Edwin

It's crazy to think these guys had been working together for 3-4 years before this took and had worked together all over the world for every major and indy company that comes to mind from WWF to NOAH to ROH to APW. Poor camera work again, but I'm not sure that would have made that much of a difference. Keep in mind these fans were just going nuts for the extensive highspots in the tag match between the Westside Playaz 2000 vs. Jardi Frantz and Vinny Massaro, so them chanting boring at Morgan's extensive arm work. I'm surprised they didn't pop more for Modest head drops as they seem like the type of thing that would've really popped this crowd. That table spot was pretty odd and unexpected. This never kept me captivated and I myself lost interest for the most part. This also felt pretty long. Morgan calling the fans marks for chanting boring was pretty odd. Despite this not captivating me, I thought those lariats from Modest and that bump he took in the corner during the Irish whip were nasty.

APW was a blast back in the day. I'm still waiting for those long matches from that one garage with the likes of Super Dragon, TARO, Bobby Quance, B-Boy, etc. Camera work hurts this. He's way to close to the ring and it's hard to tell what's going on a lot of the time. I dug Jardi and Vinnie going after Boyce's knee after he was tossed to the outside. His selling of it could have been a bit better, maybe not to the extent of Rick Michaels' vs. RnR, but still. I thought that 3-D was pretty awesome as Boyce just popped up from out of nowhere and they nailed it. Anyway, I didn't like this as much as you all did. I thought it was OK, but it didn't blow me away or anything.

This was bad. If the Dawn Marie stuff happened now a days, there'd be a scandal.

This is a different style fight and that was the story for the first 6 or so months of Murahama's Osaka Pro run. That's why they're using the 10 count down system. I didn't feel this was as particularly bad as most of you. I thought it was perfectly fine given the circumstance that Murahama is still green as a pro-wrestler as he had made his debut in January, so he had 2 months under his belt. He did have previous experience in combat sports as he had a few K-1 fights iirc at the time and some MMA fights under his belt. As I mentioned in some of the previous matches feat. QUALLT, I'm not too hot on him as he usually drags the multi man matches he's in down imo, but I thought he was OK here. As you can see, this is looking like it's going to lead us to the eventual big Murahama vs. Super Delfin match as LOV pretty much are seem to be getting into Murahama's head and are pushing them towards eventually going at each other.

This was clipped quite a bit, but what we got of this was a ton of fun. Daio QUALLT is not a guy I'm too hot on, but the other 5 guys are/can be really good, so you know they could make this work and they did. The comedy is in bits and pieces and it doesn't really hurt this at all. Ebessan works more straight up serious than his usual comedy routine which he mostly does with Kuinshibo Kamen. His exchanges with Togo for me were the highlight of the match. They are both guys from the Onita Pro crew, so they have previous chemistry and are familiar with each other. Plus Togo can pretty much work with anyone in any environment. This doesn't touch the very best Michinoku Pro stuff, but it's still really fun stuff. ***

The RnR Express worked like they had been fired from a cannon 15 years before, but Gibson looked like had drank 6 cases of beer with that enormous beer belly. I remember David Young throwing a mean looking snap spinebuster in TNA and on some early ROH shows. Here he's not particularly great. He gets the hot tag, but his punches look pretty amateurish. Rick Michaels on the other looks great. His selling of the knee was fantastic. The RnR did a great job working as heels and exploiting the Rick Michaels previously injured knee. Ricky and Robert tearing the kneepad and then stomping on the injured knee was awesome. That finish with Bill Behrens tossing a chain to Robert which he wraps around his fist and goes after Rick Michales injured knee was the best way to go out on before the double dropkick. ***1/2

This was pretty neat. Styles aside, I thought Onyx looked good here and he really benefits from having Jeff G. managing him. That tumble Styles took to the outside looked pretty brutal. Jeff G. hitting Styles with his shoe was the highlight for me. Also Styles got his attire directly from the shelf where the Young Bucks t-shirts are on now in Hot Topic.

I agree with the previous sentiment -- this wasn't bad, but it wasn't particularly engaging either. Both guys have been good in the previous multi man tags they were in (and Fujita had that one fun match with CIMA), but they just didn't seem to be able to reach that level here. I dug the chicken suplex as a finish.

