Kadaveri

Chris Jericho was like a better version of Sid Vicious in that he was generally a lot more over than his talent level would normally warrant as he had the knock of disappearing for long periods whenever fans were close to tiring of him. Now he's gone and been a consistently pushed act for 5 years in the same promotion and, oh no.

Black Sabbath are in as a band.

I'd really like it if he wrestled the way he did against Rey Mysterio all the time. Angle's true disposition is he's a super-intense bully and bringing that aspect of his personality to the forefront created much better flowing matches than when he got obsessed with trading finishers/pretty reversals for the sake of it with Benoit etc... Or that brief 2006 WWECW run was also a much more optimal version of Angle than his default mode. The more frustrating thing about him really is he does show potential to have been a real top tier wrestler, in some ways I think he did actually get it, but there's just this aggravating bit of brainworms going on that stops him ever reaching his potential except in some specific circumstances. He's a very high-level prop wrestler, by which I mean wrestlers who have a certain set of talents/abilities but needed to be used in the correct way to really get high-level stuff out of them. There's certainly room for in wrestling, might even make towards the bottom of my list if I'm feeling generous towards them in 2026. The Summerslam 2001 match vs. Austin I think is a great example of Kurt being in that kind of role. Austin is the main driver of the match narrative and his performance is the best thing about it, but calling it a "carry job" or something like that would be grossly unfair. Angle's talents elevate the whole thing to higher level that the vast majority of wrestlers are capable of. For all the criticisms of his selling, he has a great selling performance in this match, and that's not his only great selling performance, his flaw is more than he doesn't seem to have a good sense of when he should be selling, so left to his own devices we often get total messes like those TNA Jeff Hardy matches.

Roman's an increasingly weird case because the period where I think he's a Top 15 worker in the world was 2015-18 when half the internet insisted he sucked. That's where the bulk of his case is made to me, even if his contribution to The Shield is a bit underrated at this point. 2019-21 he's still pretty good at times, though the Bloodline stuff can get pretty grating with his stopping in the middle of matches to deliver his monologues. But it's really his huge run as the Ace of a booming WWE in 2022-24 that throws everything off, it's by far his most successful run where he's given tremendous opportunities, but that's the run where this guy just sucks. I liked the Brock Summerslam match a lot but other than that it's the most boring Ace run in WWE history to me. He insists on slowing every match to a crawl whenever it looks like it might be getting interesting, and the constant Bloodline interference and shenanigans just becomes a bit of a joke before long.

The AEW run has really added to his case, probably the best run of a 60+ wrestler in US wrestling history. He definitely wasn't making my list without that but I think he might sneak in now. I don't think he had a single match which didn't at least deliver, and the way he reinvented himself in his 60s as some daredevil maniac old man is really astonishing. Yes he was protected by only ever wrestling in tags, but really that just tells you that other companies should be doing that with their older wrestlers who can still go in other ways. And despite that Sting did have quite a lot of ring time in a lot of these tags. When his run first started I suspected he was just gonna be on the apron 90% letting Darby do the heavy lifting before he gets in for a hot tag and hits his signature stuff, you know the drill, but that wouldn't be a fair characterisation of his run at all. The FTR match at Grand Slam 2021 was the first one when I was really realising that Sting is simply a really good tag wrestler.

Dude if you don't like a wrestler don't put them in your Top 100 Ever list. And I'm gonna use that as a jumping off point because I've never experienced the feeling that I'm being peer-pressured by some astroturfing campaign into saying a wrestler is "objectively" great like with Will Ospreay the last year or so. It's really quite weird. I've actually seen him live many many times in 2013-16 when he was a regular on the UK indies and I can't remember ever having strong feelings about him. He was just a guy. If people enjoy his style of wrestling then more power to them but it's not something that interests me at all. To me his kayfabe character is "guy who is phenomenally great at every aspect of wrestling" (I wonder if that makes people think he's actually that in real life), like you've put in a cheat code to give your video game character maxed out stats on everything. It all feels aimed at people who mainly appreciate the most surface elements of pro-wrestling (e.g. athleticism and moves) which most obviously require "real" skill to uninitiated eyes, but there's no pro-wrestling soul to any of it. He's like the culmination of "sports entertainment" over pro-wrestling. I don't believe in any of it. The comparisons with Misawa feel bizarre to me as I simply cannot imagine ever believing in a Will Ospreay comeback the way I get sucked into e.g. Misawa's big comeback against Taue 4/15/95. Misawa has a certain level of vulnerability and determination to struggle against the odds that Ospreay can't convey because nothing ever really affects him. I don't hate it, there are a bunch of Will Ospreay matches I thought were really good, but the overall package is a bit boring and uninspired to me.

