SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!! 2/8/97

 

1. Ryo Miyake vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: Miyake is representing Tarzan Goto, and Sensei Goto is lurking in the crowd just waiting to invade. Goto is sitting alone in Korakuen wearing a purple suit and a white collared shirt with the top buttons unbuttoned. He appears to have an entire row to himself and looks smug, and powerful. They cut to him a lot during the match and they're right to do so. Where can I get Miyake's yellow Tarzan Goto shirt? I would pay very good money for it. Miyake is representing W*ING and Tokyo Pro and Japanese sleaze in general and the Goto shirt is firing up Shinichi Nakano at ringside. Ishii has neon green tights, and a neck. 

It gets good when Miyake starts toe kicking Ishii in the back and side of the head as the latter was getting up. There hadn't been any kind of Kurisu energy and that sparked something. When they go into an elbow exchange, Ishii works his a little and Miyake just runs through him with extra pounce on impact. Ishii kind of tenaciously goes after a hammerlock and that's a cool Ishii I don't know. Ryo Miyake looks like Satanico crossed with Akitoshi Saito but in a fucked up way and not a cool way. Ishii lays out for a Dynamite Kid diving headbutt 2/3 of the way across the ring and this Ishii is so much better. Miyake throws a WAR level lariat running out of the corner. His single leg crab and Texas Cloverleaf looked back backbreaking. I don't think Dean Malenko had a better application and execution of the Cloverleaf any time in '97. I've seen fucking all of them. 

Miyake invites Tarzan Goto into the ring and he takes his time walking from the 15th row of Korakuen, carrying an attaché. Nakano and now Arashi get hot and riled up at the sight of Tarzan Goto in a perfect suit jacket looking The Most Dapper Tarzan Goto Can Look, meaning his stubble is only 6 days old. Koji Kitao comes down, Goto just leaves and holds court outside the building, taking questions on the street as he's hailing a cab. You ever seen a god? 

2. Onryo vs. Choden Senshi Battle Ranger

ER: This is going to be an exciting mess with more crashes than hits and I love it. Onryo's pescado sends him crashing to the ground in front of Battle Ranger, who is still wearing his cape because Onryo hid under the ring and jumped him. Ranger takes a great ringpost bump that looks greater because he's still wearing his big cape. Onryo is remembered for his bumps and risks but his worked punches are a lot better than you remember. He throws an excellent dropkick and is good at leaning into kicks, including Battle Ranger's missile dropkick to the floor, springing off the middle rope. Battle Ranger takes a fucking Jerry bump (!) and Onryo runs up the buckles and dives into him with a Jerry bump AS OFFENSE! It all looks great. 

All of Onryo's offense is tighter than I remembered, and Battle Ranger does little things like kick Onryo in the face hard before hitting an Asai moonsault, not just focusing on hitting the move but actually thinking about believably neutralizing his opponent before hitting it. There's an unexpected and fantastic fight over a rear waistlock, where Onryo keeps trying to kick back - hard - at Battle Ranger's legs but Ranger keeps dodging while holding the waistlock, before suplexing Onryo onto the back of his head. Battle Ranger looks like he damn near snaps Onryo's neck with a muscle buster and this whole thing started cool and kept getting better. We used to seek out WAR tapes for Ultimo Dragon matches and here are two better WAR undercard juniors in the post-Ultimo Dragon era. I don't think anyone was ever getting tapes for the Onryo or Choden Senshi Battle Ranger matches, because we didn't know anything then. Now we can change. 

3. Kamikaze vs. Atsushi Kikuchi

ER: Yume Factory mentioned. Kikuchi is a black trunks white boots no kneepads guy like Riki Choshu but with Tenzan's head. Their matwork is strong and tough, locked in, forearms across jaws. Kamikaze's moonsault has impact like 2 Cold Scorpio's. Kikuchi throws a lot of weight behind lunging elbow smashes and a dropkick, and jumps off the apron with a clothesline the way someone who wasn't totally thinking it through would do. He throws a butterfly suplex with real physics and hits a lariat even harder than Riki's. Kikuchi is one of our great post-peak lost WAR guys; a guy who was only around a few years during the WAR era with less available TV. We need the 1999 Atsushi Kikuchi handhelds. Every suplex thrown is stiff: vertical suplex with brainbuster drop, a German that snaps Kamikaze's legs over his body, a Kamikaze back suplex that was clearly meant to drop Kikuchi on his neck, with intent. Kamikaze returns the lariat from earlier and these lariats are Made in WAR, for WAR. A great lariat is the best roster prerequisite of any wrestling company in history. Kikuchi has no human idea how to take a tornado DDT but that's great because instead it just folds and crumples his body in a painful way. Kamikaze kicks him in the head a bunch after the match, after dropping him on his head with a fisherman's buster. Kamikaze knew WAR so well for a guy who didn't wrestle there very often. He was a natural fit who should have been a regular.  

4. Miho Watabe/Michiko Omukai vs. Sayuri Okino/Michiko Nagashima

ER: I don't know these women. I wasn't watching LLPW tapes in the 90s and I only know a few who have since. I know Watabe I guess. She's the one who looks like a small child. Watabe gets whipped around all over the ring by her hair and it's one of those women's wrestling spots from the 50s that can look so violent when done to a woman who is 90 pounds. Okino's snapmares are more violent but Nagashima's were quicker. Omukai has strong pinfall saves, always taking advantage of the situation and kicking Okino in the back of the head a few times, and Okino bumps nicely for Omukai's hot tag. Watabe can't get any weight behind her dropkick because she has no weight but she does it 20 or so times, spamming quantity, which is important. Omukai's dropkick hits like a joshi dropkick should, and she is very good at small things. Watabe has one good neck bridge spot that's very effective, and Nagashima is really good at hot girl dead eyed interference. She's like one of the Heathers, only with a kendo stick instead of a croquet mallet. 

5. Osamu Taitoko vs. Masakazu Fukuda

ER: WAR show giving us a sumo vs. freestyle match, which is why you watch WAR shows. Fukuda is listed as having a sumo background but wrestles with amateur single legs and pins like Takashi Sugiura or Chad Gable when he did that stuff a decade ago. Fukuda died tragically during the start of his New Japan career. Taitoko - the future Tachihikari - wants to treat him like a punk and Fukuda keeps fighting back against the charges. Fukuda tries to bulldog Taitoko and pretty soon (and pretty easily) gets him in mount with an elbow held across this throat. When they start hitting each other it's one of those great exchanges you get so consistently in WAR, as the much smaller Fukuda is fighting with speed while Taitoko punches him in the nose. Fukuda is small Sugiura, Taitoko is large Kamikaze. Taitoko hits harder and has a great standing sleeper, but Fukuda is relentless and hits a cool uranage on a very heavy man. Why do sumo guys always have such good kicks to the face? Were they all bullied and kicked in the face so much in training that they know how to deliver them naturally and pay them pay gleefully? Powerbombs are real in WAR. They are never faked. They are sincere. Fukuda keeps refusing to stay down for Taitoko's back suplex and powerbomb and chokeslam, all of which were delivered with intent, so Taitoko just clotheslines him in the back of the head and Gedo clutch's that wrestler of inferior style. 

6. Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Nobutaka Araya 

ER: 1997 Araya is still trying to do trunks and this boy is too beefy for these orange crush trunks to contain. Everybody's pants look a size too small in WAR and it's one of the best unsung features of WAR. Mochizuki throws six kicks to six different parts of Araya and they all make loud contact. Sumo vs. Kicker is going to be so damn good. It always is. The matwork is rugged, Araya is like Greg Valentine on the mat but his half crab moves into classic WAR torture. Araya is a real prick and he's so good when he wrestles as sadistic sumo Valentine. It's not enough to lock in a crunching STF, he starts pulling at the side of Mochizuki's eye with his fingers for leverage. Araya can really take - and sell - good kicks. He flies back into the ropes so convincingly and takes more than one cool bump to the floor. He also has a WAR level clothesline, per the prerequisite. His corner clothesline hits like Dr. Death, big impact. 

Araya drags Mochizuki's body through a good Korakuen brawl, throwing him down so hard on a bodyslam in the stands that some people around it reacted in real shock. His piledriver is perfect, and Mochizuki is bleeding, and bleeds even more when Araya starts throwing full force headbutts. Araya can absorb all of Mochizuki's good kicks, because he punches back so much harder. Araya starts suplexing him around like a corpse, then hits this killer running lariat and pounces into the cover, an excellent example of a man Trying to Put This Away. Araya even does a Valentine timberrrrrr bump after taking a kick to the face, and when he leans head and neck first into a springboard spinning heel kick it's an incredibly done nearfall. All the nearfalls down the stretch are great nearfalls because Araya starts spamming clotheslines and powerbombs until Mochizuki stays down. It genuinely felt like the real finish was Mochizuki taking as many of them as possible until physically incapable of lifting his body. This rocked in all ways, a near 20 minute match that kept getting stronger the longer Mochizuki persevered. 

7. Arashi/Shinichi Nakano vs. Yuji Yasuraoka/Lance Storm 

Storm and Yasuraoka are dressed like Fruit Stripe gum and they are one of the worst fucking teams of the 90s. Neither man looks like they belong in WAR and this match confirms that repeatedly. It's a minor miracle that Arashi and Nakano were able to make anything about this work, as Storm/Yasuraoka never looked like they belonged in the same ring as them. This is lavender tights/mullet era Arashi. Not to be fucked with. Lance Storm opts to fuck with him all match by hitting the worst offense in WAR history which leaves Arashi and Nakano wondering how to even acknowledge it. Imagine you're Lance Storm, coming into WAR, hitting your cartwheel clothesline and dropkicks that wouldn't budge a soul. Storm's matwork with Nakano is more interesting than watching him attempt any other offense. Are there any good mat-based Lance matches? The man was trained by one Hart brother for one day, there must be some matwork Lance out there. 

The match peaks when it's time for Storm and Yasuraoka's big comeback, where they manage to string together several pieces of offense that either miss entirely or land but wouldn't hurt a fly. It all starts when Lance slingshots himself to the floor with a cannonball...and launches himself far over Arashi's head, landing on his ass on the floor without making contact with a human body. Perhaps he was paying tribute to his partner, who tagged in early in the match with a slingshot senton that completely overshot Nakano. The two of them set up a kind of Total Elimination on Arashi that sees them both throw spinning heel kicks (Storm to the back of Arashi's head, Yasuraoka to the face) and both kicks mostly miss their target, so Arashi is left just standing there while they crash around him. Panicking, Lance follows it up with a dropkick that mostly misses and Yasuraoka has to hit a clothesline just so something finally connects with the largest man in the match who has been standing perfectly still this entire time waiting for anything to make contact with his body. 