This felt more as an Osaka Pro multi man match than a Toryumon match. It featured more elements of comedy than the previous matches featuring Crazy MAX. Shinzaki and Sasuke were interesting additions to this, namely Shinzaki. Shinzaki is the first true heavyweight we get to see Crazy MAX work with and the dynamic working with him is different than working with a full crew of Jr.'s as always. I loved how it took Fuji 3 lariats to chop down Shinzaki, opposite it just taking 1 to turn any other Jr. in the previous matches inside out. I usually find Shinzaki uninteresting and boring to watch, but I thought he was good in his role here. This was heavily clipped though as it was 23 minutes and we only got 14. However, I still think this was pretty good. ***

Biggest flaw with all of these MCW matches so far is the lack of time they have to develop anything noteworthy. This was about 3-4 minutes long and was pretty wild -- albeit not as wild as the previous IWA-MS brawl obviously -- but it was pretty wild for what it was. All four guys go around punching and hitting each other with chairs for the entirety of it. I thought Morton stopping Road Dogg's comeback by handcuffing him was excellent as was the commentator who was with Lance Russell screaming they were going to kill the King by putting him through the table before it cut out before it. Overall this leaves you wanting more because we never see what happened and because it was way to short.

Chaos. Just pure chaos. The camera work sucks in this and there's no commentary, but the lack of commentary works here because it lets you feel the heat during the entire chaos. I hated the guy laying on top of the table without trying to get off of it, but I dug Suicide Kid diving immediately and not playing to the crowd and taking forever in that table spot. Just a wild brawl all over the small building. ***

I dug Motegi's grounded elbows, but aside from that they never did anything to keep my captivated or interested. Pretty boring match.

So its $9.99 for a membership fee and then $14.99 for each individual event live stream? No thank you.

MLW announced Matt Riddle and Jeff Cobb vs. Tom Lawlor and Seth Petruzelli for next month. 3 UFC vets and 1 Olympic wrestler. I'm really looking forward to it. I was at the last MLW show and Petruzelli didn't look that great, but I thought Riddle vs. Lawlor was pretty good and adding in Cobb to the mix makes this better. I have high hopes they can make this work.

This felt like a standard FMW hardcore six man tag -- sans one of BJW's founder fathers, Great Kojika coming to save his company from the FMW/WEW invaders, Team No Respect. This isn't the first time Winger has gotten unmasked in a match, so the unmasking seems rather heatless and pointless. I dug that he was all bloodied up once they tore his mask to at least make up for it. His selling of the armbar in the finishing stretch was pretty awesome. They never really aimed to escalate this match and take it to the next level, so it doesn't really do much for me.

Despite some Toryumon guys previous involvement in Michinoku Pro, this is them putting on a showcase match for the Tohoku Michinoku Pro fans. Think of it as the Dragon Gate showcase matches during that one WrestleMania weekend some years ago in ROH or the Michinoku Pro showcase matches in ECW from that house show and the Barely Legal PPV. Out of all the Toryumon guys, TARU is the worse in these matches. He benefits the most being a rudo segundo interfering than being an actual participant in the matches. Plus SUWA is everything he wishes to be. That heel beatdown on Magnum with the exposed turnbuckle and him getting juice was a new piece to their previous matches. It's all pointing towards a marquee CIMA vs. Magnum singles. I didn't think it went on too long and didn't think they really went overboard with the false finishes and I actually liked Fuji getting the pin once he hit that long delayed chokeslam on Fujita. Also this being a showcase match, yet they still held back a bit in the finishing stretch compared to some of the other multi man matches. ****

In the sense of 4-5 years, Kobayashi ages about 30 years and that is most likely due to amounted scar tissue and most likely eating 5 meals a day as he looks relatively young and slim here and in 2004 he looked like he was in his late 40's and he gained about 75-100 more lbs. This match was great. I thought this was far better than the Yamakawa match from the previous month. Both guys looked fantastic here. Honma's dive with the ladder to the outside early on was nuts. His facial expression and selling after getting tossed off the top of the ladder was great. Less pointless crowd brawling here and more brutalness instead. The finish was excellent with Honma having the awareness of countering his kimura with a Fujiwara armbar immediately. ****

