February 2019

This was for Kaito's GHC Heavyweight Title This match went 29 minutes but on the broadcast version Samurai TV cut it down to a shade over 22 and this did good for the match. I am not sure what they cut out but the result was 22 minutes of a fast paced bombfest with both guys going for the win from the off. The pace the two wrestled at you would think they could have been going 10 minutes not 30. Kaito is still only 22 and a good way from the finished article, in particular when it comes to working a control segment but his facial expressions and selling really draw me into his matches. Luckily for him his three title matches in this reign have all been against b…

This goes 73 MINUTES, so it's a real long boy, but if there's one man I trust in wrestling to have an awesome, super lengthy match, it's the Carolina Caveman himself. Having just watched it, I can confirm it was indeed an awesome one. Some very good storytelling throughout with the three heels in Attitude, Royal & Wilkins working together to try and eliminate the babyfaces. High-key felt like a trios tag match for the majority of it, but the babyfaces did go at it w/ each other too; Trevor had some really fun exchanges w/ Kool Jay in the beginning, and then the final battle between him & Cain was of course great. I'd say for like 95% of it I was thinking it's a re…

Talk about it here

Taped on 1/27/19, aired on 2/2. This is the finals of the Worlds Collide tournament, held in Phoenix on Rumble weekend. The winner gets a title shot on their brand. Talk about it here

A masterclass in the minimalist approach to wrestling. Thirty minutes of two powerhouses just throwing chops, lariats, and the occasional submission at each other. Sekimoto turns it yet another excellent babyface against the more arrogant Hino. There's also a really interesting story being told of two guys so evenly-matched that neither can maintain control for more than a few minutes at a time. The selling is also top-notch with both guys spent yet still trying to throw everything they can behind each strike. A must-see and one of the best matches of the year so far. ****1/2.

If you deeply care about concussions and wrestler's well being, I don't think you should watch this lol. This was basically 12 minutes of these two trying to concuss each other with punches and headbutts, as well as kicking the shit out of each other. Loved Abe as the feisty underdog, him getting busted open added to his fiery counters - which continue to be dope as fuck no matter how many times I see them - and the overall story. Wasn't that big of a fan of Sato just shrugging every bit of offense he took but he made it up by being a sadistic asshole and destroying Abe every chance he got.

Talk about it here

The L.I.J. team of Bushi & Shingo defend the IWGP Junior Tag titles against the Suzuki-Gun team of El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru. Talk about it here

Naito defends the IWGP Intercontinental title. Talk about it here

L.I.J. (EVIL & SANADA) defend the IWGP Tag Team titles. Talk about it here

This is for Beauty Bear's (Hashimoto & Iwata) Sendai Girls tag titles. It's rare to see smash mouth wrestling in joshi but holy hell do these four ever pull it off. In the first couple of minutes, you have Iwata trying to lay in shots into Sareee with her reward being Sareee drilling her so hard in the face that she gets a bloody nose. The rest of the half hour is a awesome mix of smack talk and stiff shots. Absolutely fantastic stuff that is a must watch. ****1/2

Talk about it here.

"Think shoot, but work" - Stone Cold Steve Austin Someone actually took this quote literally for a change and somehow we now have Full Sail Shoot Style. The fact that this match presents a complete innovation of style for WWE is just the icing on the cake. It's really the complexity of this match as the surprise payoff to a handful of angles perfectly built over the past month that makes it even more impressive as a viewer. Kayfabe will always be dead but we are still in the era of prestige television. Or the Kliq have been binging a lot of ECW on the Network. Either way, what brought us to the dance was the near perfect debut of Matt Riddle and immediate feud …

Taped on 1/12/19. LAX defend the Impact World tag team titles. Talk about it here