Marvelous 2/18/18 Review Not a good show so let's just get this over and done with. Megumi Yabushita vs. Miki Tanaka The most entertaining part of this match was the start where Miki was upset that Megumi wouldn't shake her hand so pushes her in the back very petulantly. The match itself was largely just sitting around in bodyscissors and half crabs. Bizarrely there was a moment where Miki was out of breath from being in a submission so long that she needed to stop for a moment and Megumi even passed her a bottle of water and let her catch her breath in the ropes for about 30 seconds before restarting. I don't know if that was meant to be funny or what but it ended up just making Miki look useless. 1/4* Chikayo Nagashima & KAORU vs. Momoe-chan & Rin Kadokura This was a pretty good showing considering who is involved, especially when the match was actually dragged down a bit by Tommy doing her annoying "Nooooooooooooo!" schtick way too much making herself the centre of attention. I thought Rin looked good on her hot tag and she even got a believable nearfall on Chikayo which got a big reaction from the audience and it felt like she was getting over a bit. **1/4 Sakura Hirota vs. Pandita This was just stupid. DUD Kyuri, Maruko Nagasaki & Mio Momono vs. Natsumi Maki, Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata Natsumi has now joined Level 5 following the events of the last show and is fighting Mio Momono's army of hyper-active dungaree-clad little pests. I couldn't help but notice Kyuri was all over the place with her timing multiple times in this match and constantly slowed everything to a halt whenever she got involved. She's probably always been the least of these 3 who regularly tag together but I've never seen it be this obvious. The best segments here were when Mio and Natsumi faced off and we got lots of cool battles over rollups, and Tomoko coming into to lariat everyone was fun. I actually don't remember Yuu doing anything heh. This was mostly good except when Kyuri was making a mess of things. **3/4

Danhausen would probably be featured more if he weren't constantly injured.

It's funny how after hyping up the "Bidding War of 2024" for so long, 2024 arrived with MJF's value having completely tanked.

Marvelous 1/28/18 Review Back to watching stuff from the beginning again. I know most of this stuff isn't going to be good but I still get some enjoyment out of seeing the core roster develop and knowing where they'll end up. Kakeru Sekiguchi vs. Megumi Yabushita This match feels like it's only here to get Megumi and the W-Fix crew a bit of heat. The match is predictably very one-sided as Kakeru is from Actwres girl'Z and less than a year into her career here. Unfortunately Megumi isn't interesting on offense enough to make this entertaining, her beatdown segment goes on way too long and just kinda buries Kakeru more than anything else. We do get a finishing stretch which was ok but too little too late to salvage this. * Miki Tanaka & Sakura Hirota vs. Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata Dumb low-effort comedy match where the comedy was mostly unfunny. I will concede there was one funny moment where Sakura tried to have Miki catapult her as offense only to be bounced back into taking and inadvertent backbreaker from her own partner, mainly coz of the absurdity of it. But apart from that this was a waste of time. 1/2* We next have a segment where Chigusa introduces the American wrestler Aja Perera, who'll be wrestling for Marvelous under the name Momoe-chan. She is now working for WWE as the referee Daphanie LaShaunn if anyone recognises that name, I never pay attention to WWE's referees. Chigusa also shouts at ASUKA/VENY who is in the crowd for some reason. Chikayo Nagashima & KAORU vs. Mio Momono & Yumi Ohka First time seeing BOSS To Mammy! More used to seeing them in Pro-Wrestling WAVE. At the start of the match W-Fix hand out masks to everyone, not wrestling masks I mean the "don't spread infectious diseases" masks and Mio gets upset about it. I don't know what's going on exactly but am finding this funnier than the actual comedy match. This was pretty fun I guess but it had some awkward moments where the action just kinda stops. Surprised that Yumi got the win in this one I assumed Mio would be taking the pin. ** Natsumi Maki & Tae Honma vs. Rin Kadokura & Takumi Iroha (NEW-TRA) Natsumi and Tae are both from Actwres girl'Z and debuted in 2015. I'll just note that NEW-TRA's entrance is delightfully dorky. They come out in light-up LED clothes holding glowsticks and dance to their electric mix of Dvorak's New World Symphony, but the lighting is really low so you can barely see them apart from the lights so we just have to use our imagination that they're doing really cool dance moves heh. This was mostly a good match, I thought Natsumi looked pretty good with her selling here and she took a huge bump on the neck off one of Takumi's Germans. The issue with the match though is none of it really seemed to flow together even if everyone played their roles fine. **3/4 In the post match they did an angle where it looked like Natsumi joined up with Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata's LEVEL 5 group. We'll see if that goes anywhere. Another nothing show though.

