NintendoLogic

This entire segment is [chef's kiss]. The cartoon splat when Elias hit the ground is the icing on the cake.

Word on the street is that Braun is replacing Roman. Barf.

This just keeps getting better.

Let's be honest, Urkel is a much bigger mainstream star than Big Show, even within wrestling. I'm willing to bet that more people watched that episode of Family Matters where Urkel and Carl wrestled the Bushwhackers than ever watched a Big Show match.

Another member of the "also mentioned" master race checking in. To echo what C.S. said, some degree of escapism is necessary to make living in the horrible shitty fucked-up world we live in tolerable. Pro wrestling is the heart of a heartless world. And PWO is the heart of pro wrestling. For me, anyway. If not for this board, my perspective wouldn't be nearly as broad and I wouldn't be nearly as confident in going against the grain in matters of taste. As much as I appreciate it when people get something out of my contributions, it's barely a fraction of what I've gotten out of this board.

How many luchadores of note have lost their masks to non-masked wrestlers? The only ones I can think of are Konnan and Máscara Año 2000 (who both lost to Perro Aguayo, interestingly enough). Other than that, just about every high-profile mask vs. hair match has resulted in the masked wrestler coming out on top. Well, other than Rey Mysterio. But that happened in WCW has been more or less retconned away.

Counterpoint: House of Horrors.

PWO's favorite wrestler thinks all the indy guys whose livelihoods have been wrecked by the COVID-19 outbreak should just stop being poor. In addition to being terrible at wrestling, he's also terrible at social media. And him moving to Florida wasn't the shot in the dark he's making it out to be. He went down there because he received a contract solely based on his size without working a day in the indies.

Sports entertainers cutting to the front of the line while first responders and healthcare professionals can't get tested would be far worse, though. EDIT: cm funk just beat me to it

https://www.wwe.com/shows/wrestlemania/wrestlemania-36/article/wrestlemania-36-two-night-wwe-network-rob-gronkowski-host Now it's two nights with Gronk hosting. What a shitshow this is going to be.

Current picks after my rewatching project: 70s-Giant Baba vs. Billy Robinson, 7/24/76 80s-Jumbo Tsuruta/Genichiro Tenryu vs. Riki Choshu/Yoshiaki Yatsu, 1/28/86 90s-Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Akira Taue, 6/9/95 00s-Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, 4/25/04 10s-Brock Lesnar vs. CM Punk, 8/18/13

I experienced some major reshuffling as a result of my rewatching project. To wit, I changed my top three for 1985, 1986, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2013. I also made my first MOTY selection for 2020.

Updated from my rewatching project:

Final rankings:

