October 2017

NEW-TRA showing up in Stardom is a much needed breath of fresh air, too bad they are not around for very long. Iroha looks awesome here, especially in the way she carries herself as she comes off as a big star from another company. Both Tora and Kadokura looked really good here. The big difference between the two of them is that Kadokura has more viable offense, so you can buy that she could possibly end a match on her own. A very good match between two teams of young talent in joshi. ***3/4

More NEW-TRA? Oh yeah! Bonus points here for the reuniting of Yamashita and Kobayashi, who had a fun youngster team in late '15/early '16. Kadokura looked great here again and should seriously get talked about more as one of the top youngsters in joshi. The real highlight here is the matchup of Yamashita and Iroha. The two of them show fantastic chemistry here and it's a shame that Yamashita loses the Regina di WAVE title in just a few days as a title match between the two of them could be something really special. As for this match, it goes a little too short to be great, as it feels like the match ends just as it's start to ramp up. Still worth checking out though. ***3…

A really, really fun compact sprint. A lot of creative and unique in this as well. I sometimes find fan cams annoying but, I think it adds to this matches dynamic. Match Rating - Highly Recommend

By far the best match of the opening night of WxW's tag team league. Have to say this match is much better when Walter is in the ring, Thatcher gets a bit boring when he's in there too long but Walter's hot tags are amazing. The 1st one when he charges in and throws both Briscoes across the ring twice each before doing his pose makes me believe this man could single-handedly take out an army if he wanted. The Briscoes are a lot more low-key but keep everything churning along nicely, Mark gets a good bit of shine when he takes out Walter with a moonsault to the outside in a spot which feels a lot more chaotic by the crowd being so close. ****

I'll admit it was Mike that piqued my interest when this was proposed to me by Grimmas, as we share names, but Riddle by-far astounded me with his performance here. Was Regal watching backstage that he put his working boots on? Look, I think he can come off as comical and doesn't put much weight behind his offence but, my god, did he decimate Mike here. I lost count of how many times I grabbed my head in wincing shock at the blows Riddle was landing on Mike. The running elbows were nasty, the knees to the jaw were killer and he damn near crippled the Canadian with his suplexes. Hell, at one point Riddle dumps Bailey on his noggin and, as both men lie motionless, the c…

It's Ringkampf vs. The Rottweilers. Homicide & Low Ki vs. Thatcher & WALTER. 2017 is wild. This was such a great match - loved how it was structured. At first we get Ringkampf pretty much dominating The Rottweilers in the ring, but once Homicide & Ki take things to outside the ring, a full blown tag brawl comes about & The Rottweilers get back into things. Lovely stuff. Loved seeing Homicide hit some of his classic signature moves, made me pop big time, Low Ki was as explosive as ever - he's so great & of course Team Ringkampf, Thatcher & WALTER, once again proved why they are 2 of the best wrestlers in the world & one of the best tag teams on …

If you're one of those fans who hates 'overbooking' and wants clean finishes you probably won't like this. This match is a lot of fun. I don't know the backstory other than what the commentary is telling me but the stipulation is if any of Klinger's heel stable Rise interfere in this match he will lose the title by disqualification. Obviously one of them comes to ringside about 10 minutes in anyway only for Ilja to lariat him off the apron. The 4 others from Rise come marching down to the ring and Klinger looks like he might be in trouble and step inside, the referee starts warning them to get out. Then 4 anti-Rise wrestlers march down the aisle and there's a 4 vs. 4 …

My pick for the best match on the show. Thought it was excellent - loved the way it built with Jinder working the heat on Shinsuke in awesome fashion, Shinsuke's comebacks were hot & that finishing stretch was fantastic. ****

