August 2016

As far as modern New Japan workrate matches go this was worked about as smartly and well as it gets. Early on they established clear mini narratives instead of just wasting time by doing insignificant "small" holds to fill time-Naito would mocks Omega and evade his lock ups which caused Omega to go off on him and start spitting at him, Naito had a long control segment based on attacking Omega's leg, Omega worked over Naito's neck and so on. It was worked pretty back and forth but with solidly long control segments that meant something AND memorable transitions. The legwork provided Naito an easy means of effectively cutting Omega off when he'd attempt a comeback or when h…

This was a 3 Way Dance. All guys could be in the ring at once. This was all action with a lot of big moves. This had the feel of something out of Lucha Underground. I thought Dorado looked like the best of the 3 here. It was pretty amazing the timing these guys had with one another. It started out really hot, got a little sloppy in the middle for a minute. Then it got it together to really peak and have a fun finishing stretch. I totally bought the low blow as the finish. So I popped big at the kickout. 3 3/4*

I thought this was the most fundamentally sound match on the show. This is a match that can work in any generation. Carson gets the shine early. He gets cut off and Dell hits a dive on him and Carson dung his shoulder on. Dell goes to work on the arm and just tears it up. The key here is Carson sells it . So the drama is in the selling and the story of the arm work. The guys are great at giving Carson some hope spots that are immediately cut off. The finish is Dell diving off the apron into a spear on the floor for a double countout. We get a post match brawl that sets up a rematch. 3 1/4*

Match Link Best Friends keep their great run going by having another high quality main event. The added bonus here is that Best Friends are teasing a break up angle and they do a terrific job of working that into their matches. While she's far from Akira Hokuto, Nakajima is the best women in the world at storytelling in the ring. Nakamori is quite good here, similar to Takako Inoue in tags from '93-'95. I generally hate watching Kyoko Kimura but she kept her annoying tendencies to a minimum and worked more as a straight up hard hitter. Just a great, under the radar, MOTYC. ****1/2

I watched this match twice since I saw that people gave it ****3/4. Here are my thoughts from both viewings: Omega is charismatic and his mannerisms and expressions are indicative of a character he's playing rather than "himself." He engages the crowd very well with these attributes which have a tinge of dark humor. It's fun to watch. I am a fan of Goto especially in his IC fights with Nakamura. I thought this would be similar since Omega is playing something like Nakamura's but, Goto came across as bland. He was not as stiff and or intense as I would have liked. They could have traded out Goto for any big/strong wrestler as I felt this was all Kenny. Watc…

This is a tag match where there are a few issues going on. First, Yamashita has been challenging Nanae for most of the year, while Yoshiko has been having issues with various veterans, Ayako being one of them. Add in the fact that Nanae and Ayako have been frenemies since their AJW days. The match itself is really great. It's surprising that with so many joshi groups and so many interpromotional angles being done over the years that matches like this can still get great crowd heat. Nanae and Yoshiko have become a great team. They work together so well that they are able to carry the action with a makeshift team like Ayako and Yamashita. Ayako continues her run of qual…

The 2016 Black Terry run continues as he grabs Demus out of CMLL minis hell and lets him brawl and bleed like a crazed Warwik Davis in a Mexican Leprechaun remake. They start out with some lucha exchanges, and Demus raises Terry's hand and cheap shots him, and it gets gritty. Demus throws him outside, smashes him with a chair and tries to open up his skull on a concrete pillar. By the end both guys are leaking and are doing a lariat battle. Finish has some unnecessary ref shit which may keep it from the level of peak 2016 Terry, but it was such a treat to show up in BTJR's feed. Well worth the 4 bucks.