Brock Lesnar vs. AJ Styles (WWE, 11/19/17) Just about everybody breathed a sigh of relief when AJ beat Jinder Mahal for the Smackdown title so we’d get this match instead of Brock/Jinder, but there was reason for expectations to be tempered. Brock had become increasingly one-dimensional in the ring after Suplex City had become a thing, and AJ had spent much of the year embroiled in a feud with Kevin Owens that was generally regarded as underwhelming. Any fears that this match would underdeliver proved to be unfounded, as they knocked it out of the park. I’d say this blows away anything either man has done since. A lot of Brock’s opponents try to rush right at him when the bell rings, but AJ tries to stick and move. It ends up being to no avail, as Brock catches him with a kick and plows him into the corner. I was struck by how much of a bully Brock was in the early going. He steps on AJ’s throat, drags him around by the hair like a caveman, and easily dodges his haymakers after beckoning him to throw hands. I can’t remember any other match where he’s so focused on humiliating his opponent rather than inflicting pain. It’s amazing what the battle for brand supremacy will do to people. Suplex City-era Brock’s best matches have been against smaller opponents who can fly around and take huge bumps for his suplexes, and AJ fits that description to a T. There were a few unfortunate botches in the back half of the match, most notably on the tornado DDT attempt, and I thought they went to the “both guys lying around because they’re so exhausted” well too early for it to feel truly earned. Brock’s selling of the calf crusher was brilliant, and escaping by repeatedly slamming AJ’s head into the mat like a basketball was a genuine holy-shit moment. AJ removing his elbow pad before going for the second phenomenal forearm was a nice touch at the end, as was Brock’s leg nearly giving out before landing the F5. ****1/2 Katsuhiko Nakajima/Masa Kitamiya vs. Go Shiozaki/Kaito Kiyomiya (NOAH, 5/29/18) This was my favorite match of 2018, which I’m sure is a head-scratcher of a selection even among the handful of Western fans who still follow NOAH. But when it comes to modern wrestling, a relatively restrained and compact match with King’s Road tribute psychology is going to do a lot more for me than the swing-for-the-fences epics that most fans these days gravitate toward. I have no problem with being an outlier in matters of taste, and I promise I don’t think less of you as a person or a wrestling fan if you think the modern workrate style is the pinnacle of the art form. We just happen to derive entertainment from completely different things. Nakajima and Kitamiya, collectively known as The Aggression, are essentially a poor man’s Holy Demon Army with Nakajima as the guy who likes to kick people’s heads off and Kitamiya as the lumbering enforcer. Also, their entrance music is fucking AWESOME. Kiyomiya is NOAH’s prospective ace of the future, a role previously held by Shiozaki and Nakajima (NOAH goes through aces the way Spinal Tap goes through drummers). He’s supposedly working a Misawa tribute gimmick, but other than the green trunks, I don’t notice much of a resemblance. His offensive repertoire needs more elbows and fewer DDT variations. His ring gear isn’t the only thing about him that’s green, but it isn’t too noticeable in this match because he spends most of it either on the apron or laid out on the floor. The story of the match is the Aggression working over Shiozaki’s injured leg while keeping Kiyomiya isolated on the outside. It’s basically a hybrid of the leg injury storyline of 6/9/95 and the veteran being hung out to dry by his younger partner storyline of 12/6/96, albeit on a much smaller scale. About 16 minutes in, there’s a super Go Flasher attempt that looks like a blown spot. The match ends a few minutes later, so it’s possible that it was supposed to be a prelude to a comeback for GoKai and they called an audible and ended it early when the spot didn’t go as planned. If so, it was to the match’s benefit, as it really didn’t need a 50/50 finishing run. Shiozaki does attempt a comeback, but the damage to his leg makes him a sitting duck for Nakajima’s head kicks. Nakajima staring into Kiyomiya’s eyes and grinning while Kitamiya was holding him back and preventing him from breaking up the pin was a fantastic way to rub it in at the end. ****1/4 Aja Kong vs. Hikaru Shida (OZ Academy, 9/17/18) As best I can tell, this is the first non-Stardom joshi match to gain much attention outside of the joshi enthusiast community in quite some time. I’m guessing it was largely due to the involvement of Aja Kong, who most fans probably thought had retired a long time ago. If this match is any indication, she doesn’t need to hang it up any time soon. She can’t move or bump well anymore, but she can still construct a match around violence. There aren’t too many wrestlers of either gender capable of