New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV 7/24/15 Review

1. Tomoaki Honma vs. Katsuyori Shibata (8/3/14)

So, so, so so great! I loved every second of this one. Honma is just the best and really gets that underdog mentality over to an insane degree. Here he got just as much offense as Shibata, but always came across as the underdog. And it's not like he kept lucking into his offense, he's just really great at conveying his character. Shibata was great here too as a more skilled, cold asskicker who is not necessarily underestimating Honma, but at the same time almost in disbelief that he is having *this* much trouble with him. The crowd is just so into Honma here and it's incredibly infectious. I can't remember an underdog character I get this invested in, get this genuinely excited about the outcomes of his matches. Honma just commits to everything, and it makes all the difference. His shots hit big, and they miss bigger. His headbutt flying straight into Shibata's boots was heartbreaking; his hooked legs and high cradles are the most hope-filled pinfalls possible. Shibata hits tons of nasty shots in this, and his elbows with a dropkick follow up in the corner was just brutal. But it was key that he did not view Honma as a joke, and he most definitely made Honma look like a competitor here. He sold a Honma slap like Kawada taking the nastiest Misawa elbow, actually showed struggle when kicking out of Honma's high cradles. And I could have sworn he hesitated just a moment before nailing Honma with the match-ending Penalty Kick. I really did love every second of this. One of my absolute favorite matches of the year.

2. Yujiro Takahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (8/3/14)

Hey this was better than I expected. I don't love either man, but Yujiro was pretty good here. I really liked his delay german, but then did not like how slowly and feebly he fell into the corner after a Okada dropkick. With these guys it seems like for everything they do that I like, they do something not long after that I dislike. Rainmaker looked good because Yujiro flew into it gloriously, but right before that he holds a tombstone too long which only makes it clear that Yujiro's head came nowhere close to the mat. These two give, and they immediately take away. But, it was better than I expected, and was overall perfectly acceptable televised pro wrestling.

3. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (8/3/14)

This was pretty much the match I was expecting, with fine execution and problematic layout. Tanahashi talks about his injured neck before the match and how that will affect him and how he'll have to change his style, but nothing about the way he worked this match made it seem like he was changing up his style in the least. It's like those horrible band interviews where they're talking about recording their new record, and how they've been listening to a lot of Neu and Harmonia and Phil Manzanera guitar patterns, and how they're really getting influenced by these sounds....and then the album comes out and it's the same trash they've released on their previous two records. I mean Tanahashi did not do one thing differently. I hate that.

Nakamura seemed a bit hesitant in spots, and Tanahashi is clunky about getting into position for things at times. Sometimes he's just sitting there, arms at sides, waiting to be kicked. I will give him credit for always leaning face first into Nakamura's mean knees and kicks, so there's that. Finish run was pretty bad with a rote forearm exchange, then Nakamura hitting a nasty Bom Ba Ye that looked match finishing, but Tanahashi was up doing his moves just seconds later. That was a repeat trend. This was real disappointing.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 8 Workrate Report

1. Yujiro Takahashi vs. Tetsuya Naito (10/14/13)

Wow Naito is a really, really horrible pro wrestler. Not only does he just have no charisma to speak of, but he is just completely detached from what is happening within his own matches. He has no clue how to build a match, and he's not even one of these "execution" guys, who can execute moves they see in a video game, but have no idea how to tie them together. He's a guy who can't tie them together, and executes them really badly half the time. He also has the magic ability to make his offense look like soft pillow strikes. There was one super soft moment where he ran up Yujiro in the corner, swept his leg from the apron, then did a slingshot seated dropkick…and none of them came off like anything that would hurt a human. This match was bunk right from the jump as Yujiro jumps Naito and puts his leg in a chair to "Pillman-ize" him, and everybody in the ring handles it in hilariously bad fashion, with Yujiro taking forever to set it up, Naito just sitting in the ring not attempting to remove a chair from his leg nor making any expressions (not sure he's capable of this) that would seem like he was in danger. He just sat there, blank faced, waiting, the way you blankly stare ahead when a stranger is looking for a seat on the bus and you don't want it to be next to you. It all looked so bad and went on for so long that Josh Barnett even had to say that it didn't look like Naito was doing all he could to help himself. Then there's a bad exchange with Red Shoes trying to wrestle the chair away and literally two minutes into the match it felt like my evening was being wasted. Now I mentioned how bad Naito's offense usually looks, but at the same time Takahashi wasn't doing anything on his end to make it look good. Over the course of the match I liked a couple of Takahashi's deadlift Germans (I will pretty much always like a deadlift German) but man this was such a bad match. Naito brings absolutely nothing to the table. Except his "Polvo de Estrella" kneepad. Because I like to think it's a tribute to an exotico and not just the name of his bad Stardust Press. I'll change my opinion of him to positive if I ever see him wearing a May Flowers kneepad.

2. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Naomichi Marufuji (10/14/13)

The battle of my favorite NJ guy of the last decade and my least favorite NOAH guy of all time! And there was nothing in this match that threatened to move him up my all time NOAH worker rankings. He looked so, so bad in this. The kind of bad where you could not show this match to someone with virgin wrestling eyes, because they would have too many questions, like "what was that supposed to be?" "Why is that guy pretending to be hurt? Was that move supposed to have hit him?" "Which guy got hurt taking that move?" "Was that a move or did one guy decide to fall over when the other guy ran sorta close to him?" These were all questions that *I* had while watching this match, so I can only imagine how someone watching this with new eyes would feel. Marufuji has just a wild collection of implausible offense, with bad set-ups, bad execution, and so much stuff that I'm just not sure how it would hurt if it actually landed the way I think he wanted it to land. It's all thigh slaps and really bad missed strike dance fighting and a series of moves that see him take really dangerous bumps while he's doing offense, so that his bump looks way more painful than the move his opponent is taking. Marufuji tries working too fast for his own good, as he's not fluid enough to make quick exchanges look good. Nakamura tried his damnedest here, but damn Marufuji is just B-A-D bad.

By far the best thing was Suzuki challenging Nakamura post match. I do really love that they put the subtitles up over these promos. Guys like Rusher Kimura and Suzuki always cut promos that get tons of laughs from the crowd but I never had clue one what the heck they were saying.

This was a really horrible episode of wrestling television right here.

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