Well, this was an awesome match. Usos/New Day has not only been the best tag team feud this year by a landslide, it's also one of the very best feuds overall. Started off rather light-hearted with New Day using multiple, brightly-colored trombones but quickly escalated into some unbelievable violence. Absolutely jarring visuals such as pinning Jey to the cell with three kendo sticks and Xavier being hoisted onto the ring post with handcuffs. Proof that you don't necessarily need blood to sell a violent match. The Usos continued to prove their the best tag team in the world not named the Revival but Big E and Xavier showed incredible resiliency and fire. Great nearfalls an…

Ringkampf had a great weekend w/ great matches against the legendary teams of The Briscoes & Rottweilers - and it all culminated here. Going against Jurn Simmons & David Starr, a man who WALTER had been developing quite the rivalry against. This was just a big time tournament finals epic w/ a bunch of big moves, great team work by both teams & just like you would expect a big tournament final to have, this did have quite a few of those sweet nearfalls, but I think they earned all of them by how great the meat of the match was & how the suspense & drama built & built. Reminded me of a classic 90's All Japan tag in that regard. It's comfortably, imo,…

These two have good matches together, sometimes great matches, and this was no exception -- however, it's getting harder for me to distinguish the matches as they follow a similar blueprint. Naito coolly works the leg, Ishii sells and bumps well, Naito goes back to the leg to escape shitty situations, and Ishii fights through to pain to punish Naito. This time, however, Ishii says "okay, lemme work that leg" and cuts off Naito with a big dropkick to the knee. He doesn't put in a whole lot of work but Naito's selling is terrific throughout, including his knee buckling on a German suplex hold. Even though I knew Naito had about a 0.00001% chance of losing, I still bit on th…

Nice to see the Beginning Pro girls make tape since that doesn't happen very often these days. The both of them put in very plucky performance against the veteran team of Bolshoi and Leon. While they lack the experience and offensive fire power that their opponents have, both Anou and Maki do a terrific job of looking competitive. A high quality veteran/youngster tag title match that shouldn't be skipped. ****

This is the third match that this two have had this year. They split their two matches earlier this year in the Catch the WAVE tournament with Yamashita winning in the final over Ohata and subsequently taking the Regina di WAVE title from Ryo Mizunami, Ohata's tag partner in Avid Rival. The match starts out as a matchup of power versus technique. Ohata gets some early success by trapping Yamashita's right arm in various submissions which limits Yamashita's main offensive weapon. This force Yamashita to be more careful with how she uses her arm. She adjusts how she applies her sleeper by turning so that more of her body weight is on Ohata and she's more selective as to…

This match shows why AJ Styles is such a fantastic wrestler. It’s not that he carried Corbin – he was fine in the match – but everything he did, whether it was his selling or when he was on offence, was done with such fire and intensity that always draws you in. I really enjoyed how he jumpstarted the match by going straight after Corbin and not getting into lockups etc. As a strategy that wouldn’t work given the size disparity, but also fits with the storyline; AJ lost the US Title without being pinned – he was going in angry. Throughout the match AJ was doing everything at full force and you really sensed his determination to take back the title. It’s often the little …

I don't think this quite scaled the heights of their Takeover match (though I was at that one live) because it had less of the element of surprise on its side, but it was still really terrific. These guys work really well together and the match is paced really nicely for stuff like apron spots and loud chops to get the crowd into things at the right moments. The ending does a great job of continuing to tell the story of Johnny getting over the #DIY split and the story of Almas' rising aggression. It does that well enough that they could just end this feud (which hasn't really been a feud outside of the matches anyways) and move on, having made that progress. And if they d…

This was really fun from start to finish, with really good showings by Nick Richards, Ray Kandrack & Chet Sterling. What really put it over the top as a great match though was the finishing stretch between the final 2 in the match, Trevor Lee & Cain Justice. Legitimately can't think of a better final 2 Rumble finishing stretch off the top of my head right now - they absolutely KILLED it. Cain was excellent beating down the exhausted champ w/ his strikes & amazingly nasty submissions - which Trevor sold fantastically. That created some fantastic drama. LOVED him working over that cut on Trevor's head as well. Trevor of course once again proved why every single …

I'm probably just behind on the discussion, but I don't remember hearing anyone talk about this match. I thought it was really entertaining. Cody worked the first portion of the match sort of old school stalling and heeling to the crowd... KUSHIDA finally gets hold of him and works his elbow really well throughout the match. These guys put on a good show for the fans. I remember really enjoying the Cody/Ibushi match from WK, and I think this is another one of his stronger singles matches too.

