Jmare007

Pretty sure bad booking killed SD, their roster was pretty fucking good after last year's shakeup.

Having seen the first 6 days, it's been pretty fun. I think the only legit great match has been Kento/Nomura but there's been a bunch of fun sprints. I'm glad they've kept most of the matches short too. Strong Climb was fucking awesome. So many different type of matches that were short and fun, and with a whole bunch of different finishes. The semis and finals weren't the MOTYCs I was expecting but all in all it was a great ride. Nomura has been established as a legit player - he even cut a promo on the tourney's winner on the final show - 4 months into the year and Aoki showed out too. The division is looking as great as ever quality wise imo, and Okabayashi is still months away from returning. Too bad they've had so many troubles drawing since August of last year though.

I wonder if SD can get lucky enough to keep Bryan and AJ because Vince sees moving Charlotte and Orton to RAW would have more impact than either DB or Styles.

I like watching Reigns getting destroyed because his comebacks are great and he does a very good job at selling getting beat up. Mania 31 was almost perfect in that regard, with him looking for Brock to deliver more pain as he just wouldn't stand down. This time it was just a bunch of shit thrown together so Roman could kick out and "look strong in defeat". Six F-5 was just funny in a ridiculous "what the fuck is this" kind of way, by the time Brock elbowed him to get color I was already out of the match.

I'm two days in and the tournament is living up to expectations. Nomura vs Miyahara was fucking awesome.

I thought their February match was OK but it was highly elevated by that Korakuen MAGIC. This one is even better imo, Korakuen is not nuclear like their title match but they are very much into everything they do and they continue to be fully behind Nakanoue. Daichi does a much better job working on top than in their previous encounter and Nakanoue doesn't have to rely on selling his arm like last time so his comeback has less issues. Final couple of minutes are fucking FIRE. I mean, the only thing this match has going against it is that it's clearly edited in two or three sequences, but even though the cuts are very noticeable they don't take away anything from how good this match was. The Strong Climb tournament has been fucking awesome, can't stress this enough, a bunch of very fun matches that are very short and easy to get into - a Strong BJ staple tbh - and a couple of REALLY fucking good encounters like this one.

Undeniably good. 12 minutes of the two best wrestlers on the planet doing a simple match were pretty much everything mattered and meant something, I don't ask for more in my wrestling.

I love both of these guys and this delivered almost everything I wanted. From the get go Kento is annoyed by the young kid that the crowd has really grown into in the last year, at first he tries to establish his dominance and act cocky, more concerned about Wada not letting him do what he wants that really treating Nomura as a threat. But Naoya is no slouch and he's in it for a fight, he MAKES Miyahara give a damn by hitting him with elbows and getting up every single time Kento hit him hard. Loved the countout tease and Nomura's comeback afterwards, that spear to roll up pin combination was dope as fuck and had me fooled. Same with Naoya fighting with everything he got so Kento wouldn't hit the straight jacket German because he knew that was death for him. This had some down times but I was compelled throughout by Miyahara's antics, Wada being Wada and Nomura's resilience. The final 5-6 minutes were great - I know some will hate the german suplex "no sell" by Nomura but I was fine with, it was just 1 and he hit one move before going down - shit, whole match was awesome.

Miyahara's flash offense doesn't bode well with leg selling but he did better than most in that regard all things considered - you could argue he should change his formula when the story of the match is his leg getting worked on, but made the effort to sell as much as possible - and Shingo was awesome working on top. The Wada fuckery at the beginning made this fun from the get go too. Strong main event for Day 1.

For Jetlag, Twin Towers vs Strong BJ - 1/2/17 Big Japan https://rutube.ru/video/b75ddb98345691e1e8f1415d4031f3ec/ Matt, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off after this. My backlog is getting bigger and still gonna owe 4 matches after this week.

Good doc, not a masterpiece but a lot better than WWE-made effort. Yeah, when I heard the first preview for this doc (with Simmons and Shoemaker) they made it seem this doc would have no bullshit because the director wouldn't allow it. But then I heard the one Simmons did with the director and I could tell Bill didn't know enough and was too attached to his 80's baby mentality to course correct some stuff. But hey, we gotta appreciate that they left out the "Andre was a father figure for Steph" narrative that WWE wanted to push. Vince and Hogan might've worked him - and to be honest, even with the Hogan thing, they had everyone else admitting Andre was just trolling, the problem to me was they spent too much time on his bullshit paranoia - but he was savvy enough to smell bullshit on other stuff.

