GOTNW

A very dominating Maeda performance that made for an exciting watch regardless of that. The match consisted of them mostly exchanging kicks and body blows with Maeda repeteadly taking Tariel down with takedowns. Bitsadze got just enough so you couldn't describe this as a squash and I really liked the spot where he fought off Maeda's Armbar with one hand highlighting his power. ***1/2

Good grief finding accurate dates for european matches (accurate as in them matching up in OJ's list and the youtube upload description) is nearly impossible half the time. I really like the way Murphy uses holds to control his opponents and how he will resort to cheapshots and grinding away at their face once he's in trouble. He's also really good at cutting his opponents off-him goading George into attacking him while he was playing to the crowd in the corner only to cut him off with a Back Elbow ruled as did his Clothesline. The spot where George countered Murphy ramming his head into the corner post because his head was too hard was neat but George wasn't that interesting on offence, some solid dropkicks and headbutts but the repetition of them wasn't compelling. Geore did do an amazing sell job to set up the Gator. Finish was interesting and a neat way to put over Murphy's finishing hold. *** edit: I just found the site where OJ gets hit dates from and this is actually 8/19 oooooops.

Welsh will never stop sounding weird. Fun match, lots of nasty shots. I liked the Fireman's Carry attempts a lot and Roach hit a magnificent Big Boot during his comeback. Murphy continues to legitimize himself to me as a great bumper. ***

OK match. I liked the opening a lot as Haystacks attacked Muprhy outside of the ring and slammed his head into the apron and stomped him, that's not something I've ever seen in WOS or Reslo before. Haystack's control segment was not as interesting here as it was in their 1988 match as it had more rope choking and wandering around. Murphy's body shot that allowed him to turn the transition back into offence and the corner post shot was cool, and his punches look good here too but there wasn't much to this match. **1/2

I don't know how interested YOU are in a giant fat guy but I had a blast watching this. Loved the spot where Murphy put on an Armlock and Haystacks just pushed him away. Murphy fought back with very good looking punches but spend most of the time bumping (quite nicely!) for Haystacks's stuff and he took a really nice bump for the finish. ***

Fun hoss battle. First round wasn't much and consisted mostly of them trading basic holds. Match gets going when Murphy takes over, he carried the match nicely with his striking, he has very good cheapshots and I loved his Clothesline cut off. He put on a very strong selling performance here, loved he sold the threat of a Cobra Twist and the impact of Elijah's moves as well. Elijah looked solid but didn't do anything memorable outside of maybe the greatest Bearhug I've ever seen. ***

How smart someone must have felt after coming up with the name Quick Kick Lee. I came into this wondering how Maeda would look in World Of Sport but holy shit Skull Murphy ruled here. They did some fun chain wrestling to start the bout off but then they transitioned into Murphy's control segment and the match just became so badass, Murphy rocked Maeda with vicious punches, elbows, uppercuts and knees and showcased he could do these awesome huge bumps but only used them as key transitions. And his stalling ruled. Maeda did some nice kicks and the spot where he countered Murphy's leg split by showing off his flexibility was awesome. ***1/2

I fail to see anything even remotely appealing about Evolve's presentation. You're also talking about a promotion that has a partnership with the WWE so it's ridiculous what their best looks like. There's nothing secretive about a company that WWE.com tells you will hold their qualifying matches. I'm not sure whether it's simply due to them not caring or a conscious effort but PWG's marketing is pretty brilliant and much closer to what you described Evolve as.

This is almost a catch 22. I can say, theoretically, ROH having bigger crowds wouldn't impact their dull matches and storylines. But their dull matches and storylines stem from the fact their booking is subdued to New Japan's wishes and their roster is a mix of WWE/TNA rejects and second tier indy talent because the best ones would rather sign with WWE or work WWE approved indies in hopes of one day making it there. If ROH had better matches and better storylines maybe that would allow them to grow. Or maybe it wouldn't matter at all. But they can't get more money because they can't create more hype around their product as it is (or get their owners to spend more on them). You could also put it as ROH having a style that cannot grow, but I kind of doubt these two are even related. The best example we have of a company growing in the last ten years is TNA. The easy comment here is "well TNA never drew very impressive crowds". Well, that's also true-in the US. They had some nice crowds in the UK. It was still TNA. However-when they did Ring Ka King I'm pretty sure they drew crowds, and more importantly most people who watched it said it had a unique and cool feel to it. That the types of fans who attented it were probably uncharacteristically unsmarky and willing to play along with what was presented to them is probably a bigger reason why it worked than how many of them were there.

