AEW Five Fingers of Death 1/16 - 1/22

AEW Dynamite 1/18

Bryan Danielson vs Bandido

MD: Danielson's tour of guys with a ton of raw physical talent continues (and will continue to continue with Brian Cage ahead of him). This was the most complete Danielson match we've had in a couple of months, probably since the Dax match, and he worked de facto heel here considering how into Bandido the crowd was, which made it all the better. It was a taste of a world that never was, the one where Danielson got to visit Arena Mexico and work Hechicero fourth from the top since CMLL didn't have any idea who he was, and maybe even the one where he got to work Blue Panther or Negro Navarro for the FLLM title in front of a few hundred people. While there was a feeling out process and while the finishing stretch was pretty even, with a lot of payoff and counters, there was a bit after that feeling out and before the commercial break and the quasi-heat where Danielson let Bandido shine with technique followed by power followed by speed and he looked like a mindblowing star. For that minute or so, it was hard to even process the way he was shifting gears.

After that things calmed down and Danielson was able to really stretch. There are pros and cons to the AEW commercial breaks but with a guy like Danielson in there who can hit hard, who can make every impact matter, who can engage the crowd, who just breathes pro wrestling, it works more often than not. It certainly worked here and even allowed for some time for the leg to recover after the nudo. Bandido has so many tools in the belt to come back with (here it was power), and the stretch had some bits I liked, especially Bandido getting lost in the moment and not capitalizing and Danielson seemingly wanting to win with a lucha-styled move like the Casita instead of playing fully to his strength that let Bandido get a nearfall or two n him. I'm not going to say everything was smooth, but the instincts were there, the constant struggle, the constant reaching for a limb, that even when something didn't hit smooth, the roughness only helped the visceral attempt at what they were trying to accomplish. The actual finish, to me, felt like a superior batter having to see a pitcher a few times to learn how to hit him. Danielson came in having never wrestled Bandido and having not wrestled someone of his style for a while and as the match went on, he adapted to him more and more, until he was able to catch him with the knee perfectly. Maybe that was just in my head, but it's something I like having in my head, so we're going to go with it.

Darby Allin vs KUSHIDA

MD: This was very good and I'm finding myself with very little to say about it. It's great right now that they are maximizing the roster/openness and having both Darby and Danielson up against different and varied opponents each week. And now that Negro Casas is over to AAA I want both match-ups yesterday. We all want Danielson vs Casas but Darby vs Casas with Darby creating all the motion would maybe even be better. This was all about the armwork, of course. KUSHIDA was excellent in creating opportunities for himself to open that up. Darby, more so than almost any wrestler I can think of, earns his victories through sheer endurance alone. He had to survive long enough for an opening to appear. That was basically it. In the meantime, they were able to manage spots like the flip off the top which were cooperative but still believable, as KUSHIDA made Darby go over and basically bump himself off the top huge so as not to dislocate his arm further.

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Lorcan vs. Kushida

19. Oney Lorcan vs. Kushida WWE NXT 4/20

ER: This was Kushida's first title defense after winning it at the Mania TakeOver, and he throws out the open challenge. I wasn't expecting Oney Lorcan to be the guy who answered the challenge, but Lorcan just might be the best challenge answerer in NXT. Lorcan has been maybe more underutilized this year than any year he's been in WWE. His role is technically more high profile - he and Burch have been the NXT tag champs for 6 months at this point - and he's been wrestling less than ever. Since the tag title win this is just his 9th match, showing up on TV every 3-4 weeks to remind everyone how much he kicks ass. This is one of those matches that sets itself apart in minute one, almost immediately feeling different than any other Kushida match I've seen. Kushida in trunks and ankle tape suddenly makes him move and wrestle like a year 2000 BattlArts undercarder, and my god is that a good thing. The mat scrambling with he and Lorcan was great, Lorcan trying to smother while Kushida scrambles, both locking in really snug headscissors and both working cool Indian deathlock escapes, some hard kicks, real spirited stuff. 

Lorcan goes up top and takes a mean spill when Kushida kicks him off to the floor. The editors do that thing I hate where we go to commercial with Lorcan bumping to the floor, then come back to see him working like a standing bow and arrow, minimal idea how he got back into control. But the work is so strong that it really doesn't matter, with Kushida targeting Lorcan's arm in cool ways (dropping elbows on it, posting it on the ropes and leaping off onto it) while Lorcan just works body punishment. Lorcan throws some chops in this match that made me exclaim aloud, alone. I swear they're the hardest chops I've heard in pro wrestling this year. Kushida breaks out of an abdominal stretch by going after Lorcan's arm again, and the more Kushida goes after his left arm, the harder Lorcan hits with his right. Loved his corner clothesline and the blockbuster was timed perfectly. Lorcan was great at selling Kushida's punches, great at staggering into the ropes, and I loved how Kushida dropkicked him right in the ear after his hiptoss. Great finish, with Lorcan getting his arm kicked out while on all fours (great sell where his arm looks like it's flopping around at the elbow) and Kushida locks in the nastiest hoverboard lock I've seen from him to get the tap. This match was the tightest I've seen Kushida look during his WWE run, and it's no shock that Lorcan is the guy to push him. Awesome match. 

PAS: Lorcan in a high profile singles match is always going to be worth watching, and Kushida bothered me less here than he normally does. I liked his punches, had nice thud for something clearly worked, and I dug all of his flying arm attacks. I really could have done without all of his cartwheels, but thankfully when it got down to brass tacks he mostly shelved that stuff. Lorcan is a punisher, as always. Those chops had real force behind them, more Tenryu than Flair, and I always love him as a pace pusher and he does that here. I hate the momentum shift during the commercial, but the finish was great, and this was a real treat. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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NXT TakeOver: Stand and Deliver Night One 4/7/21

NXT has been my favorite mainstream wrestling program of 2021, so I figured why not check out their two night TakeOver special, despite being a few weeks behind on programming and not actually knowing anything that is on the card. Will I be rewarded for going into this blind? We'll see!

Pete Dunne vs. Kushida

ER: This was a real nice fast pace for a show opener, and also, I hated most of it! I really, really hated most of the offense that made up this entire match, a match filled with arm break and finger break spots without a single moment of somebody selling an arm or finger injury. Dunne tossed out so many finger break spots that were used to transition Kushida immediately back to offense, just an incredibly stupid usage of an already stupidly used spot. They traded arm break spots, and every time they did, all that happened was the other one would then do their own arm break spot right after. The match threatened a few times to go to interesting places, but since no move in the match was ever sold seriously, those interesting places became only "what ifs". Kushida was really good at setting up Dunne's offense, took a big suplex on the apron too, but it's like they had some odd agreement that once one got to do a move, then the other could get up and immediately take back over with his own move. There was one compelling nearfall, where I thought a Kushida small package might have ended it early, but maybe that was me in hindsight just wishing that had ended things early. This was a lot of fast movement that lead absolutely nowhere, and everything was run through so quickly that I guarantee none of it will be remembered in a day. 

Gauntlet Match

ER: I don't really like gauntlet matches where guys enter on a time limit rather than after an elimination. It never plays to anyone's strengths, too many guys have to disappear when things get too clogged, and they're never as satisfying as just a trios match would have been. Hell, give me a couple of singles matches between any of these guys, guarantee it will be better than a timed gauntlet match. Nobody in this got much time to map out anything interesting, as a Ruff/Scott singles match could have been a really cool 8 minutes, as soon enough it was two guys bumping for Bronson Reed and ignoring everything that had happened in their own match, and that's how these things go. Pretty soon you have guys no selling spots because they need to be in position for the next chain spot, so Isaiah Scott gets flipped inside out with a Reed clothesline, but is back hitting a meh superkick on Grimes 4 seconds later because that's how the move chaining works. A gauntlet match like this is really great at making six guys all come out looking worse, either by getting pinned way earlier than they should have been (Grimes, Lumis), or having to rush through your routine because everyone else is fighting for attention. Even a silly 6 man multiman would have worked better than a new guy awkwardly integrating himself into the match every few minutes, but the format we got is not conducive to a good match for anyone involved. Did LA Knight need to be in this? Did Lumis? Just a poorly laid out idea all around. 

7. Tommaso Ciampa vs. WALTER

ER: THIS was more like it, just a big throwing bomb fest that was more than just bombs. This never felt like two guys out there trying to get This Is Awesome chants, it felt like an actual big main event title match, with one guy the clear underdog who was going to take as much punishment for as long as he possibly could. WALTER and Ciampa both turned in great performances, with WALTER turning in a ton of appropriate selling and Ciampa actually working like a guy with a size disadvantage, always feeling like a guy hanging on who MAYBE had an outside chance of winning the belt. I loved how the worked in some vulnerabilities for WALTER, and having him hurt his hand by overhand chopping the announce table in half is a great way to set up a hand injury. WALTER was super punishing with his offense, all of his kicks really found their way right underneath Ciampa's chin, and he was able to be punishing while not forgetting about what happened to his hand (something that nobody else on TakeOver has been able to do). 

