August 2005

Toshiaki Kawada vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan- NJPW 8/4/05 Tenzan really brought the fire out of Kawada in this match. I have seen this piss & vinegar out of Kawada in quite some time. What Tenzan does so well is he always threatening to eat Kawada alive which is not a sensation you get in today’s sanitized overly choreographed version of pro wrestling. Kawada is fighting for his life in there against the one of best bully wrestlers. They set the tone early with some lively chain wrestling. A lot of New Japan chaining can feel perfunctory but there was energy in this. Tenzan bowls Kawada over with a shoulder tackle. Now Kawada is a bit wary of Tenzan. They go int…

Suzuki has a smart starting bit as he keeps pining for the handshake and acting nice...until he cheap shots Nishimura when he lets his guard down and starts running around like a maniac. Thankfully we go away for that as Nishimura keeps hurling his opponent into numerous roll-up positions and he starts to not fuck around with constructive arm work and hard shots. Suzuki plays some good mind games with his opponent, consistently going from goofy joker to Pancrase demon seamlessly, making the tempo of the match very up and down workrate wise. Good bit of the early to middle half stuff is played like this, with Nishimura throwing out some smooth old-school work to counter Su…

This was a blast, Goto really took it to Fujita, busting out a bunch of nasty Backdrops together with Lariats and other offence you'd expect from a lumpy old guy who worked WAR. The match was essentially a three minute long finishing stretch, Fujita played FIP for most of the match and couldn't go all out with the violence because of who his opponent (the clubbing blows to the back and stomps don't really suit him) was but he still managed to throw a brutal counter forearm and a Frankensteiner of all things. ***

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Another mediocre brawl. I wish it wasn't mediocre as I'd love to see some awesome rudo contra rudo action from these teams but there's a surprisingly lack of character work from such talented performers.

A lovely little gem: Kawada typically isn't known a whole lot for comedy stuff outside of his HUSTLE dates, but Kashin pulls him into his wheelhouse and gets a pretty entertaining crack at it. Kawada tries to get a handle on him early however he's simply too slippery for that, getting out of his straight-forward wrestling attempts. We also get random segments of Kashin beating up young boy Taichi between sequences (because let's just face it, no one likes the poor guy) which sets K off and gets him sloppy. The lads have some stiff exchanges with kicks and elbow smashes before Kawada hits a good arm wrench heel kick to knock the guy down. He takes control with some big sho…

Toshiaki Kawada vs Minoru Suzuki - NJPW 8/11/05 A pretty intriguing match on paper as Kawada is a part of the 2005 G-1 Climax. Kawada was still capable of great stuff in 2005 see the January Sasaki match, the February Kojima match and the July Misawa match. I run pretty hot and cold with the mercurial Minoru Suzuki so he is not a shoe-in for a great match but I really enjoyed the Kobashi match from January. Overall I thought this was good not great and the home stretch really didn’t land for me. They do a symmetrical beginning which each wrestler slapping and beating down the other until the other is forced from the Ring. Kawada was on offense second so tra…

These two generally always have a good grove and I felt like this was no exception. Nagata is kinda tired of Nishimura's shit and tries kicking his head off early when he tries his handstand nonsense. Nishimura tries it again later on and Nagata just keeps pushing him over petty as anything, which causes Nishimura to just freak out and start hurling big forearm smashes alongside wild strikes and headbutts. This eventually goes into a more conventional pace as Nagata wears down the arm with hard kicks and holds while Nishimura generally has to eat the blunt of it and hope for a counter here and there. Nagata really excels in matches like these as he's just so overbearing w…

Toshiaki Kawada vs Minoru Suzuki - NJPW 8/11/05 A pretty intriguing match on paper as Kawada is a part of the 2005 G-1 Climax. Kawada was still capable of great stuff in 2005 see the January Sasaki match, the February Kojima match and the July Misawa match. I run pretty hot and cold with the mercurial Minoru Suzuki so he is not a shoe-in for a great match but I really enjoyed the Kobashi match from January. Overall I thought this was good not great and the home stretch really didn’t land for me. They do a symmetrical beginning which each wrestler slapping and beating down the other until the other is forced from the Ring. Kawada was on offense second so tra…

This was a lot more enjoyable than recent Perros del Mal matches. It didn't get going until the tecnicos made their comeback in the second fall, but the crowd was red hot for Mistico and Perro. Lots of great action in the tercera. The crowd kept booing Atlantis, which would lead to a heel turn the following month. The ending was anti-climatic but the real finish was Pierroth sending his crew to attack Perros del Mal. Pierroth forced Los Perros to eat dog food, which was a brilliant piece of booking. One of the better faction beatdowns in a while. Pierroth came across like a don.

