World's Worst Man

Dave's breaking of his scale is simply due to, in my opinion, him overrating matches in general. While I certainly think he throws around ****+ ratings way too much, there is also a problem on the low end as well and that I think is due to the paucity of truly bad matches in modern pro-wrestling. It just seems like there's less utter crap these days whereas in days past it was easy to find matches with utterly incompetent pro-wrestling basics. If anything, the standards for what constitutes an average or sub-par match need to change so that the scale doesn't essentially start at ***. This would leave more room in the ***-**** range so not everything that's halfway decent needs to be rated ****1/2. What I've realized with Dave's pimping of these matches is that he values quantity over quality, from my point of view. A match with a lot of near-falls or a lot of "drama" will be rated highly regardless of whether the near-falls and drama were done in an interesting way. This is where the modern NJPW stuff falls a bit short of the 90's AJPW that it's based off of. The AJPW guys were better at creating interesting sequences and drama, particularly in the early-mid portions of the match. I'm still a fan of modern NJPW but I do wish they would take it a bit easier at times and do less shit while trying to make what they do a bit more meaningful.

It does seem like New Japan draws many more women than other wrestling promotions I've seen, with the exception of Dragon's Gate. They certainly seem to draw a lot more women than WWE. I would say New Japan has the best of both worlds since the attractive men can draw the ladies, but they are also excellent pro-wrestlers for the most part.

I really think Sexy Tanahashi takes the cake here, but lets not forget our other beautiful man Kota Ibushi. For ladies, I'll take Ayako Hamada all day.

This match starts in typical WWE main event fashion with the combatants mindlessly and immediately getting into trading control segments. How about building some drama or tension like one would expect from a championship match? They then transition for no real rhyme or reason into the typical "trade big moves for poorly built near-falls" section of your standard big WWE match. It's like I'm watching Zero-One circa 2002. Where are the dramatic swings? The interesting counters? The actual tension? For all of the whining about NJPW main events, they are much better put together than this crap, and while the excessive violence is certainly an issue, at least the moves are part of a much more interesting structure and actually built to. Matches like this are the ultimate "play acting" in pro-wrestling. Get to the stretch run as fast as possible and then start banging out isolated near falls. **3/4 because despite it's utter failure as a "big match" these are still two (somewhat in Cena's case) component pro-wrestlers.

This was a good example of why I hate the WWE style. Uninspiring early match build which then transitions to a bunch of isolated, poorly built near falls. Bate using his injured shoulder to lift Dunn from the triangle choke position was just silliness in a match where the injured shoulder was supposed to be a story point. The transition after the 450, where Dunn just grabbed Bate's hand from a neutral position was probably one of the worst I've ever seen. Neither guy's facials/body language were particularly good either, but I'm pretty sure that was something that they improved in their later match. **3/4

Okada-ZSJ was a bit slow early on but was pretty awesome down the stretch. Ospreay-Scurrl was the opposite. I thought early on it was a pretty amazing match from those two. Selling was good, pacing was good, they weren't getting out of control. And then it went about 10 minutes past its peak and lost a ton of steam and got silly. Still a really good match overall but it really lost a lot in that last 10.

This is why I've more or less given up discussing subjective topics on internet. It really does feel like most people like/dislike things for emotional reasons and then seek to justify their emotions after the fact, rather than judging things for what they are. When I see stuff like "I already know I won't like this match before watching it" or "I saw one gif and decided not to bother watching the whole thing" it really drives that point home to me. I'd also say WWE has become so abjectly terrible and soul-less that it's kind of become the hip thing to praise it now, but that's just like, my opinion.

The arm work early on lasted quite a while but didn't really go anywhere or mean anything. There were a few instances where a rope-break was available but Jumbo inexplicably didn't go for it. There was no obvious story here but the match picked up pretty well after the halfway point. Jumbo started working over the back a bit which at least made sense in the context of him doing the backdrop for the finish. This match was solidly worked but was just kind of there with nothing really exceptional or interesting about it. ***

This made me curious where he finished in the PWO GWE poll, so I had to go look. #259 - ahead of Stan Lane, below Kevin Von Erich. Did the next year really improve Omega THAT much? He's had some good matches in 2017, certainly, but the love from Meltzer is ridiculous. I would say Okada was the guy making those matches anyway. Omega's work against others has been unimpressive with his flaws being more glaring in those examples than they are in the Okada matches. It's interesting because the hype does seem to be behind Omega, although if asked I think Meltzer would say Okada is the better worker. I certainly would.

Omega/Okada, Tanahashi/Naito, Okada/Suzuki are all great in my opinion, with Tanahashi/Naito being the best of the bunch, and the best of the tournament. Not that any of them were *****. Tanahashi/Ishii, Okada/Evil, and Nagata/Ishii were all excellent too albeit a step below the first three I thought. The final was the March 2003 Kobashi/Misawa match with worse pacing, selling and missing 10 years of story/build.