having a match of this caliber more than thirty years into their career. The first 15 minutes or so of this match are centered around dueling limb work, beginning with Aja taking out Shida’s knee with her trusty trash can. Her leg work was probably a bit too methodical, but Shida’s selling of the work was impeccable. Shida is eventually able to turn things around by taking out Aja’s uraken arm with a desperation knee. Aja escaping a cross armbreaker by headbutting Shida’s injured leg was brilliant stuff. They eventually take it to the outside, where Aja lands a brainbuster on the entrance ramp. Shida’s struggle to beat the count and make it back in to the ring gave both women ample time for their injured limbs to recover. The finishing stretch is more of a slugfest with the limb work becoming more of an afterthought, although they do return to it periodically. I suppose you could criticize Shida for dropping the leg selling at the very end, but it was close enough to the finish that I could buy it as her fighting through the pain because she sensed Aja was on her last legs. It’s not my favorite storytelling mechanism, but it’s something. What this lacks in athleticism it more than makes up for in psychology and brutality. ****1/4 Cody vs. Dustin Rhodes (AEW, 5/25/19) I’ll admit that this match probably appeals to me more as a statement of what wrestling can be than as a well-worked wrestling match. The first several minutes are a whole lot of nothing, which tends to be the case with Cody matches. Things pick up after Cody blocks the Shattered Dreams by removing the turnbuckle pad and then sends Dustin face-first into the turnbuckle with a drop toehold. Dustin bleeds an absolute gusher (at least on par with the famous Muta bladejob, particularly the shot of blood pouring from his head like a faucet), and Cody does a fine job of working over the cut. I especially liked him dodging the Rhodes family uppercut and countering with a curb stomp. Cody applying a figure-four, the signature maneuver of their father’s archenemy, was a cool touch as well, although it would have worked better if Cody had played subtle heel rather than full-blown heel. Other than some incongruous athletic maneuvers that seemed intended mainly to elicit “You still got it” chants, Dustin’s performance was pretty much flawless. It also showed how the disappearance of blading on a major league level has been a net loss for wrestling. When done to excess, it makes wrestling look like a distasteful geek show, but when used sparingly, it can elevate the violence and drama of the match without the wrestlers needing to take suicidal bumps. I know a lot of people were overcome by the emotion of the post-match scene, but it didn’t do a thing for me. That’s partially because I’m a heartless bastard who doesn’t care about family drama, but it’s also because it didn’t feel authentic to me. Cody destroys a replica HHH throne with a sledgehammer to a huge babyface pop during his entrance, works the match as a total heel, and then cuts a heartfelt babyface promo after the match. It might have worked for me if Cody had showed some hesitation or regret while beating his brother to a bloody pulp, but he doesn’t seem to have much grasp of nuance or ambiguity, which admittedly are hard concepts to get over in a wrestling ring. Again, though, just about everyone else loved it, so I’ll just chalk it up to me being a weirdo who doesn’t connect to people and emotions in a conventional way. Setting that aside, it’s tremendously heartening to see that even Young Bucks fans can get wrapped up in a match built around punches and blood, which is good enough for me. ****1/4 LA Park vs. Jacob Fatu (MLW, 11/2/19) First things first, I hated hated HATED the Ishii/Shibata suplex trading in the beginning. It was enough to make me almost turn the match off the first time I tried to watch it. Nevertheless, I persisted, and I’m glad I did. This is closer to an 80s territory brawl than an ECW-style plunderfest or a strong style macho pissing contest. There’s even a fireball-throwing Arab manager. Fatu is a great athlete, especially for his size, but he’s not the most dynamic performer. His control segment was quite a bit too long and one-dimensional, and his idea of working the audience was periodically posing and yelling “Contra!” in between all the slaps and headbutts. Park saves that part of the match with his selling and attempts to establish separation. He also pulls off several moves that shouldn’t be possible for a man his age and size. There is a table conveniently located underneath the ring, but it doesn’t come into play until the very end. Other than that, all the weapons used are items like chairs and the ring bell that would naturally be at ringside, which adds to the unscripted feel. Pro wrestling desperately needs more superheavyweight bloodbaths like this. ****1/4 And that's a wrap. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

