aaeo_

Like with this year's BOSJ there's only one match I'm excited about, KENTA-Ibushi. There's nothing else that I'm really looking forward to but a bunch of stuff could be good.

Aside from Aerostar's dive, this has been a really fun show

Wright blocking Tiger Mask's backdrop suplexes was very neat. Submissions look stiff as hell and both wrestlers really lay it in with their strikes. There's a lot of very casual no selling and early kickouts but everything else is executed great.

I also just watched the Stardom episode and I thought it was great. The parts with Iwatani and Kyona were very interesting, but halfway through I was worried that it would just be an ad for Stardom. It's good that they didn't shy away from criticizing some of the sleazier sides of their business, and they didn't even talk about the idol photobooks and all that. Ogawa does come across as a creep and an asshole, but that's always the impression that I've gotten from him. The MVP episode was also very good, thought his reaction was hilarious when he gets told he's going over Callihan at the MLW show. I'll watch the DDT episode soon since it's a promotion I like a lot. I do wonder about the timeline, I think it may have been recorded around the time of Takayama's accident. That could make it difficult to watch.

Yamashita dropped the title but she's still one of the best pro wrestlers in the world. She can fit so much into 10-15 minutes. Her selling is all purposeful, rarely can you really say she's no-selling her opponents but most of the time she does a great job at looking like she's trying to fight through the pain. Mizuki has a great underdog perfomance in this match, as Yamashita beats her up with kicks and knees. Mizuki's double footstomps completely change the match, it's fantastic. I've never really been impressed by the move but it's such a sudden game changer here that I loved how they used them. Yamashita gets up from a series of footstomps and lands a german suplex but can't hold it. And Mizuki keeps working the abdomen until she gets the upset win. The pinfall is also very sudden and surprising, which adds to the narrative of the match. Great match layout and everything is executed perfectly. I think this is the best Tokyo Joshi match of this year so far, which is high praise since they've become one of the best wrestling promotions around.

This match was super fun. The matwork is pretty simple but they do everything to keep the crowd invested and it works really well. Inoki goes to the armbar over and over again but he's always doing interesting stuff in them, whether it's just portraying the struggle with his face/body language or trying to get more leverage, or kicking Kimura. I like that they only used the lumberjacks to sort of cover up Kimura's bladejob, although I truly wanted to see the tracksuits try to brawl with either of the wrestlers and that never happens. I think it ends up being a time limit draw? Not sure though, and it doesn't matter. Good stuff.

I only saw the Young Bucks match. I've liked both of those teams in the past but I thought that was pretty bad. Penta has gotten pretty unbearable to watch without plunder. Will maybe try to check out the joshi tag and the Rhodes match.

Their match on Maji Manji #1 might have more to it but this was insanely fun, stiff and fast paced. Takeshita's nose gets fucked up at some point, and him bleeding over Higuchi's face while he gets a sleeper hold is a great visual. The lariat which ends the match is great.

A highlight of what was a pretty great tournament. HARASHIMA as the fading ace continues to be one of the most compelling wrestlers around. Sasaki attacks HARASHIMA before the bell, dropkicks him out of the ring, and then does his great suicide dive. Then, he beats him up on the outside and does the russian legsweep onto (on top of?) the chairs, which also looks pretty good. After they get back in the ring, he chokes HARASHIMA out with his T-shirt, ignores Matsui's five-count and has to be physically removed from the ring to let go. This is stuff that I've seen Sasaki hundreds of times but I'm still not tired of it. While some of the exchanges aren't as good as you'd expect (there's one time when Hara's shoulder is up on a pinfall attempt, and countering Sasaki's elbow drop with a kick to the gut is a cool idea but it didn't look that great from the hard cam angle), HARASHIMA's incredible selling and Sasaki's great heel performance made this a really enjoyable match for me.

I thought this was way too long, but it was well executed. The teases of Sekine's finisher were solid, and it was a very entertaining modern Japanese title match. Admittedly, I can never get into Nakatsu's matches as much as I should because I find his strikes to be kind of weak and he relies on those a lot, but he had another pretty good title match with Fuminori Abe. edit: Actually, now that I think about it, my favourite Nakatsu match was the Best Stretchman one, which was much sillier, but had a beautiful underdog performance in it. Nakatsu has been pretty incredible recently.

This is the show of the year.

loved Hollywood Golovkin ngl.

