September 2019

Great stuff. Takeshita working barefoot sets the stage and Aoki goes in hard after the left arm, which Takeshita does a good job selling the effects. Subtle touches like him keeping it behind his back as he goes in for a single arm lock up, or Takeshita trying for the octopus hold and Aoki seizing on the opportunity to snag the arm and keep working it. A very real sense of struggle throughout. I like that Takeshita clobbers him with the big elbow to buy some time, and then Aoki taunting Takeshita outside of the ring only for Takeshita to bite and get caught in a Fujiwara armbar on the floor. Some neat counters, including Takeshita countering the front necklock with the No…

This is an interesting group of people. You have Yusuke Kodama. Someone who is aesthetically appealing but missing that tangible quality. And you have Shotaro Ashino, someone with some much talent and ability. Particularly on the mat but can sometimes possess the overly ambitious ideas of Kurt Angle. Yes, I do mean that as a criticism - the way he can sometimes be working on the arm for a while then randomly throw a German for example. El Lindaman - he has personality of a 6ft5 speed fiend but the body of a 5ft4 weightlifter. And Shigehiro Irie. The man used to possess a green mohawk. And that’s all you really need to say about him El Lindaman is a perfect lit…

Kento Miyahara defends the AJPW Triple Crown, talk about it here

Not that familiar with Dickinson but he looked okay here - his grappling is whatever but Barnett did a good job of giving him enough to create the illusion. Some of his kicks looked good and they came off more like cheap shots to stun Barnett, who clearly had the advantage on the mat. Good escalation into some shoot suplexes, including a very cool deadlift German from Dickinson and some nasty follow-up kicks, which leads to the finishing stretch and Barnett putting him away with a gutwrench powerbomb>knees>head kick. Maybe didn't hit the same highs as Barnett/Suzuki but still very good.

THE REMATCH! NCREDIBLE hoss battle, and a better kaju battle than Zeus vs Okabayashi (which is fucking saying something). It's a more condensed and more violent version of their draw from February, they also reversed roles, as Hino was the babyface having to fight from beneath. They beat the shit out of each other - the lariat exchanges near the end were as sick as their first match -, they do it in a slow(er) pace than most would, but it works for them because you can feel the damage every strike has. They do an awesome job at struggling for moves and trying to get the upper hand. This is a back and forth match, but every transition is earned. Hino was amazing here,…

Very fun match. I think this suffered from a lack of heat from the crowd as Yokohama once again showed they suck, lol. Kamitani has been disrespecting and asking for a fight with Kohei since before he got the Strong Title so this match made sense. Hideyoshi had a fiery performance that Korakuen would've melted over but you can't have the perfect setting every time. I think this was the most "vulnerable" I've seen Sato against a young guy in a can't remember how long, and he did what he always does, just unleash stiff strikes and tries to obliterate whoever is in front of him.

Saikyou Tag League Beautiful tag match. Instead of the typical "big dudes throws little guys around" sort of match that these four could totally pull off, they went the minimalistic route and I fucking loved it. There's so many little things to love about this match. Astronauts gain the upper hand early because they lull Sekimoto and Bodyguard into working holds instead of clashing head on - which they have done plenty of times against Sekimoto & partner -, and only way the big dudes gain control is by doing big dudes things. But they have to fucking work for it. Once they get on top they choke Nomura almost to death, the selling by Takuya was stellar, I legit th…

Talk about it here

TCW is essentially a money mark promotion that was built around getting over Yoon Kang Chul (???) from what I've seen. This is the result of their antics. The main idea of the match was that they had three different styles against each other: Severn was MMA, Suwama is wrestling, and Noboru Uchida is kickboxing. The result is a absolute messy delight that at least tries to engage with the concept a bit. Severn looks like he did absolutely zero conditioning and was relatively poor when doing anything in the ring but fair credit to the guy, he at least didn't seem like he was just here for the bucket of money they had for him and I'm sure he doesn't really need it anyw…

Non Title match. Talk about it here

Daisuke Nakamura is the king of armbars and is a U-System wrestler who's been doing MMA and pro-wrestling for some years now. Yu Kobayashi is a former MMA fighter who fought a ton in Pancrase. Nothing ground breaking or revolutionary and not on par with some of the other BJJ gi wearing wrestlers, but definitely a fun BJJ vs. CACC match. The match lacked urgency and went to a time limit draw, but the grappling exchanges were all snug and tight. There's other single matches where it's BJJ vs. CACC, but I believe this one of the few tag matches that is BJJ vs. CACC.

I'm a bit confused why Dave Meltzer went five stars on this. I am well aware that it's just one man's opinion, but still. What we got here was an enjoyable 11-minute spotfest and nothing more. Dragon Lee's forearms look weak as hell and there's little to no selling to be found here. It's just a showcase of high spots. Some of those high spots are jaw-dropping, with Bandido usually pulling off the coolest moves. His rebound belly-to-back suplex is a sight to behold. Then there are spots like the Avalanche Blockbuster, in which the awkward and fake-looking set-up isn't worth the final result. If you want to watch a spotfest that doesn't outwear it's welcome, then there are …

Outstanding tag match, just non stop hard hitting action. With Strong BJ seemingly taking a hiatus, Abe and Nomura (Astronauts) are my new favorite tag team, those two are fucking gold together. Irie fits perfectly here, of course, and joins the fun of the neverending greatness that is this division.

This is a really fun match between two folks who have less than 50 matches in their careers combined. Monma is a former pro MMA fighter with a background in BJJ who is known as the Japanese Arona and who's fought some relatively big names in MMA like Kitaoka, JZ Calvan, Dan Hardy and Mach Sakurai in Japan. Matsumoto as we know is the BJJ brown belt who's wrestled mostly on smaller indy shows and mostly somewhat shoot style so this is the first time I'm seeing him in a more pro-wrestling style match. Despite both being relatively rookies in pro-wrestling, they do a fantastic job putting this together. You know all the grappling exchanges are nice and tight with some awesom…

What a fascinating looking pairing on paper, like as in, I wasn't sure what to expect from the two in terms of match quality, but this was absolutely AWESOME. Taven was GREAT dishing out the punishment when he had the control -- he was extremely compelling all the way through, and more than matched Rush's explosiveness + viciousness. The whole thing also had this great feeling of a FIGHT that's not too common in ROH World Title matches or for that matter, any main event World Title matches anywhere. This was great. ****

Nice little narrative thread here of Starr having the harder hits but Deppen having the ability to string together flashier offense in order to get the better of him. All the offense looked great here, with some nice looking strike offs. I liked Deppen's crazed coffin drop off the top to the floor and I really loved Starr's whiplash bump into the second rope. Really great atmosphere and it escalated nicely. Dope match. ****1/4