aaeo_

This is a good plunder match. I like Sasaki a lot but other than the submission match with Togo, I struggled to get into his extreme title matches because it's not a style I like a lot. This still has a lot of downtime, which is what keeps me from getting into these matches but I thought it build really well around a handful of big spots. For example, HARASHIMA's missed somato or him kicking the ladder into Sasaki's stomach earlier, which I thought was pretty clever. Sasaki fails to hit the elbow drop until he gets the big ladder, good finish. There's also a good post-match brawl after this, probably the coolest thing Soma Takao has done.

Not a great match but it stood out. Would be an average DDT tag match if Suzuki and Sakaguchi didn't go kind of wild. Their exchanges just happens at a different pace from the first time they're against each other and there's some sense of panic coming from Sakaguchi frantically trying to close the guard on Suzuki. Later on, Suzuki just crosses the ring to brawl with Sakaguchi while Akito is doing his stuff. Suzuki dumping Sakaguchi out of the ring and killing him with forearms is probably the best part of the match. It even feels like some of this wasn't planned but Suzuki throws himself into Sakaguchi's hip tosses and strikes later on, so I think it was. Higuchi is good in the brief exchanges he has with Suzuki, would be nice to see them in another match together.

I'd like to participate if you all don't mind having me

I liked how many of their big moves fail to hit, HARASHIMA's legdrop to the outisde, KUDO's diving knee drop. That's a simple but effective way to play off the famliarity they have with each other. KUDO slowly gaining the striking advantage during an exchange with tight uppercuts and hooks and then HARASHIMA throwing all his body into a headbutt out of nowhere is one of the best moments in all their matches (they have a bunch, most of them are very good). KUDO's selling fading away in the last third does hurt the match. Nevertheless, they put together a pretty good finishing stretch. KUDO does Masa Takanashi's nose thing right before the finish, which is on par with Takeshita doing Honda's elbow thing as far as emotional DDT comedy move stealing goes. I liked it. Shit, maybe Keisuke Ishii is gonna beat HARASHIMA with the danshoku piledriver at some point?

Fake shooter Nakatsu, now with Cro Cop inspired gear, does some decent ground passes. Yasu Urano is the worst, he wrestles in a Yes shirt and part of his offense is yelling really loud. Sekine and Nakatsu do all their shtick but what makes this match good are the interactions between Hino and Sekine. Hino chopping Sekine's legs is something that shouldn't work and yet, it does. When Nakatsu gains the upper hand on Urano, Sekine rushes out to knock Hino from the apron to the floor and Hino starts a brawl in the corner. There's a handful of funny moments, because Hino is good at comedy but for the most part Hino just kills Sekine. Entertaining match, despite Urano being the worst.

Never really reaches the same heights as their crazy title bout from 2016, which is a shame, but it's still a good heavyweight match despite being pretty short in length, with some stiff strikes and big throws. Higuchi's selling veers close to blowing off Ishikawa's offense at times but I like it as him trying to go on despite catching a beatdown from Ishikawa. He's good at selling punches and other strikes, he'll stand up and try to keep fighting on rubbery legs. Ishikawa is really good at everything he does here, as usual in the past couple of years.

Very solid sprint. Lots of intensity from Saiki, which matches Yuu's style perfectly. Right before the finish, Saiki just screams for 30 seconds straight after hitting a lariat, on some roid rage shit. I hadn't noticed the length so the finish caught me off-guard but they really do hit each other incredibly hard for however long this lasts. Yuu's grappling comes across as a real threat once again, with some nice throws and applying a really tight kimura halfway through the match.

I thought a good thing to do would be to check out Team DATE's foray into joshi wrestling. Team DATE is a gym comprised exclusively of barely trained fighters and complete psychopaths. For instance, Karen DATE was fighting 30 year olds in sanctioned MMA bouts when she was 12. Pretty cool huh. This match has three of them so it seemed like one of the best starting points. I was pretty disappointed don't work as shooters! One of them no sells a dropkick early on though, which rules. I enjoyed Hamuko Hoshi's comedy strike exchanges. It helped get some life into a match that had felt like people tagging in and out at random so far. Tsukasa Fujimoto is pretty good in this match, all her offense looks great. Karen DATE actually did a bunch of high-flier moves and went toe-to-toe with her for a while, which I thought was impressive. There's some awkward moments in this and it's not must-see by any means, but an entertaining match overall. Sadly, this seems to have been one of the last matches the DATE girls had in Ice Ribbon. One can only hope they come back.

pretty bad name

Really fun spectacle. Despite the numbers advantage, all the rudos eat shit against Andre. There are some really cool spots in the first half built around that. The rudos are good in this, especially Sangre Chicana, in a very different role to the wild brawling underdog he's in his big matches a few years later. The match does get insanely messy in the second half. There's some Cien Caras as face-in-peril spots but they don't amount to much because he always tags out after a minute or two. The crowd is always ecstatic to see Andre back in, which is cool.

