Every Dog Has Its Day: Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

PRODUCE Volume 1: The Octopus 6/29/26

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

"Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1

MD: Wrestling, even artful wrestling, especially artful wrestling, is quite often purposeful. An opener serves a purpose. This is just as true for a first scene in a movie, the first track on an album. It sets the stage. It establishes a mood.

While there were pre-show matches on PRODUCE Volume 1, they were tastes and teasers, a glimpse of the wide breadth of the possibilities of the indies in the span of fifteen minutes: comedy, power, toughness, style, and just the right amount of karaoke.

This was the start of the main card and the main course, and it had to do heavy lifting. It had to make a statement about PRODUCE itself, about independent wrestling, about all of the possibilities in the previous paragraph and more.

Zack Sabre, Jr. is often likened to Johnny Saint, and for good reason, but I see him more as a modern day Billy Robinson, not necessarily in how he wrestles, but in who he wrestles. I've seen footage of him in places of the world few other foreigners delve and it reminds me of the stories of Robinson in Iraq or India. While his home base is New Japan, he presents himself as someone who wrestles who he wants, when he wants, where he wants. He is a globetrotter, a world warrior. He created a role for himself and then, over time, with effort (and not at all a sure thing), he grew into it. For him to be starting off a show like this represents something.

Bengston represents something too. There's such life to him, such joy in how he wrestles. This is a guy who loves wrestling, loves technique, loves to challenge himself, loves to open up those little moments of triumph and celebrate them (even sometimes to his own detriment). It's clear as day to watch him move. And that technique is underpinned by a humanity and vulnerability. He has fun, he flexes his skills, he certainly has his pride, but he's relatable. He's a wrestler, and wrestlers do manipulate by trade (and we welcome them to do so; we invite them in and, in turn, they invite us in; that is the pact between us), but there's an earnestness to the process to him that just makes it all the more effective. You want to root for the guy. You want him to succeed. 

This would be a battle of technique, but not wrestling for the sake of wrestling (which can be fine and good, of course, but often is best seen as a starting point and not the destination). Personal issues are at the root of professional wrestling, and they contrived a fine one between these two for this opener.

ZSJ is on record in saying that putting on a great technical match for an American audience is like “reading Shakespeare to a dog." It's a notion that undermines the audience, the audience here being far more important than the country as a whole. PRODUCE touts a different relationship with the audience, claiming that it won't insult their intelligence. At the same time, it expects something more from them, that they embrace professional wrestling as art, something worth thinking about and engaging with, worth experiencing with an open heart instead of irony and self-conscious minimizing. The wrestling will be brave and confident and the fans will be brave and confident as well.

It insults Bengston as well. To hear it from him, he went to England to learn both wrestling and Shakespeare. This is an opportunity against an opponent who was on a featured match on a huge PPV the night before, against one who is considered one of the best technical wrestlers of his generation, but it's also a chance to prove Sabre wrong, to lift up himself, the crowd, and the fledgling organization.

So yes, there was a mood to be set, and they managed it admirably on the mat. Sabre controlled to start, using one hold to unlock the next (sometimes a criticism of him, but in 2026, it comes off as strategic to me more often than not). He was able to pry down Bengston's leg despite an attempt to jam it. When controlling the arm, he gave a little wave to the crowd. He saw this as easy work. Bengston however, snuck a leg in as a simple too to create leverage, breaking a hold and turning things around on ZSJ. Bengston chose to use his superior positioning to ride ZSJ's back in the most insulting way possible. Sabre, of course, took offense. The mood was set.

ZSJ came in hot, separating arms and stepping down upon them, forcing pain to blossom across Darian's face. Bengston cartwheeled away at first chance and was able to return favor to ZSJ's legs. Sabre managed an elevated half crab but when he went for a bow and arrow, Bengston snuck in a tight short dragon screw. It wasn't necessarily a human game of chess so much as frenetic technical table tennis of joints and limbs.

Sabre volleyed back, dropping down and kicking out the arm. So far the match had its rhythm, its punctuation, but that felt like the first real transition as Sabre honed in on one specific body part. That's how we break down matches, how we analyze and organize them. Some have clear shine/heat/comeback structures, but so many don't. In those, you're looking for the transitions, the shifting of the tides of fate and advantage. You're watching to see how the characters interact, how they are affected, how they affect one another. And how they interface with the rules and norms of the world.

This match was an opportunity not just to establish these two characters, the style, the stakes, but also the rules and the potential consequence for them. Sabre doubled down on the arm, starting in with his trademark joint manipulation with the fingers. The ref immediately pulled out a yellow card, something new, something different, something perhaps timely in this World Cup year. Sabre complained, and riding another wave of transition (or, perhaps were we to lean into the narrative itself, opportunity), Bengston was able to recover.

He reversed a whip into a headlock takeover, and, much like Sabre before him, shifted from one hold to the next, looking for what he wanted. Unfortunately, what he wanted here was to preen and taunt, to shoot an imaginary basketball through an imaginary hoop and right down upon Sabre's head. Character drives action, and Bengston's character, human as it might be, allowed Sabre to drive right over him, and right into a cross arm-breaker.

A few minutes later, after the two traded uppercuts and once Sabre took over himself, Sabre's own character reared his head, for good and ill. The holds became less rote and more experimental. In this, Sabre was an artist dabbling in bodily architecture. What if a joint was twisted this way, one limb stacked over the other, a leg raised high over head? What edifice might he create? There was a schoolyard element to it, an older sibling contorting a younger, something that wasn't done with respect, but perhaps with familiarity and affection. Bengston had proven himself worth this sort of playful effort, worth an affectionate bullying instead of just a professional dismantling. It was a welcome into a global family of grapplers.

Unsurprisingly, Bengston took it like all younger siblings take it, with frustration and aggravation. He broke free, slapped the mat, pushed up and kept fighting. Sabre, at times, and as the match went on, certainly wanted this, but Bengston needed it. It gave him fire, but it left him well-suited for table tennis, not chess, and at some point, when it was time to bring things to a close, Sabre shifted gears from jamming (literal and figurative) to precise mastery. 

Bengston held his own during the pin exchanges of the finishing stretch, but even being admirably and effectively reactive was never going to be enough in a world where you have to think three moves ahead. Sabre was, unsurprisingly, perhaps inevitably, able to trap him for the pin.

