stomperspc

Akito © vs. Shigehiro Irie in a Texas Death Match for the DDT Extreme Title (DDT - 05/17) This was billed as a last man standing match but its actually a Texas Death match which is a big plus in my book. Great, great stuff. They built a match that expertly played off of their individual roles and standing within DDT. Irie is the guy with a bunch of championships within DDT (and some outside of DDT) who also has the big size advantage. Akito is the underdog both in terms of accomplishments and size. They stick to those roles and build a match that tells that story even if you know nothing about them going in. I am not sure if I have seen a match this year with such a well thought out structure that is executed so thoroughly. There were a couple of parts that I didn't totally care for (really just a couple of pet peeves) but otherwise the execution was spot on. The ropes were loose throughout the match with I don't believe was on purpose, but they incorporate that into the match in a couple of clever ways. The falls are well-timed and well thought out. I think the best part of the match is how they establish the internal logic really early and stick to it throughout. Some matches are hurt by having such an uncompromising layout, but this one really wasn't. They go 30-minutes but it never felt that long and never felt like they got overly repetitive in telling the story they wanted to tell. My only big concern is I watched the first time without sound. The show as in front of 1,000 fans in Nagoya so I am worried the heat won't quite match up with the action but if it is does this *might* be my MOTY so far.

Here's my best try. Since you specifically said this is for GWE, I left out any matches that don't involve any serious GWE candidates. This is through 2005. I'll try and update later with the rest. All the matches are good and/or worth viewing for certain reasons but the matches in bold are the really good ones. * Low Ki vs. American Dragon vs. Christopher Daniels (02/22/02) * Low Ki vs. American Dragon, Low Ki vs. Christopher Daniels, American Dragon vs. Christopher Daniels (03/30/02) * Low Ki vs. Samoa Joe (10/05/02) * American Dragon vs. Paul London (11/09/02) * American Dragon vs. A.J. Styles (11/09/02) * American Dragon vs. Doug Williams 30 minute Iron Man match (11/16/02) * Paul London vs. American Dragon (12/07/02) * Paul London vs. Xavier (12/28/02) * Samoa Joe vs. Xavier (03/22/03) * Paul London vs. American Dragon, 2 out of 3 falls (04/12/03) * Paul London vs. A.J. Styles (06/14/03) * Samoa Joe vs. Paul London (07/19/03) * A.J. Styles vs. Bryan Danielson (11/09/03) * CM Punk vs. Raven, Steel Cage (11/28/03) * Steve Corino vs. Homicide, No Ropes Barbed Wire (11/29/03) * Bryan Danielson vs. Jay Briscoe (12/27/03) * Samoa Joe vs. Mark Briscoe (12/27/03) * A.J. Styles vs. CM Punk (03/13/04) * Samoa Joe vs. Jay Briscoe, Steel Cage (03/14/04) * Samoa Joe vs. Homcide (04/23/04) * Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk (06/12/04) Should watch if you are going to watch the other Punk/Joe matches * Bryan Danielson vs. Jack Evans (06/24/04) * Rocky Romero vs. Chad Collyer (07/24/04) * Bryan Danielson vs. Austin Aries, 2 out of 3 falls (08/07/04) * Samoa Joe vs. Bryan Danielson (10/02/04) * Low Ki vs. Jay Lethal (10/02/04) * Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk (10/16/04) * Jushin Liger vs. Bryan Danielson (11/05/14) * Jushin Liger & Samoa Joe vs. Bryan Danielson & Low Ki (11/06/14) * CM Punk vs. Samoa Joe (12/04/04) * Bryan Danielson vs. Low Ki (12/26/04) * Austin Aries vs. Samoa Joe (12/26/04) * Jimmy Rave vs. A.J. Styles (02/25/05) * Jimmy Rave vs. CM Punk (02/26/05) * Samoa Joe vs. Jay Lethal (05/07/05) * Samoa Joe & Jay Lethal vs. Homicide & Low Ki (05/07/05) * Jimmy Rave vs. CM Punk, Steel Cage (05/14/05) * CM Punk vs. Austin Aries (06/18/05) * CM Punk vs. Roderick Strong (07/09/05) * A.J. Styles vs. Jimmy Rave, Street Fight (07/23/05) * CM Punk vs. Christopher Daniels (07/23/05) * A.J. Styles vs. Jimmy Rave (09/17/05) * Samoa Joe vs. Kenta Kobashi (10/01/05) * Bryan Danielson vs. Roderick Strong (10/29/05) * Generation Next vs. The Embassy, Steel Cage Warfare (War Games) (12/03/05) * Bryan Danielson vs. Naomichi Marufuji (12/17/05) * Low Ki vs. KENTA (12/17/05)

