November 2017

This was perhaps Suzuki’s most heel performance to date, although “heel” may not be the right term, as he’s colder and more calculated here, making Kamitani look like a young lion. The opening sets the stage perfectly, as Suzuki coolly side-steps Kamitani’s hot-headed rush. Kamitani looks nervous and hesitant in there, his takedown attempts almost timid, seemingly knowing that Suzuki is such a matwork master that there’s about a 0.00002% chance of outwrestling him. He comes off like a child at times, an example being Suzuki’s drop down and Kamitani delayed reaction, which elicits giggles from the Korakuen crowd. Then, as if feeling sorry for him, Suzuki lays down…only to…

Masaaki Mochizuki defends the Open the Dream Gate Title There is a nice escalation early on leading to a Yokosuka slap after a rope break. Both end up ramming their primary weapon (Mochi's leg, Yokosuka's arm) into the post early. The selling is not what I like, but it works into the story of the early match. Mochi using kicks to the arm is a really good way to use his strength against a targeted bodypart. Yokosuka really works over Mochi's leg and I am digging this match as an arm vs. leg match. Yokosuka countering Mochi's knee counter to a leg grab is a nice nod to their history as partners. I liked seeing a figure four not get turned over. The second figure…

TOKYO Princess of Princess Championship: Reika Saiki © vs. Rika Tatsumi Rika has been building the strength of her hip attacks and they were a serious threat to Saiki's title. There's a cool spot where Reika counters one with a kick and ends up hurting herself. This was fantastic; the crowd was hot and the action was engaging and full of emotion. ****1/2

Yuka Sakazaki & Maho Kurone vs. Super Milk Combination (Nonoko & Yuna Manase) Amazing debut for Super Milk Combination. Yuna looked really motivated, and Nonoko and Yuka were good as always. Maho is obviously the designated fall person, but she was fighting hard. That headscissors counter into the Oppai Driver from Nonoko was nuts. Good stuff. ***3/4

Io and HZK have been the only team to consistently have watchable matches in this Stardom Tag League. Surprisingly though, this was their best match of the tournament against AZM and Kid. It's getting to be kinda of freaky to see how much better AZM is when she's in the ring with her QQ teammates as opposed to being in there by herself. Even Starlight Kid looked solid, not the typical young who is just going to do a bunch of flippy stuff in a sloppy manner. A very fun match. ***3/4

Goddesses of Stardom Tag League 2017: Oedo Tai (Kagetsu & Hana Kimura) vs. Natsuko Tora & Shiki Shibusawa Kagetsu's first match as a member of the Stardom roster. The crowd is very into Oedo Tai, they are riding a wave of momentum and it creates a special feel to their matches. Shibusawa gave one heck of an underdog performance in the closer, scoring a near-fall on Kagetsu. Good stuff. ***1/2

Impact World Champion Eli Drake vs Johnny Impact (Morrison) - Bound For Glory 2017 People can complain until the cows come home about Eli Drake being an Attitude Era wannabe, but at the end of the day he has the cadence & conviction that is sorely in today's pro wrestling promo scene. Great promo and really his stuff on NWA Power. On the end of the spectrum is one of the all time terrible promos in pro wrestling history, John Morrison. Morrison does well with The Miz where he can bounce his one liners off him, but left to his own devices he is abysmal. The promo before this match had me cringing badly. That being said I think Morrison is a fantastic pro wrestler …

This was a very good, borderline great tag match. Everybody gave impressive performances; SHO & YOH ruled with their work over the ribs of ACH & their quick combinations were really fun to watch, Taguchi was a really great hot tag, but GODDAMN the star of this bout was definitely ACH - he put on such a great performance, his selling of the injured ribs of his was superb & he brought the fire, he brought the charisma, he brought the right amount of emotion. Terrific stuff by him. Overall I think this would've been better had it been shaved off a bit, because in the end it did drag a bit, but yeah, a really damn good match. ***3/4

I can't remember if this match was better than their G1 Climax bout...I think I'd give the nod to this one based on some of the rectifications from their first match. A lot of "your good, I'm better, no, wait, I'm the best"-ing around to open before Tanahashi settles into to working Ibushi's leg in classic Tanahashi fashion. You know, lots of legwhips. One area that was a marked improvement from the G1 match-up was Ibushi's selling. When he tries to get fresh with his standing moonsault, his leg gives out on the landing when Tanahashi rolls out of the way. Tanahashi, working that veteran ace style, does a good job of cutting off Ibushi's momentum by targeting the injured…

Peak Nicopro here as the camera falls off the tripod during wrestler intros. This match is better than their title match from last year mainly due to the improvement of Chihiro has made. Cassandra has an awesome character but her control segments are boring and her overall ringwork is still clunky. Still Chihiro's performance carried this as she keeps getting better at adding drama to her to her big matches. A nice, solid, main event title match. ***1/2

New Chibis (Hiromi Mimura & Konami) & Team Jungle (Jungle Kyona & Natsuko Tora) vs. Oedo Tai (Hana Kimura, Kagetsu, Kris Wolf & Sumire Natsu) This was a fantastic debut for Sumire, she fits so well alongside the colorful characters in Oedo Tai. Hiromi is a perfect target for her, their heat-building was brilliant. Hana and Tamu are not getting along with the newest addition to the stable so there was also a relevos increibles element to this match that was amusing. Hot crowd, quality brawling and comedy. ***1/4

I always go back and forth on which joshi tag team is better, either Best Friends or Avid Rival. In this match, Avid Rival make a strong argument for themselves as they take what should have been a throw away mid-card tag match but turn it into something pretty damn good. Ayako has a quality performance here too and Haruhi put in a hard working effort similar to her title match with Mizunami back in March. Still, this is really all about Avid Rival and just another example how good of a team they are. ***3/4

