GOTNW

This didn't do much for me. I liked the early stalling but whenever there's stalling, a long hold etc. I try to give the workers the benefit of the doubt and see where the match goes. I didn't like where this one went. It went straight into babyface armdrag/keylock spots, which weren't particularly interesting. I like the spot where the babyface picks Rose up in the air and slams him, and generally they'll work the hold enough that watching it doesn't bore me to death but not enough where I'll got much out of it. Wonder whether the missed elbow drop is something Rose relied on as a transition. Rose is a lunatic bumper and deserves credit for that. Finish was very workrate-y with them quickly exchanging control segments in an attempt to produce excitement and, it worked for the crowd but it's not something that holds up fourty years later. Snuka's Piledriver looked pretty terrible. **1/2

This was more up my alley. I loved Bastein's puncehes and headbutts and Rose did a great job of bumping for them. Most of the match was a headlock, but it was a well worked one. My deduction from watching exactly two Rose matches is that he seems to build the body of this matches by teasing countering his opponent's hold only to end right back in it. They worked the headlock well enough, but what I really liked is that this had some escape attempts I don't remember ever seeing before like Rose trying to get out of the ring first under the bottom rope and then over the top one. Rose's comeback was a Back Suplex and it was followed by more backwork-not exactly the most ambitious idea but all of his offence looked impactful and it made sense so good. I liked the Sleeper finish. ***1/4

This is my first time seeing Buddy Rose. One thing that immediately stood out is how well he hit the ropes. I've seen a million matches where a babyface/lower ranked guy takes the beginning of the match with armdrag/armhold combos, here it was pretty much the entire match. Rose's selling was good enough to keep me invested, and there was some nice work over the keylock with him pulling the tights and repeteadly getting countered back into the keylock by Hector. But for a promotion and worker I've never seen before it felt incredibly mundane and familiar, and I wasn't big on how it was paced and how insignificant Hector taking the entire match looked at the end of the match. Hector had some babyface offence and took lunatic bumps for Rose's Flapjack which made it look deadly. Rose's Billy Robinson Backbreaker looked very good and whoever his associate was hit a badass diving knee drop after the match. But......but..........I still had to sit through a lot of uninteresting armlocks and they didn't provide satisfying transitions out of them. It was weird that Rose would just hit his stuff and go over after showing ass the entire match. It could've worked but I don't think it did here. **3/4

This was pretty great. I love chaotic trios brawls and this was a neat take on that, everyone brough it. Rush is of course a great dick and was a great leading rudo, Pierroth gets a lot of criticisms thrown his way but he seems to be really good at hitting people and that's all I could ask for. Escorpion was awesome at cutting people off, Terrible is a guy you always want to have in this kind of match, he throws a great looking punch. I haven't really had an opinion on La Mascara other than that he's associated with wrestlers I like but he was pretty good here, I liked how he tried to fight back when Pierroth and Rey Escorpion would hold him down instead of just taking it, trying to kick Rush and spitting on him. Shocker was mostly a punching bag. The finish was excellently done and played up pretty much every screwy CMLL finish there is. ****

Very nice too see these two square off once again, this was very much their house show brawl but that works for me. Rush's stalling before the machismo strike exchange was pretty great and I really liked them switching to slaps during the exchange as well. I wish Rush would drop the Minoru Suzuki Rope Hung Armbar, it doesn't fit into his move-set at all and doesn't good look enough on its own to warrant being done just because it's cool. ***-***1/4

This was really neat. If you watch enough of CMLL (or any promotion or wrestler really) you'll eventually notice patterns in how matches are worked and structured. This started out with Rush jumping Volador Jr.. on the ramp and slamming him onto a wall about a minute into a match. That's CMLL signaling to me this is a match I'm going to like. What I really liked about this is that it felt Rush was even more out of control than usual and how little offence Volador got in. Usually Rush would throw a drink into someone's face once, here he did it like six times, he choked Volador with cables and a shirt, it was a joy to watch. I also popped for Puebla staff telling the guy that tried to help Volador recover to stay out of it, I imagine stories of Rush doing crazy shit are a big part of why they did that. Volador was just fine here, he didn't drop selling even when playing to the crowd and I liked his repeated suicide dives as a comeback and him selling his leg after the last one was a really neat detail that both played up Rush briefly attacking his leg during his control segment and allowed Rush to get back onto offence more easily. I loved the ending of the first fall, Rush usually either wins it with a Dropkick or gets DQ'd for something cliche, here he Dropkicked Volador but continued beating the hell out of him for a while before getting the DQ. I wasn't in love with them Dropkick>pin spam Rush was quilty of in the end and the finish was what it was but I imagine these two could have an amazing hair match. ***3/4

Ishii hasn't been/wrestled like an underdog since 2012. CMLL gets to feed New Japan guys in hair matches which is valuable to them. Fantasticamania does well. I don't see the big deal. NOAH is part owned by BUSHIROAD so naturally they've become New Japan's bitch. They were treated just fine while they were still independent of them. There were talks that NOAH being involved in the 2009 Dome show was one of the reasons their TV deal got cut but that was Misawa's call not New Japan's. Seems pretty weird to talk about New Japan hurting WCW. UWF guys had enough momentum to start a new promotion more successful than their first one. UWFi feud was just Takada milking his last paychecks and accepting Choshu's superiority booking as a last resort.

