2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Team Suzuki vs. Team Okabayashi Trios

1. Hideki Suzuki/Takuya Nomura/Yoshihisa Uto vs. Kazumi Kikuta/Ryuichi Kawakami/Yuji Okabayashi  BJW 1/2

PAS: Really fun trios match which felt like the kind of chaotic brawl which was the kind of thing that Japanese wrestling really used to excel at, this wasn't elite WAR level, but it felt like a fun Zero One brawl. We get some wild brawling around the outside which included Okabayshi smacking the crap out of a random trainee at ringside.  I enjoyed Kikuta who was working kind of like one of the old Z1 Karate dudes, I am excited for anyone trying to be 21st century Ogasawara.  Finish was a blast with Okabayashi Gotch lifting Nomura out of an armbar and slapping on a Camel Clutch which looked like it snapped his back like a Kit Kat.

ER: This was fantastic and just about the best advertisement for modern Big Japan. After those 12 minutes I wanted to devour every damn thing the fed had to offer. This felt like a real throwback and had the violence of an old interpromotional multiman. Yuji Okabayashi came off like a real megastar, and like more of a badass than I've ever seen Ishii come off. Once they all brawled to the floor I was hooked in, with Okabayashi thundering chops right past the heads of fans, Nomura kicking him in the head while Yuji echoes bombs off his chest. How kickass would it be to be sitting like 3 feet away from that!? This might be my first time seeing Kikuta, and I want more! He felt like a mid 90s sleaze fed kicker, and that's always going to be a good thing. He rocks Suzuki with a few palm strikes to the chest that will change the minds of 100% of the people who don't view a heart punch as a viable finisher. Both times Suzuki gets punched in the chest he responds by kicking Kikuta right in the balls. It's cheap, but damn those shots probably just reflexively cause that. I like everyone here, and we had no shortage of guys taking hard shots or getting clonked by a chair, but Okabayashi was the star here and man did he shine. He beat men around the arena, he did the most impossibly quick snatch and grab vertical suplexes on every opponent, he chopped some trainee in the throat, and somehow came off like a huge babyface hero even though he was constantly caving in bodies. 2019 Big Japan, here we come!


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2012: Lesnar v. Cena V. Akebono/Hama v. Okabayashi/Sekimoto

Akebono/Ryoto Hama v. Yuji Okabayashi/Daisuke Sekimoto BJW 1/3/12

PAS: It is really amazing how fat Hama and Akebono are, we aren't talking regular wrestler fat, but reality television fat. Hama looks like Jerry Blackwell had an emotional crisis and tried to eat his feelings, Akebono is the size of WWF champion era Yokozuna, probably the fattest tag team ever. Match told a pretty simple story, Hama and Bono would squish the Strong BJ guys under their massive bodies, while Okabayashi and Sekimoto would throw improbable looking suplexes. It is a great way to build a match. I don't understand how either guy was able to suplex Hama,  the only way it seemed plausible is if Okabayashi's baby was trapped under Hama and he needed to summon unknown reserves to get him off. 15 minutes is a perfect amount of time for this type of match, and it was really enjoyable

ER: Man, I don't even know how Akebono or Hama are even physically possible. Both seem simultaneously bullet proof and faberge-egg-fragile every time they move an inch. Akebono seems like there is equal chance he will throw Okabayashi into the 16th row, or that both of his ankles will shatter upon taking a step. Strong BJ throw full body weight into him and he doesn't move an inch, then he throws one of them onto the other and crushes Okabayashi with the greatest elbow drop, like an Acme anvil punching Wile E Coyote through a desert cliff. I think I used a Wile E Coyote reference in the review for Cena/Lesnar, so that immediately makes this match comparison wholly valid. Hama is just absurd. He looks like a man who should wash himself with a rag on a stick. He keeps a photo of Gilbert Grape's mom on his fridge for inspiration. And here he is laying out on splashes and throwing Vader bear attack punches and eating nasty frog splashes and throwing full weight elbows. I have zero clue how Okabayashi is able to suplex him. It does not make physical sense. Akebono is an amazing pro wrestler. I am probably his biggest fan. He feels like prime Andre to me. He carries so much presence, so much stoic facial anger, drops these amazing elbows, is able to be unbeatable and vulnerable; he's so damn good. The way he just gets annoyed when Okabayashi is trying to knock him off the apron, the way he finally takes a huge bump over the top to the apron, the way he gets vertical on a school boy and makes it entirely plausible that his own upper torso could pin him. Akebono is a guy I need to do a Complete & Accurate on. You heard it here. This guy is pro wrestling. I love this match, I love freakshow fatties, and this was just pure pro wrestling.

Lesnar v. Cena review

PAS: I dug SMOP v. Strong BJ, but it was more a fun snack, then some sort of epic meal. Cena v. Lesnar was a French Laundry dinner

ER: This match felt like more of a celebration of scientific advancement than an epic wrestling match. "Our human technology and evolution has created two pumped up undersized powerhouses and two freakishly massive round squishing machines. LOOK WHAT WE CAN ACCOMPLISH. These matches were both spectacles that are unduplicatable. But Lesnar/Cena is perfectly crafted pro wrestling drama. This was a step below, as a nonstop "No WAY they'll be able to..." match, which is special in its own way. Still, champ retains.

