EnviousStupid

I was watching this alongside a few other matches that feature Tiger Jeet Singh and while they were all at least good, this blew away all my expectations going in. This was one of the first matches of Terry Funk's retirement tour (lol) and the heels come out with their sticks and swords, ready to wail on the Funker like it's the last chance they'll get. Naturally, it starts off incredibly heated and has to take a few minutes to settle down into a proper tag match, though seeing all the chairs and monitors get tossed around was quite fun while it lasted. Terry & Jumbo both get to play the face-in-peril at different points as Singh & Ueda act as the dastardly foreign heel team to great effect. Singh in particular tries the ol' hiding a foreign object from the referee regularly and Terry sells like he did taking a fork swipe from Abdullah or Sheik stabbing him with a pencil. Some won't like how dramatic it can get, but you can't deny how sympathetic it was to those Japanese audiences. The biggest surprise for me was seeing how fired up Jumbo got as a hot tag; in 1983 he's still working the classic NWA/world title match style with Flair and Bockwinkel, but this is a wholly different side of him, lunging at his opponents with high knees and eager to turn the fight into an outside brawl. More chaos ensues, gradually the heels use weapons in plain sight of the referee, and it takes Giant Baba coming out to give Terry & Jumbo their chance at revenge. If I were doing a MOTY list for 1983, this would certainly make it on there.

Hidden gem. Probably the best match from Raw to happen all year. It's also now my go-to for Dustin's career performance, delivering on incredible shines, face in peril and hot tag segments. I can't recall ever seeing a tag match where one person does all of these roles in a singular match to such a high standard. Watch it.

The sudden hate for FTR comes from an incredibly fringe group of terminally online Twitter fans who shouldn't be getting much attention whatsoever. They don't represent the crowds, nor the Nielsen ratings they get each week, and I wouldn't even be shocked if they didn't watch the product legally.

I was thoroughly impressed by how well this was structured building up to its climax. Jeff is manhandled pretty easily to begin with, but the goal for Umaga & Randy at ringside isn't merely to win, but to inflict as much pain and damage on the challenger before his world title match at the Rumble. As such, they introduce chairs into the cage match, and even put themselves in high-risk situations, like with Umaga walking along the top rope that gives Hardy his chances to win. It's great seeing a heel's own dirty tactics get turned upside-down, as those chairs become the equalizer for Jeff, as he just tosses them at Umaga's head. Randy deserves just as much credit for his acting and facials on ringside, having my full attention during the periods when Umaga and Jeff were lying on the mat. It's as great a main event & angle you'll find for an episode of Raw, that has unfortunately become something of a lost art in today's landscape.

I don't see him making my list come 2026, but that's more a case of it being too soon for me to judge someone while they're still fairly early in their career. Last year, he was a top 10 WOTY off a highly consistent TNT title reign and being part of the best tag team in the world with Sting.

When is Jeff Jarrett going to be All Elite? As far as I'm concerned, this is his world now. Bree wooo bree wooo

I've personally lost a lot of interest in AEW since All Out, however JAS vs. BCC is hardly a big reason why. Definitely has overstayed its welcome, and I'd love to not see Jericho wrestling guys like Bryan and Moxley, but things like FTR being kept away from TV, Eddie Kingston cooling off, the implementation of ROH titles/talent, and MJF being this terrible example of playing the cool kids' heel have done more to sour my perception of the company.

I had to watch through all of the Duggan/DiBiase feud after seeing their incredible blowoff later in 1985 for the first time, which led me to another goddamn classic between the two. This is easily the best work I've seen from DiBiase, coming across more vicious and urgent than I can ever recall, while still maintaining that core chickenshit heel nature at every point in the match. It makes him such a great foil for Hacksaw, who looks like one of the all-time babyface territory aces around this time. He's certainly limited in what he can do, but the booking and compact match structure is able to accentuate the positives in his game. Moreover, Duggan might have shown the best example of punching blind, throwing straight jabs while falling backwards that immediately grabbed my attention. A fascinating level of detail to something that in hindsight, was only a tune-up for the big gimmick match down the road. It's sub-10 minutes and still delivers some incredibly compelling pro wrestling.

I'm basically nodding at everything @ethantylerhas written out here. The strongest argument Ishii has come from the belief of him being a BITW-level worker for the last decade, and I don't think that alone gives him the edge over half of those Japan candidates.

