April 2017

Chihiro Hashimoto & DASH Chisako vs. Hikaru Shida & Rina Yamashita Shida-sama & Yamashita have a parejas increíbles-esque dynamic in this match, and that made things very interesting. They're attacking each other, making aggressive tags, Shida tries to use Yamashita as a weapon; but, they still prove to be a cohesive, well-oiled duo. The hard-hitting segments between Hash and Rina were awesome, and there's a shinai spot here that was topnotch slapstick. DASH reprises her role as Chihiro's designated FIP, but she gets the fall this time! And so continues the endless Shida/DASH feud. ***3/4

Goddesses of Stardom Championship: Hiroyo Matsumoto & Jungle Kyona © vs. Queen's Quest (Io Shirai & HZK) HZK is a wild girl, and she was pushing Kyona to the edge with pesky kicks to the head. She's a pressure cooker; filled with heat. I thought Godzilla & Gorilla looked much better here than they did in Nagoya. Kyona's strikes looked good, even those weak corner splashes she does had actual impact; and I like the sumo palm thrusts, mostly because they are such an odd move of choice for a jungle lady. Io was very interesting here, showing off her athleticism with clever offense. QQ grab hands to escape stereo powerbombs, and then HZK bridges over to apply …

I probably liked this match more than most based on who's involved in the match but here's what I wrote about it:

Without a doubt the best Cruiser match since WWE launched the division in September - this was so great. Loved the beginning with Gallagher overwhelming TJP w/ his technical work, which made TJP need to come up with something, so he came up with a fantastic strategy of going after Gallagher's leg. All the work he did to Gallagher's leg was just awesome, and I can't praise Gallagher's selling enough - superb selling performance by the man. All of his desperation hope spots were awesome as well; the headbutts, the big super backdrop suplex. ****1/4

OZ Academy Tag Team Championship: Hikaru Shida & Syuri © vs. MK4 (AKINO & Kaho Kobayashi) This was a very well-worked tag match, where the abundance of spots were chained together rather smoothly. Kaho makes the most out of those dramatic near-falls, and the kick-heavy segments between Syuri and AKINO were amazing. Another very entertaining match from Shida & Syuri. The Shiri does it again! ****

OZ Academy Openweight Championship: Hiroyo Matsumoto © vs. Kagetsu I thought Kagetsu did a great job conveying her panic as move after move failed to get the job done. There's some real dramatic escalation here, and Hiroyo throws a little curve ball, hitting a wheelbarrow Crash Thunder Buster. I like how she has stepped up her game since winning the Openweight belt, finding new approaches to her offense. This was a solid filler before the inevitable defense against Shida. ***1/2

Holy shit, what a match. Right on the beginning Drew does a very quick belly to belly suplex that makes Oney bail to the outside, but come back with a vengeance. From that point on, they just blast each other with everything they can. Uppercuts, chops, slaps to the goddamn face, and it's not like Oney is perceived as this weakling because of the size difference - he lays it in just as much, if not more, than Drew himself. The closing moments of the match see Drew hitting his scary inverted Alabama Slam, and then a flying boot that makes Oney bleed on the spot. Just gruesome. Fast paced, violent, and overall great. Drew looked like a huge, huge star in this mat…

Kawato's great. He's got a great dropkick, he throws better elbows than Okada, and he's got this really expressive over-enthusiastic body language. Like, he's always in a hurry and when he changes directions his body keeps going in the wrong direction. He's like a puppy on a hardwood floor. He and Desperado have the normal young lion shows his fighting spirit match, and it works. Maybe it's Desperado's timing or maybe it's Kawato or maybe it was just a great crowd, but they are into the comebacks. This was a perfect young lion match and the highlight of what wound up being a pretty fun show. I'm not going to make claims for any match but this one, but it was an en…

Ospreay came out w/ a taped up back, so Bodom went after that right away. Bodom's work over Ospreay's back was AWESOME, he came off as such a cocky bastard, his mannerisms while doing that work over the back were great. Ospreay countered that brutal back work of Bodom with his fiery comebacks - all the while still selling the back. Great stuff. One minor gripe is that I wish Bodom had sold Ospreay's leg work better, because Ospreay did go after his leg quite a bit in the match too. If he had sold that, this would've been even better than it ended up being & this was already great. ****

I remember in late 2014 thinking how awesome this match would be; I was super excited when RevPro announced it was happening & it did not disappoint me one bit. The first portions of the match are the 2 feeling each other out in fantastic fashion - great work on the mat, the two showcasing their technical wrestling skills. Eventually ZSJ gets the upperhand, he dominates KUSHIDA in fantastic fashion, being all cocky & getting to his face - KUSHIDA plays a wonderful face in peril & the eventual comeback of his was just great. From then on the match is more 50/50 with a great sense of urgency to it. This was fantastic. ****1/4

Pretty cool matchup on paper and this was pretty exciting right off the bat with the umbrella shot. It's an exhibition so we get a lot of super kicks plus a teased sunset powerbomb to the outside, which was nice. They fight to the entrance way for a suplex and a couple more kicks. Finger snap -> into an awful chicken wing but Takahashi gets his arm up on 3 and powers to the ropes. Two time bombs ends it. Nothing memorable, fun and good for what it was. ***

A 30-minute Ultimate Submission match featuring Dick Togo. What else do you need to know? Togo puts on one of his best performances since returning to wrestling, at least from what I've seen, with Sasaki's weasel heel shtick kept to a minimum. Both men were terrific but Togo really shined here as he largely fought from underneath, selling the leg and working in some hot comebacks to take the champ to the limit. There's a great visual of Togo scooting around on the mat to avoid Sasaki. There are plenty of fun crossface teases and a few good punch exchanges. Sasaki's an underrated Naito-lite with his legwork and cool transitions. I love his diving elbow drop into the figure…

