January 2017

This is a rematch of their first title match in February of last year. The big difference here is that Io is now a heel leading her Queen's Quest group, but other than using some rough tactics in the first half of the match it doesn't change up the dynamic between the two of them. In the end, it's still the ace champion trying to find a way to get the win over the monster challenger. Technically, I thought that the work in this match was better than their first title match together. Viper especially, looked much better hitting some nice, squishy, big girl offense plus doing a good job of selling throughout. This match does lack the strong narrative that their first match …

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Pete Dunne vs Sam Gradwell - WWE UK Tournament 1/15/17 Holy shit! This was awesome! How has no one talked about this? Pete Dunne is a little shit that calls himself a Brusierweight. Sam Gradwell is a hometown boy from Blackpool. This is the Quarters. Dunne attacked and injured Gradwell the previous night of the tournament. EXCELLENT BABYFACE SHINE! In 2017, not only did we get a babyface shine, we got a great one. BUMPING HEELS STILL EXIST! Gradwell is pissed and is taking no shit. I love not only the fire and intensity of Gradwell, but I love how Dunne is still fight back and GRADWELL IS FIGHTING THROUGH DUNNE! Gradwell great suicide dive. Dunne suplexed him on t…

Tyler Bate vs Wolfgang - WWE UK Tournament 1/15/17 All good things must come to end. This was a return to Earth for the tournament. A perfectly serviceable match but nothing to write home about. Wolfgang is much bigger and burlier than most of the competitors of this tournament that look like juniors. They do play up the size differential but Wolfgang just is not that menacing of a heel. It is very basic stuff that isn't really followed up on. Wolfgang may have a broken nose going into this match as it was bloodied in the Seven match. There was a good punch by Bate again not followed up. Bate dropkicked the knee again not followed up. There were pieces of a great matc…

Tyler Bate vs Jordan Devlin - WWE UK Tournament 1/15/17 Another great match from this tourney! Why is it great, you may ask? Because it focused on time-tested tradition of babyface/heel dynamics. This is the Quarters. Bate is a surprise 19 year old success. He has a moustache which makes him look older than he is. He is a crowd favorite. Devlin is an Irishman and is naturally the heel in England. The previous night he busted open his opponent with kick to the back of the head and knocked him out post-match. Devlin was a great heel in this. Bate is having fun. He is 19. He is happy to be there. He shows up Devlin by faking shaking his hand. So Devlin is pissed and …

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This is a #1 contenders match for the DUALSHOCK WAVE tag team title that were held at this time by Avid Rival (Misaki Ohata & Ryo Mizunami.) Iida and Yoneyama start off doing some effective work over Miyazaki's arm which she did a great job a selling throughout by working her offense around it. Ohka ringwork was great. She was in beast mode the whole match, working stiff and busting out some very nasty variations of the Bloody EX. The most impressive thing about this match is that while they worked a quick pace, they all kept their limitations in mind and rarely overextended themselves. A surprisingly great match which is easy to skip over since the only one in the ma…

In an age where it feels like the E just signs everyone from the indies, I am baffled why they haven't picked Candice up yet. She is so awesome. When it comes to laying out intergender matches there really isn't anyone better (that I know of) in the world right now - here she went & put on a legitimately super fun, really good match vs. Sami Callihan. Love watching Candice kick some ass, the violence party Super Dragon spot is something I'll always love. She mostly worked the match from underneath, and she was great at it. Callihan was really good as the one working on top, being angry at his smaller opponent almost getting the win, who he at the start did not take se…

I thought their match last year was good and this one surpassed it. Hidaka was a little less forgiving this go round and Nakatsu was able to showcase his growth as a wrestler over the past year. They established the limbwork early on and the story was told compellingly up through the finish, thanks to some terrific selling from both guys but Nakatsu in particular. While Hidaka's works the leg to set-up the Shawn Capture, Nakatsu does a good job of staying on Hidaka's arm, going back to it in times of need and after almost every two count. The Shawn Capture finish was perfect, with Hidaka having to drag Nakatsu back to the middle of the ring and he gives him this little kn…

This is for Dragon Lee's World Lightweight Title and I would very much challenge how Cavernario fits that weight class. Cavernario wrestles like a smaller guy despite his size and Dragon Lee is impressive in powering the lucha caveman around. Sneaky good psychology as Cavernario takes off the corner padding, and his motive is two fold - they use this to do damage (he hits an elevated powerbomb on Lee into it) but he also needs it gone to do his running tope through the ropes when on the outside. He gets caught up there, which I guess shouldn't be surprising given his size, but its covered well. We get double powerbombs to the apron, and double stomps off the top rope (to …

This purported high flyers match actually is based around limb work with Takahashi working over Titan's knee. I actually liked how this initially was set up and the crowd bought in. Credit this to Titan also, I never felt he brushed it off. He would sometimes start limping when he went into his run and I thought he sold well enough between moves/sequences. It's high spots and ranas early and then into the knee stuff before we get to a pretty wonky mid section with some obvious issues and misses. Despite this, Titan had a couple sweet rollup counters that I almost bit on as the finish. Takahashi goes over strong in the end, firing off his big offense before the Time Bomb f…