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Suzuki v. Okabayashi

14. Hideki Suzuki v. Yuji Okabayashi BJW 5/5

ER: A big stubborn meathead versus a big calculating meathead, yes please. I appreciate the patience in this one, as it's a Japanese heavyweight singles match that doesn't really see it's first elbow smash until 14 minutes in. This was all about Suzuki crushing and bending Okabayashi's arm in terrible ways, and Okabayashi being a big lug with tunnel vision. Both went in with game plans, both stick to those game plans, one game plan was smarter. The opening knucklelocks were really great, adding some new twists to the match start test of strength, two beefy dudes just locking hands and trying to muscle each other around, looking like they were genuinely putting everything into it. Suzuki goes after the arm from there and it's all nasty, all of it. Okabayashi does not look like a very pliable dude, and Suzuki works armbars and hammerlocks and Okabayashi just wants to use that damn arm. We get a killer camel clutch with Okabayashi bending Suzuki's jaw back with his right arm, while Suzuki rips at his left arm. Okabayashi sold all the arm work great, like a wounded animal who still needed to use his arm and had to work through it to survive. The arm factored into a lot of the match, and by the time Suzuki started throwing blows Oka was at a disadvantage, almost as if Suzuki was purposely keeping Okabayashi's mind off of this turning into a bombfest (Oka threw a couple of his mammoth chops earlier, two blocked by Suzuki, one landed, which is probably when Suzuki thought "I'm gonna have to take that arm, son"). I thought the fighting spirit spot was stupid, but could be convinced that it was Oka's last gasp, using the bad arm for a nasty lariat but it not being enough, and Suzuki - surviving it - really smells blood. Him maneuvering into the match ending octopus hold was awesome, and the elbows to soften Oka up were gross (especially the diving one to a seated Oka). Every moment of this match felt like a struggle, selling put over the rewarding work, just a super satisfying modern Japanese heavyweight match.

PAS: This was really fun, I am not a fan of the Strong BJ guys, but this was a good Okabayashi performance mixed with a great Suzuki performance. Suzuki is one of the only guys still working the MUGA style, and this was a like a classic Osamu Nishimura match. I loved the simplicity and the violence of Suzuki's arm work, lots of bending the elbow awkwardly, pressing his thumbs into soft joints and muscles, just grinding violent stuff. The camel clutch spot was awesome. Suzuki is countering the clutch by mangling the bad arm, but Okaybayashi refuses to let go and tries to rip off Suzuki's jaw with one arm. I really hated the "suplexes don't hurt me" section by Okaybayashi, and after avoiding it the whole match, the had to succumb to the stupid "make faces and hit each other" strike section. Still the actually finish was great, and I loved how Suzuki worked that Octupus until Okabayashi had to quit.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2016 Hideki Suzuki Deep Dive

After reading some reviews on PWO I decided to check out some Hideki Suzuki. He was always a guy I dug fighting MMA guys on occasional IGF shows and have really dug checking out what he is doing now. With all of the BattlArts dudes AWOL, and New Japan pretty much being pin up models doing near falls,  Suzuki matches might be the closest thing to my kind of Puro out there.

Hideki Suzuki/Yoshihisa Uto v. Yasufumi Nakanoue/Yuji Okabayashi BJW 5/30

PAS: Not sure why Nakanoue and Suzuki want to murder each other, but they sure as shit do and this was totally awesome. They start potatoing each other in the aisle and can't be pulled apart with the ref throwing the whole match out 50 seconds in. They scream at each other on the microphone and they restart the match and they go back to beating on each other with concussion causing headbutts and leaping headstomps, eventually Suzuki beats up his partner because he was trying to keep him from slaughtering Nakanoue. I love this kind of stuff, felt like a classic WAR v. NJ match or a Kazunari Murakami fight.

ER: I couldn't begin to explain to you what exactly the hell is happening here, other than Suzuki looks like such a nice man in still photos - what with his parted hair and a little goatee like you'd typically see on that guy who wheeled the TV/VCR cart into your classroom - but he clearly has a major problem with possibly every man, and wants to elbow them hard in the face and then kick them  in the face like a real snot. Nakanoue, Okabayashi, his own partner Uto, random ring boys, his elbows want nothing more than to feel their faces. Okabayashi is a big dude and I loved him ripping apart Uto to end the match, almost taunting Suzuki (who was on the floor kicking face) and locking on one of the nastier camel clutches you've seen. This kind of match doesn't happen a lot so we should all soak it in when it does.

Hideki Suzuki v. Takuya Nomura BJW 6/29

PAS: Really fun kicker v. grappler match, Nomura has fast hands and nice kicks and Suzuki responds by just beasting him with wrestling. He has these great looking takedowns and amateur wrestling small packages, where he folds Nomura like a blanket he is putting in a hamper. Nomura had his moments, but this was all about Suzuki as an old school MUGA asskicker, headlock takeovers, Boston crabs and a backbreaker which looked literal rather then figurative, a little one sided, but cool shit. I am going to have to go on a Suzuki binge.

ER: Fun WorldWide match worked nothing like you ever saw on WorldWide. I like Suzuki putting a somewhat angry twist on young lion style. His elbows really rattle, his Boston crab made my back hurt (seriously if he had slipped and lost his footing it looked like he would have snapped Nomura right in half), and as Phil mentioned all the simple stuff like small packages just look so snug and more painful. He's like Osamu Nishimura crossed with Yuki Ishikawa, which made me kind of drool just by typing that.

