Jetlag
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I thought we had some joshi superfans on this board, how the hell does this not have a thread? This was another fantastic contest in the series of Meiko vs. Game Opponents. Chihiro Hashimoto is this brawny amateur wrestler and works like Rick Steiner. They start of with great mat wrestling and Meiko does some awesome wristlock work, before the inevitable kicks in. I've said it before, but Meiko really has the sharpest offense in the world. She just kicked the snot out of Chihiro. Clearly Chihiro is her pet project, and while the young girl has some iffy moments, all her throws ruled and her german suplex was deadly. I also really liked how she rolled to the apron to evade her opponent. Because it's a Satomura match, everything was timed and built perfectly and felt like a fight. Really great match despite a few soft transitions, that the finish more than makes up for anyways.
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The Saints vs. The Royals. A technical sprint! Compare this to the tags from japan or the US from the 70s and it'll look like it's from another planet. They go all out with the tricked out technical stuff. There wasn't much usual tag psychology, but they worked a highly competitive match. Walton kept bringing up the size difference, giving the bout a nice feel of an uphill battle with the Royals having to be as slick as possible. They work their butts off taking all these awesome bumps and sprinting across the ring lightning fast. Some of the best criss cross running spots I've ever seen, and it felt bordering on dangerous especially Faulkner who seemed always close to causing a crash with how reckless he was. My favourite guy in the match may have been Bert as he did all these crazy lucha-ish submissions. They do a bunch of really great nearfalls - british wrestling isn't nearfall heavy, but having watched a bunch of it I knew a fall could end with any move, and they do so many teases that had me and the crowd by the balls the whole time. Because getting a pinfall in WoS is treated as catching and containing the other guy rather than knocking him silly and then lying on top of him for the 3 count, the match never felt excessive. Great, intricate bout that flew by. -
Rie Tamada/Hiromi Yagi vs. Michiko Ohmukai/Yumi Fukawa (ARSION Tag Titles 12/18) Uhm... I'm starting to think my brain isn't big enough to process this kind of match. I didn't like the offensive choices in the beginning of the match (X-Factors and Flying Clotheslines and so on). Then the match just kind of went into a spiral. Lots of unpredictable twists and turns, partner interferences and all that. There was one nifty Yagi/Fukawa exchange that I could sink my teeth into, and Ohmukai countered Tamada's Rolling Elbow by punching her in the face at one point. They play off the previous Tag Final match, and I liked some of the stuff near the end. The dead crowd didn't help either. I'll leave it to the joshi experts to judge this match. Aja Kong vs. Ayako Hamada (12/18) Aja Kong: abuses children and gets paid for it. This goes pretty much like you expect it to go. Aja slaps Ayako around a bunch and steps on her bad arm while looking unimpressed by Ayako's feeble offensive attempts. Hamada uses her agility to survive and it builds to Ayako landing increasingly bigger spots on Aja. It develops into a quite good match, even if a little by the numbers and you've seen it a thousand times from Aja before. The thing that sets it apart is that Ayako hits some spots vastly beyond the ability of most wrestler. Ayako didn't have the sharp offense she would develop later to combat a monster like Aja, making the match feel even more one sided. She gave a spirited selling performance, that's for sure. By the end she looked as if pushed beyond her tolerance point but just wouldn't quit. Mariko Yoshida vs. Candy Okutsu (Queen of ARSION Title, 12/18) ARSION with a big title match to close out the year. Candy is back as Candy and debugs another ridiculous outfit. Her necklace even seemed to be giving her trouble. I don't wanna mock any further, because for a match that has a tasseled cowgirl in it this had some super matwork. Candy can handle herself with Yoshida, but it became fast apparent that Candy would want to take this match into a standing position while Yoshida always goes back to the mat no matter what. Candy did a bunch of popping up and got all her shit in while Yoshida tried 7,000 different submissions on her until she got the right one. I mean, it was all high end, innovative work, but a little bloated and felt a little too much like a showcase for both girls rather than a title match. Props to Yoshida however as she was utterly stellar once again. So that's it for 1998! To say ARSION has achieved a lot would be an understatement. They introduced all these wrestlers in their new characters, established it's own style (including educating the audience on submissions), made good use of tournaments and upset wins and delivered a whole bunch of good matches. Earth to indy wrestling promoters: this is how you establish your new company. Best ARSION Matches of 1998 