Good matches on random house shows are what's kept me watching through the DDT Universe archives, and this is one of those matches. It's got a clear through line, as HARASHIMA tries to keep the young, crazy high flier MAO grounded. HARASHIMA puts on a really good grappling performance. He starts by keeping MAO in his butterfly guard. MAO tries to get a better position and he fails most of the time, and then whenever MAO gets past the guard, it seems like HARASHIMA immediately gets his back. I really enjoyed all of that. On top of that, Hara is smiling and playing to the crowd through all of this, barely taking MAO seriously. MAO tries to gain an advantage by shenanigans and start running the ropes but HARASHIMA dropkicks him and starts tying him up again, also working in some of his flashier offense and working MAO's mid-section. MAO finally breaks out by surprising HARASHIMA with a dropkick after Hara commits the capital mistake of doing an Irish whip to try and kick MAO. He briefly gets the better of HARASHIMA with a couple crossbodies and a nice suplex. It doesn't last long, HARASHIMA finally gets angry and bests MAO with the superplex and some stiff forearms. He wins after hitting the somato. I liked this match a lot, I thought it escalated in a smart way and was enjoyable throughout.

An hourlong draw might seem like overkill for a match with these two, but I thought this was good. Takeshita focuses on Endo's neck through the first half of the match and Endo works Takeshita's leg. There's some really dramatic stuff going on there but sadly, they both blow it off through most of the second half and then it comes back in the last ten minutes. Takeshita also has an annoying tic of no-selling big moves to hit a suplex or something of the sort, which happens a handful of times on that final stretch and I was really annoyed by. I find that sort of thing endearing in wrestlers who come across as underdogs but Takeshita doesn't, so I guess it bothers me. Endo's selling is better but his strikes are really bad. Nevertheless, I liked the overall progression of the match. There's moments of real spite and high drama. Having beaten him in their last singles match build-up tags, Endo doesn't take Takeshita seriously at first until he starts beating the shit out of him and working that neck. The swings of momentum through the match seem to mostly come from counters, which is one of the things Takeshita does best. He also eats a great kick to the face while in the top rope towards the end. Endo's offense escalates nicely, until the shooting star press which fails to put Takeshita away. The match lost me a bit in the final ten minutes because of the two nitpicks I mentioned. I still didn't love Takeshita and Endo taking other wrestlers' finishes for the finish, but I suppose after an hour of doing everything else, it makes some sense.

I don't know about "worst big match" but I didn't really like Okada-Omega IV either on first watch. I don't have any pointed criticisms of the work but I just didn't connect with it then. I remember liking the draw. I thought the way NJ dealt with Omega/Ibushi was too hokey so that might've soured me on the whole thing by the time Dominion happened. I plan to revisit it at some point but that may take a few years. +1 this match was a banger.

Really great build throughout this match. Even when they go for the dives and brawl outside towards the end, it made sense for me because they've been in a war all along. Loved Togo being unable to follow up on the pedigree because Sasaki had focused on his leg. Togo getting Sasaki hooking the arm in the crossface and Sasaki survivng after Togo had tapped immediately to it before was another cool touch.

Rush vs. LA Park from June 22 would be my pick but I haven't watched much

Just found out MS-1's mini was called MS-1/2.

HARASHIMA has a couple really great transitions on the mat and the legwork looks vicious. He does some incredible things in this match, but the layout is all wrong. Takeshita sells well until he doesn't. Stealing other people's finishers feels too much like a New Japan thing and I'm not sure if I like it. Although, Takeshita looking over at Antonio Honda on the verge of tears after hitting the punch combo was a nice moment now that I think about it.

Good garbage wrestling. It's like a good AAA match. What struck me about this match was the way different weapons just kept materializing in-ring, suddenly there's a rake and then a bunch of ladders or a fence and so on and so forth. It was an appropiately crazy match. Kasai suddenly no-selling everything is great in this type of match and the fence spot is really good. Sasaki gets suplexed while holding a ladder, which is also crazy. I don't wanna just write a list of spots but the beating that Kasai takes is something else.

Wonderful match. Oyama is a former PRIDE jobber crossing over to wrestling. He goes insanely hard on this, he bumps for everything, sells really well, and he takes a missile dropkick from Togo breaking up a pin which was a bit excessive on top of the rest of it, but it's not unappreciated. The match is very one-sided. Oyama and KUDO are both underdogs, they get brief comebacks but eventually they both either get overpowered or outnumbered. However, Oyama briefly doing judo things to Takayama was really great.