Zack Sabre, Jr., wrestling nobility in his own way, having christened another ship, will trot off to another part of the globe, will go off to fight elsewhere, and, as revealed post-match, will return to create a show of his own. 

PRODUCE, thus christened, still has a journey before itself. One match does not make a show. One show does not make a legacy. But at least the stage had been set.

And Darian Bengston? Even though he lost the match, he won something greater. The quote above wasn't about Hamlet winning anything. It was simply about him being heard. Was Bengston heard? Absolutely. Was he seen? Undeniably. He had his day here, and there's every reason to believe that his tomorrow will be brighter still.

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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. 

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Danielson vs. Sabre

 

2. Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr. NJPW 2/11/24

ER: I watched this match some time last year and fell in love with it, planned on writing it up to add to my glacially growing MOTY lists, but other wrestling felt like it was more worthy of my writing time, more worthy of coverage. This match was in no way under the radar as an acclaimed match. Who hadn't heard about or seen this match? Who needed to be convinced to seek out one of the most praised matches from Danielson's brilliant farewell tour? So, I devoted my energy to other things and now, after seeing Bryan at DEAN~! 2 beautifully bear witness to the power of independent wrestling, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit this match. 

Yes, I understand this match is not an Independent Pro Wrestling Match. Clearly. New Japan is the biggest wrestling promotion on that side of the world and this took place in a large arena in Osaka. But Bryan Danielson defined indy wrestling, and Sabre was a wrestler who I fully got into after seeing him up close and live on indy wrestling shows. The close up magic was always my favorite part of indy wrestling. There's nowhere to hide when you're in a quiet gymnasium and some guy with thick glasses is sitting 8 feet away while you're working strikes. It was good that I got to see John Cena live when I was 20, to hear a gassed up green bodybuilder literally shout out spots across an echoing indoor soccer arena, just as it was good that I got to see Necro Butcher fall fully on top of my girlfriend's sister at the one wrestling show she ever attended. 

I fell in love with Danielson's wrestling after getting to see him at least a dozen times live and up close, from gyms to garages to county fairs. Any lingering doubts I had about Sabre vanished when I got to see him give and take seemingly impossible punishment from 10' away, my love fully realized when I was standing in the perfect location to witness him leave a boot imprint bruise on Dan Makabe's neck. It wasn't that long ago when people were saying Sabre was a skinny guy who wrestled an "unbelievable" matwork style, and it wasn't so many years before that when Danielson was spoken of as an incredible wrestler who would never be taken seriously on a big league level. Times certainly have changed. 

I am constantly at odds with modern wrestling. Wrestling has never been more easily accessible, and yet I have never felt on such a completely different page from modern interests and styles than I do now. So many guys wrestle like so many other guys that it feels like every guy has wrestled every other guy a couple dozen times, homogenous styles making it seem like every possible match has been regularly happening for years and been done to death. Considering that, I was surprised that there weren't already a dozen different Danielson/Sabre matches, but merely four, split down the middle by a 15 year gap. It feels, on paper, so predictable that they would make great opponents that I just assumed they had been out there being great opponents for each other during every year Danielson wasn't a) in WWE or b) critically injured. But no, there wrestled four times, and this will (surely?) be the last time. It is their definitive match, and it is so good that noted wrestling historian Dave Meltzer gave it an unprecedented 5 1/2 stars (!), an honor he has only bestowed upon his favorite several dozen matches over the last two years. 

This match was fantastic at being the match I expected it to be, and even better at being a match that could break out into something different at any time. It skated a line between "close your eyes and picture the match you think Sabre/Danielson would have" and "maybe these two are going to go 30 minutes of constantly struggling over every single hold with no breaks of any kind". I don't need a match to subvert my expectations for me to enjoy it. Often I want a match to do the exact things I am expecting it to do. And, while I thought the match was at its most thrilling when it was subverting my expectations and teasing the unknown, I also appreciated the ways that it played directly into expectations. While the structure played into my expectations, the brutality somehow exceeded them. This never felt like two guys working a Dream Match Farewell, it always felt like a brutal match that kept tipping further and further into unprofessional territory, in a way that only felt more engaging the longer it went, with the possibility of either man's body actually breaking feeling like a real thing that could happen. So the match built incredibly as a well laid out wrestling match, while ramping up the intensity appropriately in time with the build. 

The beginning was playful and didn't feel the need to rush. When I say "playful" I mean playful in a way that would rip the ligaments of most humans, but it was playful for them. These two are not normal men, and they are testing each other and it is playful and painful. One of the best things about Fujiwara was how happy he could look in matches. When he smiled about what a dickhead he was being a dick or after taking a kick to the teeth, he looked like he was doing the exact thing he most wanted to be doing in this world and loving it. Danielson's farewell run was at its best whenever he could not hide how much fun he was having, and that pure joy was evident in nearly his entire AEW run. Sabre was smiling and laughing too, but his laugh was more pensive; the dance partner who wasn't sure how far this smiling battered old guy was going to take things. They were testing each other, in different ways, while also entertaining each other with something they each love doing: wrestling. 

I didn't see a single second of inactivity on the mat. There was constant advancement without ever seeming like they were in charted waters. In a wrestling world where every reversal feels like it skipped the move entirely and went straight to the mapped out reversal, this looked like RINGS. It was the kind of matwork where you couldn't grab a headlock without having a palm jammed into your jaw, no way to scramble for a leg without getting your own leg bent weird. Snapmare reversals looked so good they would have been bought as a first fall finish to men in suits watching front row in the 50s. Ankles were targeted, some moves delivered with a sigh of relief, less desperation maneuver more clever quick thinking escape. Sabre adjusts his submissions on the fly to keep Danielson from getting from the ropes, and it felt like a Johnny Saint spot...if Saint had ever worked as a heel sadist. I lived through the era where indy wrestlers began seeing their first Johnny Saint match, and you couldn't go to a show without someone throwing their name into the hat of "who could do the worst Lady in the Lake". I always felt the Johnny Saint Rip Off descriptor was unfair to Sabre, and I think he's been exceeding that tag for a decade now. The history is there, but the ceiling of viciousness was never this high for Johnny. 

The stiff work was even stiffer than I expected, and the worked violence was so tight that it made me question what was legit and what wasn't. Was Danielson really mule kicking Sabre straight in the kneecap, or did it just Look Good? Was Danielson really trying to no sell like Kikuchi until Sabre starting kicking him in the face, making Kikuchi homage impossible? Sabre has one of the greatest worked headbutts, and I also get the sense he has a great shoot headbutt. Does the 5 minute Fujiwara/Kikuchi match from fucking Ice Ribbon exist on tape? ICE RIBBON are the ones who ran Fujiwara/Kikuchi? How could that be? 

