May 2015

If you removed the first five minutes of this you would have a really good jr style title match. For the first five mins Tozawa has his leg picked apart by Kid and then Tozawa gets some space and then sprints to hit a dive and never sells his leg again. It is on the level of something Omega or Ibushi would do it is that useless. The rest of the match is pretty good with the two working well. You still have some of the usual Tozawa issues that he is still really annoying and his chops and a couple of other of his moves look like shit and are stupid, but everything DK does is really really good and Tozawa does not drag it down too much with his inane mannerisms. Decent titl…

Basically just 14 minutes of very clean, very good catch-wrestling. Both of these guys are already quite solid at that so not that shocking. As per most Keita matches he really doesn't give much of a inch anywhere, dominating most of the early sections with slick matwork, aiming for the legs and feet mostly with the occasional extra bit here and there. We get the good old "rolling off the apron in a leg-lock" spot to mix things up, as well as Keita fucking around by trying to Irish Whip in a UWF match and Tamura just absolutely not playing with that at all, but then Tamura plays along by going for it himself before the two do some goofy lucha bits. Keita gets a bit too co…

Cage vs. Fenix vs. Killshot vs. King Cuerno vs. Pentagon Jr. vs. Sexy Star vs. The Mack - Lucha Undergound 5/13/15 So this match is for some Aztec Medallion that is going to give you immortality. Whether literally or figuratively, I like that they always give the luchadors something to wrestle for. Again, I am just in the mood for mindless action and this was pretty good. I liked Mascarita Sagrada more in the last match from individual performance perspective but overall this match was better. Sexy Star was used really well. She was clearly over. She has a good spirit to her. I really liked Brian Cage in his match against Moxley and watching him here, I just fee…

I hesitated making a thread on this but fuck it I enjoyed this way too much. Even if I don't think it rises above "fun." Basically Regins gives us an entertaining 2015 Kane match centered around his strikes and selling. It's mainly a slugfest but when you have Reigns making me buy Kane's offense as actually doing damage, you're doing something right. Thought him seeming to just be going on instinct on the finish was great, too.

Akito had a pretty interesting WORKRATE run as DDT extreme champion between 2014 and 2015. He had a good iron match with Sasaki, a match where the rules changed every 90 seconds against Shiori Asahi, and this, a last man standing match against Irie. There's also a catch rules match against MIKAMI which I wasn't able to find online, but I'm curious about. Akito's actually a really interesting technical wrestler. He doesn't do many shoot submission holds but he has a bunch of interesting, flashy holds most of his matches are very heavy on limbwork. Anyway, the rules for this are that they get a 10-count after a pin or submission and if they can't get up, they lose. Ak…

This match was for the Wonder of Stardom title, vacated by Act Yasukawa following the Yoshiko shoot incident. Different from the other Shirai matches I've seen to date, as Storm controls much of the match by working over Shirai's neck and back. Much of Storm's offence is focused around variations of a neck whip. Io does a good job selling the damage and working in hope spots. I thought the match was pretty solid, although Storm's offence--despite her apparent size and strength advantage--always looked rather soft compared to Shirai's. This seems to be a recurring theme with many of the gaijin wrestlers. Nonetheless, this was a change of pace and worked pretty well. I…

Great showing for two women working their first main event singles match. I really like how both of them focus on a specific body part in an attempt to neutralize a major part of her opponent's offense. Iwatani goes after Hojo's arm to take away her elbow based offense. Hojo counters by going after Iwatani's abdomen to prevent her from hitting her dragon suplex, which legit KO her in a tag title match earlier in the month. With the way that both women work the selling into the match, it turns into a story of who is willing to work through the pain to hit her finisher first. Iwatani wins that battle but ends up landing too close to the ropes with Hojo rolling outside to re…

LU Trios Champions Son of Havoc & Ivelisse & Angelico vs The Crew (Cortez Castro & Mr Cisco & Bael) - Lucha Underground 5/20/15 Ladder Match Ivelisse is injured in a foot cast coming into the match and gets jumped by the Thugs, this is Matt Striker's reaction "Don't feel bad for Ivelisse, she is fair game". This could be the worst call in the history of the match. He follows this gem up with "Angelico must feel so alone after winning the titles". Bro, he is a TAG TEAM champion, I know they are dysfunctional, but he has TEAMATES! Jesus. Solid ladder match. Crew are good bruisers. I like their one highspot in the corner with the double dropkicks i…

