Richeyedwards

Shingo is bigger than several of their heavyweights including the world champ, ibushi and much bigger than zack who is classed as a heaayweight so I doubt it. The new member is supposed to be a jr.

Here in the UK the pub down the road is showing it as a breakfast-lunch deal, easily beats the midnight-5am of mania.

I think I read that he wanted to do it as it would make him stand out from the pack at the time and give himself something unique.

This certainly felt like a KENTA vs Marufuji match in the sense that I thought that either one of them could be seriously injured at any moment. This was a very good match that celebrated the career of Marufuji and these two mens history with one another. The teases and strikes at the beginning worked well before they moved on to unpacking their vast arsenals of moves with call backs aplenty. This was my favorite portion of the match with the reference to the top rope to floor double stomp and the infamous asai moonsault into the crowd that was proper heart in mouth stuff. There was also a great avoided corner dropkick that looked outstanding. It following a different 30 minute match was a detriment to it as was it having marufuji working with an injured shoulder that he seemed to hurt more as the match went on. But in terms of being a moment and having these two men in the ring together again as opponents (even though they were best as partners) was a great celebration of a 20 year career. This match was not close in terms of how good it was to the two matches they had in 2006 which are a jr title classic and one of the greatest spotfests ever towards the end of the year. It was way better than the bloated 60min draw and a bit better than the 2013 world title match. ***3/4 well worth watching especially if you have watched these mens careers as it is full of little callbacks.

A very good match. You have the owner and jr booker of AJPW on one side and the noah world champ/board member and jr champ on the other. The trade offs in the opening were gripping as they teased some moves and interactions. They lost a bit of steam in the middle of the match as they seemed to be trying to make it last the 30 mins but the final ten mins were incredibly hot again and left me wanting more in terms of singles matches. Not just jr Vs jr and heavy Vs heavy but it also made me want to see Akiyama Vs Harada ***1/2

I am glad i found the unclipped version of this as this is one of the better korakuen main event tags that AJPW had put on for a while at this point. The absolute star of the match was johnny smith who excelled in three distinct parts of the match, he had a really good heat segment on Jun Akiyama. This was great as he only focused on the arm twisting his much senior opponent up with various arm locks. Moving well between them but still giving enough time in each hold for Akiyama to sell it and get the audience to react. Something that someone such as zack sabre struggles with as he seems to quickly move through a bunch of holds. He then had a heat segment on him later in the match with mostly Misawa beating on him and akiyama getting the measure of revenge. In the finishing run he was the center of it with Asako. They worked it with the other four more established stars being the ones who would come in and break up the pins or help with a bit of double teaming. Other than smith all the others gave good performances, Misawa and Kobashi had a few exchanges that were hot as expected and Misawa sold very well for him. AJPW in 1997 still does have many great matches with my personal pick for best match ever at the start of the year, but despite that the promotion does feel tired in comparison to previous years. This match however was good enough that it felt that it could have taken place in 91 or 92 with the different hierarchy and the lower level guys getting to shine. A properly great AJPW six man in Korakuen which were becoming far less common as the decade wore on. ****

Shuji ishikawa would be 1 for me. other 'Big Guys' Ryota Hama, an ex sumo who uses he vast size and weight really well in BJW. Doering as mentioned above and one who probably doesn't count anywhere other than DG but Big R Shimizu, now he is actually not very tall he is 5'10 and only 230lbs but he is in a promotion full of 5'8 <180lb men so in comparison he is much bigger he works really well as a base for all the jr offense in Dragon gate. So for that promotion he works really well but I don't think it would work in most other places with "proper" heavyweights.