You know who is a pretty badass tag team? Arashi and Nakano! They look like two men who should be able to effortlessly hit offense on Lance Storm and Yuji Yasuraoka, and they do! They are especially punishing to Yuji. Arashi lands heavy on elbowdrops, piledrives the man. When Nakano hits him with a brainbuster, Arashi comes in just to stomp him in the head, as it should be. Arashi is such a beast. He hits a big boy frog splash and an awesome nodowa otoshi where he lifts Yasuraoka up by the rear waist of his rights, then slams him forward by the throat. It's brutal having to see Lance Storm try and break up their offense to save Yasuraoka, because we are forced as a viewer to have to pretend a Lance Storm forearm had the power to knock Nakano off the apron. We are forced, as fans of wrestling, to treat Storm's silly leap to top buckle back elbow as a thing that could move a man. It's foolish. I liked how they finished Yasuraoka, him charging straight into a powerslam upon tagging in, Arashi giving him a couple powerbombs on a hard part of the ring, then finishing the job with a twisting frog splash. 

I don't know why WAR fans accepted these Fruit Stripe goofs. 

8. Genichiro Tenryu/Koki Kitahara/Tatsuo Nakano vs. Koji Kitao/Nobukazu Hirai/Hiroshi Hatanaka

ER: Not to the level of the highest of high end WAR trios, but the same kind of memorable as the best WAR trios. What made this match great, is Tenryu working simultaneously as the aace of the promotion babyface AND as a shitheel cheap shot artist. Tenryu is the god king of the promotion, the chairman, yet all match he's taking cheap shots whenever he can, kicking guys in the eye to break up pins, directing his boy Kitahara to do the same shit, that air of unprofessionalism running rampant. It is incredible to see Tenryu both humbled by Kitao, and act as a guy who doesn't want Kitao around. He cheap shots him, and takes liberties with Nobukazu Hirai just because the boy happened to be teaming with Kitao. It leads to the best parts of the match. 

Every Tenryu/Hirai interaction is good. Hirai has the fucking nerve to powerbomb him and Tenryu gets up pissed and starts kicking him in the face, then punching him in the face and eye. Tenryu tells Kitahara to do the same, so Kitahara tags in to kick Hirai in the face, but it's not hard enough so Tenryu comes back to show Kitahara how to kick Hirai in the face while Hirai is downed. Learning from the master, Kitahara tags back in and he throws even harder kicks at Hirai's head and face. This is the kind of wrestling storytelling I can follow and understand. We are all here for Nobukazu Hirai getting kicked in the face any time he steps over the plane of the ropes. It enrages Kitao while offering us nothing but joy. 

This is also a match that makes us ask the question, "Was Koji Kitao getting good at this?" The more he worked, the more his in ring confidence grew, the better he looked in the ring. This is one of those matches that highlighted his upside that was always there. How could there not be upside in a tall, 300+ pound disgraced sumo who can't control his anger? Kitao, in his large yellow pants and large yellow exposed breasts, attempted to mock Tenryu, and I loved all the exchanges between Kitao/Tenryu and Kitao/Kitahara. Kitao actually looked surprised at the fight Kitahara brought to him, as Kitahara came with hard leg kicks, and kept kicking at his legs after Kitao got dropped to a knee. When he has him suitably ripened, he tags Tenryu in, and the fireworks get bigger. Tenryu hits an enziguiri and cannonball, and you know it's good because Tenryu does that thing where he gets to his feet pumping his fist...only to turn around directly into a hard Kitao clothesline, then gets to feel what a fat boy senton really feels like. As Tenryu is recovering on the floor from his flattening, Kitao hits a baseball slide dropkick....and that is when it is officially Okay to ask if Koji Kitao Turned Actually Good in February 1997, and dare yourself to go back deeper to find any earlier moment that compares. 

The breakdown of the finish is excellent stuff, as we knew it was going to come down to Kitao and Tenryu going full unleashed on the other, and they do. Kitao is completely unmoved by two punches to the nose and rocks Tenryu with a right. Kitao walks through Tenryu's punches and throws great jabs, and anything Tenryu tries Kitao just spam blocks with kneelifts. Tenryu, getting nowhere, hilariously tags in sacrificial lamb Nakano, who gets immediately BURIED by a Kitao sitout tombstone. With Kitao distracted by a different body, Cheapshot Babyface Tenryu comes in and starts kicking Kitao in the face to chase him from the ring and bring the weaker members into the fray, because he is great at slapping and clotheslining Hirai and Hatanaka around. Tenryu's whole team is great at kicking and clotheslining and powerbombing Hatanaka. When the clear weak link of the match manages to hit Tenryu with a missile dropkick, all it does it back Tenryu into the ropes, giving him momentum to wreck him with a clothesline. This was a WAR heavyweights main event, driven by complicated relationships and in-fighting that we wouldn't understand but is tangible in all actions. 

THE COMPLETE SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!

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NJPW Wrestle Dynasty 1/5/25

 

Athena vs. Persephone vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Momo Watanabe 

ER: I'm kind of shocked by how good this was and how well they kept up a certain energy for 10+ minutes. But I also think a lot of it just might have been Athena. I think this was 10 minutes of waiting for what Athena was going to do next. She is pure lighting and can go go go. She leaps into everything at a doggish pace. She hits the mat and people hard. She gets thrown into a fast tope a minute in and I'm not sure it's the 4th coolest thing she did all match. I thought Persephone really shined in a match where they all got time to shine (and did). She had some big bumps and lands with good weight, real good babyface energy and a unique strength spot approach. Willow got the attention of a big crowd multiple times, and Watanabe was fine fourth wheel. But every great moment led to Athena making it greater. She worked into and out of sequences with everyone so well. She's like if Low Ki really loved Manami Toyota. It's electric. She chokeslams Persephone on the apron like a small Taue demon. When she hits the Eclipse on Willow it's like the finisher 2 Cold Scorpio was jealous he didn't invent. 

Willow makes the Eclipse even better by taking her straps down in power before turning into it. You know I am a big fan of Lawler strap lowering and lowering the straps before taking the final shot is arguably the best use of the straps. I love Willow. But Athena is as must watch in a match like this as prime Juvy. The opening 3 minutes was so hot and as well timed as the greatest 4 ways, and I didn't think the energy level could be maintained. Because of Athena, it was. She ran everything together and there were a lot of strong timing peaks from the other three. The finish was kind of silly, with Thekla not committing on interference enough for what should have been the finish and then Momo hitting Athena across the head with A FUCKING BASEBALL BAT as hard as she can, it comes off a bit ridiculous. Like your scoop suplex was cool, do a few of those and give your opponent something to actually sell. What's Athena supposed to do with a baseball bat shot to the head, work a brain damage angle for 10 months?  

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru/SHO

ER: Man this was good. This was most likely Dustin's last ever match in Japan. Maybe not. I wouldn't bet against him. But this was the first match he'd wrestled in Japan since 2010. The thing is, Dustin was never a Japan guy. You'd never know it from watching this match. This was a great performance that connected with a crowd that was seated far away from him, in a way where they seemed familiar with him just because his wrestling style is That Good. He's a man with an improbably long and impressively durable high end career and he's wrestling his first match in the Tokyo Dome in 30 years. It's an amazing return. He shows out for it. 

Dustin working against these two guys is weird and fun. The size difference between he and SHO is insane and SHO sells it as such all match. Dustin is tireless when he needs to be and makes the most out of a total name grab bag random set of career opponents. Do a fucking shining wizard thing that looks awesome, fuck yeah! Dustin's hot tag where he just wastes both of them is the best. SHO is taking Dustin clotheslines aimed at the jaw they both get powerslams he can still somehow give in the same twisting form. SHO takes almost all of Dustin's shit and he takes it so well. Once he bounced across the ring for a 55 year old code red, Dustin obviously knew this guy knew the deal and knew the Man. 

I never got the hate for Sammy. I think he's pretty great. I like a kid who's not a bad kid but also a little shit. A nice guy who is capable of saying something pretty mean to your sister. He does moonsaults with wild abandon and takes the farthest back body drop bumps of anyone on any of these rosters. Does a Good Superkick still matter in 2025? I think it can. If it can, then Sammy has some of the consistently best. Not just in execution, but in placement within a match. He has this way of milking goodwill out of every indie spot that's ever been overused: superkicks, back crackers, cutters, but maintains the timing to make all of them feed well into a legend like Dustin's offense. Kanemaru's moonsault across Dustin's knees looked pretty bad, but I guess if you were in a fight with Dustin the smartest thing you could do is target his knees so let's give Kanemaru Body Part Specific Moonsault Credit here. He still gets docked for not holding up his end of the match with his shtick. Dustin rules. 

Lucha Gauntlet

ER: Good lucha highspot showcase except it kept getting interrupted by less talented New Japan guys who threw the rhythm off. Mascara Dorada and Hechicero were standouts. Hechicero doing his thing within a growing throng of competitors was cool every time he was the focus, but I especially liked him tying up Fujita in knots when they were the only two. Dorada kept finding new ways to deliver and take offense, always throwing in something extra. He kept finding a new way to flip for a kick, and the key to Dorada at his best is he has this way of adding an extra flip or twist but making it look like it wasn't mapped way out ahead of time. His tope into Soberano was awesome, and Soberano was the best at catching everyone's dives during the big dive train. After he hit a tornillo with a million twists, they had him out front and center saving everyone's bacon.   

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Katsuyori Shibata

ER: This was an "Exhibition Match" but I am unclear on what was being exhibited. We know that Tanahashi has bad leg injuries and cannot move, but he has also had many other matches this year which were not just him exchanging chops with someone for 4 minutes before time expired. The one minute of collar and elbow lock up was much more engaging than the 4 minutes of chopping that followed. Meltzer went ***1/4 on this which might honestly be his most ridiculous rating ever. Calling a match 7 stars, we all know that's stupid, but he rated this higher than the Dustin tag and the women's 4 way, which were actual GOOD matches! Nobody could squint their eyes and even call this a match. It would be like giving Inoki ***1/4 for people lining up to take his bom-ba-ye slaps. What exactly was Meltzer rating here? What subtext am I missing that made it Good, Actually, that Tanahashi is incapable of throwing chops with any strength? 

