NintendoLogic

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

PWI is reporting that this Friday's Smackdown is being moved to the PC. The dominoes keep falling.

Dave said on Twitter that he was assured there would be a show in some form, which has me intrigued as to what they'll come up with. I can't imagine them running Undertaker/Styles at an empty Performance Center.

I was under the impression that he used to date Hikaru Shida. For what it's worth, Cornette has accused Omega of having an Asian schoolgirl fetish (which, granted, is problematic in itself). He seems to believe that Riho was the 9-year-old girl Omega wrestled in DDT that one time.

The NCAA has announced that the men's and women's basketball tournaments will be played without fans. It looks increasingly unlikely that Wrestlemania will take place as scheduled. Or if it does, it'll be at an empty Full Sail.

Even a 1983 Sportatorium crowd would struggle to make it through a seven hour Wrestlemania.

Are PPV viewing parties no longer a thing? It seems like that'd be an easy way to split the cost. Then again, that may not be a viable option with the wrestling fanbase having shrunk so much and society becoming increasingly atomized. I'd be willing to bet that a substantial number of wrestling fans don't know any other fans who they regularly interact with in person.

I hope they don't cancel Mania, though. I was really looking forward to seeing Allen Jones shoot on Mark Calaway and kill him in the ring.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Minoru Suzuki (NJPW, 10/8/12) Analyzing matches can be tricky business. I think that if you set out to discover something in a match you want to be there, you’ll more likely than not find it. With that said, I think I’m on to something here. As with everyone else, it was always the lack of nearfalls and dueling limb work (Tanahashi’s arm vs. Suzuki’s leg) that stood out to me. When I rewatched the match for this project, I appreciated all that stuff on an intellectual level, but it didn’t quite connect with me viscerally. However, there did seem to be an additional important aspect to the match. It wasn’t just a contest between wrestlers, it was a clash of wrestling philosophies (traditional catch wrestling vs. modern pro style). I watched the match again with that idea in mind, and it clicked with me much more. Suzuki doesn’t just want to beat Tanahashi and take his title. He wants to embarrass Tanahashi and prove his style is a joke. We see that in the opening minutes when he lands a few cheap shots but never follows up on them. That all changes when Tanahashi applies an abdominal stretch and plays air guitar on Suzuki’s ribcage. Suzuki may not respect Tanahashi, but he won’t tolerate being mocked. That leads to a scramble that allows Suzuki to land an armbar in the ropes. When Suzuki targets Tanahashi’s arm, it’s with legitimate holds like the double wristlock and the cross armbreaker. By contrast, Tanahashi goes after Suzuki’s leg with “fake” moves like dragon screws and low dropkicks. He even applies a figure-four, which is the ultimate fuck-you to a self-styled shooter dating back to the first Mutoh/Takada match during the New Japan/UWFi feud. It’s notable that Suzuki stops going after the arm after the figure-four spot, instead focusing on slapping Tanahashi around and choking him out. It’s as if the figure-four was such a grave insult that it caused him to lose sight of the task at hand. By contrast, Tanahashi kept targeting the leg until the very end, and his superior focus ended up carrying the day. I wish Tanahashi’s selling had been more demonstrative when his arm was being worked over and a few of the holds probably went on for too long, but this was top-class stuff overall. ****1/2 Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (NJPW, 4/7/13) I’ve soured somewhat on modern New Japan, but this still holds up as a classic for me. It’s definitely one of the greatest matches the company ever put on from a psychology standpoint. Okada is prepared for the usual Tanahashi strategy of targeting the leg and rebuffs it, so Tanahashi shifts gears and goes after the Rainmaker arm. Slamming Okada’s arm into the mat repeatedly was a cool carny move. It probably didn’t hurt much if at all, but it made a nice loud sound when Okada’s arm hit the mat and got a good reaction from the audience. As with any match centered around body part work, Okada’s selling is what makes it all work. He does all sorts of things both major and minor to put over the damage to his arm. He even sells the impact when he comes down from a dropkick. The way he sold his arm while doing the Rainmaker pose was reminiscent of Rick Rude, which is the highest compliment I can give someone. He makes believable comebacks while using his injured arm as little as possible, only throwing elbows when absolutely necessary. At one point, he switches his elbow pad from his left arm to his right, which gives it some needed protection. It should be noted that he was only able to lock in the Red Ink with the elbow pad on his right arm. The logic is a bit questionable, but I think that was the idea. However, the pad also lessens the impact of his strikes, and he needs a full-force Rainmaker to get the win, so he ends up jettisoning it