When is saw the match length for this is was apprehensive, anything going 30+ in modern wrestling has a hard road ahead of it. But i was proven wrong, Shiozaki and Sugiura put one an outstanding match that was built around stiff strikes and sheer force of will. The stiffness was incredible chops vs elbows and knees the sound of them was amongst the nastiest I have heard in some time. They also managed to do this without resorting to your turn my turn rubbish, no selling and one counts. The way they built the violence was great but they never felt that they were going long for the sake of going long for 34 mins they felt like they were trying to win unlike many rubbish modern njpw matches where they feel like they are just doing stuff to make the match go long because apparently world title matches need to go 35 mins and only the last 5 mins matter. Here there was none of that garbage but just sheer violence. Sugiura was great as he has been this whole title run but Go Shiozaki looked the best i have seen him in years a masterful performance and this was one of the few occasions he looked like he could be something close to his mentor. In an ideal world it would have been a little shorter to tighten it up in places but it was still a great match and top five of the year level. ****1/2

Pretty much as you say, it is not at the level as a match of the big bjw matches in terms of being a death match. But it was a none-stop collection of ever increasing violence and madness. It started with chairshots to the head and gets increases the violence from there. It was ridiculous and made little sense but it was a really fun and violent six man, it has a man being powerbombed into a shopping trolley if that does not make you want to watch it nothing will. Certainly worth the watch.

watched the main event and the hardcore six man both were enjoyable the six man as a pure car crash of stupidity. The main event was really good, the cage section was decent and then the singles section was really good, they did too much ref bullshit and it got tired but for the most of it it was really good. Some good emotion as you would expect even if the loser was the one expected since the match was announced.

The only match i watched from summerslam and i really enjoyed it, both guys worked much of the match about just wanting to punch the other repetitively instead of going for the win, I would have liked a little more intensity from both of them throughout the match as it only really picked up in that regard towards the end. there were a couple of cool callbacks such as the above mentioned Nigel lariat, Miz busting out the romero special first to show that he could wrestle technically too was great. Better still was that Bryan escaped it quite easily and put one of his own on. I liked that Miz tried ot prove a couple of times that he could stand with Bryan at Bryan's game before being beaten back by Bryan, But to gain the advantage he went back to his natural heelish 'soft' wrestling proving that it is a perfectly fine way of wrestling. Loved the finish with the knucks and that he hid them carefully when he first got them but when hit back out by bryan he let them be shown slightly and all the front row saw them and reacted. The two major negatives to this match to me were 1. the crowd which for a match that i thought was hotly anticipated were a very poor crowd. 2. this was the first WWE match i have seen since the greatest royal rumble and the camera work and constant bickering commentary are so shit it was really off putting. I thought it was very good with great aspects in there but would have liked a little more intensity throughout the match for it to be an out and out great match and of course the crowd. ***3/4

I think I know the rumour too and well it is an interesting idea. Will not go down all that well with certain sections of the fan base.

This was the third match for both teams in the jr tag league. The dragon gate team had lost both matches coming in and Aoki and Sato have won both their matches and won the tourney in both 2015 and 2016. Aoki is also the jr champ so the DG team had a lot against them in this match. The best interactions in this match was between Mochi and Sato when they started it was just a barrage of palm strikes and kicks. There was a great later sequence between the two where Sato had Mochi in an armbar which he reversed into an ankle lock into a succession of nasty head kicks by Mochi. Shun has improved over the last few years he is one of the smoothest high flyers in the world, everything is hit beautifully and seamlessly, he still has issues when it comes to what he is doing between his big spots. His matches are all built around them but he picks his spots well and when in a tag match where Mochi can do much of the heavy lifting (even at 48) he is not exposed. This was a really enjoyable jr tag match with a really hot final few minutes and at less than 15 mins the time flew bye, well worth the watch ***3/4.

One of my favourite little things in wrestling history is that Hogan had such a set formula at this point that the monster truck match has a beat down and hulk up in it. I wish they went even further with it and one of the arms on the side of the truck started pointing at the giants truck.

If you removed the first five minutes of this you would have a really good jr style title match. For the first five mins Tozawa has his leg picked apart by Kid and then Tozawa gets some space and then sprints to hit a dive and never sells his leg again. It is on the level of something Omega or Ibushi would do it is that useless. The rest of the match is pretty good with the two working well. You still have some of the usual Tozawa issues that he is still really annoying and his chops and a couple of other of his moves look like shit and are stupid, but everything DK does is really really good and Tozawa does not drag it down too much with his inane mannerisms. Decent title match but take that start bit off and you could have a match nearing great match status. ***

She instantly replaced meiko as my favourite.