Anyway, Danielson's downward strike elbows are maybe the only thing I wished Danielson would have dropped from his arsenal. It was tough to make them Look Good, and they inspired as many horrid copycats as The Lady in the Lake. But Danielson had the best version of this spot that dozens have now done much worse. Here, his 12 to 6 elbows were the best they've ever looked...or had the close up magicians fooled me again? It sure looked like Danielson was crossing a line with them while breaking a triangle, and I loved how he was acting like a guy who knew he was clearly crossing a line. Their off-timed body shots to block strikes felt like they each could have been intentionally trying to throw the other's timing off within a worked sequence or in a playful shoot way. They worked as beautifully together as anyone with a brain thought they would.

My faults with the match are minimal but I think important: The top rope back suplex felt like it was from a different match. It's a 32 minute match and most of it had been two guys struggling against the other's force, and now suddenly it was two guys kind of holding still so Sabre can make sure he's balanced and Danielson can find his footing. Everything else felt like two men trying to neutralize the other, and the suplex felt like two friends working together to boost each other over a pretty high fence. The finish itself was kind of a letdown. I kept liking parts of it - Sabre pulling back on Danielson's leg after the Zack Driver, then throwing his other leg over to clamp it down made me think that was it. That leg looked like a nail in a coffin - but I didn't love the rush for pinfalls, and the submission reversals suddenly felt more like Dean Malenko style Early Anticipation mapped out matwork. When you get half a match of Real Shit and finish with that, it's a harsh intrusion of 2024 Wrestling right when you're about to climax. Unfortunate placement by them, unfortunate wording by me. 

Those complaints aren't what I'm going to think about when I recall this match. This match was far more than that. It stands as one of the highest points of 2024 Wrestling, and no matter what I think about modern wrestling, I mean that as positively as possible. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Shingo

 

1. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Shingo Takagi NJPW 11/4/24

ER: "Wow," he thought. "A Shingo Takagi match, finally getting discussed on Segunda Caida." That's not true of course, because Matt is a psycho who covers so much wrestling that obviously he hit the AEW appearances of Shingo, but he's a big name whose acclaimed work has never quite connected with me. His career has been long and successful and I'm sure there are plenty of matches among his thousands that will connect with me, but this is the first I've seen that felt just right. I fell in love with Michinoku Pro and still love it as much as ever, and I was there for the Toryumon tape trading and fell in love with a new generation of guys, and then I was older and out of college and had a job and a live in girlfriend and didn't connect with Dragon Gate the same and had less time to watch wrestling and so now I'm writing about Shingo Takagi for the first time on Segunda Caida. 

But this is a Zack Sabre Jr. review. Carry job is an insulting term that I don't really like using and this was not that, but Sabre's constant interruptions of Shingo's well orchestrated timing based wrestling made this dynamite. Dragon Gate at its best had exceptional speed with exceptional timing. The best of their multimans are undeniable. The timing and flow was real important to the style and Zack Sabre is amazing at working with the same timing to purposely monkeywrench the steps. He hits very hard and seems to enjoy being hit very hard. Sabre, over the last decade, has transitioned from a guy formerly accused of being a beanpole who needs people to hold still, to a deceptively sturdy guy who works as stiff as any of the BattlArts legends. He's a disruptor, he disrupts with surprising pop, and he seems to have this insistence on being hit just as hard and just as much. Unlike guys who make that their entire personality, whether they're actually stiff workers or just mimes doing bad stand and trade, he does not make it his personality. The stiffness and abuse are all part of the methodology to get to his submissions, which are also applied stiffly and forcefully. There's never any overwrought Hit Me Harder faces in sequences that stop a match dead, it's all stiffness that's intent on finishing. 

Sabre never seems to look for one answer. He has a shocking amount of depth and knows how to go several directions from established positions, making his method of attack always feel like his own while always surprising me. His willingness to lean into punishment to lean timing allows Shingo to work at his stiff best, getting to land full force clotheslines that occasionally get caught and twisted or beaten. But it never becomes an arm match, or a neck match, or a leg match, even though Sabre runs through sections of working on all of those things with the intent to finish, to wound, to slow. He can crank Shingo's neck with his legs, dropping his weight to drag him into the ring, without going back to a neck attack until the attack presents itself. When Shingo takes a second too long attempting a Gory Special, Sabre is there with a side headlock clutch that moves quickly into a disgusting octopus hold. If the neck presents itself, it becomes a neck match. As a disruptor, he allows Shingo to work his timing and takes every torso extension that presents itself. Sabre understands the weight of his offense and how to make submission applications and submission set ups look and feel as real as possible. The way he can straight an arm - quickly, slowly with pressure, working against resistance - and make it look like straightening an arm away from a man's body is requiring full strength from both, keeping that weight and gravity always present. For me, it adds meaning. Shingo looks like he's struggling to keep his head up at spots and it gave his responses frantic importance. 

Sabre is adept at catching Shingo's Actually Fast stuff, like the way he catches a few of his lariats and twists them into something dangerous, catching one and throwing uppercuts at it once he traps the arm, kicking at it another time. It's an all out attack and he commits just as hard to each attack, knowing one of them will lead to an ultimate opening. The weight made this into a match that could have ended satisfactorily at 15, 20 or 30 minutes. The survival felt earned but the attempts to finish felt real. Sabre's match long wear down was made even better with Shingo working 30 full minutes of body degradation. The final straw came down to Sabre throwing several short mule kicks at the inside of Shingo's knee before Shingo pulls off the Shingo Driver, causing enough of a delay in the pin attempt, and the way those kicks and the other knee and body attacks culminated in Shingo's slightly slower step down the stretch, his inability to get his legs underneath him on more than one occasion, and the way it was all done with no overacting, captured the best of this style. 

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September Release Wrap-Up: ZSJ~! DE LEON~! ANIVERSARIO~! HASHIMOTO/VENY~! SAREEE/MIYU~!

MD: I've always been less of a listmaker than my compatriots, so there's not as much MOTY List stuff over the last couple of years. That said, this feels like a good time to hit some high spots in a quick global roundup of things that either just happened or that were just released. Probably won't be a regular thing except for various Mondays where there isn't an AEW match that fits the criteria or jumps out at me (like when we covered Mio vs Ozaki).

