November 2014

Such a pleasure to watch masters ply their craft. Very old school lucha match, had some very pretty mat wrestling, but a little more spice then a straight maestro match. I had no idea Ultimo Guerrero had this in him, add this to his mask loss and we are looking at an out of nowhere classic year from I guy I have been totally indifferent for his whole career. He looked like he belong right there with all of these mat wizards, his stuff with Solar was just great. as was the section where he matched up with Black Terry. Panther is clearly inspired when he gets a chance to do this kind of thing, and he looked great. Loved the third fall, with the very cool Star variations an…

Really fun mat based match which very much delivered on the promise of Hechicero mixing it up with the Traumas. We open with a spectacular Trauma 1 v. Hechicero section which has some cool athletic counters, and a series of nasty rolling cradles into submissions. We also get a cool second fall exchange between T2 and Hechicero. Maya looked good when the match sped up a bit, but he looked a little lost during the mat stuff, Trauma's will eat you up if you can't hang. The other thing that kept this from being really high end was the wonky finish which felt like some sort of double pin cop out so on one had to job. More of a match with great exchanges then a great match, but…

I loved the performances from Sasha, Charlotte and Bayley in this. Sasha ducking Charlotte early and using the Lynch distraction to clothesline her on the apron was great heel work. As were the little taunts thrown Charlotte's way. Charlotte played the badass face perfectly. Bayley starting off as the fiery avenger and morphing into the FIP was great as well. Becky was fine but overshadowed by the other three by a long way. If this match had about five to ten more minutes and was the blowoff to a tag feud it would have been a MOTYC, but it was a buildup match for Sasha vs Charlotte. So the Bayley FIP turns into a quick Sasha rollup to get the one-up on Charlotte in…

This was just as good, if not a little better, than their G1 match from few months before. Loved the grappling in the early stages - that set the pace for rest of the match. Speaking of pace, I really enjoyed the pacing of this one; I thought it did a great job building the match to the finishing stretch, which was really good & had a nice feel of urgency to it. Great match. ****

NEVER Openweight Champion Tomohiro Ishii vs Hirooki Goto - NJPW Power Struggle 11/8/14 It is funny I cant explain it but Ishii looks like a great midcarder. Like an Arn Anderson. Ishii is going to rock the midcard and give reliable performances. You aren't disappointed when he doesn't crack the main event or loses a big match because he is a compelling midcarder. Yet someone like Hirooki Goto is looked at as a disappointment. Even in this match, I thought Ishii was a definitively better wrestler. Better offense, better selling, better at getting over the bigger moments. But I am not disappointed in Ishii not making the main event. I am disappointed in Goto. It is weir…

WWE Intercontinental Champion Dolph Ziggler vs Cesaro vs Tyson Kidd WWE Smackdown! 11/14/14 First thing's first, the new Smackdown ring announcer is realest. I may just start watching Smackdown for her. Hot damn. This match is a great spotfest and besides the Money In The Bank Ladder match, I can't think of a better one this year in WWE (reDragon vs Young Bucks, which I saw live was the best spotfest of the year and one of the best of all time). Spotfest is a loaded word after all wrestling matches are a collection of spots. It is your fireworks spectacle in lieu of a compelling story. I think there is very much a place for them on pro wrestling ca…

Team Cena (John Cena, Dolph Ziggler, The Big Show, Ryback, Rowan) vs The Authority (Seth Rollins, Luke Harper, Rusev, Kane and Mark Henry) - WWE Survivor Series 2014 When Survivor Series Elimination Matches are done right they are hard to top. A booker can take advantage of more moving pieces in terms of the number of wrestlers in a match and the number of finishes afforded to him. It allows for more pairings and no dull moments with each tag there is a new combination. The arc follows a more traditional sports-oriented approach where there is a scoreboard and teams fall behind and have to work hard to catch back up. I think this match should go down as one of the bes…

Your copy-and-paste opening with Suzuki grappling a bit with Sugiura, trading hard elbow shots, working on the back of Tanaka with Sato. His got his cool killer demeanor, at one point calmly walking into the ring and clobbering Sugiura in the face while he's got Sato in the ankle hold before encouraging his partner. Then it quickly takes a trip down to Bomb City where there are no sold super Falcon Arrows and Sato dusting off the Northern Lights Bomb and nutty head-dropping suplex sequences with Tanaka's neck taking the brunt of the punishment. Down the home stretch, Tanaka busts open Sato with a headbutt and it's all over from there. Overkill, sure, but it's to be expect…