In addition to all the obvious reasons this is completely insane, it's worth pointing out that Roman has a compromised immune system.

Yeah, what kind of sicko would enjoy sticking it to the company that nearly killed him through medical negligence and then fired him on his wedding day? But thank you for preventing us from losing sight of the fact that Roman Reigns is the real victim here.

They finally threw in the towel. This is a terrible decision in my view. The only thing that makes Wrestlemania worth watching these days is the spectacle, and holding it in a small building with no spectators completely kills the vibe.

Life comes at you fast:

https://www.webisjericho.com/alberto-del-rio-says-he-is-talking-to-wwe-about-potential-return/ I can't wait for them to feed Rey and Carrillo to him when he comes back.

Let's not overlook how thoroughly the city of Tampa has shit the bed here. WWE can surely afford to take the insurance hit, but a lot of the indies running shows that weekend can't. By playing chicken with a giant corporation, they're screwing over a bunch of smaller companies caught in the crossfire. This is a situation where neither party looks good.

Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns (WWE, 3/29/15) I should probably note that the result of this match permanently killed my interest in WWE, at least as far as watching on a weekly basis. The prospect of the Authority and Seth Rollins dominating Raw every week was too much for me to bear. Just about everybody seems to have turned on Rollins these days, so it pleases me to have been ahead of the curve. But that takes nothing away from the actual match. I’ve often seen this described as a heavyweight clash of the titans slugfest, but I think it’s far too one-sided to reach that level. This goes less than 17 minutes, and Roman barely gets in any offense at all for the first 12. Rollins cashes in a little more than 15 minutes in, so this is only a competitive one-on-one match for about three minutes. But I don’t mind that, because post-UFC Brock is just about my favorite guy to watch maul someone. Although I hate all the chants in modern wrestling, the fans chanting “This is awesome” while Roman was getting his ass kicked was pretty hilarious. There was a bit of serendipity in the beginning when Brock suffered a cut on his cheek during the opening tussle. Without that, Brock refusing to pin Roman after hitting an F5 would have come across as cheap. With it, it was an awesome “Nobody makes me bleed my own blood” moment. As great as Brock tossing Roman around was, though, it ended up planting the seeds of his ruination as a worker. The way he suplexed John Cena to death at Summerslam in 2014 got the ball rolling, and the fans and announce team here turning his suplexes into a count-along comedy spot was the next step. Suplex City becoming a meme would be the final nail in the coffin. That’s not to say he was no longer capable of having great matches, but it was the end of him being virtually guaranteed to deliver a classic every time out. It’s also worth noting that Roman’s comeback after posting Brock consisted entirely of Superman punches and spears. As a standalone match, all this was great. But it was terrible as a template for future matches, which is what it ended up being. ****1/4 Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (NJPW, 8/16/15) First off, I would be remiss if I didn’t note that Twist and Shout is such a stupid name for a move that it nearly single-handedly takes me out of Tanahashi’s matches. Setting that aside, these two had produced some good matches with each other before this encounter, but they had yet to deliver the kind of epic you associate with a generation-defining rivalry. The issue, I think, was one of compatibility of styles. Tanahashi loves to use leg work as both a means of filling time and a storytelling device, but Nakamura is notoriously terrible at leg selling. And even if he wasn’t, robbing him of the ability to throw knees takes away like 75% of his offense. It may be sound strategy, but it makes for a rather boring match. They take a couple of different approaches to solving that dilemma here. The first approach is to use Nakamura’s arm as a red herring. He comes in with his left arm heavily bandaged, and his frantic reaction when Tanahashi tries to go after it makes it clear that his priority is defending this newly developed vulnerability. Instead, he falls victim to the no-mixup mixup as Tanahashi starts targeting the leg after all. The second is to spread out Tanahashi’s leg work. He never works it for so long that Nakamura being able to move around and use knee strikes would be unrealistic, but he periodically goes back to it to cut Nakamura off so it’s never completely forgotten about. At the end, Nakamura goes for a Landslide off the top rope, which he used to beat Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom in 2008. Tanahashi fights him off and comes down with a High Fly Flow while Nakamura is hanging on to the ropes and trying not to fall off the turnbuckle. It’s probably the only time in history the wrestler coming off the top onto an opponent hanging in the ropes spot has ever looked good. Although they headlined the Tokyo Dome against each other on three occasions, this feels far bigger than any of their previous encounters. In addition, this would end up being their last singles match together. It thus feels like the definitive statement and blowoff of their rivalry even if it wasn’t intended as such. ****1/2 Kazuchika Okada vs. Tomohiro Ishii (NJPW, 8/6/16) I can’t say that I’m an Ishii fan overall. A wrestler whose style is centered around straightforward hard-hitting offense should be right up my alley, but all the endless forearm exchanges and popping up from suplexes and the like are instant turnoffs for me. There’s obviously