and having his matches either clipped down or edited off entirely from AJ shows. Now he's kind of weathered that and somehow come out the other side as a never say die veteran who has to be nearing 40 and takes mean beatings before eventually going down. I really dug him here, with a cool deadlift brainbuster and that neat torpedo headbutt Phil mentioned (I loved when Spike Dudley did it and Chico Che's is even better, wonder why more guys don't do it). Shibata is more of a cold mechanical ruthless killer, and his elbows are some of the nastiest things I've seen. Give Honma tons of credit for hanging in with those, but damn did those look rough. Shibata was throwing them one after another right to Honma's neck. I get a crick in my neck if I hold my phone to one side of my head too long. I loved all of Honma's little comebacks, with a nice corner charge clothesline, the torpedo, catching Shibata's leg on a kick. Shibata's attacks were incessant so Honma had to make his moments, and finally Shibata squashes this little pesky gnat with a G2S followed by a punt for good measure.


2014 MASTER LIST

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

9. AJ Styles v. Minoru Suzuki NJPW 8/1

PAS: Suzuki isn't the most consistent guy in the world, but a couple of times a year he will bust out a straight classic. This was off the charts, the old US Indy fan in me finds it really weird that AJ Styles is the IWGP Champion, I really think he owes it to Jeff G. Bailey to give Iceberg a shot at the belt. Suzuki is like the worlds greatest Fuchi in this match, just torturing Styles like a sadistic prison camp guard in a WW2 movie. He just fucks Styles arm up and twists and hyper extends his fingers. Styles has great big bomb moves, and he does a great job timing them for biggest impact. Also the fast counter open hand strike sections look so much better then the endless elbow smashes which mar a lot of these NJPW matches. Finish run was super exciting, this is the rare modern New Japan match which I think totally lives up to it's hype.

ER: Suzuki always comes out like the coolest guy in the room. I can't think of any other wrestlers who would look odd if they didn't walk with a cocksure swagger. Suzuki is a guy who would disappoint you if you saw him buying groceries and just idly pushing a shopping cart. Styles really seems like the biggest TNA victim, as with this match and the Hero match from earlier in the year, I can't think of any TNA matches of his that come close. He truly wasted the best years of his life and has the horrible tattoos and bad haircut to prove it. This match is not what I expected (in a good way) as this is relentless  and intense. I expected AJ to be super indy and Minoru to be too cool for school but they just lace into each other the whole time. Minoru's arm stuff looked super cranked in. I got tennis elbow so sometimes it annoys me when I use a mouse or set up something on the DVR with the remote. And boy do I feel like a colossal pussy watching Suzuki bend AJ's arm over the top rope with his full weight while AJ is bent in a horrible position on the apron. Every time Minoru would grab that arm it looked like he intended to rip it off. At one point he seriously looked like he was hyperextending it, while also bending AJ's wrist at a brutal angle. All of Suzuki's kicks looked swift and landed hard. His running punt on the apron was beautiful. There was interference shenanigans with guys beating down AJ after Suzuki pulls the ref into the way of a Styles avalanche. Then other guys beat those guys down and Suzuki kinda wanders back in afterwards, escaping the mess unscathed and unnoticed like Mr. Pink in the shootout at the end of Reservoir Dogs. AJ leans into everything here like a nut, and the strike exchanges were as exciting as Phil said. All these neat strikes thrown off balance and out of sync, no "hit me, then I'll hit you, and we'll growl and flex". Big slaps and kicks and elbows thrown out seemingly at random and it felt like a dirty fight. Loved the ankle pick roll through on a Styles Clash and admittedly the Styles Clash finish feels a little weak since it usually looks like a really safe bump and these guys just massacred each other with strikes and twisting. But finishers are finishers and good grief did this match have so much to love. Great modern puro match.


2014 MASTER LIST

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