October 2015

This is a really fun sprint and the best of those "Divas Revolution" tags I've seen thus far (most weren't good though). It's funny because this exact same match happened on Main Event the previous week and thought that one was pretty poor, but the lay out is vastly improved here. Match opens with a Brie Bella vs. Sasha Banks stand off. Brie gives Sasha a hard smack across the face, quick brawl and Sasha delivers a REALLY HARD SMACK across the face to Brie who looks totally shook. Nikki and Tamina get into a hoss battle charging into each other which Nikki gets the better of eventually with her forearm strike. She hits a few of them in the match, one to Naomi as she's att…

This is pretty much your standard monster vs. flyer match but it still ends up being something really fun. Ray spends the entire match just throwing every big risky move that she has at Havok hoping to take her down. So you spend the whole match wonder if she's going to succeed or just get crushed. ***1/2

This is a really fun, but short, title match. Despite the length, this is still a good showcase for both women. The thing that I like about these Santana title defenses is that each of her opponents have different strengths so you get to see her show off her versatility. Evie has mainly a kick based offense with some matwork mixed in so the story of the match is that Santana is able to keep up with Evie's offense plus get the advantage because she is able to mix in some different stuff that keeps Evie off balance. Would have been nice to see this go longer, but they were able to tell a good compact story with the time that they had. ***1/2

I've always enjoyed watching Madison Eagles but Su Yung really stood out here. Yung is working a Kabuki/Muta gimmick and manages to work in the unpredictability of her character into the match. Any time that Eagles seems to have control of the match Su is able to counter and attack from different odd angles. Madison starts getting desperate and just start throwing out big bombs but Yung somehow keeps surviving. That comes to an end at the finish as Su is distracted by Saraya Knight in the crowd and Eagles goes all in by hitting a powerbomb on the turnbuckles and a Northern Lights Bomb to finally keep Yung down for good. Terrific storytelling with great character work from…

The first ever match between the two. AJ surprisingly puts the British Heavyweight Championship on the line right before the match starts. It's a very submission based match with Styles giving enough to Liger to make it seem competitive. Liger try's to keep away from the Styles Clash, but he can't... ***1/4 to ***1/2

I was really excited about the idea of AJ Styles selling & bumping for Tommy End's strikes - and I sure was not disappointed, because I got plenty of that. AJ Styles was absolutely great, fantastic work over Tommy, and then fantastic selling when it was Tommy's time to shine w/ his offense. ****

Asuka vs Dana Brooke - NXT Respect 10/7/15 In a great use of the Network, the WWE has put together a collection of Asuka's greatest hits in order to prime fans for her debut on the main roster in a couple weeks. I have seen Asuka a couple times live and just absolutely loved her. For someone who spends his wrestling time prioritizing older footage, I have always overlooked getting into Asuka. This seems like the perfect opportunity to binge watch her best matches. I wont be covering her ~3-5 minute TV matches in detail, but they are awesome and definitely should be checked out. Pitch perfect debut match. Great exhibition of what Asuka brings to the ring. Charisma …

Performance of a lifetime from both ladies. Sasha in particular absolutely nails her performance as just a really despicable heel and is even able to work the notoriously smarky Full Sail crowd into genuine heel heat. Poking Bayley's eyes to get the first fall, trash talking Izzy and stealing her headband. You wanna talk genuine heel heat? A little girl CRIED. Meanwhile, Bayley puts in one of the best babyface comeback stretches, putting money in the bank with Sasha's hand and paying it off beautifully at the finish of the match. Prefer this to their first match and I find it strange that general consensus seems to disagree. Probably the best women's match in WWE his…

First time I had ever seen Dash & Dawson in action, and they put on really good performances - you could see that they had a good thing already back then. The psychology of Bálor's leg was wonderful, and Bálor sold it really, really well. The best tag match on the show for sure. ***1/2

Well, if this is the last match of Sarah Stock's career, then this is a pretty good way to go out. Starts out with a really fast exchange sequence with both women all over the place but Dark Angel ends up taking over after yanking Io off the top turn buckle then powerbombing her on the apron. She follows that up with a bunch of cool submission that focus on Io's back with Shirai putting it over with some really good selling. The finish is a nice change as they focus on escaping/countering each other's finishers rather than going the usual near fall route. ****1/4

This was my first real look at Yakusawa. I'm sad she's retired. She doesn't have the athleticism of Threedom, but her offence is credible looking, her timing is excellent and she's got loads of in-ring charisma. She makes for a decent change of pace from the other top natives. Hojo was her usual excellent self in this match. I thought Yakusawa looked pretty good here; her swinging front facelock looked really nasty. Unfortunately, Yakusawa was only to have a little over two months left as an in-ring competitor after this match. Hojo wins with the flying elbow drop.

