klhare

This was very bloody, but was mostly just a mess. Not much happened, it was moreso just slicing each other. It was pretty slow, then the angle wasn't really great, either.

Yeah, as everyone has said already, this was basically a tale of two matches. The parts where Carly was on offense or coming back were really great, but the Gonzalez control segments were very dry. I still consider this a good match, because it peaked high, but it is hard not to think about how good it would have been with a better middle. ***1/4

Cool debut match. You'd never really know that Murahama was a rookie, let alone in his first match, by watching. He unloaded some great strikes. I also really liked the prematch video, too. Excited to see more ***1/2

This was a fun match. Sasaki did a good job of hanging with Tenryu and was completely believable beating him. The Frakensteiner reversal made me jump. A solid main event to a very fun show. ****

Man, the first few minutes of this are brilliant. Murakami coming out right away looking like a completely prick destroying Iizuka, leading to a super heated Hashimoto vs. Murakami exchange, followed by Ogawa stepping in. It feels completely chaotic and unhinged, and the crowd is there for it. The stoppage and restart works here and actually feels warranted and not too ham-fisted as can happen with these things. Love that Iizuka is still recovering while all of the craziness is going on. Then upon the restart, Murakami attacks again, but Iizuka counters with a great armbar, then shows tons of fire in his comeback. Everything in this match feels like it serves a purpose. The Hashimoto kick to Muakami is SICK, and for a second it looks like Ogawa realizes he doesn't want anything to do with Hashimoto. The Iizuka/Murakami exchanges are what really glues the whole match together, and the finish was incredible too. My only complaint is that it could have gone on a few minutes longer, and if it did it would be an all-time great. Still pretty great anyway. ****1/2

Liger's look here is absolutely incredible. He looks so cool. The match itself is very interesting because it is so weird. It's a squash in a place where the crowd absolutely isn't expecting a squash. I want to say that Liger comes out looking like a monster, and he does to an extent, but honestly it was all done SO quickly that I'm not sure I even really got that coming out of the match too much.

Yeah, decent slugfest but not much memorable other than the chops.

This started very fast but settled in very quickly, almost to the extent that it was kind of jarring since both women came out so quickly. Hotta wants to slow Toyota down, but just a second before was going toe-to-toe with her. But, I did find all of the legwork fairly engaging, but then Toyota didn't really acknowledge it too much for a while. She did start to sell it amore as the match went n, so in the end it worked. Toyota's offense here looks really good. She has some cool submissions and hits a great dropkick to the outside. I really don't understand why they had to go into the crowd here. The dives were cool but completely unnecessary and didn't add much to the match for me. Still, it did escalate well and felt like a struggle between the two. Hotta countering the Ocean Cyclone with a simple boot to the face ruled. I thought the finish was very well done, too. ***3/4

Big Show's look was absolutely insane here. Freid hair, tight shirt and tights. He looks to be in great shape, though. A crazy look for your champion. He bumped around pretty well here, but otherwise the crowd wasn't that into this for a lot of it, and it felt like a pretty standard tv match. Not bad or anything but nothing remarkable. The Foley feud was one of the most important things for my wrestling fandom as a kid, but I completely forgot that HHH's title reign began this way on a Raw just a few weeks before. Weird.

I liked this, but I think it went on a little too long. Mainly, the first part of the match didn't really drag or anything, but there were parts where I just thought they were almost too dominant. Obviously that was the point of the match, but something about it just dragged a little in the first section. I wasn't really into the second crowd brawl part, but I think it did serve as a bit of a transition into the closing stretch where Mita and Shimoda turned up their fury even more. It did a good job of establishing them as badasses. I was really into Mita just lifting Fujii's shoulders up at the end. That was very cool. Solid match.

Older Big Japan is an area I've never explored very much and is something that I am really excited to watch more of. I can say the same about deathmatch-era Honma as well. Right away, Honma counters an Irish Whip into the corner by flipping off of the board, and I am PUMPED. I watch a decent amount of current deathmatch stuff and am not sure I've ever seen anyone do that. It is brilliant. It is really interesting to compare Honma here to him in 2010. His charisma shines threw in both eras, but it feels a lot different here. It's not as cartoony. The crowd brawling through the hallways was cool, but once they return it plods a little. But Honma comes back and hits a huge dive to the outside. I've never seen any Yamakawa before, but he hasn't really engaged me at all up to this point. I don't think he is bad or anything but he doesn't have the charisma to really get over the struggle and brutality that the best deathmatch guys have. Still, he's is able to make Honma look good, which is a plus. Honma getting Yamakawa up for a powerbomb but then spiking him backwards through the barbed wire board was great. The Yamakawa bump from the hurricanrana off of the top through the board on the outside looked brutal. This basically resorts to the basic deathmatch formula of back and forth bomb throwing while building up to big spots. It's a good match that never got to the next level for me. I'm excited to see a lot more Honma/BJW from this era going forward. I'm really interested to see how the deathmatch style evolved after moving on from FMW. ***1/2

This is a solid tv match. Spanky definitely looks like he'll be the star here, but Dragon is also a solid guy to play off of and has some hard hitting offense, especially towards the end. As everyone else has said, this is definitely very cool as a reference point.

