GOTNW

This was a fun trainwreck, I liked how it was structued, started out as an all out action spotfest, that was followed up with a short FIP segment (Young Bucks can't throw a punch to save their life but that part of the match was a complete afterthought by the end), then a comeback with Elgin doing a punch of cool power spots before it disintegrated into a TNA match with all the garbage spots. Anyone who tells you New Japan is a serious wrestling promotion in 2016 clearly doesn't pay attention and I've come to enjoy matches like this for what they are. The camera work here was pretty terrible, too many spots were either missed or could've been shot from better angles. **3/4

Terrible match. I was so glad when it ended. For all the shit I gave Triple H-Ziggler that match at least had crowd heat. The way these matches work is that they're divided into two or three parts: 1)theoretical heat building 2/3) action, flips and the finishing stretch, sometimes they're combined into a whole, sometimes not The first part of the match was just dreadful, boring.......complete trash, no other way to describe it. Crowd only reacted for it at the end and not because they cared for it but because they knew the comeback was coming. Then they transitioned to the flips and still remained awful, it was the worst US indy tag match I could imagine, completely reliant on thigh slapping kicks and predictable transitions. And it just went on forever, I was hoping they would at least do something interesting near the end but nope, I've seen this match twenty times and I haven't missed it at all. Trent completely missing a knee on the outside that still had the *smack* sound effect and then acting all tough about it was eye rolling and completely sums up the match. *

The young lions do basic stuff like Uppercuts, Back Elbows, Fireman Carry Slams etc. but everything they do look good and I vastly prefer that to Ospreay's flippy flops. Tiger Mask IV is someone who's worked Battlarts, and these days he is mostly a guy who works multi man tags, gets in, hits a couple of kicks and a Tiger Driver and then kicks out. You'd hope for some shooty exchanges vs. Sakuraba, but outside of an ok opening exchange between them we don't really get that. Taguchi's shtick is ok in matches like this but I do think it's sad to see Sakuraba be relegated to stooging for Taguchi. Gedo did like two things here, a whatever Superkick and a nice punch combo. This was ok I guess. **1/2

Here I am wondering if I can make it through an entire New Japan show in 2016 after Wrestle Kingdom kicked me in the balls. Juice looked good here, throwing some good punches and a nice lariat. Everyone else sucked. Heatless two minute match, less than average.

I hope they sign Okada. He wouldn't pollute New Japan anymore and maybe they'd teach him how to work.

One important thing to note is that for a few years they did a good job of taking advantage of the brand split to create new stars and adding to the legacy of their old ones. This benefited Cena, Batista, Rey, Edge, JBL and even someone like Undertaker in that regard. Of course eventually you got the Dolph Ziggler/Jack Swagger/Sheamus runs but even then someone like Bryan had his first run as a player on Smackdown. I also hope Lesnar starts jobbing soon because they seem to be rebuilding right now and I don't see how him running over people fits in there.

I'd prefer they cut the mid card comedy spot altogether, especially considering how often they have over acts that rely heavily on comedy and aren't seen as total jokes (like New Day).

Nominating: AJ Styles & Chris Jericho vs Big E & Kofi Kingston (WWE Raw 3/7) http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/34412-aj-styles-chris-jericho-vs-big-e-kofi-kingston-wwe-raw-372016/ Dragon Lee vs. Kamaitachi (CMLL 3/4/2016)-YES Shuji Ishikawa vs Hideyoshi Kamitani ( BJW 4/10)-YES Roman Reigns vs AJ Styles (Extreme Rules 5/22)-YES as usual see MDA for comments

Roman Reigns and The Miz. I've hammer that point in my reviews but Owens really isn't a heel nor does he act like one.

I have zero faith in Vince to ever book a proper tag team division, an over act that sells merch is as good as you'll get with him (and judging by NXT acts like Enzo and Cass and the Vaudevillains and their desire to recreate DX-esque acts they have no intention of changing that in the near future).

