December 2013

Talk about it here.

A 3 minute young lion vs. a veteran asskicker. HELL YEAH. Yohei shows good fire & his strikes look great - Shibata sells just enough for him, and of course the man is fantastic on the offense. That Boston Crab looked brutal. ****

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

This is about as great a six minute match as you are going to get. This was worked on UWF rules and is a classic Fujiwara story as the sneaky veteran is taking on the powerhouse kicker. Mochizuki unloads some really big shots, organ shifting body kicks, dental work knees. Meanwhile Fujiwara was trying to survive the onslaught and look for openings. I loved how when he maneuvered Mochizuki in the corner, he mixed in some liver shots with his body shots, he knew he wasn't going to stop this beast with power, but a perfectly placed kidney shot might. Finish was an all timer, Mochizuki goes up for his rope climb knee strike and Fujiwara shifts slightly and catches his knee in…

Savoy with a nice Judo throw off the opening lock up to drag Pistol to the mat. Cole escapes the headlock by grabbing the arm and Savoy backs her up against the ropes. The Irish whip is reversed and they go for a simple sunset flip spot, however Pistol loses her balance and falls on her opponent. Savoy scrambles to the ropes for the break whilst trapped in the cross armbar and when Cole says something to the referee, she clotheslines her in the back of the head. High bridging German suplex for a near fall. Savoy tries to lift Pistol up for something, but again Cole falls on her. Sliced Bread #2 by Pistol for a two count. Cole with another cross armbar and this time…

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

This is a LONG ass match, going past 30 minutes if you can believe it. Hara, however, is a damn good guy to be working a match of this length and incredibly apt as a opponent given he faced and defeated Keita in his debut match. This is as you can imagine very mat-focused match as a whole. The matwork is really good but there is a ton of it, also doesn't attempt to make it anymore palpable either. Hara generally is the better grappler until Keita gets one of his tricked out leg-holds (think it was a inverted figure-four? ) to damage it, allowing him to get some leeway in by targeting said leg and forcing Hara to counter before grabbing something better instead like a arm …

Talk about it here.

This is by far the most cursed matchup, Brody Yano vs Ichiro "my best friend is Onita PLEASE book me on your show now" Yaguchi in a 15 minute draw in the middle of nowhere. Yaguchi was dressed like the missing Godwin half-brother and Yano was, well, the usual mess he typically is. The match was not good! Yaguchi can do nothing in these conditions as he's way too immobile to actually wrestle or anything (as I sadly recounted from his terrible showings during the Onita/RJPW feud) so all we get are clubs to the back and/or very limp strikes in general. Yano tries to work around this by playing up the size and mass difference between the two, however outside of Yano doing som…

http://youtu.be/hgji0As6Wbo FYI, this is a title unification match for the World of Stardom title and the JWP Openweight title. The matwork at the start of this is really awesome like a faster version of BattlArts matwork. It doesn't feel like they're killing time at all because it has a fierce, competitive edge to it the entire time. Then the two of them start pulling out some cool highspots. Shirai starts out with a dive that only finds the front row of chairs, she does manage to follow up later springboard plancha were she goes over the corner of the ring onto Nakajima. Meanwhile, Arisa breaks out a jumping DDT on the apron and a footstomp from the top rope to the …

Talk about it here.