I agree. Mechanically the match was good, but the layout was terrible. Even for modern day NJPW, the excess was much too..excessive, without providing any reason to be excessive. Omega was just completely out of control. I get that he's going for epic, anime fights, but reusing moves 25 times kind of takes one out of that frame of mind. If these guys are going to go crazy with big moves, they need to learn some tricks to actually make the excessive near-falls reasonable. Something as simple as having a pin attempt close to the ropes so the victim can get his foot up would go a long way to making things seem less ridiculous.

The selling was good and they didn't seem to rush through things as much as it may have seemed but this was just total excess. The match should have ended on Elgin's splash mountain, instead it went another 10. If these guys are going to do matches like this, they have to fill the time with less extravagant shit and make the kickouts more plausible and less killing the credibility of all of the moves.

Okada is a such an asshole here once he realizes the people are more behind Kojima than himself. They didn't do a ton of shit in the match but the selling was excellent and the story was clear and well executed. Ultimately it made for one of the top 2 or 3 matches of the tournament so far.

Definitely the dog days of the G1 at this point. A lot of ***-***1/4 matches and not much better. Something that's been annoying me lately is when the wrestlers throw out big moves or big sequences and don't do anything with it. Tanahashi hits two twist and shouts plus a front suplex. That's not enough to go for a fall evidently as he waits for Goto to conveniently get up and then hits the sling blade for a near fall. I noticed the same thing in the Nagata-Naito match where Nagata hits a sick release german and doesn't go for a fall, instead transitioning into a backdrop before going for the fall. Why not get a near fall from the german and save the backdrop for another near fall later? The logic of going dangerous move immediately into less dangerous move doesn't make sense either, although that was more of an issue with the Tanahashi example.

That was the greatest promo I've ever seen.

That was my first thought after the match - where do you go from here? But I completely agree with JvK - use some smaller god damn spots to fill the time. A nice vertical suplex works just fine.

He was back on offense after about two minutes but even then Okada's selling was good enough that it was clear he was still hurt. I think the much more egregious spot was the reverse-rana which was much more of an after-thought with Okada being back in control much sooner. I just don't understand why they can't use smaller, less dangerous spots to achieve transitions or "hope" sequences.

If it's part of the escalation in the late stages in a match I think it's perfectly acceptable. A huge spot followed by a chin-lock is pretty silly, but if it's in the context of a late match push to end things it works for me even if it isn't treated as overly special. That's not to say it wouldn't be mind-blowing if a match managed to make almost everything meaningful, I just don't think I've ever seen such a match.

Isn't this what NJPW has been since the turn-around in 2010-2011? Isn't that what AJPW was from about '92 to '00? To me the difference between WWE and modern NJPW or old AJPW is that the workers in the former typically do it poorly. The best way I can explain it is that the spots often feel isolated. They are done with no build, no momentum shifts, no drama. I don't feel this way when the style is done well. NJPW has the momentum shifts and counters. AJPW had the build to the moves with workers fighting for every inch. Regarding the second comment, if a big spot is sold well and creates drama, what more is needed? This kind of alludes to something I generally feel about all pro-wrestling in that very few spots or sequences seem to actually mean anything past the "trying to hurt/beat the opponent" angle. That works for me, but I often see the criticism that a spot is "meaningless" even if it's treated well and makes sense in the context of a wrestling match. Are there really that many matches in which a majority of the spots/sequences have any sort of deeper meaning?

I heard there was this Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada match that had a lot of people buzzing.

I tend to think it's simple - either one is willing to give content a try or they aren't. For a person who is willing to give the content a try, regardless of whether they like it or dislike it, the criticisms will be intelligent and they won't mischaracterise what they are seeing in order to fit a predetermined narrative. For them it's enough simply to say "I do not like this because it's not my style". This is in contrast to the people who clearly haven't made the effort and rely on lazy or disingenuous arguments to support their preexisting narrative. The tell-tale sign to me is the content of the argument - that is how "simple preference" can be differentiated from "stubborn closed-mindedness". Whether someone is a fan of the new or the old is immaterial to me.

Joe-Nakamura was a pretty damn good back and forth match. The crowd was fairly dead for a lot of it, but I'm not going to judge a match based on the crowd heat, or lack thereof. Speaking of which, that "ten" stuff from the crowd was garbage. What an embarrassment. Revival vs. DIY might be the best WWE match I've ever seen, I went ****3/4 on first viewing. It's definitely giving Bret-Austin from WMXIII a run for its money.

I don't think that's the case here. A lot of people on this board thought the HIAC matches were good and they watch a lot of wrestling outside of WWE. Maybe that theory applies to Wreddit but not around here. Wreddit is exactly what I had in mind with that comment.

WWE fanboys whining that Meltzer rates WWE matches too low, it never ceases to amaze me. It's as if they don't realize that the ratings are fairly subjective and mostly meaningless. It's also rich that the people whining about it don't seem to actually watch any pro-wrestling outside of the WWE, which more than anything makes them look completely silly.

I'll come at it from a different angle - Takako Inoue.