Yumi Fukawa vs. Michiko Ohmukai (4/11) Mikiko Futagami vs. Rie Tamada (8/31) Mariko Yoshida vs. Rie Tamada (4/17) Rie Tamada/Hiromi Yagi vs. Tiger Dream/Ayako Hamada (Twinstar Tag Final, 12/7) Reggie Bennett vs. Mariko Yoshida (8/31) Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada (8/31) Aja Kong vs. Mariko Yoshida (6/21) Aja Kong vs. Michiko Ohmukai (2/18) Mariko Yoshida vs. Candy Okutsu (Queen of ARSION Title, 12/18) Yumi Fukawa vs. Candy Okutsu (2/18) Reggie Bennett vs. Mariko Yoshida (5/5) Mariko Yoshida vs. Mikiko Futagami (5/5) Candy Okutsu vs. Mikiko Futagami (4/17) Michiko Ohmukai vs. Rie Tamada (8/9) Mariko Yoshida vs. Michiko Ohmukai (8/31) Mikiko Futagami vs. Michiko Ohmukai (7/21) Aja Kong vs. Ayako Hamada (12/18) Rie Tamada vs. Candy Okutsu (5/5) Yumi Fukawa vs. Rie Tamada (7/21)
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Threw up this list from my notepad file. Didn't do anything from before 1970 because there's so many matches there where there's no date. Just doesn't feel fair. Also kinda feel like the Top 10-30 area of some members list would be much more interesting than the #1. With so many years there are so many great matches that picking 1 feels like an injustice.
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Yes I know. This goes 45 minutes and we all can't stand that! But bear with me. I love me a good 7 minute Velocity match, but I also love me a 45 minute title match, when it's good, and this is good. I know we live in a fast paced age and people can't sit down and concentrate on a piece of entertainment for 40 minutes anymore. But for me, it's basically like watching an epic movie that's about two men fighting to death. That is the strange fascination of wrestling, forever and always. With the way this is filmed and the slightly weird sound mix, it kind of feels like a movie too. They are wrestling in this bright ring surrounded by folks in colorful 70s clothes, and above them is only darkness. The action in this bout was kept extremely simple, and in a way the audience may have been the third worker in this match carrying the action, as the arena was just trembling with excitement to see Jumbo claim the title. I am not the biggest fan of either guy, and in terms of brilliant moves there wasn't much to see, as they kept the bout nice and simple, but the selling was spot on, and they painted the time in such a way that the match just flew by. Call me oldfashioned, but no amount of neck breaking suplex moves or daring stunts is as endearing to me as seeing a wrestling match that has two guys working a dozen variations on the most basic of holds. Then you watch as the match turns into this intricate struggle, with Bock making a one armed comeback by kicking the dogshit out of Jumbo's kidney as the audience gets nervous, and then Jumbo stepping forward and FEELING IT and just chopping away at Bock, and this match turns into this really intricate struggle. They were selling the moves in such a way that I felt any well placed blow at the right time could turn the tide, and Jumbo here puts on maybe his greatest performance that I've ever seen as he does this brilliant one legged comeback and then some of the best leg selling ever caught on film that you selling nazis really really got to see. Then there's of course the "travelling champ makes the local yokel look like he could take the title" trope but this wasn't that, this was Jumbo the hopeful japanese superathlete making minced meat of Bock while all the folks in the audience no matter their background will him on. Then add in a bunch of great 70s spots, awesome Cobra Twist, teasing of the Butterfly Suplex, Bock making use of the ring, epic blood, Jumbo having all these great rushes where it looks like he is kicking Bock into a smear, and outrageous finish that decides the match by a whisker, and you have yourself a classic. Beautiful beautiful bout.
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We move straight to the finals. And also the first appearance of Hiromi Yagi! Apparently in ARSION she was mostly used in tags in 1998, which is a bit of shame because she was pure gold here. She was a feisty harpy cladded in leopard fur and did all these brilliant swank moves, including a chickenwing style suplex and chokehold that really need to be stolen. Watching this match, I was wondering if Arsion with it's reintroduction of lucha into the joshi style was merely a return to those early 80s Jaguar Yokota tags which are heavy on lucha. Because they do all this flying around and ranas and you have Hamada doing headbutts like her Papa, and between that they go into all these brilliant mat scrambles and takedowns and it's just a rush to watch. Of course being it's ARSION the swank lucha rollups lead into shootstyle submissions and legbars and what not. For all you psychology nerds Tamada and Yagi do some fierce isolation work on the plucky babyfaces here, leading to a series of dizzying double teams that actually lead to the finish. Didn't really matter to me because the wrestling on display here was fantastic, breath taking, inspiring, what have you. The first great ARSION tag I've watched so far.
