June 2016

This is a battle between to of the younger finalists, although Iida made it all the way to the finals last year. Yamashita takes over in the early going as she bulls over the smaller Iida. She counters back with some really nasty work on Yamashita's arm trying to take away her main weapon. But Iida makes a tactical error in getting caught up in strike and big move exchanges, which allow Yamashita to be able to use her arm just enough to be able to fire back. I really liked Yamashita's arm selling as she seems to be gutting her way through the pain as oppose to your typical fighting spirit no-selling spot. Great, physical main event from a couple of promising young joshi w…

This is a matchup between two Meiko Satomura trainees. As you would expect, it's pretty hard hitting. After some early back and forth, DASH takes control on the outside with a chair then works over Mizunami's leg after they get back in the ring. Ryo puts over the leg work well as she doesn't do any of the hard charging that she usually does while she is on offense. Eventually, DASH makes the mistake of staying too close to Mizunami who just starts suplexing her like crazy. The finish really good as you have Mizunami trying to hit her power offense, while DASH is trying to counter out of it. Very entertaining stuff. ***3/4

This is the first title defense of the new Stardom World Alliance Championship. It was created during Stardom's tour of Europe back in May with the gimmick that it has to be defended between two wrestlers from different countries, in this case, Japan (Shirai) and Portugal (Shanna). I really like Shanna here. I've seen her a few times on the indys and she was always really solid, if unspectacular. She does have a couple of rough moments, but I liked how she picked up the intensity as the match went on. Io is basically what you would expect from Io Shirai at this point. With Stardom World you really get to see just how consistent she is from show to show. A solid, entertain…

Stardom and Sendai Girls renew their rivalry with this tag main event. While Iwata sticks out as the obvious job girl here, I was really impressed with her. She does a great job of selling her beatdown while still managing to get her own shots in plus a few rollups for nearfalls. It's business as usual for the three. While it's not NJ/WAR, Stardom/Senjo still manages to capture that heated interpromotional rivalry that's been missing in Japan for awhile. ****

Man Sombra could use a better name, couldn't they just call him the Mexican Shadow or whatever? This was a solid showcase match for him, they went through a lot of stuff and it lacked the usual WWE cliches that usually hold down new wrestlers in their first matches there like unnecessary long chinlock portions etc. This would've surely been better if they had just a minute or two for the cool stuff they did to sink in but then again you don't want Tye Dillinger to look too competitive against Sombra. Then again every WWE match is probably too evenly worked so it wouldn't have mattered. Some interesting stuff here for sure, I found the early chain wrestling quite interesti…

This was fascinating to watch. Nia Jax has no presence whatsoever and carried herself like she is much smaller than she is. She deserves more opportunities than someone of lesser size because (I assume) it's harder to find someone her size and you need as much variety as you can get. This felt very much like a Kiyoshi Tamura U-Style match against a not big name in that while it wasn't a total squash it felt close to it. At no point did you get the impression Asuka was in danger. It was interesting to see Asuka feed herself submissions and kicks and work around Nia. If Nia *got* the most fundamental things about her character I'd have advocated working a different much and…

Man people sure do love to complain about insignificant things these days. I guess that comes with having another tab with twitter open while watching matches and being more focused on HOT TAKES than the match itself. Some were bothered by Nakamura "no-selling" the legwork, I honestly forgot about the legwork by the time Aries' heat segment took place. If the legwork was memorable enough for me to actually, you know, remember it, maybe I'd have a problem with it, but it wasn't and I didn't feel like it lasted long enough to warrant more selling. Shinsuke sold it, Aries stopped attacking his leg and then he moved on. People chanting a wrestler sucks because they aren't pa…

I was always a fan of Fujita's and it was disappointing to see how similar this was to many of the modern puro matches I dislike. Early matwork was fun but between the boring legwork, weird timing on the kick-outs and the overreliance on strike exchanges and the Front Necklock I didn't really feel it. It was violent enough to keep me mildly amused throughout, Fujita has some really pretty kicks but I don't feel especially motivated to watch a Manjimaru match ever again. Finishing stretch had a lot of moves that could be described as nearfalls but they rarely finish matches in situations in which they were used here and the audience is aware of that as well so they don't …