entirely. Tanahashi not working the leg meant that Okada could block the High Fly Flow by putting up his knees and hit the tombstone with no negative effects, which ended up being Tanahashi’s undoing. Okada had figured out how to neutralize Tanahashi’s primary strategy and had progressed to the point where a secondary one wasn’t enough to put him away. Thus began the next stage of their rivalry, although they never matched what they accomplished here. ****3/4 Kazuchika Okada vs. Togi Makabe (NJPW, 6/22/13) I actually prefer this to most of the more widely acclaimed Okada IWGP title matches, largely because I think being an arrogant prick is a much more natural fit for him than whatever his current character is supposed to be. Cocky young pretty boy vs. grizzled veteran brawler is a natural matchup, and they exploit it to the hilt. In the beginning, Okada tries to engage Makabe in a striking battle and gets his ass handed to him. Later on, he tries to do a Hashimoto-style brick wall no-sell of Makabe’s lariats, but he gets dropped by the third one. However, when Makabe goes for a fourth, Okada counters with a dropkick. The idea seems to be that Okada has allowed success to go to his head and fooled himself into thinking he’s a tough guy, and Makabe is just the guy to snap him back to reality. But it doesn’t matter in the end, because Okada is so damn good that he can pull it out by going back to what he does best (neck work and dropkicks). I suppose most New Japan fans get their fix of compact matches from the G1, but I can’t be the only one who wishes they would run more title matches like this to serve as a palate cleanser in between all the lengthy epics. ****1/2 Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi (NJPW, 8/4/13) I’ve always thought this was better than their Wrestle Kingdom match. I once watched the two matches back-to-back, and they struck me as largely identical. My theory is that most people will prefer whichever one they saw first, and the one at WK happened on a much larger stage. There's also a bit of a nostalgia factor with this being the first Nakamura match I ever saw that I really liked. He’s well into his King of Strong Style persona here, and he acts like sharing the ring with some indy scrub is a massive affront to his dignity. The key is the contrast between Ibushi’s high-risk approach and Nakamura’s straightforward assault. In this match at least, Ibushi has the Rey Mysterio-like ability to make his flashy spots look like realistic counters. He also goes splat several times when going for something spectacular, making the highspots he lands more meaningful. You can’t really call it high-risk if the only actual risk is in the execution. This is pretty great throughout, but it reaches another level near the end when Nakamura, enraged by this DDT joker’s refusal to stay down, viciously stomps Ibushi repeatedly in the corner. Ibushi responds by manning up and leveling Nakamura with palm strikes and punches. Cool finish as Ibushi kicks out of a boma ye at one but collapses and immediately eats a second boma ye for the pin. That’s my favorite kind of fighting spirit kick out. ****1/2 Brock Lesnar vs. CM Punk (WWE, 8/18/13) I have to admit that subsequent outside events have somewhat diminished my ability to enjoy this match. After seeing Punk in UFC, I find it difficult to suspend my disbelief enough to buy him as a legitimate threat to Lesnar. Setting that aside, this is close to a perfect 2010s WWE no-DQ match. There’s no blood, but it has everything else you would want in this kind of match. Brock looks like the most dangerous man alive, and Punk wrestles like he’s in the fight of his life. When he wasn’t recklessly throwing himself at Brock or rocking him with knees, he was engaging in desperation biting and low blows. There were no contrived sequences involving someone setting up a chair or a table in the corner, nor were there gimmick weapons like kendo sticks or garbage cans conveniently underneath the ring, so this never lost the feel of a violent fight rather than a cartoon weapons brawl. Other than a couple of blatant restholds in the middle of the match, it’s hard to criticize anything they did in the ring. I suppose you could question why Brock would go for a chair. After all, what the hell does he need a chair for when he could kill us all with his bare hands? But it came across to me like it was a matter of him wanting a chair rather than needing one. He enjoys brutalizing and embarrassing his opponents, and that was just another means for him to do so. It was the same motivation behind him doing the Three Amigos just to be a dick. The only real problem with the match was Heyman’s repeated involvement. I get that they had to shift the focus back to Punk/Heyman since Punk/Lesnar was a one-off, but that could have been accomplished with a single well-timed interference spot near the end. Punk repeatedly turning his back on the grizzly to go after Heyman made him look like an idiot. Regardless, for the past seven-plus years, I’ve gone back and forth between this and Okada/Tanahashi at Invasion Attack for my 2013 MOTY pick. This time around, I give the nod to Punk/Lesnar by the slimmest of margins. Don’t be surprised if I change my mind again in the future, though. ****3/4

