May 2016

I liked the opening matwork and how they transitioned into the FIP segment, Satanico is the king of cheapshots and I also loved how he signaled to his teammate to save him when he was in trouble. Tequilita was the worst guy here, I'm not one to shit on fat and/or big guys just for the sake of doing so and while Dandy may have managed to carry him on the mat his punches and clotheslines looked pretty bad. Everyone else was good though, Diluvio Negro rocked Dandy with some great punches and headbutts. Dandy seemed to struggle with locking in the Figure 4, guess his knees might be shot but he can still throw some great strikes which is good enough for me. ***1/4

Holy shit this was amazing. It's a serious best WWE match ever contender for me. I really don't get why people get so upset over the overbooking, and honestly it was fine here. I don't remember the last time a WWE match so ambitious. The early portion was PERFECT in establishing Reigns' power and AJ made himself look good in the process too because when he did overcome it it meant that much more. I loved how it was paced, it had the greatest table spot in WWE history and a plethora of neat little touches. AJ avoiding Reigns' big suicide dive and then quickly leaping on him with the diving forearm was such a neat spot that made him look great. All of the big counters looke…

WWE agents are doing a pretty bad job these days, they've verged into self conscious agenting equivalent to E-fed match writing where they're just planning the match out in a way that sounds best/most amusing to them without considering whether or not the workers are capable of pulling it off. This match is a great example of that, they toy with the idea of a big man /little man dynamic, a neck injury and Corbin costing himself the much due to his own cockiness but they try to accomplish too much and as a result accomplish nothing. **.

Man-some of the early wrestling and rope running here was reminiscent ot the days of Kelly Kelly and other "glorious" WWE superstars. Natalya does work quite sloppy. Charlotte's Big Boot looks great. Her Knee Drops were so bad you can't blame Kevin Dunn for focusing on literally anything else. I liked this more once the limbwork started. I like the idea of Charlotte slapping people around but there seems to be a disconnect between the idea of her character and her willingness/ability to commit to it. And for all the shit she gets I would easily rank her above Natalya at this point. Good grief was the finisher kick-out spot heatless. Natalya's early Shaprshooter teases wer…

Good grief this lasted almost 20 minutes. Talk about time I'm never going to get back. Formulaic, predictable, sloppy, boring. A parody of WWE's current style. Awkward finish. Just a bad match.

This was a blast, I have always liked Ryback since he first showed up and wanted to love him but.........he just isn't that good. Perfectly fine as the guy who puts over the guy who puts over John Cena. He is a great foil for Kalisto though, Kalisto can get good matches out of stiffs and mediocre wrestlers but works so much better against a good base. Ryback has a bunch of cool power spots and the whole match is a battle of them and Kalisto's "fireworks". The avalanche military press slam looked awesome and I didn't mind Kalisto getting up so soon even if it may not have been the perfect way to go about doing it. I also loved the way Ryback carried himself and played to t…

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like this nearly as much as other folks but I ended up kind of hating it. First off I actually want to bring up some stuff I thought was good. You often see criticisms of WWE matches in supposed blood feuds starting with a headlock or heels doing face spots etc. Not the case here. As soon as the match starts they went after one another and Zayn was doing the ten punches in the corner as a face should. I just. Don't care about this type of match. I get why people like it but personally, I am kinda done with matches like this. I hated the puro no sell spots. Served no purpose and looked stupid. Hated Owens doing a flip bump for Za…

I'm not convinced Cesaro is a better worker than The Miz right now. This was a total blast-Cesaro has a lot of spots that sound good but often don't amount to much and having Miz stooge for him really helps his matches. The Miz lets him shine early on as Cesaro does come cool matwork spots and his badass deadlift gutwrench. They smartly transition into Miz's control segment by using Maryse and Miz doesn't do nothing fancy, nothing that would get a pop, just goes after Cesaro's shoulder injury. The way Cesaro countered Miz's Sleeper to get back in control was amazing, I don't remember him ever doing that before, ditto the amazing counter he had for Miz's DDT, that's the ki…

