Boss Rock

I liked this match, but it really seemed like they didn't know what story they were trying to tell. Obviously it was meant to be Kawada finally getting the job done after years of coming up short against Misawa, but how the route they took felt rather disjointed. First Kawada works over Misawa's leg, which I suppose could have been done to take away Misawa's flying maneuvers and leverage for using the Tiger Driver, but then it gets dropped in favor of working the arm. OK, take away the rolling elbow. But then that gets dropped in favor of going after Misawa's head and neck. This one at least stuck until the end and the finishing stretch is an awesome bombfest. Still, it felt like they took way too many needless detours to get to the finishing stretch. I could buy it if the story was supposed to be that Kawada was so desperate to win he used every strategy he could think of until he found one that worked, but I don't think that's what they were going for. Still a great match but definitely one of the lesser encounters between these two.

Really liked this match and thought they did a good job escalating the action. Like you mentioned, very much an extended game of one-upsmanship.

Gresham is someone I need to check out more of. Have only seen a handful of his matches but one that stood out was this match with Fire Ant. Just absolutely relentless with the knee.

The tournament has been consistently good. Not exactly churning out 4* matches like the G-1 does, but really fun matches throughout.

I think I remember that part. Misawa hit the first Tiger Driver outside the ring and just waited for Kawada to get back up rather than try to put him away. Seemed like a weird strategy. I still think the match is good but it was definitely the moment where the style began to get excessive (as much as I still enjoy those later matches). And I would still rank this match higher than the 5/1/1998 match.

This is super tough. Hardy's top card run 2008-2009 was huge and he was really the only guy who rivaled if not trumped Cena in terms of merch sales. To my knowledge, Bryan wasn't a top merch mover but he was consistently drawing killer TV numbers in 2014 before his injury and his brief return in 2015 saw him draw good numbers when main eventing house shows. You also can't count out the mainstream crossover the Yes! chants had. I might lean Hardy because of his merch sales and the fact that Bryan was out right at the cusp of his popularity.

Atlantis has always been one of my favorite luchadors. Arguably the best big match worker in lucha history and tremendous longevity.

I like Harry, but any variation of this makes him look bad. I understand wanting to defend your dead father's honor. But Jake is not the only person saying these things about the Bulldogs. If I recall Bret himself has said some rather unsavory things about them.

In what way?

Do you mean the match from last week's SDL? Yeah, that ruled.

Yep, loved that Suwama tried to attack him after the bell and Jun was raring to go for another round. Saw a pic from the Zeus-Marufuji match where he's wearing long pants. Guess his leg must be pretty banged up.

Technical wrestling and mat work has admittedly never been my favorite style (I've always been partial to brawls and bombfests). However, there are a lot of technical wrestlers today that I've come to admire and enjoy the more and more I see of their work. At its best, technical wrestling is almost like a science and there are many different ways to approach it. So I thought it might be interesting to analyze and break down some of the best technical wrestlers in the world today. Zack Sabre Jr: Sabre is a rather polarizing wrestler. There's been a lot of criticism thrown his way about only doing flashy stuff, killing time for the first half of the match, only making stuff matter in the second half, etc. I understand those criticisms but personally I disagree with them. I view Zack as someone who will break his opponent down over the course of an entire match both physically and mentally. Rather than focus on one limb or method of attack, he busts out as many holds and submissions as possible to wear his opponent down and finish them off when the time is right. Basically, he's playing the long game. This was the story of his winning the New Japan Cup. He imposed his will early and consistently, working over any body part he could grab a hold of until they could simply take no more. And with how smooth and flashy his mat work is combined with his ability to counter almost any move with another hold, he's like a magician rather than a professor like Fred Yehi. And like a lot of magicians, not many seem to know his secrets. Going back to his flashiness, as a face or heel, Zack has always had a dickish vibe about him. He thinks he's the coolest thing around because he can do almost anything to punish an opponent. So taking his character into consideration, it makes sense that his offense would have a "Hey, look at me!" vibe. Fred Yehi: Like I mentioned above, Yehi is more of a professor compared to Sabre as a magician. He's much more of a nitty-gritty technician who grinds his opponents down in logical yet ingenious ways. The way he'll attack an arm or stop on a hand for foot, he constantly finds new ways to hurt his opponent that are in plain sight but constantly make you go "Geez, why didn't anyone else think of that?" I've seen several comparisons to a young William Regal. And even though he's not as flashy as Sabre, he'll still throw in a few neat moves like the Liu Kang chest kick. I can see why some might prefer Yehi over Sabre, but I think they're both somewhat similar in trying to break their opponents down over the course of an entire match. They just have different ways going about it. Sabre takes his time, Yehi is a bit more aggressive. Hideki Suzuki: Given that he's bigger and stronger than a lot of his opponents and contemporaries, Suzuki is much more visceral. He's a heavy hitter who mixes powerful strikes and suplexes with limb-punishing submissions. I saw someone describe his BJW title reign as being like a "final boss" and that sums up Hideki fairly well. He's willing to stand and trade strikes, but why go to that trouble when you can first decimate your opponent's limbs in the most violent way possible? If you're going to fight back, he's going to make you earn it because he's not willing to give up one inch. And while he's not exactly flashy like Sabre, there's a certain finesse in how he dissects opponents. His game is to establish his complete and unquestionable dominance, but he'll enthrall you in the way he does it. Instead of a magician or professor, Suzuki is more like a doctor at his most benevolent and an executioner at his most malevolent. Timothy Thatcher: Similar to Suzuki, Thatcher is bigger than a lot of his opponents and takes a sort of bruiser approach. Though the latter end of his Evolve title run saw his work get increasingly dry and bare bones, he's seemingly become more and more aggressive. To Timothy Thatcher, wrestling is serious business and he has no time for those he deems unworthy of sharing the ring with him. He can be very nitty-gritty like Yehi but also punishing and visceral like Suzuki, even if he doesn't quite have the latter's finesse. And while Suzuki is more powerful with his strikes, Thatcher is more aggressive and angry. He's out to punish his opponents whether it be just business or a perceived slight at daring to challenge him. If there was a profession to describe Thatcher, it would be a butcher.

