donsem43
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Everything posted by donsem43
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This is for Jungle's and Tora's Goddesses of Stardom tag titles. The main story throughout this match is the continuation of the Jungle/Utami feud. Every interaction between these two is fantastic. Natsuko Tora had possibly the best performance of her career in her first Korakuen Hall main event. Not crazy about the booking here but with that said this match could be the precursor to a run of very strong tag matches in 2019 for Stardom. ****1/4 -
This is for Watanabe's Wonder of Stardom title and the match that Iwatani asked for after winning the 5* Grand Prix the previous match. This is pretty much a slugfest from beginning to end. These two lay into each other while mixing in some big spots. Not quite the great match that you would expect between these two but very enjoyable none the less. ***3/4
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This was Kagetsu's second title defense of the day as she takes on Shimmer champ Nicole Savoy. Savoy actually controls the opening part with a mix of matwork and power forcing Kagetsu to use more of her high-risk offense. I really liked the matwork here a lot. It's not smooth looking but the roughness of it made everything come off as earned. Savoy going back and forth between matwork and throws worked well because you felt like she was keeping Kagetsu off balance. The finish keeps this from being great as Kagetsu sprays mists in Savoy's face right in front of the ref leading to the end. Still, a entertaining match that will hopefully led to Savoy coming back to Stardom assuming that she doesn't sign some where. ***3/4
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Misaki Ohata has been far and away the best woman in the world this year, which is bittersweet since she is retiring at the end of the year. Just a great mix of high-end singles and tag matches with a variety of opponents in both WAVE and SEAdLINNNG.
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This match is for the Beyond the SEA tag titles held by BORDERLESS (Yoshiko and Yamashita.) I hadn't been impressed at all with BORDERLESS so far as a team but they really clicked here and this was by far their best match so far. It doesn't hurt that Arisa puts in a tremendous performance here as she is slowly starting to put together another run of top quality performances. Sasamura is a K-Dojo trainee that showed some promise. Hopefully, she starts making tape on a regular basis. This is just a great main-event tag. ****1/4
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This turned out to be the most surprisingly great matches in joshi this year. The lineup wasn't too inspiring mainly because Takase, while promising, is a rookie and Kizuki is pretty bad. It's seem like SEAdLINNNG has become the place where mediocre workers go to have good matches because Kizuki worked hard and stayed out of the way when she needed to. This actually turned out to be a traditional 1/4 vs 2/3 type of Japanese tag with everyone filling their specific role incredibly well. I hope Takase gets a chance to shine somewhere, whether it be Actwres girl'Z or somewhere else, because she can more than hang in there when paired up with veteran stars like Nanae and Mizunami. A fantastic tag that you should make sure not to skip over. ****
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This match is from the opening round of the ULTRA U-21 Tag Team Tournament. When you have 3/4th of the awesome Best Friends/Avid Rival fued, there is a strong chance that is going to be great. While Akane Fujita is a significant downgrade from Misaki Ohata, to her credit, she works her butt off here and doesn't drag down the match at all. The match is mostly just another example of Best Friends being the best tag team in the world while having Mizunami to play off of. The whole match is just a continuous flow of action while not sacrificing selling and meaning for pace. Just terrific stuff. ****1/4
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This is a match for both the World of Stardom title and the Wonder of Stardom title with the winner taking both belts. This match gets off to a fairly methodical start but it never feels like its killing time as they always seem to keep things moving along. They do manage to slowly, but naturally, increase the pace along the way to point that you don't suddenly notice that they are in the finishing run. A very well laid out title match. ****
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Has there ever been a bad Pete Dunne match in NXT/NXTUK? The match with Danny Burch for the UK title was really, really good. This week's NXT proper episode had a lot of stuff for the women. Dakota Kai/Taynara Conti was a nice match (Kai/Storm from NXTUK was good to,) plus they set up three other matches for the future: Candice/Nikki Cross, Bianca Belair/Mia Yim, and a 2/3 falls rematch between Shayna Baszler and Kairi Sane at TakeOver. All of them should be at least good. Dream/Lars was a super fun TV main with some nutty bumps from Dream.
