November 2015

As a spirited junior heavyweight-style match, this was fun stuff. Shingo is the king of bombz, and at the time, current Open the Dream Gate champion. I've always liked the fire and intensity he brings to the ring, whereas Mochizuki is the aging ring warrior here, and dang, he takes a thrashing from Shingo. Mochizuki wrestled smart, aware of the danger Shingo poses. The arm work was whatever -- limbwork goes nowhere in a DG match. Mochizuki's kicks on point and that tree-of-woe headlook looked real nasty. Shingo looked strong and his power movez looked legit, but this was the Mochizuki show, and his performace made Shingo look that much stronger. The finishing stretch wher…

I hadn't seen this before but it was quite the little banger, with good struggle in the matwork early on and some really great selling from Hideki throughout, especially off the leg kicks -- I mean, he's selling the leg even when he's working a cravate on Sato. Of course, the strikes are stiff as to be expected with Sato involved but Hideki also throws some mean elbows. It's ZERO1 so the match escalates to a bit of a bombfest toward the end, with plenty of suplexes and piledrivers, but it works well here. Sato stuns Hideki with a nasty headbutt but then when he turns his back, Hideki jumps on with the sleeper, wearing him down for the double arm suplex. When that doesn't …

Really well put together TV match. The opening sequence were nice because they were more about each of them just barely escaping the others stuff rather than showing how even they are. They arm work in the body of the match does seem rehashed from the match in May but I still thought that they did a good job of making it give the match context, especially Becky with selling, which is something that I felt was kind of missing from the last match. The finish really tops off the match as Sasha shows that while they both know each other really well she just has one more trick up her sleeve to allow her to get the win. ****

One of these dream matches we didn't know we wanted to watch until it was booked and it lives up to expectations. Rey has historically bummed knees from all the crazy dives from over the past 20 years, so Ki goes after that first and then they do a cool knuckle lock section with Ki headbutts, Rey kicks to the mouth and neck bridges. There's a ton of cool stuff moving forward with Rey popping Ki in the mouth with a springboard dropkick before doing a baseball slide dive to the floor, Ki's John Woo dropkick on a seated Rey, Ki adjusting the Warrior's Way only for him to get dumped off the top by Rey and the highlight for me was the constant tease of the 619 which was built …

While this is pretty much a veteran vs. rookie match, there's enough fire and stiffness to make this stand out on its own. This starts out with the typical vet beating down of the rookie with Hojo controlling things. Iwata is finally able to get on offense when she avoids a charging Hojo and follows up by slamming Kairi on the floor. She then focuses on Hojo back, even breaking out a really nice looking Regal Stretch. Eventually though, Hojo just has enough of this and just starts drilling Iwata with strikes topping off with the absolute nastiest spinning backfist that you will ever see catching Iwata right on the nose. Mika tries making one last comeback but gets jacked …

This match is actually fairly similar to the Hojo/Iwata match earlier in the card except that it "Champion vs. Rising Star" so it's a bit more advanced. Satomura dominates the early going by simply overpowering Iwatani with matwork and strikes. Mayu tries to stick and move to counter but it only takes one stiff shot from Meiko to regain control. Iwatani does eventually manage to get a nice run on offense but she ends up making the same mistake that Hojo did in July by trying to trade strikes with Satomura and that's just a fight that Mayu isn't going to win. Meiko puts an exclamation point by hitting a nasty DVD then putting Iwatani to sleep. ***3/4

Tenryu's retirement match and also one of the most surreal pro wrestling matches I have ever watched. Tenryu is just completely broken down here, in the last few years he could barely walk but here he can't even do that and categorizing what he does here as "walking" doesn't really seem right. Still I totally get why this would win the Tokyo Sports Match Of The Year. I've seen people call this match sad and I'd agree with that. I don't think that makes it a bad match though. Wrestling is about emotion and symbolism, not execution. Tenryu can't do anything except stiff the shit out Okada for real, and to his credit Okada daring Tenryu to shoot punch him in the face some mo…