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs KENOU - NOAH 10/14/17 I love this type of pro wrestling. Just ultra-stiff, beat the shit out of each other wrestling. If I am going to watch mindless pro wrestling I would much rather watch this than a bunch of flips or overdramatic selling. This is apart of the Global League, I think, NOAH's version of the Champions Carnival. KENOU is an M-Pro wrestler that I have seen face Fujita Jr Hayato. I always thought he was good not great. Nakajima is one of my absolute favorites and had the chance to see him in 2009 in person for ROH against Kenny Omega of all people. KENOU would go on to win the GHC Championship in December from Eddie Edwards and is th…

Hey, remember when Stardom use to have really good tag/trios matches on their house shows. This was a flashback to more enjoyable times with this match. QQ cut off the ring on Kyona and do a good job with working her over. The best part of this match is how Kyona never really spends enough time out of the match to truly recover from the beating she took early on. She's able to hang in there for most of the match but QQ keep knocking Bito out of the picture eventually hitting a Bombs Away/Moonsault combo for the win. ***3/4

This was a hell of an opener, and what I'd consider to be one of Daichi Hashimoto's best performances to date in Big Japan. You had the young team showing a ton of fire at the outset, prematurely attacking Sekimoto and Sato before the bell, and putting Sekimoto on the rocks early on before the hardened vets take over on offense. Daisuke is so good at playing the heel-ish taunting bully and of course, Sato's just plain nasty in there against Daichi, elbowing the snot out of him. Daichi's full of fighting spirit and won't back down, despite getting his clock continually cleaned by Sato -- just terrific selling on Daichi's part as he takes a beating. Kamitani does a good job…

Simple but smart junior heavyweight wrestling. This isn't a match that is going to blow many away and that's okay, that's not what they were setting out to do. But it had a little bit of everything, including a great counter-based approach, a couple of high risk spots, and a little comedy with the ropes shenanigans, Asahi's cobra strike, and the ref bumps. Shiori Asahi has a lot of the right tools, especially in his counterwork, but he tends to try to do too much in his matches. He was more grounded here (sometimes not by choice) but he's got a lot of neat touches to his style, like his simple counter to a side headlock. Sasaki goes after the neck early on to set-up for h…

Queen's Quest vs. Oedo Tai Challenge Series: HZK vs. Kagetsu HZK was going all out to put down the big bad wolf of Oedo Tai, but Kagetsu had a couple of tricks up her sleeve. This was great. HZK was roughhousing Kagetsu in grand fashion, and delivering one of the best singles performances I've ever seen from her. Hope she's able to maintain this momentum. ***1/2

Wonder of Stardom Championship: Yoko Bito © vs. Takumi Iroha It was refreshing to see Iroha work a 'high drama' style match, and it felt like a return to form for her. The action was great for the most part; they managed to keep things fresh for the 30-minute draw. I didn't think the B Driver near-falls were as effective as they could have been, Bito doesn't put that certain 'finality' into the move. Iroha on the other hand was doing a fine job of that. A good match, but there were a couple of things that prevented it from being great. ***1/2

This was just absolutely NUTS. Incredibly brutal spotfest with no dull moments whatsoever - hard hitting strike exchanges, great pace, insane spots & just all around amazing violence. ****1/2

Perfect culmination to the Prince Puma vs. Johnny Mundo rivalry. Terrific combination of great athleticism, storytelling, drama & big match feel. ****1/4