aaeo_

I think this forum is generally used to post good matches, and this isn't that but I thought it was bad in a notable way. Marufuji was supposed to have a match with Ibushi, who got injured and Omega replaced him. At first, everything is going well and Marufuji even plays along with Omega's hadouken stuff. But then, Marufuji gets injured on a dumb senton Omega does while Marufuji is sitting on the turnbuckle. And he just kind of has to hobble his way through this 20 minute match while holding his right arm and being very angry at Omega. In the end he straight up drops Omega on his head, which might be his version of a receipt. It's kind of admirable that Marufuji tried to have the 20 minute workrate match while clearly very injured, I suppose.

This seems to be a very weird matchup to main event Korakuen, but it's a good match! It is very matwork heavy, which works because it turns out Hino is good at that. Takanashi isn't so much, he does the wrestling thing where he fumbles a limb so there's a couple of seconds where he has to start doing whatever he's doing over, but it's still good enough. Takanashi trying to hurt the leg and Hino shrugging it off is a nice touch. Being outmatched, Takanashi tries to cheat any number of ways, and he gets the win off a ref bump and a low blow, but the DDT AUTHORITY FIGURE restarts the match. Hino kills Takanashi at the beginning of this "second" match but eventually, Takanashi finally hurts Hino's leg and he works on that.I wouldn't have expected to enjoy a 30 minute Takanashi match but I think there's a lot of thought that went into this. I liked Takanashi knowing he can't beat Hino and so he tries to work a limb, and then tries to cheat, and neither really work at first, and then they work briefly and then he loses.

Gresham is so great in this. He does some very good matwork as always and his showboating is entertaining throughout. I'd never seen Aussie Open before but I liked them. Fletcher is good grappling with Gresham. Davis has to stay waiting for the tag and trying to get a hold of Gresham but he gets a good hot tag. Davis has some nice throws. Finishing stretch is a bit long but it's pretty clever in some spots. CCK seems to be ahead for most of it but Aussie Open steal it after a million Fletcher kickouts. Definitely worth a watch if you like Gresham.

Soberano and Titan have had a couple matches against each other lately. Titan always works as the rudo in them, which may be where CMLL is going with this. They're pretty good matches though. At first, the rudo/tecnico dynamic is less marked here and Titan actually gets the better offense early on. Until Soberano hits his tornillo and throws Titan out. At this point, Titan goes back in, offers a handshake, gets a cheap shot and starts undoing Soberano's mask. It was a good way to get them to buy into Titan as rudo, which although i don't watch too much British wrestling, I think wouldn't have happened otherwise. They end up going for all the crazy offense they each have, and there's a lot of it. Sadly Titan doesn't do his cruceta, which is fucking great. He does do a very funky catch pin to get the win, so it's fine in the end.

This doesn't have all the high drama of the Togo-Honda classic but it's another good match from Togo's incredible pre-retirement run. This is around the time when I think Ishikawa got good. He still makes some mistakes that people who care more about everything being very crisp would probably point out, and some of his moves are goofy. For instance, there's a Togo dive off the apron which Ishikawa doesn't base for well enough and they botch it. But that's a turning point in that match because Ishikawa starts working Togo's back and Togo's selling and bumping for that is amazing. I think the difference in quality is that Ishikawa's matches started being better structured around him being really fucking big (and then at some point down the line he went from good to incredible). Togo blades after a series of headbutts, because of course he does. Togo briefly takes over with his great punches and some solid submission attempts, Shuji's selling is generally good. The size difference and Togo's empty stare make for amazing visuals. Watching Togo get beat up can really be sublime.

if this isn't just limited to mma, adcc and ebi have decent rulesets for spectators. saku's QUINTET is probably the closest active organization to what this thread is about. i've only seen their first event but i was very into it, dan strauss was pretty great in that one. seconding the imanari shout out too, he was wild

Been listening to this show, really enjoy it. i feel like the Super Porky vs Rey Escorpion hair match would make for a good episode. even though it's not a bad match, it is very weird.

I love this match, the superkix post is a pretty good recap/review. I don't know, I just like Sato a lot and the match is structured in a great way with each going for a different limb. All the struggle in Sato matches during this time looks very good and is very compelling, and watching him transition into an armbar or a triangle from weird positions is great.

This is from that time when Sato somehow almost won the first DDT election, and as a result they gave him a brief title run. It is a contendership match, HARASHIMA held the belt after beating Sekimoto in Sumo Hall. This match is good because Sato is great, he spends this match targetting Ibushi's arm. Sato's got a ton of setups for the armbar so even if he's just basically spamming one move, it's really great. Ibushi doesn't sell it for most of the match but it worked because Sato keeps targetting it and it plays into the finish. There's also a disgusting suplex where Ibushi falls on the crown of his head, because it's an Ibushi match.

