July 2005

One lf the funniest matches I have ever watched. And amazingly lasted a hour. With Bryce Remsburg (my favorite ref ever) and the mutiple Deliriei added to the match.One lf the funniest matches I have ever watched. And amazingly lasted a hour. With Bryce Remsburg (my favorite ref ever) and the mutiple Deliriei added to the match.

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This was a three team, two ring War Games with ownership of IWA-MS at stake. While it was a little overstuffed (Team NWA seemed superfluous, and were the first team eliminated), this really shows the value of having great brawlers and letting them brawl. War Games are always going to have section where lots of guys are just wandering around kicking and punching, Corp, Ian, Eddie Kingston, Bull Pain, Tank, these are all time great punchers and kickers. Watching Corporal Robinson hurl those half punch/half forearms is just pleasurable. We also had the Chris Hero v. Eddie Kingston feud weaving through this, which is one of my all time favorite indy feuds, there is a great mo…

I quite liked this. You had all four guys who were in the mix to challenge for the ROH World title plus the extra wrinkle of Joe and Aries having a match for the Pure title the following night. These types of multi-men matches were a cornerstone of the early ROH days so it was fun to see a repeat version here. I may have been skeptical of Joe's run as champ, but I am feeling the vibes for him as the 2005 WOTY.

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Naoya Ogawa vs Tadao Yasuda - HUSTLE 10 7/13/05 HUSTLE seems fully entrenched in their over the top Fighting Opera style with Takada in the M. Bison getup leading the Monster Army and Yinling The Erotic Terrorist. According to one review this is Razor Ramon Hard Gay’s which seemingly would transfer the Ace Babyface role from Ogawa to Hard Gay. Yasuda was brought in as a hired mercenary for Takada to take out Ogawa. This is pretty good but not as good as I was hoping. Both guys are more spry than I expected moving around at a good clip but I wanted to see them just throws each other around. Yasuda jumps Ogawa at the bell and tries to choke him out first with his …

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Man, it's been an age since I've seen a Sean Waltman match. I thought the early athletic stuff was weak, but once they ramped up the physicality this got really good. Jerry Lynn was the special guest referee, so you knew that would play a part in the finish, but the enjoyable part was Styles beating the crap out of Waltman and Waltman replying in kind as a semi-washed up veteran who still has a little fight left in him. It's too bad they couldn't have beaten the shit out of each other without any storyline.

The first "big" match of Joe in TNA. This is an underrated gem that's overshadowed by the AJ/Daniels/Joe matches, in which Joe looks very dominant, despite Sabin giving him the biggest fight he's had so far. This is also a slower paced match than most Sabin matches, showing that he is way more than just a "spot monkey", as all his spots are executed well and make sense within the story of the match. **** (Joe gets a big win, with Sabin showing that he can hang with the dominant Samoan submission machine, thus putting him over as well. That was the whole story of the match)

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GHC Heavyweight Champion Takeshi Rikio vs Hiroshi Tanahashi - NOAH 7/18/05 This is a very distant third to Kobashi/Sasaki and Misawa/Kawada which clearly drew the Tokyo Dome and the largest crowd in the Dome for the year even though New Japan ran the Dome three times in 2005. Perhaps I am misconstruing the situation but my read was that Rikio’s victory over Kobashi was supposed to be a generational shift but instead was a generational flop. To the point where I can’t think of an American comp. This would be like if Cena or Batista flopped so bad in 2005 they never heard from again. This really goes to show you it is all about promotion. Winning the Top Title in a Pro…

Genichiro Tenryu vs Yoshinari Ogawa - NOAH 7/18/05 Tenryu beating the ever loving shit out of Rat Boy sounds like a recipe for success at the Dome but this doesn’t get to Tenryu commuting legalized murder of KENTA or the satisfaction of Kobashi destroying Ogawa. It perfectly fine good little match but you’re not missing much by not watching this. Ogawa tries to go blow for blow with grumpy, lumpy Tenryu but that doesn’t go well. He does a pretty bad Stampeded style escape from a wrist lock. Then does so Rat Boy thing with the quick dropkick to the knee and zeroing in on the knee including a figure-4 around the post. Tenryu fires back! Rat Boy goes to the eyes and use…

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All Japan Triple Crown Champion Satoshi Kojima vs Keiji Mutoh - AJPW 7/26/05 After a brief inter promotional interlude feuding with IWGP Champion Tenzan, Kojima is back in All Japan. This is pretty much the biggest match All Japan can offer at this point and they couldn’t get over 10k. They were getting 10k + a couple times in 2004 including a sellout at the Budokan with Kawada vs Hashimoto on top. Sasaki is seemingly the replacement for Tenryu and Hashimoto. Kojima going through Kawada, Mutoh (2x because of Great Muta) and Sasaki is a great row of challengers to give him credibility but it was too late. I remember Kojima being more over at the beginning of the year.…

This was billed as rudo contra rudo. I remember there was a subset of lucha fans who preferred these types of brawls to anything else that was happening in CMLL at the time. I suppose that they're the antithesis to the average Mistico bout, but are they really good by rudo contra rudo standards? I have my doubts.