Jake De Leon vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Dexcon 5/26/24

MD: Joseph clued me in to this, as you'd well expect. He has the details on how to get it here. It's well worth watching because it's a great throwback to a world long gone, a champion (in heart and reputation in this case) traveling all around the world to fight the local hero, to give him someone to test his mettle against. It's 2024 and this is a very smart (in the vernacular sense) audience, so there wasn't going to be riots if Jake didn't win, but this match certainly made Sabre look larger than life and like a real world warrior, adding to a globetrotting year, while also allowing De Leon to account for himself far more than honorably and to seize a sort of moral victory. That was often the only sort that the local could obtain against the traveling champ, but for a crowd that might only see the very top of the pro wrestling magazine food chain a couple of times a year (or even less), it was more than enough so long as the wrestlers made it more than enough, and they certainly did that here.

This is pro-shot but there was a hanging sort of darkness with the lighting, a close-in feel that created a mood unlike most other pro-shot wrestling you'll probably be watching in 2024. The crowd was abuzz, holding up their phones, oohing, chanting. Sabre knew his job, pressing in on Leon early and using creative hand signals to try to dissuade the crowd from chanting for him. He was the rare sight, but he was there to help glorify everything around him, not solely for the sake of his own ego.

The ceiling for a guy like Sabre is very often what his opponent can keep up with. This is a year when he was up against Hechicero and Danielson, two opponents that he could do virtually anything with. It's a testament to De Leon then that he seemed like he could do almost anything. Here, too, was the added challenge that they were going to go to the limit.

While De Leon would meet Sabre head on whenever he could manage it, and even put him in real danger through damaging the arm and almost cinching in his favorite holds, Sabre came off as the overall aggressor. It was generally up to De Leon to escape, often as Sabre held on through an attempt or shifted position to continue the punishment. Escape he did though, and he'd fire back, standing tall in the middle of the ring, throwing hands while seated, fighting out of the corner, doing whatever it took. Overall, there was more focus on the arm by De Leon and the leg by Sabre, but things tended to reset back to the middle, more often than not forced there by De Leon's skill to keep his head above water and drive to prove himself as Sabre's exact equal.

They kept this pace for around twenty five minutes. Only in the last five did they really start to shift from damaging and softening up towards trying to seize a victory. That led to things boiling over and the fight heading to the floor. It was only after they came back in that Sabre seemed to understand that time was slipping out of his grasp. He tried to push forth to victory but overextended and De Leon didn't just stay in it but came perilously close to the perceived upset. Sabre got the hold he wanted, as time was ticking down but De Leon had made such a struggle of it, making him fight for every inch of positioning, that the bell rang before Sabre could obtain a tap. As draws go, this was one of the sweetest, for De Leon wasn't just a passenger riding the time out; his defense drove the seconds down and robbed Sabre from another notch on his belt. Maybe not the triumph the crowd would have chosen to revel in but one that they were still more than happy to celebrate.

Sareee/Mayu Iwatani vs. Chihiro Hashimoto/VENY Sareee-ISM Ch. V 9/2/24

MD: There's a Guerreros vs Fantastics match that was part of the Houston collection that was pretty hard to wrap one's mind around when it came out. There wasn't a clear shine/heat/comeback structure. Instead, the Guerreros would cheat to get ahead and then the Fantastics would fight back, even getting a tag, and then the Guerreros would almost immediately cut it off and continue to lean down upon them. I called it stuttering heat and there's something similar going on here, albeit with less actual tags and more simply rushing in. There's an inherent structure to this that keeps it from being formless and aimless noise, no matter how much it threatens to devolve to that at times.

As much as Sareee presents herself as an ace (with all that entails) and Mayu as plucky and effectively opportunistic, Hashimoto and VENY are both larger than life (albeit in different ways) and either on their own or working together, they were able to consistently cut off Sareee and Mayu in a way that kept this from being Your Move/My Move and endowed the match with a constant sense of struggle. Wrestling isn't math, but the start of the match was something like 60/40, with the middle being 70/30, and the finishing stretch a straight 50/50. It was a precarious balance but one that never quite fell apart.

I haven't seen a ton of Sareee this year. I don't think I would necessarily gravitate towards her over Mio, who is more about big selling and big comebacks, but Sareee absolutely wrestles like a star. She's always pushing forward, always standing up, always leaning in, always fighting back. That worked especially well with Hashimoto who was always cutting off, always pressing down, always pushing off. Their opening exchange felt familiar but not collaborative, with a highlight being how both bridged up and out of pins and immediately turned their subsequent advantageous positioning into instant offense. Mayu had more of a never say die spirit and had some fun stuff early where she outquicked both of her opponents at once. VENY on the other hand, is almost unnaturally big relative to her opponents and has this casual, matter-of-fact way of moving that methodologically controls the pace; the contrast stands out.

There were certain things I would have liked to have a little more resonance like Mayu accidentally tagging Sareee with an errant shot, especially since Hashimoto accidentally clotheslining VENY (which left Hash open to Mayu's German and being taken out of the match) set up the finish, but in general, I never felt like they were blowing things off too much. There weren't excessive kickouts as they leaned more towards partners breaking things up instead. Down the stretch they set up the idea of big moves, the struggle to hit them, and the payoff when they actually hit in a satisfying way. Ultimately, this was all action, but the action was smart and measured and played into the natural discrepancies between the teams in a way that elevated this past meaningless sensation and into something that hit just right (not an easy thing!).

Hechicero vs. Valiente vs. Esfinge vs. Euforia CMLL 9/14/24

MD: Aniversario. Elimination 4-way. First two out are out of the match. Final two in fight then for the immortal glory of taking a mask. Traditionally, I'd say that these matches tend to be a little bit disappointing, with bombs and action early and too short a one-on-one match towards the end, a poor contrast to a heated 2/3 falls apuestas match. That wasn't the case at all here.

The opening 4-way was certainly action packed. They went right to the four of them flying at each other. The initial image of the match is Hechicero missing a dropkick. Esfinge and Valiente (who needed to be highlighted early for obvious reasons) both hit dives in the first minute or two. They kept things moving and interesting as they cycled through advantages. Euforia matched up against Hechicero. Valiente matched up against Esfinge. All three of them caught Euforia on a dive and power bombed him on the floor. I don't know exactly when Hechicero injured his arm but he was holding it after the Conjuro on Valiente so it's something to keep in mind for the rest of the match; he was working through it (he even bumped over the top rope immediately thereafter, after which they taped him up).