Hideki Suzuki v. Takuya Nomura BJW 7/9

PAS: Ok I am in on this little mini feud. Nomura is a rookie and this is a nice progression for him after their match in June. Suzuki is still chucking this kid around, but he has a little harder time keeping a grip on him. Nomura lands some nice kicks, and there is a very cool counter where he slips an uppercut and gets a great backslide which Suzuki rolls through right into a Nomura kick. Nomura even survives the backbreaker which put him down. I am in the bag for Suzuki, and think this Nomura kid might get pretty good.

ER: Really fun rematch with Nomura coming back more aggressive, and the crowd picking up on his aggression and encouraging him. Suzuki is a bully to him without ever coming across overtly dickish, just holding him down with his weight advantage but not taking cheap shots. Felt like those old Pancrase matches where a guy could go for the kill but would rather have an exciting fight, and then almost ends up getting caught. Nomura having Suzuki scrambling for the ropes to break a sub was a great moment, a thing that took me from watching a match to see Suzuki administer a beating, to seeing a rookie pull off an upset. But Suzuki is too tough and you can see him kinda casually turn it into overdrive, laying back on that Boston crab and half crab, slamming that backbreaker, and then deciding things should just be over with a crazy swift and violent butterfly slam. I think I may be watching more Big Japan this year...


ER: Well, Phil went on a deep dive and he dragged me under the water with him. Suzuki really does scratch an itch. Evolve needs to start bringing him in, in a move that will surely sell few extra tickets. Anyway, the awesome and wild tag match landed on our 2016 ONGOING MOTY LIST. But if you got a spare 20 minutes, you'll be able to watch every match in this review.

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Hama v. Okabayashi

12. Ryoto Hama v. Yuji Okabayashi BJW 1/24

ER: I am a reputed fan of giant fat dudes in pro wrestling, and they don't really come fatter than Hama. Ryoto Hama is slightly shorter than me, but weighs almost 3x as much as me. If I one day decide to throw an additional 300 lb. on my frame, I would be Hama. I don't know how these guys do it. I got aches and pains on my body, just from life and sports and what not. But I don't have to deal with the knee/back/body pain that comes with carrying around extra weight, never mind a few hundred pounds of extra weight. Hama is limited but athletic, and a match like this will rely on Okabayashi being willing to get plastered with 450+ pounds of Hama splatting onto him. And thankfully for us, Okabayashi is more than willing. We laugh as Oka tries bullying Hama in the ropes, and Oka ends up standing to the side so all we can read on Hama's mawashi is HAM. And from there, Hama goes full HAM on Okabayashi. We get some big chops, though certainly powerful Oka's do not move Hama. We get some shoulderblocks which just seems like a death wish for Oka to attempt. Sure enough, he slams into Hama, gets knocked down, and Hama drops the biggest and best damn leaping elbow you've seen right onto Oka. Hama would continue his run of awesome giant fat guy offense, with a rolling senton, big butt offense, a huge sunset flip splat, but Oka starts turning things around after Hama misses his fast low splash. Oka starts in with big lariats but goes for one too many as Hama leaves his feet for a terrific crossbody. Hama punishes him with two splashes which I thought was certainly it. But he gets greedy and goes to the corner for presumably a banzai drop, leading to Okabayashi lariating him right in his giant butt before powerbombing him, then hitting two massive big splashes for the win, with Hama likely not able to roll over, like a centuries old giant tortoise. Okabayashi was a nut for taking all of Hama's excess fat guy offense, and I appreciate him for that. (also, might have to dig back and review all Akebono/Hama tag matches from earlier this decade).

PAS: Man alive Hama has gotten fat, I remember him as a regular sized fat guy and he is end of the road Yokozuna fat now. He is really great at using his fat, his elbow drops and barrell roles look like they are lung collapsing. I liked how Okabayashi sold each smush like he was going to throw up. He also knows that if you are going to hit a fat guy in the throat you had better hit him. I also totally bought the finish, Hama may be hard to knock down, but if you knock him down he is going have some trouble getting up. Really fun match.


2016 ONGOING MOTY LIST

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Time Has No Meaning to SLL's All-Request

Randy Savage vs. Bret Hart (WCW, 5/17/1998)
Requested by Lacelle

You know, much is made of that one time Michael Buffer called Bret "Bret The Hitman Clarke". Off the top of my head, I can't remember if that was before or after this match happened, so I don't know if Buffer calling him "The Hitman Bret" and omitting his last name entirely is an improvement or not, but there you have it. Anyway, Bret is a member of nWo Hollywood and Savage is a member of nWo Wolfpac at this point, and well, that angle was really one of the more underappreciated stupid things that WCW did in this period. Once upon a time, WCW trying to fight off the nWo was a really, really big deal. And then, the nWo became sort of an inconvenience that WCW just had to live with (and constantly lose to). Now, we have the nWo fighting amongst themselves, so really, we don't need to give a shit about WCW's involvement in this at all. Still, if there was any good at all to come out of this angle, this match was it.

