December 2017

I'm really enjoying how different joshi group are doing odes to early 90's AJW comm tape main-events. No one in particular has a stand out performance, what makes the match really work is just how well everybody works together with one another. Meiko and Chihiro continuing their feud was a highlight. This match also makes you wish that Stardom would get their head out of their butt and final book a Io/Hiroyo singles match. This is another match in the recent run of very good/great random main-eventer tag matches. ****

I figured it was worth saying that the Antonio Honda comedy segment halfway through this is really great if you've spent the past six months going through the DDT archives. Even without understanding the fox promo, he's always good but seeing him try to do the running forearm that HARASHIMA's team does and failing really had me dead. Rest of the match is pretty good, DDT house show tags are cool most of the time. This is on a Best Western hotel somewhere around Tokyo that they run once a year. They can go outside the ring and brawl in the middle of a bunch of wedding tables and under an incredibly tacky chandelier and that's exactly what they do. Match is very fast-paced…

Great showing by Jordan, and a great story about the spoiled brat being taught a lesson by a more experienced wrestler. What I love one those IC matches is that Roman is just finding different stuff to do according to the match and it enhances so much the experience. Jordan has a bad knee going to the match, and it's amazing how a single leg crab managed to get people on their toes. Great selling by both, specially by JJ.

This was amazing. Ohno has been delivering everytime he has got a chance to do so in this 2nd NXT run of his, and this was the best match of that run yet. It was 100% 2016 best wrestler in the world like performance from him. He beat the crap out of Gargano, just straight up bullied him with his beautiful elbows, boots, sentons, you name it. He also had a terrific dance partner with him - Johnny G gave a wonderful babyface performance, selling his ass off & busting out great, super well timed, big hope spots. Great, great stuff. ****1/2

Mizuki vs. Yuka Sakazaki Great match, it's a timeout draw so they're taking it slow, but I thought they made the 'filler' feel meaningful. The crowd bought into the near-falls and submission struggles, and these two build to a hot finish. ***1/4

Superb match. Those two had a great singles match prior to Survivor Series '15, and this one managed to surpass that. Cesaro as a heel is much more intense and ruthless, and combined with Roman's usually great selling, makes for a very strong showing for both parts. Loved Reigns using stuff like Magistral Cradles because he couldn't rely as much on his power moves due to the arm work, or how that 1st Superman Punch looked not as effective. Roman is one of the most consistent workers WWE has seen in a while.

Daichi Hashimoto & Hideyoshi Kamitani (Okami) vs Naoya Nomura & Yuma Aoyagi - All Japan Real World Tag League Final day 12/12/17 Well I'll be damned this was awesome! A young guys matchup - Big Japan's team are 25 year old each while All Japan's is 22 each - for a shot at the tournament finals. It was weird but dope watching Okami having to work as the imposing, invader team and they pretty much worked Strong BJ formula match and it fucking works, with them mostly working over Yuma and trying to keep Nomura at bay. This was 14 minutes long but felt longer (in a good way) with a jam packed Korakuen Hall growing more and more invested in Aoyagi and his battle to ge…

This is Suzuki's retirement match. DNA had this weird genre of matches where one of their trainees had come to the decision wrestling isn't for them, and so they retire and they do a match memorializing their two year career. This time, poor Dai Suzuki has to face three different wrestlers in single matches back to back (so this is technically three matches but I think they have to be taken as a whole). He obviously eats shit against all of them. Now, I don't think anyone in this is all that good other than Umeda but the whole thing is weirdly very primal and good. As far as Suzuki goes, he's clearly not all that talented but his selling is fantastic in this, and as a re…

This match felt like it was the antithesis to a lot of the modern wrestling matches that have over-choreographed, sterile action. Everything in this match had a nasty, bitter edge to it. It's rare the there isn't a sequence where there is a brutal or cheap shot that one takes at the other. At the same time, they keep the action going as there isn't really a stretch of the thirty minutes where they slow things down in order to stall to kill time. Another awesome match in the continuing, on-again/off-again relationship of Best Friends. ****

This was an absolutely awesome, competitive back & forth contest. Captured the spirit of what ROH, at it's best, is all about. ***3/4

Nothing spectacular but a refreshing, simplistic exhibition with good struggle on the mat and suplexes that felt important. For a guy who doesn’t wrestle much, Barnett showed good agility, and his takedowns and transitions looked better than Thatcher, who was, more or less, on auto-pilot here. There wasn't much heat to this, the crowd was weird, and the selling was minimal but Barnett's strikes and suplexes looked great (poor Thatcher doesn't know how to throw a good kick) and the finish was cool, with Barnett laying into Thatcher with a stiff combo in the corner to set up the Capture Buster.

After your standard junior-y opening exchange and a quick journey in and out of the arena, this mostly turned into what I was hoping it would be: dueling neckwork to set up their respective crossface finishes. TAKA isn't quite as smooth as a guy like Togo and some of the transitions felt delayed but it was still a fun back-and-forth with TAKA using the legscissors on the mat and Daisuke hanging onto to a necklock, rushing back to it each time TAKA throws him off. The finishing crossface scramble was a lot of fun with some good counters from both until Daisuke's able to trap the arm for the finish. Nothing blow away but a solid addition to Daisuke's 2017 resume.