Great match and awesome way to do a title change. It certainly helps that I'm a big fan of Sabre, but it really felt like someone had finally overcome and beat him at his own game. I get the criticisms of Sabre doing flashy stuff just because he can, but I've always seen it as Sabre imposing his will early and doing as many things as he can to break his opponent down over the course of the match (which was instrumental in him winning the New Japan Cup). And even as a face he's kind of a dick, so it makes sense that he would have that "Hey, look how cool I am!" air to him. Loved the finish of Riddle tying up Sabre like Sabre had done to so many opponents before with no way of escaping. One of the best matches I've seen this year and my pick for Evolve MOTY so far.

This is probably the best take I've seen on this.

Ishikawa-Nomura was really good. Also loved Jun-Suwama and Kento-Ishikawa.

Great call on the background to this match. Really adds a lot of context.

This match gets a lot of hate but the first time I watched it I liked it, so I watched it again to see if it holds up. The first 7-8 minutes are actually pretty good and really it's only when Black hits the Rubix Cube that it gets a bit over-indulgent. And as indieriffic as it is, it's not exactly all that out of place from what you'd see at a PWG show. Not a classic, but not the blight of independent wrestling either. It's fine.

Really fun match. Never felt like any of the action was lost despite the number of competitors in the ring, which is always a plus for multi-man matches like this. Loved Itami going after the mask and accidentally nailing Tozawa, costing them the match.

I don't even think there was any "outrage". Just a "Wow, seriously?" kind of reaction.

Why because Bruno just died today. That's why people don't like it. I saw that he paid tribute and that's the right thing to have done. A significant news story ? It's a fecking sell out number for msg from over forty years ago. I'm not desperate to be outraged but bringing it up today but now isn't the time or place. Bruno's death is a significant news story. I know that when I'm writing an obituary for a prominent person, which I've done plenty of times, I work extra hard to get the facts right. An obituary is like the final word on someone's life. If anything, I'd argue it's more important to be careful with the details in that context. I know if I were writing Bruno's obituary, I would be happy that Dave, as an authority in the field, clarified this point. Then maybe don't go on twitter, and just send correction notices to people writing the article with the mistake in it? Why shouldn't he post factual (and in no way negative or critical) information on Twitter? Have we really become this infantilized? I don't even get where people are coming from with this. Not one person who is writing these stories will read Dave's twitter. He has corrected nothing. Also, it's just about timing. The amount of sell outs he did is irrelevant today, especially for stories on ESPN's website or whatever. Sort of how I feel about it. I get WHY he tweeted it but coming from a guy not known for having tact on social media, it came off a bit callous. Not saying anyone should be outraged, but I get why some were a bit put off by it. But at any rate, Bruno and Dave were friends and I'm sure his obituary will be great.

I definitely think it's a cool rubric to use for wrestlers.

I'm not sure if there's anyone who could bring the heat like he could. Guys like Hansen, Tenryu, and Jumbo could be absolutely relentless with their strikes, but Hashimoto was just...different. Almost unmatched in intensity. I'm not as crazy about his more "sporting" or ground-based matches, but he still knew how to make stuff like working an arm or headlock seem dramatic when most just use them for transitions.

Yep, although I can still sort of see the argument against HBK even including his comeback run.

Damn, how is Casas still this good at 58? Not only is Casas slick with his matwork, he's aggressive. He attacks the limbs of Aramis. This turns into a really nice, urgent sprint with back-and-forth strike exchanges and a hot finishing stretch with both guys trying everything from big bombs to quick pins to put the other away. ***3/4.

Originally wrote this for the GWE project: Given the over-indulgent tendencies of Kenny and the Bucks and the fact that this match went nearly 40 minutes, this could have been a misfire. Was it perfect? No. Did it get really schmaltzy and melodramatic at the end? You bet. But this was one of the most ambitious matches I've seen in the best possible way. As long and as over-dramatic as it was, the match never came off as a forced, self-conscious epic. It all felt natural and the spots really made sense where they happened. That's pretty dang impressive for this kind of match where 3 of the 4 competitors are known for being excessive. The selling by Nick Jackson was great, the offense was spectacular, the tension and conflicting emotions were prevalent throughout, and the finishing stretch was fantastic outside of the cheese. Really strong contender for MOTY in a first quarter that has already produced several strong contenders.