WALTER's best bit of selling was when he was taking a dozen lariats from Ciampa, as it's incredibly difficult to sell on your feet while waiting for someone to hit you repeatedly, yet I thought he made it look fantastic. Ciampa's lariats weren't strong enough to put the big man down, but I liked how they knocked him into the ropes, loved how he stumbled before getting turned around, loved how the next one hit him in the back of the head and made him fall into the ropes for a bit, thought he turned what could have been an extended silly moment into an excellent stubborn refusal to go down and save himself from more punishment. Ciampa is a real hard chopper, and WALTER's chest was getting nicely purple by the end of this, and the harder Ciampa hit, the harder it made WALTER come at him with full force lariats and straight kicks. WALTER's powerbombs looked great too, and I loved how he was using his weight and size to just try to hold Ciampa to the mat. I loved the spot where WALTER hopped onto Ciampa and almost tricked Ciampa into bridging up on his neck, that extra bit of temerity that seemed immediately like a bad idea, and lead directly to WALTER crushing him back on their feet. Ciampa's selling down the stretch was great too, barely escaping out of a rolling powerbomb, dead man walking getting back to his feet when he clearly shouldn't have been standing, only to be put down for good with one last chop. Several guys on NXT have really taken a lot of the stupid melodrama out of their selling and it has only made these title match epics sing. With no bullshit morality acting or shocked kickout faces, the matches seem far more streamlined and intense. 

PAS: I thought this was a good stiff match, which flirted with great, but didn't get there. I thought the spot with WALTER smashing the table with a chop was a clever idea, executed well and really gave the match some structure. WALTER did a great job of selling constantly trying to adjust his attack with that probably broken hand. I also thought the multiple lariat spot was clever, although I really wish they looked better. It would have been a bigger deal if WALTER had kept standing with a dozen hard lariats, rather then just standing through a dozen B- ones. I thought the finish run had the problems that these matches often have, where they ended a couple of beats too late. The actual finishing spot looked way less nasty than the couple that proceeded it, and it came off flat. I would have liked the match a lot more if it ended on the powerbomb. Still for this style of match it had some real highs, and I enjoyed lots of it. 

MSK vs. Raul Mendoza/Joaquin Wilde vs. Grizzled Young Veterans

ER: I thought the Dusty Classic (Men's and Women's) was really good, tons of memorable matches and really made me want a legit focused tag division. This tag three way was everything the earlier match with six people wasn't, a super fun tag with a few surprising spots and a quick pace, felt more like a tag you'd see on early 2000s Jersey All Pro, and I can't think of a bigger wrestling compliment I could give over the past 20 years. Just like on those old JAPW tapes, I'd spend entire matches constantly switching who my favorite was, made me just root for all of them and seek out more. You'd flip for a big Ghost Shadow bump, then flip for the Hit Squad crushing Azrieal, then lose it for Rainchild. It was a roster I loved through and through, and everyone worked well together. I have a feeling this would have played well at the Bayonne Charity Hall. Wes Lee had this section where he was throwing out spin kick combos and leg sweeps as everyone in the match attacked like a ninja, then he pasted Gibson with a hard hitting tope, and followed that up with a huge tope con giro on Legado del Fantasma. Mendoza and Wilde are great at getting into position for things like that, and I like how they played kind of a lower key highspot role so MSK could shine with their cool double teams. Wilde stuck to hard corner clotheslines, Mendoza stuck to high dropkicks, a missile dropkick to break up a submission, and both took crazy spots on the floor to help get over the other teams. Wilde took a flat out insane looking Doomsday Device, with Drake running off the ramp to send Wilde to the floor, and Mendoza took basically a safer Burning Hammer on the floor with a slingshot double stomp from Lee to kick it off. The MSK "best buds stuff fighting for their dream" stuff can get a little hammy (though it would probably be fine if only they weren't constantly talking about it on commentary, but this is the kind of tag match you put on to show off that your tag division is really cool right now. 

Raquel Gonzalez vs. Io Shirai

ER: This was the complete opposite of what I thought it was going to be, worked totally different from what I was expecting, and I loved it. I thought this would be Gonzalez dominating, with Shirai coming back in not belieavable ways and pinning Raquel with a bad moonsault. Instead, it was somehow Shirai taking 90% of the match, which on paper sounds preposterous to me. But Raquel Gonzalez is getting really good, and it kind of snuck up on me. She is a really strong base, and not just in the kind of way that someone so much larger and taller than their opponents should be. She was so good at taking Shirai's offense and so great at setting all of it up, all of it building nicely to each stage of the match, that it felt like Shirai was organically keeping not just one step ahead of Gonzalez, but believably dominating her. They were really smart about how much offense Gonzalez took, having her block several ranas, avoid Shirai's rope feint kicks, and it was the only way this was going to work. Shirai just doing nothing but offense for 90% of the match would have come off brainless, but with Gonzalez fending off much of it, it just made Shirai come off as relentless. Dakota Kai's interference and immediate dismissal came at a good time, and I like how all it did was stop a Shirai moonsault, not turn the tide for Gonzalez. It was super impressive how they kept Shirai in control and Gonzalez staggering, but I really got into it. Gonzalez kicking out of the moonsault felt like a big deal, and the crossbody off the entrance ramp looked like a deranged Shirai throwing her body harder and harder into the monster that won't stay down. I thought it was great how suddenly Gonzalez took over, nailing Shirai with a great low cut clothesline that resulted in Shirai hitting one of her best moonsaults (this clothesline could not have flipped her over harder on her stomach). I'm really happy for Raquel's title win. There really wasn't anything left for Shirai to do as champ, and Gonzalez is someone intriguing to have on top against a bunch of interesting babyface contenders. I had this match in my head as something very different than what we got, and I'm glad, because I loved what we got here. 

ER: Those first two matches really stunk, and I was starting to regret the idea of doing this show the night of. But WALTER/Ciampa (it landed on our 2021 Ongoing MOTY List) was great and the show never slowed down from there, thought the last three matches of the night stand up next to any three match run from any TakeOver. 

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NXT TakeOver 31 Live (Until 49ers) Blog 10/4/20

I'll level with you, this card does not excite me. Phil asked me yesterday if there was anyone I even liked currently wrestling in NXT, and I actually had to think about who that would be. The brand is really stale to me right now, and the few people I have been still tuning in for are not even on this show. The brand was great when there was frequent promotion turnover, but ever since it began being promoted as its own thing it has stagnated and seemingly run out of ideas. Maybe guys on the roster realize things have been blah, maybe they take this opportunity to put on a show that will get people talking. I don't care one iota about the AEW/NXT online feud, but maybe a few of the guys on this show DO care about it and want the internet to buzz about it for a few days. Or, maybe it will be the uninteresting show that it looks like on paper, and I will only have myself to blame.

Also I saw HHH called this new performance center something like "The ultimate heavy metal soundstage" and I am curious see what that means. From Damian Priest's entrance it looks like they have a large tron and a screen wrapping the lengths of at least a couple sides of the room. I'm more excited that there are at least some people (in masks) around the hockey rink baseball backstop like guardrail shields. We still have the home viewer screens in the majority of the crowd, but down front is actual people, and it's good having actual people there. On commentary is Sebastian Gorka.


Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I don't think Priest is a bad wrestler, in that I think he has the tools to be a compelling wrestler, but he would have to be completely broken down and retrained to not be 2020 Edge. Like Edge, Priest is someone who loves to work even sized with small guys, and it comes off like a large dog who doesn't understand that he's a large dog and gets bossed around by tiny aggressive dogs. Priest is 6'5 and 250, similar size to Edge, and yet he works matches like he's a bad version of Billy Kidman working Ultimo Dragon. And I do not like this match. It came off like a modern update of a Lance Storm/Jerry Lynn match from ECW. 20 years ago that was a match and match type that felt fresh and was done well by then. But it's not a style I want to see in 2020. There are other things from that era that I'd rather seen updated than that specific counter based evenly worked style with some extra shitty If-Nova-Was-Taller embellishments from Priest. Priest's tope con hilo looked good, and a couple of the reversals do work, Gargano takes a hard powerbomb on the apron, and a couple of the nearfalls were effectively placed, and Gargano's low blow kick leading right to the finish looked great, but overall I just didn't like this.

Velveteen Dream vs. Kushida

ER: Dream is dressed like Doc Brown to counter Kushida's McFly, which sounds like something I'd shit on but it's also a fact that I went to a high school dance as George McFly. It was a Hollywood theme dance and you were supposed to come as a celebrity or movie character, and I had found a neat vintage suit jacket at the Salvation Army, and a character with big nerdy black glasses was easy for me to aim for. Now, I suppose I was also 16 years old, and not a grown man playing cosplay dress up as one of my last appearances before pressure mounts to have me punished for being a nonce, so I think I can still shit on Dream.

But I thought their match was really good, albeit perhaps a bit too long. The chemistry between them was stronger than I expected, and the strength was that there was an impressive (and unexpected) amount of struggle to everything that happened, so no parts of it felt like a competitive partners dance. Kushida kept going after that arm for the hoverboard lock, and I liked his tenacity. Dream kept using energy to fight back in cool ways, like refusing to go down on drop toehold and making Kushida work for moves like that. It looks so much cooler when Dream struggles and fights before getting dragged down, makes all of Kushida's passes look fought for and earned. I loved how Kushida rolled through to an armlock after finally getting the drop toehold. There was a lot like that, and Kushida built to some vicious stuff like kicking the ring steps while Dream's arm was pinned between stairs and ring, or catching Dream in various triangles that always felt important. This had the feel of a match that was writing Dream off for a bit, which is a thing that I think will only continue to be demanded. The finish felt like a big FU but a cool finish, with Kushida taking working the arm and Dream powering to his feet for a dream valley driver, only Kushida doesn't let go of the arm and gets the immediate tap. Kushida attacked him too long after the match though, and Dream was doing this weird theatrical screaming and crying. It felt like Kushida turning heel and them making Dream a sympathetic babyface, but I hope that's not what they're doing. I hope it was them just writing Dream off TV. We'll see I guess.