Regina di WAVE Championship #1 Contendership Tournament - Semi-Finals: Nagisa Nozaki vs. Rina Yamashita This is the most impressive Nozaki has looked since returning. She was going at it with Rina. Her movements and emotes are always striking to me, and she is very calculating with that sleeper hold. Yamashita held the match together, and they crafted a great story around Nozaki's dangerous sleeper. ***1/2

I wish WAVE Network would post more OVER SUN matches because they few that they have posted have all been really good, if not great. Here they take on NEW-TRA who have been on a bit of a hot streak of their own lately. OVER SUN control the early going with their size and experience advantage but NEW-TRA eventually work their way back into the match with some nice counters and double-teams. The finish is some great back and forth, especially with Ohka dishing out some nasty big boots, including absolutely drilling Kadokura with one to get the win. Fantastic match. ****

It says a lot about me that this was one of the few 2017 wrestling matches that I could stomach or care to watch. Yes, this sluggish in parts and largely consists of appealing to the crowd. Super Muneco looks really bad, but then, that dude always sucked, and Raton and Pinocho are still absolute workrate machines. Something that is often misunderstood: Formulas don't have to be boring. Yes, you know roughly what's gonna happen, that there will be lots of technico shine and fooling the rudos here, but these guys all have so much stuff they can do and mix up you never know what's exactly gonna happen. So any unexpected turn and twist of events ends up adding to the enj…

One thing you can always rely on Sendai Girls for are tag matches that have an interesting mix of big names. Chihiro was the stand out here, primarily with her outstanding selling. A lot of it is the result of both Meiko and Aja really taking it to Chihiro in this match. Ayako is solid here but her performance gets kinda lost with the other three. A pretty good match, which is what you would expect from the talent involved. ***3/4

Hana Kimura vs. Mika Shirahime When I read this only went 4-minutes, I was psyched. They were making all of their offense count, there's hard slaps and head-sweeping kicks and boots, and a shoot headbutt from Hana that sounded disgusting. Hana showed some barbarism in this, she tries to take Shirahime's face off with a Bakatare Sliding Kick, and ends the match with a rough-looking knee strike. ***1/4

A very good character driven match. I really loved the beginning stuff w/ Black establishing dominance by showcasing his technical wrestling skills, I'd actually say that overall that was my favorite stuff in the match. After that stage was done, it was more 50/50 with them trading big bombs. This was my first time seeing The Velveteen Dream in action & he sure impressed - I thought he did a damn good job working his character into the match; great facial expressions & selling. The post-match w/ Aleister finally SAYING HIS NAME was really awesome too. ***1/2

This was on par w/ the main event WarGames match, which was my MOTN. Enjoyed the crap out of it - a superb 5 minute sprint with Ohno showcasing that excellent, hard hitting offense of his & Lars working that monster shtick very well by not going down, showing that he can take a goddamn beating. Super happy to see Ohno get a Takeover spot & he absolutely delivered. Awesome match. ***3/4

Best match on the show. Some awkward moments but that was to be expected. Once Wolfe & Dain got involved, things kicked up a notch & the action remained really good from that point on till the end. Everybody gave really good performances. ***3/4

Hard to believe that this is the first singles title match that Io has had in five months. I found the way that these two worked this match to be really interesting. Bito's whole approach to the match was to use some really grinding matwork in order to slow Io down so that she could hit her strikes and big moves. In return, Io has to tries to maximize any opportunity that she has to pick up the pace. There were a couple of rough spots during the finish, notable the two of them trying to pull off the old 'rana counter to the Die Hard Kansai, but nothing that really hurt the match. Overall, this was the second straight awesome Korakuen main event for Bito and it's as great …

Good match but pretty disappointing overall. I preferred the Goldberg, Joe and Strowman matches for Lesnar. Brock toned down suplex city so I suspect people are going to like this the best. Something about the pacing was off and it felt awkward at times. Still, good individual performances by both. Some really great bumping by AJ and he got in quite a lot of offense. Neat leg selling by Brock. Him violently powering out of the calf crusher was the best, most memorable spot. *** 1/4

Mr. Niebla gets zero time to shine as Caifan attacks him with a chain at the start of the match. Caifan then spends the next five minutes brutalising him, by tearing opening his mask and brawling around the ring. Caifan is great at throwing punches and looking like a smug asshole. The image of Niebla's bloody face being exposed through his torn mask made for a gruesome visual. Niebla hulks up by dancing and spitting into the air and catching said spit, nice. Caifan is a excellent heel and can even look smug whilst taking a beating. Without spoiling the ending, I wasn't a fan of the lame finish. There's some great stuff here, but it feels too all over the place for me to h…

Roman Reigns vs The Miz, Raw, 20/11/17 Intercontinental Championship Match This match came out of a really fun MizTV segment with The Shield earlier. Miz stalls to start but gets his clock cleaned by an awesome uppercut. Reigns dominates with power early on and the crowd chants "Roman, Roman!" Miz runs away from a superman punch and takes over with a DDT on the outside. Reigns beats the count out at the absolute last second. Reigns might have the best punches in WWE. He fights out of a Miz chinlock with another big uppercut but Miz stays on top with his backbreaker-neckbreaker combo. Miz running desperately towards each corner to keep on offence is great. Of course h…

It would have been understandable if these for to treat this match as a throw away. It's your basic "Let's make a tag match out of the top two singles matches on our next show." Arisa and Tsukka don't treat this match like that at all as they spend any time that they are in the ring together trying to rip out the other's soul with her bare hands. Yoshiko and Mizunami don't match that intensity early of the former Best Friends but they do slowly ramp it up throughout. The finish is basically the four of them pairing off so that they can random beat the heck out of each other. Unexpectedly great match. ****