October 2016

I didnt know Cody/Brandi went to TNA. They debuted prior to this match where Gail Kim beat Maria for the Women's Title. Then Cody/Brandi showed up Maria & her husband. TNA World Heavyweight Champion Bobby Lashley vs Ethan Carter III - TNA Bound for Glory 2016 No Holds Barred Coming into this match, I was wondering if ECIII could carry Lashley, but this was actually one of the better Lashley performances I have seen in my life. He finally felt like The Destroyer he claims to be. He brought the intensity and he was just suffocating ECIII with a full court press. I LOVED THE SPEAR during the introductions. It really set the tone that Lashley was a Beast. He lo…

An amazingly chaotic tag match, one of the best of the year. You could replace Xtreme Tiger with pretty much any generic flier luchador and nothing would be lost, Caristico did play a part in the match feeling as big as it did due to him knowing how to rile up the crowd and being a bigger name, and he did show more fire in the comeback. Still this was all about LA Park and Rey Escorpion throughoutly beating the shit out of the tecnicos. The opening had a lot of quick double teams and teasing that would result in stare offs and give the crowd a chance to chant and get into it, they weren't doing much from an action standpoint but from a structural one it was a crucial port…

This was all about Joe Coffey trying to earn the respect of Minoru Suzuki - and in the end, he did exactly that. It was mostly a total Minoru show, him showcasing his terrific offense - as the match went on, Coffey got some hope spots in & those were good. They told a good story of him earning the respect of MiSu by just lasting as long as he did in the ring w/ him. This was a lot of fun & very easy to watch. ***1/2

Grump Akiyama was wonderful in this. Soya thinks he can just waltz back into All Japan and Akiyama destroys him. Some brutal knees, kicks, and armwork from Akiyama, who does such a good job at exploiting Soya's weakness and going to the arm after a two count. Soya is whatever here, just fodder for Akiyama's ass-whipping. Loved Akiyama's jumping knee counter to the diving lariat. After a ton of nasty knees toward the end, Akiyama hits the Exploder and when Soya gets the shoulder up at two, Akiyama grabs him and forces him into a seated armlock for the submission. Really enjoyed this display from Akiyama.

Yeah this ruled. Early matwork was super neat, like some sort of weird pastiche of shoot style and lucha title match matwork. I was never sold on O'Reilly due to him being a Davey Richards protege and working more like junior than a proper UWFi cosplay guy but he has improved, and for a workrate match with little backstory this was exceptional. Shibata always brings his stubborness as something that is going to be played up in the match, and the kind of spots like suplex no selling and him daring the other guy to hit him as hard as he can are gonna be there, but this was shooty enough that it didn't matter even in this type of match. It's been a while since I've been so l…

I want to point out that I've rarely fucked with Marufuji for his entire career, and I generally think he embodies the same excesses that guys like The Young Bucks carry the torch for today. And I know Okada can fall into those same traps, so heading into this, I was worried they'd bring the worst out in each other. Instead, this was Marufuji's breakout performance as he enters the cunty vet stage of his career, and he finally decided he's start laying his strikes in. His shitty superkicks and combos always miss by miles, but here, he was drilling Okada with everything, and his chops were Kobashi-esque in their brutality. I do have to ask, what happened to his arm? It's p…

This is the final of Pro Wrestling WAVE's tag league. Good lord, this is like if pro wrestling tried to be a demolition derby, just tonnes of body-on-body contact. There's a spot early on where Hashimoto grabs Yamashita along the ropes but Mizunami hits a clothesline on Rina so hard that Chihiro goes flying to the floor, that the type of match this is. Towards the end, it's hard to till if Mizunami is doing a Grade A sell job or if she is truly feeling beaten down. I know the phrase 'Hoss Fight' gets thrown around loosely but this match might be that in its truest form. ***3/4

Better than their first match, mostly due to a superior match structure that played to both of their strengths well. A better crowd here too. Less stupid spots were done-there was a rope running no-sell sequence with Hero doing Big Boots and Riddle hitting knes I could've done without, and a stupid exchange where it wasn't clear whether Riddle was Headbutting Hero's arm or Hero was elbowing Riddle in the head (it looked like the former but was sold as the latter). But beyond that, this was a quality match. Hero's cheeky insults (often followed by a strike sold as a big moment) will only ever go so far in generating actual heat, but carrying control segments is definitely …

Match Link This is a match that has been teased since Yoshiko made her return in March. After that match, Arisa Nakajima confronted her and Nanae that started their feud. This starts off with some really chippy matwork where attempted counters are hair pulls more often than not. After that, this turns into the type of match you would expect between these two, a mix of stiff strikes and big moves. Nakajima starts going after Yoshiko's arm in order to limit her main offensive weapon, the lariat, but Yoshiko does some nice 'gut through it' selling. Arisa also does some really great selling of her back while on offense after it gets worked over. The finish has some terrif…

I thought we had some joshi superfans on this board, how the hell does this not have a thread? This was another fantastic contest in the series of Meiko vs. Game Opponents. Chihiro Hashimoto is this brawny amateur wrestler and works like Rick Steiner. They start of with great mat wrestling and Meiko does some awesome wristlock work, before the inevitable kicks in. I've said it before, but Meiko really has the sharpest offense in the world. She just kicked the snot out of Chihiro. Clearly Chihiro is her pet project, and while the young girl has some iffy moments, all her throws ruled and her german suplex was deadly. I also really liked how she rolled to the apron to evad…

Part of a round robin tournament between DDT's youngest wrestlers. The moment that really makes the match happens during Higuchi's entrance, when MAO lurks out behind him and dropkicks him on the stage. From then on, MAO tries to keep Higuchi down, stomping on him, trying to tap him out and going for a cartwheel. It's on the latter attempt that Higuchi catches him and reverses the tide by what I'd describe as beating the shit out of MAO. It would've been easy for this to overstay its welcome (although the forearm/chop exchange towards the end was pretty superfluous) but the match proper is like ten minutes long, which is just right.