Pretty standard NXT quasi-squash but an easy watch, Hideo's Baseball Slide looked brutal and the Corkscrew Neckbreaker while one guy is entering the ring is a really cool spot no one really does regularly that I'm always glad to see. **3/4

I was at this match live, loved it, and I may have loved it even more on video. Both live and tape had advantages. Live I could really feel the thud of all of the strikes. These shots didn't have the snap of a Low-Ki kick, they thumped, the sound when they landed wasn't sharp it had a real bass to it. On tape you can really see the close up of the mat work, I could tell that Thatcher was mauling Riddle's foot, but on video you can really see him try to separate the toes and turn the ankle. Thatcher has been hit and miss lately, but having this kind of harrowing violence in his grappling is where he is at his best. There is no test of skills, this is a mean guy trying to u…

Kengo’s relentless and focused legwork drives this match and even though I’m not the biggest fan of Kaji Tomato, he served his purpose here and sold well for Kengo’s onslaught. At times, the match felt a bit too choreographed but that may just be Tomato’s offensive style, which is hard for me to get excited for. But Kengo’s presence was really great and he’s good at bringing the focus of the match back to the leg, even when Kaji seemingly forgets about it during his silly offense runs. I like how he watches while Tomato hurts himself on the springboard dropkick attempt and like a shark smelling blood, he goes right back to attacking the leg. Kengo’s had a quietly good yea…

La Sombra is just so much better at wrestling than Bobby Roode it's really interesting this is the situation they ended up in. You look at the most important aspects of getting over in WWE-name, entrance, outfit. Roode is just so much above Sombra in every one of those and it is really no surprise he's gotten a much better reaction. In terms of acting Sombra is lightyears ahead of him-his calm and cocky mannerisms feel a million times more natural and genuine than Roode spamming a taunt that looks like it was designed specifically to be like Triple H's without looking exactly like it. That's much like Roode himself-someone pointed out yesterday he looks like Triple H's ne…

I like pro wrestling that preserves the struggle of a fight, even if it is one often resembling action/boxing/martials arts movie scenes more than an actual real competition or a fight. I don't like pro wrestling where the workers struggle to simulate the fight itself, and if you're not bothered by the sloppiness that is still very much present in many of these matches, well, good for you. But I'm having trouble taking Bayley seriously when she messes up very basic looking spots. The match was fine-Bayley got some solid shine early on and then we transitioned into a cool control segment where Asuka nailed Bayley with a brutal knee and kept cutting Bayley off every time Ba…

Structurally there was nothing special about this match, some revenge spots early on but it quickly became an exchange of control segments. Aries' offence looks good tehnically but there isn't much flair to it, and him clapping before a chinlock was really ridiculous. Some sloppiness with an ugly crucifix driver and a falcon arrow but it didn't mean much either way. The Neckbreaker on the ropes was a cool spot but much like everything in this match didn't really mean anything, and with Jose even escaping from Aries' finisher hold this match didn't really accomplish anything. Doing a no-sell spot in the opening match with a comedy figure was also ridiculous.**1/2

This was a better showcase match than Aries-Jose as the victor looked good-particularly her Carthwheel Forearm and the finisher but she had other offence that looked impressive like a leg scissors pin and a nice crossbody. The match also benefited Billie Kay who has yet to find herself as we saw her lay her strikes in and do a really great Gory Special where she really wrenched Ember Moon. There was some rough stuff that looked more like them losing control than struggling over moves but that'd be my only complaint. **1/2-**3/4

Consider this my first shot of adrenaline. I feel like with the daily grind, my love of wrestling has taken a hit in recent months and I asked around for some suggestions to pump some life back into me. This absolutely did the trick. The best tag team match I've seen since I can even remember. I liked all the neat little heel tricks we got from the beginning, but also that them working this style doesn't feel like a cutesy in-joke about an era gone by -- the stuff they wanted to get certain reactions got the desired reactions, and with a smart crowd at that. The leg stuff at the end felt a little tacked on when it wasn't really part of the match up until that point at all…

PAS: Necro Butcher has pretty much disappeared over the last couple of years, and with Nick Gage back in jail there really hasn't been that kind of unhinged bloody slightly dangerous brawler around anymore. Enter in the sixty-three year old Black Terry who is the Necro we have been looking for. Terry has been having a hell of a year bleeding and brawling through a bunch of tiny gyms across Mexico, this weekend he even no showed an Arena Mexico event so he could bleed all over the rocks and dirt at Coliseo Coacalco. Wotan is a DTU guy and is perfectly willing to smash his forehead violently into Terry's he also had a pretty nice tope, and took a hard backdrop on the ground…