Roddy Piper is the special guest ref for this, and as special guest refs go, I think he gets a passing grade, though not a perfect one. There's a mentality amongst a lot of people that special guest refs are almost universally bad because they draw some degree of attention to themselves in a way that refs normally aren't supposed to do (I'm looking at you, Slick Johnson), and they usually don't call matches the way refs normally are supposed to. But that seems to me to completely miss the point - why would you book a special guest ref if they weren't supposed to come off as special? Not acting like a normal referee and drawing attention to themselves is the whole point of a special guest ref, otherwise you'd just have a regular-ass ref. And no, that doesn't mean special guest refs can't screw up a match big time. They can draw so much attention to themselves that it detracts from the wrestlers. Their reffing style can be so far afield that it becomes jarring. I'm just saying when you bring one in, it's usually for a reason. As far as this applies to Piper...well, he said he wanted a fight in the promos leading up to this match, and his character is a well-established wild card. If anything it would be dumber for him to play this totally straight, because that's just not who he is. In terms of how he calls this match, he mostly avoids the major pitfalls of the special guest ref - he gets his character across while keeping the focus on Bret and Savage, he calls it down the middle, he plays fast and loose with the rules, but not to the point where it seems far-fetched. I think he gets a little too hands on with the wrestlers at points - there's a bit early in the match where Bret is stalling on the outside, and Roddy gets fed up and throws him back in the ring. Not a deal-breaker by any means, but it keeps him from reaching Michael Hayes/Jackie Fargo/Ken Shamrock levels of quality special guest reffing. But he knows his job, and overall, he does it well.

So yeah, the match. I think the big thing that stands out to me here is that, off the top of my head, this may have been the stiffest performance I've ever seen from the Hitman. All of his strikes looked really hurty, including some nasty shots to the face and the back, as well as his usual hooks to the gut which he actually appeared not to be stomping for. I mean, there probably was some stomping in there, but he was throwing hands so hard that I couldn't really bother to notice. Mike Tenay epically misses the point, pointing out that Bret considers himself the best technical wrestler in the world and "hopes to use Randy Savage as a proving ground". But clearly Don West was the problem with the TNA announce team. Randy Savage isn't one to take this lying down, throwing some great shots of his own, but Bret regains control quickly, and they end up on the outside, including a cool moment where Bret tries to drop the ringsteps on Randy's head. Bobby Heenan picks up the slack for Tenay's earlier dopeyness, saying that Bret probably realized he had to turn up the heat just to combat Savage's wildman tendencies. Savage avoids having his noggin crushed and fights back, leading to a low-point in the match where Bret kinda struggles with an axehandle off of the guardrail into the crowd, followed by some shitty ECW crowd brawling that I can't really follow. They get back in the ring, and Bret starts working after Savage's injured knee, as well as busting out a particularly snappy Russian leg sweep and a big piledriver. The ending gets...weird. Bret has Savage in the Sharpshooter, but doesn't have it totally sunk in, so when Elizabeth runs out, Savage powers up and gets Bret in a Sharpshooter of his own. At this point, Liz runs into the ring and argues with Piper for no really adequately explained reason, which leads to Savage breaking the hold, and getting low-blowed by Bret. Bret would then attack Piper from behind with knux (which he later planted on Savage), allowing Hogan to run out, take out Savage's other leg, and when Piper comes to, Savage is back in the Sharpshooter and is forced to tap. Liz, what the hell were you doing? I mean, it's late-90's WCW. She might have been setting up a heel turn, but I can't be expected to keep up with that shit. Still, really good match, and Hogan sneakily crawling away from the ring afterwords was amusing.

Randy Savage vs. Ron Garvin (ICW, 1982/83)
Requested by Tim Evans

So, what did I write about the match during the 80's Memphis Project, again?

"I know this isn't a huge revelation or anything, but damn, was Garvin not afraid to kick a dude's ass or what? Potential top 30 pick."

Well, that's not very enlightening. And where did I actually end up putting this on my ballot....#22? Wow, that's surprising. Usually "potential top 30 pick" coming from me just means "it probably won't be in my bottom third", but this was one of the few that held up. Anyway, what I wrote wasn't especially informative, but it sums up my thoughts on this match pretty well. Garvin kicked Savage's ass. A lot. And it was awesome. The early jockeying for position was pretty cool, too, with the dueling front facelocks and Garvin's super-smooth looking schoolboy, but then Ronnie starts laying in the shots, and that's when shit gets real. All these punches and kneedrops and stomps...no wonder the Garvin stomp developed. This dude's stomp was unreal. Are there still people who think the Garvin stomp was a stupid move? Cause those motherfuckers were dumb as shit. Garvin lays in everything full force, and it rules. Savage, meanwhile, eats the beating like a man, bleeding, selling it great, and taking some nasty bumps into the cage. His comeback has him throwing some hard shots of his own, and both guys just come off as total badasses. Fun finishing stretch with ref George Weingroff (I've heard of blind refs, but this is ridiculous) getting bumped just long enough for Garvin to steal his belt, and both guys get to make use of it. Right now, I'm feeling like if I redid my Memphis ballot, this probably would drop, but hell if I know how much. It's still an excellent match, regardless. The quality of the link does this no justice. If you don't have one already, hit up Will about the Memphis set, because it is solid gold.

Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi vs. Manabu Soya & Seiya Sanada (AJPW, 3/21/2011)
Requested by ダニエル

OK, so Seki & Oka vs. Soya & Friends is a match-up that's gone one for two for me so far. To be fair, the one I didn't like is empirically great, and I only bashed it because I bash everything that is highly praised, but that's besides the point. The important thing is that I've seen a good take on this match, and I've seen a bad take on this match, so this one could've split either way for me. And....I hated it. Actually, "hate" is a strong term. This match had it's moments, moreso than their February match. But there was also more actively bad than that match, and ranking the three, I feel comfortable putting this last. There isn't a lot of new criticism to offer that you can't find in my reviews of the other two reviews (and other recent-ish puro reviews, since those problems are emblematic of the genre as a whole right now), so en lieu of a traditional review, here's a list of things you can blame for my dislike of what very well may have been another empirically great match.

Blame it on Daisuke Sekimoto.

I've reviewed a disproportionately large number of Sekimoto matches here, and I think I've told the same story in all of them. The relevant part is that I used to not like him, and now I do. In the February match, he was the guy doing the most to keep me from totally hating it, and in the April match, he was a big part of why I totally loved it. I put my faith in him twice, and he rewarded that decision twice. In March, however, he comes up short. This really felt like a regressive performance for him, like this was more of the lame old Sekimoto of a few years ago than the more dynamic wrestler who's developed recently. In matches built around beefy guys hitting each other a lot, Sekimoto can usually be counted upon to be both beefy and hard-hitting, but his offense really lacked it's usual punch, and he just came off as another guy going through the motions. I will give him this much: he busted out a tope near the end of the match that totally caught me by surprise, and I dug that. He wasn't terrible, he wasn't even the worst guy in the match, it's just that he's usually the most reliable, and this time, I couldn't rely on him.

Blame it on Manabu Soya.

He was the worst guy in this match. Without the great layout of the April match to guide him, he's still stuck in February's "let's put on a show" mode, more blatantly than anyone else. And at least in the February match he ate offense really well. Here, with the Big Japan guys falling down on the job offense-wise, he's not going to be bothered to make their stuff look any better. MORE FOREARM EXCHANGES RARRRRRR!!!!

Blame it on Ryota Hama.

Seeing a guy actually dedicated to having a good wrestling match rather than a shitty simulation of what a good wrestling match is supposed to look like kinda spoils me here. I mean, not that I was willing to accept the substitute to begin with, but Hama's presence in the April match makes a world of difference, and gives me all the more reason not to waste my time on this.

In spite of the above, don't blame it on Seiya Sanada.

He's actually the best thing about this match. Noticeably smaller than the three other sides of beef in the ring, he seems to realize he can do something different with his role in the match and runs with it, being all energetic on offense and taking big bumps off of the Big Japan team's power moves. For that matter, don't blame Okabayashi for this, either. He doesn't have a great showing here or anything, but he doesn't embarrass himself like he did in the February match, either. His double team spots with Sekimoto like the double rack and the double German were neat, and I liked him throwing around Sanada a bunch. I think if they had booked a ten-minute Sanada/Okabayashi singles match here instead of a 32-minute tag, I probably would've dug that.

Blame it on the booking.

Seriously, who was the genius who thought it was a good idea to give this turd 32 minutes? I don't care how much Sekimoto has improved, he does not have 32 minutes of material, and neither do any of these other guys, and believe me, it shows. It's not surprising that they failed to book an epic here, but they even failed to book a wannabe epic. There's a little sense of build here, but not much, and this match just takes a very long time to say very, very little. If Punk vs. Hero spent 90 minutes doing what could have been done in 30, this spent 32 minutes doing what could have been done in three, and that feels like a far bigger crime. The finishing stretch is pretty uninspired, too. Normally, this is the kind of match that will drive me crazy with a shitty, overblown, unearned "epic" final stretch, but here, they switch it up and give me a stretch run so unremarkable that it feels wrong to even call it a stretch run. Again, very little sense of build, and you'd think in 40 minutes they'd have built to something. Instead, the match ends the same way it started: blandly.

Blame it on the crowd.

Outside of Cena/Punk from Money in the Bank, the crowd for the April match might have been the hottest crowd I've seen for a wrestling match in 2011. Again, maybe this spoils me a bit, and I don't expect every match I watch to have a crowd that hot, but man was this crowd every bit as bored as I was by this or what? Dedicate 32 minutes to these guys, and the crowd really doesn't treat it any differently than any other undercard match. Polite applause, scattered bits of cheering for the cool parts...that's it. I don't need a crowd telling me to care about a good match, but they certainly weren't encouraging me to care about this.

Blame me for watching these out of order.

So in the April match, I made note of this bit:

"Sekimoto and Soya grabs each other by the hair, and Soya manages to push Sekimoto in the corner. Neither man will break, and Kyohei Wada actually has to step in between them, and when he can't break them up on his own, Okabayashi comes in to pull his tag partner off of Soya. Then, when Kyohei is admonishing Sekimoto, Soya pushes him aside and bum rushes Sekimoto."

It's a great "flip the switch" moment, signifying the match kicking into a higher gear than it's predecessors. Well, it turns out they did it first here, only without the ref shoving and bum rushing, and I have to ask myself, is the fact that this spot looks forced and completely out of place here because I had already seen it in the April match, or is it because that match really did it that much better and got that much more mileage out of it? I'm pretty sure it's the latter, but I'll throw it out there for consideration.

Blame it on Savage, Hart, and Garvin.

If you're going to do 21st century strike exchange-heavy fighting spirit puro bullshit, at least lay that shit in. You're giving me literally nothing else. This was downright tame, and the fact that I'm watching it in the shadow of two matches where guys really looked like they were kicking each other's asses, that's not good.

