March 2018

The boys from the Sportiva Dojo spar it out in HARD HIT, the last vestige of shoot-style in Japan. This was like 6:00 minutes long and it ruled. Fuminori Abe's slick as cat shit on linoleum against Koji Iwamoto, in his ground defense, his counters, his speed and transitions. Iwamoto's able to snag him with an armbar and when Abe tries to fancy his way out of it, Iwamoto shows good control, keeping him check. Love Abe's arm drag takedown and when Iwamoto takes him down with an STO, Abe turns it into a hammerlock, trapping the arm with his leg in order to flip him over into a guillotine check. It's awesome. The striking doesn't get to heavy and Iwamoto uses a little uranage…

What a goddamn MARVELOUS match. The most consistent wrestler in the world continues his streak of terrific performances in his JUST TAP OUT New Japan Cup tour & SANADA delivers the match of his career so far. The storytelling was top freaking notch - you got SANADA actually owning Zack in the early stages w/ the wrist control. Zack gets more & more frustrated as SANADA continues showing that he is no slouch when it comes to ZSJ's game; eventually though Zack finds a way & starts targeting that arm of SANADA in brutal, nasty, classic Zack Sabre Jr. fashion. SANADA sells it super well. The feel of urgency & physicality is off the charts at that point, SANADA…

This is from the second night of the Catch the WAVE tournament. Momono gets a lot of praise for acting like an annoying little shit but I think that she that this is the first time that she really makes it work within the story of the match. Unfortunately for her, Ohata is really good at being a nasty bitch that works her over pretty good when she gets her hands on her. Momono is able to stay in the match by doing a nice job working over Ohata's arm and not just relying on rollups for offense. This is an awesome match that shows Ohata clearly being the best joshi worker so far this year while Momono having potential to be a legit top worker down the line. ****1/2

This is the main event of the second night of the Catch the WAVE tournament. This match is just a straight forward slobberknocker as these two spend pretty much the entire match going right straight at each other with some nasty shots. Ohka has stepped up the last few months as she has picked up the pace of her matches and relied on hard hitting strikes. Yamashita looked the best that she has in awhile mainly because the match perfectly fit her strengths as a worker. Another strong match for a tournament that has been really good so far. ****

One of the best rivalries in wrestling comes to Defiant & delivers an absolute banger. Loved Starr controlling things with that headlock in the early stages - eventually WALTER has enough of that though & starts throwing him around. From that point on, it's your traditional David vs. Goliath action w/ 2 men who excel in their roles in that formula. ****

Mustafa Ali has firmly established himself as the best guy in the tournament with this match. Another spirited babyface performance from him that makes this match so much better than the emotionally cold Cedric vs. Roddy match last week. Several spots here look really brutal just from the way Drew looks so vicious and angry with his facial expressions slamming Ali into the post etc... A one point in the match Mustafa loses his temper with Drew and hoists him up onto the announce table to hit him with something, only for Drew to counter and back body drop him straight to the floor. A lesson learned about letting your anger get the better of you. Great stuff. ****1/4

The Strong Climb tournament has been fun as fuck so far. A bunch of 8-12 minutes matches that are so enjoyable to watch and very unique from one another, and with some very clever finishes. But anyway, this match, So far this year we've seen Nomura (24 years old) having a "leap year" of sorts in terms of performances and in ring presence by being a feisty young guy that does not give a fuck about anything and will take it to anyone that's put in front on him. Well, what happens then when he's paired up with a guy like Aoki, who is only 21 years old and he also has a chip on his shoulder and wants to show HE is the promising star of the promotion? We get a dope fucking…

Simply beautiful. I love the uniqueness ZSJ brings to New Japan - all of his New Japan Cup matches have been such a breath of fresh air. The uniqueness of this match in particular hit me big time; it's a big tournament finals match that goes over 30 mins in New Japan. And it's mostly spent on the mat, working over limbs & displaying a true struggle. Zack was vicious working the crap out of pretty much every limb Tana had to offer & Tana's selling was excellent - also with it being Tana in a big match situation, the drama & passion was through the roof. Absolutely loved that. What a match. ****1/2

This was a special challenge match to setup the Apache sisters challenging for the Goddesses of Stardom titles at the end of the month. They come off looking really strong here as they show off a strong mix of lucha style spots with some real hard hitting strikes. HZK takes the brunt of the Apache's offense, including a couple of nasty figure four variations from Faby. They also work together to contain Io. Overall, just a great showcase for what the Apache's can do. ***3/4

