February 2019

Another day, another lucha brawl in a run down building between two washed up luchadors. It only takes a little over a minute for Caifan to bust Guerrero open. The crowd are REALLY behind Guerrero. Most of this match is fought around the ring. Once they get back in the ring, Guerrero hits his signature slingshot corner dropkick and follows it up with a baseball slide which violently drops Caifan onto the concrete floor surrounding the ring. More outside brawling. Sadly, this has a crap ending. Guerrero attempts his dropkick again, only for Caifan to counter it with a ball shot, ending the match via disqualification. Apparently this was done to set up a wager match down t…

Daisuke Sasaki defends the KO-D Openweight Title Takeshita in a big match situation never fails to deliver. The only real complaint I have is the same complaint about other big puroresu promotions too, and that is needing every big match to go half an hour (or more), especially when the first 10 minutes are full of nothing like Sasaki's leg work because everyone knew Takeshita would no sell it a few minutes later (which he did). Besides that, it eventually got really good with Takeshita and Sasaki destroying each other with bombs and weapons in and out of the ring. Some overbooking with the ref bumps, but it never got to the point of annoying and actually added to th…

This is the end of Aoki in DDT for now, but there's many IGF matches of his that I haven't seen and are probably good. The match delivered all I expected from it, and I'd say is an improvement on their already very good first match. I don't see many people excited about Aoki's DDT run, but I am and I think a spot on this match elucidates why. There's even a moment where Aoki deliberately crosses HARASHIMA's ankles, as HARA has his back, and pushes downwards with his leg. This applies pressure on your ankle and you can see it used as a submission in QUINTET Fight Night 2, which took place just weeks ago, but also in jiujitsu dojos all across the world when taking your…

Of all the opening matches this show could've had, I can't believe they started with this one. Starr coming out to the theme song of when Starr and Devlin were teaming as Killer Product WHILE wearing the team shirt was fucking amazing. Devlin was having none of that shit and immediately went at Starr to start an amazing brawl in the crowd. Kind of slowed down when it got back to the ring, but the heat never died down. The animosity was in the air that these guys needed to settle their differences, and in the end that is exactly what Devlin did FOR Starr. Even though Starr had no chance of winning this and was still humiliated in loss, I still don't think he came out of th…

Non title match. Available at OTT on Demand. Talk about it here

Everybody got their time to shine - Joe was eliminated first, but the whole time he was there, he looked like a killer just beating the crap out of everyone, especially Bryan. Jeff wasn't there for long, but he got that one big Swanton moment, which was legitimately a very neat spot. Styles looked like the all-time great that he is with his legendary bumping, selling & offense - that Tower of Doom spot they did w/ him, Kofi & Bryan was awesome, because it wasn't the usual; they did it uniquely with AJ doing the pull-up German. Orton was vicious during his time in the Chamber & that DDP-esq RKO he delivered to AJ was great. And then there were two. That is when…

This was the only match from Elimination Chamber that I was bothered about so naturally it only lasted a couple minutes and was mostly about the post-match (which was pretty great as an angle, tbf. Becky sure laid it in with those crutch shots). I'm glad they decided to give them some time for a rematch because it was mighty fun. You knew there was going to be some Riott Squad interference in this, but I thought they did it in a way that made Ronda look like a killer who most folk can only beat with shenanigans while keeping it below the point where Ruby looked TOTALLY out of her depth. The interference itself was pretty inventive as well, especially when Morgan and Logan…

Very fun tag match, specially for an exhibition show/match. It had a lot of really good exchanges and they did not shy away from the stuff people wanted to see the most. Tana was the star in this, as he gave us asshole heel Tana and he's always fucking amazing in that role. His cutoffs were perfectly timed and I loved the little things like doing to Mutoh sign right in from of him after doing a dragon screw. I also gotta give him MAJOR props for making Sekimoto look amazing, Tana let Daisuke chop him hard as fuck, lariat him to oblivion AND do the doble german suplex spot, that's a level of generosity that's rarely seen in a interpromotional match, specially between such …

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Kento Miyahara defends the AJPW Triple Crown. Talk about it here

Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi defend the AJPW World Tag Team TItles. To my surprise this was a very competitive/back and forth match, it didn't have the feeling nor was it worked like an invader/interpromotional match but more as a standard tag. I think they took too long to get the match into a higher gear though. The big control section of Lee/Sai over Sekimoto dragged for the most part, Daisuke's hope spots could've came in sooner. But this is a Strong BJ tag so there's a ton to love here. The early exchanges were pretty damn good and Strong BJ's early dominance was. as always, a joy to watch. The final 7 minutes or so were really good too with Okabayashi…

This is a really great 2/3 falls match that builds fantastically. The meat of the match is PACO's attack on Eddie's leg, and Eddie's selling is absolutely terrific all the way through. ****

This is Mayu Iwatani's first defense of the WOH title that she had won in her recent trip to the U.S. The early part of the match has Mayu trying to go with Konami on the mat with very little success. This error eventual allows Konami focus on Mayu's recently injured knee but Konami grows a bit too confident by trying some flashier moves. This allows Mayu to get back into the match although she is noticeably slowed by the hurt knee. The finishing stretch is a tremendous mix of Mayu's high-spots and Konami's submission. An impressive mix of styles on display here. ****1/4