Edwin

Murakami doesn't reach the awesome heel level here that he did in Big Mouth Loud years later, but his stuff is still pretty great. I loved the little details here such as Murakami taking Ishikawa down and mounting only for Ishikawa to slap him from the underneath, Ishikawa coming in to kick Otsuka's hands so he can loosen the grip on the armbar defense so Sano could lock in a keylock, etc. Those strike exchanges on the outside between Murakami, Otsuka and Ishikawa were brutal. The Ishikawa/Murakami and Sano/Otsuka pairing were the best. Sano works entirely different here to everyone else, yet they are all able to adapt and keep up with him. The Mexican Stretch and rolling Butterfly Lock on Murakami were brilliant. Very, very good stuff. ****

This was JIP and clipped, but the few minutes we got looked good. I personally would've preferred if we had some roles changed and had Greco on one side and Ishikawa on one side instead of having them together as they are the two better guys in this match. Their brief exchange from January just left me wanting to see more from them against each other. Surprisingly enough Otsuka and Yone work well together or at least that's what we're made to believe due to the few minutes we get of this here. That RNC by Yone was either a shoot or Ishikawa's selling is on another level. Good stuff.

This was good fun. Usuda is the more efficient striker and better grappler and Hidaka is more diverse overall. Usuda tries to ground Hidaka with kicks and takedowns and Hidaka holds his own by trying to counter Usuda's matwork or tries a rope escape asap and he tries to catch Usuda's takedown attempts and counter them with DDT's and throws of his own. Loved Hidaka going after Usuda's knee later on in the match as he was trying to weaken it up for the Shawn Capture and I also dug the finish with Usuda smartly transitioning from the armbar to a kneebar when he sees the opening. Nifty little match. ***

Sayama wrestling Fujiwara in a gi reminds of Sakuraba fighting Royce in that long 90 minute+ fight in PRIDE. Sayama is also wearing a black belt and I'm just scrambling to figure out what is he a black belt in. I know he was fundamental in Shooto's founding, but I still don't know what the black belt is all about... I guess Sayama wearing the gi is an indication he's a karate fighter as he throws some kicks and those awkward punches karate fighters throw, but lacks takedown defense and is taken down fairly easily by Fujiwara here. It would have been great if Fujiwara pulled the technique Sakuraba would pull against Royce 2 months later in his fight against Royce and would have used Sayama's gi against him such folding him up with it and controlling him with it. Unfortunately this doesn't go on for long and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere aside from Fujiwara's endless leglock attempts on Sayama.

OK... For some reason Hashimoto is already bleeding during his walkout and he also has a huge Mitsubishi sponsor on the back of his walkout robe... As the match evolves we also find out Hashimoto has a heavily taped arm which Tenryu and Jones go after of course. Everyone here is great, except for Jones who's a huge guy dressed like Super Delfin and he can barely move. The early exchanges between Ogawa and Tenryu are great. Cocky Ogawa starts slapping around the older guy before Tenryu can turn the roles around and stars slapping Ogawa back and he starts using his past sumo experience to corner and somewhat beatdown Tenryu. Ogawa tagging in Hashimoto who berates Ogawa for some reason before he and Tenryu have a manly chop interchange. Tenryu's chops are brutal as he aims for the throat and not the chest as everyone else. Jones' interactions here were the worst as he just comes in and goes after Hashimoto's arm and gets the pin relatively fast which ends this abruptly. Unfortunately this was way shorter than it should have been and didn't really get the time to properly develop, but from what we did get to see, it had potential of being good had it gone on.

The biggest problem with these Onita Pro main events is that once you've seen one, you've seem them all. They're worked exactly the same and feature pretty much the same core group of guys with some 1 or 2 variations coming in ever so often. I personally like Onita and these types of matches, so I don't mind the repetitiveness, but I could see how this could be uninteresting to some. Togo is a new addition from the previous matches and he looks really good in it. He eventually becomes to these Onita Pro main events. One of the bits that made me appreciate this more than the previous matches was that a lot of the action took place in the ring and it was easier to keep track of all of the chaos. Plus they tore down the barbed wire which was something they hadn't done in the previous matches and the mess of chairs in the ring was a nice touch too. ***1/2

Both of these guys have been around Japanese indies for years. They've wrestled for BJW, K-DOJO, DDT, WEW, Apache Army, etc. FM-TARO was later known as GENTARO in Big Japan and Takashi Sasaki later turned into a BJW death match wrestler and was the top guy there for some years. GENTARO is a huge fan of Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart and his character is based on being a hybrid of them that's why he's wearing the pink and blank and he throws superkicks and has some HBK mannerisms. They also formed a tag team known as Arkarangers. This match felt pretty standard. They worked pretty even and it was good showcase of both guys for those not familiar with them. That Sasuke Special botch was pretty bad, but he more than made up with a nutty dive to follow up. The crowd was pretty quiet for the majority of it, but by the end they had them engaged enough to respond. Perfectly fine match.

Huh? The ring announcer asks the fans to sitdown and stay seated out of respect for the wrestlers? That's a first. This was pretty brutal and intense from the start. Tons of blood and violence. Ian particularly was bleeding buckets. I like how Ian used the broken light tubes to cut up Corporal which is something I recall digging when Kanemura and Kobayashi did it in their death matches from February. That unprotected chairshot, yikes... I would comment on the brutal strike exchange between them, but considering everything they've done to each other, that's not really much. They should've really considered trimming 10 or so minutes from this as it went on forever and it was brutal enough to finish before they actually did. The post match stuff felt unnecessary. Brutal stuff. ***

I'm not familiar with either guy teaming with Ki or Blade, but we know MNM got their choice of apparel for their WWE run from Mercury. This maybe the worse match I've ever seen Ki involved in. This was a disaster that could pass as backyarder levels of bad. Ki botching that ladder spot was scary. No matter what happened afterwards, everyone had already checked out from the scare. For some reason, there's a fan or someone heckling the cameraman which is annoying. Blade and Mercury do some brawling around the arena and Blade pulls off one of the dumbest spots I've ever seen by dropping a leg from the top of a backboard from a hoop through a table on Mercury. Meanwhile in the ring Ki takes a superplex through another table. Even though Ki kicked out of the superplex through the table, the bell still rings and his music hits which is confusing. Disastrous.