There is definitely a lack of a strong weekly show right now. Lucha Underground midcard matches are often bad lazy spotfests and are probably the biggest reason why I took a break from watching it. Nothing ever happens at NXT and matches often feature unpolished workers that haven't figured it out yet whose flaws aren't as hidden as they could be. Japan and Mexico don't really operate like that. TNA actually sounds like a great trainwreck these days and I should probably start watching it. But it's much different when you're cherry picking stuff instead of constantly following the journey.

The infamous shoot. I searched j-web too but this 4 minute JIP seems to be the most complete video of the match there is online. There are some nice potatoes in there and Maeda's final blow is vicious.

Nothing groundbreaking here, a very solid traditional heavyweight tag match. I dislike Goto and don't care much for Kea but Saito and Makabe were good enough to keep them from doing anything stupid, and having this be a ten minute match instead of an epic in which Kea's and Goto's performances have often choked helped things, doesn't take a magician to do some nice brawling for a bit before going home. Kea's quasi-Tornado DDT is probably the single counter spot I've fallen for the biggest number of times since I always forget it's a thing he does and don't watch his stuff often. It looks good every time I watch him, maybe it would wear off if I ever binge watched 2005 All Japan. ***

A lackluster heavyweight spotfest. Yujiro Takahashi was the worst performer here, using a turnbuckle powerbomb as a throwaway move and being responsible for most of the miscommunication. Taniguchi did some cool slams but no one else seemed to care much here. Never had much use for Manabu Soya, he might be an even duller Sekimoto than the actual one. **

This really puts into perspective how bad the workrate tag matches New Japan puts out these days are. It helps that an 8 man tag is a very good format for this type of match but there's no way you'd see Ricochet pull out a performance like Ricky Marvin did here-his rope tricks were breathtaking and his dives a thing of beauty. It's not that the match was just flip-flops-there was plenty of striking and kicking (Tiger Mask IV remininding you he worked Battlarts once was nice) and combining them with the flips makes for a much better match, as did it occasionally slowing it down (it's still a junior workrate match, it's not like they worked a hold for two minutes, but that wouldn't have been fitting here anyway). ***1/4

I imagine Taichi would be universally loved if he worked 1973 WWWF since all he does is stall and cheat. The opening was fun and Suzuki's willingness to stooge was crucial to it. Mathc lost steam in the middle with the Liger in peril section, attacking the mask might get heat but it's boring and somewhat pointless when it goes for a while as you understand they're pretending to try to take it off instead of actually trying to take it off. Finish was fun with the face team clearing the ring with lots of doulbe/triple team moves and the Funaki-Aoki finish was more dramatic than I'd expected as they set up the nearfalls very well and I bought into them. Aoki's frog splash looked amazing and got a big pop as did Suzuki's apron kneebar. ***

