January 2016

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Akiyama beating on a rookie is always fun and that's what we get here. Akiyama carried the match nicely, giving Lee enough shine and spotlight to make him look good (which Lee took advantage of with some pretty offence, his kicks looked very good) but viciously cutting him off before he could get lost in a control segment. Finishing stretch is really interesting in that it doesn't feature many big moves but a lot of them are believable nearfalls because of the difference in the pecking order. Bonus points for Akiyama busting out a vicious strike I don't remember him ever doing before.

This was wrestled under "HARD HIT Graplling Rules". I enjoyed the opening, I think it established well that Aoki coud be a threat to Fujiwara despite him not matching him in matwork skill due to his advantage in speed and just generally not being 66 years old. Then Fujiwara starts trolling Aoki and the match completely disintegrates (in the sense of them following the rules) and they just start headbutting the shit out of each other. Then they decide that wasn't ridiculous enough and start shoot headbutting the ringpost and just doing whatever the hell comes to their minds. Once they've filled enough time with bizarre stuff to ensure Fujiwara wouldn't get blown up they go…

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Match Link This is one of Takahashi's first matches outside of Stardom/SEAdLINNNG in quite a while, so it is interesting to see her take on some new opponents. Unfortunately, the TV version of this match has about a third of it clipped, but what is shown is great. Ohata is not the flashiest worker that you will ever see, but she makes everything she hits look like it made an impact. Takahashi does have a couple of iffy moments with selling and transitions although she looks fantastic on offense. Hopefully WAVE's streaming service shows this in full because the clipping is the only thing that's keeping me from calling it a MOTYC. ****

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