The match was ridiculous in a bad way. Total letdown to me.

I think the only thing that the YB/GL match had over this one was a couple of flips. The emotion, drama and story smokes anything on that tag match imo.

Incredible match, not even sure what else say about it. It was everything it should've been, if anything tops it this year I'll be sincerely amazed.

Gargano vs Ciampa is the match of the year so far for me, and holy shit if something tops it. All the excess the match had felt in tune to their feud and story.

Would smark crowds cheer Reigns because he's associated with Heyman though? Maybe, but I don't think it matters. But then what's the point of doing it when he already gets a mixed reaction? I don't like the idea pairing of Heyman with Rousey either tbh As a fan? A more interesting take on his character. And hell, that could lead to full on cheers after a while, instead of a mixed reaction.

Would smark crowds cheer Reigns because he's associated with Heyman though? Maybe, but I don't think it matters.

Show hasn't even started and the fuckery levels are already at it's highest Low-Ki bitching out is too damn perfect.

I owe 2 reviews and I'll probably owe this week's too but I'll get to it soon enough. Anyway, I've decided I'm going to pimp as much Strong Big Japan as possible through this project so to dawho5, this one is for you. Yoshihito Sasaki & Kazuki Hashimoto vs. Shinobu & Yuji Okabayashi - Big Japan 7/25/2011 https://rutube.ru/video/dd6594dcb8ee887a68924bcdd9dc4abc/

The real funny thing is that the photo does do justice to Ronda's "selling"

After 7 hours of wrestling I'm really worried the crowd is gonna be too spent to give Roman/Brock the atmosphere it needs. People that hate on Roman might just be too tired or not care enough to boo him like at WM 31 and the people that support might end up getting drowned like the last two Mania main events. I really hope fans give them a chance to have the dope match they no doubt can have. I also hope it doesn't go past 15 minutes and they just go for a sprint.

Bubba Braun Dudley

That superplex to falcon arrow spot, reversed to a small package made me legit mad.

This was the best of Sabre and the worst of Sabre in the same match, it was more good than bad though. I give full credit to him for making the first 17 minutes interesting enough to grab my attention. At this point is very hard for me to stay engaged for so long in New Japan main events because I know the first half barely means anything - just like NOAH's big matches in the late 2000's-early 2010' - but in this case I was thoroughly entertained by the ZBJ show of "look how many cool shit/counters I can do". I also liked the little things he did like Okada copying a reversal Sabre did early and Zack having a counter to that because he's the one that knows how that shit works, or him desperately trying to avoid Okada from getting to the ropes a couple of times. I also give full credit to Zack for having Sumo Hall buying into his late submissions AND pinfalls, I knew there was no way he was winning but the crowd did and that's all that matters to me. Now, onto the bad. Once again I came out of a ZSJ match thinking he was more interested in showing off than winning the match - and the biggest fucking price of the company - every time he locked in a submission that look painful enough on a body part (and was sold by Okada as such) he focused a little bit on it but then went back on doing different shit to other parts of the body. I get his gimmick is that he can submit you at any time with a variety of moves, but it's frustrating to watch him pass on the opportunity to establish control and dominate his opponent by obliterating a body part when he has a clear opportunity to do it. There were like three times he had Okada basically dead and he just looked at the crowd or taunted Okada, there was no urgency by him in those instances. I also thought the "reset" part of the match, when Okada just grew tired of grappling around and taunted Zack to a strike exchange, was very weak. Why would Sabre go with it when he was clearly getting the best of the champ before? Okada didn't have to do anything special to change the dynamic of the match. The second half was more about strikes and ZBJ countering everything Okada threw at him - also didn't like how after stretching the fuck out of Okada and hitting him hard, all the champ needed to down the challenger was 1 or 2 strikes -, which was fun to watch by the way, it just didn't make much sense to me considering what happened in the first 20 minutes or so. Ending felt undeserved as most of Okada's defenses. All in all, a VERY fun match that once again went too long for no damn reason but at least it was entertaining throughout most of it. It just didn't have the depth or story to become the GREAT match it could've been imo.