GOTNW

House show match not worth going out of your way to see unless you're a gigantic fan of both guys. I prefer Sato to Miyahara-more convincing when in control and a lot more likely to bust out something I like, whether it be a cool kick, submission or a nice throw. Miyahara knows how to do finishing stretches right but I am not sold on him at all outiside of that and he hasn't really figured out exactly *who* he is as a wrestler yet. Their above average acting made the chest slap exchange suprisingly solid but couldn't cary long control segments of *stuff for the sake of stuff*. **1/2

This was a mixed bag. I like the way Aoki climbs the top rope but I always thought the idea of him was vastly superior to the actual thing. The brief grappling segment at the opening was cool and I wish it went longer. Match then lost steam as they wandered around before kicking it up a notch for the finish-which was far from perfect, but at least had the type of cool stuff you'd want to see from a junior match. Sato's kicks are cool and they did a pretty good take on the submission finisher countering finish. My problem with it was that sometimes they'd build stuff up that SHOULD end the match (like Sato's awesome Heel Hook) and then lazily get out of it via hokey rope breaks or whatnot just to prolong the match and I can't get behind that, give me logical transitions and earn the next step in your match if you want me to care about it. **3/4

It dawned on me when Bray Wyatt called out Matt Hardy on twitter that his plagiarism and subsequent tweets made me care about him more than anything he had done for years. But more importantly it made me think of a bigger point. I imagine the current world would have been a nightmare for many promoters 30/40 years ago. The internet doesn't forget. Every bad gimmick and mistake they've made is name preserved forever. But it turns out wrestling fans aren't such huge douchebags after all and are willing to give wrestlers another chance even with their previous misses not forgotten-like Husky Harris. But it's more than that that we are willing to forget and ignore. Remember Punk's shoot promo? Of course you do. Do you remember anyone complaining about how he wasn't a credible opponent for John Cena because he spent most of the previous year jobbing to everyone, sometimes even in handicap matches? I don't. Suddenly it didn't matter. Just like how Ospreay went from being someone not worth signing for because "we have enough guys like that on the roster already" to being a surefire grab once his New Japan contract expires due to all the drama he generated. With so many incredible tools at their disposal it would make sense for wrestlers to use them for more than retweeting fanart and whatnot. Wrestling is still about working. You may say "Brock Lesnar doesn't deserve what he gets paid". And there's truth in that. But in a world where no one else is willing to blackmail Vince and work him into thinking he's worth more than he is it's much easier for him to get what he wants. It's easy to complain about WWE and call the people in charge devils but at some point performers deserve blame as well for not managing to present themselves as valuable.

It's Kyu Mogami Very cool that someone in 2016 Japan is willing to work this type of match, as it's essentially what I was hoping Evolve would be. The body of the match is mostly using basic holds and milking them out as much as possible to set the stage for the finishing stretch-most of the holds aren't anything mindblowing, but they look and are sold well, and Tonai does a couple of neat things to keep you invested in the armwork like roll WITH Mogami when he tries to counter a wristlock like that and use a cool leg pick to take Mogami down. They do a great job of building up their big moves and constantly teasing you so you can't tell which counter is gonna be the last one and the finish itself looks great and makes sense in the context of the match and the sequence that preceeded it. ***1/4

Takeshita, much like Okada, is a tall young guy. Thus DDT pushes him pretty hard. Much like Okada he isn't very good at pro wrestling. He just has no clue what to do. His early leg selling was eye rolling and on the bad side of melodrama. When you sell something as much as he sold the leg and then just drop it after two minutes it looks ridiculous. If he'd sold it less I would've been completely fine with it but this way it just looked comical. I liked Umeda on offence, he threw a lot of cool kick variations and had real intensity behind them, always looking to hurt Takeshita, who on the other hand would do a move, then try to remember where the hell he is for about fifteen seconds, and then do another move, and that really was every control segment of his, move weird pause move weird pause, it looked completely unnatural, I imagine stunt doubles used in fight scenes in D-level movies would make for better pro wrestlers than him. Match went too long considering it was between two guys at their experience/skill level and was very rough around the edges with plenty miscommunication especially once it got closer to the finish. I'm sure Takeshita could be able to find a job outside of wrestling via being tall and pretty and I hope he chooses to do so. **