Despite it being a 4-way with all of the inherent difficulties there, the elimination nature and inherent stakes helped things along. It felt paced just right, the level of damage and exhaustion rising so that things slowed down as believable nearfalls began to creep in. For example, Esfinge almost got Hechicero on a complex bridging pin only for Hechicero to pick an ankle to escape. Euforia tapping Esfinge on his body scissors dragon sleeper paid off their feud but was a surprise to a degree as Esfinge vs Euforia was the biggest focus heading into this. Following that was a final bit of Valiente spotlight and an extended matchup with Hechicero where Hech was able to make one last counter to tap him. Again, that was a bit of a surprise as Valiente was maybe the odds on favorite to lose his mask.

So the central feud and the central victim were off the table. What we had left was Euforia and Hechicero, the latter of which was dealing with a bicep tear in real time. They had been trios champs last year and have Infernales history but relative to other apuestas matches, there wasn't as much of a hook. That said, Hechicero is on an international hot streak for 2024, the star run of his life, and Euforia had been waiting his entire career for a moment like this and what they gave us was not at all the rote constrained mask match following eliminations that I've seen at least a few times before. They went all out.

That meant Hechicero reset things with a dive, pulling his straps back up after (another reset in its own way). It meant he let Euforia back in by wiping out on a diving legdrop onto the guardrail. Euforia focused on the arm just a little, but only to set up the mask ripping and the bombs that would follow. And did they ever follow. I lean more towards minimalism than not, of course, and I think you can have an amazing apuestas match with just punches, mask ripping, and blood, but not in 2024 CMLL, of course. This is the one time a year and the one geographic place that a match should go as big as it possibly can. That meant multiple moves off the top (including Hechicero surviving two power bombs). It meant Euforia struggled and struggled to lock in his submission and when he actually did, Hechicero still somehow survived it. It meant big moves like a pumphandle faceplant that were hit and then reversed on the second try.

In any other setting, more on top of more on top of more like this would have been a problem, but here it was the solution. They sold consequence. They channeled pure desperation. They fought exhaustion as much as they fought each other, not to mention injury and cumulative damage. In pro wrestling and in Arena Mexico, nothing could possibly matter more than this, nothing, and every kickout, every reversal, every bit of perseverance to survive a hold, all of it was warranted. And that, as much as anything else, made it feel all the more magical when Hechicero found one last burst of energy to bound off the ropes and hit his headscissors driver and immediately shift it into a hold like he does so well. If you had asked me a few years ago if this sort of glory was still possible to grasp, I might have had my doubts, but they rekindled the fire and recaptured the magic. It's not the bloody and pure magic of days gone by, but it's one still real and vibrant today.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Makabe vs. Sabre

 

Tangled Up in You

1. Daniel Makabe vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Prestige Wrestling 4/14

ER: I didn't plan on following Dan around on tour like I was following late era Dead, but after he worked the main event of our DEAN~!!! show last week and I saw he was working Zack Sabre in Portland the next weekend, I checked plane tickets just to see how feasible it would be. You know those plane ticket deals you hear about but never actually experience? The kind where someone you know makes it sound like an airline paid them $1,500 and gave them free flight vouchers to anywhere in the world just for moving to an empty seat to accommodate a mom and her child? And then a similar deal is offered to you on a future flight and there is no cash offer, no flight vouchers, only the knowledge of letting a mother sit with her child, and you feel like a sucker? Well, whatever happened, I looked up flights and there was the kind of screaming deal that I have never benefitted from, some kooky mileage plan perk that was giving me 5x the usual value on points, meaning I booked a trip to see Wrestling Genius Daniel Makabe wrestling Zack Sabre Jr. for what came out to $22.40. That is a deal I could not pass up, so after seeing Dan in Philly and New Jersey one week, I jetted off to see him in Portland the next, and this summer I plan on seeing him in Deer Creek, IN, the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, and possibly out to the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia for a two-nighter. 

It was totally worth it. Makabe and Sabre worked a long, nearly 25 minute match, that did not in any way feel like a 20+ minute match. It was heavy on grappling and leverage and the crowd ate it up. That's not an easy feat on a 4 hour show that already had several 15-20 minute matches, but this packed 1,000+ strong house at the Roseland wanted to see some fucking grappling, and these are two of the finest to do it. Seeing a match like this up close (standing behind the 3rd row on camera side) only makes this style of wrestling sing, but I also feel the match would play no matter how you watched it. You can watch it on 240p on your phone to save battery, or you can stand and watch it next to some gal who is going to be married to Makabe, both of you reacting with disgust and glee as Sabre leaves a literal boot print on Dan's neck with a kick. There's no wrong way. They could have gone on grappling forever and tricked the crowd into watching a 60 minute Broadway until midnight on a work night. That's how strong a command they had. 

They stayed close and tangled through much of it. The gamesmanship was great. Sabre is the perfect kind of cock who can back it up, Dan is a guy who can be goaded into things but also loves letting opponents get comfortable thinking they can ace him. Both have tricks, both wrestle with the confidence of someone who knows their tricks are craftier than the other. My favorite thing to see Makabe do up close is dig his palm or elbow into flesh to procure a method of advancement, Digging a quick elbow into Sabre's ribs and being right there to catch his arm when he flinches. There are no seams, nobody is moving their arm or leg into place for the other, you can watch Makabe force an error and be waiting to catch the forced error, like a guy bouncing a ball off a wall and anticipating how to play it before the bounce. Dan digs elbow points into thighs, throws a stiff palm underneath the ribs, seemingly knows many pressure points to strike on every limb that allow him split second distractions on his way to advancing up or down that limb. It's a joy to watch up close, like Ricky Jay is showing you a card trick repeatedly, until you can process what he's doing. 