Yoshimura and Okuda feuded with Umeda for a long time when they were in DNA. They were really good heels. This is in Okuda's hometown and an inversion of that dynamic, with Okuda and Naomi fighting from underneath for most of the match. The match is still good. Umeda and Higuchi are really good just silently beating down the hometown fighter. All four like working fairly stiff and every exchange is interesting. They just keep hitting and throwing each other down until Okuda pins Umeda with a bridging suplex. Very straightforward match in that sense. Even if only Okuda has been a pro fighter in any capacity, I also find all four very believable as "fighters" because of the…

I knew a PAC vs Kzy match was going to be good, but it didn't hit me that this was going to be a classic until Kzy's entrance music chimed. Neither guy is your stereotypical big match DG wrestler, so of course this was going to be an instant classic. I loved the tension that built just in the flag ceremony with everyone wondering if PAC would attack during "God Save The Queen" again. As for the match itself, it was actual murder. Kzy and PAC absolutely killed each other with big move after big move in a wild spectacle of a match. Dragon Gate wanted to tear the house down with a final show at Star Lanes, and that's what they delivered with another impressive PAC performanc…

Ring of Honor hasn't given much attention to its women's division through the years but this is a solid and entertaining title match with the smaller challenger trying to wear down the bigger and stronger champion who has rarely been beaten in ROH. They display some impressive chemistry and use physicality and a few big spots to draw the attention of a crowd that's pretty apathetic at the beginning but engaged by the end. Here's a link to the full review, part of my 365 Wrestling project.

This is a big match for Mika Iwata as she challenges the reigning OZ Academy champ, Hikaru Shida. Iwata has been over shadowed a bit by her classmate Chihiro Hashimoto when it comes to her potential because she has been pushed in a more traditional way rather than being a phenom right out of the gate. But that potential shines pretty bright here as she has a fantastic performance taking on a veteran star. Shida has a really stellar performance here to hitting just the right tone of being the establishing that she's better than Iwata but leaving enough openings to give Iwata hope and not come off as dominating. Just a terrific match. ****1/4

Bobby Roode & Chad Gable defend the Raw Tag Team titles against Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder. Watch it while you can!!!

Tanahashi defends the IWGP World Heavyweight title. Talk about it here

Gable & Roode defend the WWE Raw Tag Team titles. Talk about it here

Gauntlet matches are an easy sell for me because no matter how you look at the individual segments, they all bleed together to form a cohesive whole that allows one to affect the next and so on. Same goes here as this match had a very simple goal from the outset: convince us that Kofi Kingston can leave the Elimination Chamber as WWE Champion. Towards that goal, we had an excellent opening segment with Bryan and Kofi going back and forth. Bryan, of course, looks amazing on offense with his brutal strikes and submissions. I also liked the rising sense of frustration from Bryan as he allowed his offense to escalate the more pissed he was that he couldn't put Kofi away. I en…

Available at Rev Pro on demand. Talk about it here WATCH OSPREAY VS PAC NOW ON http://www.rpwondemand.com FREE 7 DAY TRIAL for all new subscribers means you can watch for free and also get access to hundreds & hundreds of hours of footage!

Trevor Lee defends the CWF Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Title. The match was amazing, unsurprisingly. Even though Trevor has more than proven himself to be the master of putting on super lengthy matches, I still always have my doubts when I see a match going to such monster minutes as this one, but as was the theme of his title reign, he completely sucked me into the battle that was done inside that squared circle. The 75 minutes flew by as if they were 15; it built & built & built & BUILT, and by the end, the drama was just so perfect I got them goosebumps. Trevor pretty much completely ate Cain alive in their first meeting back in January, and that was the …

Another stop in Aoki's strange pro wrestling career. This time, he's Pedro Takashi's retirement match in the weirdest show of the year. I have no clue who Takashi is but from what I gathered, he's a Muscle regular and his gimmick is doing capoeira. Aoki comes out in full judogi. Takashi is very middle-aged and he may look silly but he throws some really cool kicks. He never hits Aoki with them, but they were nice. Aoki beats Takashi down with soccer kicks and once he takes it to the ground, he starts going through submissions, which is something I would never get tired of. He takes the gi and chokes Takashi with it after being lightly grazed by a flip kick. I haven't yet …