See now you are veering into sexist talk. I would put Sasha on the level of all, if not the majority of WWE midcarders. Charlotte has as much potential as any WWE midcarder, probably more. Bayley has the potential to be more over than anyone in the WWE midcard. Becky, we will see. Yes, we would all love the WWE to care about things that aren't in the main event. However, saying the divas are lesser wrestlers sometimes borders on sexist behaviour. Is he necessarily though? Is saying that women wrestlers currently – as a collective group – are less ready to fill important roles on WWE television automatically a (sexist) indictment of their talent or merely a comment on the current landscape? Now and again when discussing baseball with my mom, she’ll say she doesn’t understand why women are not and/or could not play in the major leagues. She doesn’t understand why they can’t find some talented girls and groom them. My response is that women certainly could in the sense that there is not this talent or skill gulf between women and men that would make that impossible. Realistically, however, it is a long way off from happening. Boys are playing tee ball by the time they are five, little league at eight, competitive high school programs, and sometimes college baseball. A young girl is far more likely to be funneled into softball not long after little league age and almost always by high school. Of all the males that play baseball seriously through high school, only a fraction reach the major leagues and even fewer are what we would define as successful players. There are very, very few women lucky enough to even play baseball in high school. The structure/learning system is completely unbalanced and until that is fixed – which would take several generations to bear fruit under the most optimistic scenario – its very, very unlikely a a female baseball player would be able to reach the majors (even if through no fault of her own). Wrestling is obviously a bit different but the same ideas still apply. The pool of women pro wrestlers is larger than amateur female baseball players but still a fraction of the pool of male pro wrestlers. A women wrestler on the indies is going to have far fewer quality opponents to work against and learn from than her male counterparts. Out of the X-amount of male pro wrestlers, how many actually become legitimately great? There are far fewer women wrestlers which means the odds are even slimmer that several all become legitimately great at one time. I am not sure all of the high quality NXT-type programs in the world are going to change that until there is simply a high volume of women becoming wrestling fans, become wrestlers and getting the opportunities to work with quality opponents in different environments. Women can certainly main event and be top quality wrestlers from pure talent/skill standpoints. I think it might be a bit idealistic to expect that to happen overnight and to say that the pool of quality female wrestlers is significantly smaller than male wrestlers at this point in time isn’t sexist. It’s probably just the reality.

I second all the ones Tim mentioned. A few more from later in the decade off the top of my head: * El Generico vs. Bryan Danielson (PWG - 07.29.07) - This match, especially watched together with the tag title match and Danielson/Necro match that proceed is, is my favorite thing PWG has ever done. The match is not incredible, but its a good multi-match story with the right payoff. * Jimmy Jacobs vs. BJ Whitmer in an I Quit match (IWA-MS - 03.01.08) - Their best match against one another. Appropriately violent and out of control. * Bryan Danielson vs. Naruki Doi (DGUSA - 09.06.09) - Easily my favorite Doi match ever. Like the Generico match,this is a really great Danielson match where he plays to his opponent's strengths in a really entertaining way.

On Becky/Sasha, I am in the camp that thought it was a good match but not a MOTYC. With only a couple of exceptions, the execution was on point. I thought the structure was okay but wasn't a huge fan of the dueling arm work. Sasha working the arm fit and her stuff was generally good, but Becky's arm work felt out of place. I didn't think the match was appreciably better than other very good/not great matches (that also featured focused limb work) like Negro Casas/Maximo and TAKA/Hiro Tonai. I liked the match quite a bit, just didn't see as transcendent.

The show was fun and I am sold me on the tournament as an annual concept show for AAA. The presentation was top notch. AAA does as good of a job as any promotion in making their events feel big. They did that here and then some. Great crowd as well (which is also not unusual for current AAA). None of the matches were great, but there also wasn't much bad on the show. The 15-minute time limit/5-minute overtime period(s) structure worked well and was used effectively. In general, they got the booking right. AAA has a tendency to get in its own way from time to time and overbook things that don't need to be overbooked, but that was little of that going on here. The wrestling wasn't great but there weren't any outright bad matches. The guys that were the most likely to look bad (Masamune, Anderson, Kenso) looked bad. ACH and Cage didn't do much for me either but were not outright bad. Solar was the start of his team and Moose the star of his. The finish to the ROH vs. AAA #2 match got screwed up, but otherwise things ran relatively smoothly. AAA apparently put the whole thing together in about three months. If true, they pulled it off very well. The weakest facet of the tournament was probably the composition of many of the teams, but given the quick turnaround that is understandable. A little more care given to the makeup of the teams (particularly those wrestling more than one match) and the concept is one that could easily produce matches that equal the quality of the overall presentation.

