August 2015

Pentagon Jr. vs Vampiro - Lucha Underground 8/5/15 Street Fight Calling all Vampires, watch this match pronto! This was sick, twisted violence at its best. Total gorefest. Deathmatch Wrestling at its best. Matt Striker is the drizzling shits, just try to ignore him and his Ian bullshit, its fucking Vampiro in there, brutha. A Cero Miedo (Zero Fear) match is just Lucha Underground name for a street fight. Pentagon Jr breaks people's arms to appease a mysterious Master. He was going to break Sexy Star's arm but Vampiro stopped him. Now it is on! Vampiro had been watching some Ghost BC and came out dressed as the Black Pope with his face paint. It was cool as hell.…

LU Champion Prince Puma vs Mil Muertes - Lucha Underground 8/5/15 The Season 1 Finale of Lucha Underground pits the Champion Prince Puma aka Ricochet who has fended off all challengers thus far against the Horror Movie Monster Mil Muertes aka El Mesias. You may be wondering what happened to our friend Mil after being stuffed inside the Coffin at Grave Consequences against Fenix. Wiki and the like is a little sketchy but basically Catrina said "Psyche!" to Fenix, resurrected Mil Muertes and added more ghouls and goblins to her stable. As a fan of traditional soap operas, the thought of resurrection ala Helena Cassadine bringing Stavros Cassadine back to life pops me h…

NXT TV August 5th 2015 - Bayley vs. Charlotte Flair Bayley has begun her road to Brooklyn, she'd been out with a broken hand and returned, still bandaged up, and set upon her goal of working towards the NXT Women's Title. She had just beaten Emma, whom she'd been feuding with for months, and challenged Charlotte to a match. Bayley has been chasing that win over Charlotte for literally years, ever since Charlotte turned on her originally in 2013. Bayley chased her for the title in 2014, couldn't beat her. The four way from Takeover Rival was still built around Bayley chasing Charlotte, but then Sasha won the belt and that big victory still eluded her. Now she's chasin…

I remember randomly checking this out during my wrestling sabbatical because I figured something featuring these two guys had to be good at the very least and this didn’t disappoint. I loved Rusev’s throws in this along with his strikes. I continue to roll my eyes at Roman getting the exact same kind of Cena hate while, just like Cena, he turns in another great performance. I thought Reigns’ selling and timing on his comeback was quality and that deadlift suplex rocked. I felt like their match at Clash of Champions was kinda disappointing and this felt more like the direction they should have gone. Maybe down the line.

Tomohiro Ishii vs Hirooki Goto - NJPW NJPW G-1 Climax 8/9/15 Sometimes you just want to watch two big dudes hit each other really hard. These two stalwarts of New Japan's Hoss Division deliver in spades. So many meaty chops and monster truck lariats! The Zidane-style headbutts come from out of nowhere and are hit with full force. Like the Ibushi/Ricochet match there is really not much to this besides the fact that it is two dudes just to tear each other's head off or cave in their chests. Ishii's chops coming out of the first strike exchange stand out. Also, Goto's badass lariat after avoiding the Brainbuster. There are two funny, cute moments where each wrestler lea…

Tomohiro Ishii vs Tomoaki Honma - NJPW 8/12/15 This is absolutely fantastic! Honma is my favorite Ishii opponent. He takes a lickin but keeps on tickin. He has so much personality. He is like Donald Duck and Popeye rolled up into one fabulous headbutting package. He is wicked over with live crowds and you just want the dude to win. Ishii is so strait-laced and no-nonsense, it contrasts so well. They do a great job portraying Honma as overeager he misses three falling headbutts in a row all from different positions. They also establish Ishii's strength advantage. For every half-dozen Honma elbows, it only takes one Ishii elbow to fell Honma. Honma does a great job sel…

Very good but disappointing given the hype surrounding it and the competitors involved. I liked Styles heeling it up, the dueling leg work motif and some of the spots and drama. My favorite spot was Tanahashi selling his neck on a bridge to put over the lingering effects of Styles crazy springboard reverse DDT. I thought they had the pieces of a great match but weren't quite able to put it together. Still, very much recommended. *** 1/2