Timothy Thatcher vs Joe Graves (PCW 1/20/17) Some back and forth early. Thatcher with surgical strikes. Some really fun counter wrestling. Thatcher with knees rocking Graves. Thatcher gets the leg. Thatcher now after the bad arm. Big time finger manipulation. Nasty stomp on Grave's wrist. Suplex by Thatcher.Russian Leg sweep into some pretzel submission. Butterfly suplex by Thatcher. Graves starts a comeback to only eat a German by Thatcher. Sleeper hold that gets turned into a suplex . Then locks on a Tazmission. 4*

Kaito Kiyomiya is quickly becoming one of my favorite young guns. He brings a lot of fire and unbridled confidence to his matches, sells really well, and when paired with a chippy old ace like Naomichi Marufuji, you can't help to root for him. Marufuji's great with his doom chops, hitting him so hard, he's hurting his own hand, or he's sneaking around with his superkicks from all sides. Kiyomiya does a good job of rallying the crowd to his cause during his comebacks and I loved when goes crazy on Marufuji in the corner with elbows. The finish was absolutely brutal and awesome. Simple, effective, emotional, hard-hitting. Great little match.

I decided to check out the RPW streaming service specifically to check out this match. This was for the RPW British Heavyweight Championship. I skipped ahead, but I'll definitely check out the rest of the show and other cards on the service to see if I want to hang on to the subscription. I thought this was a really fun match! They start out working each other over with submissions, and I liked how the announcers put over that the match could end in an instant. Riddle was great with his expressions throughout. There was a painful looking stomp to the left arm of Riddle from Shibata, so Shibata went to work there first. Riddle got fired up, and then the hard-hitting…

On paper these 2 going over 40 minutes sounds VERY unappealing, but I wanted to give it a chance, and goddamn, I gotta say that I was very positively surprised by how good this match was! Marty dominated ZSJ for the most of it, and he actually looked good doing it. I enjoyed his work on top, and for once, he didn't overdo the whole Villain shtick. Zack was really good too, working from underneath, sneaking those submissions & wacky pin attempts in - I think if he had showed more fire, like he has done in his matches vs. Hero for an example, this would've been even better. Really good match. ***3/4

This match has a real all-star type feel to it with Io being Stardom champ, Hiroyo being OZ Academy champ, and Ohata being the top contender for the WAVE title. This is also the first time in quite awhile that Io and Ohata have worked together. The two of them start this match and you can tell that they are both pretty excited to be working together again. Hiroyo looked really good here to as it can be easy to forget how good she can be until you see her in situations like this. AKINO was good too, showing a lot of energy rather than one of her phoned in performances. A super fun match between four women who you usually don't see in the ring together. ***1/2

Worked like a sprint - this was all action, high energy w/ a pretty hot crowd. They packed lots of action into 16 minutes - the selling never bothered me, but it definitely could've been better. A very strong TV match, well worth watching. ***1/2

It's always great to see Luke Harper in singles action. This was quite a physical match, both guys looked great with their good looking offense. Very enjoyable. ***1/2

Match Link - Match starts at 1:08:00 This is for Shida's & Syuri's OZ Academy tag titles. I was excited when this was first announced because Hiroyo and Kagetsu were a team in one of my favourite (and highly underrated) tags from last year, 4/2/16 vs. Thunder Rock. Then again, this is OZ Academy where potentially great matchups turn mediocre. Matsumoto looked great here. She is definitely all in for this chance to have a run on top of a promotion. This was also the best match from the Shida/Syuri team. They focused more on straight tag work rather than weapon shots and brawling. It's really nice to see a match that looks like what OZ Academy should be. ****

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rSFeCDmjhc This has been built up as the first big main event match in SEAdLINNNG, although it unfortunately didn't draw that well. For the most part this match is what you would expect between these two, a very in your face, hard hitting battle. My biggest knock against the match would be Arisa's legwork on Nanae. It starts out great with a terrific sell job from Nanae, but Arisa never goes back to it until a short counter towards the end of the match which makes it seem pointless. Other than that, this is a war of attrition. A contest in who can out last the fight of the other. While it doesn't quite reach the all time classic level …

When did Lashley become such a good wrestler? He was absolutely great here - super awesome arrogant monster heel performance by him. Eddie was really good as the scrappy underdog too, but much like in the match vs. Davey Richards, Lashley was the star. ****

Two big boys going at it. Hero is the best wrestler in the world, he had an insanely good 2016, so I was really looking forward to this - and it did disappoint. My first time seeing Keith Lee in singles action, and he looked good here. His offense looked damn good, loved those chops. The ropes breaking did not derail the match at all really, which was pretty awesome considering that it could've ruined the entire match - but Hero & Lee were out there to put on a banger, and they sure did. Very enjoyable. ***3/4

I sure did not expect this to deliver this much - my goodness, what a match! Zack is pissed off and he is in the house to kick some ass. His early shine was SO good, his offense looked fantastic. Once Page got the control, I expected the match to die a bit, but it didn't! All Ego looked damn good working the heat on the son of Zack Sabre - but every time he was close to getting Zack fully down, ZSJ busted out some awesome submissions - he does those transitions better than anyone in wrestling today. This was so much fun! ****

This was very fun. Some good interactions between the New Beginning big match up opponents, such as Ishii trading some stiff strikes with Makabe & Honma, Goto & Juice having some nice sequences, and then my favorite part: Shibata & Ospreay having an absolutely amazing opening sequence. ***1/2

Rosemary is the established TV star and plays this like a name working an independent show, getting in all her signature offense and "playing the hits" while Samara has to work up the courage to face her intimidating and more experienced opponent. It's a breezy little match that tells a succinct story with no obvious flaws or botches.