Mercedes Mone vs. Mina Shirakawa

ER: I thought this was a really good Mina performance - one of her best long singles match showings I've seen - but I couldn't get into what Mercedes was doing. She had this weird way of silently emoting to the crowd, a PC thing that doesn't play at all in a gigantic dome. She would silently sell through her teeth as Mina was working over her leg, then sell her leg by doing a bunch of offense that required her to slam her knee into things. I don't think her teeth selling played in the large venue and I think she went to wordless crying faces too soon. Meanwhile, Mina was savagely going after her leg in ways she doesn't do in AEW. I loved all her knee breakers and the way she'd kick the inside of Mone's knee, slamming her knee into the mat and maneuvering into figure 4 leg locks (quicker than I thought she was capable of doing). Mone scrambling for the ropes was one of her only bits of selling I liked. Mina was working over Mone's knee not to soften her up for some submission, but to leave her prone for her impact DDTs, and I loved all of Mina's impact DDTs. But Mone was working this more like a "Things I Wanted To Do in the Tokyo Dome" so she was bridging up to hit the three amigos (feeling way out of place in this match) and then doing offense based entirely around fucking up her own knees: several different codebreaker/back crackers, a gutbuster, the meteora, just a total disconnect from the great match Mina was working. 

Brody King vs. David Finlay

ER: I don't know if I bought Finlay's offense against King, but I bought the way King took Finlay's offense and the way they made the most out of their misses. Finlay got sidestepped early on a charge into the guardrail, a great last second feint by King that sends Finlay into a gross full speed miss...but then Finlay hits that same flying body attack into King later in the match, delivered at the exact same speed and impacting King the way his body impacted the railing. I like that kind of commitment to not just a miss, but to show your delivery and execution is consistent and real. King is great at misses too, with a great miss very early on a charge into the corner. I love the specific way he hit the turnbuckle pad, like a dog who ran full speed into a sliding glass door. When this settled into Monster vs. Man it was at its best. Finlay's strikes look terrible so it made sense when King was knocking him around with his actual good elbow strikes, and Finlay does Staggered By Strikes selling better than I thought. The finish felt too abrupt for a match that had a good pace, but I kind of liked Finlay being unable to hit a sunset flip powerbomb out of the corner...only to just lift and hit a regular powerbomb right after. King made the Overkill look like a finish, dropping down fast face first into Finlay's knee. 

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Shota Umino 

ER: There aren't actually people out there who hype up Umino as some kind of good wrestler, right? I sure don't see that kind of praise, and I see no reason for that praise. This guy brings very little to the table. His strikes would not break through a spiderweb, and his selling is nonexistent. The first three minutes is just Claudio running him ribs first into the ringpost and a half dozen guardrails and I was looking forward to a match where Claudio beats the hell out of this man who could only exist in a post-Marufuji Japanese wrestling landscape. But this guy really has nothing once the actual moves are delivered. He is not bad at taking and selling a move itself, but once the moment has passed he is onto his bullshit. He fights this too often as Claudio's equal, but none of his offense makes him look equal to anyone. He is a less effective Kentaro Shiga, and lucky for him Claudio is good at taking all of his overly complicated DDTs. The one time Umino's damaged ribs came back into play was the only real compelling part of the match: Claudio's scorpion deathlock. This hold won me over the longer Claudio had it locked it. At first I thought it was for a pointless build to a bad Umino comeback, but the longer Claudio had it applied and the harder Umino fought for the ropes, the more I thought it could actually finish the match. The more I wanted it to finish the match, because I didn't want to see what kind of do-si-do reversal of a reversal nonsense Umino broke out for the home stretch. He made the ropes, he do-si-do'd, he somehow won without ever looking convincing in any way. 

Although he did do one thing well, and I couldn't believe it. HOW is Umino the guy who can throw good looking downward strike elbows to the head and neck?! Nobody makes those look good! Here's the lightest elbow striker on the card and he's lighting Claudio up while balancing on the ropes? What is the deal with this guy. 

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: This was the match I was expecting them to have and was a good version of that match, which is a match that I don't much care for. There are a lot of parts of an Ishii match that won't make sense when applied to most other wrestlers, because he is going to take punishment until he cannot. So it annoys me when Takeshita acts shocked at Ishii absorbing punishment. When Takeshita hits the Raging Fire falcon arrow off the buckles and Ishii kicks out, he sits there on his but in disbelief for an entire 30 seconds (!), filming an extended Performance Center tryout reaction because the guy who absorbs punishment kicked out of something like 7 minutes into a match. I hate this shit. Like man if I know he's going to get up and start exchanging elbows then you should clearly know this man will kick out of things and get up to fire off some elbows. 

Ishii will take plenty of punishment and I only find that so entertaining in 2025. He's a nut, this is what he does. He will get dropped on the top of his head on a German suplex, Takeshita trying to compress any more vertebrae that haven't been compressed yet, and Ishii will take a big clothesline bump on the back of his head. As tired as I am of stand and trade showdown wrestling, I did actually like them holding waistbands and throwing their hardest shots of the match, and how Takeshita levels him with one of his hardest elbows after they let go of the waistbands. I hate how we seemingly have to sit through a lot of bad stand and trade to get to the part where "this time we really mean it" but they did a good job of making the shots mean something more down the stretch. Ishii's popped me with a frankensteiner that I through looked great, and was a nice payoff to Takeshita taking an eternity to set up a powerslam off the top rope. I bought into Ishii's lariats down the stretch. Takeshita threw some of his best strikes and Ishii built up to his biggest lariats, but even though the shots landed harder in the last half, I still never truly feel a sense of escalation as a lot of the selling is the same in the first few minutes as it is in the last few minutes. I guess we are supposed to be surprised that it is Still Going On but that sounds like a terrible way to structure a wrestling match. Can you still believe we're doing this shit? 

My favorite little moment was Ishii's lunging back elbow after absorbing lots of elbows and kicks in the corner. Takeshita held his chin afterward in a way that made it feel like an actual real moment, like he got popped and knew this was going to be the first of many. He recognized Ishii's fight, and Ishii made a single shot resonate more than a dozen Takeshita had just thrown. But the longer these things go the longer those shots all blend together. 

Young Bucks vs. Great-O-Khan/Jeff Cobb vs. Hiromu Takahashi/Tetsuya Naito

ER: Man I don't know. Maybe this would have been better if it were a simple tag match instead of this three way tag, because this three way tornado tag format stinks. Shoot maybe even with the three way format but guys actually waiting to tag in on the apron it would have worked, but this does not. Guys appear and disappear at will, and the longer guys disappear the more reminder that it's all about blatantly setting up a bunch of spots that never add up to much. There's plenty of superkick spamming, plenty of suplex spamming, plenty of dives that nobody seems to have any idea how to catch. There were plenty of spots that looked good. I like the way Cobb throws a German suplex, I liked when Matt was struggling in the tree of woe and all his strands of pearls were hanging in his face as he sputtered, and I thought the Bucks staying vocal throughout (including telling the ringside cameras they were going to go make love to their wives) brought something. But the disappearances were too frequent for chained spots that didn't land so hot, and the glue joining those spots was awful. Naito looks completely lost at times waiting for what to do next, and the only way he and Takahashi know how to interject into a spot is with bad kicks to the stomach. O-Khan was gone far too much to make an impression and the Bucks conveniently sold based on when they needed to be in position, with no regard to what move they were selling. That's the worst, and that's what kept happening all match. 

Jack Perry vs. Yota Tsuji

ER: One of those matches where nobody really looked good but one guy looked better, and it went longer than you'd want but only because it wasn't that good. They didn't do much wrong, besides not wrestling a compelling or good or watchable match. Perry has good DDTs and a couple better suplexes than you'd think but Tsuji is a real zero. What's the entry point with Tsuji? What is the draw? How does the Raymond Chandler's Carmen San Diego Zoo Suit entrance gear tie into a guy who is so on the nose The Worst Influences of Edge that he even has a Spear finisher and makes spooky faces? Perry was good at cutting off several Tsuji charges/spears, catching one in a well timed DDT and stopping another with a sly kick. I like Perry as a heel more than I did as a babyface and I think he's closer to being a good wrestler now. His personality is much more natural. I would have probably liked Edge more if he tried doing a Spanish Fly in 2002. After Perry takes the spear for the loss, he exits the arena holding a hot water bottle to his tummy and maybe Perry is actually a good wrestler. 

Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd

ER: I typically do not connect with big match Kenny Omega, and I don't believe I have ever connected with a single thing that Gabe Kidd has done, but I think I loved this. This was a 12 match show and I'm not sure there was a match I was looking forward to less. Well, I knew the Yota Tsuji match would be worse, but I knew this would be twice as long and I knew the show was already five hours long. I mentally wrote this one off, and yet I found myself hooked from the start. Kenny works this like he actually cannot stand Kidd, which is something I never get from Omega matches. I always get "he is trying to have an EPIC match with X" but I never get "he is extremely annoyed by this guy and wants to hurt him" and that makes me enjoy this Kenny Omega match so much more than his usual 6+ star affairs. I also think it's fantastic that Omega is hellbent on not adjusting his ring style to account for his exploding insides and deteriorating body so now his biggest matches have this extra layer of deep pain and human stupidity that finally adds Consequence to his work. 

He bounces Kidd's body on the apron and ringside like he has no regard for his safety, bouncing him off the ropes to the floor, a snap dragon on the floor, and a big powerbomb onto a table in the announcer's area. It's one thing for him to have little regard for his opponent's body, but it's key to his character (and his character is clearly just himself) that he also has little regard for his own body. I got actually invested into him being unable to stop himself from flinging his body into dives and stupid bumps all match while his innards are screaming and his legs and hips cry out for some goddamn mercy. That disregard for self and opponent only gets cooler when disgusting suplexes into edges of chairs turn into unprotected chairshots in the year 2025. Real 1999 Chairshots taking place at a Tokyo Dome show so sparsely attended that the reactions may as well have been piped in. Kidd takes the nastiest chairshot after braining Omega with a couple. He felt that fucking swing bad too, because he sure gets his hands up quick when Omega comes swinging again. 

Drilla Moloney and Clark Connors unexpectedly added to this match without ever getting involved. Kidd's crew of ringside fuck boys yelling around the ring made the side of an idiot getting destroyed even better, and it seemingly made Omega wreck Kidd even harder with suplexes. There's just no good way to take a snap dragon off the top rope. Kidd's knees get smashed straight into the mat and that might be even more disgusting than the neck damage. 