Isaiah "Swerve" Scott vs. Santos Escobar

ER: This had a lot of moments I liked even though I think a lot of Scott's embellishments are really annoying. The match really came alive when Scott hit a one man dive train, and that Fosbury Flop was a cool highlight of that. I like Escobar's stable and would like to see them do things other than feud with Scott, but this match felt like the best case scenario for the pairing. Scott's big stuff looked good (one of Escobar's strengths is taking offense, and that shines here) and Escobar got to plaster Scott with his great tope. This one also could have used an editor, as I think it would have been more effective under 15 minutes, but I also think they did a good job at filling those 15 minutes. Ashante Adonis came back for (I believe) the first time in NXT since his name change from Tehuti Miles, and I could see him having fun matches on this roster. He's a guy who is low on offense, but works a similar style to other offense deprived wrestlers who I enjoy (i.e. cruiserweight Stevie Richards is more interesting to me than Isaiah Scott). I'm glad Escobar retained and would love to see his group presented as an actual threat, even pushed to the level of Undisputed Era.

Candice LeRae vs. Io Shirai

ER: I think this one had the right energy and built in a nice exciting way, but the Wife Guy Johnny stuff coming out for the finish and bumping around like he was on a trampoline while making shocked Gargano face was something the match really didn't need. The ref bump to set up the Gargano new referee silliness was inventive and fun, with Shirai eating knees on a moonsault and letting her momentum carry over and basically Pele kick the ref. The ref bounces to the floor and LeRae's curb stomp looked really gross, mashing Shirai's face into the mat. I think the Johnny stuff really took away from all the drama they had built in the match, as it came off cartoony in a way that the match hadn't been. I liked Candice here more than I did the last time these two had a big singles match (last year at TakeOver Toronto). She kept taking me out of that match with weird selling and getting into position too early for Shirai, and she worked this better as an aggressive heel. I don't think Shirai was as strong in this one as that one, but she made the big moments count and took offense nicely. Still, I thought some of the 50/50 stuff in the middle lost track of things, and then when they won me back Gargano took me back out of things, plus the finish looked a little ugly. Toni Storm and Ember Moon returned in two different post match segments, but it's really weird to bring back two people to the same division in segments immediately following each other. It kind of lessens the impact of both, although I can't deny that Toni Storm is a welcome return. Anything that gets a little less Tegan Nox blandness off the weekly show.

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Finn Balor

ER: Watching this one got delayed by me watching a mildly crushing 49ers loss, with an uninspiring Nick Mullens performance paving the way for an exciting but ultimately futile comeback from CJ Beathard. George Kittle is a more fun to watch wrestler than anybody on TakeOver tonight. I want to see Timothy Thatcher work a shoot style match with Kittle, based around Thatcher being unable to take down Kittle but being persistent about it. Brandon Aiyuk hit a ridiculous leapfrog hurdle for a touchdown, the coolest and best utilized leapfrog spot I've seen tonight. But the Niners lost and this match will now lift my spirits.

And this one won me over early, overcoming it's NXT Main Event Epic Drama layout with compelling selling and nice targeted attacks. Kyle O'Reilly put on one of his strongest singles match performances that I've seen, coming off like Bryan Danielson working like a 2001 NJPW kickpads junior. We get the cool story of O'Reilly exacerbating a Balor shoulder injury early, leaving him susceptible to a near match ending attack on a different limb. Both guys hit the strikes and offense harder the longer the match goes, justifying the overly long near half hour match length. It felt like things really ramped up throughout and never skipped ahead at any points. O'Reilly has a cool set of rolling double underhook suplexes and some knees, but gets a rib kicked in by a great solebutt and then run sternum first into the turnbuckles. From here on out O'Reilly is gamely selling a rib injury and while it was dramatic I also thought it was effective. O'Reilly had a couple of big comebacks (I especially loved him dumping Balor with a real high bridged Regalplex on Balor's neck) but Balor did cool things like work an actual persuasive abdominal stretch and stomp the hell out of O'Reilly's guts.

Both guys bleed from the mouth, and there's some some strong camera shots of O'Reilly stuck in a nice sharpshooter while blood cuts down his cheek. They also do some nice close up magic, as the closest the camera ever got to an O'Reilly knee strike it happened to be the hardest knee strike he hit all night. Finn stomps him in the ribs more, and O'Reilly fights back with a cool standing guillotine that looked nice and snug. O'Reilly played well as a lower rung FUTEN guy who hangs for 13 minutes against Katsumi Usuda. O'Reilly catches Balor with a couple of dragon screws over the ropes, and then hits a totally killer kneedrop off the top rope directly onto the back of Balor's thigh. O'Reilly's kneebar he locks on is some righteous Volk Han shit. He really twists and bend the ankle and when Balor tries to kick him away he grabs that leg and twists it violently over Balor's other leg. The kneebar was so good it made me suddenly start rooting for O'Reilly to win the title here, wanting Finn to tap. That kneebar got me Immediately invested in seeing a specific result, made me spontaneously root for a guy I've never been super high on, and that kind of moment is special. Balor doesn't tap, and he does finally make the ropes no matter how much I wanted him to tap. And, somewhat disappointingly, while his double stomps to finally slam the window shut on O'Reilly's ribs looked really great, I wish more respect was paid to the tendon damage that kneebar should have caused. Even so, I think the double stomps were a fitting end to the match and worked well in context. This was an unexpectedly strong main event within a style I don't adore, building to actual drama and justifying the overly long runtime with some stiff work.

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On Brand Segunda Caida: 2019 Kassius Ohno

Kassius Ohno vs. Ashton Smith NXT UK 2/22 (Aired 3/20/19)

ER: This was Ohno's NXT UK debut, so this will likely be the quickest of his UK matches. Watching every Ohno match in NXT UK will be a fun way for me to gauge whether or not there are other guys on this brand worth following. There are a couple I follow now, several that I am not interested in, and some people like Ashton Smith who I have never watched before. Smith had a couple off moments, timing spots that needed tighter timing, but had a couple kicks and elbows that played well and looked good enough to hang with Ohno. One of Smith's kicks lead to Ohno flying fast through the ropes to the floor and landing on his feet, a super impressive bump for a guy his size. And as always I love when Ohno uses his size, dug his almost running vertical suplex, and I hope in one of these matches he just wins by hitting eight or so straight sentons. He hit two nice ones here, and I always want more. Also liked his stunned frozen sell when Smith caught him with a fully extended kick to the face a couple times. Smith's Samoan drop looked impressive, but Ohno's brutal match finishing elbow to the back of Smith's head looked far better. That's a killshot finisher right there.


Kassius Ohno vs. KUSHIDA WWE NXT 4/10 (Aired 5/1/19)

ER: This didn't totally work for me, as I couldn't buy into most of Kushida's offense actually toppling Ohno. I've seen Ohno agaisnt plenty of small British guys, and they almost always step up their strikes and landings and Ohno is always able to make them look credible. And I don't think there was anything Kushida did here that looked like it would put away Kassius Ohno. Kushida went through the freaking dojo system, he should be absolutely able to slap the taste across Ohno's face. Ohno had plenty of killer moments, so things were still plenty watchable. Ohno broke out some tricks I haven't seen and it sucks that they kind of felt wasted on this match. He had a super cool headlock takeover, and he catches a cravat off a Kushida Asai moonsault, from his back. That's something I've not seen and it could have come off silly, instead came off like Ohno was a master of positioning. There's an amusing moment where Ohno does a long Hector Garza on his knees handshake request, everyone obviously knowing it's a trap, and Ohno pays it off by yanking Kushida's handshake right into a big ass boot. Kushida seems to exist solely to put in weak performances against my favorite guys.


20 Man Battle Royal feat. Kassius Ohno ROW 4/13/19

ER: This felt like some wrestling brand from another dimension. I have never watched any of Booker T's Texas-based Reality of Wrestling promotion, but I saw Ohno was in this battle royal so I figured that would be a good way of seeing if there are any guys in the fed worth seeking out. After a lengthy royal rumble style battle royal I'm not really sure that I've found any worth seeking, but I certainly got a sense of specific ways his students are trained. Outside of Jacob Fatu and Kassius Ohno, this match was filled with 18 other guys who all got reactions from the crowd and all inspired excited exclamations from the announce team, 18 guys with established reputations and championship reigns...and I've never heard anyone mention a single one of them. It felt like a private Texas City brand of excitement, 18 fully formed stars who are created exclusively for Texas City, and nobody outside of Texas City is allowed to mention them. The announcers called this rumble with a certain David McLane enthusiasm, where everyone was a star but it all had that feeling of none of them being a star and they were all just fake wrestlers created for a TV product that may not actually exist, announced to us like they were implanted memories of things that had never happened. "It's E. Snow! I can't believe we're seeing the return of the 3 time champion E. Snow!" "Erik Lockhart is back! The Lockhart cousins, Erik Lockhart and 'All Day' Will Lockhart, are running wild!" Everybody was a multi time former tag champ, TV champ, World champ, with an established nickname, and the crowd was actually responding to these guys as if they were indeed stars.

