GOTNW
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This match is a master class in delayed gratification, working and getting over in professional wrestling. Before the bell even rings Inoki potatoes Oki with a punch. They seperate them, and the match starts. They don't just immediately start brawling-there's lots of lock-ups, some of them include hair-brawling, and pretty much all of them ending with the ref coming in between them. You can feel the tension-it legitimately looks like they hate each other but are also simultaneously not trying to lose their temper and get DQed-the wrestling is really good, nifty takedowns, pretty suplexes-but where the match really excells is when all hell breakes loose. Oki hits about Inoki with about a million headbutts-each sold gigantically, knocking Inoki down. Inoki goes down again and again and then fires up. daring Oki to headbutt him some more. His mannerisms are simple and primal which is precisely what makes them so cathartic. When he punches Oki in the comeback for the first time you feel ane explosion of all of the frustation that boiled in you during the FIP section and you remember why people watch so many movies that rely on cliches they're aware of. It's because they work. Inoki Bom-ba-ye.
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You could classify the matwork here as "NWA" style-in that holds are worked and worked over until there is a transition and that transition really determines the quality of the match. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time but sometimes it's worth sticking through it. It's worth sticking with it here. Before the match Andre gets annoyed by Inoki getting a bigger reaction than him and refuses to shake hands. He attacks Inoki's arm early on-no sitting in a hold for five minutes but repetead wristlocks and armlocks that really establish his dominance. Andre easily drags Inoki to the middle of the ring once Inoki reaches the ropes and does a cool hammerlock slam, both of which make for cool visuals. Andre gets frustrated with the ref over.....something, leaving himself open to Inoki who goes for his leg, thereby establishing Inoki could get in control that way. When Andre goes to attack Inoki's arm again Inoki tries to kick away at Andre's legs, but they don't transition into Inoki's control quite yet. Eventually Inoki manages to counter Andre's armlock with a Headscissors-which looks amazing. Andre then manages to cross over Inoki's legs and changes his focus on attacking them. Inoki eventually manages to counter that with a Keylock-another big visual. They do tease Andre countering it a couple of times but before countering it Inoki turns him back into the Keylock to further establish the armwork. Once Andre does pick Inoki up into the air instead of placing him on the top rope like the norm is in 70s matches he throws him out of the ring, putting over the peril of the situation. Andre nurses his arm for a bit but Inoki quickly returns to the ring and we get to the finishing stretch, with Inoki nailing a couple of big Enzuigirs that connected well and Andre doing a Suplex and a ot of headbutts. I particularly liked the Canadian Backbreaker counter where Inoki pushed the corner-post instead of the ropes to counter Andre into a Back Body Drop. Unfortunately politics get in the way here-as Inoki can't even get a visual count-out win, Andre immediately no-sells him and only loses because he started brawling with a remember wrestler ringside, then gets back in the ring and lays out Inoki to get his heat back. Damn that 50/50 booking Very good match based around strategy, though I doubt Andre had the skills to produce anything truly great with lots of matwork. ***1/2
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Fuke walks away from a handshake and goes after Tamura as soon as the match starts, he doesn't really do much damage to Tamura. After that Tamura just completely shuts him down, easily blocking all of his big swings, just slapping and kicking the shit out of him and knocking him down until he ran out of points. Really cool structure and a neat atmosphere with a very responsive crowd. ***-***1/4
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This was a very pleasant surprise-particularly in the level of *wrestling* displayed. Some of the takedowns were just unreal-particularly Yamazaki's twisting one and the one where Scott transitioned into a Stepover Toehold. The "resthold" complaints are silly-they were working nearfalls with the whole crowd chanting for the wrestler in the hol , but I guess I'm going to have a different perspective when I'm watchng *everything* vs. people who watched whatever made the yearbook. What would be proper selling of a Half Crab anyway? Crying and waving your hands manically? This isn't exactly Shawn Michaels vs Hulk Hogan. The stand up portions were as badass as you'd hope from a Yamazaki match and the standing choke made for a sweet finish too, especially with there being a threat of a takedown that they'd established with Scott doing so much cool amateur wrestling stuff. ***1/2
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Simple, smartly worked undercard match. The opening is full of lock-ups, headlocks, fighting for positions, defence spots etc.-they mix in some strikes as well, do enough to keep you interested but not enough to garner a reaction outside of a polite clap here and there. They naturally bridge that to the escalation of the finishing stretch where they go all out, laying in brutal palm strikes, knees and doing a bunch of swank submission counters. ***1/4
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You don't need to watch every show-in fact I'd go as far as to say you don't even need to watch a single full show if you make sure to watch every type of match the company/style regularly presents.
