2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Ospreay

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay RPW 2/14

PAS: I was pretty wary about this match. Ospreay is normally way too much for me, and a maximalist top British star vs. top British star match felt like heartburn was on it's way. This was certainly a big main event match, but I thought it was sensibly put together. It was going to be Ospreay's big shit against Sabre's slickness and they had a bunch of fun ways to tell that story. Sabre would slap on a bunch of nasty submissions to cut off Ospreay's momentum, but wasn't able to stanch every Ospreay attack. I really liked how Sabre countered the head tuck superkick, by slithering on to Ospreay's back and getting in hooks. Finish was exactly what it should be, as Sabre tries to put him out with a triangle choke, even landing some nasty elbows, but Ospreay is able to yank him to the top rope for a superbomb, back elbow to the head, and spinning neckbreak (all three of which looked nasty) and that is it. I was expected another five minutes of dramatic near falls, and instead it just ends when it should have. Really rare for a 2020 wrestling match.

ER: This was really great, one of those few times a year when the Segunda Caida circle overlaps with the Meltzer circle on our Venn diagram. I'm going to have issues with a lot of matches that get 30 minutes, and I don't think Ospreay is someone who has 30 minutes of material. However, I think Sabre is the best guy at fleshing out Ospreay's material, and together they make some cool music. Ospreay has some legitimately cool stuff, but there a lot of his matches I've seen have had a lot of cool dance stuff thrown out with little rhyme or reason. Sabre establishes a ton of cool reversals early in the match and makes Ospreay's trademark big spots mean something, and when Ospreay starts switching up his strategy and approaching trademark sequences differently so that they land, it just makes it all the more satisfying. I loved how Sabre connected dots on his submissions, and loved how adept he was at reversing Ospreay. These two work incredibly quick with each other, and when most guys work quick there tend to be a lot of steps that get skipped. But Sabre incredibly does not skip steps, instead is able to work super fast all while showing his work. Working this quick you wouldn't expect someone to reverse a handspring kick by catching the leg, dropping down with the ankle over shoulder, lock in a grapevine, bury a fist in the square of your opponent's back, then lock in your crossface; one of those steps (most likely the fist jammed into the back) will normally be skipped at the service of "work fast look cool".

But Sabre spent this whole match showing his work and not letting it slow him down once, and it looked awesome. I loved how quickly he was able to fly into things, like the way he leapt at Ospreay and landed in a fully locked in octopus, sinking it in as quickly and efficiently as I reach for my toothbrush. These two were like glue with each other, and when you move this fast it's super impressive to not slip out of something momentarily and then put yourself *back* into something, but I didn't notice any of that. This was all of Sabre's smoothest trippiest counters to Ospreay's flash, with Sabre baiting Ospreay into throwing out limbs and always capitalizing. Ospreay's comebacks were planned smartly and the learned behavior was really satisfying, so that once things start landing and he starts recognizing what Sabre is using as bait, starts realizing that Sabre is locking subs on from different angles, it's really fulfilling. I thought the nearfalls built nicely, and they all came off stuff that deserved to be nearfalls. My favorite was Sabre leaping onto Ospreay with a flying guillotine, hoping to drag him to the mad with the added weight of the leap, but Ospreay instead turning he weight to his advantage and shifting the momentum into a sick brainbuster. I had no idea who was winning this, and I love when a longer match like this is able to maintain that "either guy can win this at any moment" feeling throughout, while somehow not feeling like move trading, and not showing their hand.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Park

1. LA Park vs. Eddie Kingston RPW 2/14

PAS: This was the most lucha of the LA Park indy matches I have seen. PARK comes in and right as he is about do his chair dance, Kingston jumps him and kicks his ass all over the arena. Kingston is full on Fuerza in this match, mocking the dance, unlacing the belt and making the ref hit him with it, just classic rudo stuff. We get some heel ref stuff, which pays off by PARK chairshotting him and then some really great hard hitting back and forth. Kingston is just lacing Park with chops, and Park fired back with this great looking headbutt. Lots of nasty chair shots by both guys too. I loved how aggressive Kingston was. This was a match with tons of shtick, but Kingston always made it a fight. Kind of mix of a PARK house show match full of stuff, and a PARK vs. Mesias brawl. I certainly do not follow Rev Pro, and don't know who Mad Kurt is, but his little run and low blow on Kingston worked in the spirit of the match, and lead to a sick spear through the table. I adored this, two of my all time favorites (and a relatively rare double C+A match) and it lived up to it's promise.