El Satanico v. Pirata Morgan v. Jerry Estrada-AAA 19.1.1993. is the first match I came across in my file that includes all the wrestling I've watched in a given year and I remember it being pretty baaaaaaad. Pretty sure I came across a Satanico quote on twitter recently saying he hated that time of his career as well for whatever that's worth.

I think these two have had an amazing series of wonderful matches. Some people have described those matches as spotfests and frankly, there is a lot of truth in that. What I think made the matches work is that: -they sold a lot inbetween the spots and gave you time for their insanity to sink in -they did a wonderful job of using learned psychology and constantly added new moves and counters -and finally, the spots and sequences themselves were just mind-blowing This match was a reminder that they are 21 and 26 and just a few years into their careers. While they added a couple of new ideas they kind of hit a wall in terms of how what they could do and relied heavily on the insanity aspect of it to carry the match. Their good traits didn't suddenly disappear-in fact it's what I think allowed this match to be as good as it was-but I'm pretty sure I've seen every singles match they've had, including the lightning ones. That's, what, eight of them BEFORE this one? A big part of what made a lot of their matches work is that I didn't know exactly how much it would take for them to go down because they were constantly changing things so much. By this one I kind of had a feel on how much it would take, and something like the counter to Kamaitachi's ramp Dropkick gradually went from being an amazing counter to something I didn't really mind much and was a footnote in my nitpick to something that I just shrug at here. Don't get me wrong-I did enjoy the insanity in this one a lot-but it's a good thing these two will be seperated for a while now. They've done all they could against one another at this point in their careers. ****

I loved the early battle of strength vs speed and how AJ adapted to Reigns' offence. I preferred the way the Payback match was paced and I wasn't really big on the crowd brawling in this one which is why I think the Payback match was better. The stuff with the pre-show panel table felt novel but I don't think it was worth the time they gave that segment. Sealing the Styles Clash for the last two months was probably the best thing they could have done and they did a great job building to it here too, I loved Reigns' Uppercut counter to it. Reigns' leg injury angle wasn't overly significant in the whole scheme of the match but it did provide a valid excuse for him to sell as much as he did before Gallows and Anderson got involved. I loved the way they mixed up the counters, for example in the last match Reigns Superman Punched Reigns in the middle of his Springboard Forearm and here he did it before Styles even leaped. AJ took some disgusting bumps and the match felt a different kind of brutal. The bit with Reigns swinging him into the apron and the barricade before Powerbombing him through a table that wasn't "cleared" beforehand was just insane and Reigns breaking the barricade with a Spear also felt fresh due to it being done from a different angle. ****1/4

If you nominate it I'll probably watch it and do a complete breakdown. Then call you insane for watching that instead of Hashimoto matches.

I recall him getting plenty of promo time around the time he was (Un)dashing. This is the only one I actually found memorable: Cody Rhodes promo will also get you these:

Bad match. Natalya doesn't know how to work and even though I often criticize Charlotte for her subpar acting Natalya's here makes her look like Choshu. She was abysmal. I liked Charlotte's Suplex onto the ropes, her trying to counter the Sharpshooter by climging the ropes, her back elbow/big boot combo and her chops look good, but all in all this was just a heatless mess. They just went through a bunch of submissions no one cared about or bought as potential finishes and didn't do anything to build to them or make them seem like important once they were applied. *1/2

He got plenty of promo time over the years, long promos too. That we can't assess how good of a wrestler someone is if they don't wrestle in 20+ minute singles matches is a statement I couldn't disagree more with.

Zayn's character doesn't need wins.Cesaro doesn't deserve wins at this point, there's no money in him. Owens has survived 50-50 booking, he's fine. They have a sizeable investment in AJ apparently so I think they'll force themselves to handle him at least solidly.