A REALLY good match, which is shocking given Clive Myers was 69 here! Dude was doing arm wrench rolls and leg takedowns like he'd never stopped despite the fact he'd not been wrestling since the 90's. Of course there's a lot of that classic WoS comedy as well, which might turn some off. Me personally, it was used effectively and never went over the top to the point of negating the stakes of the match. There's also some expected sloppiness given, well, both men are pretty old here, so the more speedy stuff can come off pretty rough and tumble. That being said, the work in general is well done despite their limitations, with Kidd getting in some pretty awesome bits of just …

Shinsuke Nakamura vs Kazuchika Okada - G-1 Climax 25 Semifinals Finally, the New Japan boys weave an amazing story to support their uncanny ability to generate dramatic, hot finish runs with their moves. The result was the best New Japan match of the year. Okada is probably my least favorite wrestler in the world, but I will give him his due, he is a proficient wrestler. I just find him dull. He is like a technically perfect robot devoid of all emotion. In this match, he did show more cockiness than usual and that helped. The big boon to the match was Nakamura was selling for two in this match and this has to go down as one of his most masterful performances. Thi…

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Shinsuke Nakamura - G-1 Climax 25 Finals The finalists of the first G-1 Climax, Keiji Mutoh & Masa Chono, are providing commentary for this momentous occasion. Last year, these two put on a match that I thought was a ***** classic and the second best match of the year worldwide. They have come a long way from their 1/4/05 Tokyo Dome performance. Amazing, these two have been synonymous with New Japan Pro Wrestling for over a decade now. They had a lot to live up to from last year's masterpiece and hell just the night before Nakamura had an instant classic with Okada and two nights before Tanahashi and AJ Styles tore the house down. I acknowledg…

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This match gets a lot of mileage out of the face/heel dynamic. Pretty much everything that goes on in this match feeds off of it and the characters that these two have created. Sasha playing the arrogant heel champ who takes pleasure in picking apart and embarrassing her opponent, while Bayley is someone who may have finally figured out who she is and the confidence that comes with that. As for the actual work in the match, Sasha performance is masterful. All of the little details that she brings add depth to what could have been an overly simple story. Bayley's strong responses to Sasha's insults bring energy to the match. If Sasha vs. Becky showed what the women cou…

Pretty good match, they do wacky shit from the beginning like Ibushi driving Sekimoto off the ramp on a dolly, somehow dollies also played a part of another match they had in Korakuen Hall, so I guess that counts as a callback. It's less of a demolition than the other Strong BJ matches in DDT, and weirdly I like it less. Wrestling genius Sasaki meshes with Sekimoto and Okabayashi strangely well, beyond just getting beat like other DDT "juniors". They base pretty well for him and he can grapple a bit with them. Ibushi brings the violence with stiff strikes, but it's a bit disjointed in general. There's a lot great moments in that finishing stretch, which starts with Strong…

Very good match with Kagestu and Kaho desperately trying to overcome the heels and their dastardly cronies. Tons of fun all around. *** 3/4

If I did a standard play by play description of this match it would come of as the same as a thousand other joshi matches, but what really makes this match work better is the strikes and the big bumps that they take. They start off with a pretty standard lucha sequence but then Iwantani just boots Shirai in the head Hotta-style and they don't really lay off each other for the rest of the match. It also seems like they watched some of the bumps that Sasha Banks took a few hours earlier and thought "Hey, we can top that!" Mayu takes a nasty slam on the apron, then later tries to destroy her kidneys on the apron after getting dropkicked from the top rope. Meanwhile, Io tops …

Awesome spectacle with tons of memorable moments/spots, great character work, snug strike exchanges and well executed finisher kickouts. The execution of the screwy finish could have been better but I liked the storytelling behind it: Lesnar had surpassed Taker but Taker was the fighting veteran willing to kick you in the dick and cheat to win and that's exactly what happened. ****1/2

I really enjoyed this. Busick is great as a bully against highflyers, he has had a series of good matches against Mike Bailey and this was in that style, Everett would hit some big time highspots inbetween Busick muderizing him with suplexes, clotheslines and uppercuts. There were point where it felt a little formless, but the big stuff was big. At one point Everett went back on offense with this leaping one motion backwards rana which was one of the prettiest highspots I have seen in a while, really shouldn’t have been thrown out in the middle of the match. Finish run of Busick offense looked awesome as Everett takes stuff so crazy that all of Busicks moves look deadly.