an audience for that sort of thing, but I’m not a part of it. So for my tastes, this is not only my favorite Ishii match but the best possible Ishii match. He does all of the things I like about him here and none of the things I don’t. It helps that Okada is probably the perfect opponent for him to work his tough guy act against. Okada is a tremendously talented athlete, but he’s far from an asskicker, so Ishii shrugging off his blows makes more sense than doing it to, say, Shibata. Plus, Okada being the promotion’s golden boy allows Ishii to assume the role of working class hero. They show at the very beginning that this won’t simply be a friendly skirmish between stablemates. Okada seems content to employ his usual grind-it-out strategy, but Ishii won’t accept that and nukes Okada with a lariat. Ishii chopping Okada in the throat during the Rainmaker pose was the spot of the year and possibly the decade, and stomping on Okada’s foot to block the tombstone wasn’t too far behind. Through most of the match, Okada has a look on his face like he has no idea what hit him. I liked how he was increasingly reliant on dropkicks down the stretch as he had run through his standard offense and that was all he had left that would faze Ishii. As with many Okada matches, it comes down to who lands the tombstone first, and Ishii’s Owen Driver ‘97 is a fitting coup de grace. The Japanese commentary team is perhaps the most underrated crucial aspect of this match. I think New Japan’s English commentators do a great job for the most part, but Jushin Liger losing his mind on commentary took this to another level. ****1/2 DIY vs. Revival (WWE, 11/19/16) It should be clear by now that I’m pretty down on most modern epics compared to the classics of the past, so any time a new match receives buzz as the greatest of all time, my usual reaction is to reach for my revolver. In this case, however, I would take no issue with someone declaring this the greatest tag match in US history even if I personally wouldn’t go that far. At the very least, it feels like the supreme synthesis of the best elements of the classic and modern styles. This has all the fast-paced action and dramatic nearfalls that have become de rigueur for showcase NXT matches, but it remains tethered by traditional tag structure and psychology. Although many of the sequences were clearly planned out, they retain a sense of chaos and struggle and avoid seeming overly choreographed. They also avoid falling into the trap of working too evenly. It’s hard for me to get invested in matches where momentum shifts come too easily, and most junior and joshi tags lose me by having the match essentially reset after a hot tag. Here, once the Revival gain control, they never fully relinquish it until the very end. There didn’t seem to be any compelling storyline reason for this to be 2 out of 3 falls if the pre-match promo video is any indication, but it allowed both teams to hit their respective finishers and not have them cheapened by being kicked out of. Plus, this being a tag match allowed nearfalls to come from a wrestler’s partner breaking up a pin rather than simply kicking out. Kick-outs in wrestling matches are like jump scares in horror films: they usually get the intended reaction the first time around, but too many can be numbing, and there has to be something behind them or else they lose most of their impact once you know what’s coming. Johnny Gargano going into a catatonic state after Dawson kicked out of the slingshot DDT and the overly melodramatic moment at the end where Dash and Dawson were holding each other’s hands to try to avoid tapping out were unfortunate harbingers of what the NXT style would become, but those elements are restrained enough here that they can be easily overlooked. Gargano needs new kickpads, though. They’re obviously not doing their job if kicking a belt does that much damage to your leg. ****1/2 Kento Miyahara vs. Shuji Ishikawa (AJPW, 8/27/17) All Japan started getting buzz as a promotion to watch in the mid-2010s, and for a lot of people, myself included, this match served as the promotion’s coming-out party. It’s Ishikawa’s performance that makes the match for me. He spent much of his career as a deathmatch goon and has the scars to prove it, but he doesn’t look at all out of place as Triple Crown champion. His knee lift is the best in wrestling since Takayama, and he has all sorts of interesting ways of working over Miyahara’s neck after sending him throat-first into the guardrail. I liked how he countered a shutdown German suplex attempt with a kamigoye, which made more sense than it probably sounds like. While obviously talented, Miyahara is also incredibly frustrating. His in-the-moment selling is fantastic, but he seems to have trouble transitioning to believable comebacks, so it often feels like he just decides to flip a switch and end a match. There’s a sequence in this match that shows him at both his best and his worst. After taking a Fire Thunder onto the apron, he clenches his fist to check for nerve damage in a brilliant subtle spot. About a minute and a half later, he pops up after taking a superplex so he can do a fighting spirit comeback. There’s some rather aimless back-and-forth down the stretch, and Miyahara ends up hitting about a million blackout knees and gets the shutdown German pretty much out of nowhere. It was jarring how disconnected it was from the rest of the match, like listening to a record and having someone suddenly lift the needle up. This ends up being the rare modern match where the body is far more interesting than the finishing run. It probably sounds like I’m more down on this match than I really am, but the weaknesses are more glaring to me and thus easier to write about. This is a very strong match overall with an outstanding performance from Ishikawa. ****1/4

