Seabs

It's hard to tell exactly how good this was with it being JIP so far in but this definitely felt like the back end of A really good big Japanese style main event match with both guys really bringing it and putting in great performances. It's kinda weird watching so much clipping on this Japanese stuff and realising that wrestling fans who only start venturing into Japanese Wrestling in the last couple of years will never feel the struggle of viewing a great match get killed by clipping or having to wait months for a match to get dropped by Lynch of IVP if it ever does at all.

There's bad wrestling that nobody needs to see and then there's bad wrestling that you just absolutely have to see. This definitely falls under the later. That Ki botch was terrifying even knowing that something of that ilk was coming. When you see a match like this it kinda amazes you that more wrestlers on these low rent shows doing crazy shit didn't get more seriously permanently hurt. Ki following it up by just whacking Blade as hard as he could in the head with a chair was classic Ki. I'd kill to see the aftermath on the unedited version with Ki losing the plot and getting dragged out the place kicking and screaming. Sleazy Indy wrestling at it's worst but also it's most unmissable.

Yeah this definitely seemed more like the back end of a regular trios match than an all out sprint. Although tbf that is what a Toryumon trios is. Besides the Korakuen match with Dragon Kid this was probably the Toryumon match I enjoyed the most so far. Genki was a ton of fun in this, just an absolute bundle of energy and charisma. I'm growing on CIMA too. I still don't really care about him as a wrestler but his over the top stooging is entertaining. Tons of fun.

Pretty basic but with so many good workers all looking on top of their game basic can turn into something really good. It didn't get into the great territory but when matches are designed to that's not a problem. Things got really hot towards the end and then there was a weird minute or two when Kanemoto tagged in and they slowed the pace back down before getting back to the hot finish pace again. Ohtani was the MVP for me.

This was a total spotfest but a 10 minute spotfest involving Ricky Marvin is more than fine with me because Ricky Marvin is an awesome highspots wrestler. Fugaz didn't overly impress me in this. He seemed a little off the pace on a couple of spots but most people would get undermined by Marvin in this sort of match. Forgettable match but spending 10 minutes watching Ricky Marvin highspots is hardly the worst way to spend 10 minutes.

Organised chaos is a really good way of describing this. Everyone will have a different breaking point for how much of this type of a match they can watch but I thought this was timed out almost perfectly in terms of not outstaying its welcome. Probably could have lost a minute or two and been even better but it was still great all the same. The botch off the powerbomb looked really nasty but at the same time looked like an awesome highspot if done a little more co-operatively. Great match.

I liked the pre and post match stuff a lot but the match less so. Ki looked great and against someone more similar to him in style this could have been a real good match. The problem was that it didn't seem to play to any of Montoya's strengths. His pre match promo is very Indy but it's good. He's very sports entertainment like if you will as far as the heeling it up goes. Which was good but then you want him to work a match that fits the pre match character and working ground game holds wasn't that. Maybe if it ended up being worked more around striking games than ground games it would have worked better and been less like Low Ki wanted to do something with a guy who wasn't a good fot for what he wanted to do it with. Post match is really good though. Didn't the match was overly good but as a complete segment I definitely didn't regret watching it.

Anytime Tenryu and Kojima were in his it was good and great when they were in together but Saito and Koshinaka failed to really bring anything all that positive to the table. Ass based offence would be the worst thing ever in wrestling if it didn't always get somewhat over for whatever reason. Actually I'm catching up on some New Japan this year and Taguchi has made me lowkey enjoy his ass based shtick, especially the spot where he goes for the jumping ass attack off the ropes and SANADA does the old Samoa Joe nonchalantly stroll out of the way spot. Kojima catching Koshinaka into a suplex was really cool too. Ok I've talked myself into being an ass attack fan now. Kojima's hot tag is great. Spot where Kojima wacks Tenryu on the apron and makes the mistake of running back towards Tenryu so he just kicks him in the back of the head as he's running the ropes is great. Really everything Tenryu did was awesome in little subtle ways. If him and Kojima had better partners this might have been great but instead it's just good with great but also bad parts depenidng on who is in the ring.

You've been able to do that for the past few in the UK. It's the most meta thing ever.

This was good but it was brought down by Delphin's selling and outstaying its welcome. If they'd shaved 5-8 minutes off this it would have been a lot better. The early matwork was really good and then the leg work was solid too. Delphin kinda just shrugged it all off at the end though. Togo's reversal off the hurracanrana into the boston crab and rolling through the DDT both looked awesome. The pedigree/senton combo probably should have been the finish or at least not been followed by Delphin just running his comeback like he would if that hadn't happened.

Really good big show main event type match. The strength of the match is obviously the strikes. Tenryu's selling is off the charts. So many stories told in just a simple facial expression. That "oh fuck I'm too old for this shit" face. So great. Sasaki's no sell spot at the beginning is actually really great. Tenryu's frankensteiner reversed into the powerbomb was great and Sasaki following it up all I'll fucking show you old man and going straight back to the top rope to do the move himself. Finish is kind of sudden but I'll take too sudden and too soon over went too far past their peak.