I thought Mascara Dorada/KUSHIDA was the best match of the night. In general, I don't mind matches going short (much rather that than have them go several minutes too long) but this was one match that definitely could have used a few more minutes. They went less than 10, but everything they did was well thought out and was carried out smoothly. Very fun match with a lot of cools little spots stuffed into a sub-10 minute match. Main event was fun since Gedo controlled most of it. Crowd was really hot for the finish and reacted big time when Gedo got the win. I'm thinking Gedo wins tomorrow versus Komatsu (though it wouldn't be shocking if Komatsu got his first big win there) but then losses out the rest of the way. Pretty good show. The reDRgaon/RPG matches were longer than they needed to be, particularly given that the KUSHIDA/Dorada match could have used a couple of extra minutes.

Cavernario had a good first showing. Hit the top rope splash to the floor of course. Owens had his moments. The little bit of mat work they did was good, I liked Owens' tope, and the slingshot backbreaker of his is a good move. Other than that though, Owens wasn't very good. Cavernario spent the majority of the match selling which sort of worked since he was over, but Owens just doesn't have the quality offense to control for that long.

That was the best I've seen Finlay looked. Far less green than he had looked in the past and wrestled more like you'd expect Finlay's son to wrestle. Straight forward match.

I thought Liger/Komatsu started out really well. Komatsu had to wheel out more offense than usual. He's got a lot of solid offense. Liger gave him a ton. I thought the kick outs towards the end and Komatsu's knocked-loopy selling were a bit much but still good match overall.

I went to the show. A couple of thoughts: Tag title match was really fun and easily my favorite of the show. Cesaro's power stuff looked good. Kidd/Cesaro are getting down that cohesive team deal down. New Day act has his its stride and I'd say they were getting 50/50 responses for their entrance until the Orioles/Adam Jones stuff that turned the tide a bit more. The "I Quit" match (while still not great) seemed to work better live which isn't surprising. Things like the stunt bump with the sparks shooting off looks/sounds cool in person but is tired and cliched otherwise. Not surprised at all that a lot of people hated the match but it really wasn't that boring in the arena. The finish also got a good reaction. It didn't appear like people felt it was a rip off and almost reacted with a "that's exactly what we wanted" type response. Lana was getting a lot of cheers so that's probably why the finish was well received since it signified the next step in her turn. Neville didn't get much of a reaction for his big moves. I don't go to enough WWE shows to know if that is usual for high flying to be received that way (unless done by someone who is already over) but it was noticeable. Crowd just didn't really react to most his flying even relative to how they reacted to other stuff in that match. Don't know how it came across, but Orton was the most over of the four guys in the main event, Ambrose a close second, Reigns got a mixed reaction, and Rollins was largely booed (though not completely). Shield reunion teases got a huge reaction. People were really behind Orton's stuff at the end of the match.

These shows are going to live or die based on how well the minor league teams promote them so the actual cards don't matter too much. That said, its disappointing (although not necessarily surprising) that the cards lack any imagination. They are totally bland. I am not suggesting they run big time gimmick matches on throw away house shows, but there is nothing on these cards to suggest Jarrett is going to do more than simply present a straight forward wrestling show with mediocre talent. That's probably not going to cut it. Maybe the television tapings look completely different, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Yea, just the BOSJ matches for most of the shows (with the exception of the finals and the three Korakuen cards) but that's all I really all I want anyway. The costs of setting up a hard camera and uploading a few hours later have to be minimal and it really helps to be able to follow the entire tournament.