Very fun match from beginning to end, all of the matchups in this are interesting and a few turn out great. HARASHIMA and SUWAMA start with some quick grappling but the match really starts with Ishikawa and Hama. Any matchup in which Shuji is the smaller guy is interesting. Hama is very fun to watch throughout this. The other two, Hino and Higuchi, chop the fuck out of each other. There's a lot of shit going on at times and Hino kind of holds it all together by coming in and chopping people. There's a great moment where Hino goes to knock Higuchi and Hama off the apron and Hama decides to not move at all, so Hino stands there looking confused for a second before SUWAMA elbows him or something. Hama versus Hino is incredible, best part of the match. Ishikawa tags in and finally gets Hama down with a lariat. I think he was supposed to do a piledriver to Hama but he understandably decides not to and HARA and Higuchi tag back in. At first it felt like they missed the perfect ending then, HARASHIMA does a superplex to Higuchi to almost no reaction, but they get the crowd back into it shortly afterwards by having the whole other team beat up HARASHIMA. After he does a somato to Hama, him and Higuchi have a pretty good finishing sequence.

First of two tag matches used to build up to the Yamashita-Yuu title fight at Korakuen Hall. The tension feels very real between them and they get extended sections of this to themselves. Their early matwork is pretty great. Obviously the Korakuen main event is better, but they do some cool stuff that they didn't have on that match, like Yuu catching a high kick and throwing Yamashita into the corner. Towards the end, Hikari puts Yuu in an octopus hold, which she struggles to get out of, before hip tossing Hikaru and going for the rear-naked choke. Yamashita comes in to save her but Yuu catches her and chokes her out with the RNC. Hikaru is the legal woman so the match keeps going. That is until she also gets choked out seconds later. Yuu looks like a badass coming out of this. Cool match, I regret not watching it before their title bout.

Sumo Hall main event for Sekimoto's KOD title. HARASHIMA is cornered by Poison Sawada Julie, Owashi and a few other DDT wrestlers. I liked this but I had a problem with how despite both being good technical wrestlers, they don't mesh too well in that area because of the size difference. There's a pretty good moment when Sekimoto gets a single leg boston crab and they really milk it despite HARASHIMA being about 50 centimeters away from the ropes, which plays on Sekimoto being much bigger, but in general I found the early portion lacking. The match gets better once HARA gets an opening and starts doing dives and strikes. Sekimoto halts the momentum by blocking a somato on the ramp and then hitting a vertical suplex. HARASHIMA sells really well for Sekimoto's various suplexes and throws, which are fantastic to watch. The mandatory Sekimoto headbutt exchange wasn't so much but the rest of the finishing sequence is pretty hype, with HARA doing a million somatos and the crowd (and me!) loving it.

I think Ibushi is at his best when he gets to work like an angry underdog, so he can kick out at 1 and throw the extra-stiff strikes while yelling and stumbling all over the ring. This match is great because of that, although it's less one-sided than I remembered. The first part is slow and ends up not mattering much, but the string of near falls, and the back half in general, were very good in this one. Sekimoto getting up with the look on his face after Ibushi spends a minute stomping on him in the cornet is great. I had no clue Sekimoto worked another match on this day, that's interesting.

watched omega/penta. the armbreaker spot felt very dumb in this context but the rest of it was ok. the main event was good. it's cool how much people love mysterio, pretty much anywhere he goes.

The first Sumo Hall main event for DDT. HARA has some incredibly silly entrance gear for the occasion. The matwork and striking early on is dissapointingly clumsy and awkward but once they start working at a higher pace and eventually doing high spots it gets pretty good, they build on each other's moves and counter and dodge stuff. HARASHIMA catching Ibushi's dives with a straight knee was great. Pretty good match and it feels like a special moment.

As far as i can tell this came about as the end of that METAL VAMPIRE storyline. Not that it matters, because the selling point for this is that it's Dick Togo in a cage match. He's just perfectly suited to do this. Most of the match is a bloody brawl before Togo misses a wild senton from the top of the cage and Takagi hits the two moves that he can hit really well to win. It sounds simple but it just builds in a great way and the early brawling is all very compelling.