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Kazuyuki Fujita vs Masahiro Chono - NJPW 8/14/05 G-1 Climax Finals I watched this yesterday but only getting to the review now. It is honestly that good to get everything exactly right so I’m not too worried. Fujita is the ultimate coulda woulda shoulda wrestler. With the right management and right mentor on psychology, this dude could’ve been real money. Chono is Chono. He is over like rover but I just don’t give a shit about him. Fujita comes out like a beast ground & pound knees. I like the route they take at the beginning cat & mouse. The only way Chono can get an opening is if Fujita hurts himself. Fujita misses a charge and tumbles to outside …

Kazuyuki Fujita vs Toshiaki Kawada - NJPW G-1 Climax 08/14/05 Kawada is so fucking good against shooter. His way of selling and firing back up is perfect for the environment. I have seen MMA fights, when they are in pain it is for a bit, but they know they got to fire right back up. Kawada knows how to do that jelly leg sell and then just snap out of it to fire a big kick to the head. This is basic Fujita lots of great fucking knee lifts. He seems to have punched himself out and Kawada looks to actually win with a jumping kick to the head and then a guillotine choke. Fujita just has to much for him and a barrage of knees win it. Fujita's knees on the ground need some …

This is from around the time Shibata decided it was best for him to part ways with New Japan and become a freelancer who was on journey around Japan working for various organizations years before venturing in MMA. This has somewhat a sense of a big fight with Shibata knowing he has to take every advantage he can to put the old man away, so he attacks him from the get go and we have a fight between these two filled with Shibata punting the Choshu and Choshu constantly hitting brutal lariats on him.

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This wasn't the most exciting match in rhythm and pacing, but it gave the crowd some interesting wrinkles. First of all, they got to see Mistico and Perro team up, and actually work together, in what would have been a dreaming pairing for a lot of the audience members. They also got to see Atlantis working rudo, and a portion of the audience continued to boo him every time he was in the ring. The highlight of the match was Mistico and Wagner linking for a pair of dives.

This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Of course, it was mainly smoke and mirrors with Pierroth's crew, the commissioner Scorpio Sr, Los Perros and La Nazi, but lucha has been having apuesta matches like these since the dawn of time. They're not always Sangre Chicana vs. MS-1. After the bout, Los Perros humiliated Pierroth with a bag of leaves to make up for Pierroth feeding them dog food the week before. Not sure whether they were meant to be tobacco leaves or something else. Halloween was way too cocky while taunting Pierroth. He's got a hiding coming. This could have been a lot worse.

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Hulk Hogan vs Shawn Michaels - Summerslam 2005 You know I don't think I have ever seen this match before, which is surprising because I really loved the build to this match. I think one of the big missed opportunities for the WWE consistently since 2002 has been the build to the dream matches. In a lot of ways, once WWE purchased WCW, it became a dream match company and it really hasn't deviated from this and thats why finally in 2019 it is finally coming back to bite them. WWE knows the dream matches sell themselves so for the most part they don't put much effort into the build. I thought the build to this was phenomenal and it is still something my brother and I re…

John Cena defends the WWE Heavyweight Title I'm starting to think that there is some revisionist history (damn, I hate that phrase, but it's apt here) going on here. For years, the story was that the fans turned on Cena because of his new cookie cutter army gimmick but here he is, still in his Chain Gang gimmick. They even call Cena's fans the chain gang. Its the same schtick that he had months prior to big plaudits. So that's not true, at least not here, who knows weekly because I was like super young to remember this era of wrestling. Anyway, this was pretty neat. And I attribute it to Cena's great showing here. He was explosive and showed tons of urgency in …

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