ER: How ridiculous is it that Park has been on his indy tour for a couple years now, and the first fed to give us this match between two of the best wrestlers of the past decade plus, who both work the same parts of the country...is RevPro. RevPro of all places gives us the gift of Kingston vs. LA Park, a genuine dream match, and it delivers in a way I definitely didn't expect it to. I have seen Park live working almost all of the comedy bits he does here, and I've seen him in other matches working these bits. And Eddie Kingston made these bits and this silly/violent shtick work better than anybody else I've seen. Kingston was a natural lucha foil for Park, because he filled in the rest of the match with violence. Most of the times I've seen comedy Park, there's no violence in between the bits. Usually, there is just mugging and standing in between the bits. But here we get all the most Monterey ref involvement, with the ref being called into action, helping the rudo, injured shoulder 2 counts, pulled in front of offense, all of that stuff that is absolutely THE WORST when it is done poorly (it is almost always done poorly). And Kingston turns some one of the worst wrestling tropes into actual entertainment, the perfect personality and skill to work this match.

Right at the start he jumps Park as Park is posing on his chair, and the fans boos, and before punching Park in the head and kicking his ass to the floor, Kingston looks to the fans with an expression that said "Who the fuck boos?" The brawling was all really good, with Kingston throwing punches much more for impact than for accuracy, which added to the atmosphere. Park takes a big bump into the guardrail (which was loose and goes flying into fans) and Kingston bashes him with hard chairshots. And by the time we get Kingston removing Park's belt and whipping his back and chest, it just gives Kingston another attack, as his chops were landing just as hard as his belt shots. Park has big shots of his own obviously, including a hard headbutt, a couple of cool sliding knee variations, and we build to the heaviest and hardest tope I've seen this year, with Kingston just absorbing all of that skeleton torpedo as it crushed him into the guardrail. Hats off to the overly involved referee, too, who worked everything with quick timing that never lingered on him. Nearly every time we get ref involvement like this, huge portions of the match stop or get completely derailed by the ref staying out on the stage too long during each of his moments. Her the referee kept things moving quick and never dawdled, and the guy has balls for staying in the way of a speeding Park tope for as long as he did (before Kingston expertly and kindly pushed him out of harms way to take it). Kingston is so good at mixing lucha comedy timing with violent brawling, a style you don't really get to see from him, and maybe we owe Chikara some credit for his lucha timing. He's always stood out as unique when compared to other Chikara trainees, but you see something like this and you remember how well he can do every wrestling aspect, and that came from somewhere. I, too, have never heard of Mad Kurt before this match (and a quick scan of RevPro's roster page revealed several other guys who looked like people posing for Spirit Store's catalog), but Kingston selling a big comedy ballshot was worth having to look at Kurt's sunken chest. Some of my favorite matches of any given year are ones that take familiar and even annoying wrestling tropes, and mine them for something special. This is a great example of what two legends can accomplish.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Mason vs. Sabre

18. Zach Sabre Jr. vs. James Mason RPW 3/31

PAS: So cool to see Mason, who has been one of the great under the radar wrestlers of the last 20 years get a big showcase main event match. I imagine this will be one of his most watched matches ever, and he was great in it. This was worked similar to Sabre vs. Navarro, with Sabre working as a guy outclassed on the mat, and trying to keep up. I think I prefer that to Sabre as a dominant mat guy, and really want to see Sabre vs. Fujiwara or Sabre vs. Joe Malenko. They had some very cool reversals, including a long section of reversing straightjacket neck locks in cool ways. Mason always seemed a step ahead and I liked Sabre getting frustrated and throwing a couple of cheapshots, especially right after Mason refused to hit a downed opponent. Didn't build to an epic finish, but I liked the idea of Mason thinking he had pulled one over on the kid, only to fall into a trap.

ER: I loved this, just what I was in the mood for this evening and didn't realize it until I had started it. Phil and I have become the big Sabre drum beaters, which is great, but Mason is a guy who is an obvious SC fave...who we don't happen to write about that often. It's weird. Mason is a guy who, whenever he's come up, we both think routinely looks like one of the best in the world. Feels like a guy we should do a compact C&A for just so we can get more Mason content in our archives. We have as many Doug Williams reviews on this site as we do James Mason reviews, and that's just stupid. Mason is great, and this is like seeing Sabre against a younger and dare I say even better Negro Navarro. Both guys can work mean and this had a lot of nasty neck cranks that felt even worse as I watched it with a stiff neck, lots of yanking jaws one way while pushing on the ear, lots of smothering guys with their own arm, lots of snugly applied straightjacket locks with precision counters, lots of wrists bent over and snapped around, looking like some classic gorgeous violent World of Sport. This show should have been filled with old men in brown sport coats and old women in overcoats. I dug all the stuff around butterflying the legs, loved both men's attempts at tying the other's arms behind them, Mason locks on a Kikuchi level Boston crab at one point, throws battering ram headbutts to the gut and hits shoulderblocks and shoves like a Put Yer Dukes Up prohibition streetfighter. Agree with Phil about Sabre as frustrated lightly overmatched prick being extremely entertaining (though I also like a ton of Sabre-dominant matches), as there are always legitimately painful moments that Mason gets put through, but he just as often has a quick and violent counter for it, and tricked Sabre is always fun. Mason even takes a great classic British comedy slo mo pratfall bump over the top rope and almost landing hands first on the chest of a busty lady in the front row. Felt like a spry Benny Hill bit that hadn't been sped up yet. I like how this escalated and thought both guys kept an impressive violent pace throughout, though the finish felt mildly out of nowhere despite plenty of match time. I would love to see Mason become a guy who gets on American indy shows, and Sabre now has a long streak of delivering.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2017 Ongoing MOTY LIst: Shibata v. RIddle