This is a semi-final of a No. 1 contenders tournament and a rematch of an upset win that Nozaki got a couple of months ago. In that match, Nozaki won in less than 5 minutes when she locked her sleeper on Mizunami, causing her to pass out. Here, Nozaki feels like Jake Roberts when his DDT was over as an instant finish. Nozaki's sleeper looms over the match and forces Mizunami to try to be more aggressive in the early going. Anytime that Mizunami goes for a big move and either misses or gets countered Nozaki, almost always comes back with the sleeper. Very intriguing and well executed match. ***3/4

This is the final to a No. 1 contenders tournament for Misaki Ohata's Regina Di WAVE title. This was a very strong performance from Yumi Ohka. She had no problem matching the physicality of Mizunami and also capitalized on the work on the neck work that Nozaki had done in the semi-final earlier in the night. Ohka does about a hundred big boots in this but each one is measured and hits with such impact that it doesn't come off as a repetitive move. Actually really looking forward to watching Ohka vs. Ohata after this match. ***3/4

At the show live in Boston, OH MY FUCKING GOD! AJ STYLES IS THE MAN! He is the King of Traditional pro wrestling. Jinder established power game so AJ goes for legs. Then AJ gets hung out to dry on the ropes in a great transition to heat. EVERYTHING is directed at the midsection. AJ puts on a selling clinic and takes like 8 million belly flop bumps! Could have peppered in some more hope spots but best Jinder heat segment ever! great extended comeback. AJ's offense is so good. The Colossal was a nail biter for me. I'm such an AJ fan and being live total mark transformation for me wanting AJ to kick out. I popped huge. Loved the submission finish! Great call! AJ is…

So here's my second ever review as part of The Secret Santo match trade give to me by Lucha enthusiast Rah. I like I've mentioned previously am a casual as casual can be lucha guy as I have never dedicated a ton of time to delve into the style and am only knowledgeable about the most famous names, companies and cross over groups and talents from Japan and North America. So all that aside here we go with this match from a company I've never seen nor heard of featuring guys in a similar boat with me. The arena is a good size and decently filled with a loud and vocal crowd which is great as dead crowds really make me less interested when watching. They are fight…

Brought to me by Secret Santo. This was an ok brawl, a lot of hit and miss stuff. Match was waaay too fucking long and it dragged a in a lot of parts, both wrestlers having to sell and walk to other ring to get weapons or set up stuff became annoying pretty fast, and for a "final fight" type of brawl this didn't look like anything that special. When the thumbtacks were introduced I thought this was going to get into a different level, at least in intensity, but it was still pretty much the same as the previous 2/3 of the match. I did like the selling and the overall story of what they were going for - kinda wish I could see more from Cage - just wasn't that convinced with…

I am really surprised I didn't hear more hype about this. I loved it. Maybe I am being contrarian, but this was my favorite match between the two in NXT. I thought the early limb work and joint manipulation was fantastic. The pacing was almost WOS-esque (at least a pretty hard nod to the style/era). The counters were great. This had hatred and malice, even for a Dunne match. Bate's ear is bleeding. They pace things out nicely. The reverses and counters all make sense. I really liked a lot of the little things they did. The hand work comes back in key spots, with Bate not being able to keep a grip in a pin or needing to sell it after delivering a massive right hand. My on…

Reika Saiki vs. Yuka Sakazaki Another great timeout draw involving Yuka. Miyu might be positioned as the ace, but I think Yuka is the full package. I like the way Reika carries herself, and she knows how to make those big moments count. The first half of this is pure gold, the outside segment has to be one of the best I've seen all year, and all of the cut-offs from Reika were great. ***1/4

Talk about it here.

Wonder of Stardom Championship: Io Shirai © vs. HZK This is the third match between these two this year, and I thought it was the best of the three. This was an intense back and forth with amazing bumps and counters. Io has been doing a great job of keeping herself fresh lately, she has been finding new approaches to her matches and I thought she was interesting here. HZK's growth was on full display. ***1/2

This is for Mary's High Speed title and is Starlight Kid's first title match. This was a super fun, and like Io/HZK later on the card, didn't follow the typical veteran versus youngster formula. This was more Mary using various lucha holds to slow and ware down the fast, high flying Kid. This was easily the best that Starlight Kid has looked so far. She was a spot machine but everything she did looked smooth. Well worth the time to go out of your way to watch. ***3/4

This is Yoko Bito's swan song, which is a shame since I think the last four months have easily been the best run of her career. She looked really good matched up with Satomura and it's too bad that they couldn't have had a singles match in Sendai Girls in her last couple of months. Iroha was a standout here as she worked extremely well with both Storm and Satomura to the point that I'd love to see those two singles matches. A strong match and a nice way to cap off Bito's career. ***3/4

I was really excited to see this as these two are my most improved women of 2017, (well Iroha at least makes tape consistently now.) This opens up with some nice matwork which eventually leads to Chihiro getting a good grip on Iroha's leg to stretch it out. Iroha does a good job of selling while still using the leg on offense while Chihiro uses it as a shortcut to get back on offense. This might have been right up there as one of the top joshi matches of the year but the last minute was pretty sloppy. Even with that, this is still a great match. ****

This is quite the matchup of veteran stars and junior partners. This might be my favourite Meiko performance of the year. She was really on, especially when she would slickly move from matwork to more high impact moves. Despite her age and slight weight gain, Ayako still moves around really well. Both of the younger workers came off strong, going back and forth with the vets fairly. A very fun match. ****