Cage matches aren't exactly something I associate with lucha but it's something you'd figure LA Park would be great at, and sure enough he is. He totally outclassed Caristico here. LA Park's performance was phenomenal-the level of vioelnce he brough to the table was just something else, as was his character work. He dominated most of the match with long control segments and I am a fan of that classic "rudo beats the shit out of a tecnico for the first ten minutes" structure. Him toying with Caristico, playing with his mask and telling him to look up before instantly knocking him down is something that has to be seen. One advantage of the 2/3 falls structure is that allows…

You can tell by their entrances-how they move, how they look, by their entrance music. You can tell that Shibata is a real wrestler and Go Shiozaki isn't. Shibata represents something-he likes Inoki and Maeda. His favourite wrestler is Hashimoto. That's whose bags he carried. Black shoes, black trunks, has a simple font that says THE WRESTLER for a t-shirt. Go Shiozaki probably only still wrestles because his modelling deal fell through and he needs the cash. These two are modern japanese wrestlers-they will have a modern japanese wrestling match. It probably won't be as good as Hashimoto vs Tenryu and since it's 2016 neither will the heat. But it still managed the work b…

I think no one's really accurately depicted the way modern NOAH matches are worked. Obviously that is in direct correlation with the dropping interest in it but when it gets some attention the focus is mostly put on the more obvious and uninteresting stuff. Looking at this match and thinking about how it's worked and how that relates to NOAH's recent success or lack thereof was interesting. The body of the match is worked with them exchanging control segments-but unlike in most workrate matches here the control segments actually last a good couple of minutes. The transitions used to get from one control segment to another were quite good-Nakajima's first High Kick in part…

This is a first round match in WAVE's Next tournament to find a new number one contender for Yuu Yamagata's Regina di WAVE title. This match is super short, it goes less than three minutes, but they pack a ton of action into it. It's impressive that Iida manages to get two convincing near-finishes of an arm submission in that short time. Yoneyama spends the whole match going full speed, constantly trying for rollups till she actually manages to lock one in for the win. This match would have definitely fit in on a late 90's episode of WCW Worldwide.

This is another first round match in WAVE's Next tournament. Natsu has been quite the surprise while watching WAVE the last few months. She was completely unremarkable as a rookie but ever since she came back from Mexico she has improved a lot. She seems to be turning into a modern Takako Inoue, not just in look and attitude but also in ring work. Meanwhile, Yamashita is her typical, straight forward, powerhouse self. Here she quickly establishes her strength advantage by turning a Natsu small package into a vertical suplex. Natsu does an admirable standing toe-to-toe with Yamashita in strikes but ultimately Yamashita is just too tough for her and she ends up being mowed …

Slingblade is like saying Roaring Elbow. It's Sliding Blade. Don't be a fucking weaboo Michael Cole. God this match sucked. Two terrible quasi cool heels whose acting looks like they're cosplaying Wile E. Coyote and whose trash talk wouldn't impress kindergatners. Rollins' pentaly kick was one of the most cringeworthy things I've seen in a wrestling. "I hate you so much I'm gonna do a.....Corkscrew Neckbreaker! Yeah! Take that!" They even did a no sell sequence! They must have loved this match on reddit. Between Owens' looking how to set up a table for two minutes and "accidentally" spraying the ref with a fire extinguisher this is coming off like a self conscious trainwr…

There seems to be some resemblance of hype around a WWE show for the first time in forever so I guess I'll cherry pick my way through it. Lacerated can't be a world real people say in normal conversations. Rusev's strikes have improved-Reigns' are still better but that's expectable. I liked that the match felt like a hate filled brawl inside a cell instead of them just working the prototype HIAC match just for the sake of doing so-mainly consisting of them shoving one another into the cell, onto the steps etc. instead of elaborate gimmick stuff. And when they went for the more elaborate weapons by searching for them under the ring like the table and the kendo stick they q…

Eddie Guerrero died of a heart attack 11 years ago aged 38. As I started watching this match I sat there and wondered. Wondered what they planned for this occassion. As I give these matches a chance time and time again and conclude I get way more out of Emma and Nia Jax roughing someone up for three minutes, I wonder whether THIS time is the one they got it. Think back to the good match(es) they had in NXT. Think about how the longer build for this match could mean there was more planning for it. Maybe a better structure. More practice. No clumsiness. Maybe the big spots can look dangerous without verging into "she's gonna break her neck soon too". And so the match star…

This was the best opener I've seen all year, condensed and brutal, with a red hot crowd. They didn't waste any of time they were given, going full steam right out of the gate. Okabayashi hits Ishikawa so hard with a shoulderblock, his mouthpiece flies out. In addition to dealing it out, Strong BJ really know how to sell a beating, especially Sekimoto, who took the brunt of the punishment with some nasty headbutts, elbows, and kicks. Love the spot where Sekimoto is taking elbow shots from Sato and just hauls back and levels him with a short-arm lariat. This match also had one of the best colliding lariats spots I've seen in recent memory and some fun, hard-hitting double t…