This is for NEO Biishiki-gun Princess Tag Titles and is another pretty good tag match from them. The match is worked differently than the other Biishiki-gun tags as it's quicker with a bit more back and forth. Marika Kobashi impressed here as she wasn't afraid to hit like a truck. Miyu and Saki-sama really laid into one another. In fact, I actually want to see these two have a title match together. Just good stuff all around. ***1/2

As far as spotfests go, this might be the craziest 2-on-2 one to hit the PWG ring since Samuray Del Sol & AR Fox vs. Ricochet & Rich Swann from 2013. Super fun action w/ quite a few genuine "holy shit" -moments in there, in particular by Bandido who looked absolutely unreal with some of the stuff he did. ***3/4

This is from the third night of the Catch the WAVE tournament. These two take about a minute and a half to feel each other out then just start going right at each other with bombs. They still do manage to not force any of the action either so that while the match is short, it has a nice flow to it despite the constant use of big moves. An absolutely tremendous sprint. ****

An epic war of a match for Ilja's second title defense. Somewhat of a short match, but a total sprint spot fest from start to finish. There was a toooooon of chops from literally everyone, and even though it was mostly spots, all four guys managed to weave in their respective intertwining stories. Starr and WALTER went at it, Ilja and WALTER went at it, but Banks wasn't going to be left out as he also took the fight to each man. I would love to see singles title matches against Ilja in the future, ****1/2.

ICE×∞ Championship: Hiiragi Kurumi © vs. Miyako Matsumoto Miyako's a comedy worker, but she wrestled an epic main event with drama and tension. Her performance was unreal. I love how they played off of Miyako's previous ICE×∞ win (8 years ago) during the finishing stretch, that was superb storytelling. The submission struggles here were fantastic as well. Excellent match. ****1/2

Kenny Omega hesitates to harm The Bucks, even stopping Ibushi from going after Matt's back. Loved Matt's back selling throughout, making it the center for some of the match's biggest transitions. Particularly liked how it forced him to drop the Sharpshooter. Thought it was a nice little plot thread that ran through the match. Then they do crazy spots, and I'm sorry but I'm a sucker for crazy spots. And these didn't feel overkill, they transitioned from one to the other really well. We didn't get too many pinfall attempts til about the last 10 minutes or so. I like how the crazier spots that stick out at least had significant character moments. Ibushi forcing Omega to…

This was superb. Liger's offense was nasty & Ospreay's bumping for him was ridiculous in a very good way. A super fun, great bombfest. ****

Very fun interactions between Okada & Zack - great tease for their upcoming title match + a great FIP segment w/ Ishii; Suzuki & ZSJ working like dad & son with those submissions while Okada had the ref distracted was amazing. Some very good, hard hitting interactions between Ishii & Minoru, too. ***3/4

Flash Morgan Webster with that amazing babyface performance! Travis Banks looking & feeling very fresh w/ that heel turn! I love it. The beginning set the pace of the match - I love me a good Superman Punch spot, and the one Travis delivered to Webster after they shook hands was GREAT. After that it's mostly Travis on top while Flash makes some awesome, fiery comebacks; one fella said that Webster's performance was very Daniel Bryan -like, and I can agree with that. He was absolutely rocking my world with those brief comebacks he got - LOVED those suicide dives he hit. Travis was really damn good working on top too, with that smug look on his face the whole time. Exce…

This is from the fourth night of the Catch the WAVE tournament. Momono puts on one hell of a performance here. I was very surprised at how Momono went right at Ayako but in a way that fit her character. She manages to keep Ayako off balance for most of the match. When Ayako wins, it's more due to Momono lacking the true finishing move to put her away more than anything else. Tremendous stuff. ****1/4

The main event for the fourth night of the Catch the WAVE tournament is a matchup of two former winners. Ohka continues her strong run recently here as she works a match were she wisely avoids a lot Mizunami's power attacks and takes some measured shots of her own. Mizunami does a good job of selling for Ohka's offense despite Ohka looking be far the least imposing of the two. Just a strong display of very smart work. ***3/4

Cavernario nails both the cartoon silly caveman and the brutal, uncaring caveman characters at the same time, and it's always delightful and weird. He really beats the crap out of Soberano over the first two falls here, and it sets up Soberano's very divey comeback nicely. I love these two.

In this match Toni puts her SWA title vs. Viper's ICW title. Out of the matches that this two have had with each other this was my favourite. They pretty much cut out the cutesy 'watch Viper do World of Sport spot' part of the match in favour of just throwing flat out bombs. Viper also took some nutty bumps including a piledriver from Toni on the stage. The only thing I didn't like about this match was Toni no-selling an apron dive and a Michinoku Driver from Viper. Other than that, this match was a super fun bombfest. ****