The early shift to Kidd is great, culminating in Kidd kicking out of a double underhook piledriver, with Omega pulling back on that leg the same way he does when he knows he's getting a 3 count, comes off more obnoxious than "first in a series of moves that shouldn't be kicked out of" and I loved the juxtaposition of him kicking out of a dangerous looking piledriver that should have finished most matches, into making Omega scream with an abdominal stretch. Gabe Kidd slips out of a One Winged Angel into a Desperation Abdominal Stretch, elbow dug deep into Omega's inflamed intestines, and it is one of the all time best uses for an abdominal stretch in wrestling history. Kidd going into Payback Mode ruled. His knee to Omega's guts landed harder than Omega's V-Triggers and contributed led to a future where Omega has a few feet of intestine being removed. Not satisfied with damaging Omega's insides, he always wants him concussed. He spikes Kenny on his head with a short piledriver, and when Omega reverses a powerbomb with a rana, Kidd does not accept that reversal and just drops to his knees with a ganso bomb. There's not attempted lift into a convoluted spot, he just drops Kenny onto the back of his head. I'm laughing my ass off about it when Kidd piledrives him again. 

But if Omega can keep his guts in his body he isn't going to be slowed by head trauma. He has been through fights that Gabe Kidd hasn't yet imagined, and before long he is kneeing this man in the face repeatedly. A double middle fingers spot is something that comes off hack in 2025, but Gabe Kidd possesses the exact correct dumb guy energy to make a last gasp double bird from the knees feel exactly like something he would do when he's about to lose a fight. Kenny grabbing those middle fingers like handlebars to drive the final V-Trigger home was the best. Kidd played the best version of his character and I don't think any of this felt like Great Match mode, it felt like dangerous escalation with great big match selling. Maybe the match didn't need to be a half hour, but I thought it was a rare case where the extra time made the match better. They didn't use the extra time on more kickouts from bigger moves, it was almost always spent letting in pain. The way they sold the big move punishment and exhaustion made it all resonate, made it feel real. Kenny wrestles like a guy who is in pain and Kidd wrestles like a guy too dumb to stop taking damage. Ospreay wouldn't have the guts to sell offense as long as Omega and Kidd did, and that made me feel their story.  

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ricochet

ER: I loved Ricochet for the first 30 seconds, and thought he was good enough for the next 20 minutes as an overwhelmed guy whose offense keeps getting lighter and lighter in the face of an unflappable champ who hits much harder. But those first 30 seconds, man. It's always great when a heel jumps somebody at the bell. When I think of a heel team rushing some babyfaces, it's almost always with punches and clubbing arms, almost always as just another way to get into the action. No different than a collar and elbow start. When it's used to debilitate an opponent, it can approach brilliance. Think Tenryu blindsiding Giant Baba with a suicide dive into Giant Baba in the 1989 Tag League. Ricochet doesn't have debilitating weapons, but he uses speed and heel flying to throw Sabre off and I loved it. A heel ambushing their opponent with a suicide dive, springboard dropkick, Sasuke Special, and springboard 450 splash before they can get their ring jacket off, is fantastic. A hot 30 second Jersey All Pro match-finishing stretch as a heel ambush.  

I don't think he kept up that attitude or energy or idea execution the rest of the match, but I also don't think it mattered because him flying into Sabre's buzzsaw was entertaining because he couldn't keep it up. The first 30 seconds worked so well because it could only work for so long. While Sabre's full body European uppercuts to take control felt plan in comparison, that was something that could be kept up for 20 minutes. Sabre hits hard early and keeps it up all match long, and once he started hitting Ricochet I don't think anything else Ricochet hit had the same immediacy. Like he ran and ran until he got a wake up call and then lightened up, hoping it would make Sabre lighten up. Sabre's shots all look dangerous, but Ricochet is still hanging onto a light springboard clothesline, chops that hit lighter the longer the match goes, arms that barely club back. His combos are also too slow, and there are almost a half dozen times where he leaves Sabre waving in the breeze like an idiot so he can do another spin. Had the story of the match actually been "Sabre endures punishment and Ricochet slows the more punishment Sabre takes" then this could have been incredible. Sometimes I think they were working that story, and those were the best parts. Other times I think Ricochet's offense just didn't work because it didn't work, and it would have been hit that way regardless. I didn't buy Ricochet as a worthy Sabre challenger, but I liked when the match was structured around not buying Ricochet as a Sabre challenger. 

Sabre's dedication to believing that being the IWGP Champ means hitting hard and trying to get guys to hit hard is what made this good, and Ricochet did well at not understanding that this was not a battle he was going to overcome and Sabre was not going to be moved off that hill. Sabre was good at reacting to a lot of Ricochet's stuff that didn't belong in the match and turning it into something painful. Sabre catching an Asai moonsault with a cravat feels like something Chris Hero had to have done in Chikara at least once. It's fun, and then everything else is very mean. Ricochet's rolling vertical suplexes going from the ring to the apron to the floor was a lot of painful bumps for a dumb spot. Sabre's selling is almost enough to make it work, especially the way he got up at 18 but lost his balance and slipped back into the guardrail before making it in. Ricochet calls him a motherfucker and Sabre laughs at the idea. I'm a motherfucker? Ricochet, a man who doesn't slap very hard, is dumb enough to challenge a guy who can slap very hard to a kneeling slap fight. It only takes two exchanges for him to get to his feet. Sabre even tells him, "You're back in Japan now, mate." Is this match about how Ricochet has Dragons Gate Mindset and isn't catching on that Sabre fancies himself as submission wrestling Scott Norton? I like that. 

So, there can't be any complaints against Sabre's submissions anymore, correct? I always felt they were hilariously wrong, but if those opinions persist anywhere they only look more wrong now. His execution is fast and it always looks extremely painful. The way he bent back Ricochet's legs for a bridged figure 4 variation, the limb wrenching llave he pretzeled him into, the neck snapping ankle cranks he kept doing. Every strike and every twist looked painful and every sub he trapped Ricochet in looked potentially match finishing. The problem might have been that everything Sabre did looked so effective, that very little Ricochet did looked as effective. Ricochet's worked punches to drop Sabre at the end of the match were good worked punches...but the spot in question didn't call for well-worked punches, they were supposed to be KO shots that each dropped Sabre to his knees. I love a good worked punch, but they don't "work" when they're the only worked looking strikes in a match, and now they are supposed to be dropping the champ. Ricochet's mid-match slow down does set up the finish nicely, as he throws his sliding clothesline so slow that Sabre just snatches his arm out of the air and maneuvers him disgustingly into a modified Rings of Saturn. I kept going back and forth on this. I liked Ricochet, and I liked the story of his bullshit not standing up to Sabre's strong style...but the match story was inconsistent because sometimes his bullshit would stand up to Sabre and then a minute later it would be clear that his bullshit was supposedly equal to Sabre...

 

Well, the opening women's match was so good that I got lured into watching and writing about an entire show from a fed I don't love...and while there were some more rewards there was also way more stuff I didn't like. The Omega/Kidd match was great, the women's match was great, Mina was great in her match, the luchadors showed out in their gauntlet, the Dustin tag was incredibly fun, and most of the people I dislike wrestled expectedly bad. Two great matches on a 5 hour card isn't much of a success rate, but I'm glad I took the time to watch them. 

2025 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Found Footage Friday: KACE~! CRAMMER~! LOS COWBOYS~! HAMADA~! BABE FACE~! INDOMITO~! M-PRO 8-MAN~!

Johnny Kace vs. George Crammer NWA Chicago 1961

MD: I was doing so well with the Monterrey footage too, but I just can't resist going for the matches that people are showing interest in with this old US footage. People were describing this as a Regal vs Finlay archetype and I can sort of see it but it almost comes off as a proto-UWF match in some ways. These are two guys that get very little discussion overall. We have maybe two or three other Kace matches, for instance. The 60s are just a black hole relatively, unfortunately. He was the NWA Midwest Heavyweight Champion here and the title was on the line. 

And this was just fifteen minutes of mean, dogged, pro wrestling. Kace charged right in to start with a top wristlock and worked the nastiest hammerlock you'd see. That was the thing with both wrestlers. They constantly worked every hold on both ends. That could mean constantly torquing a toehold or driving down and in with a hammerlock or trying to get some sort of leverage to escape only to have the opponent topple your bridge with a tiny movement. It was constant shifting, constant pressure, constant selling. Constant motion in a way that made the match feel competitive and ramped up the stakes and consequence for everything that happened.

There was always the sense that each wrestlers was one well placed punch away from a reversal. Kace controlled early but Crammer would take over with some gut punches and a hammerlock of his own. They'd work up to slugging one another and then back down into a hold and back up again. Kace was obviously a mean bastard with a mean mug and Crammer had the fans behind him through ruthlessly and mercilessly giving Kace everything he deserved, making him choke on a poetic taste of his own medicine. There was no semblance of shine/heat/comeback here, just constant pressure creating implicit storytelling. Crammer would eventually shift to the leg but Kace snuck out and hit a few backbreakers for the win. Even though he came off as entirely credible in victory, it still felt more like he survived the challenge by the skin of his teeth than anything else. That's how hard they were going at one another.

Gran Hamada/Silver King/El Texano vs. Dr. Wagner, Jr./Indomito/Babe Face CMLL 1991

MD: Good and heated.. The central pairing was Texano and Indomito. If you're not familiar with Indomito, he was a Black Power in UWA and a Payaso (Coco Amarillo) in AAA. In the middle he was dressed in a powder blue Zardoz type gear with poofy Ronnie Garvin hair. He had a boxing background but wasn't really going to compare to the punches Babe Face and Hamada (a secondary pairing) were throwing at each other. This started with a rudo ambush and he was good at directing traffic and keeping things laser focused on Texano, who I think, ended up bleeding. The tecnicos did an unusually good job at rushing the ring time and again to try to take back over, only to get beaten back. Usually it's all just beatings and churning until the actual comeback. My favorite bit in the primera was right at the end; Wagner and Babe Face were getting the submissions in the ring and Indomito just slammed Texano's head sideways into the board around the ring again and again and again. Truly the violence we need in this world.

Rushing the ring did work at the start of the segunda and we got a nice bloody bit of revenge. Indomito's bleached blonde hair was made for it. Tercera settled down to exchanges and a lot of Silver King/Texano's usual double teams which were all ahead of their time and smooth and effective. Finish was novel. Instead of clearing the ring for the final pairing, Hamada had Babe Face in a submission in the corner. Indomito redirected a charging Texano into the ref and took advantage with a foul. Nice little twist on the theme to cap off a good one. I have nothing to say about Wagner here except for how striking it is how little he stands out for basically the first third of his career considering what he becomes later. He's in the right place at the right time doing the right thing mostly, but it's sure not ever interesting.