I wouldn't be surprised if Vince is so deep in the Trump bubble that he thinks the coronavirus threat is fake news.

I don't think Meltzer is losing his shit at all. If he is, it certainly isn't due to obvious con men like Prichard and Bischoff. He seems to be doing better than ever personally and professionally. However, I am amused by how he abruptly shifted from "Wrestling is about time and place, you can't compare matches from different eras" to "Matches of today are clearly superior to those of the past and here's why."

Minoru Suzuki/Taiyo Kea vs. Suwama/Shuji Kondo (AJPW, 3/14/09) The Pro Wrestling Love era was a dark time for All Japan, but Suzuki’s work in the company was one of the bright spots, and this is one of his standout matches from that period. For one thing, Suzuki and Kea come out to a mashup of Holding Out for a Hero and Kaze Ni Nare, which is obviously too awesome for words. Beyond that, the teamwork they display is quite a sight to see. Suwama is the muscle of his team (although Kondo is no slouch in that department), so Suzuki and Kea avoid engaging him directly. Rather, they provoke him into losing his temper and neutralize him with a spike piledriver on the floor, allowing them to isolate Kondo. When Suwama comes in off the hot tag later in the match, they go nuts with blind tags. They even catch him off guard with a fake blind tag, which I don’t recall seeing anyone else ever do. The one downside of the match is that Suzuki/Kea’s work on top was a bit dry. During this period at least, Suzuki needed a bruiser as his tag partner to provide a contrast to his stretching. However, there was a nifty moment when Suzuki had Kondo in a cross ambreaker and directed the referee to keep an eye on Suwama to keep him from breaking it up. The referee eventually came back to check for a submission, which allowed Suwama to run in for the save, but it gave Suzuki a few extra seconds to work the hold. For those who enjoy this, the two teams worked a match in the same vein at the Destroyer memorial show in 2019. ****1/4 LA Park vs. El Mesias (AAA, 12/5/10) For heavyweight lucha brawling, this is as good as it gets. It naturally begins with the rudo Park getting the jump on the tecnico Mesias, and Park recklessly chucks chairs at Mesias, beats him up in front of a group of women in the front row, and powerbombs him onto a wheeled garbage cart. When a fan dumps a beer on Park in the stands, he takes it out on Mesias with some especially stiff punches. Mesias initiates his comeback by ducking a chairshot, kicking Park in the gut, and stumbling around a bit before standing tall. It was reminiscent of Sangre Chicana/MS-1, which of course is the gold standard of lucha brawls. Mesias came at Park with a shoulder block tope like he was shot out of a cannon. Between the force of the dive and the blood loss, Park being counted out seemed plausible at that point. After a while, this shifts from a pure brawl to a Hokuto/Kandori-style war of attrition. To be honest, that part of the match probably went a few minutes two long, although there was never any spotty selling or easy comebacks. Things picked back up when a ref bump allowed Park to land the dreaded martinete (tombstone piledriver), the most devastating maneuver in lucha libre. I really liked how Mesias spent the rest of the match trying to hold his neck in place. I found Park placing the mask of his recently murdered brother on Mesias and then draping a white sheet over his body to be in rather poor taste, but I suppose it’s small potatoes for a promotion that billed a literal rapist as Love Machine. Great Austin/Rock-style finish as Park lands a low blow and then wipes Mesias out with repeated chairshots. ****1/2 Dick Togo vs. Antonio Honda (DDT, 1/30/11) DDT is quite the strange promotion. They promote matches where ladders win championships and wrestlers face blow-up dolls, but they also promote completely straight title matches like this one. Honda, normally a midcard comedy guy, has the match of his life, while Togo lets it all hang out