May 2018

Fuck me running. These two are fucking crazy people. I didn’t like this quite as much as their NYC match, but this was still a ton of fun. This felt a little more like they were moving form thing to thing. On the other hand, it also felt a good bit more brutal on the hole. Janela wound up with a nasty cut down his back, I believe from the barb wire. Havoc did a fucking top rope double stomp on to tacks with no shoes on. Both men walloped each other with some chairs and pans and the like. This was a ton of fun and moved at quite the pace. All the cringy moments where there and both men looked absolutely insane during different parts of the match, which was more or less w…

Well, I can’t say I expected these two to be in the finals of this tournament.... NJPW contracted Sabre vs a WWE (NXT) contract Ohno in the finals of the biggest indy wrestling tournament in all of Europe, but here we are. The story of the tournament might have been Hero sort of slowly but surely getting his wheels back under him and improving in each round, looking a little more crisp and a little more ready to go. Sabre was Sabre all weekend, defiant and in people’s faces, being a real prick about everything and beating everyone despite it. Hero starts hard here and gets going early. Of course he is somewhat slowly broken down until Sabre can start to work the legs. S…

I love how Sabre has to work really hard to even get to any holds here; like when he finally gets a sweep and then a heel hook, it really feels like a turning point. Some of Lee's strikes look especially monstrous, and him curling Sabre up from his armbar is an amazing strength spot. I love both Sabre and Lee, but Sabre's insistence on having bigger people beat the hell out of him and Lee's reliance on overconfidence as his Achilles Heel, respectively, sometimes take me out of their matches a little. Both of those ideas are used perfectly here, though. This is my favorite of their matches, and my favorite match of this tournament.

Kzy is finally getting the big singles push, and even has his own faction right behind him, and this match against one of the top DG guys was his latest test. It wasn't as crazy as the match with Mochizuki a few months ago, but Kzy still managed to put up a pretty fair fight against the just as crafty YAMATO. Discussing who needed the win more is for another time, but Kzy still managed to show he can hang with the main eventers, ****.

Shingo against Yoshino isn't a singles match you get to see very often, but it's always a great time when they clash. Seeing Yoshino warp around the ring at high speeds against Shingo's amazing power and timing makes for some great chemistry. Unfortunately for Yoshino, Shingo's power was just too much. He didn't even need to use interference to get the clean pin either, ****1/4.

Their March match is one of my favorite WWE matches of the year, and I am glad to see that the chemistry they showed in that one wasn't a one-off thing, because this was another absolute banger between the two. Murphy is just an absolute bruiser, could watch him on the offense destroying his fellow 205'ers all day long. Ali's bumping goes perfectly w/ Murphy's amazing offense & Ali's offense of his own looked absolutely great as well - while Ali is a bonafide bump machine, I thought Buddy stole the show here in that department; he made Ali look like million bucks with his amazing bumping. Ali's flippy stuff has never looked as brutal as it did here. Awesome all around…

Very good match. Awesome selling of the midsection + general FIP'ing by Bryan & Rusev's selling of the arm towards the end was just terrific. ***1/2

Recorded: 4/22/2018 I just watched this after finishing SSS16, where I thought they had probably the match of the tournament. I wound up liking this a good bit better. While I thought it was fun and unique for them to build around the lariat of Starr in SSS16 you can see that it was part of the match here, but not the focus. I might even venture a guess that this match inspired the shift to the lariat later on. Regardless, this was a really tight back and forth match. Starr keeping up with Sabre on the ground and forcing Sabre to step back and strike before reengaging the grappling was a nice touch, really sets Sabre apart as a master tactician here. Starr sold the le…

This was really good in under ten minutes and has me really excited to see what they could do in a title match. Soberano isn't generally noted for his matwork, but Negro's selling and struggle on the mat allows them to work on hold for a minute at the beginning and make it interesting. They go pretty full steam ahead after that, with some really fun back and forth including some unusual running kicks from Soberano that Casas eventually turns into a dragon screw, a very hard looking springboard dropkick by Soberano, and a completely bonkers top rope powerbomb bump that I'd be shocked by a 20 year old taking, never mind someone's Negro's age. Soberano takes much less of…

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

This was very fun. Good stuff early on w/ Liger overwhelming Cody, and Cody only getting the advantage with the help of the greatest manager of all-time, BURNARD the BUSINESS BEAR. Bless. Cody was very good on top & I liked the brief leg psychology they went with. Liger of course rules as a babyface w/ his selling & comebacks. ***1/2

Of course this was great. An absolutely amazing spotfest with the SSB being fantastic nasty bastards, the Bucks playing some of their vintage greatest hits & Matt Jackson continuing his hellacious 2018 FIP-run. Pure mark out festival from start to finish. ****1/2

Holy christ if you think their first match was crazy then you have to watch this rematch. Much longer and for the belt this time around, but still all around a very physcial big lads match with the best of both guys. It might've gone overkill by the end with finisher spam and no sells galore, but the crowd was still eating everything up by the end. If Lee needed one final crazy match to finish off his indie career, then it was this match, ****3/4.