Good grief I should've just continued watching ZST. Terrible modern junior match. Opening is them doing bad looking arm wingers, wrist locks and hammerlocks and them chain wrestling manages to look more like a dance than the worst Will Ospreay flip flops. The selling is highly questionable-they sell in the moment but the damage is forgotten as soon as they move on to the next move. The finishing stretch is filled with modern puro tropes like "look at how strong and cool I am" fighting spirit no selling. And hey-this is pro wrestling. You can make everything work. But they don't since they're not good at wrestling. This is essentially a junior workrate match-so you're hoping they're at least going to do something cool-but they don't. It's just a bunch of average action crammed together. Yamato's Spear looked really bad and his Reverse Kokeshi is the most embarrassing looking move I've seen in a long time and there were a couple instances where I wasn't sure if they'd botched or their moves just looked like shit. *1/2

The easy counterargument here is that most WWE title reigns don't "work" these days and that WWE realises keeping something off TV is the most efficient method they can actually execute in keeping someone or something relevant as seen with Sasha Banks recently.

Not really sure why what's been a signature Fujiwara spot for 20/30 years disgusts you so much.

I think it was more cases of worked bouts turning into shoots a couple of times with Inoki than outright MMA-esque fights. Anyway I don't see why it's not comparable. Plenty of american pro wrestlers have been good (and probably terrible) at MMA too.

I love when people bring this up for New Japan yet ignore that's pretty much how Inoki managed to become a bigger star than Baba and New Japan bigger than All Japan in the first place Sometimes it works too. Takayama became a far bigger star due to his PRIDE fights despite not winning a single one.

The problem with Brock is that we have the evidence to know he would be an amazing vulnerable monster in his 2002/2003 run and the pre-Suplex spamming return matches. He is just dreadfully boring as an unbeatable character. You can make squashing someone compelling but Lesnar is no Hashimoto or even Goldberg in that regard.

Han didn't work in a vacuum. That's nonsense. He had excellent timing and used his big spots in way that would get great heat from the crowd (while you could point to a fair amount of heatless Tamura bouts). I honestly don't see much subtlety in his work. In fact it kinda turned me off him initially since everyone talked about him as this shoot style master and there he was doing armdrags and figure four leglocks. His character might be a stoic one but that's not what the discussion is about.

I don't really get that example. Han was a much flashier and bigger worker than Tamura on average. I could easily see arguments for Tamura's work verging on being self indulgent. What makes it work for me is that he was an absolutely amazing matworker-even if he isn't feeling particularly motivated in terms of experimenting with ideas and just wants to roll and go through a bunch of cool stuff there's no one that does cooler stuff than him. HIs willingness to create epics is what makes me rate him as high as I do in terms of all time great wrestlers but Han and Fujiwara had successful formulas due to which their lows aren't as low as Tamura's.

Bad minimalistic wrestling easily becomes self indulgent and very boring. Bad maximalistic wrestling can easily turn into a self-parody that might be easier to turn into a meme but is equally as bad as the bad minimalistic wrestling judging it on its quality as a wrestling alone. A great worker might lean towards one more than the other but HAS to combine both otherwise he is not a great worker. Ideally you'd want a worker to be able to do both. Take Yoshiaki Fujiwara for instance-the Takada 10/25 match is a masterpiece combining so many details that make it as great as it is. But he can also do stuff like the Choshu match from 1987 which, to steal a line from Schneider, is basically Rock vs Hogan if they were great wrestlers. Wrestlers who work too minimalistic will lack the characters to make their tehnically sound holds interesting, wrestlers who rely too much on flash will lack substance in their matches. I don't really have a preference-my favourite wrestling is a spectrum of different philosophies on how to do pro wrestling. My least favourite type of wrestling is an easy answer though-it's the one that tries too hard to be "big" and feels even smaller as a result.

I think this was a work. I was suspicious that it was one before I even watched it-I found a clip of Maeda aggressively showing the winner's trophy onto Tamura after this match. It didn't really make sense-I mean you could say Maeda is crazy, but I don't really believe that. Usually there's reasoning behind his violent outbursts. You may argue how sound that reasoning is and how defendable his methods are, but let's move on from that. The match starts with Tokoro slapping Tamura when they go to shake gloves. I'm 100% perceived this is going to be a pro wrestling match by this point. The pre-fight video had Tokoro saying Tamura is his hero and that he wears red pants because of him. There's an article online saying Tamura requested UWFi rules for this. I already saw these two have a pro wrestling tag team match in RIZIN this year. The finish with the Maeda stuff is pro wrestling anyway-but considering all the circumstances surrounding this and how flashy some parts of the match were I'm giving this the benefit of the doubt and saying it's a pro wrestling match. And that I have found zero articles online (well, articles on english) discussing the possibility of this bout being fixed showcases the caliber of Tamura's talent as a performer and his understanding of how he needed to adapt to convince people he was fighting for real. Even if this were a completely real fight (which I highly doubt-there's clear some punches are lacking intention to finish the opponent off) at best/worst it's a something like the type of "real" fights that would go down in Pancrase where one guy would let the other catch him in a submission and then go for rope breaks to build drama and so on. Match was very entertaining but I'd find it impossible to rate it.