A kid standing on his seat not far from me kept screaming out for Zack Sabre to twist or injure a part of Makabe. This kid was a real sicko, screaming for Sabre to twist Makabe's neck, leg, feet, fingers, just screaming out his childlike voodoo doll requests with every Twisting Dream sounding like a worse and worse existence for Dan. I loved little ways Dan would play possum, lying in wait for Sabre to throw a kick just so he could catch him with a sick abbreviated dragon screw, or luring Sabre into a stomach kick just to pivot instantly into a trap leg suplex (the only throw of the match). The possum moments were great, because they also led to possum moments that worked out terribly: laying in wait for a kick he knew was coming only to not be quick enough and instead take a full kick to the chest, or later when he gets a little too married to a kneebar while legs are tangled, he's left prone for a swinging kick right in the neck that sounded louder than anything else in the match (and left an even louder welt). Sabre was of course the first one to go for strikes, but this is a match that didn't need any kind of strikes (and didn't have many). Sabre is always the first one to pull shit like that, but I loved the ways Dan forced him back into a Frye/Shamrock stubborn kneebar battle. Watching ol' slippery Daniel Makabe slip his way in and out of an octopus, or squirm through shifting Sabre's foot a couple inches to allow him to get his own trailer hitch while Sabre was also pushing on Makabe's foot to do the same, locked in a ligament twisting ouroboros that managed to always build while still feeling like they left hours of material on the table. 

Sabre worked over and welted up Dan's arm whenever the leg twisting didn't go well for him, and there were multiple times where Makabe couldn't capitalize on something because of the ways it was now harder to utilize his left arm. Posting up on the arm was now out of the question, but using it bluntly for twisting now became more focused, and no matter how many times Sabre kicked at Makabe's left arm, he couldn't slow down Dan's Luis Castillo-like right hand (one of which landed hard and clean, one which landed on Sabre's jaw just as a flat boot kick landed right in Makabe's gut). Both men had a couple of rope breaks during some long engagements with tangled legs, including Sabre having to scramble so quickly that he ended up grabbing the bottom rope on either side of ref Aubrey Edwards like he was Eddie Guerrero hugging the referee for protection. Every twist felt like a possible finish, a thing that could catch the other on a bad day, but when Sabre locked his leg around Dan's left arm and trapped them both behind his back in a sick attempt to make Makabe's elbows touch, the could started feeling like a certain would. 

I don't think it's easy to main event a long show and keep a tired Sunday night crowd hot for wrist bending and elbows dug into hip points, but it's business as usual for a wrestling genius and the evergreen Gotta Hand it To Sabre. These people, me included, got louder and louder for all of it, and I think we all would have been right there in minute 45. Two wrestlers so good they make you lose track of time, when everything we do every day revolves exclusively around time. I like the way they twisted. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW (in NJPW) Five Fingers of Death 2/12 - 2/18

Bryan Danielson vs. Zack Sabre Jr. NJPW 2/11/24

MD: Longer matches are not intrinsically better; most times the opposite is at play. There is the possibility for more complexity with more time however (which is exactly why the opposite is so often at play; there's a responsibility not just to have long equal more, though all too often, matches are not properly punished for failing to meet that responsibility). Which is a roundabout way of saying that there was a lot to keep track of here. Moreover, there were a lot of bits that could have multiple readings. Sabre's a guy who was praised early, too early in mind, when he was still a tribute act and hadn't put it all together, but that was years ago and he's connected dots more or less since then. It took me a while to catch up to him, though, and I'm still not as familiar as I could be. That means that there are certain things here that I am not as comfortable attributing as I might normally be. But we'll get to that in a moment.

The first ten minutes of this were the two of them throwing every hold they had at one another. In their last match, much like a big chunk of his 2023, Danielson wrestled reactively. He drew Sabre in, let Sabre take the initiative, and then countered. Here, there was none of that. He was aggressive, pushing forward with a fluid, lithe stance, and trying hold after hold after hold. Three possible readings there. The first is that he was the invading aggressor, as Sabre had been at WrestleDream, and acted accordingly. The second is that he knew how good Sabre was now and wasn't going to give him the chance to take the initiative. The third, and this is the one I like the best, is that he's still recovering from getting stretched and twisted by Hechicero and he came in with a chip on his shoulder. You can add in the fact Kingston so recently beat him and Sabre's taunts about how fragile he was (which, like the other two preceding elements, has a hint of truth to it). Maybe it's even a combination of all of the above, but those are a lot of strands to keep track of to explain a wrestler's actions and reactions in a 30+ minute match.  What I loved about this opening stretch is that neither felt confident with any of their holds in the face of the skill of their opponent. This quick shifting had a real lucha matwork feel to it despite the actual holds being done not being those typical for such a thing, either in choice or execution. You have to suspend your disbelief with those lucha opening stretches sometimes, have to just assume that the maestros know what will and won't work and the cost and price to holding an attempt too long. Here, though, it was tense and visceral; too much torque one way or the other would have led to a devastating opening.

That played out in practice at around the ten minute mark when Danielson was able to reverse Sabre into the ropes, leg first, and cause some real damage. It was a fluke but also a natural culmination to what had been happening and one that would change the course of the match. Basically, something had to give and something did. There was an immediate question of whether Danielson would use the damaged leg as a wedge to gain broader advantage or if he'd target it and he chose the latter. For the next few minutes, Sabre backpedaled and tried to stay above water. He was able to open things up with a couple of lightning fast escapes into neck twists (with the damaged leg), but it was always going to be a detriment. 

Two or three key times, one when they were in mutual legbars and then later for a couple of standups, Sabre leaned hard into strike, even slap, exchanges. Again, there are a couple of readings. It might have just been the usual fighting spirit or animosity coming to play. To me, though, it felt like Sabre knew how vulnerable his leg was and chose to tantalize Danielson with an offer he couldn't refuse, the chance to throw fists, hands, and feet with Sabre instead of keeping his offense laser focused on the leg. Sabre couldn't stand to Danielson's superior striking but it was worth sacrificing his looks and his skull to keep his knee for a few more minutes. It was a choice that might have won him the match over all.

Which leads to one last decision down the stretch. During one last such exchange, Danielson, perhaps understanding and adapting to what I just suggested Sabre was doing, slipped in a backslide attempt off of a Sabre strike. Sabre landed on his feet but tweaked his leg momentarily and Danielson hit the knee. He didn't go for the cover. Despite Sabre getting in a couple of nice bombs down the stretch, Danielson had been winning on points and very likely could have scored a pinfall here. Instead he got up to hit another and it ultimately cost him the match. My guess here is that Danielson wanted the submission instead (or at least a knock out) but didn't think he could quite get it yet, even after one knee, given how the match had gone so far. It was that same instinct from the beginning of the match that caused them to release holds after a couple of seconds; he had so much respect for Sabre and so much confidence in his own ability to hit that second knee and put him away once and for all in the manner of his choosing, that he left a less satisfying win on the table. 