This was a blast, a super fun action packed 6 man tag just like you'd see in 2013, what really put it over the top for me was the post-match brawl, Reigns looked like such a badass in that, just tossing AJ everywhere with Styles taking these lunatic bumps. We know how a feud of this kind ends (Gallows and Anderson turning on AJ) but it's been a surprisingly fun ride so far. This continues to confirm my theory Gallows and Anderson and the kind of brawling and skillset they bring is much more suitable for WWE than New Japan. ***1/2

Miz at ringside instantly makes me care more about this one. Fun match that was basically just them going through a bunch of cool spots. Non-finish was fitting and probably added more to the storyline than a clean finish would've. Cesaro ripping Okada's Dropkick spots is cool but I don't really see why would he start using chops. **3/4

Look I get WWE is big on nepotism but this is the kind of match that should be getting PPV spots. Becky is really good and Emma is a top 10 WWE wrestler right not at worst, maybe top 5. The way she used Becky's hair while in offence was super nasty, she'd stretch her and throw her around in all sorts of ways. Loved the finish and how they incorporated Becky going for her finish into Emma taking a cheapshot. Emma now has a Northern Lights Michinoku Driver finish to confirm her transformation into a great 1993 puro worker.

I watch this and wonder if Vince still does cocaine. Since they have Goldust touring with them you'd think they could stick him against Corbin and Crews, add an extra half stars to their showcase matches, teach them how to work, but he works comedy matches instead. And to be fair I thought this a pretty hilarious one. Just about the most stupid and wacky narrative ever with Goldust and R-Truth constantly ribbing each other now their tag fell through.

Very strong match and more reminiscent of something Koji Kanemoto would do than the self conscious dick measuring contests I've come to hate. The early faux shoot matwork was way more interesting than watching more pointless headlocks. The overreliance on cut offs after rope running and the lack of lengthier control segments prevented this from being better. I did like a lot of it, particularly Shibata's dominance in the middle and the way he kicked Nagata around and Nagata brutal comeback with devastating kicks and knees, prolonging those and finishing the match with them would've been much better than doing finisher stealing. I'm not crazy over suplex no sell spots but …

Here I am wondering if I can make it through an entire New Japan show in 2016 after Wrestle Kingdom kicked me in the balls. Juice looked good here, throwing some good punches and a nice lariat. Everyone else sucked. Heatless two minute match, less than average.

This was surprisingly solid, I'd have expected these two to have a boring opening and then transition into trading weak forearms for five minutes before a dancing finishing stretch but the match was actually quite tight and compact. It also had a lot more movement and selling than Goto matches usually do and counters that looked cool and felt fresh and novel due to these two not having five million singles matches against each other. EVIL's Fireman's Carry Powerbomb looked great and I loved how he sold the Impact of Goto's Lariat as soon as he countered them. **3/4

The young lions do basic stuff like Uppercuts, Back Elbows, Fireman Carry Slams etc. but everything they do look good and I vastly prefer that to Ospreay's flippy flops. Tiger Mask IV is someone who's worked Battlarts, and these days he is mostly a guy who works multi man tags, gets in, hits a couple of kicks and a Tiger Driver and then kicks out. You'd hope for some shooty exchanges vs. Sakuraba, but outside of an ok opening exchange between them we don't really get that. Taguchi's shtick is ok in matches like this but I do think it's sad to see Sakuraba be relegated to stooging for Taguchi. Gedo did like two things here, a whatever Superkick and a nice punch combo. This…

This was a fun trainwreck, I liked how it was structued, started out as an all out action spotfest, that was followed up with a short FIP segment (Young Bucks can't throw a punch to save their life but that part of the match was a complete afterthought by the end), then a comeback with Elgin doing a punch of cool power spots before it disintegrated into a TNA match with all the garbage spots. Anyone who tells you New Japan is a serious wrestling promotion in 2016 clearly doesn't pay attention and I've come to enjoy matches like this for what they are. The camera work here was pretty terrible, too many spots were either missed or could've been shot from better angles. **3/…