I I was looking for a thread comparing current wrestling to older wrestling or something similar so I guess this will do. Keep my stylistic biases in mind. A lot of people argue there is now more good wrestling than ever. I would agree with this. There is just so much footage it doesn't even make for a fair comparison. Where people mostly disagree is how great the best stuff of today is compared to the classics of yesterday. Personally I don't think 2016 is churning out all time classics one after another. The only one I would argue for is Styles/Reigns from Payback-which is a serious best WWE match ever candidate for me. But I am also not the biggest fan of the styles that are "in" and supposedly producing all this greatness. Looking at my favourite stuff historically a lot of it managed to exist because of how insanely popular wrestling was at the time-particularly in Japan. A lot of experimentation and innovation came naturally. UWF, FMW, Michinoku Pro, Battlarts, BJW, etc., the business was strong enough that if there was someone with a different vision of pro wrestling someone would show up to watch it (and this produced some of the greatest matches of all time, some in front of 500 people). With the business going down for so long there isn't so much room for that. But-regardless what you think of them-if you look at the most successful non-New Japan promotions-what do they all have in common? Dragon Gate, DDT, Big Japan. They all started out as part of that experimentation wave and managed to cultivate a fanbase. They've changed things along the way but they have managed to grow a healthy audience. Doing what they did would be much harder for a promotion starting right now than it was for them. Because Japan is weird and brilliant-you are still going to find plenty of attempts of being different-whether it be Gatoh move holding shows in.......a room?, a wresling federation in a sex dungeon, HASEGAWA and stuff like that. Not a lot of it (well almost nothing) amounts to "great" wrestling but I'm glad it exists. Most indies are more interested in resurrecting styles or just booking older guys from those styles in "regular" pro wrestling matches because nostalgia is the draw (RJPW, Hard Hit, neo-FMW, my favourite-Tokyo Gurentai, etc.). NOAH, which used to be my favourite promotion, has turned into a parody of japanese pro wrestling. AJPW is slowly rebuilding but I have my doubts about them ever reaching their peak. I mean in work and not popularity-Akiyama has moved away from a lot of what made the All Japan matches crucial and doesn't seem to be teaching his youngsters the old ways. This isn't a big problem with Akiyama because he is a genius performer who can work through that whenever he even slightly cares but obviously not everyone is going to be a performer of that caliber. All Japan's old formulas allowed them to maximize a lot of wrestler's skills. You take a guy like Suwama, I'm more than certain he could do everything Yoshiaki Yatsu did, if not better. Yet when I look at him or Go Shiozaki all I can think of is wasted potential. Wrestlers who showed a lot of promise from their early days squandered by modern puro going in a direction that made them think the wrong things mattered. New Japan was never a fairy land where everything ruled but currently the product is at an all time low. It's a long sleep from one G1 to another. As far as the best japanese stuff goes.......yeah it tends to be disappointing these days, but there aren't many places to look for it either. The best match this year was a WAR-esque tag where Hideki Suzuki and Nakanoue killed each other. I am curious what peaks the All Japan/Big Japan partnership will reach as they currently provide the best alternative for those longing for more traditional japanese heavyweight wrestling. CMLL is what it is. When they give a shit you get all time great promotional runs. Most of the time they don't. But we've definitely seen sparks of that in the previous year or so. Maybe it's uncertainty whether someone is going to jump to WWE that is preventing them from booking long-term storylines. But they still have a lot of great wrestlers. AAA is shit but they've always been. More cool lucha indy stuff makes tape than ever. I'm sure someone would say US Indy wrestling is long removed from its Golden Age but I'm sure whether the golden age was really that great. It's a different world out there these days. WWE will snatch up anyone that's any good and the indies are getting an influx of largely mediocre WWE talent that fans may or may not have sentimental value for but will almost assuredly get booked regardless. As a result WWE also now has a pretty insane roster, one that has already produced an all time great in ring year if not the best in 2013. Booking aside, they coould (and often do) kill it when provided opportunities. One thing to also consider re: the aforementioned experimentation is that wrestling has been around for a while now. We have the established classics. We're reaching a point where it's questionable how many more things can we truly see in the medium. And with that in mind it's worth noting that once genres pass their prime the geniuses of the time tend to be regarded better than those who try to imitate them. Name the first classical composer that comes to your mind. Do the same for a jazz artist, a rock band, a painter and a writer. Now, provided in the two seconds after you read my sentence you didn't turn into a gigantic dick and consciously tried to name some obscure names (or have already conditioned yourself to do so) you'll see the point. That doesn't mean it's impossible to create great wrestling now-but it might be harder now that wrestling is dealing with the question of how to create greatness in a world where previous greatness exists, a wall every art hits. As you might have guessed by already, I think wrestling is just fine where it is right now. I remember thinking back in 2012 how little how end stuff there was. Interestingly enough that was also the year New Japan's resurgence started and it's been better since then-not necessarily in New Japan but in wrestling in general. To me this is a question that will be worth asking a lot more twenty years from now, with the legend of yesterday continuing to die off, the popularity of pro wrestling likely decreasing and a post-Vince WWE. tldr: wrestling would be better than ever if Ikeda just published those damn Futen DVDs.