Jinsei Shinzaki/Gran Naniwa/Hideki Nishida/Kazuya Yuasa vs. Kintaro Kanemura/Dick Togo/Tomohiro Ishii/Macho Pump Michinoku Pro-Wrestling 8/14/02

MD: Tough fan cam angle for this one as we miss the early crowd brawling and then have the babyface corner right in the center of the shot for a lot of the rest but these characters are so larger than life you're never at a loss for what was going on. They spent the first six minutes or so (once they got back into the ring) beating up on Macho Pump. Nishida lit him up with chops. Naninwa stomped all over him. Shinzaki walked the ropes. As with these big M-Pro tags, the section maybe wore out its welcome a little but really, who doesn't want to see Macho Pump get mauled? The heels take over on Yuasa and Kanemura, unsurprisingly, stands out. We really haven't covered enough of his stuff on the site but it all seems so self-evident. Just a big scummy, scuzzy, agile, charismatic, guy who comes at things from unique angles and who isn't afraid to crash and burn. Things eventually break down to Kanemura vs Shinzaki before cycling into pairings and finally landing, after the ring gets cleared, on Naniwa vs Pump, with Pump hitting or trying to hit all of his Rock offense and Nanina always a half step ahead. Structurally this was probably the proper balance but I probably would have liked it a little more if they had cycled through pairings to start as opposed to just having the faces beat on Macho Pump. I felt like we didn't get enough Togo in this one, for instance. 

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Ishii

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Tomohiro Ishii NJPW 7/26/23

ER: Eddie Kingston is in the G1 and that means we finally get to see Eddie Kingston and his litany of constantly progressing injuries take on the World's Oldest 47 Year Old Man. Ishii has the shoulder hunch and neckless profile of Perc Angle and the sprint speed of a 60 year old retired NBA Center and Eddie Kingston wrestles this match with one hand constantly holding an injured body part like it was the only thing keeping his body together. It's a match where both guys start out slow and injured and get progressively slower and more injured in each subsequent minute. It's 15 minutes of Kingston working a nearly immobile man who has shrunk 3 inches in 4 years and it is entirely made by Kingston's constant selling and staggering. When he starts with a front suplex and follows up with a double stomp, his back pain flares up like a factory worker who will never be able to retire, and the match becomes a war over who can hit harder without moving their feet at all, and who can best adjust their timing to accommodate an increasingly slow-moving opponent. 

Kingston hits a lot harder, welting up Ishii's chest, but Ishii has a much lower center of gravity due to his compressed spinal cord and that allows him to brick wall Kingston on shoulderblocks and take him over with German suplexes. Kingston's selling just kept getting better the longer the match went (which is kind of Eddie's whole thing), and while I loved him stumbling into the ropes and leaning into them for support, I also loved smaller things like how he pulled himself up to his knees by latching onto Ishii's ergonomic Proflex back support belt. Kingston's back means he can't get much spin behind his spinning backfist, so he just makes up for that by hitting his standing backfist as hard as ever, and when he hit two of them in succession I thought that was the end of Ishii. Ishii hasn't had a neck in years, which has only served to make his head more like a battering ram, and when he smashed Eddie with a headbutt and then dove horizontally into him with a second, I thought that was the end of King. Kingston kept losing steam on his shots, hitting something weak and then willing himself to hit a bit harder just out of self-disgust, whereas Ishii realizes he has no steam on his strikes so just hopes to get close enough to drop Eddie on his head. The brainbuster Ishii uses to finish off Kingston was a classic Murdoch brainbuster, the only difference being fueled by cortisone shots and pills rather than Coors Banquet. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR: WAR 6/20/99

WAR 6/20/1999

Masao Orihara vs. Tomohiro Ishii

SR: Both these guys were pretty great in the late 90s, so I was pretty salty about this being clipped down just a couple minutes. Ishii was a wreckingball during this period, but Orihara easily outstiffes him trying to crack his jaw with lariats. We also get Ishii working Orihara over with chairs and whiping him out with a crazy rolling senton to the outside. Fun stuff but I wanted atleast 3/4ths of the thing.

Nihao vs. Koki Kitahara

SR: This was a CAPTURE showcase match and holy fuck after this I‘d kill to get the entire CAPTURE back catalogue. Brutal brutal match, just the most primitive grimy shootstyle you can imagine, two  guys with gloves trying to pummel each other into oblivion. Nihao takes Kitahara down and bloodies him with punches and headbutts, but the boss comes back just trying to crush his face with punches and teeth loosening kicks. There was one spinkick that would‘ve made Daisuke Ikeda wince, and also at one point Kitahara reverses a takedown into an armlock that looked to almost tear Nihaos shoulder. They showed 4 out of 6 minutes, and really would it have killed them to include those 2 minutes? Still 80 % of a sick spectacle is better than most, and those 4 minutes were some of the most insane of the year.

Ryuma Go vs. Thunder Warrior Alpha

SR: I respect Tenryu's tendency to bring in Go to squish random aliens. This was clipped to almost nothing but we got to see Go acting crazy and destroying the alien.

Genichiro Tenryu/Magnum TOKYO vs. Nobutaka Araya/Sumo Fuji

SR: The boss is involved, so we got the full match here. Didn‘t know what to expect from this, but it ends up a really entertaining match thanks to Tenryuisms. Basically Sumo Fuji acts like a big shot and annoys Tenryu some and ends up paying for it. Also really liked Araya as a scuzzy guy potatoing Magnum TOKYO. Toryumon guys also looked solid in their sections against each other, and TOKYO hit a pretty great top rope asai moonsault amongst other things. Loved Tenryu here, I think he didn‘t even take a back bump but pretty much carried the match by being a prick, as he usually does.

Osamu Tachihikari/Arashi vs. Daikokubo Benkei/Ichiro Yaguchi

SR:We get about 30 seconds of this and I am not bummed at all about that. I liked Tachihikari busting out random move like an STO and a Magistral.

Yuji Yasuraoka/Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Super Delfin/Naohiro Hoshikawa

SR: This was 4 solid pro wrestlers doings lots of solid pro wrestling, building to a pretty exciting second half. WAR reckless kicker Mochizuki ruled, I am just going to pretend he retired after WAR folded. He had some pretty great exchanges with Hoshikawa here, and I loved him flying into the scenery out of nowhere to take out people with spin kicks. Delfin & Hoshikawa worked well together and it was cool to see them acting as a crew. For some reason, juniors getting dumped on their heads or diving around the place was a lot more satisfying to watch in the 90s.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Yuji Yasuraoka

SR: I guess Mochizuki wasn‘t happy with Yasuraoka's performance in that tag, so he gets on the mic to challenge Yasuraoka to a singles. Yasuraoka then proceeds to hit his awesome dive, getting insane height, and we get a fun short explosion of them throwing bombs at each other. Wouldn‘t have minded if this went longer, but they just did a 17 minute long match before so it made sense for this to be short and intense.

Shigeo Okumura/Sambo Asako/Atsushi Onita vs. Nobutaka Araya/Genichiro Tenryu/Shoji Nakamaki

SR: Exactly what it looks like on paper: Six tubby asskickers brawling all over the place, bleeding and pasting each other with chairs and lariats. That plus the megastar charisma of Tenryu and Onita. Tenryu is such an awesome menace here, punching people in the face and chucking chairs at them. Him vs. Terry Funk would’ve been one hell of a program. Then again, Tenryu  was pretty much untouchable at this point in his career. Onita & Asako looked pretty much like regular guys at this point, which made Asako getting abused by Tenryu feel all the more violent. Okumura was in charge with bringing a slight bit of workrate to the match and he did fine, hitting a pretty stiff dropkick. Very predictable match but all too fun.

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New Footage Friday: FLAIR! MURDOCH! DOUGIE! FUJIWARA! TAKADA! BURKE! GORDY! ULTRAMAN

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Nobuhiko Takada vs. Rocky Della Serra/Leo Burke UWF 7/24/84 - GREAT

PAS: This was early UWF, before they were really a shootstyle fed, so this was a standard pro-wrestling tag match. It was mostly hard head Fujiwara, which is far from my favorite Fujiwara, but he does hard head spots really well. Burke especially leaned into stooging big from punching or elbowing Fujiwara in his rock hard dome. Takada continued to underwhelm me, lots of kicks which only semi-hit (although he did waste Burke with a top rope dropkick).Burke was the revelation here, he has a big rep, but not a ton of footage, and he was on one here. Great looking bumps, awesome offense (he hit the best inverted atomic drop I have ever seen) totally looked like a super worker. 

MD: Fun stuff. Della Serra is a guy we've seen pop up in a few places since we started doing this and Burke is obviously one of the greatest journeymen of the 80s. What I liked about them here is that this, in early days UWF, felt almost like a different style battle where they were utilizing the sort of pro wrestling they'd do anywhere else and Fujiwara and Takada were Fujiwara and Takada. That might be a series of overdramatic elbow drops from Della Serra or an inverted atomic drop from Burke or whatever. It obviously meant that they knew how to play into all of Fujiwara's head spots for the best effect. Adding to this you had Takada bringing a little more flash with whips and dropkicks on top of things like the belly to belly right into a submission. It all came together pretty well despite it all.

Ric Flair vs. Dick Murdoch NWA 9/11/86

MD: Maybe not the best week to cover Flair, but what the hell, it's footage, it's new, it's Friday, and it's of historical value since, unless I'm mistaken, we just have a couple of minutes of garbage footage from 78 over two matches of Flair vs Murdoch, so this is a new, iconic pairing. I liked the creativity and the variation here, much of which I'll credit to Murdoch. After the initial matwork (not Flair's best, but it was fine) they made the most of the relatively short fifteen minutes of match time, just throwing out interesting transition after interesting transition to the point where it never felt like a your turn/my turn match but like a real struggle where both guys were trying to outfox the other. My favorites were probably Murdoch catching the knee on an early knee drop attempt and Flair causing Murdoch's elbow drop to the leg to overshoot forcing him to wipe out on it. But Murdoch also got a snap turning backslide counter and Flair jammed him on a fireman's carry attempt by punching him in the face, and so on, combined with what you'd expect like Murdoch answering the chops with punches out of the corner or Flair getting a cheapshot in after begging off towards the ropes. 