Did Matt Hardy read the post-wrestling thread? For all my talk about how Lucha Underground is flirting with post-wrestling this looks way more revolutionary than anything they've ever done. The sheer absurdity of it is brilliant, but my favourite moments were probably Jeff not dropping selling even when he's shooting fireworks and the finish where Matt took advantage of Jeff's stupidity and predictability. Rating it feels impossible but it was definitely one of the most entertaining experiences watching wrestling I've had.

I think the impact of CM Punk is wildly undersold here. I remember someone saying once he was a more impactful figure on WWE than someone like Rock or Austin-not from a business standpoint, but in terms of how the company goes about doing things and what is acceptable for the fans to say. This might still sound ridiculous to some but I think it's absolutely true. There was always a latent smarkiness in WWE crowds but Punk's rise allowed it to go beyond just booing Cena and whatnot. Crowds weren't NEARLY as smarky when I started watching-which wasn't exactly 1982. Comparing 2010 crowds and 2015 crowds is night and day. Could you imagine then every show would have twenty million New Japan namedrops and commentators talking about Choshu, Misawa, Kobashi, Stan Hansen etc. as well as WWE promoting an indy?

I think these only exist if you didn't watch their stuff last year (on in Shibata's case the year before that or the year before that). Aside from the violent outburst after Balor busted him open Joe hasn't really looked much different. I was actually pretty confident this was going to happen when they got signed. Gallows was always much better at working WWE style than New Japan style and Anderson has benefited from it as well. In real time I was more frustrated that New Japan wouldn't push a more interesting native team than I was appeled by their ring work but they had some very good matches there. Some not very good ones as well, but the potential was there. CMLL has multiple MOTYCs every year so. Hechicero being a WOTY contender is something that depeneds more on how he's booked than anything. This happened last year.

That's also an issue in New Japan-Gedo is capable of booking things that feel like a big deal in the moment but the storylines almost never last longer than a few months and are quickly forgotten and/or have no greater importance. The biggest storyline they've done in the last few years has had Okada "dethrone" Tanahashi as the top dog twice yet Tanahashi is still the de facto ace. Big Japan is pretty good at pushing people up the card and making the essential victories feel meaningful. Personally I couldn't really care how much WWE canonizes something. All I really want for them is to be invested in the present product. I don't think they were talking about those amazing 2003 matches in 2006 but people were caught up in the stuff going on and didn't care. Ditto 2013. I think Punk's depature has showcased just how valuable he was to them and how much more worth he is than Lesnar. Other than Cena (who's lost a lot of steam by this point honestly) WWE doesn't really have anyone that could make something feel important by doing very little.

Chris Hero & Tommy End vs Zack Sabre Jr. & Sami Callihan (EVOLVE 53, 1/22)-NO Zach Sabre, Jr./Sami Callihan vs. Drew Gulak/TJ Perkins (EVOLVE 54, 1/23)-NO Tracy Williams vs. Matt Riddle (EVOLVE 55, 1/24/16)-NO Zack Sabre Jr. vs Will Ospreay (EVOLVE 58, 4/1)-YES Matt Riddle vs Zack Sabre Jr. (EVOLVE 59, 4/2)-YES Drew Gulak and Tracy Williams vs. Johnny Gargano and Drew Galloway (EVOLVE 59, 4/2/16)-NO Fred Yehi vs. Chris Hero (EVOLVE 59, 4/2/16)-NO comments in match discussion archive as usual Nominating: Rush, Pierroth & Rey Escorpion vs La Mascara, Shocker & El Terrible (CMLL 5/20)Rush vs Volador Jr. (CMLL 6/27)