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I mean if you interpret this as selling in a broader way the debate is pretty meaningless since a lot more of what constitutes a wrestling match is selling than offence so naturally it's going to be more important.
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I voted for offence simply because in most cases wrestlers aren't good or bad at selling enough for it to make a difference.
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Man-no matter how much his work gets praised Tamura's character seems to forever remain underrated. HIs determination, stubborness and ego are played to perfectly here-the moment where he look down on Maeda dares him to do something is great, as is the insane fight over positioning that ensues instantly afterwards. The speed of their kicks is something else-them actually presenting the match like a real fight instead of doing trading kicks spots makes the kicks feel a million times more important but the speed and impact and technique in kicks itself is on another level as well. I look at stuff like a sequence in which Maeda locks in a Leglock and Tamura blocks it and tries to escape but Maeda blocks that with a Guillotine BUT Tamura rolls with him and uses that Guillotine to get a Side Mount and transition into a full mount and really get in a dominant spot and you know an Armbar is coming, Tamura is rolling around, trying to trick Maeda into letting his guard down but he slips for a moment and immediately gets Double Wristlocked from the bottom and think-seriously fuck junior wrestling, THIS is true workrate and it rules. The Sleeper/Ankle Lock finish is always great but they milk it to its maximum here. ****
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I've avoided NOAH like the plague since KENTA plague-the only time I ever think about them is when I wonder what exactly went wrong with the style. One of the theories I remember is that the AJ/NOAH guys took the style too far and nothing the new guys did could make the crowd care-but after seeing Zack Sabre Jr. get his matches hugely over in Differ Ariake I came to the conclusion the newer guys just have no clue how to build a match. This wasn't even the best example of that as most NOAH main events are structured worse than this one was-Sugiura vs. Shiozaki or Marufuji is just 30 minutes of repeating the same strike exchanges. Here you actually have something resembling a heat section-Sugiura has really great, reckless offence and Nakajima has improved tremednously at garnering sympathy. And they at times they really *do* get that heat from the remaining two thousand NOAH fans. But overall....the match lacks direction, and more than anything it lacks urgency. You get a spot, then a bunch of down time where nothing happens and so on, and it shows they really don't know what to do to fill so much time. The match created a lot of strong visuals and could be edited into a great highlight video-Nakajima being busted open with an unprotected chairshot in particular was something else. NOAH really does need a proper change. You can what you want about all the Sugiura and KENTA 2010-2013 main events but at least they had an identity. I have no idea whom this style is supposed to cater to. It's moving the style closer to New Japan's but just by taking away some of the tools the workers used to fill the time yet insist on the workers filling the same amount of time. Either slice 10-15 minutes off these matches or let them Dragon Suplex each other for ten minutes like they used to. There was at least a natural progression and structure in the style that required 4 finishers for a big match victory. **3/4
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Interesting opening-Elgin overwhelms Nakajima with power, Nakajima had to use the dreaded Dean Ambrose rope pull and drop toe holds to get back in control, first attacks the arm and then when Elgin fights back goes for the legs. Nakajima's armwork and legwork is pretty inconsequential-triple limbwork would've been interesting but Nakajima's kicks were pretty enough that I'll just take that segment for what it was. I find it really hard to care about Elgin's control segments when all he does is spam spots, and his spots aren't really that special. Nakajima's selling carried the strike exchanges-Elgin nailed a couple of good elbows but also did stupid sound effect enzuigiris. There was stuff like Elgin's triple suplex attempt where you could tell they were just setting up the next spot and the finishing stretch was classic 2.99 spam/hit a big move>if the next one is reversed its damage is instantly nullified. A good showing for Nakajima who managed to make me enjoy an Elgin match about as much as I am gonna in 2016. **3/4
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Opening was kinda boring as they quickly dropped the matwork to do boring armwork and irish whips into the guardrail, because that's what the people REALLY want to see Match was fine once they transitioned to hitting each other hard-Nakajima's technique and Shibata's brutality never cease to impress me. Still the match was filled with lazy mirror spots and had a stupid suplex sequence, so a couple of minutes of nice violence will only get you so far. ***