Boiiiiiiiiii. This was super fun. It's like they let them go out there and do whatever they wanted including Spanky coming out to Britney which is absolutely everything. Spanky looks like the greatest backyard wrestler ever. Which I mean as a positive but at the same time some of his spots are sloppy. But he also does work like someone his size would work if this was a shoot. Dragon is far crisper and snugger in everything he does and even this early into his career looks really good. Bonus points to Spanky for celebrating the run in finish like he'd he just ran a 30 minute gauntlet.

Thought this was brilliant. What seperates this from a bad spotfest is that the character work is really strong and thus you get a really fun match that keeps your interest the whole way. Dragon Kid is such an underrated guy that always looks really good whenever I do see him. It's kinda weird how under the radar so many of the great Toryumon/Dragon Gate guys have gone for nearly two decades now despite how good like every single one of them are. The Fuji/Mochizuki parts were electric and also really cool to watch knowing them more as grizzly vet partners than young opponents. Fuji was the MVP of this. It's pretty rare that sumo shtick gets incorporated into a wrestling match in an entertaining way but it was very much that here with Fuji. The overhand slaps spots was great and I loved all his eye pokes. MAKOTA's top rope hurracanrana looked awesome. TOKYO fluffed a couple of spots but nothing that ruined the flow. CIMA's spamming of the palm punch was a bit grating. I'm more sold on early CIMA as a fun character worker than an interesting match worker between this and the Minoru match. Kid looked like he genuinely hurt his arm at the end which actually made the awesome post match even. The attack looked savage and the Dragon run in was so awesome. Looked like a mega time action star in a blockbuster movie getting dragged back into his old ways by the evil new kids on the block. Brilliant match and even better post match.

I wasn't crazy about this and thought it dragged a lot. Yamakawa's entrance was magnificent. High flyer Honma is kinda surreal. The ups and downs of Honma's career are kinda surreal though. The flip off the board and the tope were great though. The crowd brawling really hurt the match. It's generally not good but Korakuen provides a lot of good crowd brawling, this wasn't one though. The diving headbutt spot was pretty weird with Yamakawa he wasn't having any off the board. It did look over his head rather than his shoulder though so maybe he pushed it off too far and couldn't exactly pull it back on himself. The board spots were fine but there's only so many you can do in one match before they reach diminishing returns and they went past that point here. Building to the biggest spot for the ending was good though. Just dragged too long and didn't have enough to get me invested.

Daniels feels like he worked the same way in 2000 as he would in 2010 based on this. He's always super crisp even this far back. His problem was always hitting the heights that guys like Joe and AJ could. Shaving his head was a great move. As a 10 minute match this probably would have been a ton of fun but it ended up dragging on a bit and by the 12-14 mark I was losing interest. Once they go that long they needed more to hold the match together than crisp workrate wrestling. This probably would have been received a lot better at the time when this type of match was much less common and more innovative.

Right I'm finally jumping in on this at last. Goes without saying but that doesn't mean that saying it doesn't get appreciated. Huge thanks to Loss for all the time and effort he's put into this just for the enjoyment of others. This was fun more for the novelty of early Danielson and Kendrick than it was for being good. Spanky looked pretty sloppy. There were times when he was going for cool shit and it worked and times when it didn't. Guy looked lucky not to break his neck in a handful of spots. Dragon looked a lot smoother but the match was structured to give him a few isolated spots rather than anything more complex to see where his work level was at this point. But he looked good playing the high flying babyface hitting his highspots. The ref fucking up his dive was hilarious. HOLY FUCK at that spear by Bone Crusher. Spanky being so skinny and scrawny is hit and miss for certain spots but it was a huge hit for selling that awesome looking spear. Rudy Boy worked well as a base for Spanky and Dragon bringing the excitement.

The same arguments were flying around when he lost his first match to Reigns and after that he even had a bad follow up jobbing in the afterthoughts Battle Royal. They heated him up again and he got hot again. It's never one single event that decide's a wrestlers fate, it's a series of them up. He can lose looking like a monster and follow up by doing what he's been doing again. It's not like he's going to lose in a quick one sided Suplex City match. He's probably getting more in on Brock than anyone has since the Roman Mania match which is a big rub in itself. Or they do a non finish and build to a rematch at Survivor Series and that happens then. The only reason he'll be ruined is if the follow up does him no good, not the outcome of the match.

It's the number one thing that puts me off enjoying the current product. Sure there's "good wrestling" but none of it is fun. It's not just the babyface shine that canished but also heels stooging. What was the last WWE match where a heel really stooges it up to get the crowd to pop and get the babyface over? It's almost as if they're scared that heels showing ass in that way hurts their credibility which would be hilarious given that heels like Kevin Owens and Bray Wyatt aren't even a millionth of a fraction as over as acts like Buddy Rose and Midnight Express were and them acts never had a problem with being taken seriously during their heat segments because they spent the first stage of the match stooging to embarass themselves.

I'm not too worried about Jordan not getting over at this stage because the end goal is likely him not really being Kurt's son and it being a ruse by Steph and Hunter to fuck with Kurt because reasons so his future is probably as a heel anyway.

So that's what Maddox and Woods were both doing in that hotel room then.