I was a big London fan in 2002-2003. Tim and I were talking about him the other day and both agreed that if he had stuck around on the indies, we are certain his indie/ROH run would be viewed in the same light as Danielson, Punk & Joe. He was a natural babyface. His run in ROH as a pushed wrestler only lasted 10-11 months but he packed in a lot during that time. The #1 contenders match versus Bryan from December 2002 was probably no worse than the the third best ROH match of 2002. His title match with Xavier from later that month was great in its ability to elicit genuine emotion from the Philly crowd by simply working a straightforward heel vs. underdog face title match. The 2 out of 3 falls Danielson match holds up really well (though it has been a year or two since I last watched it), as does the Styles match from the summer of 2003. The Joe title match was good considering that most assumed London was losing since it was his last announced show. He had his moments in WWE but not anything that truly stood out. It is clear listening to him in interviews that even today he is still bitter about his time in WWE and it definitely crushed his spirit to some extent. I’ve liked bits and pieces of his indie work since returning (select PWG stuff, the ROH match versus Strong, ect.) but he’s broken down physically and not always motivated. One of many, many “what if?” guys. London wrestling versus a heel Homicide and a heel Low Ki in 2004, going up against Generation Next in 2004/2005, and feuding with Jimmy Rave in 2005/2006 before or after Rave’s feuds with Punk and Styles all sound like great stuff. As it is, he is one of many guys with a lot of potential who was very good early on, but for reasons out of his control and some that were in his control, he never quite hit the peak he seemed capable of reaching.

Tim and I made the trip from Baltimore for last night’s show. Dark Match: J. Diesel vs. Romantic Truth Was announced as Moose versus J. Diesel (which would have been heel vs. heel) but Veda Scott said something to the effect of Moose not wanting to waste his time with a match like this until he gets his deserved shot at the World title. Never been overly impressed with J. Diesel but he looked good here. Lots of good body punches and he kept it up throughout the match, also working in the fun abdominal stretch/body punch spot. Romantic Truth was sloppy at times. Not much of a match overall. 1. Takaaki Watanabe vs. Adam Page I don’t think I’ve watched a Watanabe match last September. He sort of fell of the face of the earth there for a little bit. He’s bulked up a bit more. He’s kind of short for a heavyweight but is definitely big enough now to booked as a heavyweight in current New Japan. I’ve liked him in other matches (his match versus Chris Hero in Smash last summer was fun) but I thought this was the best I’ve seen him. He was moving around more confidently, played off the crowd, and threw some nice suplexes. He did a German Suplex on Colby Corino on the floor which felt a bit excessive but got a big pop. Page was fine in his role. Solid opening match. 2. KUSHIDA vs. Michael Elgin Not a good match, but not necessarily bad. Elgin’s offense was aimless as usual but KUSHIDA held things together with some nice arm based offense. KUSHIDA had a couple of off moments (one Pelé kick missed by a mile) and they also did too much popping up after moves down the stretch for my tastes. Not a terrible match and fine for an Elgin performance (he is MUCH better off as a heel) but not anything worth watching. Elgin hit a brutal-looking lariat during the match. 3. Tetsuya Naito vs. Kyle O’Reilly A lot of comedy early on form both guys, largely centering around the eye gesture thing Naito does and eye pokes. The comedy got over, at least initially. By the end, the match morphed into the Elgin/KUSHIDA match with a lot of jumping right back up from moves and a lot of back-and-forth. They went way too long for a match that was 50% comedy. Some good stuff and the comedy was fine, but the length of the match was counterproductive to the match they worked. The fans weren’t apathetic to the near falls by any means, but they didn’t get much of a reaction. 4. Shinsuke Nakamura defeats Jay Lethal (w/Truth Martini) and Jushin Thunder Liger and Mark Briscoe This is the fourth time I have seen Liger wrestle live and I still pop up from my seat like a little kid the second his music hits. Just something about him. His entrance even got Tim to put down the O’s game on his iPad for a second and stand up. Nakamura was over HUGE. I’ve been to a lot of ROH shows the past 13 years and the reception for Nakamura was one of the more legit superstar reactions I can remember anyone getting in this promotion. They essentially worked this as a parejas increibles match with the New Japan guys versus the ROH guys, which begs the question why they just didn’t book that match in the first place. As Tim pointed out, they might as well have gone all the way with it and booked the losing team in a hair vs. hair or hair vs. mask match for Friday’s show. I thought the match was really fun. The makeshift teams did the usual “partners who don’t get along spots” including Lethal and Briscoe dragging each other into the ring off of “hard” tags. It broke down into a normal 4-way at the end after Liger broke up a Nakamura pin fall. Mark took some big bumps. Lethal hit three topes in a row and Nakamura got all of his signature spots in. Enjoyable match. It took about an hour and a half to get through the first half of the show and then the usual 30-minute intermission. They started back from intermission with a segment to build up the Cheeseburger/Brual Bob Evans feud. I appreciate giving even the smallest of feuds some air time on a big show but by the time the first real match after intermission started, they were already pushing 10:00 PM. 5. Hiroshi Tanahashi defeats Roderick Strong Very good match. I want to watch it again on tape to see how good but live it was a lot of fun. Tanahashi came out to an almost shockingly poor reaction. It wasn’t necessarily the fans being burnt out either since Strong’s reaction was much louder. I joked when Tanahashi split open Strong on a flying forearm, that he was trying to show everyone that they have the wrong idea about the quality of his strikes, but honestly up close most of his stuff looked good and was laid in nicely. I didn’t get the same impression live from the Bennett match last year, so maybe some of that credit belongs to Strong. They did a nice a hard lock up and rolled around on the mat a little bit to start. Strong was really bleeding heavily after the flying forearm. Like always, the blood helped the match a lot. Strong laid in some some hard chops throughout. Tanahashi took a couple of backbreakers including one on the apron and one that was a counter to a High Fly Flow. So either his back isn’t as bad as it is made out to be or he just doesn’t care. The blood loss got the crowd behind Strong and made for a quality near fall section. Strong got a legitimate near fall reaction off of a series of moves late which was really impressive considering there was no way he was winning. They raised each other’s arms after the match. I heard Strong/KUSHIDA from night #1 was good and this match alone was probably enough to get Strong a look in New Japan. Not sure where he really fits but he is certainly deserving of an opportunity. He’s having an excellent 2015. 6. The Addiction (Christopher Daniels & Frankie Kazarian) defeat CHAOS (Gedo & Kazuchika Okada) There were the usual anti-TNA chants pre-match which Gedo encouraged and Okada seemed bemused by. Like Elgin, Addiction are much better off as heels. Gedo started and showed off his nice punches before tagging into Okada. Okada was over big, second only to Nakamura out of all the New Japan guys. Okada ran through some of his stuff before bringing Gedo back in to get worked over. Addiction had some nice double teams and their control portion of the match was fine. Okada got the hot tag and ran through his signature spots (the “drop kick the guy off the top rope spot” got a big reaction) before Gedo came back in to eat the pin. Good match overall. Exactly how you would expect it to be worked. We left after this match, missing out on the ROH title match and the six-man main event. It was passed 10:30 by the time the Okada tag wrapped up and we had a 90-minute drive back home plus work in the morning. Overall, good show. Nothing was terrible. The crowd was into everything. Hiroyoki Unno (the red shoes referee) is over this time along with Tiger Hattori and was way over. Tanahashi/Strong was definitely match of the night and worth seeking out. All the New Japan guys worked reasonably hard. I would say noticeably harder than they did last year. Maybe it was just me, but the New York show last year felt like the usual Japanese guys on vacation show while this year felt more like a “real” show if that makes sense.