Nakatsu is pretty interesting to me, because he debuted in DNA and immediately got a shooter gimmick, but I think he never did any shoots. He also had really great gear in DNA, which he swapped for some really bad gear once he got to BASARA. Here, he teams with Sekine, as per usual. They're pretty alright. Opposite them, it's Togo and Hidaka! What a great team! Togo sons Sekine and Nakatsu early, just working a headlock. Upon tagging in, Hidaka starts working Nakatsu's arm and they have a pretty good exchange early. Then Sekine and Hidaka do the Cavalry spot, which consists of Sekine sitting on top of Hidaka and Nakatsu coming in to kick Hidaka in the butt and then Sekine and Nakatsu have a lil' chant. And then there's fighting spirit strikes but instead of chopping each other's chest, they kick each other in the butt some more. It's all very BASARA. I can enjoy this type of thing some times, but it's not really my favorite. Togo is the best one in this match because he just comes in to apply headlocks and bump for dropkicks. I enjoyed Nakatsu's selling for Togo's punches as well. The finishing stretch between those two was pretty good. I'd like for Togo and Hidaka to team together more often at their advanced age, in other settings perhaps.

There are several pairs of wrestlers working as "___ Jr." and "Hijo de ___". Villano III and Blue Panther's kids come to mind. The commission doesn't actually do too much these days, as far as I know.

This is Saki Akai's first match as Saki-sama, which became a very funny gimmick later on. It's already entertaining here with Masa Takanashi as Martha, Saki's maid. He interferes a couple of times in this match, literally sweeping Miyu's feet off with a broom and stuff like that. It's an extremely trashy match but like I said, the gimmick is funny and they really lay into the kicks, so it's good enough for me.

Jackie Sato fucking rules. She's an incredible seller, the way she sold the leg in this match was hyper dramatic and effective. Both Sato singles matches that I've seen have her taking hideous beatdowns but I feel like it's impossible not to see her as a quintessential ace with her presence and the insane reaction she gets from the schoolgirls in the audience. The suplex at the end is absolutely nasty and worthy of a double KO finish, as well as Aoyama's missed dive.

Really enjoyed this due to the intensity and violence they both brought. Everything feels really visceral from the go, and Higuchi really throws himself into Ishikawa's offense and viceversa. Ishikawa throws a lot of truly hideous headbutts, culminating with the rainmaker headbutt. Higuchi's sloppiness in high risk moves added a lot to the match for me, as the wild rookie trying to overcome Ishikawa by any means necessary and trying shit like a crossbody dive to the outside and a splash from the top rope, both of which he really never does. Ishikawa's screaming and mugging as he tries to put Higuchi away on the latter half of the match was just great. One of Ishikawa's best matches in what was a ridiculously strong year. The post-match is cute. Ishikawa tries to congratulate Higuchi, but Daisuke Sasaki cheap-shots him, takes the mic and insults Higuchi. Higuchi flips Sasaki off as he's being helped to the back, to the crowd's delight. Then, the crowd sings happy birthday for Shuji Ishikawa after Sasaki reluctantly congratulates him. I'm very entertained by the dynamic of Ishikawa as a face in DDT's pure heel stable.

The atmosphere is really great in a completely different way to good DDT audiences. Really enjoyed the atmosphere on this match. There are crazy people in this building trying to chant for Komatsu and then the DDT fans start booing them. Tanahashi is the most hated person in Korakuen Hall, after he said HARASHIMA sucked following a really bad Sumo Hall match between the two. I absolutely loved this one though. The sight of Tanahashi struggling to put Ohka and his shitty jeans in a Boston crab is fantastic. The thought of Tanahashi selling for Ohka is also great. Ohka is really great in this match, him and Tanahashi meshed together incredibly well throughout. Tanahashi really tries in this match without having to do anything too crazy, throwing a wild dropkick at HARASHIMA, brawling outside and riling up the audience. Komatsu also gets a ton of heat. Great heeling by him, and the crowd cheers when he wipes out Tanahashi on a dive. He also gets some shine with a great spot where he reverses HARASHIMA's somato into the boston crab. He escapes and Ohka hits Tanahashi with the FIRE SPEAR, which allows HARASHIMA to hit the somato and pin Komatsu. Tanahashi does a power point presentation after the match and everyone is happy. He says he'll do DDT's election, which didn't happen as NJPW and DDT stopped working together shortly afterwards but he really should do it. It'd be great, I'd vote for him.