The thing is, I can't be sure. This is unknowable in 2024. We're better off for that. Wrestling is absolutely a creative medium and while some people's idea of creativity is stacking more upon more to create a cool effect, I love that a match like this lays itself open to multiple satisfactory interpretations. If Danielson meant to do X1 in minute Y1, that has an implication for the reading of him doing X2 in minute Y2. Wrestling is broad and can be so many things, but usually it's direct and in your face. Explicit storytelling in wrestling tends to go but one way and implicit storytelling, even when it can be worked out and pieced together, usually follows the paths of least resistance (such as Hierarchy or Hansen). Here the text was rich enough and executed with such skill that there are multiple possibilities. That, as much as anything else, makes this match exceptional.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Ospreay

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay NJPW 10/14

ER: It's tough to get me excited about a 30 minute long New Japan main event for one of their couple dozen different title belts, but Zack Sabre is a guy who can still engage me within a style I don't care for. I'm a Sabre Guy and I think he's a great opponent for Ospreay because he forces honesty out of him. If you put Ospreay in with a guy who is a lot like him - and Wrestling Like Ospreay seems to be the style that is omnipresent on the Indies and Japan and a lot of wrestling TV right now - it can inform his worst tendencies, and then he welcomes his opponents' worst tendencies, and then you eventually realize the match shot at least 10 minutes beyond its best finish line. I like big Sabre main events because Sabre matches don't tend to veer into any of the same kind of overkill as Ospreay vs. Ospreay Replicant, as Sabre matches always just devolve into different ways for him to twist his opponents' neck or limb joints, skipping past a lot of shocked face finisher kickouts in favor of sudden panic when a kickout leads to an unexpected submission attempt. This went 30 minutes and Sabre's honesty and build through the match really made this peak at the right moments, and the fact Ospreay lays a lot of his offense in and Sabre is dumb enough to lean into all of it just makes it better. 

They got the stand and trade elbows out of the way in the first third, as a way to actually establish the potential stiffness and introduce it into the match, Ospreay allowing Sabre three free shots and Sabre rattling his jaw on all three (especially the middle one), before leveling him in one shot in return. Sabre will have to hit harder or avoid being hit. The stand and trade letting your opponent hit you stuff works much better as a transition out of opening matwork, than as an end of match We're Having a War spot, and it's one of many great choices they make.

Sabre's submissions are really disgusting and any criticisms of the past saying people need to hold still for him during matches seems even more misguided and out of place than it did then. His matwork is honest - there's that word again - and his dumb guy face really does just fool people into thinking he's a phony. His figure 4 stump puller was incredibly nasty and we would have loved Minoru Suzuki in 1989 UWF doing that while making the calm smug faces Sabre was making here. Zack Sabre Jr.'s rosy cheeks make him look like a San Francisco Giants World Championship Run middle infielder and people hate that his rosy-cheeked softbottomed matwork looks fucking tough. He looks like a right wing tech blogger who got Actually Good at tricked out submissions and he's one of our greatest ever Gotta Hand It To's.

Sabre is impressively untelegraphed. You go through your days watching an ungodly number of Dean Malenko matches and you can see all the awkward pauses and frozen leans while waiting for guys too early, setting up the sequences while visually thinking of every step. You watch enough of him and you can see where everything is going, even if it is going fast. Zack Sabre Jr. still surprises me, which was something I didn't expect when I first saw a Sabre match 12 or 13 years ago. He still has new tricks and new ways to get to a destination, and he's really good at them. I wish we got even more of Sabre going after Ospreay's arm, because I was into every single part of it, culminating in Sabre headbutting Ospreay's arm and throwing a Kikuchi level headbutt to sit Ospreay down on the top rope, before flinging both of them off the top rope with a sort of Spanish Fly-ing Armbar that would look insane in any video game. 

Ospreay has some cool stuff, and he also has some dumb stuff. He is a Dumb Guy, and he will always do dumb things. The turnbuckle head tuck is a really great Dumb Guy spot. It's like a sadistic game an 8th grader with a bad home life would come up with. It doesn't have to make any sense in a logical way, because there's no good way to organically get a guy tucked into his own asshole while standing on a turnbuckle. Instead it's this Dumb Guy game where a guy sees how much he can work a kick at a guy's firmly prone head. Sabre winds up taking the first and third fully to the face and head, while the second kick is a true miracle worked strike, Ospreay's boot showing no light against Sabre's chin mouth and nose while also clearly not budging him in the least. Looks like we found another Gotta Hand It To. 

Relative to nothing, John Morrison would die if he hit a Skytwister Press as flush and smooth and well-placed as Ospreay's. He would just explode into Axe body spray dust. 

Finisher trading is something that you just have to expect with this style of Strong Style Main Event wrestling, so dragon suplexes are going to give people the power to throw their entire body into a back elbow attack, their eyes going white as they blackout dealing deadly versions of year 2000 EZ Money offense. But I don't think they ever tipped into overkill and I don't think we got any ridiculous kickouts. When Ospreay shut it down, he shut it down. When he started bowling through Sabre's neck with elbows and finding new ways to drop him on his face, that was it. Sabre could be the King of Stupid Faces if he really wanted to be, but he is somehow miraculously not, as the most we ever get is his actual dumb face looking dazed as Ospreay finds ways to drop him on that face. I thought this was really great, and it feels weird to say that Zack Sabre Jr. has been one of my favorite guys to watch over the last decade, but it's impossible at this point to avoid the allegations. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/25 - 10/1 Part 2

AEW WrestleDream 10/1/23

MD: Since there's so much to cover, I'm only going to do a full write-up if I have a lot to add. I don't have a lot to say about Kingston vs Shibata, for instance, just a few sentences. The announcers covered it well at the start, noting it was sort of a clash between the UWF-inspired NJPW style and the King's Road AJPW style, and at the end where they pointed out that Kingston had used up his theoretical rope breaks to protect the Pure Champion in his loss. I thought the image of Shibata rising up in the corner as Eddie was beating him down was absolutely iconic and shouldn't be lost. Likewise, Shibata goading Eddie with kicks worked really well. They kept the pop-ups to a minimum, a brief flash in the overall match. The finish effectively got over the power bomb as Eddie's finish moving forward and not just a one time thing.