Ospreay is good in it. He doesn't come off as a pure spot guy at all in the match. In fact, a lot of his offense has additional significance behind it assuming you buy into the story the announcers are selling. Ospreay's facial expressions and demeanor added a lot as well. Styles was great here but Ospreay added a lot. I didn't love it as much as Pete and I think I had it in the *** 1/2 range in the February Match Guide (which feels a little low to me now looking back) but its definitely a very good match.

Even if Jarrett gets a (good) TV deal, he is still going to have the problem of running a nationally televised promotion without any established starts to build off of. We have gone almost 14 years without the #2 most visible promotion in the US (TNA) creating any new legitimate stars. Styles is the only one that could really be argued. All the big stars in WWE over the past 15 years are either still with the company or retired. There is nobody besides Punk who was just recently – like in the past 3 years – on national television and booked as a star that is available. I don’t know if you can create a successful national promotion (as in, more than just a TV product that gets good enough ratings to survive like TNA did for so many years) without that. It will be tough to create new stars when there is nobody who can put them over in a meaningful way. If TNA dies, maybe they can squeeze the last bit of usefulness out of Angle. Styles could also put someone over in a meaningful way, but then it’s sort of coming off like TNA-lite. Punk is not even a remote possibility at this time. I agree that the roster is a good start, but it feels like a solid mid-card foundation with the first batch of names. Honestly, that’s the easiest part to do when it comes to creating a roster because there a lot of guys that could be plugged into those roles. With the possible exception of Moose (who has a ways to go) there is nobody in this first batch who could be a reasonable bet to be a big star. The stadium shows should be fun but he’s going to after to be a lot more forward-thinking if the end game is a successful television wrestling product.

