December 2014

Wild Burning (Jun Akiyama & Takao Omori) vs. Xceed (Go Shiozaki & Kento Miyahara) - AJPW 12/6/14 There have been strecthes in all these 2014 AJPW matches where they are wrestling at a ***** level and it feels like you are watching 90s AJPW again. The action is explosive, urgent, but also with a sense of purpose directed towards winning the match. The best example of this high-caliber of work is towards the beginning. Miyahara has out worked the bigger, older Omori exposing a midsection weakness. This was not enough for Miyahara who was became obsessed with getting his shots in on Akiyama on the apron. Of course, he paid for his negliglence in the form of a w…

Big Ryck vs. Drago vs. El Mariachi Loco vs. Fenix vs. King Cuerno vs. Mascarita Sagrada vs. Pentagon Jr. vs. Prince Puma vs. Son Of Havoc vs. Super Fly - Lucha Underground 12/11/14 I have seen bits and pieces of Lucha Underground from the first Season. I always had trouble finding it on my cable to DVR it, but I wanted something fun, mindless to watch and this fit the bill. Standouts: Masacrita Sagrada, I have no clue if this is the same dude from the 90s, but if it is holy shit WOW and if it is not he did the original proud! So much charisma! I loved how he did some push-ups to pump himself up before going after Big Ryck aka Ezekiel Jackson. He was so expressi…

NXT Champion Adrian Neville vs Sami Zayn - NXT Takeover REvolution 12/11/14 NXT crowds are far from perfect, but for this match they were undoubtedly perfect. This match goes from a normal MOVEZ~! match to a great match and a star-making performance for Sami Zayn because this crowd was totally invested in the Sami Zayn character. They also proved me wrong. The past couple of years my confidence had been shaken that babyfaces could exist in this cynical, jaded wrestling climate. When Sami Zayn had the chance to blast Neville with the championship belt, they all chanted "NO!" in unison throughout the segment. They cared about how Zayn won the match and that meant a lot…

NXT Women's Champion Charlotte vs Sasha Banks -NXT Takeover REvolution 12/11/14 It was love at first sight for me and The Boss. I could just tell from her mannerisms that she would be a Sleeze Favorite, then she called Charlotte, "generically basic" and I knew she could do no wrong. However, this Lady (She ain't ratchet!) from Titletown, USA (Home of Winners such as the New England Patriots, John Cena, and Myself, the First Ever Winner of the First Ever Pro Wrestling Trivia Internet Podcast, Brainbuster), is no slouch in the ring and most importantly is not afraid to heel it up. Whether it was getting into Charlotte's face like who ya think ya are or taunting Charlotte w…

WWE Intercontinental Champion Luke Harper vs Dolph Ziggler WWE TLC 2014 Ladder Match Luke Harper may look like Bruiser Brody, but he wrestles like Stan Hansen and the world is a better place for it. He had a total disregard for Ziggler and his own welfare. Having watched wrestling for seventeen years now, it takes a lot to make me cringe, but repeatedly I was wincing in pain with each punishing blow. It was so violent and I even questioned if it was all worth it. I hope it will be because I thought this be HBK/Mankind match for Ziggler. Shawn Michaels needed the match with Foley to establish that he dish out the pain as well as he could take it. It is si…

I randomly ran across this today, and I thought it was pretty good. I'm sure the finish left people unsatisfied at the time, but watching it in a vacuum now, I was glad I checked it out. There's some pretty bad camera work that's distracting at times. But, you get some smart work from AJ and some nice selling from Ricochet. Once AJ focuses in on the left knee, I thought they told a good story until the questionable finish.

Hard Hit is such an odd and fascinating company. It puts on unique shows that aren't necessarily for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoy them as they do a great job of putting on shoot style matches between pro-wrestling and MMA fighters who mostly fought in Pancrase. Tsuchihashi is the difference maker here though as he's mostly spent most of his combat sports career fighting for Akira Maeda in The Outsider (an MMA promotion Maeda founded to put on MMA fights featuring guys with no combat sports training who are mostly gang members) which is why he is all tattooed up. The match isn't your traditional pro-wrestling match and is more so 4 guys rolling on the ground countering…

Takeshita and Endo continue their title run with a win over KUDO and Sakaguchi. Having seen about four of their tag title matches, Takeshita and Endo stick pretty closely to the same structure every time but I guess it works since I've really liked two of those matches, the one against Golden Lovers and this, against Shouten Doji. Endo gets beat up and cut off and the other team fucks him up, then there's a back-and-forth finishing stretch and Takeshita does a bunch of suplexes and wins. It's pretty good but I do wish this was a bit different because KUDO and Sakaguchi are both good technical wrestlers (especially Sakaguchi) and they don't get to showcase that, even when …

Spider comes into this with a taped up shoulder/support, naturally that became apart of the match. This came about in a number of ways; Keita aiming to target it with his limb work, Spider having to take breaks to fix it and Keita teasing running in and attacking him, etc etc. Keita also attacked the leg whenever convenient to even things out as not to make this too one-dimensional, which was similarly cool to see. As a match this mostly composed of the two doing some tricked out lucha Llave back and forth exchanges. Spider being a Osaka Pro lifer would make you presume that he wouldn't be particularly amazing at this but he actually got to show off some skills in that re…