Chris Hero's performances fluctuate as much as his weight. He was almost Ikeda like here-not as stiff, with weird pausing during strike exchanges you'd see in Daisuke Sekimoto matches that many of Hero's big proponents shit on, and a lot more thigh slapping but the general idea of mixing in some comedy in the brutality is there. I absolutely loved the missed shoulder block spot and the idea behind Chris Hero failing to no-sell Trent's.....some move to the gut/chest, though that particular spot would've been beter if Hero had emoted/sold it better. The Tope Con Giro counter was unreal-I thought Hero was going to Piledrive him on the floor, it was just so smoooth and perfectly placed and then.......he hit a Rolling Elbow. Listen, I'm not advocating doing headdrops on the floor (though if you're insisting on that a Piledriver is a good option since those to be safe-sometimes can look crappy in those 80s matches, but I'm sure Hero could've made it work) but if it looks like that either hit a counter that looks natural or don't do that counter at all, doing a convoluted counter just to fit your MIsawa tribute shit in looks ridiculous. This had the prolonged control segments and the neat cut offs you'd want from a Hero match and it may be due to this being a relatively fresh match up but I didn't find this excessive at all, probably helps that the finishing stretch had a lot more than just Hero spamming elbows. ***1/4

There were two Chris Hero performances in this match. The first one was great. I really liked the beginning with Cobb throwing Hero around and Hero did a great job of cutting him off, first with a big boot when Cobb dared him to shoulder block him, then with a surprise punch when Cobb was on offence and then again with a big boot after Cobb did a backflip to show off. The second one was dogshit. I can get beihind Cobb no selling a Piledriver beccause he is a monster with no neck, Hero no selling an amazing looking German Suplex only to go back onto offence was pure trash. Then he did it AGAIN, only this time it was after like five suplexes. And speaking of them-I can accept Hero continuing to get up after getting dropped on his head as a feeding method-lord knows how many times I've seen it in puro-but his selling while he was doing so was pretty terrible and yeah-he just went back onto offence after getting him with all of those suplexes. Also none of his rolling elbows make for convincing nearfalls anymore so I just end up wishing the match would end already. There's also something to be said about how his bullying performances result in him not even trying to win the match at many points and as a result both make his opponent look like a joke and result in uninteresting work before he cuts them off again-his cut offs are usually very good and I will give credit for him. He also sloooooowed a rolling elbow attempt and made feeding Cobb his Side slam thing too obvious. Watching this only confirmed my doubts he is a legitimate best in the world contender this year. **3/4

Fun match. Lots of PWG matches feel like they go too fast, it's just ZOOM ZOOM from start till the finish. This one wasn't like that, though it felt like some of it was more due to awkwardness and unfamiliarity than it being planned out-Elgin's elevated stunner looked terrible and Kamaitachi's apron dropkick didn't connect properly. What I like about Kamaitachi is that, despite esentially being a workrate junior there are elements of the wrestling I love in his work. There were some fun spots here based on Elgin overpowering him or catching him in mid air and what I liked about the faux fighting spirit strike exchange I usually loathe in a PWG match is that Kamaitachi kept cutting Elgin off before he finally hit the big Lariat, that's something you'll see in a 90s All Japan tag and it's great that he *gets* something like that. Elgin here looked more like the guy I never wanted New Japan to bring in than the guy that had some surprisingly good performances in the G1, with his input mainly being move move move. **3/4

It's always weird watching japanese wrestling where the wrestlers actually over after getting used to mild clapping.This match ruled. Yamamoto goes after Maeda attacking him with palm strikes and takedowns and as a result we see a more defensive Maeda. Maeda opts to attack Yamamoto with Leglocks and wears his leg down throughout the match which Yamamoto sells perfectly by slowing down in the final minutes more and more after every leglock Maeda catches him in. One of my favourite moments in the match was Yamamoto getting overzealous once he realised he was a real threat to him and earning a yellow card for slapping him on the ground or after Maeda went down I couldn't really tell which one it was. ****

Awesome stuff here. The insane crowd reactions for the entrances clue you in on this being something special and commentary describes it as Maeda's final match in Osaka or something along those lines, definitely part of his retirement tour. The action itself is great as well, they did a great job of building up every transition on the mat and the keylock counter and the fighting over the leglocks were the highlights of the match, and honestly it probably wouldn't stand out if it happened on a smaller show a few years ago, but here it was more important that the action is good enough to supplement the beautiful atmosphere than to try and force a classic, which, with Maeda's detoriating health, almost certainly wouldn't have been as good of an option as a couple of minutes of tight work. ****