January 2007

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I was not expecting this many head drops in a Tanahashi match! This is the first time I've been impressed by Taiyo Kea. He may be lacking in charisma, but he sure can dish out some brutal looking offense. Tanahashi takes it like the champ he is and fires back when he can find an opening. I don't rate Tanahashi as high as others do nowadays, but seeing him here, you can see why he has the fan-base he has now. Thankfully, the flaws that riddle most of his current work are nowhere to be seen. This match never feels formulaic and when Tanahashi hits a tide-turning big move, it feels organic. This matched benefited everyone. Kea looked like a bad ass in defeat on one o…

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2wtkvd_6-shinsuke-nakamura-vs-toshiaki-kawada_sport The mat-work here is fantastic. It shows a struggle, but it's accessible enough that someone who isn't a fan of shoot style would still enjoy themselves. Kawada is a lot more reserved than he usually is, but all that changes when Nakamura refuses to break an armbar when Kawada gets to the ropes. After this, Kawada finally starts bringing the hate and both guys take some stiff shots and suplexes. Even as Kawada was ending the near of his career, he was still one of the best at selling. His facial expressions were on point. It's a shame the no-selling headdrop spots come off as a tad s…

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Seeing Umaga brings back childhood memories. Used to have a figure of Umaga. My favourite too. I adored everything about him. His look most of all. I used to genuinely believe his face paint was a real tattoo. Oh, how naive was I. The match starts off pretty good. Cena adopts a stick and moves approach in the opening moments. Baiting Umaga in and getting a few shots in. I did like the “Umaga ate my sign” sign in the crowd. Umaga does a really great job of working over Cena. His unique offence looks so impactful. Something fresh and new to counter Cena’s simplistic babyface offence. The whole match reminds me of Hogan matches in the ’80s. There even is a spot w…

Why this doesn't get talked up more? I just finished watching it for the first time & I was absolutely blown away. Old school brawl, full of hate, defined heel & babyface roles, kick-ass performances by all - especially by HBK, who gave one of his best performances ever in my eyes. ****1/2 - ****3/4, leaning more towards ****3/4 now. Incredible match.

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This is cut to 19 minutes of the original 30, because fun editing is all about making cool matches less cool, idk. We get to see the opening grappling and it's pretty great? Yoshida is obviously just a master of this craft, Emoto doesn't look lost and keeps a good tempo. Then they cut and it's generic shit and I'm sad again. They do actually work stuff into the match, namely that Emoto works the back and Yoshida works the arm. Emoto uses the ropes aplenty, either throwing her opponent onto them or using them as weapons to work the back more. They do the classic Kings Road 90's spot of teasing apron moves, which ends with Yoshida eating a nasty Gourdbuster onto it. It was …

We sadly only get about 10 minutes of this in terms of footage; Kawada was rather inconsistent at the time (this was around about the time his body was just outright failing him when it came to delivering most of the time) if anyone could get him to something really good, it would be Nishimura, plus we still get some good work so I figured there's something at least to discuss. We start off with some really aggressive stuff as Kawada's leg gets wrecked from the get-go, with even the ref having to run in and try to stop Nishimura bending it, Kawada spends virtually all of the first round on his ass as Nishimura bends the life out of the leg. We strongly clip to the later r…

Some person is uploading 5$ bin 2000s joshi by the bulk on YouTube, and I'm happy because I can watch Carlos Amano matches. And this was a pretty fun veteran technician's match. The whole match is highly polished and Nagashima actually has really mean offense too for such a tiny girl. Amano is all flying headbutts and she has spectacular flying headbutts. There's all kinds of variations on them: flying headbutt to Nagashima on the top rope, Flying Headbutt right into a nasty Nagashima low dropkick that looked perfect, flying headbutt tease into a cradle which Nagashima reverses anyways etc. Kinda veers into joshiriffic territory at times, with a brawl on the outside where…

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There’s plenty of good talent in this match and while there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing, there’s also not anything to make it really stand out or that I can identify as a reason for you to go out of your way and watch it. The definition of an average match. My full review is available here, which is part of the 365 Wrestling project.