Blame it on the rain.

OK, it's not actually raining, but the weather is pretty dreary, and I think my seasonal affective disorder is starting to creep in. I'm sure that didn't help, but I'm guessing this stunk regardless.

Kendo Nagasaki vs. Greg Valentine (BJW, 7/6/1995)
Requested by Cobra Commander

Well, that's something I wasn't really ever expecting to see. Then again, it's not like Valentine hadn't been in his share of bloody brawls before this one. Yes, folks, this is Greg "The Hammer" Valentine circa 1995 working a Japanese Death Match. Specifically, it's a no-rope barbed wire match, which is actually pretty tame by '95 Big Japan standards, but still not necessarily something I expected The Hammer to show up in. Still, Valentine could go pretty late into his career, and I think he acquits himself fine here. The bigger question mark is Nagasaki, whom I have never really gone out of my way to see before. My findings are...inconclusive. The guy throws hands really well and bleeds a ton. His crowd brawling is really fun, dumping chairs and tables onto Valentine's head. But when he's not on offense, his selling can create some problems. There's a lot of him lying around on the mat, not so much selling as awkwardly looking around for the next move he has to take. There's a Valentine elbowdrop with an extended windup that's especially frustrating. Still, the rest of the match is an entertaining brawl. It passes my first major test for barbed-wire matches - do wrestlers suddenly gain the ability to resist Irish whips - with flying colors, as they forego that move entirely and mostly try to just push each other into the wire. Also, Greg taking it to the mat early to avoid dealing with the wire altogether was a lot of fun. And the finishing stretch, built around a race to piledrive your opponent onto the chair, was brutal and well-executed, with the actual piledriver finish being fittingly nasty. All in all, I got a kick out of this despite it's more flawed moments.

Kengo Mashimo vs. YOSHIYA (K-Dojo, 6/12/2008)
Requested by Brandon-E

Somebody who was watching Kaientai Dojo in this period more regularly than I is going to have to explain YOSHIYA to me, because as it stands, I don't know that I'm really equipped to review this properly. I guess the big question is is this guy a comedy act, or am I actually supposed to take this seriously. Because if he's a comedy act...well, he's not an especially funny one, but the match at least makes sense. If not, he is a spectacularly shitty wrestler who kills this thing dead within seconds of it getting out of the gate. Basically, he is a really schlubby looking guy who gets booked as a super-powered badass, and it just takes me out of the match immediately. And I do mean immediately - the first spot of the match is a really overblown test of strength that YOSHIYA wins handily despite Mashimo being built like a brick shithouse and YOSHIYA being built like me if I let myself go a bit more. And there's a lot more nonsense where that came from. He also sells really weirdly. I don't know if I can properly describe it. When Mashimo hits him, he sort of groans loudly and starts staggering a little and staring wide-eyed off into space. Mashimo does look really good here, and at this point, he really strikes me as someone who had all the tools, but just needed actual good opponents to use them against, and he sure as Hell wasn't getting that here. I'll give YOSHIYA this much: he did work really stiff here. At least they gave the asskicker gimmick to a guy who could actually kick ass convincingly. But everything else about it...yeah, I'm not entirely sure this isn't just some joke that I'm not getting.

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SLL's All-Request Tuesday Afternoon

The Southern Boys vs. The Freebirds (WCW, 1990)
Requested by Victator

This was the first of a best of three match series for the "Southern Tag Team Championship", which I had never heard of before, and which no records of actually exist. Until someone tells me otherwise, I'm guessing this was the Freebirds' Million Dollar Belt. It's not like I've ever gone out of my way to watch a lot of early 90's Freebirds matches, so I wouldn't really know.

Anyway, one of the big questions working on the Texas set left me with was how did Michael Hayes go from being so great in his '88 World Class run to being so bad in his '89/early 90's WCW run. This match does not provide much in the way of answers, though, because the 'Birds are actually pretty good here. Neither him nor Garvin are what they were in 1984, but they can both still throw hands and heel it up for the crowd, which is all either of them really need to do. Michael Hayes does that terrible "I will pin you by kneeling on your arms and posing so you can take me over in sunset flip position" spot, but other than that, no real complaints about their end of the match. The Southern Boys were a fun, high energy offensive team. Steve Armstrong had really pretty dropkicks, and Tracy Smothers made a great FIP. At one point, he eats a kneelift from Garvin on the apron and flew backwards into the guardrail. Nasty. Their finisher was pretty nifty, too. Not blowaway great or anything, but definitely a fun diversion.

Koji Kanemoto vs. Hayato Jr. Fujita (NJPW 5/26/2011)
Requested by Wrestling_KO Mike

Wow, I actually get to review a good 2011 puro match? It kinda figures, what with these being two really good wrestlers with a proven track record against one another. What's interesting to me though is that looking at it structurally (and taking away the expectations that come with the names "Kanemoto" and "Fujita"), I should have hated this match. It basically breaks down into two halves: one built around back-and-forth strike exchanges (the bane of 21st century puro matches), and one built around back-and-forth finishing hold exchanges (the bane of Kurt Angle-style workrate matches). You tell me that's how a match is structured, and I'll usually actively avoid it. So why does Kanemoto and Fujita trading forearms work when Sekimoto and Soya trading forearms in the match I reviewed last week didn't? For that, I direct you to something I wrote recently at the ProWrestlingOnly forums.