It's definitely one of Daniels' most attentive performances, especially during the first act. Lots of countering and taunting at AJ to go along with the focused limbwork, really highlighted their history as rivals over the years. Even if you aren't familiar with it, AJ's generally recognized as a bit of a hothead that can let his emotions get the better of him, which made things a lot more interesting when it turned out that Daniels was the one falling into that trap instead of AJ. For most of the match, I got the impression that they were trying different variations of their main offense, as the usual shtick from either would end up being reversed otherwise. Revisiting it after so long, I find myself agreeing with most of Sleeze's conclusions. One of the most rewarding TNA matches from that time period.

New Japan making dozens of his matches free to watch has seriously made me reconsider my stance on him as a candidate. Most of my criticisms for him aren't really applicable to his 70s material, and that's probably when he was working most of his prime years. He's so great at directing where a match will go and how to maximize key moments in them. A wrestler that could make his style of wrestling look realistic (for the time), and then add highly dramatic elements on top that rarely break the tension that he had been building up. Moreover, the pacing and opponents from that time felt more suited to Inoki's strengths. The matches didn't feel like they went on too long because the variables were malleable enough and individual actions were treated like they held weight in the moment, regardless of whether they wound up playing a factor thereafter. Larger wrestlers like Murdoch and Andre could be imposing threats, but also allow their matches to breathe. It's a big difference between them and the likes of Hansen, Brody, Williams and even Choshu through the 80s, who'll force themselves as well as the action onto their opponents and potentially muddy the vision that someone like Inoki aspires to bring forth. In comparison, there's no such rush with these older matches. Even in a bloody, violent one like he has with Kintaro Oki (10/10/74), you get the classic start-stop approach from Inoki in the early periods, hard-fought grappling that looks legitimate, before the dramatics are brought to the forefront and the heat which had been sustained so far can finally be released for an exciting third act. I haven't bothered making a rough draft for GWE, but before his passing I would've pegged Inoki somewhere around the bottom half. Now, he's top 25 at least. Maybe I'll write something in the future that covers more ground, but I hope the few things I've put here can compel others to dive into his body of work.

The first half was sleep-inducing. Really transparent attempt at heated brawling when you prioritize spot -> set-up -> spot so much in the layout. I guess that makes sense in retrospect given what we know about Shawn Michaels' input for this match. Gargano jumping over the barrier onto Ciampa immediately gave me the sense that it was closer to playfighting than what I want pro wrestling to look like. The second half was a major improvement though. The big moves felt warranted for a 2018 TakeOver match and made for some good nearfalls, even if it did go a tad overboard (Project Ciampa off the second rope meaning nothing in the long run, for example). Callbacks to a lot of their history together were really effective and hooked me back into the drama. Really liked how desperate and tense Ciampa got, as he felt like the one who actually projected the importance of this match as a whole. For me, it's in the same boat as Omega/Ibushi vs. The Young Bucks one month earlier as a really ambitious story-driven match that doesn't do it for me, but they have more good things than bad going for it. They do better in the rematch.

Cole has been primarily a big match worker as early as 2014 and, in my humble opinion, has sucked at it since 2016 with that 2nd ROH World Title reign. Looking back through his NXT run, I'm stunned at how much he was loved by crowds in these matches that are emblematic of the common criticisms brought up about this time period of the brand in retrospect. The Gargano series, the Cole matches, Ciampa, Aleister, Ricochet, all the men's WarGames matches. Just flabbergasted at the moment.

Something that's always stuck with me about Inoki's legacy as a beloved national icon is the slap. I'm sure we've all seen clips of Inoki slapping dozens of wrestlers, staff, and fans alike, all waiting in line to be touched by such a figure, but is there any other modern culture that treats a slap across the face as a blessing? Mexico? Europe? Even in Japan, who else is able to have that kind of act recognized with such reverence from the public?

I'd go with Choshu, who was maybe the hottest thing in puroresu that year. Extremely strong work across singles, tags, and those NJPW gauntlet matches

With how they're keeping the reign going for so long, I'd like to think they're wanting to put over a younger guy as potentially the next face, but I don't think anyone right now fits the bill. Big E looked like the best choice, but his future is still in question after that neck injury. If Drew was going to win, they would've done it at Clash. Sami was a generational babyface once upon a time, but I don't see him getting the rocket strapped onto him like it were still 2014. Riddle, Breakker, Bate are all options, I guess. I'm just not sold on any of them so far. Cody would be the one I bet on.

