Edwin

Those Yuki Ishikawa and Carl Greco exchanges were fantastic. Greco coming in like a house on a fire and taking Ishikawa down and Gator rolling him was great. I really dislike Yone here. His running halfway from Korakuen Hall on the floor for a lame knee, his popping up after having gotten dropped on his head, his lack of facial expressions, etc. made him really unlikeable here and that dragged this down. Greco's double armbar was fantastic. Otsuka would use the same move in the same year to tap out Mike Bourke in PRIDE. Aside from the Greco and Ishikawa exchanges, this was very underwhelming.

I haven't watched this match in 10 or so years, but re-watching this now and it really wasn't the all-time classic greatest death match of all-time that it's always been made out to be. I haven't watched the Yuko Miyamoto vs. Takashi Sasaki nutty death match from 4-5 years after this, but I really loved that match back then. Not sure how it holds up to though as I haven't seen that in about 10 or years either. With that said, this was still pretty good. I agree with the sentiment that the crowd brawling was way to extensive and didn't really lead to anything memorable, nor did it provide anything noteworthy. I also felt this was 5 minutes too long. Had they cut out the extensive walk around Korakuen Hall, this would have been far better. Despite the flaws in this, this was still better than the CZW junk we saw this month with Ian Rotten and Mad Man Pondo carving themselves with scissors for the sake of it and this is also far better than the majority of death matches you will see in the U.S. The refs. putting over Honma planting Yamakawa through the barb wire board on the outside was a nice touch. The finish was also quite neat as they relied less on the use of weapons and more on the sole fatigue and damage they had already endured. Overall I felt this was a decent-to-good match. ***

These are the same guys as the pairings from the previous Toryumon multi man match, except Dragon Kid is being replaced by Tiger Mask IV. Sucks it's not Dragon Kid as he was fantastic in the previous multi man match, but it's still not a major issue as TMIV doesn't drag this down one bit. TARU tossing Stalker Ichikawa into the fans during the brawling was great. The cheating during the abdominal stretch with MAKOTO guarding it was a nice touch. CRAZY MAX maybe the best early Toryumon faction. They're excellent heels and their seconds interferances are usually on point. That blitz from CRAZY MAX on Magnum near the end was crazy. It could have finished there and I would've been fine with it. Luckily they only went for another minute - minute and a half to avoid it from going overboard. Another great Toryumon match. ****

This was pretty odd... Just a wild match all over the place that never really goes anywhere. Ruben Cruz looks like a lost Mean Street Posse member and Jeremy Sage looks like he stole the pirate shirt from Seinfeld. Not Dragon's or Spanky's best work. The outcome didn't help this either.

That was some entertaining 3 or so minutes before the run ins fiasco. Dundee's firey headbutt and right hand were fantastic. More so an angle than a match per se, but what we got was fun.

Was reading the results over at Cagematch and Gilberg defended the WWF Light Heavyweight title at this event against someone I'm not familiar with called Dave Greco... Bizarre. This was pretty neat, but far from memorable. I'm not familiar with Billy Reil, but he looked far better here than Ric Blade did in the previous Low Ki match listed from this month. They also kept it a lot simpler here than in the aforementioned match. I dug Ki's dive to the outside which was pretty nuts and that counter tornado DDT into a DVD. The ref. selling the eye poke near the end was pretty bad. So far I would say this maybe a top 5 indy match from the batch of matches I've seen for the month.

This is you typical Onita Pro main event: Onita? Check! Yaguchi? Check! No rope barb wire ring? Check! Crazy crowd brawling? Check! Table piledriver? Check! Blood? Check! DDT's? Check! Piledrivers? Check! Reckless powerbombs? Check! I personally enjoy this type of stuff, so it was entertaining to me personally. ***

I like FMW a lot. They actually got me into Japanese pro-wrestling in 1997 due to those horrendous Tokyo Pop commercial releases. However, I thought this was pretty bad. Just a reckless bomb fest leading to endless 2.99999 kick outs to pop the Korakuen Hall crowd. Not trying to be negative about ths, but there really wasn't any stand out moments in this.

I agree. RIZIN is amazing. Yumiko Hotta rope running at the start of her fight with Gabi Garcia was hilarious. Speaking of, Gabi is fighting Shinobu Kandori on NYE who she was originally scheduled to fight last year, but Kandori had to pull out due to an injurt and Gabi ended up fighting Yumiko.

I don't think its so much that he doesn't know what he's doing as much he's stuck in exhibition mode most of the time. He treats chain wrestling like spotmonkeys treat flips, and that kind of "look what I can do" attitude is rampant in this generation of "big" Indy guys. He's the guitarist doing a dozen sweep arpeggios when a hammer-on would've been perfect. Not that it isn't impressive and a nice change from a card likely filled with moonsaults and weak suplexes. I wrote a bit on him after having watched his match against Mark Haskins from the WWN Supershow over at DVDVR: Edit: Re-reading that post I posted some time ago and your reply, yeah, I guess what I meant to say is his grappling exchanges look more like exhibitions than anything else. He's more focused on being cute than effective and it makes him look really weak and like he has no idea what he's doing realistically. 2 years ago the majority of the people who replied to his GWE nomination on here didn't like him either: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/31550-zack-sabre-jr I'm curious what the sentiment would be from those same people now that its been 2 years and theres a lot more footage of him available now...