"Sell things the way you want people to buy them."

Kenta Kobashi and Kensuke Sasaki doing their big chop exchange at the Tokyo Dome in 2005 was a big, spectacular moment in a big, spectacular match. The idea that you can just throw that spot into any old match by two guys cosplaying as Kobashi and Kensuke and it will make your match a bigger deal is moronic. Kanemoto and Fujita are two jokers trying to replicate a tired spot that's long since had it's meaning sucked out of it. Kanemoto and Fujita are two angry pricks who are going to keep charging each other until the other goes down, and unlike all the other pretenders, it damn well looks like it. The botched apron double kick spot aside, everything was laid in hard and sold appropriately. The technical exchanges in the second half were super-slick and entirely convincing. Kurt Angle spent practically every match he's been in since the Rumble '03 Benoit match trying to recreate it. Within a month, his routine went from revolutionary to old hat. This felt as fresh and vital as Angle's work doesn't. They took a formula almost perfectly designed to drive me away, and they had me reeled in the whole time. I had not been paying very close attention to the Super Juniors tournament this year, so Hayato Jr.'s win caught me by surprise, too. Looks like it even caught him by surprise. Offhand, it struck me as the least of their three matches, but they are three very, very good matches, so that should not be read as a criticism at all. This is the real deal.

Sheik Khan Abadi & The Suburban Commandos vs. Johnny Plinko & Circum-Sexy (DMW 6/18/2011)
Requested by FLIK

I don't know what a Devil Mountain is, but it sounds like a great place to have a wrestling match. That said, I don't know how I feel about this one. As the unofficial internet consultant to the United Wrestling Coalition, I've watched a lot of poverty row indy wrestling lately. But while these guys were able to pull off bigger spots than the UWC crew usually goes for, I didn't always get the sense that they were any more polished than them. Pretty comfortable saying no one in this match was as on point as 2011 Twiggy Ramirez. And that's not a huge insult or anything, but it's not necessarily a great honor, either. I do want to say I liked the Suburban Commandos. They didn't use "It's a Nice Place to Live (But I Wouldn't Want to Visit)" as their theme, which feels like a missed opportunity, but they had a lot of big offense that I really liked. They had some cool double team spots. The military press dropped into a gutbuster on the other guy's knee was a personal favorite, as was their finish, an inverted flapjack into a powerbomb/neckbreaker combo. One of them also had a nasty snap backdrop. The finishing stretch was pretty suplex heavy, and I thought that was easily the best one. But they also had this one move where one of them had Johnny Plinko in wheelbarrow position, and Plinko willingly suspended himself straight outwards in the air so Sheik Abadi could come off of the ropes with a DDT. Business = exposed. And then there's the matter of the other four guys in the match. Sheiky baby threw some neat kicks and a running double knee, and broke out what I can only describe as a trust fall suicida, but he also had some really awkward moments, like a hot tag where he tried to get a little too fancy knocking the other heels off of the apron, and ended up rolling around out of place like a dolt. He wasn't awful or anything, but he left something to be desired. Then there were the heels. I didn't get the sense that any of them were terrible, but this was not a great showing for them. They tried to do this elaborate heeling shtick at the top of the match, but they had to choreograph it to involve all six guys doing the same thing at once, and the timing was way off. Really made it feel too stagey. They also were not afraid to stand around huddled together on the outside waiting forever to catch dives. That's not entirely their fault. I can understand the trust fall suicida taking too long to set up and them just being stuck waiting to eat it. But does catching one of the Commandos axehandles off of the apron require that much prep work? Beyond that, they seemed pretty non-descript. They also had a really superfluous manager. Seriously, he stood there the whole time during the opening micwork, and I don't think I even realized he was there until after the heels first got driven out of the ring. Even then, I wasn't sure he wasn't just the ring announcer or something. He did get involved later on, but I still don't know why he exists. Yeah, there was some interesting stuff going on here, but overall, it just didn't do it for me.

Eddie Gilbert vs. Ricky Morton (USWA 7/11/1992)
Requested by Tim Evans

Wow. So this is a roughly ten minute match between two really great wrestlers, who have kinda similar skill sets, though they tend to use them in different ways that would compliment each other. Two guys who are very much about dynamic brawling, dynamic selling, and dynamic playing to the crowd. This match is about dynamic nothing. I was genuinely stunned by how much this bored me. Did not see that coming at all. The match is mostly built around Morton keeping Gilbert trapped in an armbar, and these seem like the kind of guys who should be able to make that compelling. And well, it's not like either of these guys are Mutoh sitting around in a hold, but they're not what I expect from Morton and Gilbert, either. There really just isn't that much to talk about here, which is good in that it's Tuesday afternoon, and this was supposed to go up on Friday night, but not so good in that I want Morton and Gilbert to actually give me something to talk about. Kind of a strange finish, as the special TV time limit expires with Gilbert in control, but Gilbert wants five more minutes to put Morton away. He gets it, and is promptly flash pinned by Morton, who seemingly wins the USWA belt, but Gilbert never said anything about the five more minutes being for the belt, so he retains via Dusty Finish. It does, however, lead to a fun post-match angle where Eddie Marlin grants Morton a title rematch with any stipulation he wants, and Morton decides his dad Paul will be the special guest ref for the match (Gilbert: "I THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD!"). Shame the body the match itself wasn't as compelling.

Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi vs. Ryota Hama & Manabu Soya (BJW 4/28/2011)
Requested by ダニエル

Well, if nothing else, you've got to hand it to Big Japan. They got a hold of the All-Asia Tag Titles, and they make it a really, really big deal here, even playing the national anthem before the match. It's something that could've rung false, but I totally accepted it here. It probably helps that they were working in front of a really great crowd. Crowd chants "Dai Nihon", and I'm wondering when they last time the interpromotional aspect of an interpromotional feud in Japan actually felt significant. The fact they got over that angle in 2011 is really impressive. Also, damn, is Hase looking old. I mean, I know he was a wrestler and everything, but still, he just turned 50 in May. He probably shouldn't be quite this decrepit.

So the match starts, and it's not long before Sekimoto and Soya are doing the standard chop/forearm exchange. Again. It pretty quickly starts to like like this is going to be second verse, same as first, just with a better atmosphere, and I hunker down and prepare for the worst. And then, something strange happens. Sekimoto and Soya grabs each other by the hair, and Soya manages to push Sekimoto in the corner. Neither man will break, and Kyohei Wada actually has to step in between them, and when he can't break them up on his own, Okabayashi comes in to pull his tag partner off of Soya. Then, when Kyohei is admonishing Sekimoto, Soya pushes him aside and bum rushes Sekimoto. The crowd boos Soya's heelishness as he stomps a mudhole in Sekimoto, and it starts to dawn on me that I may be watching an actual good wrestling match. And then Hama tags in for the first time, and the idea is completely and totally confirmed. First of all, since the last time I saw him, Hama seems to have started taking some stylistic cues from Vader, only with a bit less of an emphasis on stiffness and a bit more on fatness. Secondly, good lord, is Ryota Hama ever fat. I know that's not a revelatory statement or anything, but seriously, that is a fat, fat man. He is built like a Moai head. It's amazing. Third, he kinda looks facially like a giant baby, and he only has one facial expression that he maintains through the entire match, yet he somehow manages to express every emotion he needs to with that one expression. I don't know if it's just some Sergei Eisenstein shit where I'm seeing the same face in different situations and projecting emotions onto it based on context or if he's really just that skilled, but I'm totally digging it. Look at his test of strength with Sekimoto and thrill as the expression he uses to display smug pride as he's winning shows surprise and alarm just as effectively when he's losing. Fourth, good lord, is Ryota Hama ever fat. And he knows how to use it. There are a bunch of great spots built around the fact that he is made entirely of sausages. Standing on Sekimoto's chest (with Soya pushing down on top of him), the rolling senton, the Abdullah elbow drop, the Umaga charging ass into an opponent slumped in the corner. He also makes a great brick wall. I mean, he is not as athletic of a brick wall as Mark Henry, but he definitely has his own thing going for him. Henry is a ridiculously built dude, so charging into him seems like charging into an actual brick wall, whereas charging into Hama is more "NOTHING MOVES THE BLOB!". His Vader Attack isn't as dynamic looking as Henry's Vader Attack, but he can two steps toward a charging Okabayashi, and you buy that the momentum required to move him two steps forward is all he needs to bounce Okabayashi right off of him. Also on the Vader tip, his punches aren't quite as stiff as Vader's (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, anyway), but he's throwing hands in sort of a Vader-ish way, and they do look pretty good, and the Big Van Crush on Okabayashi definitely looked like it could've been a credible match ender.

So this ended up being pretty fun, but it's not just down to pork vacuum Hama. Structurally, this is a massive improvement over the 2/6 match. That was a generic post-2005 puro heavyweight match, which is a shitty match formula that I almost never enjoy. However, most of the first half of this match is worked as an 80's southern tag, and most of the second half as a 90's All Japan tag, which are two awesome formulas that I almost always enjoy. Sekimoto was surprisingly effective working slab-of-beef-in-peril, and while I've already gone over what Hama brings to the table, I do want to say that Soya was very good here as well. He didn't play heel as overtly as a lot of guys do when working as interpromotional invaders, but he gave a hard-hitting, spirited performance, and came across way more determined and hateful here than the bland guy trying to convey fighting spirit in the last match. When he starts doing strike exchanges again late in the match, there's actually some emotion behind it, as opposed to just two guys going through the motions. Okabayashi is also way better here than he was in the previous tag. Admittedly, that's not hard, but he was fun coming in off of the hot tag (I lost my shit when he tried to rack Hama), and he gets a heat segment of his own that's pretty good before it breaks down into the 90's All Japan extended finishing stretch. Key to those is that you have to actually build emotional investment in the match during it's body so that the audience is hanging off of every nearfall at the end, something a lot of current puro matches forget to do. To that end, using the southern tag formula in the body to set up the long finishing stretch was actually an ingenious move, and I'm surprised it's not something that's done more often. This is another match I didn't know the outcome of going in, so Hama's Big Van Crush, Okabayashi and Sekimoto's awesome back-to-back top rope splashes, and Sekimoto's discus lariat (and probably a few other things I'm forgetting) all had me thinking it was over before it actually was. When the Big Japan crew finally does put down the invaders, Hiroshi Hase comes in with their belts and helps Sekimoto back to his feet, and they all hug, and it's one last big match moment that this little match that could actually deserved.

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