ShittyLittleBoots

This was pretty damn good. Very solid David vs. Goliath action w/ Aleister bumping his ass off for Sullivan & being awesome with his strikes. ***

So much better than their NOLA match. Here they actually sold their hatred for each other - the action was violent throughout & never dragged. ****

A good match that told a very fun story of them trying to one-up each other by using each other's moves & going for similar spots. Dream's Prince Puma tights too, my goodness. Absolutely brilliant. ***1/4

Red hot crowd & awesome hard hitting action from start to finish. Loved the Burch FIP segment, Kyle targeting his arm throughout the match was pretty great (loved that big Armbar drama), the ONEY HOT TAG was goddamn terrific & Roddy was his usual fantastic self, loved his facial selling & him on the offense is always a violent joy, and here he was going against two fellas who also bring it big time w/ their offense. Great match. ****

Other than the last 15 or so seconds, this was pretty awful. The strikes of both guys were hilariously bad for what they were trying have the match come off as; funnily enough, the match I watched before this one was Riddle vs. Thatcher from PWG, and in many ways, this felt like a shitty indy version of it. Quite ironic. *1/4

The first fall was legitimately great. Great sense of struggle, urgency & physicality. The offense of both men looked VIOLENT. The greatness continued in the first moments of the 2nd fall with Okada putting on that tremendous cocky face of his, showing how proud he is of getting that first fall. Omega showcased great desperation, all the while selling the fatigue of the 1st fall big time. At some point during the 2nd fall though, the match lost all of the urgency & that great character dynamic of it. Started to drag like I feared (& honestly expected) - basically lost all interest in the thing. There was a few cool moments after that, like Kenny doing the Styles Clash & Ibushi telling him to go for the Phoenix Splash. Other than those 2 moments though, the action wasn't any interesting whatsoever. Kudos to them for going over an hour, but what they did confirmed what I already was pretty damn sure of; Kazuchika Okada & Kenny Omega certainly aren't Ric Flair's, Bryan Danielson's or Trevor Lee's. **1/4

This rocked my world. 6 minutes of fantastic, gritty back & forth wrestling with a terrific sense of urgency + really great selling and amazing looking strikes. One of my favorite ones of the year. ****1/2

This had a wonderful start; great pure spotfest action with a fantastic sense of urgency & Hiromu being superb with his explosive offense. Once they got down from the crowd though, the match sadly didn't remain very interesting. I did love the submission drama w/ (especially) the LeBell Lock & the Triangle, but other than that stuff, the match did not grab me at all. I think it was overall definitely a good one w/ some flashes of greatness in it, but unsurprisingly it also was long as a mofo & had lots & lots of dull/meh stuff in there. ***

The crowd was superb in this & really helped to elevate the match quality. Inoue was AWESOME, he was man on a mission trying to bring down the MMA invaders - all of his work over Shibata was great, even though I thought while I was watching the match that he got to do a little too much offense & that Shibata was on the selling-end of things a little too much, BUT by the end I was all about it as the crowd response to it was perfect. Really good, borderline great match. ***3/4

For most of it, this was a complete Buddy Murphy carryjob in my eyes. His targeting of Cedric's back was wonderful & his strikes actually looked good unlike those of his opponents. Shitty selling by Cedric & the awful thigh slapping "epic" strike sequences during the finishing stretch brought the match down a notch, but it was still a good one & a great showing from Buddy Murphy. What an absolute lovely revelation that man has been in his 205 run. ***

A fantastically paced 3-way dance that flowed perfectly. Daniel Bryan's pure babyface fire is absolutely unmatched & that was on full display when the match kicked into it's finishing gear. ***3/4

A spotfest that went on way too long. It wasn't bad, I would say the match was just fine overall, but it going & going until I couldn't wait for it to end hurt it a lot. Probably should've ended after that shitty no-sell strike exchange sequence, then it would've been around the 3-star region for me. **

This was so good. Though it was also a yet another potential ****+ amazing match that didn't reach it's full potential because the single-cam setting just didn't capture the full emotion & overall feel of it. Even with that unfortunate camera angle situation, it's definitely still one of my favorite matches of the tourney - flowed so good & Taguchi was on absolute FIRE. Love that man. ***3/4

It's such a shame that this ended up happening on a single-cam show, because I feel like w/ multiple camera angles to capture the action & emotion of the match, this EASILY could've hit that ****+ mark. Such a lovely match - very similar to KUSHIDA's matches vs. Kyle O'Reilly in that it was all about both guys just looking to destroy each other's limbs by kicking the crap out of them & stretching them w/ submissions. Enjoyed it big time - a really good match that I, indeed feel like I would have liked even more w/ normal NJPW production instead of single-cam. ***3/4

For the most part, this was a very good ***1/2-***3/4 match w/ really good leg psychology, but the finishing stretch put it on that next level - Starr goes HAM on WALTER's leg that he has been working on throughout the thing, WALTER is in real trouble, but manages to bust out a CRADLE to get the win. Such fantastic storytelling; Starr had WALTER scouted big time, here in their 10th singles match against each other, and while WALTER does unleash some of his murderous offense on the man, Starr has a counter for almost everything, which resulted in WALTER kinda having to fight from underneath! What a fantastic twist in this amazing rivalry. Absolutely amazed at the match-by-match psychology they bring. ****