From this battle royal it felt like Booker's training room must be covered in posters that say ENERGY, because nearly every one of these guys all entered the ring with that same kind of hot tag energy. Heel, babyface, doesn't matter, because all of these guys had energy! They also all took good bumps while getting eliminated, so the pluses were: energy, and nice bumps to the floor. That's probably enough of a floor to turn someone into a pretty decent worker. A lot of these guys were real same-y so I couldn't get much of a feel for who was best. My favorite (non Ohno/Fatu division) was probably Brendan Steen? He was kind of like if Kidman had worked more like Danny Doring, except I mean that as a compliment? Gino was a guy with great swoopy dickhead hair who threw a lot of big hangtime spinkicks; Terrale Tempo had nice leapfrogs and I bet he'll have a good shoulderblock or right hand shortly; Ayden Cristiano had more polish than a lot of the guys and came off like Chavo Guerrero Jr. had he started his career as more of a heel. Kassius Ohno was the big name in the match and was treated as such, and in a match filled with guys trying to throw striking offense above their level (looking at you, "Axton Lowe") it was fun seeing Ohno get a ton of time to showcase his strike repertoire. They saved a lot of eliminations for him, and since all of the ROW are somehow very good at taking elimination bumps to the floor, we got all sorts of Ohno throwing big kicks or tornado elbows followed by guys flying 8 feet off the apron. You get at least 20 good minutes of Ohno in this, as he's one of the final 3 (along with Fatu and Ryan Davidson, a man who felt like Jack Swagger working more like low budget Rhino), and it was at minimum fun to watch him ping pong guys around the ring with strikes.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 3/8-3/14/20

Brian Kendrick/Jack Gallagher/Mike Kanellis/Ariya Daivari/Tony Nese vs. Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch/Tyler Breeze/Isaiah Scott/Kushida 205 Live 3/13/20

ER: There is some weird 205 curse where none of the guys know how to lay out even the most normal gimmick match. This is a match with 10 guys ranging from Capable to Actually Great, and I have no doubt it would have been much better had they just worked a standard 5 on 5 match. Instead it is an elimination match, and 205 Live just cannot do gimmick matches. Some of the worst matches I've seen on the show have been normally cool things like No DQ matches, where the guys force themselves into a format while seemingly intentionally playing against their strengths. And this match would have at least been amusing had I gotten a graphic that said "205 Live vs. NXT: Playing Against Their Strengths". Also, you book a weird invasion elimination match, and you make the team representing 205 Live the heels? I don't get it. There's nobody in the building anyway, you aren't playing to any fans, why wouldn't the home team at least be the good guys? I would have been interested in people like Kushida and Lorcan coming in and working like invading assholes, but that would be something that would mix it up a bit, and this needed to be a dry elimination match.

I don't know what it is with most elimination matches, but we always get plenty of guys eliminated due to things they would normally never get pinned by. So obviously you know this match had a ton of roll up and small package finishes after someone took 0-1 moves. It is the way of the elimination match. Most of these guys disappear without making any kind of impression: Kendrick goes down to a late small package after being almost entirely uninvolved in the match, same thing for Tyler Breeze; Kanellis had a great showing last week, goes down to a quick roll up this week; Nese had one of his most interesting showings in awhile teaming with Kanellis last week, here he gets put down quick. There were some nice individual moments, but nothing that added up to anything close to a good match. Burch turning and hitting a headbutt on the interfering Sunil Singh looked cool, and we at least got a tiny bit of Jack Gallagher showcase. Gallagher hasn't been on TV for 3 months, returns sporting scrimshaw tattoos (I'm not really one to judge tattoos; I don't plan on getting any more beyond my Violent J left shoulder tattoo and my Shaggy 2 Dope right shoulder tattoo, but I will say that scrimshaw clipper ship ink on a pale body looks much better than a Blue Lives Matter looking ass neck tattoo), but even then his return is more of a cruel tease do to the match layout. He goes at it with Lorcan (which is actually a criminally unseen pairing, with no singles matches and only sparse interactions in a couple doofus matches like these) but it gets shut down quick with a cool Gallagher rolling elbow. Gallagher also took a great backdrop bump to the floor, but really wasn't in there long. This all felt designed to be a Kushida/Scott showcase, but I'm not really buying what those two are showcasing. This match was another example of breaking something that was already fixed nicely. Nobody came out of this match looking good.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 2019 Catch-Up

Oney Lorcan vs. Ariya Daivari 205 Live 4/23/19

ER: Another of those oddball 205 matches that get 18 minutes but could have been super effective with 9 minutes. I liked what they did here, and liked that the first 12 minutes were low offense and much more about what moves didn't hit than what moves did hit. The bulk of the match hinged around two big Lorcan spills to the floor: the first time getting a dive blocked by a Daivari forearm and later taking a big backdrop tumble. Those misses were much bigger than any hits in the first 2/3 of this, with Daivari trying a couple times for his million dollar dream sleeper and once early for his hammerlock lariat. This was mostly two guys canceling each other out, like we were getting Stevie Richards vs. Stevie Richards. And I'm into that match structure, but it probably went longer than they needed it to. Around the 12 minute mark things picked up and started grabbing the fans in the arena, with a big Lorcan pescado and Lorcan stuff like his running blockbuster and flying uppercut that always gets a good reaction. They really kept the big highspots out of this match, and it was a cool experiment to see how long you can work a match around non-sequences. But it was hard recovering them after the long draw they put them through, and amusingly after avoiding big moves all match, Lorcan goes for the half nelson suplex OFF THE TOP! But he gets knocked off, and while Daivari's finishing sequence of a frog splash and hammerlock lariat is a nice one, I can't imagine too many were excited for the Tony Nese vs. Daivari match this set up.

Drew Gulak vs. KUSHIDA NXT 5/1 (Aired 5/29/19)

ER: Gulak and Kushida working a submissions match on NXT not long after this was one of the impetus that drove us to start The Big 3 project. And I like how much of this match was spent going after submissions, a nice logical jump for them to just do a Submissions Only match a couple weeks later. That match had problems, like a goofy Malenko/Guerrero sequence (in a match with no pinfalls) and this one was more coherent without specific guidelines they were playing within. But this one also didn't hit the peaks of the Submissions Match, and I think both matches hit their valleys because of Kushida's business. The first half of this was great, just both guys trying to force the other into hard fought pinfalls or trying to slowly bend a limb into a sub. Neither had easy paths to locking in a sub or getting a pin, so I dug them just trying to use leverage to force shoulders to mat instead of going right into the big spots. And it was when they started going into more typical Kushida offense that it got less interesting. There was a lot of interrupted rope running and blocked strikes spinning Gulak into Kushida Trademark Offense, and the early match submissions that were so engaging gave way to the Kushida mindset of "this is how I always set up my sit out hiptoss cross armbreaker". We also got a weird moment of Kushida and Gulak grunting at each other while going for submissions, and it felt like an extension of that thing where indy workers are too scared to say something stupid to the crowd, that they just silently pump their fists and open their mouth as if the people in the crowd were watching them on TV. I liked Gulak catching Kushida in a fireman's carry gutbuster after Kushida overshot him running ropes, and I liked Kushida trying to force Gulak's wrist into the hoverboard lock, but the Gedo clutch felt like a silly way to end a match where actual forced amateur pinfalls couldn't get a 1 count.

Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler NXT 5/1 (Aired 5/29/19)

ER: This only goes a couple minutes before a Street Profits run in, definitely much more of an angle than a match (these teams were all in a fantastic ladder match at the TakeOver a few days after this aired), which is kind of a drag just because I know there is a killer Forgotten Sons vs. Lorcan/Burch tag match just waiting to happen. This was fiery as hell and I don't even think Lorcan got involved in the short runtime. Burch started things off by sending Blake flying into the buckles with a big running dropkick - both Cutler and Blake are really great about flying into guys and away from guys - and Blake fires back after some Ryker interference and absolutely brains Burch with a lariat to the back of the head.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 9/7 - 9/14

205 Live 9/10/19

Jack Gallagher/KUSHIDA vs. Brian Kendrick/Akira Tozawa

ER: We're back to appropriate match length on 205, and this was a bunch of fun. I thought everything in this was great...up until KUSHIDA's hot tag. The opening scramble with Kendrick/KUSHIDA was really cool, and filled with little things that make me love Kendrick: blocked headlock takeovers, refusing to go down on a drop toehold until forced, clasping his hands on a hiptoss armbar until KUSHIDA starts throwing fists at his hands, even doing a leapfrog much more like he was jumping a hurdle in competitive track so that he lands in a more advantageous position. Kendrick is a great logic  wrestler and I love seeing his tricks. Gallagher and Tozawa are always fun together, and I dug what Kendrick did with a blind tag as Tozawa baseball slides to the floor making Gallagher think he had been too much for him, only to turn around and take a nasty posting from Kendrick. Tozawa trotting by on the floor and rustling Gallagher's hair while he was still hung around the post was an excellent touch. I loved Tozawa's short punch, and seeing Kendrick and Tozawa corner and isolate Gallagher was great stuff, but it all built to a KUSHIDA hot tag that I didn't think was very good. I don't think KUSHIDA's stuff looks very good when he rushes through things, as he's a guy who always looks like he's thinking too hard about the next part of the sequence, so all of his strikes looked more like someone practicing a sequence than actually doing the sequence. We still get Gallagher spilling to the floor and Tozawa pasting him with his cannonball off the apron (Gallagher always seems like the guy who gets smooshed into the barricade with that, and it always looks great), but overall I think things wrapped up way to neatly once KUSHIDA came back in, match could have used another twist or two.

PAS: I thought this was really good, I am not a New Japan guy, so my KUSHIDA experience was his not very good Gulak matches from NXT. I think he may be better suited as a tag worker, where he can do some cool opening mat scrambles, let his tag partner do the majority of the actual in ring work, and then tag back in for a hot tag. Gallagher was pretty great in this taking a huge bump into the ringpost, and taking a pasting from Kendrick and Tozawa. Kendrick has been a bit of forgotten man in 205 lately, but man is he great, I loved him escalating the violence, and his smaller stuff is about as good as it gets in wrestling. I thought KUSHIDA's finishing armbar was pretty great looking and the coolness of that allowed me to forgive some of his awkward moments.