While there was a sense of anticipation of the post-match hanging over the main, it was still a definite hit. A 2/3 falls match, much like a Texas Death Match, allows for different finishes than usual. The turtleneck bit was brilliant but might have felt like robbing the fans in a different match; using a countout after the stairs shot really put it over as something even more gruesome than normal but would have been impossible in a different main event. Christian having trouble getting him over for that spot added instead of detracted because it made it seem less cooperative, like less of a "spot" and more of a murder. That's something with Christian's offense in general. It was a lot of him just leaning on Darby instead of carefully placing move (or counter) after move (or counter). The best part of the post-match was Christian's overall demeanor. He wasn't horrified or excited to see Copeland show up. He was begrudgingly accepting that "this guy" was here again and that even in the best case, he'd have to share the spotlight. I don't think anyone else in wrestling would have played it quite like that.

Bryan Danielson vs Zack Sabre Jr.

MD: Let's start at the end. Post-match, Sabre refuses the handshake and Danielson calls Aubrey Edwards back into the ring. She's a hometown hero, much like Danielson, and there's a special connection between them, as there's footage of Aubrey crying during Danielson's retirement speech. He's on record on saying that he wasn't even sure what he was thinking in bringing her back, that it just felt right because the referee is such an important part of the match. That's the cool thing about art though, about everything we do in writing about it. Intent matters, but not nearly as much as effect. After a grinding, focused, measured technical match, one so good and credible that it was the spot in the show that they chose to cut to a MMA star afterwards, Danielson chose to give Aubrey her flowers. What that evoked to me was the theater, that curtain call where the actors take their bow and then clap towards the stage crew, light operators, the pit band. Danielson chose this moment, after this match, to do something which pulled the "curtain" down in as directly figurative a way as I can imagine. It wouldn't have worked after almost any other match. It would have seemed winking and cutesy and metatextual and pretentious, no matter the intent. Here, it felt appropriate, as if we'd reached a transcendent moment of wrestling as a performance art, and just this one time, we were allowed to acknowledge it.

I've been through this twice now, once just experiencing it, once trying to make sense of it. Because of that second pass, I can tell you that it was the fourth exchange of the match where they had all of the quick ins and outs and clever reversals and escapes; that's where Sabre knocked down Danielson's structural arm to disrupt the Indian Deathlock, for instance. That entire exchange was amazing, everything you'd want from a war of technical pro wrestlers. Narratively, however, if you want a skeleton key to the effect of the match (leaving intent aside again), Moxley's commentary provided it early on. Danielson is a reactive wrestler. That's the key to the match.

There were two big transitions, or more appropriately, act breaks. The first was Sabre goading Danielson into using his steel-reinforced right arm for a strike only to cleverly block it and damage it heavily. That would be Sabre's "end" throughout the rest of the match. He wanted to hurt the arm enough that he could get a submission with it. Even when he hit some other move, it was all to create an opportunity to go back to the arm. The second was Danielson starting on the leg, first in the corner with kicks and then with the dragon screws, most especially that stomach-turning one where everything seemed jammed in all the wrong directions. That, however, was not an "end", but instead a "means," something Danielson could use as a point of leverage to open Sabre up for the offense that he really wanted to hit, to create opportunities, to help facilitate escapes when his arm was in danger.  

On paper, Sabre's strategy should have been the one to win the day. In fact, you could make the case (and Danielson, Nigel, and Sabre all made it in one form or the other) that Sabre may have come out of this looking like the better technical wrestler. Just not like the better overall wrestler. He had one singular goal in the arm whereas Danielson, as per his personality and character, was adaptable, flexible, able to ride with the currents of violence and pain instead of trying to bend them to his will. And isn't that what a technical wrestler does? Technical wrestling is about control, about manipulating the human body in ways it shouldn't bend, about playing chess three steps ahead, about constraining possibilities so that there is only one inevitable future, the one you define. Danielson is, in many ways, the antithesis of that, which is why, when it seemed like Sabre had finally gotten him, Danielson, not ready for it so much as able to react to it due to his openness of mind, turned it right around into the RegalPlex, setting Sabre up for the Knees.

Danielson's 2023 is full of matches that play out not quite like you'd expect or anticipate. Sometimes it's due to injury. Sometimes it's simply due to unforeseen circumstances placing him into a match not his making. Here, in this battle of the greatest technical wrestlers, he ceded the competition entirely, instead serving as the ultimate steel for the very best to prove himself against. It just shows that to best appreciate Danielson, sometimes we have to take a page out of his book and be reactive and adaptive ourselves. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre vs. Ospreay

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

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

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

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


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Drew Gulak is Standing in the Wake of Our Pain

Drew Gulak vs. Zach Sabre Jr. CZW 4/10/11 - FUN

PAS: This was a chance to check out both of these guys in their earliest incarnations, and Sabre looked 14 years old. Sabre was really just a WOS tribute act at this point, but those are fun spots and Gulak was a good foil. This was really hard mat wrestling like later Gulak matches and I had no idea CZW was running this stuff this early. I liked how frustrated Gulak got and how he gritted his teeth and tried to grind Sabre down. This didn't have the polish of the their later matches against each other, but it had the same DNA and I enjoyed checking in.

ER: Phil told me earlier that this looked like high school versions of Sabre and Gulak doing their best Sabre/Gulak match, and I thought "What? It's less than 10 years ago, it's not like they were in their teens." And then I turned this on and it looked like two 15 year old brothers with dorky ass teen sports bowl cuts that just got picked up by their mom from soccer practice. I don't know if this was good - if I saw two different guys have this same exact match in 2020 I probably wouldn't bother to write it up - but it was fun seeing them working out the kind of match they would both be great at just a few years later. Gulak looked a lot better than Sabre. Gulak really didn't wrestle that differently than any other time I've seen him. Sabre really looked like a backyarder who somehow only had access to World of Sport, who was doing his best to mimic what he had seen. Every sequence he did here he can do a lot tighter today, and Gulak did a great job at actually making this stuff look like he couldn't prevent some of this stuff from happening. Some sections of submission set-ups looked good, but full sections didn't. I liked Gulak's palm strikes to Sabre's body, but down the home stretch they did these hand slap headbutt trade off sequence that looked absolutely silly. But it was fun seeing the bones of this style, before it was a style being done great on the indies.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK

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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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