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The opening was good enough-basic matwork and Tanahashi continously evading and blocking Shiozaki's chops. Unfortunately that mini-atory was quickly came to an end when Shiozaki randomly and forgettably chopped Tanahashi to little reaction while fighting over...some leg-based move, probably a dragon screw. This is one of the worst Tanahashi performances I remember seeing-the majority of his offence consisted of embarrisingly looking gut/knee kicks that were straight out of a 1999 Raw in their impact and borin lg and repetitive leg attacks. Tanahashi absolutely outclassed Shiozaki in star presence and reactions-the crowd was way more invested in cheering and (more prominently) booing Tanahashi than reacting to Shiozaki in any way. Shiozaki's performance wasn't much-he didn't sell the leg as you'd expect, he'd get in his chops, kesagiris and Lariats and then let Tanahashi direct the match again. He also hit his own hand while attempting to strike Tanahashi and managed to botch some kind of afallaway slam so hard it didn't look like a move oalr a counter. I can enjoy botches-Shiozaki stiffing Tanahashi on a Moonsault by kneeing him straight in the head was fun-as long as the wrestlers imorovise well. The said Moonsault rocked Tanahashi for real and made their finishing stretch slower and the cooperation more obvious and full of botches, basically how it would look like if someone were to make a parody of modern New Japan finishing stretches. *3/4
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I liked the opening-consisted of basic holds but they worked them well, and Shiozaki bridging out of a hold and then transitioning into a hammerlock looked cool. Tanahashi made Shiozaki use Chops as a means of a comeback instead of just "stuff he does" which was a good call and there was stuff I liked in here-Shiozaki patting Tanahashi's head and playing with his hair, Tanahashi acting like a dick, using Misawa's elbow combinations and attempting a Tiger Driver. Shockingly there was legwork in this match-and it even managed to produce two spots I liked-Tanahashi changing the direction of his Dragon Screw when Shiozaki started fighting out of it and Tanahashi quickly Chop Blocking Shiozaki when he got out of.....whatever move Tanahashi was attempting and was about to go for a rope run. However...........there was a lot of stuff here that I did not like. Most of Tanahashi's legwork was boring and looked weak-I really have no use for watching him dropkick someone in the leg fifteen times, doesn't captivate me whatsoever, doesn't look good, doesn't add anything to what they're going for. Shiozaki didn't even bother selling the leg most of the time except when he Moonsaulted, and lord knowns I've seen enough japanese wrestling I'm not going to lose sleep over it. In fact I'd much rather have that than Shiozaki making cringeworthy faces. The problem there is that it did render huge portions of Tanahashi's runs on offence meaningless and Tanahashi's legwork wasn't engaing on its own. Shiozaki hitting Tanahash with embarrisingly bad kesagiris and punches telegraphed he wasn't actually going to get out of Tanahashi's moves. Tanahashi's Fujinami tribute slaps also looked bad. Shiozaki botched a top rope swinging side slam really bad. Finishing stretch was very reminiscent of what's going on in New Japan these days-lots of jumping around, pop-ups, run the ropes-get countered transitions etc. Tanahashi at least does less Sliding Blades these days-it got really repetitive here. Shiozaki countering Tanahashi's Go Flasher Small Package coutner by just lifting him straight up was neat, but it was too late to suck me back into this. And then there came Tanahashi's questionable set up for the HFF.... **1/4 -
Yeah-you can definitely see the prototypes of some of today's New Jalan tropes here, particularly the long forearm exchanges, double lariats and the bounce off the ropes-eat a move transition. This was a fun hoss battle-I noticed I enjoy the New Japan finishing steetch countering logic a lot more when it's applied to shoulder block. Maybe I'd grow tired of that too but it's peculiarity made it worth pointing out. This was a fun hoss battle-Nakanishi would spice the strike exchanges with big chops and a huge bitchslap and I loved how Makabe used the first one to goad Nakanishi into attacking him and managed to create a huge opportunity for himself. Nakanishi selling dizziness was fun-Makabe's choice of offence questiinable, I don't really buy Half Crabbing a guy a minute after you Death Valley Bomb him on the floor. Nakanishi also pulled back on Makabe's jaw and knees like Atlantis does which turns the Argentine Backbreaker (usually one of my least favourite moves) into a neat looking hold. **3/4
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You can see modern New Japan style in this. It's in their strike exchange that consists of striking more and more instead of stopping and selling a blow, it's in the way Tanahashi milks his arm injury, it's in the count-out tease and it's in it the finish that consists of them trading big moves and, specifically, how they do it (lots of counters and pop-ups). I did enjoy the match-the beginning had a lot of matwork that way tighter than you see these days with a much wider array of holds, I mean it's understandable after years of work guys get lazy but it's much more interesting to see them work armdrags, kneebars, headscissors etc. than just grab a hold until it's time for dancing. After that you get a small portion of the match that is workrate-y and my stuff-your stuff, though I must note I like Tanahashi laying in Dropkicks and hitting Single Underhook Suplexes a lot more than a million jump around moves. Also Makabe quickly kicking out of the suplexes was smart as when they transitioend to The match really becomes interesting when Makabe counters Tanahashi with a neat Standing Double Wristlock he transitions into a Fujiwara Armbar. They build heat here-and Makabe does a good looking "Hogan knocks Inoki off the apron with a Lariat" tribute spot to tie that into the ring out tease. The finish was exciting as by this time they weren't limitated by formulas and much of it felt novel. ***
