February 2015

I thought this was a good TV main event which was helped by the right guy winning. Most of the excitement was in the finishing stretch, but they did a good job stacking the deck against Bryan. He and Rollins work well together. ***1/4

I don't have a ton to say about this one since I was partially distracted but I do think it had an excellent finishing stretch. I know this has gotten some buzz, so I'm still creating the thread so those who have championed it can talk about it.

IWGP Heavyweight Champion Hiroshi Tanahashi vs AJ Styles - New Beginning in Osaka 2/11/15 My two favorite wrestlers on the planet right now meeting for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship is always a good thing. I really liked their October title change from 2014 and thought this was even better. They should some learned psychology as Tanahashi had AJ's dropkick scouted early and AJ knew Tanahashi's somersault off the apron. I also thought they did not just do a let me run my spots and now you run through yours, which is really common in this day and age. We did not see every single Tanahashi stock spot nor did we see every single one of AJ's instead they worked in thos…

This reminded me of a WCW cruiserweight match with WWE-style facial expressions mixed in. This was very good, but seemed to be missing something to go over the top. It had a good build and there were some great highspots and nearfalls, but it was kind of shallow. Not sure that's the right word, but it seemed pretty forgettable even though it was well worked. ***3/4

I really loved the heel stalling from Owens that kicked this match off. This was very similar to the Cena-Rusev match as far as layout, at least before Sami's head bump, although Zayn is much easier to get behind at this point and shows great aggression. He really should be at worst one of the top three or four guys on the main roster. Owens was good here, but I think Zayn's selling, offense and commitment to his character was top notch. It was a great performance from him. I like how Owens can use his highspots in a way that doesn't take away from him as a heel. I thought this was really great booking and losing the title without losing the match was a great way to get b…

Pretty solid spotfest and all of them are pretty good in the ring. Charlotte still has a little awkwardness but nothing that won't go away in time. I just think she's so naturally talented that it's easy to overlook how a lot of her stuff looks a little unseasoned. Another throwaway match, but a good showcase of the women in NXT.

An interesting singles match between to estranged sisters. They spent the early part of their careers together then Io had some legal trouble that apparently caused a split between her and the rest of her family, including Mio. I don't think they had been on the same card for three years. The match itself gets of to a tentative start as it seems like they can't agree on what to do which leads to some awkward stretches in the early going. Once they get on the same page though, the action picks up. A good back and forth mix of highspots from Io and nasty submissions from Mio plus really stiff strikes from both. ***3/4

I've seen the love this has gotten, and I watched it and thought it was good, but nowhere near at the level I have seen others describe it, but I couldn't really articulate why. I rewatched it and I think it comes down to the way everything was sold. I'm all for a good strike or chop exchange in a big match, as I think it's a great way to create drama. However, I didn't like the way they worked the chop exchange here, nor the forearms. The Flair-Steamboat route of selling each chop individually works much better, and considering how good the strikes looked, they could have done that for 20 minutes and it wouldn't get old at all. Tenryu and Hashimoto worked a few matches i…

Starts off with some intricate matwork, which is always great to see from HARASHIMA, even though you know this match is going long and will steer pretty far away from "technical" wrestling. He starts working Ibushi's body with punches and stomps, which I liked. He picks Kota out of mid-air with a dropkick. Sadly, he stopped focusing on that immediately afterwards as they went outside the ring. I did think Ibushi walking away because he wants to fight Hara on the entrance stage was fantastic. Ibushi does a moonsault off a large screen before they climb back to the ring. Later on, he finds a way to counter the somato with a double foot stomp, which I still don't really unde…

Disappointing even though Strong BJ are great in this. Sekimoto and Okabayashi take turns body slamming Takeshita, which is a nice tag team sequence. Takeshita is super awkward and does shit like crawl for the tag when Endo is laid out outside but it's fine for the most part. It's kind of a shame because Endo was pretty great at getting beat up during this tag team run. Endo's hot tag is really good. But then, instead of going into overdrive like the other Endo/Takeshita matches after the initial heat segment, Endo gets cut off and Okabayashi beats him up. And then Takeshita comes back in and fights Sekimoto, and that's kind of whatever because he did just get savaged for…

Cesaro and Kidd are a great act and should really be like Jerishow where they are in the middle of everything up and down the card. You can tell Cesaro is making more of an effort to advance his character, as he's more heelish than I recall him being in the past. Good, but disappointing at the same time, as much for how things have ended up for both of them as the quality of the match itself.