If i usually complain about gaijin who seem like a bad fit in Stardom, La Rosa Negra appears, at least in this match, to be an exception to the rule. Iwatani wrestles a fast-paced, athletic style, but Rosa is able to keep up quite nicely. Plenty of nice sequences in this match before Iwatani uses the dragon suplex to take the High Speed Championship. Even the post-match is entertaining, as the trophy accompanying the belt starts to fall apart on poor Mayu. Rosa gets in on the act, trying to give some of the broken off pieces back to Mayu while raising her hand. Rosa was a credible opponent for Iwatani and a fun personality in the ring. I hope they invite her back. I …

IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada vs AJ Styles - King of Pro Wrestling 10/12/15 I am tempted to just copy and paste my review of the July match. In that regard, this is the most disappointing AJ match so far in NJPW that I have seen. There are enough differences in the finish run that make this entertaining and a great match, but I would have liked to see them depart from the usual New Japan heavyweight main event style. It is a style I do enjoy, but I would have liked to see them venture out into new territory. I am in minority, but I actually slightly preferred this finish run to the last match's finish run. These matches just do not feel complete. The begin…

Saw some gifs on my twitter timeline of Braun throwing Ambrose around from a year ago and I checked that out but saw this in related vids and found it more interesting. Think the biggest growth from Strowman since this time has been how he emits his presence/aura and what to do when he's in control during his beatdowns. Compare this to the Zayn demolition from this Monday and it's night and day with how he moves and how he lays in his shots. I think Reigns' selling is the best part of this along with how he tries to figure out how to get on offense. Strowman taking Reigns' head off on the second apron dropkick ruled, though. Hope they have a program down the line.

This is a super fun main event from Stardom's first of two shows that they ran in California. Even though she been all over the indys, this is the first time I've seen Mia Yim work. She was good, nothing notable just an overall solid performance. Io is just great here, she seems to have found the right mix of flashy moves and using her own charisma to be a consistently entertaining wrestler. Really good back and forth finish with the some nice near falls for both women. Well worth seeking out. ***3/4

http://youtu.be/s8BSJZBz9E4 This match is structured in a pretty traditional joshi way but rather than the highspots and double teams that you would find in a 80/90's AJW match, the offense is mainly strikes and suplexes. Nakajima is just a beast on offense drilling her both opponents with strikes and dumping them with suplexes. Fujimoto was pretty good here too, as she is starting to transition from being company ace to grumpy, but still cute, veteran. Haruyama has slowed down from her prime because of a weight gain and two bad knees, but she is still great at selling and brings some nasty strikes to match Nakajima. Kizuki is being built up as the new ace for the com…

This is the main event from the second Stardom show in California. It's also another addition to Thunder Rocks run of really good matches. Just like her team with Santana Garrett a few days later, Hiroyo shows some surprisingly quick chemistry with Skater right away. Hiroyo plays a very bullish power complemented by Skater's strike heavy offense. As usual with Thunder Rocks matches, they're really well paced and laid out. The match ends up working for both its length and number of near falls. ***3/4

Fun tournament match which doesn't shoot for epicness but simply displays their strengths in a conscise manner without any stupid gimmickry and simultenously presenting enough novelty to make it stand out a little. All of their usual spots are here, but un an easily digestible format-Suzuki modifies his rope hanging armbar by going on the apron and trapping Nakajima's foot between the ropes instead of just countering a strike as an obvious set-up for the spot and cranks Nakajima's arm by hammerlocking him with a chair. Nakajima's flashy kicks and strikes are matched well by Suzuki's well timed seling of big spots while Nakajima's upbeatness prevents Suzuki from losing foc…

Interesting story behind this match. As of a few hours before, this was supposed to be Sakaguchi vs Kota Ibushi for the KO-D Openweight Title but Ibushi was out with High Fever so HARASHIMA took his place instead due to his high ranking in the DDT Election that year (3rd place). Yukio Sakaguchi, who is the son of former NJPW President Seiji Sakaguchi, is the defending champion of the KO-D Openweight Title and has already beaten KUDO (Peter Pan) and Daisuke Sasaki (DDT Who’s Gonna Top). Sakaguchi was rather new to wrestling at the time, well compared to HARASHIMA anyway, with him being three years into his career in wrestling and was 42 years old at the time so there was a…

A shockingly good makeshift main event as Kairi Hojo had to sit out this show due to a concussion, which forced them to redo the card with this as the main event. This is the first time I've seen Santana Garrett, as she's another woman who has been all over the indys but I've never actually watched. She looked really good here, breaking out some nice offense while keeping up with the pace of the natives and also had some nice chemistry with Hiroyo. Thunder Rocks keep their run of awesome finishes going here. They seem to know how to get their matches to finish at the right time and not deteriorate into 2.9 fests. ***3/4

Brock Lesnar vs The Undertaker - WWE Hell In A Cell 2015 The consensus based on Cagematch and my recollection of ten years ago is that this match is considered slightly better than Summerslam but I am flipped. To me Summerslam is definitely better as it is uptempo, more chaotic, physical and really builds to a Fever pitch. This match is a mid tempo war of attrition which is still great but nowhere near the excellence of Summerslam. I thought the home stretch really petered out. Brock started off more tentative than Summerslam which is interesting. They circle and I love their standup work. Nobody is bumping for shit, which is how it should be! Build to the bump…

This was really cool. The Sekimoto and Zeus interactions were the least interesting portion of the match, not that they were bad or anything but they were as standard as they get, Sekimoto is a one trick pony and his trick was never that good to begin with. Super Tiger II may not be a shoot style master but just his willingness to do shooty stuff is enough to make matches more interesting. Murakami was the star of the match as expected, I could watch him just taunt Sekimoto and his stupid face for twenty minutes and he seemed unusually motivated here and did way more than I expected him to. Highlight of the match was the finish, after some dull crowd brawling Murakami jus…