This is the first match on this stream: https://www.pscp.tv/w/1gqxvVzvOZzxB Somewhat disappointing that this is a single-cam show but this match ruled. I love Umeda's clinch knees and his arsenal of kicks. He is in control for most of the match and really kicks the shit out of Higuchi, but there are brief moments where he just gets ragdolled. The tide turns for good when Higuchi catches a high kick, chokeslams Umeda and then lands a disgusting lariat. And after that, the last couple of minutes are a demolition. Umeda takes some hard bumps, and sells really well during the last stretch. Good stuff.

Short match built around striking. A lot of realistic, fluid kickboxing exchanges early on, and I enjoyed Okuda shooting in for a double leg takedown with any opening he sees. I thought the match would hit another level after Sakaguchi hits Okuda with a wonderful straight right. But sadly, they just do faces and trade forearms after that. Okuda might be the best in the world at that, but who could possibly care about that type of thing in this day and age. Disappointing match.

That SI article reads like native advertising.

The lore for this match is very deep and it feels like a minor miracle that footage exists, but it's a shame that the footage is stop motion choppy at times and you can't really see most of the third fall. Either way, that third fall has a really beautiful moment. The Brazos clear the ring and a Villano (I have no clue which one it is) comes up with their mask completely destroyed and just gets mobbed by all three Brazos. This match was probably great but it's hard to tell.

The last ten minutes are entertaining in a goofy way but I thought it detracted a lot from what was a pretty great match beforehand. They go way overboard and Barnett even throws a rolling thunder kick just for the sake of it. One of the most interesting things about this match is how much it's like a 70s Inoki match (down to the time limit draw and overtime) but in half the time and with Suzuki doing goofier faces.

This was the highlight of the show for me. There's a great build up, the intensity and violence just keep increasing until it really boils over with the Billy Robinson backbreaker, and both Thatcher and Hideki's execution is flawless 99% of the time. I'd like to write more about it whenever I end up rewatching it. Instant classic, almost as good as Thatcher's match with Ishikawa last month!

The initial grappling is super stiff and engaging but the match goes to another level after they fall out of the ring and Takeda starts bleeding. Gresham somehow was the best striker on this show, targetting the cut and actually slipping punches instead of just waiting for his turn to fire back. Takeda just chases Gresham down and knocks him out. Good shit!

So weird to see Kross work different than how he does in AAA. He's a really entertaining and charismatic guy, and seeing him go for the (rope? edge of the ring?) break over and over again was the best part of this match, even though he looked like one of the less skilled grapplers on this show. I really enjoyed Smith's kickboxing at the start of the match, killing Kross with leg kicks and checking everything he throws back, but thought the striking exchange towards the end was very stilted. The suplex Smith gets off before submitting Killer Kross was incredible.

Making this thread because I saw people say this was a bad match but I thought it was good. Mir and Severn are skilled and there are flashes of cool shit happening here. The sudden finish via heel hook worked extremely well in my opinion.

Katsumata will have hardcore matches whenever they let him, so he was naturally gonna have one on the show for people DDT didn't take to New York. Katsumata is a jobber but he's one of the better wrestlers they have, great selling and all that. They let him blade on this one. GUNSO is the owner of Dove Pro and he has industrial rock playing over all his matches. I thought the few other matches of his that I've seen were boring, once the novelty of the music wore off but this match is very good. Shunma bleeds a lot and GUNSO does have a great uppercut, so that's enough for this to work. GUNSO has the best spot of the match with a legdrop on top of a ladder on top of Katsumata's face.

Taven has to be one of the worst to ever do it, mad at myself because I sat through that ladder match

This is about the same match as their February Sumo Hall match, which means everything I didn't like about that is still here but everything that was good there is still good. Once again leg work takes up most of the first third (nooooooo). Takeshita's knee selling is a bit better but still very annoying in how inconsistent it is once they get deeper into the match. They repeat a few spots from Sumo Hall. Takeshita catches the suicide dive and does a vertical suplex on the apron, which is really awesome and gross. Sasaki catches a senton headfirst, which I think is new. Takeshita also does some horrible stuff to himself. The finish is entertaining. As a whole, the good outweighs the bad for me but your mileage may vary. The post-match is really cool.

How so? I think Mauro makes actual sports worse and goofier with Showtime and Bellator.