I would throw in Big R Shimizu as the best guy in dragon gate at 25, Koji Iwamoto is 28 and Naoya nomura is 24 from ajpw. Absolutely agree on takuya and ashino, really not a fan of abe though, all his little movements and facial expressions are really annoying. I can see ashino and takuya being the aces of bjw strong division and wrestle 1. Koji however is always going to be a jr lieutenant to jake lee at best, Nomura could become a big deal in ajpw along with tag partner aoyagi who is also 22.

We both made the thread at the same time I am gonna delete my thread now According to Meltzer and a couple of other sources Brian Christopher has also died today after reportedly hanging himself while in jail for I believe a DUI. http://www.prowrestlingsheet.com/brian-christopher-hangs-self/

Every story I have Heard about the man makes him out to be a wonderful person which is sadly not something you can say about a lot of wrestlers.

I have just made two threads about Brickhouse Brown and Nikolai Volkoff passing and now on top of that their are reports that Brian Christopher is in hospital in a serious condition. This is a dark day for wrestling. http://www.prowrestlingsheet.com/brian-christopher-hangs-self/ Edit: According to Meltzer Christopher has also passed away.

https://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.php?id=119222

This was posted today to the families facebook

This was the end of a 3 year long chase for Zeus when he finally wins the triple crown title in his home town in front of his family in a major arena. The moment when he won the belt and the post match was beautiful celebrating in the ring with his tag partner after finally winning the belt and defeating the ace. As incredible as that moment was the match before it was a little disappointing. There was a lot to like, the two men have good chemistry and Kento playing more and more heel as the match went on changing the crowd from 60-40 to Zeus over to 90-10 in favor of Zeus. The repeated attempts for the shutdown German from Kento was great he went for it around 6 times but never got to hit it was great drama as every time he went for it he got closer to hitting it getting more and more desperate in his attempts as Zeus became more and more desperate in his escapes. There was some selling by Zeus on the outside where i was not sure if he was injured or not he looked completely out of it. Kento working over Zeus's neck and head the whole match in order to get the shutdown German was good. But as good as all of the baseline of the work was there were aspects that i felt hurt it. It had a brawl around the outside and up the ramp towards the start that went a bit to long and the finish had way too many knee strikes from Kento it was getting a little silly. There was also one moment where Kento was over the top in his mannerisms whne trying to be a heel that was more comedy than heelish. I did still really like the match but it was a disappointment compared to what i was expecting between these two. The post match though might have been the best moment in wrestling this year so it did not leave a bad taste in my mouth. ***1/2-***3/4

I guess it comes down to what each individual sees as what each rating point entails, and for some the 'standard' for the lack of a better word is higher for some than others or they just look for different things. I have always seen it as: Minus stars actively offensive to me something incredibly racist, homophobic etc such as the Christopher street connection vs da hit squad from era of honor begins. dud shit match with no redeemable aspects such as elgin vs omega from last years g1 1 star bad but their might be something passable in there like a good crowd or one or two things are done competently 2 star decent match if a simple tv match but, much longer matches that are trying to be big main events can be here if done badly but i think a simple basic tv match would be more fun to watch because it is way shorter. 3-3.25 star good fun 3.5-3.75 very good match worth watching 4-4.25 great match go out of your way to see it 4.5 moty level 4.75 very truly exceptional with only maybe one or two things that could have been done better 5 pretty much perfect or close to perfect. For me I think the last match I thought was 5 stars was Brock vs Cena at extreme rules. That is so long ago compared to some who have given something like 10 5 star (or higher) matches so far this year. That seems absurd to me. I guess it comes down to with the individual thinks but I do question it at times I guess all we can ask is for consistency.

Orange-causes the face to side with the person who used the mist and turn heel. Or some sort of mind control