I don't even think it has to be one of the tippy top guys. If anybody on the roster made a public statement to the effect of "Screw this, I'm not working a stadium show in the middle of a goddamn pandemic," I'm sure there would be a chain reaction of other wrestlers doing likewise or at least enough media attention that running the show would no longer be feasible. The fact that nobody seems to be willing to do so is seriously alarming. They have no problem rallying to pile on Meltzer when he tweets something stupid, but they can't work together to protect their health and that of their families?

Tom Hanks caught the virus in Australia, where it's currently summer.

Apologies to anyone still following along, but more modern matches give me writer's block for some reason. The finish line is in sight, though, so bear with me. Daniel Bryan vs. HHH (WWE, 4/6/14) I must confess that I’ve never been a Daniel Bryan Guy. I always thought he was a great wrestler and was happy to see him succeed, but I was never particularly emotionally invested in him. Even at the height of the Yes Movement, I felt like I was largely on the outside looking in. I’m not saying that to denigrate anyone who was really into him, because establishing an emotional connection with the audience is a major part of wrestling. It just means that I probably approach his matches with a more detached perspective than most. Take this match, for example. If you don’t find the idea of Bryan vanquishing the hated HHH to earn a title shot in the main event of Wrestlemania inherently captivating, there’s not much to his performance here. This is probably going to sound like I’m trolling, but it honestly felt like a borderline HHH carry job to me. He controls most of the match, keeps things interesting while on top, and is the one responsible for feeding Bryan’s comebacks and timing the cutoffs. The crossface chickenwing-tiger suplex sequence looked like something out of 90s All Japan. Repeatedly trying to win by countout was a nice touch as well, with the idea being he was trying to minimize his exertion to save himself for the main event. Bryan hit some nice dives early on, but he doesn’t do much more down the stretch than run through his signature spots. Unlike, say, the Morishima and Sheamus matches, I never got the sense that he was trying to implement a specific strategy. In particular, I would have liked to have seen him do more to try to shield his injured arm. Still, his selling and bumping were strong for the most part, and he enhanced the match simply by being so over with the crowd. This is an excellent match overall, which again is largely due to the efforts of HHH. This is probably the only time he truly looked like the heir to Harley Race and Ric Flair he always imagined himself to be. It was also in spite of Stephanie’s incessant screeching at ringside. I’ve always hated heels generating heat by being annoying. To me, that’s the wrong kind of heat. If a heel does something despicable that makes me angry, I want to follow along because I attain catharsis when the babyface gains revenge. If a heel annoys me, there’s nothing that can happen in a wrestling ring that will make me whole, so I just want to stop watching. ****1/2 Hirooki Goto/Katsuyori Shibata vs. Yuji Nagata/Tomoaki Honma (NJPW, 6/21/14) Honma is the perfect addition to give these strong style slugfests a hook beyond just tough guys clobbering each other. He’s the lovable loser who the audience can’t help but get behind and root for to steal a victory even though they know deep down he never will. He wrestles like he’s been thrown into the lion’s den and might as well go down swinging since he’s doomed regardless. We see that in the beginning when he jumps Goto and Shibata before the bell and shortly afterward when he sneaks in a few sucker punches while he and Nagata are double-teaming Shibata in the corner. Shibata would pay Honma back with a punch of his own that Honma does a boxing-style crumple sell for. He struggles valiantly, even getting a great nearfall when he reverses a shouten into a small package, before inevitably going down in flames. Other than Honma’s underdog performance, the best thing about the match is the compact nature. It’s a manageable length at 11 minutes, and they keep the fighting spirit overkill to a minimum. Shibata does pop up from an exploder, but there’s nothing so egregious that it takes me out of the match. It all adds up to a textbook example of less being more. ****1/2 AJ Styles vs. Minoru Suzuki (NJPW, 8/1/14) A lot of the time when wrestlers of disparate styles face