And here I thought Road Dogg had made it official that wins and losses don't matter in the fed :) Would defending 50/50 booking also count when it comes to feuds? There are some obvious outliers even just this year (Cody beating Rollins on 3 straight PPVs), but to my knowledge it has always been associated with main-roster WWE.

I find it funny that Bobby was always viewed as the tag guy in Undisputed Era, yet the best tags that group had were consistently with Kyle and Roderick.

Personally, I think Ospreay was at his best as a Jr. Heavyweight working from behind against established NJPW stars. I'm probably in the minority of people who feel that way, but the style appeared to (at least initially) reign in some of the worst aspects of his performances that often got out of hand on the indies, while still emphasizing those athletic flips and dives that look genuinely outstanding. I don't think he ever really transitioned out of the acrobatics, just that he wants to be strike heavy alongside the high-flying offense. In theory I think that last part sounds a bit like Misawa, except I don't find it appropriate at all for Ospreay in practice. Hate the way he carries himself, groan at the way his matches all come across as Okada-like, loathe the overacting and his selling nowadays, care less and less for the big spots each time I watch them done, and have really despised how he's picked moves from various wrestlers to input into his finishing stretches, most recently teasing and even hitting the One-Winged Angel. Very frustrating wrestler, especially now that he's able to dictate the direction and pace of most matches he's in. To his credit though, he's one of 6 or so wrestlers to have over 100 matches with an average rating of >8.00 on Cagematch (the others I know of being Danielson, Chris Hero, ZSJ, Okada and Tanahashi). Maybe that fact will hold weight with some fans.

Nice to see that when Seth isn't talking like the goofiest motherfucker possible, he can be detestable in a REALLY good way. Here's hoping for a home invasion in the coming weeks where 3 different women are supposed to be Becky in the background.

I planned on revisiting all these NXT War Games matches after watching how the concept was used in WCW and paid homage to across various independents over the 2000s. In hindsight, that was probably the worst thing I could've done. This is a disappointing match on its own, but to call it War Games feel like an insult to its history. Match starts with three guys churning out clusterfuck moments devoid of emotion and in front of a silent crowd, like we're all just waiting for something worthwhile to happen. Undisputed Era are the only heels I can recall that get the advantage in War Games and still can't work a proper heat segment. AOP managed to elicit a few pops once they enter the fray, but it's clear by that point how soulless this entire affair is. Garbage spotfest where the cage is only there for people to jump off of. The introduction of weapons by Dain and Wolfe only reinforce this. No one can bleed because the stipulation is only here for marketing. The spots have all been seen and done before on WWE programming, probably without the wrestlers standing around to base for moves. You have Adam Cole kick out of the biggest moment of the night (superplex from the top of the cage) and the way he wins is with a Shining Wizard to Eric Young, who is basically holding a chair to his own face. Awful, awful stuff. Ages like milk. Excluding the women's one in 2019, I have zero expectations for these knock-offs.

Neither Roddy nor Riddle are guys who I'd call myself a big fan of, but they pull off a pretty organic heel/face dynamic from the opening grapple. Riddle has the size and skill advantage on the mat, consistently able to apply submissions that leave Roddy scratching and clawing for a rope break. Meanwhile Roddy is easily the harder striker of the two, which comes into play really well with the several combinations he puts together in his offense, mostly targeting the ribs and back of Riddle that commentary reminds us of were damaged sometime before the PPV. It's that kind of tenacity on display that helps Riddle look genuinely sympathetic in spite of his outlandish personality. If I was to really fault anything here, it's that I thought the wrong person won. Riddle never felt like he adapted to Roddy's gameplan or outmatched him during the finishing stretch, and even his high-risk attempts ended up with him eating a couple knees to the back. Hitting some weak elbows followed by lifting Roddy up for that shitty Tombstone Press Slam to win just wasn't my cup of tea.

The whole angle with Kip Sabian and PAC being over a minute long and the referee "not seeing any of it" just takes the cake.

My bad. I've been confused for the last hour as to what constitutes as British, as someone who's clearly not from that part of the world.