I haven't said anything on this because I didn't really have anything to add to the discussion but I do have now! Standards in how matches are worked change all the time. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better depending on what you're discussing and whom you're asking. But what I think is important is to look at exactly what kind of changes happen. Simultaneously we also have to consider our perception of wrestling criticism, the primary of Meltzer-ism and the workrate dogma that ruled for so long. Because wrestling is what it is it took a while before platforms where people could seriously deconstruct it were created. There is more of a general awareness of what works in a real fight now thanks to the popularity of MMA. The influence of this seems to be vastly overstated. Most of the changes actually stem from the UWF and other major japanese promotions adjusting their work to keep with the dives. I can't tell whether Blue Panther, Lizmark and US Indy workers saw the same tapes, but they saw the same workers and the same matches. We know how real submissions work. This doesn't really matter in pro wrestling. Pro wrestling continues to use chinlocks and arm wingers. This is why I don't really accept someone saying "well, we know about MMA now" when saying, say someone's armwork isn't interesting in a 2016 match. You can have interesting armwork using 1973 All Japan psychology that defies MMA logic in 2016 too. It just doesn't happen a lot. Probably the biggest change in how matches are worked in how they are paced. Matches are much faster today with significantly more action. This might simply reflect the changes in our surrounding (and, among other things, why many people will long for wrestling from their days when it was "better"). It is a different world out there and matches are worked with different goals then they were fifteen, thiry or fifty years ago. It makes sense that you'd work one way when your target audience is the live crowd, another when your target audience is still the live crowd but television is becoming relevant for your promotion and another when television audience is your main goal and, well, people that enjoy your TV show up for the tapings. In that sense I find it somewhat pretentious to think that you can watch a match from 1963 and expect to have the same experience as a wrestling nerd that was in the crowd that night. The best you can do is understand why that style was worked the way it was, learn what to expect and appreciate and it and decide whether you like it or not. Standards change in criticism. This is true from both a wider perspective with new ideas and theories constantly being added before eventually cycling eternally once all of them are on the table and in your personal experience as a fan/critic. I liked the idea of "standard in wrestling don't change" because I liked its original intention (debunking the idea that the rise of athleticism, which isn't really athleticism but wrestlers doing more flips and whatnot-I highly doubt the Ricochets and Will Ospreays off the world would have the cardio to do a Billy Robinson-Inoki hour long match). But the more I think about it-there are things in wrestling I think are important. There absolutely are. But they vary so much from one style I like to another I can't just nod my head and say "yeah, good selling is important" when what good selling means changes so much depending on what we're talking about. And sometimes one value matters more than the other. Sometimes things in wrestling get dropped as a conscious decision, sometimes they are simply forgotten. You as a fan can of course argue that retiring something from use was a mistake. You like it so it has to be good! Even if you construct some insane chart or whatever depicting how much things in wrestling matter and how they effect each other at the end of the day you're simply presenting your vision of what makes good wrestling. It's not really a yes/no thing but If I have to pick I'm leaning slightly towards yes because there are many other things at play too, including efficiency vs personal satisfaction as an artist, wrestlers thinking of their work as "just a job" vs. thinking it's their drug (look this may sound a little awkward but there's a video where Matt Sydal explains what wrestling means to him and you can imagine how that looked). How deep can we go?

Nagata is someone who I never really got fully behind for but I like him a lot as a Shibata opponent, a lot more than Ishii at this point. Some tropes are inevitable (like the suplex no-sell sequence and one wrestler daring the other to hit him) but here they were done well and kept to a minimum. The finisher stealing didn't add much to the match for me nor it hurt it. Lots of face smashing and a very good post-match signalizing the end of the Shibata-Third Generation feud. ***1/2

Sorry this match was shit. Ospreay might be the inventor of GIF selling, when someone is attacking his limb he'll do about one spot where he'll "smartly" do a move without using his injured limb so EVERYONE CAN SEE HE CAN ACTUALLY SELL RIGHT? But he can't. He sucks at wrestling. And his selling looks fine in comparison to his childish facial expression and annoying yelling. I don't remember the last time I felt so embarrassed about watching a match as I did during his hulk up attempt after KUSHIDA hit him with some Kawada kicks. And his facial expressions look fine compared to his execution. Good God I don't remember the last time I saw a praised properly trained professional wrestler blatantly not connect on so many moves in the same match. KUSHIDA may not have done as many flips on it but his tope looked good because it actually connected. Some nice Armbar counters by KUSHIDA but I want to forget about this match ASAP. Also it's becoming increasingly hard for me to care about sequences where I know the first five attempts of doing something aren't going to work. Rating: BAD; very.