Very fun spotfest but Dragon Lee has had better ones, match was overreliant on move>bounce of the ropes>get countered at times. Lee's Deadlift Backdrop Suplex was badass and I liked him using a big combination to end the match instead of going for the pin after every single move. Didn't care much for the New Japan strike exchange but them slapping each other while fighting in the tree of woe was cool.***-***1/4

This is the last go around for these two as Kansai is retiring in December. I might be overrating this because of nostalgia but I don't care as this was fun to watch. They go at a slow pace but they make up for it by making every move matter. Kansai does a nice job of mixing up her strikes and matwork keeping Aja on her heels most of the match. Although, in a nice call back to their 90's feud, Aja's Uraken ends up being the great equalizer allowing her to get the win. ***1/2

This is the main event of the first night of the 5*GP and also a rematch of their High Speed title match from back in January. This gets off to a great start as Ray attacks right at the start and things quickly spill to the outside. Ray takes nasty bumps on the outsides allowing Iwatani to take over. In general, I really liked Ray's performance outside of some selling issues. She was aggressive the whole match and stayed on Iwatani the whole match. Very entertaining main event. ***3/4

Opening was pretty boring, I have zero use for Lesnar spamming German Suplexes that end in weird flat back bumps, looks completely unnatural. Match was fun once they moved away from that as we got to see some actual violence with the table bumps. I can accept finishers being used the way they were here much easier when you actually establish every match is going to be like that and it doesn't feel like it's just a cheap way of getting hit for a bigger match and that's what they've done with Lesnar, you get the feel you'd have to hit him with a shotgun to actually beat him. What makes this match really special is the absolutely brutal finish-absolutely unreal violence crea…

There's no way this was as long as it seemed. I liked Ziggler's early roll-ups, I remember there being a Cesaro match where they spent more than twenty seconds doing that type of stuff and it was really cool. Finish was cool as well because Ziggler's moves are stupid and Ambrose just refuse to go with one of them, hit his move and went home. But man oh man was this not pretty. They were trying out new stuff, Ambrose randomly used moves he's never done before, guess he realised he has to world title matches now, and he was trying out new stuff with his character, while Ziggler tried to experiment with how he uses the moves he already has. None of it worked. Absolutely noth…

The beginning was actually quite interesting as you had them working a tight lock up, Cena throwing the best punches he's ever thrown (I want to say his punching style here looked Buddy Rose's but I'm not sure I've seen enough of Rose to stand by that) and Cena using irish whips as punishment spots. Then they do an apron bump and this turns into a formulaic Cena-as-PWG "superworker" match, with AJ inserted into the formula and the formula slightly adjusted to fit his moves in but not enough to make it actually novel. And you don't want to see these two do a stupid spotfest. AJ Styles isn't 25 anymore, he isn't nearly as smooth and athletically impressive as he used to be …

Vince really likes that spot where Reigns runs down the ramp and Spears someone near the ring doesn't he? And now the creative team has to think of ways to get it in regardless of how little sense it makes. The brawl itself was fun and Reigns' screaming fangirl was more amusing than any of the "smart" chants but the way they went about it just made no sense whatsoever, especially when Reigns wasn't even trying to get pas referees who weren't even trying to really stop him from attacking Rusev.

A match that smoked everything else that happened during that event. Great psychology with the back, the selling was top notch and Charlotte took some brutal bumps along the way. The botched spot was ugly but ironically setup the rest of the match nicely. The Eddie-Rey dynamic was really good with Banks using her wits and speed while Charlotte used her size and strength. ***1/2

I really liked Miz's performance in this, he's really come a long way. He did a very good job of controlling the match and establishing nice and long control segments. Unfortunately Crews didn't have much to offer, his punches looked bad, his enzuigiri could've looked better and he is still very vanilla. I liked how they teased the bigger moves and Miz fed Crews his power showcase spots nicely (and Crews threw him good too). Not a fan of wrestlers doing things they usually don't when executing moves to set up a counter like Miz picking Crews up just so he can counter a Skull Crushing Finale atempt with a flash pin. As usual Miz used his surroundings and his manager to eff…