2. Katsuyori Shibata v. Matt Riddle RPW 1/21/17

PAS: I enjoyed this a fair amount, although Shibata dream matches are not my kind of wrestling. You can tell that Riddle is really jazzed to work Shibata and his enthusiasm is what I liked the best about this. They had some pretty nifty arm bar based matwork, it wasn't Tamura but it was pretty good. After the matwork they got down to business and started cracking each other. Riddle had great facial selling, everytime he got smacked has this look on his face like "can you believe how hard this motherfucker is throwing? Let's go" This had some of the no-selling I can't stand in Shibata matches, and sometimes Riddle falls into the bad habits of his opponents, but overall this was good stuff.

ER: The dumb parts of this were dumb, the good parts of this were really good. The stupid german suplex tradeoffs come off really eyeroll-y to me at this point, they never seem organic or part of the actual match. I would say that we're all tired of turn-based chop and elbow exchanges, but the crowd began flipping out when Shibata started requesting to be chopped, so the formula works for the paying audience. I thought all that stuff was pretty lame, and minimized the actual cool stuff they were doing, and thankfully there was still a lot of cool stuff. All of the mat work is just insanely fast and makes me constantly expect some kind of tear. When I played baseball I remember this guy Nick, an athletic shortstop on my team, dove back into 3rd on a pickoff and his patella had completely twisted to the inner part of his knee. It was horrifying. Everything these guys do seems far more likely to end in a dislocated kneecap. All the armbar rollthroughs are fast but hypnotic, and while all of it is smooth you can very easily see something popping in an instant. I loved when they were each rolling out of each other's wrist control and Shibata rolled through into almost a grounded cartwheel spin kick to land in control. It's a bummer that I thought the suplex trading and planned strike exchanges took away from better, similar moments. Riddle had all these cool tough Karelin lifts that didn't seem nearly as impressive when both guys are bouncing off their heads and popping up to bounce the other guy off their head. And the finish was masterful, like the best Futen/Batt, with Shibata catching Riddle with a hard slap that dropped him, before tapping him In a vacuum the finish was perfection. But it came off lesser than it should have since I just watched these two voluntarily stand (kneel) and trade harder shots moments before. Sure we can make the argument of expected shots not hurting as much as surprise shots, but that would be ignoring that Shibata has a habit of not ending matches on his best strike. Still, the good in this was really good.

2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURAT MATT RIDDLE 

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Hero v. Shibata

55. Chris Hero v. Katsuyori Shibata RPW 11/11

PAS: In many ways this reminded me of the Samoa Joe v. Kenta Kobashi match, this absolutely delivered what the crowd wanted to see. They wanted to watch a big indy star work a signature New Japan Shibata match and that was what they got. I can understand why someone might have this as their MOTY, even though it isn't really my type of thing. Hero added some very fun flourishes to this, he was kind of a shitstirrer, talking trash, slapping Shibata in the face, doing a douchy kip up. When it came time to hit hard, Hero can do that as well as anyone, and they pounded each other, there was an especially great knee counter when he looked like he broke Shibata's ribs. I also really liked the way Shibata kept grabbing the sleeper hold, he was tenacious, got into it in a bunch of fun ways, and you really bought it as a finish. Still this had a bunch of elbow..stare..elbow spots, which really can take me out of a match, it is a stylistic thing I just hate. I imagine I will like this more then any New Japan match this year (unless Liger works a rookie or something) but I can't see it super high on my overall list.