If you've read enough of my reviews you know my takes on matches can be quite unique. I didn't think this was a worst WWE match ever candidate. I didn't think it sucked. Didn't hate it. Now I didn't think it was great either-but I'd like to explain my position first. As a serious worker in 2016 Jericho is pretty terrible. Ambrose isn't much better, but at least I think he has some skills that can be used in certain match types against the right opponent even if I think 80% of his output is pure trash. They wrestled a serious wrestling match on Payback and it sucked. It was boring, dull and completely uninteresting. This match was a trainwreck. I'm open to liking trainwrecks. Most of the offence and acting here would've been complete dogshit in a regular pro wrestling match but it worked here for me, maybe precisely because it was so bad. I maintain that this could've been a legitimately amazing match if Jericho wrestler wearing the scarf. The visual of him doing so would just be so hilarious and he could choke Ambrose with it and that'd set up Ambrose's revenge spot etc. So many stuff in this match-from the shitty punches, them using shoves as moves like twenty times, Jericho just wandering around yelling at people....I think it worked in the context of recreating a late WCW/TNA gimmick match. I did think the two minutes they built to the thumbtacks spot was legitimately good wrestling and the bump itself was absolutely disgusting. The visual of Jericho bleeding from his arms was great. But it also went too long. It amused me throughout because of how bizarre and ridiculous it was but I would have preffered something more compact (i.e. ten minutes shorter). I'm not sure it's worth giving three stars to even if did entertain me like a much of that rating usually would. I do wonder if the lack of self consciousness here actually hurts it for me here, because it would totally be a three star match if Sabu did something like this. Like if Jericho was consciously trying to create pro wrestling absurdism that would be different to me than him just being a shit wrestler that's so bad I think he's awesome because he botched so much stuff due to being a shit wrestler but I find it funny that he does that while yelling in this condescending dad tone. But then there's also the question of whether intent is relevant in art and my instinctive reaction to that is no. So. This match is *** to me I guess? There you have it.

Hate to ruin the fun but this didn't do much for me. Still felt very much like a generic WWE four way just with a better workrate and the overreliance on cheap props to produce drama isn't really my thing in 2016. I liked the finish with Miz getting the pin out of nowhere but when you have stuff like Zayn rolling on the floor asking the ref if it was two instead of going for the pin himself after just breaking up someone else's finisher>pin, Cesaro just staring at Owens while he climbed on the rope and so on it's not the type of stuff I'm going to love. I've seen Cesaro drag Miz into the ring when she tried to save him before, I've seen the tower of doom spots, I've seen the triple suplexes, one guy running at every corner to hit his move three times and so on. Initially I don't even buy them as nearfalls but after a while having someone break up the pin or pull someone out of the ring just becomes tedious and repetitive. **1/2

I had pretty high expectations for this but they could've done better. A lot of good ideas, and plenty worked (Rusev's Bearhug was amazing for instance-so refreshing to see it instead of boring chinlocks) but then you got stuff like a Torture Rack, the world's most stupid move being used in 2016 and Rusev overselling Kalisto's terrible Sleeper. Kalisto's apron bump was insane and the Camel Clutch variation Rusev used to finish him off was completely "is this even possible" next level awesome. Hope they get a proper rematch that gets time. ***-***1/4

Good match, I liked a lot of the stuff they did like the elbow smashes Usos pulled out and how Gallows would counter The Usos' offence when they'd take too much time to set them up. Still you had weird pauses between the moves and sequences like this were a Triple H match which wasn't really fitting for a Tornado Tag which you'd expect to be this non-stop action filled chaotic adrenaline rush. ***

I think after seeing nothing is gonna move the needle they've decided to sacrifice this year to rebuild and I've enjoyed the product a lot more after Wrestlemania as a result of that. They're really not doing anything wrong right now in my book.

Ziggler is such a dork he started the match off with a worked shoot headbutt that didn't look good. I've noticed the sternum bump in the corner has been used a lot more recently. Corbin has a great punch and I won't have to hear about how this was some great important match in a DVD ten years from now so it's automatically better than the Triple H-Ziggler match. Still Ziggler is pretty bad, going for moves he never does to set up a seguence to his DDT that looked worse than usual, randomly selling to no effect and so on. Enjoyed the finish with Corbin punching Ziggler in the nuts and then going over him but I am ready for him to move on, they should feed Zayn to him next. **

Did you comment on them in the Payback/Takeover threads if not I'm gonna need more on that.