I thought this was very fun. Kanemura tossing Yamakawa over the top rope onto a pile of chairs and then following up by jumping off the top rope and hitting a senton on Yamakawa without having to set him up for it was awesome. Glad Yamakawa started the walking around the crowd holding Kanemura by the hair and Kanemura hit him with a punch to the stomach and the proceeded to attack him. I also liked Kanemuras use of weapons. He didnt just break a light tube on Yamakawas arm and forget about the light tube like most guys do, instead he broke the light tube on his arm and then grab shards of it and stabbed Yamakawa in the arm multiple times with it. He also threw Yamakawa through a table and then proceeded to hit Yamakawa across the head with it endless times until it was in pieces. The finish was awesome with Yamakawa hitting his modified double underhook facebuster once and that was it. No need to kick out of it as it was wrap right there. Very fun match. ***

I think the funnies thing of all of this is the fact that PRIDE had strong ties to pro-wrestling for the majority of its existence, yet a lot of them consider it the greatest MMA organization ever. They love Sakuraba, but ignore the fact that he was a pro-wrestler in an MMA world. I'm a huge fan of both, but I honestly don't get either side taking shots at each other.

I thought this was very good, mostly due to Ishikawa who I thought was by far the best guy here. His attention to detail is fantastic. Hes attempts an armbar on Nagai and he cant lock it in, but he sees Nagais neck out there so instead he locks in a head scissors and then sees the opening for the armbar and he locks it in. He tries to lock in a kimura on Nagai and he fails to and instead of just staying in side control waiting for Nagai to escape, he immediately sees an opening for an americana and he goes for it. Him getting kicked down by Nagai and then getting up before the 10 count and smiling at Nagai before Nagai goes for another head kick only for him to counter into a leglock was great. His strikes are also fantastic, but those may not he worked. I thought both Nagai and Ikeda looked much better than in their singles match from January. Otsuka personally didnt do much for me here however, but he was luckily paired up with Ishikawa who took control for his side. Im not keen on Ikedas flipping top rope kick, but that finish was awesome. Ikeda hitting a nasty headbutt before locking in a rear naked choke on Ishikawa who was out was great. ***3/4

I really wanted to get into this and like it, but it felt so lifeless for the most part. The grappling didnt really suck me in as it looked relatively weak and didnt seem like either guy was really struggling to get anything locked in. I did dig the big throws and Minorus Rumina Sato-esque Minoru Special which is awesome, but that was about it.

I thought this was a pretty cool match, however I wasnt particularly blown away by it. I usually find Christopher Daniels boring, but I wasnt bored during this. Thought the finish was perfectly timed and didnt think they went overboard which was neat.

Chad Collier! That dude has been around the bigger indy companies back then ROH, IWA-MS, etc. and was pretty decent, despite not having much personality. Scott Andrews I remember too from stuff like the ECWA Super 8 tournaments and he had some appearances on the really ROH appearances too if I recall correctly. Jeff Petterson Ive never seen, but I do remember the NWA Florida memorial tournaments with guys like Mikey Tenderfoot and Roderick Strong. Jet Jaguar Im not familiar with. This was a more relatively simple match. Everyone here looked particularly good, yet the crowd never seemed to really get that much into it, however Scoot seemed to always get a reaction out of them. Overall this was perfectly fine.

From whatever we got to see, as the camera work hurt this, it seemed like a fine match. There was a moment when they went to brawl around the area and we just got a glimpse of a bush before they reappear and Marty punches Sullivan with a cone on his head. When they get back to the ring area, for some reason Marty hits himself with a street sign... Highlight for me was the finish where Marty hitting a big crossbody from the balcony which Sullivan was able to reverse. Hard to say how good this really was due to the camera work, but from what we saw, this seemed like it was perfectly fine.

As the majority of people, Im used to seeing Barry Horowitz get steamrolled on Saturday mornings on WWF TV, not in an indy setting where he gets to actually work on top. Don Montoya Ive seen a handful of times through the years, but have never been sold on him. His shoot match with Low Ki from JAWP from January was good, but that was mostly due to the other party. This was pretty decent. Horowitz cutting a promo on the crowd early on in the match when they were cheering him and he was the heel was awesome. His hand work was pretty neat, but for some reason I didnt really care for Montoyas brief comeback. The finish was awesome with Horowitz placing brass knucks in his kneepad and hitting a knee lift with it. I didnt like this as much as you guys, but I still thought it was decent at best.