Drew Gulak/Ariya Daivari/Tony Nese vs. Humberto Carrillo/Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado

PAS: This was a long trios match with some cool moments, but some real stinkers too. Nese is really bad in this, at one point he puts on maybe the loosest crappiest chinlock I have even seen, he might not have even been touching Dorado's body. Lince Dorado being shoehorned into the PPV title match is really weird. He isn't even a top 10 2008 Chikara roster member (Hero, Claudio, Quack, Colin Delaney, Brodie Lee, Whatever Ant Tracey Williams Was, Tim Donst, Jigsaw, Mitch Ryder and Kingston for sure would have a better match with Gulak) and the third best guy in his stable. Watching both him and Metalik in this match, it is even weirder that they are pushing Dorado. Apparently WWE bought the Dorado gimmick from Chikara, which is amazing. How much could they have possibly paid? It can't be more then a 100 bucks. I just imagine Quackenbush buttonholing Helmsley after Quack's training center gig "You know Hunter technically we own the Lince Dorado IP, you really should buy it from us, if you are going to use it on TV." and Helmsley just handing him whatever he had in his pockets "I got 67 dollars and a GMC gift card with an unknown amount on it, take it or leave it."

Gulak was good as usual, the crowd was clearly not paying attention to the match and chanting for a baby in the crowd. Gulak starts rocking Dorada like a baby as a taunt to get the crowd back in the match. Total pro move.

ER: I was hoping Phil hadn't noticed Gulak's extremely pro as hell reaction to distracted fans, because I was more blown away by that than anything that actually happened in the match and wanted something to talk about. Can't be much more of a bummer for wrestlers than a fully distracted crowd, and Gulak improvising and rocking Metalik like a little baby to instantly get all eyes on him was one of the more brilliant things I've seen. I mean, Tony Nese lost their attention like 12 seconds later, but I'm not letting Gulak get dragged down just because Tony Nese sucks. I really like Phil's 2008 Lince vs. Chikara exercise, and you can easily add Hallowicked, Sara Del Ray, Cheech AND Cloudy, Pantera, Larry Sweeney, Drake Younger, really Lince is nowhere close to 2008 Chikara top 10. He's a guy battling to get on the 25 man roster.

The match itself was too long, though the length did give it more time for nice moments, and there were plenty of nice moments. I don't think the whole added up to much, but you stick a couple interesting guys in an 18 minute match and something decent will shoot out the other side. There was some fun stuff on the floor, Metalik always breaks out a couple of impressive flips, Carrillo had a couple big dives, Metalik had an outright awesome rana leaping over the ropes to the floor, and Daivari took a fast splat bump off that rana. But there was also a lot of really awkward shifting into position for offense, lotta messy stuff, and Phil didn't even mention Nese's awkward loose body vice. I will say, that I think these guys are all at least trying to have bangers out there, and that counts for something. That enthusiasm can help lift up matches and I hope the show goes on a good run.

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WWE BIG 3: Gulak, Gallagher, & Lorcan, 6/9 - 6/15

With their number of different weekly shows WWE has gotten to an almost WCW level of matches per week. One big advantage of this is that some of the best guys in the fed - Jack Gallagher, Drew Gulak, Oney Lorcan - often get multiple chances a week to have long matches on shows no one watches. Well we are going to start watching now, and I am looking forward to checking out what those guys will deliver!


205 Live 6/11

29. Jack Gallagher vs. Chad Gable

PAS: Man was this really good, I think Gable is still an imperfect worker, but Gallagher is such a master that he can carry a guy with some fun spots and explosion to a real banger. Early mat work was really cool with Gable dominating with his explosiveness and Gallagher using guile to get some cool escapes. It builds to a bigger finish with both guys hitting some awesome suplexes including a super long delayed suplex, and Gable with gorgeous rolling belly to bellys, the snap Gable has on his suplexes is just unreal. Finish was very cool with Gallagher attempting a tope, getting caught on the floor, dumped with a german suplex and failing to beat the count into the ring. Super physical match, Gable was bleeding from the mouth, and Gallaghers body was covered in bruises. Match seemed to set up a rematch which I am very excited for.

ER: Aw man this ruled. I'm not sure why the possibility of this match never actually crossed my mind, as it feels like a perfect pairing. Gable is a pitbull but Gallagher hits harder, and Gallagher keeps almost luring him in to situations that end with Gallagher throwing his best-in-fed (and arguably best in current wrestling) stomps to the head, short hard forearms, and a lariat that feels like it's thrown by a man 100 lb. larger. Gallagher has such a cool arsenal that he doesn't even break out his world class headbutt or violent dropkick, fully able to have a match more on Gable's terms while finding little ways to subvert Gable. The crowd still doesn't seem to know what to do with these guys, so I appreciate them showing off actual unique gifts that literally forces the crowd to respect them. Gallagher holds Gable up in one of the longest delayed vertical suplexes I've ever seen in a WWE ring and after 8 seconds you can really hear buzzing and by 20 seconds they're fully giving it up for these two. I love Gallagher's pale body as it makes every hard shot really read, you see a big bruise on his leg, later on a bruise on his back, but Gallagher is a real Gentleman (not the fedora type of Gent, but a guy who can actually look good in a suit) and doesn't want Gable to feel left out, so he bloodies his nose. Gable throws maybe the most gorgeous belly to belly suplexes in wrestling history. Off the top of my head I am thinking Gary Albright, Scott Steiner, Alexander Otsuka and, perhaps oddly, former bay area indy worker Tony Jones (a former wrestler with incredible throwing strength). Gable's are thrown closest to Albright's style, an impossibly tight pivot into a high 3/4 release, and the snap he brings to the floatover makes him look like a sleek robot programmed to wreck skeletons with suplexes. The finish was really cool as it's very difficult to work a "caught" move without looking like the person on the receiving end just no sold a normal move, but they get the spacing right so that it feels like Gallagher came up just short enough of the dive that Gable was able to fully negate it, and I appreciate the fact that they treat getting suplexed on the floor like an actual thing that could keep someone down for a 10 count. Totally fine with seeing these guys run it back.

16. Drew Gulak vs. Humberto Carrillo vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Oney Lorcan

PAS: Another killer match, what a show this episode of 205 Live was. Gulak was super aggressive and that real intense smash mouth style really helped temper the craziness of the other three. Gulak and Lorcan took it back to 2014 with some great exchanges including a really nasty slap fight. Lorcan is so great in these spot fests because he is so good at crazed intensity. He is one of the best guys in the world at working fast and making it look like a fight, rather then just someone performing high level acrobatics. Hadn't seen Carillo before sans mask (seen a couple of Ninja Jr. matches) and he had some really fun stuff, a super cool spot where he yanked Tozawa off the mat into a Japanese armdrag, a cool flip dive and a nuts bump where Gulak pushed him off the top rope and flew super high and hard chin first into the guardrail. Tozawa is of course an old hand at these kind of spotfest, and is very good and bring his personality into these matches. I could have done with out the Ariya Daivari run in, but otherwise this was this kind of match done about as well as it could be.

ER: Total banger, an immaculately laid out spot fest that actually paid mind to how much damage each guy had taken, and built so that every single guy felt like they had a shot up to the finish. Gulak and Lorcan are absolute glue for a match like this, but I like the elements that Tozawa and Carillo bring as it's more exciting than having 4 similar workers. Carillo looks like a hispanic Michael Ian Black and hits about as hard, but he makes up for that with some wild bumps (huge bump off a massive Gulak lariat, gets shoved to the floor by Gulak and aims to rearrange his body on the barricade) and breaks out some flashy offense like a handspring in the ropes that sees him hook Tozawa's arm on the way back over into a Japanese armdrag, or his springboard dropkick on Gulak late in the match. Tozawa brings life to matches like this, and I genuinely appreciate the work he puts into making his fireman's carry slams actually look difficult to pull off. We're deep in an era of over-cooperation in wrestling where literally any move is very easy to hit, so seeing Tozawa buckling his knee and making it look like he's deadlifting everyone only makes the moves feel more impressive. It reminded me of when Cena would pay extra attention to slowly lift tables and ring steps to give them even more heft. Tozawa is great at making overused offense look good, and I dug the spot where he and Carillo superkick Gulak and then Tozawa superkicked Carillo, both looked great and like an actual kick that mattered. Tozawa's boss senton off the top to break up a pin looked fantastic, with Lorcan feeling it in his back and Gulak getting squashed beneath. Obviously any time Lorcan and Gulak teed off it was going to be class, and that strike exchange was a really slugfest, totally nasty with no turns taken whatsoever, just a battle of dudes landing hard shots without waiting for openings, winging their arms at face and body. We got a few cool moves off fireman's carries, not just the Tozawa stuff but an absolute beast of a spot where Gulak tossed Carillo off his shoulders into a Lorcan uppercut to the neck. The dives were outstanding, big flip dive from Carillo and an even more unhinged one from Lorcan, but the money spot of the match was Carillo kicking Gulak off the apron and Gulak doing a really perfect stumble sell off the apron and into the barricade. And then Tozawa just PASTES him with the best possible running cannonball off the apron. Sadly the finish ends in confusion, with Tozawa and Gulak both having their shoulders down after a superplex, so I guess the only solution is to run this whole thing as a rematch. Sigh. Crowd knew they were treated to an absolute gem here, and it was great to hear their appreciation.