Let me tell you something, I don't care what anyone says, I don't care what the fans in the arena thought, this match ruled, the modern New Japan fans and all the weaklings that have been conditioned to have their wrestling clean can buzz off. Suwama and Fujita have REAL HEAT, and the match begins with a long staredown which feels like something out of those epic Hashimoto matches I rated seventy six stars, the crowd is perplexed that they would do this and of course turns on them but Suwama and Fujita proceed to have out of this world amazing interactions regardless, slapping the shit out of each other, brawling all over the place, legit busting each other open, it's ama…

I originally got the match + full show from Jetlag (thanks again! ) but VKF's channel have also uploaded this to their Youtube as well following Nishimura's tragic passing. It's a pretty damn good celebration of everything Nishimura stood for as a worker; incredible, crisp technical wrestling with expertly done storytelling via said wrestling, GENTARO especially seems to be having the time of his life wrestling what probably was one of his idols as he sells his ass off for the guy. Nishimura around this time had mostly faded into the background as most of his time was occupied with his political career so when he did wrestle it was mostly for pretty nothing tag matches wh…

The atmosphere is really great in a completely different way to good DDT audiences. Really enjoyed the atmosphere on this match. There are crazy people in this building trying to chant for Komatsu and then the DDT fans start booing them. Tanahashi is the most hated person in Korakuen Hall, after he said HARASHIMA sucked following a really bad Sumo Hall match between the two. I absolutely loved this one though. The sight of Tanahashi struggling to put Ohka and his shitty jeans in a Boston crab is fantastic. The thought of Tanahashi selling for Ohka is also great. Ohka is really great in this match, him and Tanahashi meshed together incredibly well throughout. Tanahashi rea…

Link to match! Fantastic stuff as expected. Zack is at the very end of his NOAH tenure to go on to try his stuff in America and the indies (namely WWE and Evolve, though that would fall though) and so his final singles outing in the company is against his mentor and long-time tag partner to settle the score proper. Zack has all of his WoS spot-stealing, but Ogawa is indefinitely more crafty and knows basically all of his tricks so he keeps control for the most part with basic head work. What I really like is how these two get the audience's attention not with crazy workrate, but with smart planning and structure around repeating holds into more and more complex count…

This was really fun. Graves looked great his transition between leg locks are arm locks were really cool, at one point he put one a totally plausible looking shoot figure four leg lock. There was much more of an amateur wrestling base then a Jujitsu base in the grappling which makes sense as Cobb was an Olympic wrestler. Cobb is at his best as kind of an athletic freak suplex machine, sort of a lost Polynesian Steiner brother this kind of real mat based match tamps down what makes him special a bit. Last round was especially exciting with Cobb smacking Graves with his big headbutt he rushes him to finish Graves off and gets clipped in the knee, which Graves jumps on. Love…

This was excellent stuff and well worthy of a final. The final went five rounds instead of three and they worked a nice pace right into the final round. Thatcher is so good at infighting, throwing kidney shots from the mat, cracking fingers, twisting ankles. Graves also looked very good he really does some interesting transitional things on the mat. I loved how the match got chippier with some shots thrown after the bell. Liked the finish too, with Graves countering an armbar, into a half nelson choke which Thatcher tried a bunch of different counters out of before finally tapping. Graves feels right on the level of Thatcher, Gulak ect. and really should get a shot at a b…

Fun and quick outing. Sumi is a scum-indie karate guy (who apparently did some MMA? The records aren't clear on that) and of course Keita Yano like the big nerd he is wants to turn this into a conventional early 90's FMW Onita/Aoyagi situation where they basically just hit each other really hard on mats in the middle of a gymnasium. You know a match is going to be fun when the first two things that happen are Sumi landing a stiff leg kick and Yano feigning a injury to then catch the guy off guard for a spinning back kick in response. Yano takes control early with low kicks, as well as a tremendously goofy running headbutt to send the guy crashing to the hard floor. Sumi …