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This match is such a huge mismatch-Inoki is like two heads taller than Hoshino and their difference is status is even larger. It's worked like that and that's precisely what makes it so intriguing. Hoshino has to desperately throw everything at Inoki not to get 2.99 counts that and interpreter then twists as "surviving"-he has to do that just to make Inoki register his offence. When Inoki trips Hoshino it's a show of dominance. "look how easy it was for him". When Hoshino does that he has to time it perfectly because he doesn't have Inoki's strenght and size that would allow him to just push him away-and the narrative makes it work even more when you add the meaning of a payback spot to it. Hoshino's offence consists of super awesome punches that Inoki sells *perfectly* which ties into the finish-in a modern match after Hoshino's managed to weaken Inoki you'll usually see a wrestler in his position spam go into the *I do big moves/nearfalls now*. Inoki still fights him off-culminating in one of the best Snapmare spots I've ever seen if not the best (I doubt those 2006 ROH "Snapmare is suddenly the world's deadliest move" matches are going to hold up seamlessly). And then, in the portion of the match where you'd usually just have Inoki go on a rampage Hoshino immediately dives at his legs because he knows he's dead if he doesn't stop him. Hoshino sells Inoki's palm strikes like death which adds another dimension to the strike exchanges and makes them feel more significant and consequent AND they do the "Jumbo slams Misawa's head into the canvas" spot 12 years before Misawa/Jumbo! ****
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Fargo tells us how he got back in shape by jogging and lifting and is taking booking again, and is willing to help Lawler and Dundee to fight against Latham, Ferris and, uhm......there's a third guy. Pete Austin? Someone's gonna be in those six man tags. It certainly sounds like a kick-ass trios team, let's see where it goes....
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A standard beatdown. The heels holding the door so the faces couldn't come to Dundee's aid was a nice touch, also love that a very similar spot was done in NOAH in like........2003.
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Tommy Gilbert Jr. is now Eddie Gilbert. He was good at carrying the workload and cleaning house but I was more impressed with his dad, great FIP work, he packed a really great punch, and the sequence with Tommy Gilbert taunting Buddy Wayne and his kid repeteadly punching Tommy Gilbert until he took him seriously was super cool. Post-match angle has Waynes taking Gilberts out for revenge. **3/4
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Well. This was a match. I wonder if Wayne's silly mannerisms grow endearing or just become more annoying. He dominated most of the match with solid punches and then got flash pinned. Post-match angle has Star take out both of the Waynes, wonder if he'll be a regular from now on. **1/2
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This was ok, pretty much every match here is gonna be worked shine-heat-comeback but how they go about it is always interesting to see. Shine was fun, with faces repeteadly countering the heel's holds and armdraggim them. Heat section was meh, Latham looked clumsy. I liked how they set up the finish with Koko trying to save his partner only to cost him the match by allowing the heels to double team on his partner because the ref was busy monitoring him. **1/4-**1/2
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"Takada is better than Misawa""Bob Holly is better than Takada"
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Really neat match built around swank matwork, lover how Charles would block the Boston Crab with his hands, lots of nifty takedowns and counters, both guys constantly looking for a counter, really the kind of stuff you want from this type of match. Charles is my favourite discovery so far, his slams are a thing of beauty, the way he pops his hips is just unreal. Finish was also really near as you almost always see botched which made it look even more pretty. ***1/2
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What a fucking war this was, just four guys nuking each other with punches and every weapon near them while retaining the feel of a genuinely chaotic brawl you want. The camera work and Lance Russell's commentary perfectly contemplate the anarchy going on, and watching these guys throw tables at each other in the concession stand and think about how well received the Rush-LA Park brawls were reminds you that standards don't ever change THAT much.....just different symbols used along with the blood and violence. I give four stars to what is shown.