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Finally Yoshida gets a break from having to wrestle big, heavy opponents. This was worked the same as Fukawa/Ohmukai but better because Yoshida always adds a certain uncooperativeness and all these awesome takedowns and mat transitions to a match. Ohmukai wants to play reckless kicker and Yoshida just mangles her legs on the mat. One of the things I like aboutYoshida is that she always maneuvers around and changes positions so her opponent can't get the ropes. Other wrestler will just sit there and let the guy crawl to safety, not so easy with Yoshida. Not that Ohmukai sold any of that, but man I don't even care. Match was short, to the point, and Yoshida looked like a beast.
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Pretty much a move exhibition where they cram as much as possible into a sub 5 minute match. There were a few swank moves and counters and the execution was good, so, this gets the Full Worldwide Point. Mikiko kind of works like a WCW PowerPlant guy in this meaning she busts out all kind of cool random stuff while Ayako sticks to her game lucha offense.
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Reggie took the spider woman out of the last tournament; can she do it again? I love this matchup. They work this like the previous match and do callbacks and all that and start out with a bunch of matwork and it's all stupidly great. Reggie may have been better on the mat here than before as she did these great spots where she just collapses Mariko with her power and weight and it's brilliant. Mariko sells big time for Reggie and snaps her submissions on like a snare. I mean the first 5 minutes of this match would've done Negro Navarro proud. Reggie really lays in the chops and Mariko does her damndest to avoid the power moves. It all leads to an utterly brilliant finish. Fantastic stuff and it's so cool to see Bennett as a gaijin monster that doesn't suck on the mat.
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This was kind of like an abridged version of their 4/11 match but not as good. They start out all scrappy and slapping eachother at the bell, and then it was Ohmukai's kicks and suplexes vs. Fukawa's submissions. Fukawa had a few neat counters and worked over Ohmukai's arm, which is a good idea when you look at Ohmukai's super thin matchstick like arms. I cringe when I see a wrestler with arms that skinny, male or female. It wasn't anything transcendent like previous matches and I felt Ohmukai was physically awkward at times. Also, the match was short and I felt like they were getting all their shit in. The crowd was also fairly dead too.
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Oh Mikiko Futagami, where you have been all my life? This was tremendous. Two workers who are always doing something nifty having a gritty match. Tamada worked over Futagami's leg for most of the bout, and Futagami came right back at her with all these neat/violent comebacks. Some of you selling purists might object to Futagami's selling here, but I thought it was just right. She was initially overwhelmed and would collapse after landing a single comeback move, then slowly work out the kinks, always hobble around and slapping at it as if to get it back working 100 %, and the leg seemed to come back and haunt her at the most uncomfortable times. Did I mention Futagami has this really great palm strike and nifty armbars and reckless desperation kicks and whatnot? Really dug how Tamada seemed to have Futagami's number throughout the match but went desperate near the end when Futagami kept catching her bad arm. Another damn good match where Tamada targets a limb, another damn good match where GAMI is GAMI.
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Mari Apache: Genius Luchadola. This was pretty much a lucharesu exhibition with some big nearfalls. Not a lot of selling and a bunch of pop-up transitions. I liked this as Mari is chunky so her graceful flying around is really cool to watch and I prefer swank armdrags over dragon suplexes. Plus Ayako continues to look incredible in her second match ever. Full worldwide point.
