April 2005

Eddie Guerrero vs Kurt Angle - WWE Smackdown 4/14/05 I feel like I saw this at the time it was aired as I was a pretty big Smackdown fan at the time. Eddie is the babyface, but the slow burn is in effect. Angle is the heel coming off HBk program. Fantastically laid out match for the first 3/4s and Eddie's babyface charisma was in overdrive. I know the Rey stuff produced some legendary matches, but God Eddie was such a good babyface. Excellent shine with Eddie frustrating Angle with the basics. Angle is forced to powder just cant get anything going. Eddie parlays that into the Three Amigos and wants the Frogsplash but rolls through when Angle heads for the outside.…

This was so much fun. The match marked Casas' 25th anniversary as a wrestler. He received all sorts of bouquets and plaques and had a parade of guests including his wife and mother. The rudos brought a gift to the ring which looked suspiciously like one of Damian's pool cues, and while Halloween serenaded Casas with a song, Damian attacked him with their gift. What followed was a solid, energetic bout. The Casas brothers were an awesome trio unit, and my love for Halloween and Damian is well documented. I was glad to see they gave Casas something to do and his exchanges with Halloween were awesome. I didn't expect to see Blue Demon on the rudo team. If I knew anything abo…

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ROH World Title Match: Austin Aries (c) vs. James Gibson Austin Aries is a gorgeous wrestler to watch. Aries is so slick - he embodies the word - with his offence. It’s like poetry in motion in the way he seemingly glides across the ring. And he does it in a way that helps his wrestling look more solid and grounded than a lot of people who are aesthetically pleasing but it's more of a dance and it perhaps works against them. A wonderful wrestler. I sometimes think that I’m way too high on him but then I’ll watch him in a match, like this one, and think “no, he’s just as incredible as I think”. Enough of the Austin Aries gushing as the match was superb. Not flawless, bu…

The fourth match in the best of 5 series and they put on another solid match together. Julius Smokes comes out hitting the ramp with a metal baseball bat which adds another layer of insanity to him. The lumberjacks are all Ring of Honor students for the most part. The lumberjack stipulation stops them being able to brawl in the crowd which has been a staple in this feud and what has been the highlight of the previous 3 matches, however the action in this is nice and tight in the ring. Despite the lack of crowd brawling, there's still a sense of chaos in this with Smokes on the outside with a bat and with the lumberjacks around the ring. There's a new layer to this feud wi…

I've seen some people hate this, but I thought it was awesome for the most part. I am certainly a sucker for elimination tags (Survivor Series is my favourite PPV). It is certainly far, far too long, but for the most part it's great. The pace never really lets up, things do look like they have purpose, and there's never too much move spamming or repetition (with the exception of Marujufi's superkick and Sugiura's spear). SUWA was great and I'm looking forward to his match against KENTA. The beatdowns of Suzuki and Hashi that make up the meat of the match are really fun. I never know why Ricky Marvin didn't make it in the US as he's an absolutely great Jr Heavyweight. This…

My expectations for Kawada are so low at this point that I could enjoy this without worrying whether it was any good or not. It's basically an average wrestling match, and instantly forgettable, but easily digestible. I am kind of curious whether it was a physical or mental thing that caused Kawada's decline. You'd have to think that the state All Japan was in played a part. I wonder if Kawada would've been better off freelancing. I suppose popping up places having interesting matches would have been no different to the random collection of opponents he faced as Triple Crown champion.

This must have caught me in a good mood as it was a hell of a lot better than I was expecting. The reason that I like it more than a lot of the other Homicide vs. Punk FIP bouts is that it was worked in an Armory, which meant that there wasn't a ton of room for them to walk around the area. Instead, they were forced to work a classic indy house show match in front of a tiny crowd, and I thought they excelled at that. There was a high level of crowd engagement and the BS stuff was fun pro-wrestling. I would rather watch Homicide work indy shoot style matches with Low Ki, but it's a feather in both guy's caps that they can work this kind of wrestling 101 match.

These are two guys I know I should watch more of, but there's only so much time in a month. They produced an entertaining bout. It got a bit silly towards the end with the fighting spirit shtick and calling out the name of their finishers, but Corino was always a bit tongue and cheek with the Japanese elements. I normally loathe indy commentating, but I thought the guys calling this were amusing.

It's already been established that Ono can work a pretty, pretty, pretty good four minute match, but Kotsubo is very much not Ikeda and there's only so much Ono can do with a guy like that in four minutes. Kotsubo didn't flat out suck or anything -- he has some solidish wrestling, and he at least made the matwork look somewhat competitive even if Ono's scrambling was much quicker. I mean, if you've seen enough Ono then you get the sense he could turn loose and Kotsubo would not be able to fight off that armbar or heel hook. Kotsubo's main problem is that he doesn't hit hard, and when you're i) in FUTEN and ii) against Ono, that problem tends to be magnified. His German su…

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Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs Hiroshi Tanahashi- NJPW 4/24/05 New Japan Cup Semifinals Winner faces Nakanishi in the finals. These two has a stone cold classic the year prior in the G-1 Climax they don’t quite hit those levels but this is still very good. Tenzan just brings a certain energy to his matches and sets that tone early that his opponent will be in a fight. Tanahashi is no asskicker like Kawada but he can stick and move (reverse crossbody) and grab holds (headlocks and armbar). Tenzan is in all his clubbering glory in this match. Tanahashi gets caught going up top with a super plex and now it really all Tenzan. TENZAN FALLING HEADBUTT TO THE BALLS! My wife …

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A highly praised match, that I don't think I have ever seen. However, after the last great AJ match (vs Joe) that I watched I need more 2005 AJ in my life. This match starts off hot with AJ diving out of the cage onto Abyss during his entrance. They then brawl through out the arena. Strange choice for a cage match, however it is the main event of a show where every match is in a cage, so they probably needed to change things up. Finally it looks like AJ is going to get into the ring and he gets the cage door slammed into his back and then viciously into his face. Way more vicious than I have ever seen. It might had been the great bump AJ took, but it looked brutal…

I'm not entirely sure why I'm continuing to watch Jeff Hardy's TNA matches. I've already reached a conclusion on how he was as a worker at the time and it's probably not going to change. Maybe I should stop. This was fine. Jeff Hardy was my favourite wrestler when I was 12 and Raven was in that spot when I was 13. MVP was before any of them and inbetween were The Rock and Jericho. Then I discovered puro through my new favourite KENTA and eventually I stopped having a favourite wrestler. As far as this match goes. Some good, some bad. I liked Raven avoiding Hardy's chairshots but literally the next spot had him stand there while Jeff set up his chair jumping. Then …

I really wanted to see the revancha between the Casas brothers and Halloween, Damian and Blue Demon Jr, but it's not available online. I'll have to settle for this entertaining spectacle instead. I'm not sure when and how Universo became a tecnico, but this is one of those rare instances where the lead rudo has beef with all three of his opponents. There were a lot of fun exchanges in the bout, but what stuck out most to me was the way the rudos treated Mistico. They were such dicks to him that it kind of had me rooting for the little guy. Garza, in particular, was a giant dick. By the end of the bout, you wanted to see Mistico wipe him out. The finish was some weak ass s…