NXT 5/18 (Aired 6/12)

Drew Gulak vs. Kushida

PAS: Match started out super promising, with some really nifty mat wrestling with Kushida gaining some advantages by using his speed, really great looking reversals and scrambling. Match lost its thread though, with Kushida doing a bunch of springboards and cartwheels which didn't look great and took away from what the match was trying to do, at one point they have a lame forearm exchange (which Mauro says is a tribute to Frye vs. Takayama for fucks sake) and a silly spot where they do Malenko/Guerrero rolls in a match without pinfalls. Gulak had some cool shit, including maybe the nastiest ankle lock I have seen, but for a match billed as a mat classic, this was mostly just an OK juniors match without pinfalls. I know it seems silly to expect a shootstyle match on WWE TV, but we have actually gotten stuff like that recently with the proliferation of shows, so this didn't live up to my weird expectations.

ER: I liked this more than Phil though agree with the moments that looked bad. I have no idea what that Malenko/Guerrero roll-up loop was, with both men stuck shoving the other through pinfalls instead of actually trying to pin the other, that was just dumb. The forearm exchange was meh but I also watched the match on mute so no doubt it would have been worse with Mauro calling it. Also there was only one handspring, not a bunch, and it was fine. I think the okay spots just looked that much worse because the first several minutes of this are FIRE. The mat rolling was so cool, all flash but when you do flash, this is how you do flash. There was a ton of cool rolling and fast go behinds, and I especially liked a slick as hell rolling fisherman's cradle by Kushida. There was a ton of great stuff here, even if it was front loaded, and Gulak is good at taking Kushida's offense, really leaned up at just the right time for his rolling low dropkick. Outside of that glorious match opening scramble my favorite thing was easily Gulak's ankle lock, as I'm not sure I've ever seen someone cinch in an ankle lock and then throw in a couple stomps to the kidneys. Front end of this seemed like a lock for the list, back end drops us down into "overall a very fun cruiser match" territory, but this still had a lot to love.

37. Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Kyle O'Reily/Roderick Strong

PAS: This was a really great sprint, all four guys are really good at pace pushing, and this was stiff and intense and never kills a million finishers like so many workrate tags. Lorcan and O'Reilly match up really well with each other, I love how they mix in different kind of strikes with uppercuts and and body shots a slaps, I also really love how O'Reily uses knee on the stomach to control on the mat. This actually had cool double teams too, that were more about violence then prettiness. Strong and Burch were fun too, and if this had a better finish I could see this pretty high on the list. Even with the finish it had, this is list for sure.

ER: Hot damn this match. These guys all beat the hell out of each other and there are suddenly a ton of dudes in WWE who are way into lean protein diets and all weight like 170. These dudes are all my size only their bodies look like they eat turkey and almonds and broccoli for every meal and I look like I sit in a chair and type about wrestler's bodies. No wonder Erick Stevens suddenly popped back up, probably angling for a NXT nutritionist gig. And all of them are absolute ass kickers, doing something actually interesting with the new "constant motion" style that's all the rage. The thing with constant motion BS is everything is so planned out and phony and cooperative and sleek. These guys actually know how to do constant motion wrestling but have it be slightly out of sync, slightly messy, slightly uncooperative. That's not by accident, it's that these guys are all great enough to realize that you still need a little messy uncooperative wrestling that hits at hard angles. That seems like a pretty obvious thing to me, but some pretty bad stuff appears to be en vogue these days. This felt like a real coming out party for O'Reilly. I don't think I've ever enjoyed him as much in a match as I enjoyed him here (and his stock has risen for me since he joined NXT). He was just a mean asshole hear and I've never seen him outright torture a guy the way he tortured Lorcan. He throws hard shots to the head and then aims to bruise Lorcan's kidneys and make him piss blood by flying into him with several knees, dropped them hard into the lower back and side, a wicked running kneedrop low and quick off the ropes, and then just scrapes his knee heavily across Lorcan's back every time he passes to his other side. This is an O'Reilly I want to see opposite Gulak and Gallagher and really, against anyone.

Roderick Strong has been kind of quietly one of the best wrestlers in the world for the past decade. He keeps things snug and works fast, really lays it in and can do complicated stuff while making it feel plausible. He had a over shoulder backbreaker in this that made me go take ibuprofen. Lorcan is one of my very favorites, a guy I've been lucky to see live several times and always delivers. He comes off like one of the hardest workers in the biz, and there are few people I'd rather watch fling their entire body into someone. His tope con hilo is always him launching himself thoughtlessly, and his dropkicks and flying back elbows look like he's trying to knock over a soda machine. There were several moments where someone would walk in a pop someone else right in the face with a hard slap, or a kick to the ribs, or a freaking headbutt to the chest. Even the run in interference lead to two big bumps, with Strong especially flying out of the ring when Burch shoves him, and the rolling cradle was held in real tight for the finish. They can just go ahead and keep running these kind of tags every damn week. It's the best.

ER: Three of these matches are landing on our 2019 Ongoing MOTY List, which is a real nice haul from 2 hours of TV. But go on and keep wishing guys would leave WWE so they'll finally be allowed to wrestle.

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Lucha Worth Watching: Kushida vs. Volador AND Flamita vs. Xtreme Tiger!?

Kushida vs. Volador Jr. (CMLL 7/8/16)

So I went into a hyped match expecting to be a party pooper, and came away liking a lot of it, far far more than I expected. I expected the end run to get a little too cute - and it did - but they did several neat little things that I wasn't expecting, and avoided a lot of the awful parade of nearfall trading that plagues most Arena Mexica singles match terceras. Loved the arm work by Kushida in the primera and segunda (even though nobody watching this expected that to play into the tercera), him grinding it with takedowns on the rampway, and especially him catching Volador in an armbar off a springboard somethingorother. I kept waiting for Volador to go for a handspring-showdown-wait for applause and he never did it, so thank you thank you Volador. He did a lot of nice little things I don't often see him doing, like keeping that arm limp and punching low on things that are supposed to miss. Early in the primera Kushida ducked under a strike during a rope run and Volador really cut low. He's usually more interested in doing his own rope running and not making it look like he's aiming to actually hit his opponent, so I was sold fairly early. He hits a killer dive in the segunda, and then catches a killer Kushida flip dive in the tercera. For awhile here Volador was good at doing things avoiding his arm, hitting a nice headscissors, that dive, his superkicks, but even when he did start using it I actually really liked all the backcrackers in this. The backcracker is a move that swept through lucha in the 2010s like crack through inner cities in the 80s, and here they actually effectively used the move for the first time....shoot, in 5 years? 8 years? Volador leaps onto Kushida's back, tries to pull him down into the move, Kushida struggles into the corner, Volador keeps pulling, being an annoying backpack, and eventually the weight is too much and Kushida gets pulled back into it, bouncing somewhere between 3 and 13 feet into the air. You never see struggle over a backcracker and it was really a tremendous spot. The end run was nice with a super satisfying majistral reversal and a this-should-be-the-ending-oh-good-it's-actually-the-ending reverse rana. No overkill, no 2.9 glut, great peaks, and we have a match that exceeds expectations. Huzzah!

Flamita vs. Xtreme Tiger (CaraLucha 8/20/16)

Well, Matt tricked me. "This was from this weekend," he said. "I kind of need you to write it up. It's lucha worth watching though not for entirely good reasons (though there are a few)." Okay, I remembered him being slightly more positive about it. There doesn't actually seem to be any trickery after all. I likely just got flattered by someone saying they need something from me, and without listening to the rest of what they said I just went "SURE OKAY!!!" And then they began the match with 40 seconds of Malenko/Guerrero roll-ups. That's how they started things. I thought the sunset flip was going to get him, but then it didn't and I instantly thought that a guy flipping himself into a pin would also then pin him! But none of them pinned anybody. We moved on. And really this whole match was pointless. Both guys are talented. They both do impressive moves, they both execute them fantastically. But none of them mean anything whatsoever. This was some of the most egregious move trading I've ever seen. I can't see how there can be any sort of drama in a match like this. There has to be some sort of responsible hierarchy of moves. Some moves have to seem more damaging than others. This was just a collection of moves, none of which kept either man down for any period of time, and eventually one of them ended the match. Both guys took some dangerous slams, and things would always progress the same: Dangerous slam -> guy who took dangerous slam would stand up and catch the other guy in a dangerous slam. Neither guy showed any damage, so why would I care about pinfalls, or anything else? I guess by that point we're all just watching to see neat moves executed in a bubble. They may as well have done a super fast Spanish Fly, and then both stood up, bowed, and announced their next move. They were essentially performing motion capture moves for a video game, while wearing more flattering attire. Flamita did some very cool arm work, using a fun variety of arm crushing moves, my favorite being a great legdrop starting with him standing on Tiger's arm before delivering it (he also had Tiger slumped in the corner at one point, and did a running dropkick to just his arm). But Flamita couldn't have known that Xtreme Tiger has invincible arms! Tiger did some cool things too, loved his bombs away type move off the top onto Flamita's pelvis, and he broke out some cool leg work (his seated wishbone was killer). But, you may have guessed this, but Flamita has invincible legs! Flamita's phoenix splash has a great thud to it, and that's the move that ended the match. He set it up by being driven head first into the mat by Xtreme Tiger. Put all these moves in a logical order and make a 3 minute highlight video of it. It would be more enjoyable than what we got.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 9/30/15 & 10/7/15 Review

9/30/15

1. Matt Sydal vs. KUSHIDA

Well this was pretty unlikeable. This was that perfect combination of uninteresting ringwork combined with constant crowd chanting. Crowd is chanting This is Awesome as the match begins, because you see, they're in on the gag. We jerk off with some bad matwork with one guy holding still so the other can do stuff, and then doing stuff while the other guy holds still. The strike exchanges were weak and the moves were really poorly set up. KUSHIDA has some slow motion handspring offense that doesn't look good if and when it connects, and requires Sydal to either stand there while a man does a handstand, or run face first into a man doing a handstand. KUSHIDA hits a decent flip dive at one point. Sydal still has a pretty shooting star press. Boy I did not like this.