So much better than their Carnival match. The story in this one was so good; Marufuji is the crafty veteran who is clearly one or two steps ahead of Kento, and the champ is in real trouble trying to figure him out. The headlock sequence was absolutely wonderful, as was Marufuji chopping the soul out of Kento & I loved the couple of British -esq escapes Marufuji had for Kento's attempts to do his German. The match does have quite a few of the typical, generic puro championship match tropes by the end though & those eat away some points, but it was still a very good one. ***3/4

By far the worst match in their trilogy. Too long, too much Ospreay on the offense & too many "cute" "epic" sequences. Super generic indy 50/50 crap. The only saving grace of the thing was that Riddle on the offense is always a joy. **

This was absolutely beautiful. Fantastic, super compelling chain wrestling & when Marty eventually got the upperhand, he was simply awesome working the crap out of KUSHIDA, all around. KUSHIDA was a rockin' babyface as usual - one of my favorite moments of the match was when he got that comeback going, he sold the exhaustion of being worked all over by Marty so, so, SO well. KUSHIDA gets some of that vintage arm work of his in as well & as always it's pretty fantastic - I loved the sequence where he got Marty stunned on the top turnbuckle, he goes after the arm again (once again selling the fatique perfectly), which leads to Marty doing the finger spot of his, which then resulted in KUSHIDA not being able to lock the Kimura. Fantastic stuff, fantastic performances by both - especially KUSHIDA & an overall fantastic match that had a real unique feel to it. ****1/4

This was such a super fun, energetic back & forth match. Jeff looked very good w/ all of his stuff & Bryan on the offense was an absolute joy to watch. The knee psychology towards the end ruled & Bryan actually getting the win with a Heel Hook is superb. Bring on Bryan vs. Joe next week! ****

As usual, these two beat the crap out of each other in a fantastic David vs. Goliath bout. They went with the simplest of all psychologies in that kind of a setting; ZSJ went after WALTER's leg, which WALTER sells excellently & puts on an overall amazing wounded-yet-still-dangerous-monster -performance. ZSJ is great working the crap out of that leg & his cocky character work as he realizes he has the big lad in trouble was a joy. Fantastic performances by both guys & a fantastic match. ****

Not on the level of their excellent PROGRESS match that happened a few weeks after this one, but still an absolute banger of a match. My favorite thing about the match was definitely the early exchanges on the mat; I thought Starr did such a fantastic job portraying his amateur wrestling background into those, and it worked like magic w/ ZSJ. After that the match becomes more of a slug/bomb -fest with some nice leg psychology in there, and yeah it rules. ***3/4

6 years ago to the date I was amazed by this match, watching at live on 5 AM. 6 years after, I am still amazed by how great it is. It's a match that I will never think of anything less than as one of the greatest of all-time. Everything from the atmosphere, to Bryan mouthing "no you're not" while Punk yelled "BEST IN THE WORLD!" during his entrance, to the absolutely amazing offense of both men, to the brutally focused work on the leg by Punk, to the mauling Bryan delivered to Punk's mid-section, to the callbacks to their indy matches, to the CURB STOMP, to the "I HAVE TILL 5!", it's just perfect stuff in my eyes. One of my favorite matches. Just a couple of indy schmucks having a battle to prove who is the best, for the most prestigious championship in the business. *****

Well goddamn. I thought their RevPro & NJPW (did not watch the ROH one) matches from 2017 were trash, so I definitely didn't have positive expectations of any kind going into this. I am very positively surprised by what they put together here though - a really good match! Really liked Marty on top in the first half of the match, he was pretty damn awesome on control & Hiromu was good fighting from underneath - LOVED that sunset flip powerbomb to the outside comeback of his. After that the match becomes more of a bombfest, but doesn't drift into the overkill at all & remains very enjoyable in it's structure & the way they continued to tell the story they had been telling since the start of it. Loved the finish, too. MOTN. ***1/2

Highflying vs. Technical Work is a dynamic that works super well 90% of the time, and it certainly did here. Daniel Makabe is an absolute stud in the ring - his work in this one was just outstanding. Fantastic work over Zayne, especially liked that leg targeting & he sold all of Zayne's highflying offense in superb fashion. I do think the match dragged a bit towards the end, but it was still a really good one. Borderline great, even. Daniel Makabe rules. ***3/4

This ruled. Definitely the MOTN. Great pace from start to finish - started off in a very explosive fashion & eventually slowed down a bit as Ishimori started to go town on Ospreay's banged up neck. Loved all the neck targeting - pretty much EVERYTHING he did was done to punish that neck. Ospreay's big comeback was really good & the match got a real nice sense of urgency from that; Ospreay busted out big bombs to try & get the job done before Ishimori would destroy his neck. Really good stuff. ***3/4