The second of two WrestleMania weekend rematches in an OTT ring. First off, I’ll say I much preferred their WrestleCon match to this one. They just did a lot more physical stuff, and the crowd was quite a bit hotter. Not to knock this match though as it was still very fun stuff with what you would expect from both men, and that was a very physical battle. In all seriousness though, I need Cobb in the G1 ASAP, ****.

“Shit Finn Balor” isn’t so shit anymore. In all honesty though this is the first Devlin match I have seen since his lackluster performance in the WWE UK tournament, but it’s obvious in this Sabre match that he’s vastly improved. He showed great intensity and psychology in dealing with his injured wrist, which was a major target for Zack. Speaking of Zack, he was ironically the killer in this match as he super predacious in trying to annihilate Devlin body part by body part. The story they told and the physical war they waged on each other set for an awesome title match main event where Devlin survived by a hair. Looking forward to seeing where Devlin takes his momentum ne…

You can’t ever expect Ospreay and Riddle NOT to have an awesome match. This OTT match played off their EVOLVE match from a month prior, but they didn’t have the drama of Will’s neck to build off of this time around. That said, both men brought a considerable amount of intensity and urgency to beat the hell out of each other in hard strikes and crazy moves. Loved the storytelling towards the end with Riddle’s urgency backfiring on him as it led to Ospreay getting his win back from the former, ****1/2.

more detailed diving here San Nakadai was a legit Pancrase guy who never seemed to get anywhere bar opening act for what seemingly was a fairly infrequent career. he now has the Yakuza tats to go along with his wrestling persona as a dangerous MMA guy who will kick you in the face if need be. There's a fascination with such a matchup with someone like Keita who typically had to sprawl with fairly giving Bati-Bati guys and not legit fighters. Is it warranted? I think so in this case. You see that unique matchup become apparent as Keita tries doing his little tumble roll at the very start and Sen almost by instinct tries kicking him while he's down there lol. Gen…

These two had one of my favorite DDT matches of 2017 and once again, these two proved that their in-ring chemistry is a key to success. I've always had a soft spot for HARASHIMA's matwork, which usually doesn't go anywhere but when it's happening, I dig it. His leg trip to KUDO from the ground was especially neat. HARASHIMA is also one of the more frustrating sellers but when he's on, he's on, and here, he was on. He eats a spinning back kick to the face and I loved him immediately bailing to the outside after making it to his feet before the ten count...only for KUDO to take him out with a big dive! KUDO kicks hard and he kicked a lot in this match. His head kick toward …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R709wVwzcsE&t=24s This was the replacement main event for the show where Ayako Hamada vacated the Sendai Girls title. Personally, I think this was DASH's best performance since she started her hardcore gimmick a couple of years ago. Chihiro gives another strong main event performance. Despite this match being relatively short, they still manage to keep it action packed with a strong transitions to give it a nice flow throughout. ****

Roddy and O'Reilly have returned to their calling as big ragdoll bumping chickenshit heels. They look great bumping for the babyfaces and they put that little extra stank on it that makes a babyface comeback so satisfying. Burch looked great during his mat exchanges with O'Reilly and made a sympathetic babyface during the first control segment. Then we get Pete Dunne coming in as an intense, heated babyface and he threw some fantastic strikes and cut a great pace working against the heels. Oney Lorcan was a fantastic hot tag to end the last control segment and lead into the big finishing stretch. Great six-man tag and it makes me pretty excited for the UE-Burch/Lorcan tag…

This is Daniel Bryan vs The Miz from Newcastle. How would you judge it?

Highflying vs. Technical Work is a dynamic that works super well 90% of the time, and it certainly did here. Daniel Makabe is an absolute stud in the ring - his work in this one was just outstanding. Fantastic work over Zayne, especially liked that leg targeting & he sold all of Zayne's highflying offense in superb fashion. I do think the match dragged a bit towards the end, but it was still a really good one. Borderline great, even. Daniel Makabe rules. ***3/4

This was not a match I had expected to be as good as it was. With two guys very well known for being high flyers, I expected this to try and imitate the Ricochet vs Ospreay matches from previous years. Ironically it wasn't as spotty as I thought it would be which allowed both guys to bring more standard wrestling into the mix. ACH in particular was great here. Flip was good too, but a little more awkward than usual. Hope to see both of these guys tear it up in the tournament, ****.

Unsurprising to everyone, Taiji gave Ospreay his first singles loss in Japan since last year. What was surprising to me though was the length of the match. Maybe that is in the booking to make Taiji look as strong as possible, but both guys were still able to pull out a very good match in the time length they were given. Taiji really makes the new heel turn work, and Ospreay was as athletic as usual. A rematch between these guys very soon is guaranteed, ****.