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Finals of the Tournament Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada (8/31) Lil Ayako upset two established wrestlers in the previous rounds. Yoshida just destroyed Ohmukai. What can the Super Rookie do against the Spider Lady? Well, not much, really. This was basically a rookie squash, but damn what a world class match. Yoshida was just dominating Hamada on the ground here. Absolutely nothing Hamada tried looked easy to get in on Yoshida, and that was a big part of the greatness of the match. Especially after watching Ayako in all these spotty matches. Not even her whacky Hamada Special move worked on Yoshida. The moments where she actually slips past Yoshida and catches here are something else, making this a damn great match for a 17 year old girl in her 4th pro wrestling match ever. Also, because Hamada had won the previous tournament match with a flash rollup, all of her rollups here were great nearfalls. After the match they carry off Hamada's corpse while Yoshida hasn't even broken a sweat. What a fabulous wrestler. Ayako Hamada/Tiger Dream vs. Yumi Fukawa/Michiko Ohmukai (Tag League, 10/7) The mysterious Tiger Dream makes her first appearance! (in this review series) My oh my, I wonder who that chunky, pink haired flyer girl could be? It was of course Candy Okutsu who wrestled pretty much like she always does except with 2 or 3 Tiger Mask spots added and she did the legendary Tiger Mask bouncing around. She did the Tiger Feint Kick before she put on the mask anyways. Given how she would go back to just being Candy soon after this I guess the gimmick was merely an excuse to stick her in shiny pants that gave Yoshida's leather grappler outfit a run for it's money in therms of sauciness. As for the match it was clipped to shit and looked like a spotfest. I will see that ARSION spotfests are much more fun than regular spotfests because they have these swank twisty lucha ranas followed by Fukawa rocking it on the mat. Rie Tamada/Hiromi Yagi vs. Tiger Dream/Ayako Hamada (Twinstar Tag Final, 12/7) We move straight to the finals. And also the first appearance of Hiromi Yagi! Apparently in ARSION she was mostly used in tags in 1998, which is a bit of shame because she was pure gold here. She was a feisty harpy cladded in leopard fur and did all these brilliant swank moves, including a chickenwing style suplex and chokehold that really need to be stolen. Watching this match, I was wondering if Arsion with it's reintroduction of lucha into the joshi style was merely a return to those early 80s Jaguar Yokota tags which are heavy on lucha. Because they do all this flying around and ranas and you have Hamada doing headbutts like her Papa, and between that they go into all these brilliant mat scrambles and takedowns and it's just a rush to watch. Of course being it's ARSION the swank lucha rollups lead into shootstyle submissions and legbars and what not. For all you psychology nerds Tamada and Yagi do some fierce isolation work on the plucky babyfaces here, leading to a series of dizzying double teams that actually lead to the finish. Didn't really matter to me because the wrestling on display here was fantastic, breath taking, inspiring, what have you. The first great ARSION tag I've watched so far.
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Best moment in this match was Naito doing his ratboy grin when Omega collapsed after landing on his feet. Too bad the rest of this match wasn't anything worth giving a shit about. They tried so, so hard and did all these clever "watch me sell my leg" spots, but in the end just had your usual run of the mill indy spotfest. Neither of these guys knows how to build a meaningful transition, integrate a highspot into a match or that you can't have a match centered around leg selling and still get all your shit in. Instead, you had the usual leg slapping, your turn my turn, "run into the other guy" transitions, on/off selling, I hit you-you hit me, and all that for near 30 minutes. Can't decide what's funnier, two 2016 NJPW "stars" doing Haruka Eigen spots, Kenny's overselling/incredibly corny "passionate" facial expressions or Naito's complete lack of fire. Well, A for effort, but the match sucked.
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She has, but she hasn't shown up on my comp yet. Her first appearance is in 1999. Can't find her debut match online either, sadly. Semi Finals of the ZION Tournament Ayako Hamada vs. Mikiko Futagami (8/31) Pretty much a move exhibition where they cram as much as possible into a sub 5 minute match. There were a few swank moves and counters and the execution was good, so, this gets the Full Worldwide Point. Mikiko kind of works like a WCW PowerPlant guy in this meaning she busts out all kind of cool random stuff while Ayako sticks to her game lucha offense. Mariko Yoshida vs. Michiko Ohmukai (8/31) Finally Yoshida gets a break from having to wrestle big, heavy opponents. This was worked the same as Fukawa/Ohmukai but better because Yoshida always adds a certain uncooperativeness and all these awesome takedowns and mat transitions to a match. Ohmukai wants to play reckless kicker and Yoshida just mangles her legs on the mat. One of the things I like aboutYoshida is that she always maneuvers around and changes positions so her opponent can't get the ropes. Other wrestler will just sit there and let the guy crawl to safety, not so easy with Yoshida. Not that Ohmukai sold any of that, but man I don't even care. Match was short, to the point, and Yoshida looked like a beast.
