Maciej

I thiiiiink this was from the 12/18/17 G21 show.

Yeah, this was very fun throughout and a terrific offensive performance from Cesaro, not just in destroying Jason Jordan's leg but also just general aggression (there's a fun moment where just starts dropping elbows into Jordan's "guard"). Jordan keeps up his end of the bargain selling too. I would really love this is if I didn't think the finish was pretty flat.

I really like the character Sasaki has developed, the kind of heel that will slap you not cuz he's a coward with a sudden burst of confidence that'll immediately disappear, but because he's thinking two steps ahead for the exact right way to distract you and get the advantage. And I think Higuchi is drastically underrated - a high energy big man who sells well and occasionally busts out a cool headscissors reversal, too. Sasaki's La Mistica is as gorgeous as ever. ***1/2

Takeshita has really grown from beautiful wrestling prodigy into a bully role seamlessly, and he decides early on to try and destroy Endo's brain. His STF is really great too. Tetsuya works pretty much pure babyface, which, though he's historically great at being a dick, is obviously a great use of his athleticism. If I had to criticize, there's a point this gets to where Endo is selling his brain damage so well, that returning to kind of a traditional big move-trading structure for the last part of the match seems a little wasteful, but that's just nitpicking. This is well worth everyone's time. ****1/4 That's three Takeshita matches I have at 4 plus stars in 5 days. DDT rules.

Jiro gives an incredible, optimistic babyface performance here, and the crowd eats it up (as did I). He pulls out some fun stuff on the mat, and his commitment to his jacket is my favorite love story in wrestling. The last few minutes here might seem like overkill, but just when it seems like the typical finish where the underdog has busted out everything he can to no avail, we get a twist, so I think that overkill kind of works. I'm probably in the minority here but I liked it even better than the also quite good Bailey/Ishikawa match on the same card. ****

Bailey's not willing to just go straight up evasive speedy guy here because he thinks trading strikes gives him a shot to win, even though Ishikawa's elbows almost kill him every time. And in the end it doesn't work, but I totally buy that he believed it. Ishikawa remains typically unbothered in those striking exchanges, but knows when he has to step up the effort. He does an awesome looking knee lift as a counter to the shooting star knee here too. This was quite fun. ****

This is seemingly just a random 6 man to set up for DDT's round robin tournament, which starts the next day, but it way overperforms, as DDT matches so often do. Favorite things include HARASHIMA's creative takedowns of the much bigger Ishikawa and rope running sequences between Takeshita and Higuchi that actually build to something later in the match. The HARASHIMA/Speedball portions of this match build wonderfully as well, with Bailey hitting a kick initially to make HARASHIMA just tag out immediately, then a big kick exchange in the middle of the match, and then finally the finishing run after a dive sequence that sees Higuchi almost kill himself. Don't miss this one before jumping into the tournament matches. ****1/4

I don't think this'll be anything like a MOTYC for me but it was quite good and a fitting conclusion to this feud. Negro doing all the little things he does well, like really selling the sleeper/choke distinction, always makes me so happy. ***3/4

This match goes to a wonderful place that manages to be very silly at horrifying at the same time, and I really like that. These two sell the insanity on their faces in different ways, with Starr's nonstop intensity and Janela's joyful lunacy. Of course the blood dripping down their faces (and in Starr's case grossly down all sides of his head from the thumbtack wounds on top of his head) sells that insanity too. This was very fun. ****

I don't care at all about the rope break stuff, but I did like this less than most people, I think. First, while I bought Jericho's hatred toward Omega in the build up, I don't know what he was doing as some kind of crazy Bruiser Brody/Stan Hansen foreign invader here. And then, yeah, it was like five hours long and not actually that different from an Epic New Japan Main Event, just with (even) more tables and even slower. I'm not saying there's not stuff to like here, and many of y'all have already given great examples but I think I might love it at literally the half the length. ***1/4 (I like both of Jericho's big matches with KO from last year better)

Three people who haven't been mentioned yet, who would be pretty close to the top for me: - Konosuke Takeshita, who has had the DDT title all year and has big matches that I tend to enjoy as much or more than all the NJ guys and bringing fun and energy on house show tags. He is a tremendous athlete and he's still getting better at finding ways to show personality. - Chihiro Hashimoto, who is in three of my fav 15 matches of the year (vs. Meiko, the second one vs. Aja Kong, and the Io Shirai 10th Anniversary tag). - Pete Dunne. He was a great heel in Progress already, but the high end matches in WWE have been so fucking great.