Okabayashi and Endo were the best part of that somewhat disappointing tag match at the Saitama Arena I saw this morning, so I was happy to see that they booked this on their next show. It's a fantastic match! Endo zeroes in on Okabayashi's arm and works it with some holds and on the ring post early on. Okabayashi briefly gets the upper hand and starts beating up Endo, but Endo lands a great dropkick followed by an Asai moonsault to halt his momentum. The back half was very good. Endo goes for several kimuras and armbars, and Okabayashi picks him up and slams Endo to get out of the hold several times. I've found I really like that sort of repetition in wrestling. Endo gets…

I've always held TAKA Michinoku in high regard and him cultivating such a badass house style in his own promotion is only going to help his 2026 GWE looks for me. This match. My god. What can I even say to do it justice. I'm astonished how simple doing pro wrestling right can be sometimes. This match consisted of nothing more than these two grappling. And it became something special. Not because they used big symbols, but because they used normal, usual, mundane symbols and turned them into something huge by mixing them up with a bunch of cool, beautiful looking matwork. When you know how to sell you can turn Headscissors and Armbars into viable nearfalls too. I loved how…

Not sure why it took me so long to watch this but it was every bit as horrifiyingly amazing as I expected. Classifying it as anything other than pro wrestling would be unjust. There's a pro wrestling angle before the match. There are irish whips during the match. As a viewing experience, I loved it. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable rating it due to all the whining that could ensue about rewarding unprofessional behavior, but I am not one to really talk about morality in pro wrestling. The match starts with a creepy minute long staredown. They get into each other's face, after which Act punches Yoshiko in the face. Then the fighting starts-they both throw hands but Yoshiko …

A couple notes about this match. First, it's a High Speed Title match, which is usually work more like an MPro or DG style match than a usual joshi one. Second, the ref is wearing a GoPro camera strapped to his head, while this looks goofy it actually catches some good shots. For the match itself, it starts out as your typical vet/rookie match with Io controlling things. Koguma does manage to get control with a pretty awesome chain of spots. She gets knocked out to the floor and Shirai tries to follow up with a moonsault to the floor but Koguma grabs her ankle and yanks her down with Io smacking her head on the floor. She then follows that up with a tornado DDT off th…

Another great match on this show in a completely different way. While Cena-Rusev was more of a psychological match, this was more of a high-impact match. The crowd was so divided that they came across apathetic until Bryan caught Reigns with the liver kick, which was an awesome transition and really cool match choice. This is hurt in some ways by the wrong guy winning, but they did work the right match to give Reigns an earned victory to an extent, although I think they could have done more in that direction. I think about something like the Bret-Diesel match at the 1995 Royal Rumble where they teased a Bret heel turn going into the match and Bret also did heel stuff in t…

I thought this was an awesome match. Cena was fine, but I thought he should have varied up his comeback a little more, since the crowd was with him until he slipped into his pattern, then they started booing. Hopefully, Cena will bust out something new at Wrestlemania to really put this match over the top, because as good as this was, I think these two could do even better. Rusev is just a tremendous worker. Great offense, with the DDT cutoff of Cena's AA attempt being my favorite spot of the match, but everything Rusev did just looking really crisp and painful. The match also had a really nice layout - kind of old school in how it built to Cena's comeback and how it was …

Well this was an excellent syndie tag given time to build, which I appreciated. Cesaro-Kidd feel like a team that could be great and involved up and down the card with even the singles stars with the right booking. The Lucha Dragons had some really inventive offensive, like that low rana that impaled Kidd's face in the mat. They had me biting on the false finishes, and they built the heat really well. Good stuff! ***1/2