AstroBoy

The story here is strong and definitely carries the day. Akiyama is getting more and more cocky and aggressive and goes right at Kobashi, eventually taking him out on the rampway with a spiked piledriver. The work in between that and the Kobashi comeback is pedestrian, but the Kobashi hulk up is milked for a ton. He destroys Akiyama, then Kanemaru, then Akiyama again with the lariat and gets the shock pin to reassert himself in a big way. The purple and black was a nice touch too. **3/4

Scorpio's antics help give the early moments of this some flavor and intrigue. He looks good and has great impact on both his standing moonsault and the flipping leg drop late in the match. Slinger was adequate but didn't stand out in any way, same with Kenta here. Marufuji I thought was the one who reached a bit too much here. He was a little sloppy trying to execute spots he couldn't quite pull off, maybe a little overzealous to bust out flashy offense. A couple nice nearfalls that the young guys get to kick out of but Marufuji succumbs to a german suplex by Slinger. Pretty much the definition of an average match. **1/2

Yeah no matter what I am just happy that you all put this project together. So many matches to check out.

I haven't posted over there in a while but playing devil's advocate here -- I nominated a few matches at one point and they were quickly just buried in the nomination folder with no replies at all. This isn't about me but a more general issue of if people are nominating matches and there is no actual discussion about the matches, then so much stuff just gets lost in the shuffle. It's not like people are not seconding or thirding a lot of these nominations, it's that they aren't getting any discussion at all. I think the thing is that there are just SO MANY MORE matches than there are wrestlers, and therefore you have so much ground to cover just to nominate things you think you might vote for. And even then, you're probably missing or forgetting some stuff. It's just a tall task to try to get everyone to nominate everything they want while also getting others to vouch for them or disagree with them, and then leave time to actually watch other stuff.

This may have been my favorite match of theirs yet. Nice, fluid mat work early leading to Spanky getting the better of it with his speed and some real nice agile spots to take over. Dragon's transition to offense with a big reverse suplex felt like a solid way to strongly change the complexion of the match. Dragon showed a real nice vicious side on offense and they do display some cool ideas. Spanky jumping on the top rope to avoid Dragon was neat but ultimately felt out of place, like they tried to shoehorn it in here. The finishing run gets going real good and they really build strongly to Spanky's big splash ending things. ***1/2

Takayama shaking off the surprise dropkick at the start was great. Kikuchi cleverly uses his smarts to attack a limb and get some momentary light to go on offense but obviously that wasn't going to hold up. Takayama's knees here were vicious and looked totally killer. The ref stoppage added some real gravity to help get Takayama over as a beast here, too. ***

This was awesome. Morishima comes out of this looking better, actually, given that he jumps Vader and pounds on him without any hesitation to start the match. Vader is just Vader, though, and mauls him pretty thoroughly. Vader was really laying in the shots here and it was a great clash of bulls fight, albeit one-sided. I loved the surprising finish of him just beating on Morishima and then covering him for a cumulative damage pinfall. Really great showcase for Vader while keeping a young giant strong in the process. **1/2

I absolutely liked this more than the pay per view match. Better pace, more discernible hatred, better character work. Angle is steadily coming along a bit week by week but I still think he struggled here to be that compelling on top. Luckily, this goes by quickly and it doesn't have a chance to lose its intensity. I even like the finish and Angle really was in a spot to capitalize off a win at this point. ***1/4

Does Graves or whoever think that Punk is going to reconsider or something? Like he is desperate to crawl back? Who knows the whole story but Punk seems perfectly happy doing his own thing even if he isn't a success at it. It only makes people like Graves look stupid for caring so much about him while they carry out their soulless WWE shilling company man routine. I get not liking Punk or even being happy to see him fail, but people act like the guy left them high and dry in some awful way.

Nothing special but they go out and have a very smooth, very enjoyable compact match where everyone gets to shine a bit. Angle gets to be the fall guy for Rikishi spots. Good TV match. *3/4

I thought Benoit's promo was really good before the match. An intense few minutes with Benoit especially looking solid, making Jericho's offense look as good as possible. To his credit, Jericho really brings stiff chops to these Benoit matches. Triple H runs in for an effective brawl and I am surprised at how strong they positioned Benoit during this pull-apart. *1/2

Yeah I think this is a good idea.

Fantastic idea and I can't wait to see this take off. I will help in any way possible!

The box gimmick was dumb and immediately failed on a practical level which was funny. This did totally take a left turn after the third box was opened, because it slowed WAAAAY down to the point where it lost any kind of fun that it had going early on. There was just way too much downtime and lying around, especially after the introduction of the terrible looking coal miner's glove. Booker has a leaping sidekick during his comeback that came nowhere close to hitting as Jarrett takes a bump like he just got shot. This was such a lame and inconsequential way to crown a champion. *1/2

I thought this kind of sucked. There was no real flow to anything, the dynamics hurt the match instead of adding interest, and this could have benefited from a faster pace. Scott Hudson says Scott Steiner has an "imposing facemask" which is a ridiculous thing to say, as if Booker T is going to be scared off somehow. I really liked Steiner's forearm shivers on Book in the corner. I didn't think this was much at all. *3/4