each other, it either results in a muddled mess where neither wrestler knows how to make the other look good or one wrestler largely conforming to the style of the other. This particular match is the best kind of styles clash (no pun intended), as both men give each other enough space to show what they’re best at without losing sight of who they are. Suzuki allows AJ to show off his athleticism without seeming overly cooperative, and AJ goes blow-for-blow with Suzuki while impeccably selling Suzuki’s submission work. This is an all-round virtuoso performance from Suzuki, from his “I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy” facial expression in the opening minutes to his work on AJ’s arm. Suzuki countering the Bullet Club finger gun taunt by pulling back on AJ’s finger was pretty cool, but what made it even better was when he countered a phenomenal forearm with a Fujiwara armbar and pulled back on the same finger. I didn’t care for the ankle lock reversal sequence, but Suzuki being a step ahead and slapping on a cross armbreaker was great. It’s like he was trying to send a message that wrestling Kurt Angle a few times in TNA doesn’t make you a submission expert. Even the obligatory Bullet Club and Suzuki-gun run-ins didn’t hurt this too much. ****3/4 Katsuyori Shibata vs. Tomoaki Honma (NJPW, 8/3/14) It takes a lot for a modern New Japan forearm-fest to not annoy the shit out of me, so they achieved something truly special here. Although this is worked fairly evenly, there’s a clear sense of hierarchy with Honma as the dogged underdog and Shibata the violent bully. Shibata isn’t exactly known for taking it easy on opponents, but he seemed even more brutal than usual here. Every elbow and kick sounded like a gunshot. All of Honma’s offensive maneuvers and pin attempts are tinged with desperation, while Shibata remains relatively unflappable throughout. Watching a Honma match from this period is a lot like watching a Final Destination film. You know going in that he’s going to die horribly, so you tune in to see exactly how it happens and how long he can manage to cheat death. It can be as formulaic as a typical slasher film, but it’s a formula that excels at delivering both pathos and excitement when done well. A final nice touch at the end was Shibata having to hesitate before hitting the PK because Honma went down awkwardly after the GTS like he was legitimately knocked out. It’s always great to see wrestlers not simply neatly move into position for their opponent’s offense. ****1/2 Kazuchika Okada vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (NJPW, 8/10/14) It was a huge deal when these two won their respective G1 blocks because it meant we’d see the long-anticipated “forbidden” matchup between the top two guys in CHAOS. This is sometimes described as their first match against each other since Okada’s rise to main event status, but they actually faced each other in the 2012 G1 in a match that has been largely forgotten for whatever reason. In any event, they show here that you don’t have to go over 30 minutes and have a million big moves to produce an epic. For one thing, all the sequences where they struggle to gain or maintain control give this an almost King’s Road feel. It’s that kind of struggle that separates an actual contest from an exhibition of signature spots. There’s also some cool learned psychology on display. At one point, Nakamura tries to apply a cross armbreaker to Okada’s Rainmaker arm and turns it into a triangle choke when Okada tries to reverse. Okada then tries to make the ropes, which allows Nakamura to fully apply the armbreaker. Later on, when Nakamura reverses a Rainmaker attempt into another cross armbreaker, Okada has it scouted and escapes by raking Nakamura’s eyes with his boot. I will say that I can’t stand how Okada uses the reverse neckbreaker as an out-of-nowhere reversal. The setup for that move is far too complicated for that purpose. I also have an issue with how New Japan uses finishers. For Nakamura, only the standard boma ye is capable of ending matches. All the other variants (sliding, diving, enzui) essentially act as setup moves. By the same token, Okada hits two short-arm clotheslines near the end of this match. But it’s not a proper Rainmaker unless he does the ripcord motion beforehand, so they don’t count. If they’re going to treat finishers like magic spells that only work if you pronounce each syllable correctly, I’d rather they not use virtually identical moves to set up the real deal. Overall, though, this is a dream match that lives up to the billing. ****1/2