during his retirement tour (this being pro wrestling, he would unretire a few years later). Honda starts things off by going after Togo’s arm Anderson-style, and Togo emotes like his arm is being fed into a wood chipper. His selling was probably a bit too demonstrative for basic holds like wristlocks and hammerlocks, so it could be argued that he was actually overselling. But the key to body part selling isn’t what you do while the part is under direct assault but what you do in between. In that respect, Togo’s selling in the opening minutes was brilliant. At one point, he goes for a Pedigree but can’t complete the double underhook due to the arm damage, allowing Honda to regain control by going back to the arm. There are even subtle details like only using his good arm when using the ropes to pull himself up. Eventually, the pain becomes too much to bear as Togo has to make the ropes and roll to the outside. Honda tries to press his advantage, but he busts himself open when he tumbles into some chairs at ringside. Once they make it back into the ring, this turns into a Mid-South brawl as Togo works the cut with punches and stomps. He even does a Ted DiBiase-style fist drop. Eventually, Honda drops the strap Lawler-style and explodes with a punch flurry that ends with a massive Popeye uppercut that Togo does a massive Bluto bump for. Honda also apes Inoki down the stretch with his enzuigiris and octopus holds. He stops going after the arm in the second half of the match, but his earlier work creeps up periodically, like when Togo’s arm gives out while applying a crossface. Togo’s frequent Pedigree teases get it over as the most consequential move imaginable, and when he finally fights through the pain to land it, you know it’s a wrap. As you can tell from this writeup, the match employs many elements more common to 1980s territory wrestling than 2010s puro. Although I don’t think they were entirely successful at integrating them into a coherent whole, it’s nice to know that the classics never die. ****1/2 Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus (WWE, 4/29/12) Many high-profile WWE matches from this period are almost as interesting as sociological experiments as they are as wrestling matches. It was around this time that WWE crowds began to revolt against the planned direction to an unprecedented degree, and the company seemed to be at a loss as to how to compel them to react the way they were “supposed” to. Case in point, Bryan was getting over far more than WWE would have liked, so they tried to nip it in the bud by having Sheamus infamously beat him in 18 seconds for the World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestlemania. As we all know, it backfired spectacularly as Bryan ended up more over than ever, leading to this match as a sort of attempt at a make-good. But it ended up being too little too late, and it marked the beginning of the end of Sheamus being taken seriously as a top guy. That’s a shame, because while he may not be the kind of guy you can build a promotion around, he’s an asset as one of the guys in the mix. He’s a bruiser with an impressive offensive arsenal and a strong enough seller to make smaller opponents look credible, allowing him to work as both a top face and a top heel. I got the impression that a lot of fans were as much into the idea of Bryan as a WWE main eventer as they were into the actual matches, leading to a lot of the matches, particularly the ones with Punk and Cena, being vastly overrated in my view. However, I’ve always thought this match held up really well from an in-ring standpoint. In fact, it was my match of the night when I watched Extreme Rules live, largely because the ending to Cena/Lesnar left such a bad taste in my mouth. This was the closest we got to ROH Danielson in a WWE ring up to this point, as he’s in full-on Best in the World heel mode. He even does the “I have till five” spot. Sheamus goes for a brogue kick early on and makes a “this close” hand gesture when it misses, which shows the biggest problem with