July 2010

"Same great shit!" chant as Danielson goes for the surfboard. Oh how a year can change things, eh. A very good, back & forth match w/ very good, competitive work on the mat + TJP's selling of Bryan's strikes was a beauty. ***3/4

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An absolutely amazing AMBITION, shoot style match. Moss is the larger of the 2 so he relies more on his takedowns while Dragon chops him down with strikes - there's some very strong psychology in there too w/ Dragon doing some brutal targeting towards Moss' leg, which leads to a great moment where he had just knocked him down w/ leg kicks, Moss gets up & BOOM - a brutal kick to the HEAD. Baited him into it w/ the leg kicks. FUCK YEAH. Great, great stuff. ****1/2

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(source here, possible epilepsy warning given the lights for the match keep flickering) Looking at these four you KNOW you're going to get at least something entertaining, what with Miyamoto's hoss antics alongside Nagai's shoot-style, First Tiger's stiff kicks and tubby lucha work and Fudo's beat the shit out of you-style all blending nicely here for a really hidden gem of a x-list indie. Miya hasn't quite hit the juice hard yet, still being fairly beefy but not to the insanity that we know of him today, no. Him and Fudo do bring in some stiff shots but mostly play it safe for the opener, so shoulder presses and a chinlock will do. Nagai's scum-shooter gimmick is g…

The opening was good enough-basic matwork and Tanahashi continously evading and blocking Shiozaki's chops. Unfortunately that mini-atory was quickly came to an end when Shiozaki randomly and forgettably chopped Tanahashi to little reaction while fighting over...some leg-based move, probably a dragon screw. This is one of the worst Tanahashi performances I remember seeing-the majority of his offence consisted of embarrisingly looking gut/knee kicks that were straight out of a 1999 Raw in their impact and borin lg and repetitive leg attacks. Tanahashi absolutely outclassed Shiozaki in star presence and reactions-the crowd was way more invested in cheering and (more prominen…

GHC Heavyweight Champion Takahashi Sugiura vs Yoshihiro Takayama - NOAH 7/10/2010 Sugiura was well into his 581 day reign as champion, which seems questionable, but given the roster there was not much of a choice. This was the NOAH tenth anniversary tour and they are still in a decent sized building drawing 5000+. I loved this a lot more than expected to. Sugiura is a wrestler that usually draw apathy from me. He is undersized and hits hard. There is not much charisma from him. But at least he does hit hard. I think that adds to this match a lot. They start with a strike exchange and I eye roll. Takayama hits a dropkick to send Sugiura out the ring. I love Takaya…

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WWE Champion Sheamus vs John Cena - Money In The Bank 2010 Steel Cage Match Man, the Nexus angle did absolutely no favors to Sheamus. Basically making him look like the biggest 6' 6" pussy in the entire world, over and over again. No wonder I didn't take him seriously until 2012. I thought this was a strong cage match. It was hurt by the fact there was a lot of dead space. Even Lawler is like why the hell is Sheamus staring off to space, resident genius Matt Striker says Sheamus is too busy evolving, duh. God, he sucked. It was also hurt the fact no one was going to buy a finish until the Nexus came out. The positives were that Sheamus is an excellent worker on top, w…

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Sumo Hall main event for Sekimoto's KOD title. HARASHIMA is cornered by Poison Sawada Julie, Owashi and a few other DDT wrestlers. I liked this but I had a problem with how despite both being good technical wrestlers, they don't mesh too well in that area because of the size difference. There's a pretty good moment when Sekimoto gets a single leg boston crab and they really milk it despite HARASHIMA being about 50 centimeters away from the ropes, which plays on Sekimoto being much bigger, but in general I found the early portion lacking. The match gets better once HARA gets an opening and starts doing dives and strikes. Sekimoto halts the momentum by blocking a somat…

I think this forum is generally used to post good matches, and this isn't that but I thought it was bad in a notable way. Marufuji was supposed to have a match with Ibushi, who got injured and Omega replaced him. At first, everything is going well and Marufuji even plays along with Omega's hadouken stuff. But then, Marufuji gets injured on a dumb senton Omega does while Marufuji is sitting on the turnbuckle. And he just kind of has to hobble his way through this 20 minute match while holding his right arm and being very angry at Omega. In the end he straight up drops Omega on his head, which might be his version of a receipt. It's kind of admirable that Marufuji tried to …

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Kensuke Sasaki vs Go Shiozaki NOAH 7/10/10 They be a CLUBBERIN, TONY! Bill Eadie take note this is how you make clobbering compelling. Kensuke is an unstoppable force of chops and lariats. I think it is about the 20 minute mark before he hits something besides a chop or lariat and that is a BRUTAL SNAP PILEDRIVER! I loved this stripped down take on pro wrestling. You could feel him beating the life force out of Go Shiozaki. I am not a big Go fan, but to his credit I thought he did a great job selling this demoralization. The beginning took the match in an interesting direction before they re-routed to the final direction. It started off pretty even between the two…

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Tyler Black defends the ROH World Title. This is Steen at arguably his most nastiest & violent form, and here he was looking to change Black forever. Him opening up the match with that stiff sounding SLAP was great, and it very well set the table up for what was about to come in the next 20+ minutes. Steen is awesome on top, delivering a beating to Tyler & even bloodying him up -- eventually Steen himself gets his face bloodied, and I gotta say that both of them rocking that color definitely made this match even more memorable than it already was. Tyler's babyface performance is also all kinds of very good w/ him busting out some awesome hope spots, comeback …

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