Final teams: AAA Dream Team - Rey Mysterio Jr., Alberto El Patron and Myzteziz AAA Team #2 - El Hijo del Fantasma, El Texano Jr., and Psycho Clown Mexico Independent - Dr. Wagner Jr., Solar, and Blue Demon Jr. NOAH - Takayama, Ishimori, and Kotoge AJPW - KENSO, Masamune, and Tiger Mask III (Kanemoto) ROH - ACH, Moose & Brian Cage TNA - Matt Hardy, Mr. Anderson, and Johnny Mundo Rest of the World - Angelico, Mesias, and Drew Galloway They also announced at the press conference today that the show will air on iPPV. Striker and Vampiro to do English commentary. Tournament format is 15 minute time limits with a one-on-one 5 minute overtime being used in the case of a 15-minute time limit draw. They will be drawing first round matches on May 22nd. I like the format a lot. 15 minutes feels like the right time limit and the 5-minute one-on-one overtime period sounds like a neat idea on paper at least. I am interested in seeing how and when they use the overtime. Some of those teams are real motley crews, but I like the eclectic mix in a tournament like this. AAA Dream Team should win it all. It is just a question of who they go against in the finals. Rest of the World would be my choice, though TNA would probably work too. It'll be interesting to see how they go about eliminating the other Mexico team since those guys (maybe not so much Solar) don't lose a lot (only to each other). Maybe match them up against the Dream Team in the 2nd round and Rey pins Solar or something.

A few potentially fun Mascara Dorada matches in the B block with KUSHIDA, Shelley, Romero and Fish (and to a lesser extent, Nick Jackson). The Liger/Cavernario match is on the last day of the tournament and at Korakuen so it would be somewhat surprising if that show wasn't on either New Japan World or Samurai TV. Block B seems destined to come down to KUSHIDA and Shelley, especially since they are wrestling on the final day of the round robin. Block A is sort of wide open. Maybe Liger makes it to the finals with one last run (that would definitely get over) or maybe they spotlight someone like O'Reilly (O'Reilly/KUSHIDA would be a fun final). No semi's this year it looks like. Dominion is definitely stacked. In addition to not having any interest in seeing Ishii/Makabe again, the Goto/Nakamura rematch doesn't do much for much for me. Also doesn't seem to make a lot of sense from a booking standpoint. If Nakamura is going to win the title back, I don't see the point in the initial switch unless they wanted it off of him for the US ROH tour because he's going to lose a match or two (not very likely). I guess if Nakamura is going to win the G-1, he can lose to Goto twice in a row and then Goto can challenge for the Dome title shot in the fall or something. Really looking forward to Shibata/Sakuraba.

April Match Guide is up here: http://www.crossarmbreaker.com/2015-match-guides/april-2015-match-guide/ In this month’s issue: TAKA continues his strong 2015 in K-DOJO with another excellent, short singles match; Virus and Avisman tear it up on the mat in Coacalco; The current trio of New Japan young lions team for the first time – who came out looking the best?; A 30-minute match in All-Japan and a near 30-minute match in Dragon Gate each produce mixed results; Can Kota Ibushi and HARASHIMA top their very good February with their April sequel?; Plus, in addition to the full length reviews, this month’s issue includes quick hit looks at more than two dozen additional matches!

Love how every Yano pin attempt on Tanahashi gets a big reaction because of how good of a job they've done in establishing that he can beat him at anytime with any move. Sakuraba/Shibata interaction was strong yet again.

Omega's shtick would be fine it was drawing heat, but its not. All the garbage can stuff was cute in theory but didn't add to the match in any meaningful way. In some ways, he is trying too hard. I think he would be more effective if he dialed everything back just a little. Shelley looked good. Liked the KUSHIDA & Young Bucks stuff. Great near fall on the Sliced Bread #2. Okay match.

Not much heat for the junior tag. Was just okay most of the way but picked up for the final few minutes. Romero was great. reDRagon were largely background players. Good match that didn't blow me away and the lack of heat in the midst of all the big moves was distracting at times.

Young Lions was tag was good. Not sure it was better than the six-man from earlier in the week but still good in its own right. Best part was the near falls and crabs at the end from the young lions.

Thought the 8-man opener was better than usual. I liked the Nakanishi comedy rack spot and the dive train was a lot of fun. Rare non-Fantasticamania "dive" (term used loosely) from Nakanishi. KUSHIDA looked like the best guy in the match as usual.