2. Adam Page vs. Will Ferrara vs. Watanabe vs. Moose

Boy we are not doing well tonight. This was a rushed 4 way, starting out clunky then burning through some suplexes leading to the early finish. Page was a standout and this was probably the best I've seen him, showing some personality and setting up offense for others nicely. He also had a really great fallaway slam on Ferrara at one point. Ferrara has terrible strikes but is game to take a bump. Moose is always disappointing. There is still plenty of potential there, and he throws a nice back elbow here, but there's just always tons lacking. Watanabe is from Japan, LAND OF WORKRATE and thus he is awesome and we must all throw streamers at him. He never looks very good. Everybody threw suplexes. Colby Corino took a decent bump from the apron at one point, but he leaned way out of a Moose kick to get to that bump. Steve Corino continues to miss every emotional note, woodenly saying "Colby. Nooooooo. Get off of the apron." At least it was short?

3. Adam Cole vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Well this was disappointing. Cole is not great, and Nak really didn't try too hard. We had Cole doing a bunch of fairly engaging leg work, leading to Nak not caring much at all about the leg work. Some of Cole's superkicks to Nak's leg were alright. I especially liked one to the back of Nak's leg. But almost immediately after the legwork stopped, Nak was back up, throwing knees, doing suplexes, jumping around, being generally just fine. My time felt wasted.


Eh, Rachel was on the phone with her sister and she didn't want me to watch You're the Worst or The League without her, so what else was I going to do. But this show was three matches that could have been good, but none of them were.

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10/7/15

Oh man this show is filmed at MCU Park in Brooklyn and it already looks so awesome. This needs to be done more often. Such a great venue and it reads super cool on TV.

1. Time Splitters vs. Briscoe Bros.

The Time Splitters...are not a team I would like to see again very soon. KUSHIDA is just really bad. Their comedy doesn't work, most of their actual ring work doesn't work, they just don't work. Shelley can at least throw a halfway decent punch. KUSHIDA is one of those guys who has really bad trademark offense, but it's made even worse because he doesn't make any of it look good. He's the one who picked this offense. You'd think he would know more than anyone that he has a shaky handstand and a bad looking jab. But then he goes and does bad handspring offense and just a terrible left jab combo. We get a too long super silly arm wringer segment which I'm sure is amusing to the live crowd and all but I'd rather see Briscoes kicking the hell out of them. And we do get that, we do. We just get so much KUSHIDA. Too much. He's junk. I'd rather just watch the Briscoes fight each other.

2. Watanabe vs. Cedric Alexander

Well hey this was the best I've seen Watanabe look! The match was JIP so who knows what kind of mess we missed, but Watanabe looked like a guy I would actually want to see here! Stiff senton, nice strikes (actual painful elbows! Funny how NJPW main event style always has interminable elbow exchanges, yet most of their guys have lousy elbow strikes), a couple of headbutts I didn't expect. Cedric knows how to miss big and I dug his thrust headbutt. Veda Scott is always amusing at ringside. Maybe Watanabe just likes working in the outdoors more? I had a copy (like a photocopy) of Farmer Burns' old "Lessons in Wrestling and Physical Culture" and it recommends to always do your calisthenics in an outdoor setting or at least next to an open window. It also recommended eating your daily steak next to an open window. And to use soothing syrups made from only the finest heroin. But still, I have seen many indoor Watanabe matches that were terrible. And now 100% of the outdoor Watanabe matches I've seen have been good. Science.

3. Roderick Strong vs. Kazuchika Okada

For a guy nicknamed Mr. ROH you think they would just spell his name ROHderick. Okada is very much not good but there were moments in this I enjoyed. Instead of their usual guardrail with metal signs on it, the infield had these flimsy plastic barriers (I guarantee there were some people upset that they paid for front row and were denied flat metal to slap their palms on) and at one point Roddy backdropped Okada onto a barrier, overshot a bit and dumped Okada on his head into the crowd. But man the way Okada builds matches is just annoying. He has no clue how to go back on offense. He just gets hit with a move for a nearfall, both men sell, then Okada just does his own move. We get a few strike exchanges, and Strong's strikes completely smoke Okada's, so Strong always gets the better of him, and then every time Strong then turns to run the ropes that's when Okada greets him with a dropkick or something else. This shit happens in every. single. Okada match. It's just lazy structure, and it's why I get sucked out of his way-too-long matches at the halfway point. At a certain point it switches into "opponent does shit until Okada just does his signature shit". Nothing means anything after awhile. Strong gets a nice nearfall with his running kick, people in the crowd can't believe it, thought it was over. But then Okada just gets up at the same time as Strong and hits a tombstone. Story of the match, story of the wrestler. Yuck.

Not a bad show, although I have now officially seen too many Okada matches. I don't like him. BUT I loved the outdoor setting of the tapings. Gives the show a nice fresh look and looks like they got a bunch of people there. Funny as I hated the look of WMIX, but grew to enjoy the look of outdoor shows more and more. I wonder what moment turned me. It could have been Onita riding in a boat to get to a ring. Or a WCW Spring break show with somebody falling into a pool. It may have been CW Anderson riding on the back of a tractor to a ring in the middle of a cornfield. Yeah. It was probably that one. But whatever it was, I love the outdoor show vibe. So, excellent marks for presentation.

Also, A+ on the sound mixing. Kelly and Corino were mixed WAY down so I could hardly hear them, making them so easy to tune out. I don't know if this was Destination America or ROH themselves, but mixing those two dunderheads down is just an excellent move all around. Great job gang!

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV 8/14/15 Review

1. Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka vs. Toru Yano & Kazushi Sakuraba (9/21/14)

This kind of thing is refreshing after getting so many weeks of Okada WORKRATE EPICS it's just nice to see a couple old shooters be cocks to each other in a completely inconsequential match. I mean...I'd obviously always rather watch that than long Okada matches, but stay with me here. You watch this to see how Suzuki acts around Sakuraba, and in that regard it delivered. You had Suzuki (to the shock of nobody) pulling rank on Sak and bullying him a bit, and Sak was kinda playing the wounded child. Suzuki does bully better than just about anybody, and it all built to Sak locking on an awesome kneebar while Suzuki was tied up in the ropes, and I just loved Sak maniacally locking it on while Suzuki writhed on the apron. Nobody cares about what Yano did in this and as I type this I've already stricken most of it from my memory. I did dig the finish as Iizuka gets the claw and Yano cuts him off with a kick to the balls and a snug roll up. Afterwards Suzuki laughs and spits at the camera and does a great exaggerated Vince walk to show off how his hurt knee isn't hurt even though it's hurt.

2. Kota Ibushi & Tetsuya Naito vs. AJ Styles & Tama Tonga (9/21/14)

Dug a lot of this (well, I mean, Naito is...well you know), Ibushi is easily one of the best flippers who - like Styles did years ago - has transitioned nicely into using those spots as a heavy. Tonga is the best lackey in the Bullet Club and he really needs to be featured more instead of duds like Archer or Davey Boy. He moves really cool, bumps big and works way more stiff that guys like Karl Anderson or (obviously) Archer. Styles gets a little too hammy with the bumps here but he and Ibushi work great together and I really dig the Styles/Tonga team. Ibushi always hits his flying offense impossibly on point, and yeah, nice to see some fresh faces on this show. I don't think I can write up another Okada main event (which was why I skipped last week's show).

3. KUSHIDA vs. Ryusuke Taguchi (9/21/14)

A flawed but fun match with the strengths outweighing each guy's weaknesses. We had some issues of convenient selling and some funny build, but the overall story worked for me. I don't really love either guy's personality but something clicked for me. It's possible my White Russian is doing the clicking for me, who knows. But I got into the leg work vs. arm work aspect, loved KUSHIDA kicking the hell out of Taguchi's arm to set up the Hoverboard Lock (which really is a great looking sub) and Taguchi going after the knee to set up the ankle lock. KUSHIDA does a lot of handspring offense and he snaps off handsprings more believably than anybody else in wrestling. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. Because handspring offense is almost universally idiotic. It's like someone being the best at plunging a toilet that they clogged. Or somebody being really good at scraping the black parts off of toast that he burned because he doesn't realize that the dial on the breakroom toaster IS A TIMER. TURNING IT UP DOES NOT MAKE IT HOTTER, IT IS A FUCKING TIMER. It is a set of heated coils which stay heated for a set amount of time based on what number the dial is turned to, but this guy is really good at making his burnt bagel somewhat edible. They do some roll ups that are entirely goofy but I had fun with them, I totally bought into the Hoverboard teases and certainly thought a tap out was coming, loved moments of Taguchi scrambling for ropes, and yeah. This was fine. This was fine pro wrestling. My time did not feel wasted.