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ZION Tournament 98 Round 1 Ayako Hamada vs. Mari Apache (8/31) Mari Apache: Genius Luchadola. This was pretty much a lucharesu exhibition with some big nearfalls. Not a lot of selling and a bunch of pop-up transitions. I liked this as Mari is chunky so her graceful flying around is really cool to watch and I prefer swank armdrags over dragon suplexes. Plus Ayako continues to look incredible in her second match ever. Full worldwide point. Mikiko Futagami vs. Rie Tamada (8/31) Oh Mikiko Futagami, where you have been all my life? This was tremendous. Two workers who are always doing something nifty having a gritty match. Tamada worked over Futagami's leg for most of the bout, and Futagami came right back at her with all these neat/violent comebacks. Some of you selling purists might object to Futagami's selling here, but I thought it was just right. She was initially overwhelmed and would collapse after landing a single comeback move, then slowly work out the kinks, always hobble around and slapping at it as if to get it back working 100 %, and the leg seemed to come back and haunt her at the most uncomfortable times. Did I mention Futagami has this really great palm strike and nifty armbars and reckless desperation kicks and whatnot? Really dug how Tamada seemed to have Futagami's number throughout the match but went desperate near the end when Futagami kept catching her bad arm. Another damn good match where Tamada targets a limb, another damn good match where GAMI is GAMI. Michiko Ohmukai vs. Yumi Fukawa (8/31) This was kind of like an abridged version of their 4/11 match but not as good. They start out all scrappy and slapping eachother at the bell, and then it was Ohmukai's kicks and suplexes vs. Fukawa's submissions. Fukawa had a few neat counters and worked over Ohmukai's arm, which is a good idea when you look at Ohmukai's super thin matchstick like arms. I cringe when I see a wrestler with arms that skinny, male or female. It wasn't anything transcendent like previous matches and I felt Ohmukai was physically awkward at times. Also, the match was short and I felt like they were getting all their shit in. The crowd was also fairly dead too. Reggie Bennett vs. Mariko Yoshida (8/31) Reggie took the spider woman out of the last tournament; can she do it again? I love this matchup. They work this like the previous match and do callbacks and all that and start out with a bunch of matwork and it's all stupidly great. Reggie may have been better on the mat here than before as she did these great spots where she just collapses Mariko with her power and weight and it's brilliant. Mariko sells big time for Reggie and snaps her submissions on like a snare. I mean the first 5 minutes of this match would've done Negro Navarro proud. Reggie really lays in the chops and Mariko does her damndest to avoid the power moves. It all leads to an utterly brilliant finish. Fantastic stuff and it's so cool to see Bennett as a gaijin monster that doesn't suck on the mat.
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Ayako Hamada debuts. And Arsion would never be the same! AYAKO WAS 17 COUNT THEM 17 YEARS OLD HERE!!! As far as the match goes, structure-wise it was pretty much a chaotic mess, altough I can think of worse ways to debut. The point was to introduce Hamada as this new hot thing, and she really did make that point doing all those stupidly fast armdrags and intricate flips and her dad's signature spots including the fucking brilliant cannonball into rana which I love – it veered into dangerous territory at times and there were one or two somewhat blown spots, but it didn't matter. You are supposed to look at this match and wonder how in the world a 17 year old girl can do all that. I'm just glad she didn't get the generic dropkicks-and-rollups treatment. Those fast armdrags were awesome.
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Their last match blew. They go out to redeem themselves here. Mostly slow paced mat based match, altough Ohmukai's reach advantage does come into play, and a few face-shattering kicks are landed. Both girls target the arm, and while not anything mindblowing in terms of the skill displayed here, they stay focussed and if you are into Arn Anderson style „target the arm“ matches you will really dig this. Time limit again comes into play so I can forgive the one no-sell in the last minute. Another strong outting, better than I expected going in.
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Remember when I talked about standing exchanges earlier? This starts out with another super neat one that feels like you're watching Misawa vs. Kawada or something. Then they get down on the mat with Tamada targeting Fukawa's bandaged shoulder and Fukawa returning the favor with a couple armbars of her own. They abandon the groundwork in favor of going for bigger moves and I don't mind it as they keep it building nicely and making the big moves feel important. Match starts getting a little wonky and I'm ready to write that these matches all start like a house of fire only to go completely of the rails in the second half, but instead a shock finish occurs and I will shut up. Another short match that had a few really outstanding parts.