Heh well remembered. Marvelous 9/12/23 Review Hibiscus Mii & Maya Yukihi vs. Maria & Riko Kawahata Firstly it's a bit weird how Maya went from main eventing a Stardom PPV to working the opener of Marvelous shows in about 6 months, and that's been her trajectory all across the scene. What happened there? There's a funny moment at the start where Mii & Maya make their entrance but Chigusa has a word with them, dunno what was said but it resulted in them going to the back and doing their entrance all over again but doing sexy dances to the ring this time (I saw sexy because Chigusa was shouting "YEAAHHHH SEXXXYYYYY" all the way through this so that was clearly the intention). Well it looked like they were all having fun The match itself wasn't much, although there was a nice energy to it. The most memorable moment was Maria messing up a springboard strike move but just about saving herself from landing badly. *3/4 Bryan Ishizaka vs. Leo Isaka Thought I'd give this a chance. Eh. Probably shouldn't have bothered. This match was in two halves. The first was a ringside brawl which absolutely sucked. They worked at about 0.25 speed with zero energy. The total opposite of a "wild" brawl. The 2nd half they got in the ring and had a decent basic match, but previous few minutes left a bad taste in my mouth. * Azusa Inaba & Tomoko Inaba vs. Itsuki Aoki & Yuu A battle of the little kickers vs. the power wrestlers. This went a bit too long and got repetitive at parts but it was a good match and they were throwing their strikes well. I thought Aoki looked better than Yuu when it was time to exchange some clobbering as she was working with the Karate Sisters and reacting to them rather than just doing her usual spots regardless of what they were doing. *** Ai Houzan & Unagi Sayaka vs. Ayame Sasamura & Sandra Moore We start off with the long awaiting Sandra vs. Unagi showdown. It goes down with Unagi saying she wants to teach Sandra some Japanese and whispers something into her ear, but then attacks her as Sandra tries to teach what she learned. They then both miss some moves and tag out. Heh ok. The best part of this match was Unagi getting clobbered by Ayame. Ayame hits hard. It looks like we're going to get a strike exchange but after taking some hits Unagi just goes for a codebreaker rather than hit back, which I thought was a good twist. **1/2 Chikayo Nagashima & Takumi Iroha vs. Mio Momono & Tomoko Watanabe (AAAW Tag Team Titles) Packed main event for a small show here. The energy in the room really changes as soon as this starts, right from the entrances the crowd seems to have got a lot more hyped and serious all of a sudden. There's a bit of a scary moment early on where Takumi backs Tomoko into the ropes for an Irish whip, but something goes wrong and Tomoko's neck gets caught under the top rope. Takumi puts her in a headlock on the ground and Mio quickly runs in to stomp on Takumi, fights Chikayo in the corner and forces Takumi to come over and throw her out of the ring. I guess this was really just buying Tomoko a bit of time to recover from the ropes mishap but it was an organic way to do it, as by the time that's all over it's clear Tomoko is fine and they get back to fighting. I'm steering away from going into play-by-play mode so I'll just say everyone has their working boots on here and things are laid out logical to produce a great match. One spot I'll highlight is this little bit where Tomoko has Chikayo up on her shoulders to take a crossbody from Mio but it gets countered into a pin. Very Chikayo counter. It's also notable how, even though she's still the underdog, Mio takes a lot more of the match than she would have done a year ago. There's a good few minutes where she's just kicking Takumi ass and I'm not sure I remember her ever straight out be in control of Takumi for so long before this. There's a big turning point where Tomoko catches one of a Takumi's kicks to turn it into a dragonscrew and then follows up with a Figure 4. Mio tries to hold Chikayo back from breaking it up for a while but eventually she gets through, how hard she was fighting to break up that figure 4 sells how much trouble Takumi's in. It gets worse for her when she takes another Tomoko dragonscrew in the ropes, followed by a Mio dropkick to the knee on the apron and then another dragonscrew. The story of that match now is that Takumi's knee is hurt and she needs Chikayo to take the lead for the rest of the match. That's where we get Mio's big control segment on Takumi about 11 minutes in working the leg, with Takumi having to be saved by Chikayo running in to break things up. This whole layout has thrown expectations out the window. Takumi's the Ace of the company but circumstances have pushed her down to the bottom of the totem poll. There's a moment where it looks like she's about to get a comeback in, hoists Mio on the top turnbuckle to do something but her leg gives out climbing up the ropes and it all falls apart, Chikayo has to run in again to take out Mio to keep Takumi in the game. The finishing stretch is fantastic. Mio looks like the best babyface in the world in those last 5 minutes or so. I read the main narrative of this match is Mio really wants to show she can hang with Takumi as an individual rivalry, and she certainly achieves that. However, this was a tag match, and her constantly gunning for Takumi meant Chikayo could constantly wreck things for her and her and Tomoko weren't working as a team as well as Mio and Tomoko weren't. You can interpret this as Mio leveling up, but also showing she has some immaturities holding her back. It's great stuff and a great match. ****1/4