Sheamus from a psychology standpoint. If you have a move that is virtually guaranteed to end a match, can be hit out of nowhere, and doesn’t put you at a disadvantage if you miss it, there’s no real reason to not spend the entire match trying to land it. That’s why I’m a strong advocate of wrestlers suffering some sort of penalty when they go for their finishers too early to act as a deterrent. There’s probably no WWE spot more played out than a wrestler going shoulder-first into the ringpost, but they did a great job here of treating it like a move that completely changed the complexion of the match. It exacerbated the damage from Bryan’s earlier arm work and made Sheamus even more vulnerable to the Yes lock. Bryan employs the old Iron Man match heel tactic of getting intentionally disqualified to do further damage, although I would have preferred that he really earn the DQ with a chair or something rather than simply kicking Sheamus in the ropes. Sheamus’ desperation brogue kick at the beginning of the third fall was a fantastic way for him to get back in the match. He was still out of it after having passed out in the Yes lock to end the second fall, so he wasn’t able to immediately cover. Plus, he wasn’t quite able to get all of it, so it ended up looking more like a claymore kick. Whether intentional or not, it provided additional justification for Bryan being able to kick out. The finish was rather abrupt, but I did appreciate Bryan not doing the cliched repeatedly popping up to feed Sheamus’ comeback at the end. WWE would end up winning its war with the fans, leading to the current state of affairs where nobody cares because nothing matters. But that’s a story for another day. ****1/2 John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar (WWE, 4/29/12) I don’t know what more needs to be said about this one. It’s a surreal spectacle unlike any other, simultaneously shocking, exhilarating, and baffling. The shooter who comes in to destroy the fake pro wrestlers was well-established in Japanese wrestling, but it was novelty in a major-league American promotion. The fact that Lesnar was a superstar in pro wrestling before joining UFC made him doubly dangerous. Nobody had any real idea of what to expect going in, and Lesnar starting things off by opening Cena up with elbows to the head and flattening him with a clothesline made it clear that any preconceived notions had to be thrown out the window. The chaos and brutality give the match a “this isn’t supposed to be happening” vibe you almost never see in WWE. All the spots that didn’t go according to plan, like Lesnar going over the top rope and nearly blowing out his knee, added to the chaotic atmosphere. I should note that I hate the referee stopping things so the doctors could patch up Cena as much today as I did at the time. Not only did it disrupt the flow of the match, it made no logical sense in a no-DQ bout that featured multiple ref bumps. Thankfully, they learned their lesson from that debacle and actively encouraged the spilling of blood in subsequent Lesnar matches. The ending is of course completely indefensible from a booking standpoint, but it’s far enough in the rear view mirror that I don’t get bent out of shape over it. Also, I’ll admit that Cena making a miracle comeback to win in the end made for a better self-contained match. It helps that I’ve long since given up on expecting WWE to be able to do anything right. ****3/4

Hopefully they'll make Bryan/Gulak the opener and we can all turn it off immediately afterward.

I can't buy into Okada as a GOAT candidate because he never comes across as a dangerous tough guy. With just about every other ace, there was a sense that they could snap and fuck someone up if pushed far enough. I never get that with Okada. The match with Jay White at Wrestle Kingdom might be the most egregious example. With the way it had been built up, he should have been at White's throat from the get-go. Instead, he came out and had a normal Okada match with no real sense of urgency or aggression.