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A sprint. This had all the things a joshi hater can't stand. Random moves and transitions a plenty, fuck all rhyme or reason. I guess it's true that you need matches like this to go along with the mat clinics, but I felt like was watching a „Greatest Hits“ clip of their previous matches at times. The level of execution was pretty high (besides Tamada almost KOing Candy with a missile dropkick) and everyone here had unpredictable offense, plus you get to see Ohmukai kicking people in the face a bunch and Fukawa grabbing all these fancy armbars. And, the match only went about 12 minutes which I think is a lot better than having this type of bout go 20+. So, it was a solid watch overall.
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Mikiko Futagami vs. Michiko Ohmukai (7/21) I've actually written about this match before, but it can't hurt to watch again. Because this is such a wonderful quasi BattlARTSian piece of cake. Ohmukai really lays it in on Futagami in the corner with some malintentioned knee strikes and then rocking her with that Ikeda-like running solebutt of hers, so Futagami, after a brief mat scramble, replies in kind by just standing up and punting Omukai square in the eye. Futagami really was brilliant at this stage as she did all this neat wrestling and had these Tenryu-like facial reactions. She is like William Regal portrayed by a gender switched Katsumi Usuda. The second half could have used a portion edited out as they really throw out way, way more than they should, but then Futagami always does something random and nifty (like in this case almost ripping Ohmukai's skinny shoulders off with an ultra painful looking double armlock thing) and Ohmukai keeps landing these ungodly stiff shots. It builds to a pretty dramatic finish. The use of the time limit in this fed is great. Yumi Fukawa vs. Rie Tamada (7/21) Remember when I talked about standing exchanges earlier? This starts out with another super neat one that feels like you're watching Misawa vs. Kawada or something. Then they get down on the mat with Tamada targeting Fukawa's bandaged shoulder and Fukawa returning the favor with a couple armbars of her own. They abandon the groundwork in favor of going for bigger moves and I don't mind it as they keep it building nicely and making the big moves feel important. Match starts getting a little wonky and I'm ready to write that these matches all start like a house of fire only to go completely of the rails in the second half, but instead a shock finish occurs and I will shut up. Another short match that had a few really outstanding parts. Michiko Ohmukai vs. Rie Tamada (8/9) Their last match blew. They go out to redeem themselves here. Mostly slow paced mat based match, altough Ohmukai's reach advantage does come into play, and a few face-shattering kicks are landed. Both girls target the arm, and while not anything mindblowing in terms of the skill displayed here, they stay focussed and if you are into Arn Anderson style „target the arm“ matches you will really dig this. Time limit again comes into play so I can forgive the one no-sell in the last minute. Another strong outting, better than I expected going in. Ayako Hamada vs. Candy Okutsu (8/9) Ayako Hamada debuts. And Arsion would never be the same! AYAKO WAS 17 COUNT THEM 17 YEARS OLD HERE!!! As far as the match goes, structure-wise it was pretty much a chaotic mess, altough I can think of worse ways to debut. The point was to introduce Hamada as this new hot thing, and she really did make that point doing all those stupidly fast armdrags and intricate flips and her dad's signature spots including the fucking brilliant cannonball into rana which I love – it veered into dangerous territory at times and there were one or two somewhat blown spots, but it didn't matter. You are supposed to look at this match and wonder how in the world a 17 year old girl can do all that. I'm just glad she didn't get the generic dropkicks-and-rollups treatment. Those fast armdrags were awesome.
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Coming from someone who hyped LA Park-Mesias as one of the best matches of the decade I can't tell if this is a troll or not. Hey, I can forgive "forced epic" if the match is actually outstanding.
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It doesn't get more forced epic in mexican wrestling than doing a Tombstone and have the match continue. There was plenty of your turn-my turn stuff. They took turns hitting eachother with chairs, hitting slaps to the chest, and trading rollups/submissions in the 3rd fall. It's a common thing in big lucha matches and they do the exhaustion selling to make it not seem as bad as in some japanese matches, but it's still blatant turn taking. EDIT: Since people have been pimping it as Match of the Decade, have they actually compared it to the top mexican matches from this decade so far? I didn't think the match was bad, but I expect more from something that gets pimped as MOTD. And I think stuff like the 2012 Panther/Casas match or the Santo TxT tag, the 2011 IWRG vs. AAA tags or assorted 2010 IWRG bloodbaths shit all over this.
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I don't see what's great about the match either. The brawling wasn't near good enough and I disliked the use of the Tombstone. And I'm a fan of both guys.