EVIL is still trying to figure things out, which means he hasn't settled into a formula and his matches aren't just spamming contemporary New Japan cliches. This forces Goto to step out of his (dreadful) comfort zone and as a result these two have had some surprisingly solid matches. EVIL does some thing here that I liked as ideas but could've been milked out more like ending an elbow exchange with an eye rake (seriously, that could've been my favourite spot of the year if they treated it like it mattered more) and rubbing his elbow across Goto's face. The good parts are when they're smashing into each other with elbows, lariats and so on. The bad parts are when they're turning around a lot and it looks more like modern dance than a fight and also when Goto does his stupid indy backbreakers on a knee. There's a lot of movement and the match is almost all action, and it kept me interested throughout, so the good outweights the bad. **3/4

Fun match. Matt has talked about in when commenting on Ultimo Guerrero matches but there is something to spots where you know what's coming next and it still works, like when Ishii made the hot tag here and would reverse both heels when they went rope running. I liked how aggressive Sanada was here, really wrestling to his character and the height he got on his leaps was unreal. Fun finish, YOSHI-HASHI's new submission is a cool neck crank, I'll easily take that over stuff like Goto stealing finishers from US indies. **3/4

This was a chance for me to see three guys I like and a white kid I've never heard of that was only here to take the fall. Unfortunately it's a JIP but somehow I don't feel particularly motivated to shill out cash for the full version of this that may be available in a few months for like, 200$. Some nice strikes and grappling and it was cool to see Ogasawara work a karate master gimmick. ***

Tokyo Gurentai is my favourite japanese promotion right now and Nosawa's willingness to book Battlarts house show matches among other things has a thing or two to do with it. Some nice kicks, and having Wada in there allowed Ikeda to play off of him and provided some nice comedy. Match peaked when Ikeda had had enough and started blasting folks with brutal Lariats and shoot Headbutts and he would also sell his own headbutts which added to the drama as you start to wonder whether this middle aged man has finally broken down. Also props to the guy who bumped for his Lariats for killing himself on them (I think it was Ito). ***1/4

The opening was pretty ridiculous, Rose taking a huge bump off Piper kicking him in the arm is just too much. The match also had a looong and boring chinlock spot. Rose's bumps would make for cool GIFs but have little lasting effect in his matches. Their stomps can look really good when they're just kicking their downed opponent in the face but when they're hitting to back or making them look more like kicks they look pretty weak. I think they utilized the lumberjacks well enough and the match definitely took a turn for the better once Piper started unloading on Rose with punches, honestly their matches have made me a lot more interested in him than I am in Rose currently. Clusterfuck finish didn't bother me. **3/4

Mixed feeling on this. First fall was super promosing and made it feel like they were going to have a wild bloody brawl. Rose working over Piper's cut was neat, and while Piper's comeback was cool I wish their over the top acting was reserved for it because I just grew numb to them quickly. They hit some vicious stomps and Rose's throat selling was cool. Second fall has more nice punching from Piper but irish whips as punishment spots just don't cut it for me (maybe they would if Rose was like, Great Khali sized or if this were twenty years earlier). Also Piper stops bleeding which blows. Piper's missed dropkick looked vicious but Rose's control segment that led to the finish didn't do anything for me, you'd think the middle rope giving out would give them an opportunity to do a bunch of cool stuff around that but they didn't take advantage of it. Again-taking bumps for irish whips just looks completely unnatural here. Piper's brief comeback attempt before the finish of the second fall was good but the match had already lost a lot of steam. Third fall had some nice brawling and them slamming each other's face into the mat was cool but the finish didn't do the match any favours. ***1/4