March 2006

I was a little hesitant about digging into the Davey Richards tag period, so far I only reviewed Dragon brawls, and a long tags with Davey Richards of all people as his partner was pretty daunting. This however was fucking choice. Jack Evans is really best as American indy Kikuchi and Super Dragon lays a horrific ass kicking on him, stretching him in unnatural ways, dumping him on his neck and beating the grits off him. At one point he just pokes him in the trachea. He also gives him a curb stomp on the side of his neck, and a bunch of different bits of violence I can't even describe. Evans had some pretty offense, he cracks Richards with one of the best pele kicks I ca…

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Minoru Suzuki’s rocking the pure white, a clear indication that he’s gone good, and I loved the teased confrontations, knowing that Suzuki is going to turn heel within the match at some point but initially, he’s wrestling clean with some reluctance. Then he locks on the jujigatame and refuses to let go, the bastard, and the referee nearly throws himself atop Suzuki to break it up. Having shown his true colors, Suzuki uses a hanging sleeper on the ropes and it’s sold like straight death by Akiyama – in fact, Suzuki grabs him, yells “wake up!” and slaps him in the face. He’s nasty with his boots and chokes, shoving the intervening referee out of the way, but Akiyama equally…

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Destination X - X-Division Champion Samoa Joe vs Christopher Daniels vs AJ Styles Easily the least of the three triple threat matches, but that isnt that much of a knock on this and more of a praise to how well-done the other matches. I like how in the previous match, AJ and Daniels were at each other's throats because they knew they couldnt pin Joe so they thought their best chance to win was against each other. However, this time they do a lot more teaming up against Joe including the nice symmetry of the two savings each other from Joe death blows (Ole Kick to guardrail and Musclebuster to chair). I believe the angle was set up well for Daniels to take it because he ha…

This was a decent enough match. Shane took some crazy bumps like a back suplex off the top of the ladder, over the ropes and threw a table, and Vince and Shawn hamming it up worked for the most part. The finish was an eye-rolling callback to Montreal, and I don't see who in their right mind wanted to see Shawn feud with Vince, but Shane always tries to pull his weight in the ring. JR kept calling Vince Satan. Probably not that far from the truth.

The Shibu/Natsuki bits were just generic low-risk rookie joshi puroresu sequences, lots of dropkick exchanges, bad forearms to the chest, hair-pulling, all the usual beats. The Yoshida/Fujii spots are EASILY the best parts of the match, these two were basically built for each other. Of course we still have to had Yoshida bumping to the lamest cross-chops you've ever seen, but they actually built a nice little narrative around Natsuki being a shit and trying to grab Yoshida's body in side mount and hook a half-Nelson to try to get a cheap-ass pinfall which Yoshida then does to her to basically mock her attempts back, which then results in Yoshida eating a uber close near f…

IWGP Champion Brock Lesnar vs Akebono - NJPW 3/19/03 It is matches like this that make me proud to be a Brock Lesnar fan! I always assumed Brock Lesnar phoned in his IWGP Title Reign and just collected a paycheck, but no sirree Bob, Brock was committed to this match. The dude clutched his back just as he was running the ropes and stopped dead in his tracks. It was phenomenal. Whoever coached Brock on selling should coach everyone. Not because of how well Brock sells, but because how much he believes in selling. He wrestled this entire match underneath. He wrestled so vulnerable and really like Akebono bully him. That takes great self-confidence. He did not do what wa…

The crowd is packed with excitement. This match working at a intense forensic pace. The table ends up spearing the ladder in one most hard fought, toughest matches of all time. This match is for the faint at heart. Match Rating - Too brutal to rate

Love the mat work in this one - there's a really great sense of urgency to it, especially to everything Monma does. He grabs every hold w/ such an awesome fashion that it comes off as super dangerous. I love it. Shibata was obviously great too, he was right there w/ Monma on the mat & his strikes looked as deadly as ever. Great match. ****

This might be the greatest squash I've ever watched. I love watching Kensuke beat the shit out of people, there a lot of guys that use offence similar to Kensuke today like Sekimoto, Okabayashi, Hino etc., part of the problem with them is probably that they're too selfless and end up doing shitty modern puro tropes and as a result neither guy in the match looks good, Kensuke only cares about looking strong and he is much better at projecting himself as a badass asskicker than the modern guys and he also does a lot of great looking combination and moves current guys don't like the sandwich lariats, chops to the throat and neck etc. His matches are also a lot less likely to…

I love the way these two play off each other, Suzuki did a great job of selling the threat of Fujiwara's submissions early on, all the matwork was snug, they constantly kept things moving and would use their joints to maintain control of their opponent or transition. A direct comfortation sheds an interesting light on how oddly different yet similar their characters are, the biggest difference probably being that one is tehnically a heel and another face. I love the way Suzuki avoided Fujiwara's headbutts after Fujiwara rocked him with a big one and how he checked the ringpost after Fujiwara smashed his head into it. Suzuki will do stuf like taunt his opponents when they'…

This was a spotfest, in the sense that there wasn't really a theme established during the match and it was more about the flashiness of the work. And it was a very good one. Hara is the least noteworthy guy here but even he is good, I always have time for a midcarder with nice kicks even if he doesn't offer much more. I loved the way Sawa used ring positioning in his striking exchanges vs Hara to express both dominance and peril and his usage of pro style moves was amusing. Ishikawa really is the master of making simple holds look deadly-it's not just that he knows how to properly apply them, he really wrenches on them and contemplantes them with great facial expressions …

This was fine. Best Joshi of the 2000's? Absolutely not lol. This started off decently enough with a scrappy back and forth before slowing down with a long brawl on the outside. It had some cool bits (Amano enjoying a beer while Nishio was stuck in a chair, Nishio's running boot to Amano on a chair sitting on the apron) but it was mostly either weak chair shots or walking and/or the occasional strike or whatnot. Literally spend like 15 minutes on the outside just hitting each other with chairs over and over until Amano no-sold a chair to the head with a cool headbutt and took over with a sunset once on the inside. Both blade, Amano has a long entertaining control segment …

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A world class tag team in KENTAFuji going against two of the best singles wrestlers in the world, a dream team of the aces of ROH in Bryan Danielson & Samoa Joe. No way this wasn't gonna be great. It started off with some nice work between Danielson & Marufuji - that transitioned into Marufuji being the FIP, which he was tremendous at I might add - that really was a pleasant surprise because in some of the KENTAFuji tags in the past he hasn't been the strongest FIP. Here he thankfully was tremendous. Joe & especially Danielson were fantastic with their work over him, working the heat on him in terrific fashion. Eventually Maru makes the hot tag to KENTA who is…

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I had never seen this until just now and the first half of it might be the best first half of a match I've ever seen in my life. This is an incredible performance from Dragon, I love all the limbwork, I love him doing an atomic drop after a fan calls him Bob Backlund, I love how much of a vicious prick he comes off as. I think with a babyface on the other side showing more fire and a crowd that wasn't exhausted from seeing a show that had already gone over 4 hours and included that Dragon Gate trios match this could easily have been a 5 star match. ****3/4

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These two wrestled a million times but this one had extra spice as it was on the go home show before WrestleMania. I liked that they let them wrestle a clean match and had Orton make an appearance after the match was decided. I also liked the fact that they made the champ Angle look strong without resorting to cheating. Rey got a close nearfall without a ref bump and Angle showed how good he was on the counter. They could have easily done a BS finish where Orton interfered, but instead they chose to put over the champ.