This is a apuestas match the way it should be, seedy dirty gym, both guys bleeding and getting dirt in open cuts, nothing slickly produced or fancy, just a nasty bit of business. Terry is still a great brawler, Aeroboy jumps him in the aisle but Terry takes over and posts him and cracks him with a chair shot. He rips the mask and digs a piece of broken plastic chair into Aero Boy's head Abby style. Aero boy takes over when Terry dives off the ring apron right into a thrown chair, which is a crazy pants spot for an old ass man to take. Terry gets busted open as well, and we get some great visuals of Terry as a broken bloody old man fighting for his life. Finish run was a b…

Holy hell what a war. Really felt like a lucha version of one of those peak Necro Butcher brawls. Terry is truly amazing, how in god's name can a man of his age work two violent wars like this and the Aero Boy apuestas match back to back? I loved the early matwork which was pretty slick, and Cavernario countering submission holds by biting Terry in the thigh makes perfect sense, that is totally what a Caveman training in ju-jitsu would do. After the matwork they get down to the violence with both guys just slamming their heads into each other Regal and Benoit style. The brawling in this was really frantic, big shots, thrown quickly from off angles. At one point Cavernario…

The crowd EXPLODES for Angle. Angle comes across as very happy to be there. Big smile on his face. The crowd starts the ZSJ chant when he is introduced, and back to Angle when they call his name. It's apparent everyone is just stoked for this "Dream Match." Angle has a clear size advantage, so that is the story they told, and the commentary team did a good job getting this over. ZSJ gets to kick out of the Angle Slam. They trade submissions, and proceed into the greatest hits. Angle gets the W. It's a quick but fun match. I bet attending live was a ton of fun.

TNA World Heavyweight Champion Drew Galloway vs Bobby Lashley - TNA Slammiversary 2016 KO Or Submission For some reason I have much more interest in this than in their WWE PPV main event from a couple months ago that I skipped. I thought this was great, not perfect, but really good Big Man wrestling for the 2010s. The KO or Submission gimmick unfortunately does not mean this worked like UWFi which would have been sick but it gives MMA fighter, Lashley a decided advantage. McIntyre has developed a new submission, The Iron Maiden (a badass name for submission as a heavy metal fan and I would love to see him bust it out in WWE), which bizarrely is used twice in the open…

Jeff Hardy vs Matt Hardy - TNA Slammiversary 2016 Full Metal Mayhem For those of you that are like me and 2016 is foggy, this match is during the Broken Matt gimmick but before The Final Deletion. The original Broken Matt gimmick is sheer brilliance. Normally, I am all for evolving a character & adding layers, but in this case it only turned it into a self-parody of what was originally a genius gimmick. You see prior Matt had turned heel after winning the World Championship, something that always eluded him. He started slicking his hair down with a side-part and dressing in suits. Why? The first was insecurity as the older brother who failed to reached the single…

Match Link This is a matchup that has been getting some build in Stardom for the last couple of months with this being the first singles match between these two. Hojo tries to get the early advantage by jumping Hiroyo during her entrance but eventually gets cut off. Kairi does do a great job fighting back after taking some big shots, including getting press slammed to the floor. Terrific work from Matsumoto to as she goes from being a dominate power wrestler early on to looking vulnerable taking Hojo's offense. This all leads to a great back and forth draw finish. Hopefully Stardom keeps this rivalry going as this was a great way to start it off. ****

This is Bito's return match after a 4 year absence. It was surprising to see just how competitive Bito was right from the start. She gets the early advantage on Hojo, staying threatening till the end. She did seem to run low on gas towards the end but the match layout covers for it by keeping the match moderately paced with high-impact strikes. Overall, a surprising strong return match and it will be interesting to see how Bito continues to develop during her return. ***1/2

Watched this one with no idea who either guy was after seeing it pimped by shoe as ****3/4. Think it should get its own thread. A few years ago, at the peak of my AJPW fandom and before I got into BJJ and realized getting hurt isn't that fun, I would often fantasize about what it would be like to train to be a wrestler and do King Road inspired matches in front of 10 people for my local indy. I'm not going to pretend an untrained critic like myself has anywhere near the sort of expertise as these guys, but I would like to think what I imagined doing was at least somewhat similar to what these guys did here, and I'll be up front in admitting that the opportunity this …

