April 2017

This was a blast. I like when Suwama is playing the bully in his matches and he was a lot of fun with his pissy sleeper hold on the ropes and ragdolling Mashimo with suplexes. Mashimo's so good at working a body part and here, he chooses the leg and works it over to set up the finish. Terrific selling from both guys, and I especially liked how Suwama used suplex throws for recovery time. His lariats looked extra gnarly and I thought the finish was neat, with Suwama trying to boot his way out of an Achille's tendon hold and Kengo trapping the leg, forcing him to submit. One of the better matches in otherwise meh tournament.

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

Top fucking notch. O'Reilly was all business here while Keith Lee always wants to do his shtick - it's a part of his charm. Lee quickly realized that O'Reilly wasn't there to play around so he starts showing why he truly is LIMITLESS with all that athletic stuff he pulls out while still being a dominating big man wrestler. Loved the story of Kyle being super focused on chopping the big man down, he did awesome work to Lee's leg throughout the match, which eventually paid off as he got him on his knees. Fantastic storytelling. Then the terrific ending after the re-start deal where he just destroyed Lee with those striking combinations & that brainbuster. One of the fin…

Starts off with some awesome mat work, love watching these 2 go at it - eventually Thatcher gains the advantage, and we get a super awesome control segment w/ him working over Riddle. Thatcher on the offense was a thing of beauty, loved watching him lay those knees in & lock those submissions. Riddle is really good working from under - he gets some awesome hope spots in including almost hitting Thatcher with the Bro To Sleep only for Thatcher to counter it into a Fujiwara Armbar. LOVE IT. If there's a better opening match on any card this year, I'd be surprised. ****1/2

Wonder of Stardom Championship: Kairi Hojo © vs. Hana Kimura This was Hojo's homecoming so the crowd is extremely pro-Hojo, so much so that they boo Hana-chan's dancing! This was 20 minutes and a good chunk of that is Hana dominating. She takes Hojo on a tour around the arena, kicking her down a long flight of stairs and choking her in front of school students. A lot of stomping and foot-choking and lewd dancing. It gets tedious after a while, but Hana draws a ton of hate, and the crowd wants the Hojo comeback badly. I liked the slap exchange, although Hana had some timing issues, she caught Hojo with a couple of stiff ones. Hikari was really soaking this in -- it's n…

Just an absolute warfare with the two trying to break each other down. Slick mat work to start things off - that transitions into Yehi getting the control, he works over O'Reilly in awesome fashion & in particular he starts targeting his leg. O'Reilly sells that tremendously. O'Reilly gets the control & starts working over Yehi in FANTASTIC fashion - now it was Kyle's time to pick a limb so he goes with Yehi's arm. He starts working that, which Yehi sells tremendously. Dueling limb work~! I love it. Both men sell so well for each other & both men have offense that looked like million bucks. Great feeling of physicality, competition & urgency. This was a wa…

This was in a tough spot as they had to follow the classic that was Kyle O'Reilly vs. Fred Yehi, but they managed to follow it outstandingly well. Just an incredible underdog story with Lio first getting some technical work over done on ZSJ, which pissed ZSJ off so he starts to torture Lio. Lio was a great underdog & ZSJ is always a blast working on top. ****1/4

Quite fitting that in his last indy match Galloway has the best match of his indy run. Just a superb, violent I Quit match. Galloway was awesome working over Riddle in brutal fashion & Riddle did some of the best selling of his career so far. ****1/2

This was lots of fun. TAKA shined - loved his work over Ibushi's neck. Ibushi on the offense is always fun, I just wish he had sold the neck work more, because with that this match could've reached greater heights. It was still really good though. ***1/2

Was super excited when they announced this match up & it managed to deliver just like I had hoped it would. Ringkampf quickly established dominance over BSS - they worked over them for a pretty lengthy amount of time before BSS got back into things. When they did get back into things, we got an outstanding FIP segment w/ Thatcher - Thatcher might legitimately be the best salesman in wrestling today. His facial expressions & physical selling are on point. ADJ's eventual hot tag was great; the heels did what they had been doing the entire match for Ringkampf - they bumped their ass off for him/them. They were really great in their role. The finishing stretch was the…

This match is for Storm's SWA title. I was really interested in seeing this as Negra has looked good this tour and this was a chance for her to have a long single's match, (unfortunately, she had to leave not long after this show so this was her last match for now.) She looked good here again, especially in the early going reacting/countering Storm's matwork. Also showed a lot of personality that got the fans into the match. Yet another quality performance from Toni Storm, which is a good sign if she is about to get a big push in Stardom. A below the radar match that everyone should watch. ***3/4

Best Friends (Arisa Nakajima & Tsukasa Fujimoto) vs. Lovely Butchers (Hamuko Hoshi & Mochi Miyagi) Nakajima was beating the shit out of the leopard-print glob of mediocre known as Hamuko Hoshi. Kicking her in the head, stomping her nose, slapping her across the face, KNEES -- good shit. I loved it. I love Arisa! Hamuko no-sells a Venus Shoot in a ridiculous sequence. Miyagi goes crazy with Thesz presses. I can't tell if Fujimoto genuinely struggled to lift Hamuko for the Japanese Ocean Cyclone in the finish or if that was part of the 'drama'.. either way, this was mostly fun and fast-paced. A solid restart for Best Friends. ***1/2