I keep up with lucha ok usually, but I saw this pretty high up on a list in the MOTY thread and hadn't watched it yet, and it really delivered. I generally love the opening to a match in which the first wrestler to enter dives onto the second one before they enter the ring, and Iron Kid tries that here but Demus doesn't so much catch him as redirects him, flinging him from the top of his head into a post. We then get a nice beatdown including some fork action. Iron Kid hits some really beautiful dives when he eventually gets back on offense. There's also a moment near and dear to my heart where Iron Kid attempts to start a pissing contest chest slap exchange, which tends to bore me 9 times out of 10, and Demus just kicks him in the gut instead. Finally, the finish is a move that absolutely should be the finish, and all of this somehow happens in seven minutes. I loved this, and was very happy to make it the first wrestling match I watched in 2018. ****1/2

Very glad to trawl this thread for more stuff to prioritize catching up on (also def have a whole lot of Stardom, plus I've seen some good stuff on Twitter recently about this year's NOAH, plus some Powerbomb indies, plus some British stuff, etc etc etc). But 35 I like the best as of now (relatively loosely ordered, though I'd say there's a tier drop after the top 10) in case this helps anyone: 1. La Parka vs. Rush, 3/11, Baracal Entertainment 2. Pete Dunne vs. Tyler Bate, 5/20, NXT 3. Kairi Hojo & Yoko Bito vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto & Jungle Kyona, 3/5, Stardom 4. #DIY vs. The Authors of Pain vs. The Revival, 4/1, NXT 5. Chihiro Hashimoto vs. Meiko Satomura, 9/24, Sendai Girls 6. Asuka vs. Ember Moon, 8/19, NXT 7. Hideki Suzuki vs. Yuji Okabayashi, 5/5, BJW 8. Tetsuya Naito vs. Kenny Omega, 8/13, NJPW 9. Masashi Takeda vs. Masaya Takahashi, 12/17, BJW 10. Pete Dunne vs. Tyler Bate, 12/21, NXT 11. The Authors of Pain vs. #DIY, 1/28, NXT 12. Meiko Satomura & Io Shirai vs. Mayu Iwatani & Chihiro Hashimoto, 3/9, Stardom 13. Aja Kong vs. Chihiro Hashimoto, 4/6, Sendai Girls 14. Hiromu Takahashi vs. Dragon Lee, 2/11, NJPW 15. Cain Justice vs. Dominic Garrini, 3/15, CWF Mid-Atlantic 16. Skyman vs. Saturno, 3/4, Cara Lucha 17. Johnny Gargano vs. Andrade Cien Almas, 8/19, NXT 18. The New Day vs. The USOs, 10/8, WWE 19. Pete Dunne vs. Mark Andrews, 1/15, WWE 20. Asuka vs. Nikki Cross vs. Ruby RIot (w/ post-match brawl), 6/14, NXT 21. Shigehiro Irie & Kazusada Higuchi vs. Konosuke Takeshita & Akito, 5/21, DDT 22. The Revival vs. #DIY, 1/11, NXT 23. Bailey vs. Charlotte Flair, 2/13, WWE 24. Ethan Page vs. Darby Allin, 2/25, Evolve 25. Imposible vs. Relampago, 1/22, IWRG 26. Jungle Kyona vs. Kairi Hojo, 2/23, Stardom 27. Princesa Sugehit vs. Zeuxis, 9/16, CMLL 28. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Timothy Thatcher, 2/25, Evolve 29, Zack Sabre Jr. vs. WALTER, 10/21, PWG 30. Keith Lee vs. Donavan Dijak, 9/3, PWG 31. KUDO vs. Konosuke Takeshita, 1/29, DDT 32. Tetsuya Naito vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, 8/11, NJPW 33. David Starr & Jurn Simmons vs. Timothy Thatcher & WALTER, 10/8, wXw 34. Trevor Lee vs. Nick Richards, 7/12, CWF Mid-Atlantic 35. Killshot vs. Dante Fox, 9/27, Lucha Underground

I'm curious with the "ZSJ's grappling sucks" crowd, do y'all not think that kind of British-style submission work has any place in the matches ZSJ finds himself in, or do you just think he's not good at it? The latter, cool, whatever, but the former (ie "he should take some BJJ") seems oddly limiting; it's not like everyone else is working shoot-style on the mat.

