Tetsujin

It's a shame modern jrs in NJPW wrestle as heavyweights 2.0, because this could have been great if they used the tone of the -fantastic- second half in the whole match. But nope, we have to deal with some boring ringside brawling, painfully weak looking forearms and intrascendent legwork first. Only Bushi and Desperado máscaras show was worth watching in the first ten minutes or so. Takagi and Kanemaru killed it in the climax of this, I'm currently looking at a BOSJ singles between those two, there's some chemistry there.

What a great Jay White performance here. The guy has improved a lot and finally he's booked like someone dangerous on his own. Between him, the 'Okadahashi' moments and some very good nearfalls at the end, this was a very enjoyable tag team match that sets up both singles matches for night 3 perfectly.

Finished with 1994, what a fucking hell of a year. So many great matches, and more elite stuff than I thought. Aja Kong was no doubt the WOTY and the top two spots of my MOTY podium are two of the greatest matches of the decade. The Hart brothers gave us the rivalry of the year and one of the most clever matches ever produced by WWE. Imagine how good this year is, Misawa/Kawada, while still tremendous, didn't even make the top 3! That's my biggest revelation thus far in this mini project of mine. Looking forward to 1995 now. 9/6/95 is one of the only few matches I'm seeing myself giving it GOAT treatment, but everything can happen and maybe, just maybe, something else can take the #1 spot. We'll see...

I have problems with this match. Entertaining enough, but they wanted to be the MOTY instead of just having a great opener and that clearly damaged It. Too long, overkill, anticlimatic "hey-look-how-awesome-this-match-is" spots. Just not my cup of tea. **3/4.

Kenoh was great here, his attitude and vicious offence added a lot. These two will be huge stars in NOAH in the next decade, they have the charisma and in ring potential, but right now they need to improve some things like short-term selling, escalation, or Kaito's elbow strikes if they wanna produce great big title matches. This was good, with even really good moments here and there, but not great in general. ***1/4.

This match sucked, but it didn't suck as much as I expected to. Richard's acting is very bad, his mannerism, his facial expressions, everything, it's like a prelude to current Kenny Omega. All the 90s AJPW cosplay was terribly done. Too many nearfalls, to the point where nothing mattered anymore. The crowd wasn't even invested, even if they wanted to, and that was... Sad. I'm surprised Elgin was the best performer of the match (well, obviously despite McGuinness at commentary lmfao), he actually sold himself to the fans that at the beggining didn't care about him at all. At least some of his moves and strikes were good. But fuck Davey Richards really sucked here. Before giving it stars or whatever, I need to know: was this the first match of this... "style"? You know, all this "let's put all the puro's big matches clichés together to create the ultimate epic match" tendency so often seeing today. Because if it was, I'm going to give it even less snowflakes.

I know it sounds a bit cliché, but he's gonna be so underrated at the main roster...

Rewatched this yesterday and I'm kinda shocked about one thing: this is no longer one of the greatest matches of all time for me. Hell, it's not even my MOTY anymore (Kong/Hotta). It's still holy fucking great, one of the best matches of the 90s and one of the biggest performances from both legends, but not top tier material for me. What I think this match needs to be top tier material, the thing other king's road masterpieces have, is the in ring work being trascendent. The stuff they do is amazing in terms of action and emotion, but not very important in terms of storytelling. Yeah, Kawada is very focused and closer than ever to reach the top of the mountain, and Misawa manages to look like the biggest final boss in pro wrestling history while at the same time making you feel that his reign is in true danger for the first time; but the transitions are kinda poor, the legwork and the bloody ear meant nothing, there was no strong cohesion between the different phases... Maybe I'm overanalyzing it, but this match has the reputation of being one of the greatest matches of all time, if not the greatest one. With that reputation, I believe you should have a highly demanding test.

I'd book a champion vs champion, title for title, at the main event. The winner unifies both women's championships and their rosters, and an exclusive women brand starts. You know, if cruiserweights and even NXT freaking UK have their own weekly shows, why not women?

I'm surprised how much love Okada/Omega IV have on this website, to be honest. To me it was one of the worst big matches I've ever seen. Am I alone on that? And, just to be clear, I'm a huge fan of their 2017 trilogy.

Not as great as their time limit draw earlier this year, and not even close to the epicness of their two singles bouts last year, but damn these two have eternal chemistry and can never have "just a good match". Really loved the struggle on every fucking thing, the slow paced grappling and Sekimoto's fighting spirit, although the finish was a bit anticlimactic for me. Really good match, but it suffers from both workers having even better matches together. Totally good stuff though! ***3/4

So, did you guys saw that spanish indy match feat. ZSJ that Metlzer gave the full five recently? I'ts on youtube apparently.

Agreed. Destruction is the best one of the three. My MOTY throughout the whole year has been Andrade/Gargano and I don't think any match could top that in less than two months for 2019. It's the only ***** I have this year (I'm pretty fussy with those). For me there are only two matches nearly as good as that was, and those are Ishii/Omega from G1 (perfect escalation, drama and intesity) and Shirai/Satomura from April (one of the greatest exhibition matches I've ever seen). Those are ****3/4. Then, I have (in that order) Ciampa/Gargano 2, WALTER/Bate at PROGRESS, Naito/Omega and Devlin/WALTER at OTT, all of them as ****1/2, which is the greatest ranking I can give to a match without seeing it as one of the best matches ever. I still need to watch tons of highly recommended matches, 'cause this year I've been busy af. But, I'm very sure at least the top five won't suffer any changes.

