NintendoLogic

I was hoping the low blow would be the finish.

I really like both Ibushi matches as well as the 2014 and 2015 G1 finals. With that said, I'm certain future generations will look back at Nakamura as the most inexplicable WON HOF inductee.

This match is missing something, but it's not all Nakamura's fault. Both guys should be showing more aggression given the build and the stipulation.

They did the deal where they spent the match entertaining themselves with silly chants. I believe they also did the wave at one point.

The last two matches have sucked the life out of this PPV. Hopefully Styles/Nakamura can have the match they're capable of having and salvage things.

God damn it.

I'm impressed by Becky Lynch's ability to stay consistently over despite booking doing her no favors.

Very pleasant surprise from two guys I normally don't care much for. If only Rollins would stop doing that superplex falcon arrow.

I thought Lashley was pretty well exposed there (methinks all those people who insisted he was good in TNA were pulling my leg), but he got the crowd behind him by the end, so what do I know.

That was as good a match as you're going to get from Big Cass. I love Bryan's combination Memphis brawler/submission specialist act. Hopefully that's the end of this feud.

This is some uncanny valley shit right here. Whoever made this needs to be fired.

Have you guys ever considered that maybe Dave genuinely believes that Omega/Okada and the like really are that much better than the great matches of the past? Dave has said in the past that four stars is the equivalent of a black belt and anything beyond that is additional stripes. I guess that makes six stars and above the equivalent of a red belt. That doesn't mean a black belt is worthless.

In his review of Final Battle 2012, he said the Steen/Generico ladder match wasn't his cup of tea because it was just an exhibition of crazy spots and didn't feel like a world title match, but he gave it four stars largely because the live crowd ate it up.

I thought Omega/Okada was clearly the best of their matches. I think Okada's match with Tanahashi at Dontaku was better, but they hit all the marks they set out to hit while keeping me mostly engaged for over an hour, so kudos to them. I can't imagine someone finding serious fault with it unless they're implacably averse to New Japan main events or long matches in general. Is anybody else really excited by the prospect of Chris Jericho having a match with Minoru Suzuki? Jericho reinventing himself as middle-aged and crazy Terry Funk has worked far better than I ever imagined it would, and even if you don't think as I do that Suzuki is the best brawler in the world right now, he's the one guy on the roster who can give as good as he gets.

OK, this is getting silly. If you can imagine a fantasy scenario where McGregor puts on 20 pounds and gains enough striking power to knock out heavyweights without his conditioning taking a serious hit, I can just as easily imagine Alberto training for the fight like it's a full-time job and hiring someone like Greg Jackson to devise the perfect game plan. Remember that he was a full-time professional wrestler when he fought and MMA was basically a side gig. He wore a mask during his fights, for chrissakes. Basketball is not a combat sport. And for the record, LeBron actually outweighs Plumlee.

I like the episode of Ren & Stimpy where Mad Dog Hoek and Killer Kadoogan wrestle the Lout Brothers. Stimpy cuts a money promo at the end of the episode.

It's actually not unprecedented. Nobuhiko Takada had trained in submission grappling for decades and he was routinely tapped out by white belts at BHJJC.

Del Rio is former world-class amateur wrestler with MMA experience. He may not be an elite fighter, but he's not just some guy off the street either. He also outweighs McGregor by nearly 100 pounds. I have no idea who would win in a fight between the two, but I can guarantee McGregor wouldn't get a first-round knockout. He has yet to show he can knock out a welterweight, let alone a heavyweight.

Straight from the horse's mouth: http://www.jimcornette.com/fighting-spirit/stars-their-eyes-fsm138 And I don't think modern NJPW is a significant deviation from 90s AJPW at all. It's a continuation of the direction the style was going in 2000s NOAH. Current NJPW is far closer to King's Road than it is to 80s/90s strong style.

Have you ever grappled? Seriously, if you haven't done any grappling, he'd probably take you down and tap you in the first round. I don't know how anyone watched that first fight and thought Punk had any business in the cage with a professional fighter. He decided to become fighter at a time of life when most fighters are thinking about their exit strategy, and that is before we take into consideration all of his previous injuries. He's never been a good athlete, which is a huge detriment when you are trying to be a professional athlete. The amount of arrogance it takes for a dude who never even wrestled in high school to believe that he'd be able to be a professional fighter in his mid-to-late 30s is legitimately insane. It is like someone who never played football deciding to becoming a NFL quarterback. It is incredibly stupid for anyone to believe he'd be able to do it. I honestly don't know how he got past the licensing board. There is a huge lack of respect for how good these guys are at fighting. I remember someone telling me that they thought Alberto Del Rio could beat Conor McGregor in a fight. These aren't just dudes off the street, getting drunk and fighting in a bar. These are serious athletes who train up to 8 hours a day to become better fighters. The amount of talent, athleticism and skill that it takes to be an elite MMA fighter is so much higher than anyone gives them credit for. People really believe that random assholes who used to do Tae-Bo can compete with professional fighters. Stop it. This is fake news. I never said that Del Rio would beat McGregor in a fight. I only said it was absurd to think that McGregor would beat his ass. On a completely unrelated note, it just occurred to me that having Curt Hawkins break his losing streak by squashing Mike Jackson would be so hilariously petty that I fully expect WWE to do it.

Dave has consistently held that matches can only be fairly judged contemporaneously because nobody can predict the tastes of future generations with any degree of certainty. If a match felt like the greatest he'd ever seen after watching it when it happened, then it was. How well it holds up 5/10/20 years from now is irrelevant. More broadly speaking, I think you have to distinguish between evaluating matches as a fan and evaluating them as a critic. It's one thing to say that, say, Tiger Mask and Dynamite Kid's matches don't hold up for you thirty-plus years after the fact. It's another thing entirely to say that they were therefore wrong to have worked their matches the way they did.

Way to grab that brass ring, brother.

Too bad DR Ackermann's out. I had plenty of Bret Hart matches lined up for him. For SmartMark15, here's some BatBat. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4mkxoi

I actually enjoyed the main event quite a bit. WWE is so stagnant right now that crash TV feels like a breath of fresh air. I certainly wouldn't want to watch it all the time, but it's fun in small doses. Is there any chance of Park losing his mask at Triplemania? I'm sure he would if the price was right, and Wagner got a nice chunk of change for losing his at last year's show. But that was a match with a year-long build and not a hastily thrown together four-way.

The lights going out in the middle of a match seemingly to set up a big return or debut only for it to be just a power outage is peak AAA.