This one was a little different, as Honda worked more like a Minoru Tanaka here which.....I'd rather he worked like he did in the previous two matches of his I've seen but what can you do. He made for a good Minoru Tanaka. The opening wasn't much-they did the same chain wrestling sequences you've seen a million times but did do a few interesting things during it-like Yoshida using a one armed headlock while Honda held him in a hammerlock and doing the WOS foot-wristlock counter. Honda did a bunch of dropkicks, an armdrag and even a 619. Also a hammerlock backstabber which may sound like "bad indy move 101" but actually looked really cool. His holds looked great again but …

EVIL is still trying to figure things out, which means he hasn't settled into a formula and his matches aren't just spamming contemporary New Japan cliches. This forces Goto to step out of his (dreadful) comfort zone and as a result these two have had some surprisingly solid matches. EVIL does some thing here that I liked as ideas but could've been milked out more like ending an elbow exchange with an eye rake (seriously, that could've been my favourite spot of the year if they treated it like it mattered more) and rubbing his elbow across Goto's face. The good parts are when they're smashing into each other with elbows, lariats and so on. The bad parts are when they're t…

Nagata is someone who I never really got fully behind for but I like him a lot as a Shibata opponent, a lot more than Ishii at this point. Some tropes are inevitable (like the suplex no-sell sequence and one wrestler daring the other to hit him) but here they were done well and kept to a minimum. The finisher stealing didn't add much to the match for me nor it hurt it. Lots of face smashing and a very good post-match signalizing the end of the Shibata-Third Generation feud. ***1/2

Sorry this match was shit. Ospreay might be the inventor of GIF selling, when someone is attacking his limb he'll do about one spot where he'll "smartly" do a move without using his injured limb so EVERYONE CAN SEE HE CAN ACTUALLY SELL RIGHT? But he can't. He sucks at wrestling. And his selling looks fine in comparison to his childish facial expression and annoying yelling. I don't remember the last time I felt so embarrassed about watching a match as I did during his hulk up attempt after KUSHIDA hit him with some Kawada kicks. And his facial expressions look fine compared to his execution. Good God I don't remember the last time I saw a praised properly trained professi…

Fun match. Matt has talked about in when commenting on Ultimo Guerrero matches but there is something to spots where you know what's coming next and it still works, like when Ishii made the hot tag here and would reverse both heels when they went rope running. I liked how aggressive Sanada was here, really wrestling to his character and the height he got on his leaps was unreal. Fun finish, YOSHI-HASHI's new submission is a cool neck crank, I'll easily take that over stuff like Goto stealing finishers from US indies. **3/4

I watched their matches back to back and I think this was more engaging to me. It might sound odd, but if you switched the order of their matches and have the big bombfest "dream match" here + interference finish and have the Summerslam match be about AJ knowing he's better than Cena and then capping it off with a (clean) win then I think it means more. I liked the idea of AJ outsmarting Cena and using his speed and strikes where he could plus I think this was one of the better sequences of countering Cena's big stuff that I've seen since Punk was doing it during their matches. There were a few things that seemed too choreographed or took too long to develop, (like C…

Super fun, Gallagher's WOS escapes were really cool, he totally lived up to the hype. Aicher also did a good job keeping up with him on the mat (especially liked how he'd position himself during armlocks) and threw some good looking strikes. I wonder if "huge size difference" is WWE speak for "only one guy is on roids here". ***

This was shit. Sloppy, awkward and slow which is precisely what you don't want out of a junior workrate match. Also not a fan of the bullshit they'd do before the moves, didn't add any flair to them just made them look even dumber. I have a feeling I won't be a big fan of this Noam Dar guy with all the thigh slapping he does on his sub-Marufuji kicks. Sihra did a cool Back Elbow at least. Finish is a bad looking leglock that got zero reaction. *1/2

Fun throwaway Nitro-type match, I enjoyed Lee's kung fu shtick, their movement was fluid and smooth and their spots athletically impressive, I like these kinds of matches way better when they have selling and don't drag forever. **3/4