If nothing else this match will always be a watershed moment for women in mainstream wrestling. Sasha, in particular, was well thought of before this match. But after this match, people started talking about her as being the best in the WWE, if not the world. The match itself starts out with some back and forth exchanges leading to Becky ending up with the slight advantages at the end which force Sasha back on her heels. Sasha fires back in a big way by blocking a Becky kick and yanking her down to the apron by grabbing her arm. Sasha follows that up by spending the next several minutes just torturing Becky's arm, with the big highlight being Sasha bending back Becky'…

BJW - 5/28/15 An easy 'modern strong style' tag team classic. Time limit draws miss more often than they hit but these guys went through hell and back for half an hour and didn't miss a beat. Uber-stiff and brutal at times, with Sato and Okabayashi both getting busted open the hard way. Things got a little chaotic and messy at times, but it never got too ridiculous and they always reeled the action back in. Everyone had a role to play, with Sekimoto being Twin Towers' ragdoll for a good chunk of the match and wonderfully selling the constant beat downs. Sato was crafty (and elbow-happy) as usual -- I liked his re-thinking the arm work early on. The strike exchanges go…

Never been a big KUDO fan. He doesn’t have the charisma of HARASHIMA but I do think that he is still a good wrestler because of his intensity and good offence, and he very much delivered here. Some of his comebacks were extremely well timed and thus allowed all the babyface heat he gained in the match to shine through most effectively. The fire he showed in his offence was so awesome. HARASHIMA was fantastic in this. And whilst KUDO did great fighting from beneath, HARASHIMA stood out with his outstanding heel work. Closed fists for some of the strike exchanges, smiling in such a dickish manner whilst brutalising KUDO’s ribs, being an absolute bully. The peaked at the abs…

more detailed diving here 30+ minutes of grappling on some random dirty mats? Must be a Keita Yano match! Not satisfied with beating each other up we instead get Yano and Yamada teaming up against some fellow indie goobers. For real though, this was fun if you can get into the grimy conditions. Yamada and Yano basically twist and bend their opponents up into some really nasty knots for a good portion of it and it's about as entertaining as you can imagine. Keita especially pulls a lot from WoS transitions here with how showy he is and to get over their whole stance as superior grapplers alongside occasionally pulling out some old-school dirty shit like ja…

WWE US Champion John Cena vs NXT Champion Kevin Owens - WWE Elimination Chamber 2015 I cant think a match I have more disdain for than this match. I thought it was terrible ten years ago and watching it back now. I think I hate it even more now. There were matches like this before this match, but you could argue this style made its debut in the WWE Main Event scene with the match. This match highlights everything that is the antithesis to emotionally moving professional wrestling. It emphasizes that WHAT at the expense of WHY and HOW. The WHAT is MOVEZ~! and lots of them. It is not quite as bad today's motion-smoothing wrestling where everybody is p…

What a clusterfuck on every level. New Day can have the three guys competing. Why ? Torito stays in the Chamber. Why ? The Ascension in on my TV. Why ? The idea was cool. The execution wasn't. Watching Tyson Kidd is a bittersweet feeling. Cesaro is the Arn of this match. So they start with the Lucha Dragons, and it only will go down from here. Kalisto soon gets stuck over the New Day's pod. They fuck up the countdown because he has to do a spot. Ascension gets in. What a complete and utter waste of time these guys have been. Match goes awry already. They are not over one bit. Los Matadores get in and El Torito gets the best spot of the entire match. Kalisto t…

Holy shit, what a debacle. No one of these guys are over one bit. The work mostly sucks, only Barrett works half-ass well with Ziggler. Nothing happens, ever, in term of using the gimmick.... We get R-Truth, again. We get Ryback in airbrush but sadly he doesn't do a RVD spot, he's all about being Kane and being one of the worst monster ever in the cage. Henry is there. For someone with so much hype around this place, I have never seen anything better than "decent", honestly. The two "events" : at some point, Mark Henry's glass door breaks down so he gets out. No idea if that's a fuck up. Then, Sheamus can't get out of his because it can't open. Looks like a fuck up, b…