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[2018-09-24-Stardom] Mayu Iwatani vs Utami Hayashishita
donsem43 replied to aguakun's topic in September 2018
Utami was actually a little less than six weeks in to her career at this point. The thing with her is that she isn't technically that much better than some other joshi rookies out there but it's more of the fact that Utami is being pushed as a main-eventer right away and she fits the role. She doesn't look out of her league at all. The match itself is great. I like how Mayu tried to rough up the rookie but had enough respect for her as a threat to not go out of her way to embarrass her like she usually would in situations like these. She did a nice job bumping and selling the work done to her arm. Utami has another smart performance here, just like she has had throughout this tournament. It's amazing how she never tries to over do anything and just works smart. A fantastic final to end a very strong tournament. ****1/4 -
This match was awesome until the finish. The opening was great as Kairi clearly has the Kirifuda Clutch figured out so Shayna switches it up by going after Kairi's arm. Kairi's selling of her arm was terrific, especially when she made sure to work around it while on offense. The finish did feel like it was pasted on though. I wouldn't have had a problem with it had Shayna won with an armbar or if they worked it from an angle that didn't leave the ref in a bad spot. Still, this was the best match that these two have had and I have no problem with this feud continuing since these two probably have an even better match in them. ****
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Ronda's run of inexplicably good matches continues here. Although, I thought Nikki was fantastic here. Veteran who holds the match together isn't a phrase that I'd thought I would use to describe a Nikki Bella performance but that's what happened here. Even Brie, after being pretty awful since coming back, did a very nice job here working as a second. I really liked how Ronda kept herself vulnerable by being too cocky at times thus leaving herself open to cheap shots from the Bellas. She still had a few bad moments as she took too long to set up some of the bigger spots and she's clearly using constant trash talk to cover up obvious spot calling. In the end though, this match worked much better as a main event than it looked like on paper and it definitely should be commended for that. ***3/4
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I want to say this match was great but there's just too much goofy stuff going on here. It was clearly at it best when these two went straight at each other but then something goofy like the tossing of chairs into the ring or Becky trying to walk off in a LWS match would hurt the momentum. Charlotte has been terrible this year but she actually did come through here, mostly because she took a bunch of incredibly nasty bumps. Irregardless of the new floor mats, the powerbomb to the floor bump at the finish had to suck. I didn't care for Becky's inconsistent character work, is she suppose to be a badass that disregards the rules or a coward who cheats to get by, that seemed to change every few minutes. Still, as a whole, the match was entertaining but if they just cut out the dopey stuff they would have had something special. ***1/2
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Wow, they threw up Ronda/Nikki up on YouTube:
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I don't remember exactly when it started, but she began to wear them as part of her entrance during her first (2013/2014) World of Stardom title reign. It's basically a slightly different design of the Tiger Mask mask. Rossy Ogawa, who runs Stardom, has a thing for Tiger Mask which is why about half the roster now comes out with some type of similar mask during there entrances. Io almost always has a different mask for every show. While Toni/Meiko was pretty good, I thought Io/Rhea was great. Rhea doing a terrific job grinding down Io, while Io did a nice pacing out her come back to sell Rhea's work. Io also looked a lot less nervous than she did in her other matches in the tournament. Toni/Meiko was really hard hitting but I didn't like how, at the finish, Toni kicked out of the Scorpion Rising then Toni immediately coming back to hit a Storm Zero for the win. The final will be interesting since the Io/Toni matches in Stardom have been a mixed bag. Add in that this will pretty easily the biggest crowd that either of these women have performed in front of but that didn't turn out to be a problem for Shayna Bazsler and Kairi Sane last year, plus this should be a more welcoming crowd than the one from last year final.