My name is Kevin. I'm 31. I was first exposed to wrestling very early through action figures and cards, but did not actually start watching until the Attitude Era. I stopped watching in high school, but came back after, first looking at more historical US stuff, then branching to the US indies and Japan. Mankind vs. Undertaker HIAC is the match that made me love wrestling. I was always drawn most to wrestlers like Sabu, Stan Hansen, Terry Funk and Foley. They always were a bit chaotic and unpredictable.

I'm not sure I've seen much of either guy. Lucha is a pretty huge blind spot for me. For the longest time, I felt a gigantic disconnect, but I've dove in a bit more over the last year or so, and it has definitely clicked more, especially the brawls. Right away, the ton is set with Buccanero attacking Tarzan Boy and making him pour blood immediately. Buccanero's kicks look pretty vicious, which is not really something I usually think of with lucha, so I can appreciate here. Even though it went on for only a few minutes, the first fall did start to feel like it dragged a lit, but luckily it ended right when I started to get tired of it. The transition to the Tarzan Boy comeback felt a bit sudden, but it did work for the match structure. The huge Tarzan Boy dive looked really great. I did enjoy all of the Satanico interactions finally leading to Buccanero's demise. Overall, this was a fun match that felt somewhat formulaic, but it was a formula that absolutely worked. Buccanero stood out more than Tarzan Boy. I thought TB could have been a bit more charasmatic, especially during the first fall, but he was still good. 3 3/4

The resurgence of Big Japan's deathmatch division over the past year or so has been very interesting. While still always the major draw in the company, most English speaking fans have favored the Strong Division over the Deathmatch one. However, the Srong Division has had trouble establishing new stars, while Masashi Takeda has become an absolute superstar. This is his first title defense of 2018 against Takumi Tsukamoto. They would go on to become tag champions a few weeks later. Takeda has a lot of things going for him. He's incredibly charasmatic, has solid technical skills, knows how to structure his matches and is a madman. Most deathmatches in Big Japan are focused around the ability to just survive as much punishment as possible, and this is no exception. It is very brutal. From lighttubes to scissors to fork cakes to cages to nailboards, there's a lot going on here. Takeda takes control early and just destroys Tsukomoto's forehead, with gouging, tubes, and brutal chairshots. He then steps up the brutality attempting to send Tsukomoto through a barbed wire cage, but Tsukomoto fires up by breaking lighttubes over his head and gains the upper hand, suplexing Takeda through the barbed wire. The crowd is starting to get amped up and behind Tsukomoto. He follows that with a vertebreaker onto chairs. After some back and forth, Takeda gives Tsukotmoto a pretty crazy Russian Leg Drop off of the apron through the cage, which has been moved to the outside. From here, it turns into a bit more of a sprint, with both guys fighting as hard as they can. Takeda is a great deathmatch seller. He has really great facial expressions that make him look like he is in absolute agony, but Tsukomoto is right there with him in this one. He continues to fire up and really gets the crowd behind him. There are some big nearfalls, like Tsukomoto kicking out after a slam on a nailboard followed by a German onto tubes, but Tsukomoto still isn't giving up. Finally, a reverse DDT puts him away. If you are not a fan of the Big Japan deathmatch style, this may not be a match to change your mind, as it contains the excesses and brutality that can take some out of a match. However, I think they do a great job accomplishing what they set out to deliver: elevate Tsukotomo and continue Takeda's unstoppable reign. It is fairly compact. There isn't much downtime, they transition and build to the next spot very well and never feels like they are just waiting for someone to set up or build the next contraption to go through. This is my favorite deathmatch so far this year. Takeda has been one of the best wrestlers in the world so far, and this has been one of his best performances. If you can stomach this style, I absolutely recommend this. ****1/2

I'm hoping Park pulls this off so badly. Two major Park mask matches within weeks of each other would be incredible.

Being familiar with the ups and downs of this story really helped it for me, but I absolutely loved this. The atmosphere was electric and each guy played his role very well. The time was up for Bad Bones, and I felt like he did a good job or portraying that. Walter demolished everyone and made Ilja's struggle seemed real, and Ilja was completely fired up and delivered. This checked all of the boxes for me and was just the pinnacle of what I want from wrestling. *****