July 2009

Very similar to their epic PWG meeting that happened 8 years after this one. Of course neither one of the 2 were as polished w/ their in ring work & personas as they are now, but you can see flashes of what’s about to come for both guys. Walter dominates with his hard hitting move-set & strength advantage while Zack tries to chop down the bigger man w/ his strikes. It's a great match between a pairing who could produce one in their sleep. ****

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This is a scaffold death match for Miyamoto's death match title, called "one night carnival again" in reference to the first match of this type with Sasaki in 2007. Takeda is definitely the underdog not just because he's a new guy fighting for the title for the first time, but also because the match was originally designed in reference to Miyamoto's day's working construction, so this is definitely his sort of match. I've seen it called ***** by some people and, while I'm not sure if I'd go that far, it is a damn good match at worst just a notch below the March tag and I'd love to rewatch it in better quality than the Youtube video. This is a really good example of a…

William Regal vs Christian - Superstars 7/23/09 WATERPROOF BLONDE! If you close your eyes...I forgot how much I loved Christian's entrance music. Context, William Regal moved to ECW where Christian had been since his return to WWE. Supposedly Christian's ECW run is an all-time great TV match run so I am excited to check it out. I thought this was a great, solid pro wrestling match between two vets. You have the gritty William Regal against the never say die babyface in Christian. Christian is a damn good bumper for a babyface. He eats cement on a plancha and then Regal just shoves him off the top rope to the floor. Both pretty intense bumps. Christian was also good at…

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Other Deep Dive stuff Fun/weird match that had some great work at a time where Keita was a bit inconsistent quality-wise. Ryuji Walter (usually named "Ryuji Walters" on his singlet) is another one of those mysterious Japanese uber indie guys that despite being trained by the legendary Boris Malenko has sparingly appeared....well anywhere, really, bar this promotion and some self-promoted indies that maybe made tape. He apparently trained for Inoki's UFO promotion yet it went under before he could show up so he just kinda lingered around the indie scene. Walter still seemingly trains a fair number of wrestlers to this day but any substantial info is lost to the sands …

Pretty fun tag match with plenty of good chemistry between all four guys, especially Sawa and Otsuka. Sawa does a really good job of selling the danger of Otsuka’s suplexes. There was good heat between Sawa and Sasaki after some shenanigans but I also really liked the subplot of Yoshikawa being brash and all up in Sasaki’s face. Sadly, Otsuka wasn’t in this all that match but the finish was the best part of this match. Real stiff exchanges between Sawa and Sasaki as Sasaki tries to hulk his way through the some nasty head kicks before ultimately succumbing.

World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk vs Jeff Hardy - Night of Champions 2009 You can tell a lot about match from the beginning. This was started as a clunker and ended as a clunker. Really weird beginning. Jeff Hardy looked like he was in a daze and just didn't have a fucking clue what to do. CM Punk also in a weird mood wrestling circles around Jeff literally and then asking him what he was going to do to him. Very odd. They do the finisher teases again. Then they do some nice bumps to the outside. Punk misses a suicide dive. Then Jeff Hardy takes the Pillman bump from the top rope to the barricade. I thought they would settle into some sort of groove, but not really. …

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