This is for Sera's ICE Infinity title. I decided to check this out after enjoying Miyagi's work in the Catch the WAVE tourney and was really surprised at how good it ended up being. While she carries herself well as a champ, Sera's ringwork hasn't quite hit the level that you would want with the top star of a Japanese promotion. The layout of this match was very strong, building drama up throughout especially towards the finish with Miyagi getting nice nearfalls. Neither of them did anything flashy but they made their moves count, especially their signature stuff. A nice, surprising, sleeper match. ***3/4

Artist of Stardom Championship Tournament, Semi Final: Queen's Quest (Io Shirai, HZK & AZM) vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto, Jungle Kyona & Tora Natsuko AZM calls out Hiroyo! Holy shit! This was another really good Queen's Quest trio in a line of really good Queen's Quest trios. Jungle Friends were a very energetic team, and I thought Tora was fun. HZK's feud with Kyona is really starting to heat up, I can't wait for their Cinderella Tournament match. Io is the ace, but she kind of lays low in these matches and let's her teammates get the spotlight. It is generous of her. Tora gets squashed so hard under HZK's diving raiden drop that I think it may have caused her head t…

What a goddamn big boy sprint! It starts off with an INTENSE lock up & I so loved that. Doering screams "COME ON SHOW ME POWER!" which meant it was time for TEST OF STRENGTH~! - when that was done, it becomes a total bombfest & it's just lovely. 7 minutes of badass heavyweight action. ****1/4

Well this sure was fantastic. I am not very familiar with Jake Lee, but if he hasn't had that breakthrough performance/match/moment yet, this sure had to be that breakthrough performance/match. They did a fantastic job in teasing that he might pull off the upset against the ace - Kento sold his ass off for him & sold that "oh shit, this kid is the real deal" feeling with his great facial expressions. This was so good. ****

Those two just have amazing chemistry together. You pair off Big Show, a talented dude with the shape of his career, with a great newcomer like Braun, and you are bound to get a great super heavyweight match. I love how they bust out armdrags and kip ups and baseball slides because of their unique match up. Also a very good work with teasing the superplex spot. You knew it was coming, but they did a great job of keeping the suspense high. When it actually happened, people obviously lost their shit. This is such a great and fun match,people. **** 1/4

This is from the opening night of the Catch the WAVE tournament. Miyagi was very solid here. She worked a straight match, and while she kept things simple, show good intensity to keep things from getting dull. Ohata on the other hand was fantastic. She work with a really nasty attitude while hitting hard the whole way throughout. She also put over Miyagi offense in way that you always felt like she had a chance to win. A strong match to open up a tournament that didn't look like it would be anything special on paper. ***3/4

Regina di WAVE Championship: Ryo Mizunami © vs. Takumi Iroha Iroha doesn't make tape very often so it's always interesting to see what new techinques she has learned in the untaped abyss. This didn't quite reach the level of Mizunami's title matches against Ohata and Haruhi on the epic scale, but the action was straight-forward and solid. One gripe I had was the moment when Mizunami's hits a desperation Hot Limit; Iroha had been dominating so much that Mizunami could barely stand and she's just lifted up and takes the reverse piledriver with no resistance. At least wiggle your feet or something! ***1/4

After coming off a so-so match at Rey De Reyes, this match between these two was much better. This was an old fashioned street fight that hid Taya’s faults in the ring and let her shine as a brawler and a character. Early on, she gets busted open and the visual of her blood mixed with her blonde hair was a throwback to something you would see in 80’s southern wrestling. Even the commentators remarked “Ric Flair” as her crimson mask replicated some of the Nature Boy’s iconic bloody photos from Apter mags past. The match almost met the entire checklist of a great street fight. Both wrestlers actually wore street clothes to a street fight. There was blood. One of the comp…

A very good match here. The bit where Cole was making fun of Riddle's MMA background, only for Riddle to put him in a deadly submission right away was absolutely wonderful - terrific little spot there. The rest of the match saw Cole really borderline dominate Riddle, he worked on top for most of the match, which was a joy to watch because Riddle's selling & bumping was so good. Oh and those fiery comebacks of his are also great. ***1/2

One of the most hype matches for me personally in recent memory when it comes to PWG - and it did not disappoint. ZSJ's new attitude in Reseda is wonderful & it was in full force here - he showed no respect to the legend. Most of the match is spent on the match w/ them working each other's limbs & battling over control. It's great. The selling is great, the pacing is great, the structure is great. Awesome match. ***3/4

Chuckie T on commentary wondering if we could say this is kind of a big brother vs. little brother situation was really the perfect description for this match. An absolutely AWESOME hoss fight - the throws were ring-shaking, my goodness those were insane. Really liked Keith Lee's control segment on Cobb - he got to showcase his stuff while Cobb got some really awesome comebacks in. Real good stuff. ***3/4

This ruled. They worked the David vs. Goliath dynamic with O'Reilly chopping down the bigger man in Big Mike - loved all of Kyle's offense, he was really great in this match. Elgin answered to KOR's submissions & striking combinations w/ big bombs & hard hitting lariats. It was all super enjoyable. ***3/4

No wasted motion or dull moment with this only going 13 minutes - the story was that Doering dominated The Ace by working over his back. I thought that Doering did a really fantastic job doing that. The Boston Crab drama was fantastic. Miyahara also delivered a superb selling performance - he really put over Doering's brutal work by selling his ass off w/ his physical selling as well as his tremendous vocal & facial selling. His comebacks were tremendous & when he got the W, you really got the feeling that he just barely survived. Fantastic match. ****1/2