Getting people who wouldn't watch their painfully mediocre shows otherwise to pay attention to them and good gates when they bring the New Japan guys in.

G1 blocks are out. Block A Togi Makabe Satoshi Kojima Tomohiro Ishii Hirooki Goto Bad Luck Fale Tama Tonga SANADA Naomichi Marufuji Kazuchika Okada Hiroshi Tanahashi Block B Katsuyori Shibata Yuji Nagata Tomoaki Honma Michael Elgin Toru Yano Tetsuya Naito "King of Darkness" EVIL Kenny Omega Katsuhiko Nakajima YOSHI-HASHI Very satisfied with block B. I don't like Kenny Omega but everyone else I am at least interested to see how they will do. My most positive take from Block A is that I'll get more proper Makabe singles matches which works for me since I love his shtick. Shibata/Honma/Nakajima/Nagata/Naito match ups should carry the tournament nicely and I'm verry glad Yano made it. No Yujiro Takahashi this year thankfully.

Thank you for your response. I do find the comment about wanting to watch "great wrestling only" somewhat relatable, but it's more of a mood I get sometimes than a fixatated state. The cons of it seem pretty obvious-you're going to find plenty of matches disappointing for whatever reason and might miss out on other great wrestling due to not being willing to expand what you think constitutes great wrestling. Lord knows I have lots of issue with the "WOS cosplayers" as Matt has called them but if I didn't bite the bullet and start watching Evolve stuff I wouldn't have seen Matt Riddle who is a tremendous talent (let's ignore his inevitable WWE signing). I watch wrestling by freely jumping from promotions and eras depending on what I feel like watching, I often feel like watching mediocre and bad matches is just as important in understading why something works, even though I don't really actively seek them out.

Great match. Sano's lengthy Armbar spot was amazing, especially how he quickly switched over once Tamura rolled over and tried to escape. Tamura's arm selling moments afterwads was realls neat as well-you're not likely to get limbwork in a shoot style bout outside of maybe someone spamming low kicks, and implementing pro style limbwork might even be contrary to the prkncipal beliefs of shoot style, but you can still get that few seconds of showing peril that put over what just happened and I'm really glad Tamura does that. The Half Crab fake into an Armbar made for an awesome finish. Their insistence on using only grappling made the striking and kicking even more special as it showcased their desperation and loss of patience. ****1/4

I really enjoyed the opening portion with them battling for positions and Barnett attempting a few cool leglocks but the match just went into another dimension once Tamura hit Barnett with a big counter knee. Barnett just unloads on Tamura here, hitting some of the most beautiful suplexes I have ever seen that combined a perfect combination of power and technique. The matwork is exactly what you'd want out of a big Tamura match, there isn't anything I find as beautiful in pro wrestling as Tamura's lightning quick seguences on the mat. Tamura's kicks provided a great means of feeding for Barnett's throws, and even something as nonsensical as them saying to hell with it and starting to kick away at each other with guards down managed to fit in, as just seconds later Barnett attempted a high kick which pointed to high fatal playing around in dick measuring contests could be. Finish was about as perfect as it could've been, as Tamura finally managed to counter Barnett's throws and lock in one final Jujigatame to seal the deal. ****1/2

It was almost shocking how lacking in narrative this was. It was basically just them exchanging control segments. I popped for the spot where both Kawada and Taue went down and hoped it would lead to something but it did not. The spots and action themselves were great, obviously. They were copied by many later on but the selling and the struggle that made them work was largely ignored. And it's as far away from generic Smackdown vs Raw selling a lot of wrestlers seem to think is expected from them. Just ask yourself what made so many of these sequences work. Akiyama rolling out of the ring after getting hit with a Braibuster. Taue refusing to fall down after getting hit with a quick flurry by Akiyama. The quick blocks they'd do only for them to find a way to go through them the second time. The problem for me is that isn't especially creative and gets tiresome after a while, especially if you've seen a fair bit of work form these four. Oh Misawa is going for a Rolling Elbow, Kawada is going to duck and try a Backdrop. Kawada is going for a Backdrop, here comes a Headlock counter. Taue is going for a Chokeslam? And armdrag counter. A Powerbomb? A Frankensteiner/Hurracanrana counter. And on and on and on it went. My problem with their May match was that the beatdown on Akiyama just went too far for him to make a comeback the way he did. And while the way that match was paced and executed didn't work for me it was certainly ambitious enough that I could understand a ***** rating for it. This one? Nah. It also says something that I didn't bite on a single nearfall despite not knowing/remembering the finish. A very good spotfest but I'm not sure it's better than the last Dragon Lee-Kamaitachi match, let alone the best match of all time. ****