The finishing stretch was, of course, BS, but still had enough wrinkles to feel creative. Murdoch hit a running power slam instead of slamming Ric off the top. They had a ref bump, Flair tossing Murdoch over the top, a phantom pin off a punch by Murdoch, before the actual finish of Murdoch inadvertently back body dropping Flair off the top onto Tommy Young and then hitting the brainbuster but getting DQed. If you're going to have a finishing minute like that, at least it was dynamic. You didn't know if Flair would win by cheating after Young went down or if it'd be Flair tossing Murdoch over the top that would cause the finish or if Flair would win after the phantom pinfall, etc. On the other hand, if you're having to stack elements of a Dusty finish one on top of the other on top of the other to keep it fresh, maybe there's something problematic with your booking?

ER: I thought this was excellent, just the panacea I needed after a long work week with some late nights. The chemistry between the two was great and they kept upping the ante in ways I wasn't expecting. This match had a ton of activity to it and they kept pulling off sequences that I hadn't seen done quite this way. That always excites me, when I see a new match with two guys I've seen a ton. I can't really get excited about Flair matches these days. I imagine if an unseen Flair/Steamboat there's a good chance I'd watch it, but probably a better chance that I would just watch a random episode of Sunday Night Heat instead. And yet I loved everything Flair did here and loved even more how Murdoch worked with him. The opening was some light matwork with them moving in the familiar ways, but it really kicks up when Murdoch catches and blocks a Flair kneedrop inches from his nose, drags himself to his feet by Ric's leg, and before long is dropping elbows on Ric's leg. That leads to Dick missing one of them when Flair shifts and then Flair starts working over Murdoch's side from his nasty spill. 

Now, this match had a lot of "stuff". Murdoch and Flair are guys with a lot of stuff, and Flair more than most is a guy who is going to get his stuff in no matter what. But this match managed to have a ton of stuff while feeling like all of the stuff served the match. This didn't feel like Flair giving the fans Flair, it felt like Flair giving the fans a good match with memorable Flair moments. And Murdoch was there with some incredible selling and super impressive body work to make Flair look even better. Murdoch's execution was all time great in this match. His misses landed like a man who didn't expect to miss, his punches looked as punishing and sharp as ever, but his technical ability was amazing. He had a nice tight reversal on a Flair abdominal stretch that he then rolled into a tight cradle, and later he hit one of the most finely executed sunset flips I've ever seen. Murdoch understood the physics of wrestling, and his move execution legitimized his fighting. It wasn't just his offense, but the way he took Flair's offense was a real mastery of physics. Murdoch is able to look heavy while taking offense but you can tell he's getting up for everything with ease. He hangs in the air taking a Flair back suplex, and makes a hiptoss look like Flair really has to muscle him over. Murdoch's selling was excellent throughout, taking a Flair kneelift and holding the left side of his belly like he got stuck, or the painful grimaces when Flair would raise his arm and punch him in his left side. 

The dedication to every small spot made every big spot look fantastic, with the best being Flair going up top and Murdoch running across the ring to plant him with a huge powerslam. And we got an all time great punch out, with Flair dishing a hard knife edge in the corner that sends Murdoch responds instinctively to with a three punch combo, and Flair bumps his way through these fists in great ways, leading to ref Tommy Young stopping Murdoch from hitting his big wind up right, only to have Murdoch throw a just-as-nasty left jab over Young's shoulder. It wouldn't have looked better if it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and I'm not sure Bugs could work that punching sequence as expertly as Murdoch or Flair. I loved all of this match, bullshit finishes don't bother me when the journey is this much fun. 

PAS: There is an apocryphal Murdoch vs. Flair match from Mid-South which Joel Watts called the best match he has ever seen, but the tape melted in a hot car. From this relatively abbreviated version you can really tell that they had special chemistry. This was way more reversal heavy then I expect from Flair matches, with lots of cool counter wrestling by both guys. This was counter wrestling which felt organic rather then two guys waiting around to dance into another spot. Murdoch especially found neat ways to pick the leg or sneak in punches. I loved Young catching the haymaker and Murdoch sneaking in a jab, I love when punchers have a bunch of different signature punches and Murdoch unloads the arsenal. 

Doug Gilbert/Keizo Matsuda/Tiger Jeet Singh?/Ultraseven/Takashi Uwano vs. Terry Gordy/Shoichi Ichiyama/YUJI KITO/Yukihide Ueno/Tomohiro Ishii IWA Japan 2/4/01

 
MD: Full disclosure: I'm not super familiar with some of these guys, but I found this overall pretty compelling. The story here was good, with eliminations possible by going over the top too, which meant Gordy was a beast here just due to the size differential. I know he was diminished, but you put him in a tag like this where he could be dangerous in the corner or come in and have some guys run into his stuff or just throw his body around and he could still be incredibly effective. I wouldn't want him working a twenty minute singles match necessarily but he had size and presence and meant something to the crowd: when Ultraseven (who was bigger but could still move pretty well) faced off against him the crowd had a real buzz. Anyway, this was ultimately the Keizo Matsuda show. Mostly thanks to Gordy it became 5 on 2 pretty quickly, with a long beatdown on Matsuda, to the point I thought we'd get ten minutes of Gilbert vs the World, but they were able to get it to 4 on 2 and then Gilbert did his job by double eliminating himself and Gordy. After that, Matsuda had some real hope and momentum and it looked like there might be some heel communication and another elimination but the double teaming works and then works more and then works even more and after a valiant attempt to hang in there, the numbers game ends up as just too much. Matsuda is probably stronger for his showing though.

PAS: This was a couple of months before Gordy's death, a full year after his last listed Cagematch match (Hardy Boys vs. Gordy/Hayes, which is pretty intriguing). I thought he looked great. In some of his 90s work he looked addled, but here he moved well, hit some big hard shots, great clotheslines, nice suplex. I liked how he was a real obstacle for everyone he faced, and I dug Dougie needing to sacrifice himself just to give Matsuda a chance. That was definitely not Tiger Jeet Singh btw, it was some guy in a mask, which is always the trouble with translated match listings. Matsuda was fun as a guy dying on his sword, but be valiant all you want, you are still dead. 

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Matches from NJPW G1 Climax 7/6/19

I didn't really plan to write this up, and likely won't write this up in full, but there are a couple intriguing on-paper match-ups that I might give dashed off live style reviews to.

Jeff Cobb/Ren Narita vs. Tomohiro Ishii/Shota Umino

ER: I don't think I've seen either Young Lion, but thought they were fine. Narita threw an unexpectedly nice belly to belly. Are Young Lions still only allowed to do dropkicks and elbows and boston crabs? It felt like these two did a lot more than that. Ishii looks really small here, and Cobb looks bigger than he's been. Ishii looks a little softer too, and it wouldn't be too shocking to find out he's got a zillion built up injuries that make intense workouts tough. Cobb's stop motion reverse back suplex is one of the most spectacular moves in wrestling. A lot of this doesn't quite work as Cobb/Ishii do several of their "we're standing and hitting each other hard" moments and Ishii just doesn't look like a guy hitting hard. This would have been more fun as two singles, give the young guys each a 5 minute match against a vet.

Lance Archer vs. Will Ospreay

ER: Archer is now cosplaying Tina Turner in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and his decades old bad lower back tattoo is slowly but surely morphing into just a full black backpiece. This match would have made for a really exciting series of GIFs, but I sadly had to watch the thing in real time. Archer is apparently a guy who moved tickets in the Dallas area, so this is his showcase match, and he showed me that he's still a guy who is really awful at getting into position for offense and still just stands their motionless waiting to receive offense. This happened the entire match, and it looked awful each time. There were a lot of cool moments, Ospreay is always going to have cool moments. But a ton of the moments required Archer to suddenly not be selling any kind of big move that he had just taken, just a constant stream of Archer popping up from a big move right away only to then stand still in place waiting for the next move. The timing is all sorts of wonky. Archer hit a boss chokeslam through a ringside table (killer height by Ospreay), there were a cool Ospreay code red in the aisle, Ospreay's springboard dropkick to Archer's face as Archer crawled back into the ring was awesome, and that's the thing: a lot of these moves looked awesome as long as you forced yourself to not think of the inorganic set-up. It would make for a sick 2 minute YouTube comp, if people still make those. Included in that compilation would be Ospreay making the dumbest "He kicked out at 2!?!?!? G-G-G-G-Ghostssssssssss!" face. What a goober. Archer won with a claw in Texas, and I will give them credit for that being cool. But I don't think even the claw is cool enough to make Archer look cool.

Bad Luck Fale vs. EVIL

ER: I am arguably the biggest fat guy wrestler torch bearers on the internet, but Fale is really a guy I struggle with. He is a not as good Kareem Muhammad, just an impossibly boring big fat guy. Here he's a giant fat guy who tries to win by count out (which is an amusing giant guy heel tactic) and tries to use chairs, while being the third most important and interesting person in the match. When you're less interesting than Marty Asami and EVIL, you done messed up. Asami is weirdly the focus of the entire match, as every spot is merely a set up for him to do some big bump across the ring, on the floor, or to the floor. Asami even refs the very next match, and doesn't oversell any of these actual attacks the way most refs do, so it literally just felt like a showcase for some of the big bumps Asami learned. EVIL hits a bunch of nice hard lariats and a cool headbutt, but Fale kind of only knows how to sell lariats by standing there and lightly swaying like a less impressive Giant Gonzalez. Not great.

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. SANADA

ER: Sanada is a NJ guy I really liked 2-3 years ago, whose stock has fallen the higher he moves up the card. He's a guy I liked in multimans and a guy I like much less in singles. But this one still jumped out on paper for me. It just didn't really live up to whatever hype I had for it. I think I fell for Sanada when I saw him in more multimans, when he came off like a throwback big bumping UPW wrestler. A guy without much offense but could take a couple bumps that looked heavier than they actually were. This was just him doing a bunch of mirror sequences with Sabre while Sabre mocked him in between mirror sequences. Don't get me wrong, I laughed several times at Sabre mocking him. But that's because Sanada looked like someone that should be mocked. The only interesting part of this was one of the stand and trade sections, where I thought all of the "fighting out of a straitjacket" submission stuff looked really great. The rest felt like Sabre leading Sanada through the same sequences that look better with other opponents. There were a couple cool reversals (I like uppercuts reversed into backslides, and I like backslides a lot in general), but the subs never went anywhere interesting and the finish felt like Sanada fell into a victory. Sabre was funny throughout the match, I liked him waiting to roll back into the ring at the 19 count, but it made Sanada like like a punk and the match didn't have enough good to override that.