This was really good. It had some depth to it as Hoshikawa gets beaten down with a chair and a low blow but then makes his own comeback with brutal headbutts and Togo takes a wild bump to the concrete floor. Togo is good getting worn down and eventually fighting from underneath. They trade hot nearfalls and the selling of exhaustion and physicality is really good for both guys. Hoshikawa picks up the win and they have a nice moment afterward. ****

Crazy awesome shortish tag that made a big statement. Of course so much focus is on Murakami/Ishikawa but I really dug both Nagai and Malenko here. Malenko is fast becoming a favorite of mine. He is such a great grappler who can also hang tough and really comes off as a tough guy even though he looks like the worst dude you'd ever meet at a bar. His selling of Nagai's midsection kick attack was fantastic. You could see the pain registering and the panic going off and it brought the crowd to a frenzy. Nagai was just a total tank, going nuts with nothing but heavy shots. Huge kicks to the ribs and a big time German suplex. The main feud stuff was just icing to a really great match. ****

Man this was great. A beautiful example of a long tag match with twists in momentum and control without it getting stale or repetitive. This has the normal fine matwork to start things off but things really settle in with Taira just torturing Ken, and then Sano getting in on it too. The first hot tag is really well built to but Usuda was cut off almost immediately. Taira had a lot of neat escapes and rolls to get out of Ken offense. Sano totally obliterates Ken with a spinning kick to ramp things up. We shift as Ken and Usuda fire up and use some striking to gain a nice run of offense but Sano introduces a new wrinkle into the match with a gutbuster to Ken. A double stomp off the top and eventually a big missile dropkick lead to a boston crab for the win. This had a nice sense of one-sidedness that made Ken's struggle to survive come across really well. And enough small changes in attack or strategy to keep the match from getting stale at all. I loved it. ****1/4

Back rake is one I want to see. I feel like no one does a missile dropkick anymore. Running knee lift is a good call. Also just a traditional DDT.

My hopes were pretty high for this and they were mostly satisfied but not quite. This kind of takes its time getting started and Zumbido gets heavily involved, a theme that would continue for the entire match. They really work about 3 or 4 miscommunication spots between Zumbido and Dandy in here at key moments. I really liked the timing of Antifaz coming back in the second fall to really fire up and get some revenge weapon shots on Dandy. This was probably the best he was all match, capturing the crowd, firing them up and going after Dandy with real gusto. The third fall breaks into runs of big nearfalls. They do build some drama, although there is one big glaring spot where Antifaz doesn't do a damn thing so Dandy has to basically put himself into a small package for a nearfall. Weird. The piledriver spot and also the double clothesline spot were both big nearfalls that were really well done. I did like Dandy going to the powerbomb twice in a row, only for the third to lead to the finish. Good match but not quite great. ***3/4

Part of the problem I think is that it is very time-consuming to just think of matches to nominate, write them up, get them nominated, etc. It leaves very little time for anybody to actually discuss the matches themselves because it takes a lot of thought to get everything nominated that you might want to vote on. Part of me wonders if the project wouldn't benefit from less strict nomination type stuff. GWE worked because there are only so many wrestlers and then you can get into the discussion. There are an infinite amount of matches and so many will inevitably get lost in the shuffle. Maybe sub-folders to discuss specific wrestlers, sub-folders for different promotions, sub-folders for different eras would be an interesting way to take it? So you would be sacrificing a thorough list of nominees but it would easier to pop into the Steve Austin folder or something and just start discussing some of his matches. Or you could drop in the NJPW 80s folder and debate between two highly touted matches. Just a thought, and in no way a dismissal of the tireless work that has gone into this. I just know that I haven't kept up in a while because I couldn't get organized enough to nominate everything ahead of time.

This was fairly middling until Nagata did his damndest to to singlehandedly elevate the whole thing and make the crowd come unglued. It starts with him pointing down Chono before he locks the STF on Tenzan. Then while Tenzan is being worked over by Iizuka, Nagata taunts Chono without mercy, even shadowboxing at one point. He is just a supreme cocky dick and it really helped push the match to another level. Everybody else was kind of along for the ride and I thought Iizuka looked pretty weak here to be honest. ***1/4

The crowd is way into this. I don't often see a wrestler and just immediately take a disliking to them or think they are "bad" but Kashin really does jump out as pretty bad to me. Just the way he turns away from taking a simple chop from Takaiwa. He even whiffs on a tag to Liger! Barring that, this was good enough juniors tag action. Stuff between Liger and Kanemoto is always good and Takaiwa is a personal favorite. Loved him winning the shoulder block standoff with Liger. **3/4

This just felt so stuck in the mud. The execution and general layout of the match was fine but there was nothing that stood out here at all, save for the dissension between Omori and Asako. The hot tag of Omori was really awesome come to think of it, with Ogawa and Misawa cutting off his fiery comeback with some clever spots. Asako didn't exactly add much here either. **3/4

This got good despite Marufuji being a really disinterested seller and also having some wonky offense right after he took over. The weird standing bronco buster in the corner comes to mind. You can tell they are deliberately and cautiously taking their time to execute a match like this but it does come together nicely with Marufuji honing his attack toward the ribs. I actually really liked the methodical pace leading to the nice couple false finishes. **3/4