Being extreme in either isn't an ideal, though I'd argue it's much more important for someone to be interested in different kinds of wrestling and self reflection (specifically noticing how their taste changes with time and why). When you speak of someone having impenetrable views of wrestling I think of someone having a core set of values-this is good, this is bad and it can't be otherwise. Sometimes a comment will let you see a match in a different light, though there is an argument to be made that unless that's due to your lack of context or a match just not "clicking" for you for whatever reason (there's a thread for the millitary industrial suplex to be had about something like this actually) that it's verging off into narrative creation that doesn't have much to do with the match itself.

Yeah this was really good. Miyatake is a DDT DNA guy and the kind of guy you'd bet your house on on taking the fall and they treat him like that, the exchanges between him and Takayama are pretty hilarious as was Suzuki just dismissing him as a threat. I love the way Takayama throws forearms, they look like punches half the time. While this wasn't a comedy match per se I spent a good chunk of it laughing, it doesn't get much better than Murakami taunting Takayama before they start blasting each other with brutal shots while commentary makes Fist Of the North Star references. Suzuki is great at spots where he milks a submission for all its worth and he even made it a viable false finish here. I loved Takayama cutting off Suzuki's Piledriver attempt, it completely caught me off guard. ****

This was really cool. The Sekimoto and Zeus interactions were the least interesting portion of the match, not that they were bad or anything but they were as standard as they get, Sekimoto is a one trick pony and his trick was never that good to begin with. Super Tiger II may not be a shoot style master but just his willingness to do shooty stuff is enough to make matches more interesting. Murakami was the star of the match as expected, I could watch him just taunt Sekimoto and his stupid face for twenty minutes and he seemed unusually motivated here and did way more than I expected him to. Highlight of the match was the finish, after some dull crowd brawling Murakami just goes berserk and starts blasting Sekimoto with punches in the face and starts throwing chairs around, it was the kind of awesome chaotic brawling I'd like to see more out of japanese wrestling these days. ***1/4

Idk I don't see myself ever agreeing with something like that. It's natural that your surroundings would influence what you watch but if the end game of discovering more wrestling and communities is just appropriating their opinions and common wisdom then discovering them didn't really mean much for you after all.

Man having other people's opinions influence you to that level must be extremely boring.

Man-Yuki Ishikawa rules at pro wrestling so much. I've seen a fair bit of videos of Yoshiaki Fujiwara stretching folks, I imagine if I were to execute them without much training they would look like Wallace's did here. He also did a lot of kicking and stomping that was more similar to ATtitude Era stuff I loathe than the Battlarts matches I love. Ishikawa was just so amazing though, he did some wristlock takedown that was just breathtaking, on the ground his transitions were just.......indescribably beautiful and he executes every single thing with such intentsity it's a joy to watch. Loved how he kicked Wallace to break his grip in the Armbar and the vicious knees on the ground he did. Great performance by Ishikawa and another carry job in his bag. ***1/2

There is so much greatness in this match. I absolutely love that 90% of the moves they do are just Lariats. This is living proof you can have a kickass one move match. "My Lariat is stronger than yours fuck you" is such classic dumb japanese machismo I can't help but love it, but the real difference between how they do it here and how some modern guys do it is in the way they it. There are no weird pauses where they just look at each other-there's clear hyping up and daring the opponent to give you his best shot. Whenever true peril emerges they fight back. The Lariats themselves look great but the "will they or will they not fall down" selling is done about as perfectly and dramatically as it could be. Hara's body language after Choshu knocks him down is AMAZING-not only was it amazing after Lariats, at one point Choshu just viciously stomped him and you see why Hara is such a great pro wrestler-he puts the move over in a way that it easily translates to you, the viewer, the move he was just hit hurt as hell but without milking it out so much it becomes a parody of itself AND he doesn't go overboard with it. That kind of perfectly balanced selling isn't easy to pull off. Show me Sekimoto or Okabayashi doing that. You can't. It doesn't exist. Choshu selling the damage of Hara's Lariats after he'd win a battle was PERFECT-you don't want any portion of the match to feel like time wasting, especially in the tight and compact matches Choshu likes to do and if you don't put over the damage Hara's previous ten Lariats have done to you why should the crowd care about the next ten? Some really good transitions here too-the "wrestler falls from accumulated damage despite hitting the last blow" is one that always works with the right workers, but Hara's amazing bumping stood out. The missed corner lariat was set up in the context of the match AND featured an insane bump-and Hara's bump off the apron after Choshu hit him with his Lariat-which might as well be a shotgun blast-was also mindblowing. Hara's counter Lariat was a perfect comeback tease and made me want to see Choshu take his head off ever further. And also Hara running away from the Lariat battle once he realised he was losing it was also really cool. ***3/4 but philosophically this might be my favourite match of all time.