Yeah, this didn't disappoint at all. I haven't been super fond of PWG in the past and their other encounters this year have been quite good if not my favorite all time shit, but this one was a cut above indeed. Sometimes "these two are incredibly talented monsters and they're going to try the most amazing shit they can do to destroy each other" is more than enough story, and it really was here. ****1/2

I don't think this quite scaled the heights of their Takeover match (though I was at that one live) because it had less of the element of surprise on its side, but it was still really terrific. These guys work really well together and the match is paced really nicely for stuff like apron spots and loud chops to get the crowd into things at the right moments. The ending does a great job of continuing to tell the story of Johnny getting over the #DIY split and the story of Almas' rising aggression. It does that well enough that they could just end this feud (which hasn't really been a feud outside of the matches anyways) and move on, having made that progress. And if they do decide to have another match, that's very cool too. ****1/4

I thought this was really fun and pretty clever. Zack seemed ready for most of Ibushi's high-flying but eventually cocky in his ability to strike with him, Ibushi's big strikes actually meant something, and the execution on all of it was world class. Fav match of the G1 so far. ****1/4

So, I did like this match quite a bit, but most of the reasons why are already outlined here, so at the risk of seeming more negative than I am, I'm going to focus on the main disconnect between what I saw in this match and what a lot of other folks seem to see, which is this great Naito selling performance. I kinda don't see it. I'm not saying he's doing anything wrong by any means, but his selling "[blowing] Ibushi's out of the water", I just don't know. Cuz he grabs his neck once after the piledriver before going for a (bad, I think?) rolling kick? Cuz he makes solid exhausted facial expressions? I hope y'all don't read this as facetious, cuz I really do promise I am earnestly interested in what I'm missing, but this seemed like a totally solid selling performance that was worthy of this match but didn't do all that much to connect with me in a way that elevated it. Like I said tho, I did like it, largely because these two are great athletes and do a good job of making that athleticism serve the flow of the match and its transitions rather than just showing off. Ibushi is one of the few people in the world who even when he's doing the same moves other people do just makes them look stunning (that rana, good god). His bumps for the Destinos, too, really made that move seem that much more deadly than it usually does and, not that Tetsuya Naito's finisher needs to look stronger, but after that massive piledriver it sure didn't hurt. ****1/4

This Raw monster division has really been something else this year, and it looks like it might be getting even crazier going into Summerslam. I wish we got this without the commercial breaks, but still, I really enjoyed it. Both Roman and Joe are wonderful at looking like huge, incredibly dangerous monsters while selling for each other's monster-ness. Roman does it with an "I don't know how I'm gonna continue" look; Joe looks more angry than anything, but it works for both of them. In addition to their usual spots we get a Roman trying to put his shoe through Joe's face and Joe cutting off a Drive By with a great clothesline. But this isn't actually just a Reigns/Joe match, as BRAUN comes through to wreck shit and we don't just get a regular beatdown, but the start of a three way thing. It makes sense that Braun comes out on top, because the Samoans have been beating the shit out of each other, but both Joe and Reigns get shots in, and Joe even has him on his way down in the Coquina before Reigns goes for the Superman Punch and interrupts. I love it all. ****

There might be a little disconnect early one; something seems a little disjointed in some rope running for example, but yeah, this was very fun. I too like Breaking-Down Old Ace Tanahashi as much as any previous iteration; his crafty dragon screws and sling blades work better for me as the majority of his offense than they did for him as a pure ace, and they play off the arm sympathy wonderfully. I'm pretty excited to see Sabre against a bunch of new opponents in this thing. ***3/4

I really enjoyed the first half or so of this where they're both trying to win and not just have a pissing contest. This is not to say that pissing contests in wrestling can't be good, and even during that stuff, the selling was pretty good, especially from Goto as he was trying to keep up while on the losing side of the first big exchange. Structurally, the whole "okay, let's loudly announce that we're going into the trading shots portion of the match, after which we'll go to the usual bombs and finish up" way this ends up just isn't my favorite thing, but the execution is solid for what it is. ***1/2

There's some really good work before and after that octopus hold too - first the weird chop combo, and then Suzuki selling the hell out of a short little Kawakami kick to make ya really believe it stunned him.

I don't think I liked it better than their first two matches, but I completely agree that this is an amazing series - to this year what Sasha/Charlotte was to last year but spaced out much, much better. These dudes tossing each other around makes so more sense and is so much more interesting to me than most big match WWE (and NJ) finisher counter spam stuff. Though, having said that, the final spear counter was hilarious and I am thankful to have it in the world in gif form. ****

I've been going through this year's DDT recently, cherry picking interesting-looking things here and there and I haven't been watching every single one of these slightly different tag matches, but I figured I'd check this one because it's for the vacant titles and good god-damn am I glad I did. Higuchi is especially good here, as he gets his arm worked over and sells it really nicely throughout. There's an especially nice subtle spot where he catches Takeshita with a powerslam of sorts but has to let go with one of the arms midway through. The go all out on a fast, intense finishing stretch, including both Irie and Higuchi diving onto Takeshita to try and incapacitate him long enough so can't interfere in a pin attempt. This wildly exceeded my expectations; it's my favorite DDT I've seen so far this year and one of my fav tag matches anywhere. ****1/2

I didn't like this overall quite as much as you did, but Sabre's running kick to the back of Trent's legs while Trent was on the second rope was one of my favorite offensive maneuvers I've seen this year for sure.