ER: Not my favorite Hero match of the year, but Hero is on such a roll this year that he's spinning gold everywhere. Shibata is game and they work a nice condensed version of a modern Hero epic. What's ironic is I've complained about Hero matches going too long, therefore making his opponents seem too strong; and here, we get a 15 minute match and I didn't think Shibata took ENOUGH abuse. Will I ever be pleased? I line up pretty well with Phil on this one, could have done without the New Japan-y elements, loved the moments that felt more like Hero vs. an indy guy. Shibata is a great modern kicker, and Hero is a guy who will lean into kicks, and while the fans were dying to get behind Hero he kept doing all these great little dickhead cutoff spots, the best being a straight punch to the jaw to an unsuspecting Shibata. Every American watching knew Hero was going to work heel right when he came out in the Duke U gear, but I'm not sure how well that specific brand of white privilege translates over the pond. I would have liked to see some selling from Shibata as he mostly worked that chug chug chug NJPW style of "stand up and do your shit", but Hero made sure he stayed down a couple of times with some absolutely beastly knees that I don't recall seeing from him. Both looked like they should have permanently wrecked Shibata, so he's obviously a real man for taking them, but man they looked like finishers; the rolling knee (when he usually does a pump kick) as Shibata ducked in was just so nasty looking. Shibata not winning the strike game and going for sleeper chokes was a great plan, and loved how that's where we ended, with Hero going down to the sleeper through gritted teeth, long enough for the PK to do him in.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Global Cruiserweight Series: RPW Qualifying Match

Noam Dar v. Josh Bodom RPW 5/1/16

PAS: Kind of an odd match to run as a qualifier. You figure these would be more showcases for the guy going over, but this was more of an angle based match. Dar hurts his arm early and Bodom works it over with Dar doing a nice job of selling. They also do a bunch of spots with Bodom's stable mates interfering.  I didn't get much of a sense of Dar's stuff, although I loved his final kneebar and the fight over the finish.

ER: I was unfamiliar with both men going into this, and I came away liking Bodom and thinking Dar is one of those guys who I may like or dislike depending on the opponent. He has a lot of hammy facials and pauses before hitting offense, and I have a feeling against some guys we'd have to suffer through extended periods of schtick. For a 12 minute match this took forever to get going. We get a long stand off and several singing chants from the crowd which made it an easy choice to watch most of it on mute. I've heard dozens of Hey Jude renditions, I don't need to hear an indy wrestling crowd's take. Bodom had a nice snap to a lot of his stuff and I liked the way he pressed on. Dar was really effective at selling the arm, really wisely able to use only his good arm throughout the entire match and never dropping it for brief moments of convenience. The interference felt odd and out of place, as Phil mentioned, and I would have liked a different structure, but by the end this won me over.


WWE GLOBAL CRUISERWEIGHT SERIES GUIDE

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Styles v. Sabre

3. AJ Styles v. Zack Sabre Jr. Revolution Pro 1/16

PAS: This was very indy juniors dream match style, which isn't really my thing, but this was a pretty great version of that match. I really liked the opening scramble sections of this, which were functionally Guerrero v. Malenko roll up, but with completely different spots. Styles has very powerful and aggressive take downs which really add interest to any jockying for position. I also really dug all of the different ways both guys got into there submissions, very creative stuff, Styles especially has a bunch of nasty ways to work in his ankle slicer. They did a strike exchange section which was a bit superfluous, but the finish run was pretty good, and I liked the finishing submission a bunch.

ER: I liked this even more than Phil. The lost the narrative a few times and you could argue they almost did too much stuff, but damn do I love the stuff that they do. Phil is spot on with the Malenko/Guerrero new era stuff, as it doesn't totally go anywhere and it only serves as a pretty way to jockey for control, but it's far more interesting that tests of strength and collar/elbows. They do a bunch of cool snapmares rolled into wristlocks, they scramble into and out of perilous positions, they move at an alarmingly fast pace that would leave me wondering which way is up. Sabre clearly has glue on his hands as Styles needs to always be careful not to leave a limb hanging. They do too much cool stuff like Sabre catching a single leg during a leapfrog, or the nastiest moment of the match: Sabre grabbing Styles wrist and violently bending it down and back, wrestling Styles to the ground to stomp on his folded under elbow. Styles goes after the knee, Sabre goes after the arm and wrist, and while selling can get convenient they always remind us that the damage is there. I liked that the Styles Clash plays into Sabre's strength, as it's a move that required a bit of set up, requires Styles to be a bit vulnerable in the moments he's maneuvering Sabre into position, and they play up those moments of vulnerability by having Sabre grab an arm, grab a choke, leaving Styles to decide if he wants to finish things another way or find a quicker way to lock on the Clash. The ankle slicer is a painful sub that looks painful, and I would have been fine with that ending things, but we get gifted with a wild Sabre multi-layered sub that just screamed. Both of these guys are very clever and know their way around an indy workrate epic. Awesome stuff.


2016 MASTER LIST

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