I don't think I'm going to make it before WM 35, but sooner or later i'll finish my list and share it with all of you.

That's a great point I forgot to talk about, SmartMark. Charlotte really was giving everything she had to make Becky even a bigger star, she tooked the heaviest bumps, se was dominated almost all the time... She really learnt from his father how to make your opponent to look great. All the credits for her.

This match has awesome offense from both guys and a really strong climax, but god Kento really needs to learn how to long-time sell. All the damage he takes in the heat segments comes to nothing when he makes his comebacks, and that's not the exception here. It's not a coincidence I like much more Kento's big matches when he actually loses, because that's the only way the damage he gets matters. But yeah, still a great match and specially a wonderful Zeus performance, his control segment was a delight and shit that German Suplex kickout at 2.999 was done perfectly. ***3/4.

Updated with 1993! Hansen/Kobashi may be a boring pick, but some things are obvious 'cause we all know they're true. Freeza is the greatest DB villain. Messi is better than Cristiano. And Hansen/Kobashi is the 1993 MOTY, an instant classic that has become inmortal. The happiest surprise for me was how fucking awesome Hokuto/Kandori was, because I saw that match a couple of times a few years ago and I didn't think it was THAT great. Holy shit, holy fucking shit. If there's a match I can describe as 'larger-than-life', it's 100% this match. And the craziest part of all this is, neither one of those two matches are ***** on my book! But they define pro wrestling perfectly and they both deserve to be the highest picks from 1993.

Tl;dr: a very good match, with an awful referee work. These two finally gave us the match we all knew they could have, and in a big way. All the spots came naturally, as they made sure it was a personal fight. I was so convinced Charlotte was gonna win, specially after her big comeback after being buried, that the actual result of the match put the biggest of my smiles on my face. Becky deserved to win this feud soooo much, I love it. Yeah, the referee stuff was terrible and cut my disbelief a couple of times, without all of that bullshit it could've been a great match instead of a very good one, but still highly recommended. All hail to the new queen. ***1/2

They made Tanahashi win the G1 because there's no other superstar on their roster who could afford to lose at the main event of WK against Omega ('cause I can read Gedo's mind, he's thinking about "hey let's give our top gaijin a WK main event victory; here we go USA expansion!"): -Naito is super duper over and the fans will not forgive another big loss at the main event of WK for him. -Okada is Gedo's big project and noup, he's not gonna job against a gaijin at the Tokyo Dome. -Ibushi, you know, hasn't sign anything and probably never will. Too risky. -But yeah, Tanahashi is their perfect choosing. He's someone they can trust in both match quality and drawing power. Also, he's not the Ace anymore, so he can make the job with 0 problems. So yeah, I can see Omega/Tana as our WK 13 main event pretty clearly. It's funny how NJPW is giving more and more to Omega when he's going to leave them and going to WWE sooner than later...

The whole purpose of this match was to introduce the new Dean Ambrose, and holy shit he ruled here. The grappling opening sequences felt organic, Ambrose's headlock was ruthless, but then he started to give Ziggler some brutal chops and lariats and even a great fallaway slam. No rebound lariats, no shitty stinger's splash followed by a running bulldog, no suicide dive, none of that, just power. And it fix Ambrose's new body and attitude perfectly. The Dirty Deeds outta nowhere was a great finish for a very good tv match, and a perfect reborn for the Lunatic Fringe.

Updated with my 1992 picks. And, as I expected, nothing changed! Those three matches are among the ones I enjoy the most watching them over and over, and DreamRush is a clear GOATC imo. The crazy part is that I left behind Casas/Dandy, Piper/Hart, Pegasus/Villano III... Holy shit 1992 was a hell of a year in terms of excelent matches.

I actually loved the final pin. In current NJPW, somebody with the status that Kenny Omega have would've kick out of the first finisher. But here, he was so god damned destroyed that he felt short in the process. After the 3 count, Omega was like "d-did I kick out?" and then Ishii's music plays and It was awesome. It added even more suspense to the whole thing.

These two have one of those cases were two undisputed great wrestlers have chemistry, but not that "holy shit MOTYC!" kind of chemistry together. I'm thinking about Misawa and Hansen, Cena and Orton, etc. But this, if maybe not the best, might be the funniest one of their matches due to their character work in the first half; loved Naito pissing off Ishii to te extreme, that chop-spit exchange, those amazing chops to the troath... So much fun here. The second half was also very good, there was a lot of pride behind everything they did, neither one of them wanted to lose against that asshole. Ishii as an underdog is far way better than his "cliché-after-cliché" fightin spirit, and Naito was great as always. Very, very good fight. ***3/4

I can think about probably a dozen of reasons why WWE's product sucks right now. Workers doing their job and not wanting to lose it it's not one of them.

A great tv match between two of the best wrestlers in the world. Both of their movesets are amazing and here, together, they gave a little class about how to work an 'arsenal exhibition' kind of match: with perfect timing and giving value to every move and strike. Really loved the finish also, some CalfCrusher credibility is always good. Man, I hope they have the chance of main eventing a PPV this year for the title because that would be incredible. ***1/2.