There are a lot of things that affect our perception of wrestling that haven't been discussed yet, I think this is an important one. It's only natural you'd compare something new to things you've seen before. Personally I try to get a feel for a wrestler and a promotion/style before watching their best stuff. That's not always going to be possible and if I think it's truly elite stuff I'll usually give it a rewatch if I feel I may have missed out on my first watch due to not understanding the conventions of the style. Similarly I think it's possible to overrate a match based on your lack of exposure. Someone's regular spot may amaze you when you see it for the first time and be completely unimpressive the tenth time you see it. By familiarizing yourself with the worker you're able to distinguish between the spots that look great every time (Volk Han's Guillotine Hammerlock, for instance) and those that lose their sparkle quickly (a 630 Senton and indy backbreakers would be my examples). Getting into a style by just watching the commonly accepted best stuff seems inherently toxic, even if it works just fine quite often. How similar a new style is to what you're already familiar with will surely play a factor but how willing you are to expand what you can deem great wrestling will probably play an even bigger one.

Wrestling twitter has turned many into caricatures and gimmicks. There is also an unwillingness to discuss current wrestling beyond surface level twitter discussion and hot takes.

Almost an FMW match, every other move was a chairshot. Tenryu may not have had the intensity he would later display but you do see signs of his later greatness with THE FIRE~! he portrays which, as Hashimoto told once Samoa Joe, is the most important part of being a pro wrestler. It's a 1982 All Japan finish so you can take an educated guess on how it finished, Tenryu did a pretty insane blade job and the match is worth watching for that alone. **3/4

I really liked the opening, you don't really think of AJ Styles as this great matworker but he's bound to do interesting stuff once the match gets on the ground and he busted out some cool transitions and pin attempts here. They were kind of lost in the middle, instead of continuing with the limbwork they just did more control segment exchanging, to be fair to them both they did some really cool stuff, AJ's got an awesome Backbreaker and his Hammerlock Backdrop/Pumphandle Gutbuster combo was unreal, I loved the way Sabre countered AJ's Dropkick by just pulling him down, it's not that this match lacked cool stuff but I'd have wanted to see them connected in better fashion. I also enjoyed the struggle over the Calf Killer. The big lackluster strike exchange is a good thing to point to in why this felt more like two world class wrestlers having a good house show main event than a great match. ***1/4

Pretty great performance by Sabre and a not so great one by Ospreay. I've tried to but I just can't like to guy. He'll drop selling in order to move on to the next MOVE all the time, the selling he actually does doesn't look convincing and doesn't last long enough and his shit just isn't impressive. It doesn't look good. He's good at jumping around but not good at incorporating his leaping ability into creating good pro wrestling sequences and moves. Chad compared him to a young AJ Styles in his article-I couldn't disagree more. I think young AJ Styles actually had a really good basic sense of pro wrestlng, certainly a million times better one than Ospreay. I'm sure Ospreay would be better if he watched a bunch of Ohtani tapes and went to work southern indies for three years. Half of his offence just looks ridiculously bad and the other half I've seen done better by any number of CMLL guys. I imagine people would be losing their shit for Triton if he was british, signed by New Japan and looked good in a suit. Anyway. Onto Sabre and how he made this match good. He totally carried Ospreay on the mat (hardly surprising). Sabre is so much better than the catch point guys it's ridiculous, a Gulak or Tracy Williams may use a forearm during a hold to remain in control but they do it without any purpose and it doesn't add to the match like it does in a Finlay or Regal one. Sabre will also do something similar like step on Ospreay's hand for a transition, and will both give the move meaning by doing so and milk it out more. Furthermore he has so many escapes that he can basically have Ospreay slap on a wirstlock and work a whole segment AROUND Ospreay. He may not be at that Billy Robinson level where he's reversing all his own submissions and making it seem like Jumbo knows how to work but he did do the next best thing in making the narrative of the match fit him releasing Ospreay from holds. He busted out some really neat suplex counters to Ospreay's flips as well. ***1/2