I absolutely loved this. The 2016, 74 year old Liger can still bring the Thunder. He wrecked Kushida's knee with dropkicks before dropping it on the railing and posting it. If you need Kushida to sell it every step of the way you'll be disappointed, but I thought it was very solid and was even ripping at Liger's gear while trapped in a hold that I thought was a great touch. What's more, I loved that there were clear strategies on both sides here. Kushida was going after the arm from the early stages to set up the Hoverboard Lock, while Liger worked the leg like a killer and pulled out all of his traditional big spots. They did such a great job building Liger's chall…

This was alright. I loved Sanada attacking Okada as soon as he went for his faux clean break, no reason for him to just stand there while this goof big leagues him. I disliked the way he used the two Piledrivers, he followed that up by doing nothing on offence to allow Okada time to recover which bored me as does Okada's shtick at this point, I enjoyed the finisher counter dances, Sanada manically going for the Dragon Sleeper for for a nice mini-plot and they did a good job of building up to OKada's Tombstone. Still too much of this I didn't even care for or could call what was coming nex to rate it any higher. **1/2

Terrible match. I was so glad when it ended. For all the shit I gave Triple H-Ziggler that match at least had crowd heat. The way these matches work is that they're divided into two or three parts: 1)theoretical heat building 2/3) action, flips and the finishing stretch, sometimes they're combined into a whole, sometimes not The first part of the match was just dreadful, boring.......complete trash, no other way to describe it. Crowd only reacted for it at the end and not because they cared for it but because they knew the comeback was coming. Then they transitioned to the flips and still remained awful, it was the worst US indy tag match I could imagine, completel…

This was quite interesting and worked completely different than their matches for the NEVER belt two years ago. Those matches were worked completely in Ishii's style while this one felt like a proper contrast. Some people have a platonic view of japan that's all about the great matches and whatnot so I love the fact that Naito's gotten so over mostly on character work and stalling. I enjoyed his Rush-like control segments early on and the presence of BUSHI and EVIL at ringside added another dynamic to it, the way they'd have one of them pull Ishii's leg to get Naito back in control for instance was very smartly done, of course New Japan's camera men missed it. I liked mos…

Man-Sons Of Haku sounds like such a badass tag team yet you watch this and it's pretty transparent why these guys aren't on Raw or NXT right now. Honma is a very good worker and I like Makabe more than probably anyone else on PWO but carrying these two goofs to a good match was a bit too much of them to ask, Hashimoto and Masa Saito could've probably had a three star match against the Tongas and they are no Hash and Saito. Tama Tonga's body blows were just atrocious, Tonga Loa bumped for a Makabe Lariat before it even hit him and when they actually did an interesting rope running sequence the payoff to it was a weak Dropkick Honma sold as much as he should've but then he …

This was a strange one. I enjoyed it but at times, it was like watching technically-proficient wrestling in slow motion. There wasn't much emotion until the end but this match had a genuine feel to it. Tamura had some hard-hitting strikes and Watanabe some great throws. Match really picks up after Watanabe tweaks his knee and blows the German suplex bridge, as Tamura goes after the leg. The finishing stretch was a lot of fun as Tamura keeps cutting Watanabe's leg out from him and eventually gets the submission.

To be honest this match is much better if you watch it with some context. Emi was one of the original founders of Ice Ribbon but ended up leaving for "personal reasons," leaving Fujimoto to take over as head trainer/face of the promotion. Emi made her surprise return to the promotion a few weeks earlier as the mystery partner for Takahashi. Also, Nanae has a budding rivalry with Nakajima that started in her SEAdLINNNG promotion and carried over to this. Plus, this match came together after the initial match between Best Friends and Stardom's Thunder Rock fell apart. Anyway, the actual match starts off with a mat exchange between Nakajima and Takahashi, but after that …

This was fun, I loved the way Park pushed the ref into Atlantis and put his feet on the ropes while going for a pin, it totally looked like the ref could conceivably miss it. Early chain wrestling was fun and Parka repeteadly going for Fujiwara Armbars at the end was neat. ***