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Nikki Cross vs. Bianca Belair from this weeks TV was really, really good despite the sports entertainment finish. These two mesh together surprisingly well and it's a shame that they won't have a proper blow off to their feud on either Evolution or a Takeover.
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This match happen of the final show of the 5*GP. For Konami, this was quite the bookend to a tremendous tournament for her. She looked great here again working over Utami with kicks and various holds. For her part, Utami has another better than expect performance. She sells Konami's arm-work well and fires back with some judo throws and submissions of her own. This was a bit on the short side but the work here makes it well worth checking out. ***3/4
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The problem with that viewpoint is that it wouldn't be hard to replace every overrated/mediocre/bad woman from U.S./Europe in this tournament and replace them with a overrated/mediocre/bad joshi wrestler. The WWE has just been lucky enough to bring in the women that they have. There's also a lot of obviously inherent problems with NXT that is hurting the development of not just women, but quite a few men as well. Highly doubt if you shipped all of the women from the Performance Center off to various dojos in Japan that everyone of them would come back as some sort of super-worker. Alex Lee and Heidi Katrina have both trained with Satomura for awhile and both have improved but neither of them are people I would go out of my way to watch.
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This was the best episode so far, which wasn't surprising considering that it had the best two on paper match-ups of the entire tournament. Hiroyo/Toni took awhile to get going, just like Hiroyo's first match with Evers/Ellering, but was really good once it did. The finish did come out of nowhere giving the match a much flatter finish than it needed. Kacy/Ripley was a mixed bag. Kacy was very hit and miss here missing a few spots in the match although they did a surprisingly good job covering when this blown spots happened. Ripley put in another strong performance although she could use a better finisher. I like Conti in her match with Lacy Lane. She busted out a bunch of nasty judo throws but I thought her best highlight was the kicks to Lane's hands when she was trying to pull her out of the corner. Meiko/Mercedes was awesome. It might just be one of the stiffest worked matches in WWE history, right up there with Garvin/Valentine and Benoit/Regal.
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This was a big match in the Blue Stars block with the winner being in control of her own fate going into the final day. Hazuki is just nasty in this match, jumping Iwatani at the start then viciously going after her arm. Iwatani stays in the match by hitting just enough big shots while still selling her arm, eventually catching Hazuki with a dragon suplex for the win. Short, but quick and action packed. ***3/4
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Hiroyo/Rachael took awhile to get going with the finishing run being pretty good. At least Hiroyo had the wherewithal to realize that the crowd didn't know her so she went out of her way to get over with the crowd. Conti/Elaban was better than I thought it was going to be. To be honest, I thought Elaban was going to be bad but I came away impressed. Her offense looked good and she did a nice job selling the work on her hand from Conti. Conti had some great looking throws and has some good crazy/kooky shtick too. Matthews/Dawn was okay but it was funny seeing Dawn trying to do all of these elaborate strikes while Matthews would just go straight ahead and drill her. Io/Xia was squash with Io just basically running through her stuff. The match would have been interesting if they would have mixed in some flash rollups for Xia.
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WWE TV 09/24 - 09/30 Is Palmeiras the greatest soccer team on Earth?
donsem43 replied to KawadaSmile's topic in WWE
Fan shoot footage of Io's moonsault made it look a lot worse than the angle they showed plus there were reports that it took Xia awhile to get back up. Guess that's the advantage of being taped instead of live. -
[2018-09-09-Stardom-5*GP] Jungle Kyona vs Utami Hayashishita
donsem43 replied to aguakun's topic in September 2018
Yeah this was an better version of their match the previous month, mainly because Jungle is looking for the win right out the gate. Utami does have a few hiccups when she takes too long to execute a move and is a bit slow to get into position but still managed another very solid performance. Jungle was at her best here, maybe her best performance of the year, as she works over Utami's back with a variety of holds and power moves. Not crazy about the booking of a draw but Stardom is pretty much all in on Utami and you can't blame them at this point. ****1/4