KENTA vs. Kota Ibushi

ER: KENTA is not the guy people remembered from 10 years ago, and he was a flawed wrestler 10 years ago. Now he's a step slower and could still act like a dick, but he's never going to come off cool like Masa Fuchi, he's just going to come off like a junior who isn't as good at doing his same set of moves. KENTA looked out of shape and slow, and that's not a super interesting thing to see. Ibushi had some real nice sells of KENTA's stuff, he can really class up a Go 2 Sleep, but KENTA seems totally washed to me. There's still upside to a lazy asshole gimmick, but his needs work. He did stomp an big old hole in Ibushi's guts, really didn't seem to pull back in any way off the top, and that's something. A lot of fans are really hyped that "KENTA is back", the problem being this guy was never the guy they thought he was even in his prime, and that prime is looking streets behind at this point.

Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

ER: I can never quite put my finger on it, but something about Okada always reads "water polo dick". I didn't watch this. I later saw a GIF of Tanahashi's high fly flow to the floor, and those always look great. I hope the people who watched this got what they wanted out of it.

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Wrestlemania Weekend Thursday Wrestlecon Supershow and Axcess Cherry Picking

Wrestlecon Supershow

Joey Janela vs. Penta el 0M

ER: I was curious what Janela could do here, since Penta is just beyond dullsville at this point. Penta is just about the most boring and uninspired guy these days when it comes to getting his shit in, completely disregarding any offense he has taken and just running through his sequences. I really liked him in the first season of LU and I can’t think of anyone whose stock has fallen farther in that time, while still maintaining a rabid fanbase. Janela looked good, hitting a bunch of nice full extension superkicks at well timed parts of the match, hitting a big superplex, a great dive down the stretch, and making Penta’s sometimes dodgy offense look good. Penta has terrible slingblades, but Janela made them work, really got good bounce off the backtracker, and the Penelope interference was used really well. I liked her yanking Penta’s foot to set up a superplex, and the finish with Janela leaping off the ropes into a superkick, and then Penelope doing the same, dodging one, and getting leveled by another was some fun BS. Penta is super predictable the whole match, but Janela mixed a couple things up and paced out a nice performance

ER: So Jerry Lawler threw a fireball that hit Joey Ryan in the tip of the dick, which is just fantastic. The execution was fantastic, the build up was great, and Ryan sold it for ages, as he should have. This was a comedy spot that paid off.

Jeff Cobb vs. Tomohiro Ishii

PAS: I am not the biggest fan of your Ishii slugfests, he always kind of comes off as third rate Takeshi Ishikawa, with out the selling or diversity to really take it to the next level. Still big dudes pounding on each other is a genre of match I am going to dig, and Cobb's power stuff is really fun. Wasn't a huge fan of the early endless elbow exchange, but this got pretty great by the end. Loved when Ishii got pissed off and started countering the elbow smashes by leaning in and headbutting Cobb's arm, nasty stuff and a cool variation of a fighting spirit spot. Cobb also had some out of control throws, he has such explosion with his hips and he chucks Ishii like a longshoreman throwing a bag of coffee. Couple of great headbutts too, with both guys reckless throwing their head at their opponent.

ER: That elbow exchange was interminable, but happily they got it out of the way really early in the match, instead of doing that thing where a match is peaking and we have to stop thing for some standing exchange. But we got that out of the way and then the match was able to do what it was supposed to do, which is to be a human recreation of BattleBots. Cobb brought maybe his meanest match ever, and dropped stuff like the standing shooting star, and instead focused on all of the big throws. It was appropriate to bring out the triple Germans on the weekend that Kurt Angle returns to the WWE big stage, and I don't know if Angle's ever looked as great as Cobb's here. The bridge was an impressive touch, and he mixes them up by even suplexing Ishii into the buckles. This was a long match with a lot of heavy lifting, and I was really impressed with Cobb's gas tank. He does a cool captured arm and leg suplex into a bridge, and at one point I actually yelled ROLLING OLYMPIC HELL when he grabbed Ishii in a head and arm choke. Cobb becoming a proxy Tamon Honda would be great for us. Ishii is just a total masochist, not leaving a match satisfied until his vertebrae are properly compressed. He lands a bunch of stiff arm lariats into Cobb's lungs, and I was really losing it when he pushed Cobb back across the ring by headbutting Cobb's strikes, just backing him up with his cinder block head, and Cobb had a bunch of great "Who the hell is this guy!?" faces. Cobb hits my favorite spot of the match by leaping head first into Ishii with a spectacular torpedo headbutt, and this match was one of the greatest versions of two large beer kegs becoming sentient and hurling themselves into each other that I've seen. This could have been bogged down by no selling suplexes and throw trading, but I loved how they ramped everything up, and loved how Ishii outlasted Cobb and won with a vertical suplex (you know, followed by a couple of brutal headbutts).

Rey Horus/Rey Fenix vs. Flamita/Bandido

PAS: I could imagine this was a blast to watch live, but it felt a little like a car with a gas pedal stuck on mash. Everything was worked at the same pace, it never felt like it had a chance to breath for me. Fenix was super impressive, in a match filled with freaky athletes, everything he did had an extra burst of speed and an extra pop of height. There was some crazy flipping on the ropes where he got knocked down bounced up and still hit a springboard, the balance was bonkers. I also really loved Horus's out of control surprise tope con hilo through the ropes, dives are so much cooler when they are out of nowhere like that. I hadn't seen much Bandido and he didn't do a ton for me, seems like he was setting up his signature counters too much, felt like a Dragon's Gate guy to me which is not a compliment.


WWE Axcess

Kassius Ohno vs. Keith Lee

PAS: Cool idea to run these short indy style matches at Axcess, hopefully more fancams show up. Hero is a guy I kind of forgot about, I don't watch a ton of NXT and he got memory holed a bit, but his is still fucking great. He may be the best leg slap striker in wrestling history, I know it is a lot of smoke and mirrors, but he really looks like he is murdering people with those shots. Lee seemed a bit cowed by a WWE stage, as his charisma was a bit muted, although he is still an impressive athletic marvel. I loved Hero taunting him only to get smashed with a pounce and firemans carry powerslam.

ER: Rachel and I saw a great show in SF last night, Soccer Mommy headlining with Oakland's extraordinary Madeline Kenney opening for her (and debuting some wildly great new stuff, check them both out on bandcamp), and between sets we watched this match on YouTube. I think Phil is totally on the money calling Hero the best thigh slap striker in wrestling. People make fun of that skill mostly because it's something we see done so much so badly, but Hero throws so many great strikes with well hidden slaps that it feels like a cool old theatrical art. Tajiri would be the other candidate, and I think it's a cool skill to learn so well. Lee was a bit more restrained than I was expecting, but Ohno sure helped Lee look great. It was crazy how high Ohno got on a slam and how far he flew off the Pounce. Lee leans into a bunch of high kicks and comes up with some cool surprises of his own, really liked a couple tornado back elbows he caught Ohno with. Shout out to whomever captured this and didn't get caught recording front row, super fun little match. 

2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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New Japan Pro Wrestling: Strong Style Evolved 3/25/18

I'm planning on doing an Segunda Caida X00 this year, whether that number be 100, 200, 300, or what. So I have to watch a lot of wrestling, including stuff that I don't think I'll like a lot. I need to keep an open mind and look for names that might eek onto the list. This is a show New Japan is running in Long Beach, and while I'm not a big modern NJ fan, I like the idea of a non-WWE fed coming into America now and again. It can only be a good thing for wrestling. So the show is on TV, baseball season hasn't started yet, and I forgot about WWE Fastlane (thus no love blog), so I may as well make up a Sunday.

Christopher Daniels/Scorpio Sky/Frankie Kazarian vs. Rocky Romero/Sho/Yoh

ER: Well this write up is looking like a dumb fucking choice. I don't like a lot of guys in this match, but I guess I relate to it. All the Americans are people that I first started watching and seeing live in 2000/2001, going on road trips with friends to Southern CA. They're all older, balder, still doing the same thing they were doing nearly 20 years ago. So I am them. Older, balder, still writing about pro wrestling, still seeing the same guys. Life is a straight line. All guys do something I like, some things I don't. Kazarian doesn't shortchange stomach kicks and gets great height on a legdrop. Sadly he majorly botched a springboard legdrop off the freaking bottom rope. Once he slipped he just hopped on one leg to finish the spot. He at least sold a knee injury on the apron for a bit, so that was a decent bounceback. Yoh is a decent face in peril, Scorpio throws a better right hand than I remember, Daniels is still doing the same offense he did in '99, but he hits a nutty split legged moonsault to the floor, throwing himself into the barrier. This was kept short, and was fine.

Juice Robinson/David Finlay vs. Gedo/Hirooki Goto

ER: This was a fun one. Juice is a mean dude who would be the best possible member of a Breezango trios. His kicks land, he's got good punches, a high senton, and he always surprises with stiff shots. Here he busts open Goto's mouth with a hard back elbow. Goto shows more personality than I have maybe ever seen from him, after he gets his mouth busted. Something snaps and he is suddenly intense. Finlay is never the wrestler I want him to be, and with that last name he won't ever be, but he's a good fired up babyface. His hot tag was great, tons of energy, great flying back elbow, good presence on that pasty bod. Gedo is always a favorite of mine, and we get typical great Gedo punches and a superkick that looks like it still matters. This was quick and fiery, I dug it.

Davey Boy Smith Jr./Lance Archer vs. Toru Yano/Chuck Taylor

ER: Over/Under on how many time's JR compares KES to Hansen/Brody? 4. I think 4 is fair. KES are too goofy, Yano is too goofy, serious Taylor is still too goofy. KES are never as hoss as I'd like them to be, and I hate the look of orange spray tan, blonde spiky hair, big doopy mouth guard. Smith still moves so stiffly around the ring. He never looks comfortable in there. Archer has a face I dislike on sight, but he hits hard on a shoulderblock, and he and Smith can at least sometimes act like big guys. I don't have much use for Yano, and I still can't buy Taylor as a competitive heavyweight.

Marty Scurll/Cody vs. Tanga Loa/Tama Tonga

ER: This match has one of my favorite NJ guys (Tama Tonga) opposite my probably least favorite NJ guy (Marty Scurll), so I know which team I'm rooting for. Scurll stinks. I hate how JR always compares him to Marty Jones, Regal, Finlay, it's gross. Scurll always comes off so hack. He attempts a Regal-esque spinning wristlock sequence and clunked his way through it, getting hung up twice. Tonga is awesome, though, like the Usos working a main event Roman Reigns style. His exchanges are fast, he throws nice strikes, goes down like a shot on a Scurll superkick, misses a Superman punch in style, I always dig him. Loa is good too, never really got a chance to do much in WWE, but he hits hard and has a nice moveset, really sinks that spear. Both Tonga and Loa take offense well. Cody still doesn't do a lot for me, but his ring confidence is far bigger now than ever, and that counts for something. Scurll stomped Tonga's elbow nice a couple times. I'll give him credit for that, at least.