International Ribbon Tag Team Championship: This is Ice Ribbon (Hiiragi Kurumi & Tsukushi) © vs. Azure Revolution (Maya Yukihi & Risa Sera) Tsukushi is one out of control youth, and Yukihi is a gramma whose patience is wearing thin. I really liked Maya-obachan's performance in this, she was heating it up with Tsukushi, jacking her jaw with knees and superkicks, and digging her claws into the mini-joshi's back. Tsukushi was a nasty little aggressor, with snug elbow strikes and a vicious low dropkick through the ropes. I gotta be honest, I thought her Japanese Ocean Suplex finisher looked ridiculous. Yukihi may have thrown herself into the move a bit too much. Ku…

This was a super awesome little spectacle. The size difference between these two is HUGE to say the least. Kalisto uses his quickness to avoid Braun's total domination - he gets some awesome highflying moves in, but then there are times when Braun is just tossing him around in badass fashion. It's just as good as it sounds on paper. ****

This had a promising start, with Ishikawa beating on Daichi and focusing on his mid section, but quickly went to shit once it was time for them to work back and forth. There was a cool moment in the beginning of the match where they were doing shoulder blocks, and as Ishikawa is bigger it's expected he'll know Daichi down, so Daichi booted him in the face before he did so, which was cool since it broke the flow of the sequence and made the inevitable shoulder block that would take him down a little bigger moment. That was completely absent later on in the match, they were just doing empty rope running counters, it doesn't even mattter who hits their move or catches the op…

A nice little match, as Nomura attacks Omori before the bell with consecutive Dropkicks and sets the pace for this quick match. Omori looks to hit the Axe Bomber, Nomura looks for the Spear, naturally they run the ropes a lot for that, and it's about as cohesive as it could be. I loved how Omori blocked Nomura's first Spear attempt by just powering through and that the finish included countering the back of the head-normal Axe Bomber, that and the length of the match were a nice nod to the famous Akiyama/Omori sprint, and Nomura's delayed selling was on point. **3/4

This is quite the veteran vs. rookie match. The story is the typical fare but the work here is terrific. Kadokura doesn't do anything flashy but her selling and the timing of her comebacks here are amazing, especially for her experience level. Ohata is having an amazing, under the radar, year. She sells just enough to make you believe that Kadokura has a chance. Great stuff. ****

Tyler is back in Full Sail and he's sporting more rugged look. Gallagher is criminally underrated as a technical wrestler. He grabs hold of Bate's wrist and refuses to let go. This is pure WOS-inspired grappling. They use strikes sparingly in the finishing stretch and they always feel like a big deal, especially Gallagher's headbutt that knocks both men out. Bate manages to catch Gallagher off-guard with a surprise wheel kick and picks up the win. Stop sleeping on this hidden gem and give it a watch. It's well worth your 15 minutes. ★★★★¼

Black Terry does it again. This guy is a national treasure; just put him on legal tender already. It is only out in fancam form right now. This Rush does his duck and run thing for a while and once he lures Terry to the outside he starts beating on the old man and never really looks back. He takes Terry all over the arena, parts of which you can't see from the fan cam. They go off to the lower left at one point and I see popcorn and fists flying. I can't see what is going on, but it looks fun. Terry stumbles back to the ring a bloody mess and Rush follows him to continue the beatings. Once back in the ring Terry is able to mount a pretty vicious looking comeback once R…

I rolled my eyes when this point was mentioned in a certain match review years ago, but I'll steal it here-to me, this really felt like a real pro wrestler taking on a phony. Negro Navarro is a lucha maestro-he's changed with the times and has constantly updated his offence, but the way he'd done it and performed has stayed true to that lineage and tradition. Zack Sabre Jr. is a total hybrid. You can see he is someone fascinated with pro wrestling and wants to rip everything he likes and create this all encompassing stlyle and whatnot, but as a result his matches don't really have a specific flair, particularly outside of a context that is "indy wrestler having matches in…

An hourlong draw might seem like overkill for a match with these two, but I thought this was good. Takeshita focuses on Endo's neck through the first half of the match and Endo works Takeshita's leg. There's some really dramatic stuff going on there but sadly, they both blow it off through most of the second half and then it comes back in the last ten minutes. Takeshita also has an annoying tic of no-selling big moves to hit a suplex or something of the sort, which happens a handful of times on that final stretch and I was really annoyed by. I find that sort of thing endearing in wrestlers who come across as underdogs but Takeshita doesn't, so I guess it bothers me. Endo'…

Tanahashi has a lot of aggression at the start jumping Evil and sending him around on a tour of the ringside area. Evil responds well to that onslaught and takes over when he horse collars a chair to Tana’s neck and then hits that chair with another one. Back inside, Evil slows the match down with neck focused submissions. The biggest critique I have of this match is that the comebacks came too easy for Tanahashi. I know Evil beat Tana in the NJ Cup but this is a different story. That was kind of the point as Evil is just a Gatekeeper for LIJ to get to the big boss of Naito but as a stand alone match, it lacked much drama because it felt like Evil couldn’t sustain any typ…

Another great match for Hiromu. Just action action action for 16 minutes that didn't let up but also didn't drift too far into stupidity that they lost me. I liked Ricochet going for broke right away given the previous match with KUSHIDA. Hiromu is always going to take some chances to gain an advantage and he does that here. They did a strong job of showing how Ricochet was just one move away from being successful and winning multiple times. Eventually, the energy and tenacity of Hiromu is too much and he wins in 16 minutes. ****

Impressive performance by Juice in his first big time real main event opportunity. He looked very good & his selling of the leg was very strong throughout the whole match - I was actually afraid he would totally no sell it when Naito started to attack it right away, but he sold it really well from start to finish. ***3/4