Marvelous 9/3/23 Review Hikari Shimizu & Riko Kawahata vs. Itsuki Aoki & Rina Amikura Hikari and Rina are both former Actwres girl'Z wrestlers who're now part of the Colors offshoot unit. We get the obligatory comedy but they get it out of the way early. For some reason Rina seems to only do two moves for the first half of this match, bodyslams and that screaming splash move. There's a pretty entertaining chop exchange where Riko bares her chest and demands Rina hit her after demeaning her a bit. Decent enough. ** Ai Houzan & Maria vs. Nightshade (Handicap Match) Marvelous have screwed up uploading the match it's been put up at 1.5 speed. What a silly company. Shame coz this is surprisingly good. Right from the start Nightshade terrifies Ai by just screaming at her when she goes to shake hands. Ai doesn't want to fight Nightshade anymore and begs Maria to start the match. The rest of this is Ai & Maria treating Nightshade like a puzzle, trying to figure out ways to bring this monster down. They show some great camaraderie and I thought Ai looked particularly good here, at one point she defends herself by poking Nightshade in the eye but she'd been such a good babyface in the buildup that it didn't feel like she did anything bad. I liked the moment where Maria has the idea of airplane spinning Ai to use her as a weapon to whack Nightshade in the head with. Plus another good Nightshade showing. *** Chikayo Nagashima, Takumi Iroha & Unagi Sayaka vs. Mio Momono, Sandra Moone & Tomoko Watanabe Mio is disappointed that he attempt to spin into her streamers didn't work. We get some birthday girl bullying at first with Team Mio grabbing Unagi and bullying her in the ropes while shouting 'Happy Birthday', but eventually Mio starts overdoing it so Chikayo & Takumi feel the need to step in. This is a really well laid out trios match. Everyone gets in the match for about the right amount of time. The best part is the Mio vs. Takumi exchange. They make sure Sandra vs. Unagi never happens heh, Sandra's main contribution was a good suicide dive while a ringside brawl was happening. Tomoko & Chikayo are both solid. There was a nice moment where Takumi was going for her leg-lariat off the ropes, but annoying Unagi trying to be helpful misunderstood the assignment and grabbed Sandra Moone to hold her against the ropes, inadvertently saving her from the leg-lariat. Takumi looked pissed. I don't remember seeing this spot before done exactly like that, and it was pleasingly character specific. I also liked a very simple exchange between Mio and Chikayo where it's just a couple of knees, but it's really good how Chikayo follows through on the push-off to deliver the knee, and then Mio sells it with perfect timing to get up in time to take the 2nd one but without ever looking like she's waiting for it. Good work. This whole thing was a real good main event without anything especially good about it. ***1/4

Just in general, if anyone's been thinking about going to Japan for a while but put off by how much it'd cost, there's probably never been a better time to go than now. The Yen's falling exchange rate has made everything so cheap and who knows how long that will last.

Marvelous 8/18/23 Review Ai Houzan vs. Sandra Moone Sandra is not very convincing with her strikes. She seems too hesitant and it's a bit weird when Ai is playing the physical underdog role here yet her strikes look more impactful. Sandra's powerbomb moves were good though, the sideways one she does looks unique at least. These two didn't seem to gel well. *1/4 Chikayo Nagashima & Takumi Iroha vs. Itsuki Aoki & Unagi Sayaka The photo on Itsuki's entrance video needs updating it must be 3 years old and she looks totally different now. This is another kinda weird match as it feels like they're not entirely sure whether to take this one seriously or not. It's actually Unagi who seems to want to go hard but then the others do some comedy spots and Unagi isn't good enough to elevate things in-ring. Chikayo attacking Unagi's nose was pretty good/funny though, especially when Itsuki got revenge by grabbing Chikayo's nose. **1/4 Maria, Nightshade & Yuu vs. Mio Momono, Riko Kawahata & Tomoko Watanabe Chigusa is going wild on the entrances announcing Mio as THE JAPANESE CHUCKY lol. Not sure how helpful that is. There was a lot of good stuff in this match, but it never really came together as a cohesive match. The best part was the brief Mio vs. Nightshade segment. Nightshade is pretty good, sometimes she's goes a little overboard with her evil monster mannerisms, but I did enjoy stuff like her menacing Riko not letting her escape to tag out. **3/4 Bit of a nothing show.

Is Bray Wyatt the first wrestler to win a "Worst" award the same year he died?