Hiromu Takahashi/BUSHI/SANADA/Tetsuya Naito vs. Ryusuke Taguchi/Dragon Lee/KUSHIDA/Hiroshi Tanahashi

ER: Boy with all these multi-mans they must be trying to use 40 guys on one show. We're 5 matches in and we've had 26 guys on the card. It's a lot. This match felt like it should have been better. It's impossible to have a bad 8 man, really with almost anybody involved. Everyone has to be in so little that you can really play to strengths. This wasn't a bad match, but it had guys with a lot of strengths, and should have been better. Takahashi and Lee cram a lot of ideas into their singles matches, yet here only get a couple quick moments together, nothing really memorable (though Takahashi does chuck Lee into the turnbuckles on a wild suplex). I like "Tanahashi is injured" matches, and they kind of start going after his arm but it doesn't go anywhere. The stretch run dance partner trade off was really fun, one guy after the next running in to do a move or two before getting taken out by the next guy. Those moments are always fun with talented guys. Taguchi impressed me here, liked his energy, liked his heel hook roll through, liked a couple of his hip attacks. I was similarly impressed by BUSHI. But this should have had more oomph to it.

Jushin Liger vs. Will Ospreay

ER: I was optimistic about this one, as Liger is great enough to reign in the excesses of Ospreay, and Ospreay is talented enough to be reigned in. And I liked the story they went with of Liger working up to big time the hot rising star and surprise him. Liger is aggressive and nails a somersault dive off the apron, crushes Ospreay on the floor with a brainbuster, drops him with a Liger bomb. We get more intrigue when Ospreay lands funny on his left knee and I honestly can't tell how legit the injury is. He still does a bunch of crazy flying stuff, but he sells his knee the whole damn time, even during flying moves, and I don't know if Ospreay's selling is THAT good. There was some impressive attention paid to his knee injury here. He also takes a great bump off a shotei, with Liger hooking him under the chin, and Ospreay looked like a cartoon cat running into a laundry line that he didn't see. The match ends a lot shorter than I expected, about 10 minutes, not sure if that's the overstuffed card or if they went home earlier because of that pesky real/fake leg injury. But we get a couple nice nearfalls before the sudden finish, and I thought the match was real good. Ospreay even cuts a good promo post-match, giving credit to Liger but also acting big for his britches. He gets a good reaction by challenging Mysterio too, which could be a fun match. But then they have Scurll come out and cheapshot Ospreay and rip Mysterio's mask off. Did we really need to give Scurll that much of a rub? Spend your time on other guys.

Zack Sabre Jr./Minoru Suzuki vs. Tomohiro Ishii/Kazuchika Okada

ER: Okada just doesn't to it for me, but there's enough personality in this match to really make it work. And sure enough, cocky doofus ZSJ is awesome and I love that I'm now the high vote on the guy. Seeing he and Suzuki put a bunch of dickhead tandem submissions on Ishii while the crowd chants "Fuck you, Sabre" is joy. You see, Suzuki is too cool for them to be mad at, they would want to be friends with him and hope Suzuki thought they were also cool. But Sabre is just a hateable mug who should be pummeled. He stomps Ishii to the rhythm of their chant claps, and continues to poke the bear by rubbing his boot laces in Ishii's eyes, kicking him condescendingly, rubbing it in while Ishii is on the mat. When Ishii snags him and lifts him into a deadlift German it's a great moment. I love ZSJ using Okada as his submission jungle gym. Okada can often come off Polar Express-eyed and this makes him show some emotion, a little fight and a little desperation. Okada throws some embarrassing elbows when it's his turn to fight, really disappointing stuff. I hear Sabre get called out a lot for being too skinny, but he's practically the same size as Okada, and I don't hear that complaint about Okada. I don't get it. I think people just like to hate Sabre, which he should get credit for. Sabre continually doesn't learn his lesson. After a (too long) Suzuki/Ishii who-can-hit-harder contest, Sabre is back and mockingly kicking Ishii. Ishii catches a kick and steps in with a great headbutt and stiff powerbomb. Ishii is okay but is he as good as even Kazuyuki Fujita? Is he even the best Japanese guy working a "Man with no neck" gimmick? He's nowhere near Masa Saito. I don't know if he's better than Fujita. But I do really like how Sabre and Ishii match up, loved their July 2017 singles match, love how Sabre acts around Ishii. Sabre taps him with a great tangled up grapevine, puts Okada in an octopus hold after (but does not tap him during the match, which would have felt like a huge deal), even tosses Okada's title on the floor after the match. That's an Okada singles match I would watch.

Jay White vs. Hangman Page

ER: Last couple matches were pretty exciting, crowd is noticeably cooled off for this one. I usually like White, but he can also benefit from good opponents, and Page isn't very good, so I get the quieted down crowd. They make an effort though, so things liven up a little bit down the stretch. Once they really get the crowd into things, they immediately go into this lonnnnnnnng and drawn out spot where Page repeatedly tries to set up the slingshot lariat, and White keeps wandering unnaturally to the side to break it up, and Page keeps resetting him, and never actually gets to hit. It's like they were working a silent vaudeville comedy act and it could not have come at a worse time in the match. And then they go from Page not succeeding at hitting his indy offense four times in a row, to the other end of the spectrum, with White hitting a DDT on the apron and then a freaking German suplex from the apron to the floor. What the fuck!? Page flips and lands on his feet and then falls backward, so it's not like he got dumped on his head (earlier he did take a nasty snap dragon suplex in the ring), but it's a crazy spot to come out of nowhere. So much Page offense has a really implausible set up, which means he'll fit right in with New Japan main eventers. This match is really overreaching at this point, it's going way too long. White singles matches can drag on too much. I think he's much better in trios. Page sets up an improbable swinging neckbreaker off the top rope, and it's treated like a big move on commentary, but moments later White is hitting Page with a nasty back suplex on the floor, and another in the ring. They trade big moves. JR even shrugs off a "Well they're hitting a lot of big stuff..." after they keep trading moves. That shooting star shoulderblock is such a risk for what the payoff is. It just looks like a less impactful normal sholderblock, with added risk of breaking his own neck. He throws a nice lariat, but adds in that stupid rope flip right before (that he always stumbles a bit on). White throws so many rough suplexes in this match, all with really low launch angles, all looking like they bounce Page off his head. Way too many of them. And after all of those suplexes, his finisher is basically a Roll the Dice. These two tried to do way much. Page looked tougher than anybody else on the show tonight. Everyone else pinned and submitted so much quicker. They did a lot of things you'd think this crowd would like, but the reactions were never really there.

The Young Bucks vs. The Golden Lovers

ER: This was overly long, overinflated, overkilled match that had plenty of great moments. It tried to have way too many great moments, but it had some great moments. It also had moments where I watched in 2x speed. It was around for awhile. This was the match fans in attendance wanted to see, they wanted to celebrate modern New Japan, and this match gave them the chance to chant and clap "Fight Forever" and "New Japan". They are a part of something, this is their punk rock, etc. I thought this was a great Nick Jackson performance, with Matt stepping it up down the stretch. Ibushi is a nut, but I hate that he does so much offense that can occasionally drop himself on his own head. But this whole production was just stretched too long. They could have made much better use of partner saves. There are a lot of kickouts, and by the end Matt Jackson is kicking out of everything. It was a little deflating. They overpeaked it and suddenly they were the last person to finish at an orgy, and everyone's been done for 15 minutes and you're still working towards a finish. The big time where they utilize a partner save to great effect, Matt had just kicked out of some huge things, so Ibushi hits the V Trigger, with Omega hitting the One Winged Angel. OWA is one of the more contrived set-ups in finisher history, but it's super protected and Nick flying in for the save was awesome. But it had all gone on for so long at that point. Ibushi was off a bit all match. He'll still commit to crazy, but some nights he's like Sabu, looking just as ready to injure himself as his opponent. The first table spot was handled really nicely, I always like a good instance of something set up early that is forgotten later, until it makes its presence known again. This usage reminded me of the great Modest/Daniels vs. LeGrande/Thompson match I flipped out live for so many years ago. The table had been set up at ringside long before, and the Bucks were trying to separate Ibushi from Omega, Omega kept getting knocked to the floor, as the Bucks tried to string offense together, and after Nick hits a 450 then Matt goes crashing off the top through Omega, through a table.

I loved the sequence around that, but it is always fleeting with these guys, as it felt big enough to lead to a finish, but instead Omega is back quicker than expected and - and here's what I hate - instead of coming back and just beating ass, Omega is worried about getting Matt up onto his shoulders so Ibushi can fall on his head kicking someone. Having such clunky, difficult to set up finishers just makes guys look stupid when they come roaring back into the match and have to go through a convoluted sequence. We get Omega snap dragon suplexing Matt, only for Matt to bounce off his own neck and spring up to do a piledriver. Both moves looked great, and Matt grabs at his neck (after popping up from a suplex and delivering a piledriver, naturally), but they always leave me a little empty. Matt was good down the stretch and delivered the storyline heft, and Nick was great throughout, his timing more on point than anyone in the match (and matches like this obviously need some precision timing), I loved some of the sequences in the match, but didn't always love where they lead, and I think some of the bigger moves would have felt even bigger if Hangman Page hadn't just brushed off several headdrop suplexes. I want more space in a match like this, but the fans got the exact match they wanted, so I am not shocked that this is getting called classic. I wouldn't go classic, but it was plenty fun.


ER: A not bad show. They announced they were coming to the Cow Palace on 7/7, and I'm not sure what would need to be on the card to get me in the building. The word is Jericho/Naito, and that will not get me in the building. But if they do Liger/Mysterio? That would probably get me. It all depends on the price point, as I have an unknown mental price point in my head for everything ("I will happily see this music band for $10. Oh, the show is $20? I am less interested."), but I'll know it when I see it for this show. It's like art, you know what you like when you see it. For the Cow Palace show, I'll know if it's out of my range or not when I see the price. But on this show, I liked Liger/Ospreay, liked the Sabre/Suzuki tag, really thought the show breezed by nicely until White/Page.

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