This is part of the coolest dumb storyline I've found on DDT Universe: METAL VAMPIRE, a Dick Togo faction. They were Koo aka Shuji Ishikawa (who wasn't very good at this point but he was big so him hanging around the ring beating people up is great, although he's also wearing a terrible mask), Seiya Morohashi, and Togo. The match is ridiculously overbooked. For one, it's a five-man elimination title match. There's also three referees involved. The first one is Megumi Grace, who was DDT's main ref until 2010 or so. METAL VAMPIRE has their own ref, I don't know his name but he has a rad blonde dye job, so you can tell he's evil. HARASHIMA is handcuffed, Koo interferes, there's an Antonio Honda run-in to low blow Koo, the heel ref incapacitates Megumi Grace takes over. Togo blades for this, which shows he's a real one. And after the vampire ref fucks around and lets his stablemates do hideous things to HARASHIMA and Takagi for a while, out walks Kyohei Wada (!), who gets a bunch of dumb hero spots, standing up to the mean heel faction and their patsy referee. In the end, it's Togo and HARASHIMA who have a pretty solid match which ends with a nice Togo comeback win. I had a lot of fun watching this match. It's the same kind of thing that i liked from watching AAA as a kid. ymmv

Part of Ibushi's trial series, which also included matches against Ikuto Hidaka, TAKA Michinoku and camo Daisuke Ikeda. The other matches (TAKA and Ikeda) that I saw from this series were by and large squashes, with Ibushi getting almost no offense outside very brief hope spots and losing fairly quickly. This is better than the previous ones because I like Milano's weird offense so much and partly because the hope spots are better. Ibushi stops selling the leg which Milano had worked over early on halfway through, which he always does but it bothers me enough to point it out. The way Milano sells one of Ibushi's high kicks was dope. The best part of the match was Milano moving away from Ibushi's dives, which set up the double moonsault. The crowd isn't yet as into Ibushi as they'd be later on but they get behind his comeback. Finish fell flat, but overall a good match. There's also someone with a BAPE shirt on in the front row.

This is lowkey one of the best ladder matches I've seen. There's nothing hanging above the ring so it's just a ladder match because there a bunch of ladders around. Morohashi & Hashimoto are the tag team champions and they run wild on the other two teams with chairs for the first half of the match, until Morohashi catches an errant chair shot and KUDO pins him with a suplex. Hashimoto beats people up some more after they're eliminated. The two teams left are both made to have ladder matches. Particularly MIKAMI, who loves ladders. The crowd loves unmasked HERO! and he gets the pin after getting beat up all match, when MIKAMI misses a moonsault off the ladder. I really liked the pace and layout, as well as Morohashi/Hashimoto as a team.

Generico is a weird wrestler to me because in the few matches of his that I've seen, you can tell he's very technically proeficient for the style he works (I remember him saving Isami Kodaka from certain death in their September 2011 match) but I don't particularly care for any of them. The section where he repeatedly dumps Ibushi out of the ring here is probably the most interested I've been in him so far. However, I think that only comes about because something went wrong, Generico was yelling at people ringside while Ibushi struggled to get back in. For two wrestlers who generally do complex spots fairly easily, this match is kind of a mess. There's a funny moment in which Ibushi fucks up a huracanrana from the top rope, so he fucking thuds into the floor and he just pops back up to the apron, gives Generico a thumbs up, and hits the move.

i love As Charro's mask

King of DDT tournament final, good DDT main event type match. The beginning of this was interesting with Endo laying down for Sasaki, before kicking out and trying to steal it with a roll up. A bit later, Sasaki uses Mad Paulie to stop Endo's Sasuke special. They work a pretty straightforward match after that, with Sasaki targetting Endo's leg while controlling the match, followed by an Endo comeback, before a finishing stretch where they trade submissions. Endo has great offense what with all the crazy throws and dives he does. It felt a bit like they might be building towards more matches between these two, and while those would probably be great, I really like Damnation and I'm not sure I want that to happen!

Part of the King of DDT tournament, which I thought was very good this year. This is my favourite match from it, with the huge caveat that I haven't seen the final show yet. The grappling was good and competent throughout, especially with both struggling for the armbar early on. I really like Sakaguchi's elbows and open palm strikes. The fighting spirit kick exchange was nice. The soumato teases and counters or blocks were great throughout. I'm gonna have to go and watch these two's other matches together eventually, since I liked this so much.

I was looking forward to this a lot because these two are pretty good. It didn't disappoint at all. Yuu's grappling isn't fancy but it's so compelling, she's always doing stuff. I know nothing about judo so I don't know the names of the things she does but it's all pretty great. Yamashita's kicks are great as always. This also doesn't have a bunch of aimless limbwork that goes nowhere which is something I feel holds back a lot of TJP matches I've seen. They just beat the hell out of each other instead. When it gets to Yuu sadistically chopping Miyu and Miyu landing that head kick, it hits another level. One of the best matches of the year for sure.

I've been watching the archives in DDT Universe for a while now, it's been entertaining. Also going through whichever 80s lucha matches I can find, but at a slower pace. I wanna watch late Battlarts as exhaustively as I can at some point, as well as a less exhaustive watch of recent New Japan.