Post match and Taguchi does an interview where he keeps saying something translated as "Oh my and Garfunkel"....which is weird. Is it like when religious people avoid saying the Lord's Name so they say something like Oh My Land or Oh My Stars? Is he just being a silly goofball? He kept saying Garfunkel and it was equal parts amusing and confusing.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/3/15 Review

I'm happy to have more wrestling on my TV. Maybe I'm a luddite - well, I definitely am - but getting to watch something on my large HD TV screen will always win out over watching that same thing on my laptop. I've been mostly out of the ROH loop for the last year or two - there are no Sinclair stations in my area - so let's dive back in and watch, shall we?

I know these aren't filmed exclusively for DA, but it would be cool if this brings them any amount of new fans. And I can't imagine a better introduction to new fans than seeing the hate-filled scowl of Jay Briscoe and caveman insanity of Mark. I love Briscoe promos.

1. Will Ferrara vs. KUSHIDA

I had not seen Ferrara before, and that was probably a good thing. Will Ferrara was definitely a current day indie wrestler. Went through all the motions and movements of a wrestler, no substance whatsoever. There's this certain way a lot of newish indie workers move, this puffed chest/butt out style of movement, and he's got that down pat. He wimps out of his clothesline follow through and seems scared to hit people with his dropkick, but he knows chest puff/butt out style. KUSHIDA has popped up lately on the Friday NJPW show, and he's okay but also has a lot of weenie strikes. His springboard head graze is apparently a signature spot of his (I thought he was working a parody highflyer gimmick against Ricochet), and he throws these real lousy not punches/not forearms where he just kinda hits Ferrara's forehead with his wrist. Imagine the worst version of the way Robert Gibson would throw punches off a hot tag. Ferrara hits an impressive suicide dive tornado DDT but it doesn't really go anywhere. I do love the hoverboard lock as a finisher, looks nasty and Ferrara only briefly held on before wisely tapping. So I liked that, but a lot of this was....not much.

2. Silas Young vs. Watanabe

Young's "Last Real Man" persona rings a little hollow with me as I'm always just left wishing he was more of an asskicker. He's got a great 'stache, and a good mug, but doesn't really work stiff and really, just kind of scowls. It needs some work. Watanabe is a pretty low end NJPW guy who throws poor elbow strikes and sells moves by making exaggerated Eddie Murphy-as-Buckwheat faces. Young kicks him in the ear and Watanabe perks his head up, widens his eyes and purses his lips. Maybe it's more of a Church Lady reaction. He does it three different times here. Young takes a couple nice bumps here, bouncing off the apron after a clothesline and flipping over off a suplex on the floor, but Watanabe isn't very good and Young seems like he needs an actual asskicker in there with him to bring out his best.

3. Moose vs. Colby Corino

I'm a fan of a good squash and Corino manned into some stuff admirably here. Corino is scrawny enough that I cringed whenever he would get tossed around. He takes a big time bump into the guardrail, takes a powerbomb on the apron and one on the floor. I dig squashes in wrestling, especially on an ROH card so we don't just see 8 straight matches of do-si-do mirror sequences.

4. Donovan Dijak & J. Diesel vs. The Briscoes

This was a nice extended squash. Diesel works an amusing golden gloves boxing gimmick, Dijak is a guy with some height and not much else. I love all of Mark's strikes and his dropkicks are some of the best in wrestling. Jay is maybe the most intense dude in wrestling today, his scowls are downright mean. I wish I could have seen them work WAR. I love Briscoe matches when they just start going on a rampage, they both know how to ramp things up so damn well.


This was kind of a weird episode to debut to a wider audience. I know they just opted to show the Sinclair episode that already aired this week (which makes sense) but this was not a good episode in the least for new eyeballs. The homegrown guys looked like duds, and the two matches they pushed from the very beginning of the show didn't end up actually happening, which might look odd to new eyes. Not that anybody would have likely been clamoring for BJ Whitmer in a singles match, but it's strange to start a show advertising just two matches, and keep advertising them throughout the show, and then do a bait and switch on both of them. At least the Briscoes were featured, who are no doubt the best guys in the fed, so at least they had that on their side. Still, you have to assume somebody somewhere was seeing this for the first time. And that person just got to watch Will Ferrara.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 15 Review (feat. more Matt D/Young Bucks feud data)

1. The Time Splitters (Alex Shelley & KUSHIDA) vs. The Young Bucks (6/21/14)

I really dug this! Bucks worked a super effective heel RnR style and other than my complaint of them  never using the springboard tombstone as a finish, thought this was one of their best performances. They bumped around (especially Matt), their tandem offense looked good, and Matt threw some nice mule kicks, flashier spots (the tornado DDT to Shelley after Matt floated through to the apron was slick). This actually had the best usage of their double tombstone, as it clearly looked like it would have finished the match had Shelley not burst in with a great save. The build to the hot tag was really good, and the heel schtick came off more legit here than it does on the indies, for reasons I can't easily explain. Possibly because they toned down the more cornball antics (which I actually like from them in certain situations) and worked with a slight sinister edge. Crowd was hot, work was good, match was time well spent.

FOUR SAMPLE MATT D YOUNG BUCKS MOOD CHECKER:

We now have four Bucks samples since I....well flat out forgot about this gimmick. Matt still seemed a little bull-headed about the Bucks last we checked in, but maybe there was a hint of retreat. I thought they looked good here and I love the vibe of a heel RnR who work less cute, more dickhead. I'm giving this one easily to the YB.

MATT: 1
BUCKS: 3

2. Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka vs. Kazushi Sakuraba & Toru Yano (6/21/14)

I dug this one too! Suzuki and Iizuka are a fun tag team, and seeing Suzuki tangle with Saku was a kick. The end run had Saku going for all sorts of subs and every time it looked like Suzuki was about to tap. The triangle was locked in and the rolling Americana looked great, and they kept getting broken up. Both teams had some nice convincing saves, and I love a great save in a tag match. Loved Yano rolling up Suzuki in a beautiful high cradle, really thought he was pinning Suzuki, so didn't notice Iizuka creeping up to pull the ref. I love Suzuki being the one guy in wrestling who understands running physics, so knows how to actually just stop running when Irish whipped. I love the sequences that followed both those physics spots. Really fun match.

3. Kota Ibushi vs. Ricochet (6/21/14)

Awesome little spotfest that would have been viewed as an instant classic on Lucha Underground, but kinda got a bit ignored on this show. We don't get tons of selling, but when the spots are this fun who cares. Tons of neat springboard spots, with Ricochet hitting a snug dropkick and later a massive shooting star. Ric landing on his feet and casually strutting away was one of several holy shit rewind that! moments, one-upping his earlier flip dive over the ringpost that spilled him way into the crowd. Ric's kicks all looked nice and Ibushi's weren't too shabby, all the "missed" stuff looked good, and there was a bunch of really terrific strike blocking. It always looks cool when you chop attach a guy's clothesline or something, and both guys got cool strike blocks here. Ricochet front kicking an Ibushi clothesline, both men tossing out blocks during fast strike exchanges. They all ruled. This was just satisfying as fuck moves based wrestling.

This was a real satisfying episode of NJ TV. Tons of variety, episode went by in a flash.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 14 Workrate Report

1. Taichi vs. KUSHIDA (6/8/14)

Well, these two have a bunch of offense that doesn't look very good. KUSHIDA almost seems to be working a parody of high flying gimmicks, as he'll do a springboard but just lightly tap Taichi with a chop on the way down. He also busted out some amusing double axe handles. It's like he's a junior flyer implementing a 70s territorial heel offense. Before the match Taichi attacked KUSHIDA with a chair in some pretty convincing ways, and the match had tons of interference from TAKA, then Alex Shelley came out to even things out. But that pre-match interference led to some good early pinfalls as KUSHIDA wasn't as beaten down as Suzuki-gun thought. A lot of KUSHIDA's strikes don't look great, but he oddly has a bunch of great missed strikes where he cuts close and looks like he woulda just knocked Taichi's block off. At one point we get a nasty moonsault where Taichi gets his knees up and KUSHIDA basically crashes his knees and shins into Taichi's knees and shins. It looked sick. Buuuuuuuut it wasn't a part of the finish so neither man really acknowledged how painful it looked immediately afterwards. Eh. This was what it was.

2. Ricochet vs. Ryusuke Taguchi (6/8/14)

Taguchi took most of this which made it pretty clear that Ricochet was moving forward to the finals. Taguchi looked good in his moments, with a big dive, nice kicks, couple big vertical suplexes, took Ricochet's kicks on the chin. But he also rushed through his moves the way a guy losing a short match rushes through his moves. I've seen Ricochet look better than he looked here, but hey, this was short and designed to make Taguchi look strong in a loss so whatever.

3. Ricochet vs. KUSHIDA (Best of the Super Juniors 2014 Finals)

Hey this was fun! Not that I was expecting it to be bad, but for a 24 minute match this thing just cruised right on by. I enjoyed it all, too, just a fun little match. The opening felt like early 2000s indy stuff, but in a good way, like the first time I saw Low Ki vs. Red. And the handsprings and backflips actually got integrated well, instead of feeling like a well-rehearsed dance routine. And it led to our first great moment, when Ricochet went for a handspring elbow and KUSHIDA hit a low dropkick right into his arm mid-handspring. Great spot, followed by KUSHIDA hitting a massive and accurate flip dive over the buckles (and Ricochet did a good enough selling his wing the rest of the way). KUSHIDA's Hoverboard Lock is a cool/goofy/fun/effective submission and I dug how it kept playing into the stretch. Ricochet goofed around maybe a little much during this, but that is his personality and the fans over there like him so it's probably a nitpick. Tons of good stuff in this, a real satisfying addition to a tournament that used to be one of my favorite yearly things and is now something that I don't really care about.

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