Straight forward formulaic RnR match against some guys I've never heard of. From the year so far, I'd take their NWA Wildside heel work over this in a heart beat. This gets more crowd heat than the majority of the indy footage we've seen this far from the year. Overall this is skippable.

That pre-match promo and those brutal forearms by Regal in the corner on Meanie were great. The match itself wasn't bad, nor was it memorable either.

It was a tired spot by 1999. True, but I don't think there's been a time between then and now where it's as frequent as its become now. Literally in every single main event there's the announcers table spot.

I didn't think much of this. It was a pretty simple and standard sub 10 minute match. The commentators constantly focusing on Bobcat was weird. I did dig Reckless Youth's dive wiping out the entire KAW crew, but that was about it. The finish feel flat as Reckless Youth caught a chair and just stood there with it in front of his face waiting for Todd Morton to hit him with a missle dropkick. Pretty forgettable.

I thought this was by far the best MCW match we've seen this far even though I still haven't seen Reckless Youth vs. Bull Pain or Steven Regal vs. Blue Meanie. I'll echo the sentiment about the brilliance of Hughes using his glasses to block the powder. Lawler's piledriver on Hughes was great too. Fun Lawler vs. big man short TV match.

Does anyone else find the commentators table spot tiresome in WWE main events? It happens in every PPV main event no matter the magnitude of the event or the match itself, plus it happens on RAW and SDL every so often too which makes it even more pointless.

Jeez, I just realized even Vince Russo chipped in on that clip. I guess that's the first time he and Cornette have come to agree on something. Crazy...

This is the type of thing you'd expect in a sub 5 minute indy TV match -- hurrying up to try and get as much of their stuff in in as little time as possible. At this point I'm convinced that no MCW match is going to go past the 8 minute mark and that 95% of them will feature some type of interference at some point.

K-Krush is doing the same thing he's still doing today. That rapping and dancing was as horrible as it still is today. I've personally never been sold on K-Krush and I still haven't seen a match of his that's made me change my opinion of him. The highlight for me: The blatant spot calling during the headlock was horrible. As most MCW matches we've seen, this is short and kept relatively simple.

This was entertaining while it lasted. Morton as a heel is still providing the fun. Hamrick goes for 100 MPH for he majority of this and his crash and burn was awesome. He does the Mr. Perfect grab the rope leg kick flip. It sucks this goes for about 2-3 minutes before it's called off.

This was OK for what it was. Relatively basic NWA Wildside TV match. Nothing really worth going out of your way to see.

The announcer puts over the titles Quack has won and mentions he's a 3 way dance champion of Steel City Wrestling. That's odd? Also he mentions Montoya having dropped 105 lbs. since November 1999... Yet he's still a flabby big guy. He also mentions a fan has a Jushin Thunder Liger mask that will "only increase in value as time goes by..." Anyway, Montoya being a flabby heel who needs a water break after the extensive mat work was neat. My biggest problem with Montoya is that he comes across too cartoonish a lot of the time. Despite that, him reacting to the fans "boring" chants by taunting a flashy move only for him to lock in a headlock was awesome. I like Quack a fair bit, but he still hadn't developed and become the entertaining guy I dug 4 years later in CHIKARA. His palm strike is particularly bad looking. I didn't like him fighting back as they were moreso him trying to be cute and getting his stuff in than being effective. This also went on for 10 minutes way to long. Not particularly a bad mach, but definitely not a memorable one.

https://twitter.com/briantheguppie/status/942054673451835392

No, this is not the direction indy wrestling is taking and I honestly don't even see why one would assume that. Not everyone is like them now and not everyone will be like them then. Not everyone works like them now and not everyone will work like them then. To me, this seems more like a momentary fad that will eventually die out at some point and they will either find a way to reinvent themselves and come up with something new or they will fade away like everything else that doesn't find a way to reinvent itself. I personally don't care for their work because I haven't followed indy wrestling regularly since about 2008 I wanna say (2012 possibly?). However I will admit that they have had some moments where I've found their schtick funny -- one of them doing endless tumbles in a New Japan ring mocking Ricochet, them getting on the mic. at PWG and saying the match would become a 4 way spot fest, etc. Sure I find that stuff funny and entertaining, but it's not something I'd personally go out of my way to see nor would I become a hardcore fan of them based simply on 1-2 segments of comedy. As for their matches themselves, yeah, I'm not a fan. This endless thigh slapping of 2017 indy wrestling and the endless gymnastic routines are things I don't like and that seems like the type of thing they usually do based on the matches I've seen, but I also don't waste my time telling others how much I hate it and how bad it is and how they should stop liking it because I don't agree with/like it.

This was brutal. Both guys brought the stiffness and they turned a hardcore match into a straight up stiff singles match with a table spot. Them avoiding the blood and excessive use of weaponry made this unique and enjoyable. Low Ki at this point was still green and you could he was still improving at this point, but that botched hadnspring kick in the corner was bad. I prefer Dan Maff as a fatty Puerto Rican bruiser, but I thought Monsta Mack looked good here. Mack tossing Ki around was awesome. Also this finished at the right time as they didn't go into overkill and didn't go on for too long either. Good stuff. ***