Got a link to the tweet pls? https://twitter.com/DenimFritz605/status/942543986325106690 https://twitter.com/TheJimCornette/status/942596880034353152 https://twitter.com/davemeltzerWON/status/942597401742733312 And then there's this exchange where Dave compares Okada vs. Omega to Flair vs. Steamboat and Jim responds: https://twitter.com/davemeltzerWON/status/942544739743576064 https://twitter.com/TheJimCornette/status/942597736838369281

Best performance by Spanky so far. Young rookie vs. experienced vet match. That Spider German suplex from Spanky and that dive over the top he's been doing in all of his matches were great. Spanky needs to work on execution a bit as he seems off a bit, but other than that, this was perfectly fine. The best match from TWA out of the bunch so far, with American Dragon vs. Ultimate Bad Guy close right behind it.

Yikes, that Dragon promo was a bit rough. Ultimate Bad Guy seems like a generic name from a Double Dragon NES villain. Dragon looked awesome here. David vs. Goliath TV match with Dragon using his speed and agility trying to try and stop UBG and UBG using his strength and size advantage to try and ground Dragon. That rana over the guardrail and endless dives from Dragon in hopes of wiping out UBG early on were beautiful. UBG also does a great job at manhandling the much smaller Dragon. Really good stuff.

I was huge on Toryumon back in the day, but I didn't like when they rebranded to Dragon Gate for some reason it just felt different. These early Toryumon shows had these crazy multi man matches and it's fun revisiting them. The diverse roster they had really made these matches. However the Toryumon style is not for everyone. I'm not sure, but I believe MAKOTO was later Darkness Dragon. If so, then he was far better in that character than he is here as MAKOTO. Really dug Dragon Kid's 619 before hitting the beautiful triangle moonsault dive. Fuji teasing the dive after was good stuff too. Mochi's kicks are a thing of beauty and are proof that you can land effective strikes with sound effects without having to rely on the endless thigh slapping. CIMA pulling Dragon Kid over to his corner and teasing a tag before taking back over to his corner to continue the beatdown was awesome. That post match chaos was fantastic. Despite being relatively green, these guys put on a heck of a match together. **** That's 2 good matches Mochi and CIMA have been involved in in the same week.

I thought this match was fantastic. It's so odd watching Sasuke work as a heel, but he was fantastic at it. Those early kicks from Mochi and the headbutts from Hamada were brutal. Tiger Mask countering the Sasuke Special with a kick to the back just as Sasuke was about to take flight was a nice touch. The finishing top rope Ace Crusher leading to the rear naked choke from Hamada was neat. I also dug how they didn't go overboard with the finish and ended just at the right time. Also no matter what year it is, Gran Hamada looks the same physically... ****

Hey, it's WCW veteran Shiima Nobunaga! I remember the days when Minoru Fujita got a ton of hate on the Puroresu Fan board during his hot streak with Ikuto Hidaka as members of Skull & Bones in ZERO ONE. That was about 4-5 years after this match took place. CIMA throws a mean elbow in the corner which is a lost art now a days. I enjoyed the second half of the match as they really got the fans going and just before it began going overboard they wrapped it up. Nice touch in them not opting to kick out of each others finishers leading to endless 2.999999 kickouts. ***3/4

Aside from the Santito and Blue Panther exchanges, this was pretty bad. I like the Toryumon guys more than most people, but they looked pretty bad here I thought, namely Dragon Kid and Genki. Genki standing around playing to the crowd while Dragon Kid is getting piled on by the other 3 made him look like a buffoon. Blue Panther whaling Santito with a chair early on and then clotheslining over the guard into the crowd was fantastic, as was Santito's tope into the crowd. I thought Arai looked better than Dragon Kid and Genki, but he was also paired up with Blue Panther and Bombero Infernal, so it was going to be a bite difficult for him to not look decent at worse. Forgettable.

This was a different style fight and Murahama looks like he's coming for a Shoot boxing match with the long tights, the shin guards and the boxing gloves. A lot of the exchanges are also similar to what a less technical fixed Shoot boxing match would look like with the strike exchanges and throws. The throws in the second round were on point -- Murahama's suplex seemed like a throw straight out of a Shoot boxing fight at Korakuen Hall. Hoshikawa grounding Murahama who's an experienced kickboxer with boxing gloves was smart as Murahama would struggle to grapple due to the boxing gloves and he would have to rely solely on rope breaks which would cost him a point in each round. You can tell Murahama was holding back on his strikes, but it was still an excellent flurry and a neat finish. ***1/4

This was good, albeit it was a bit too long. Delfin has never stricken me as a particularly great singles guy, I think of him of someone who excels more being in multi man Osaka Pro - Michinoku Pro matches where he's not solely a featured attraction. Togo however is great in any setting he's in. The leg work in the first half was great. Togo viciously going after Delfin with stomps was fantastic. Unfortunately it did not lead to much in the second half of the match as Delfin pretty much blew it off. I also disliked Delfin kicking out of the senton splash. If the plan was him going over, then he should've just moved out of the way from the first one. However this is his company and he was going to book himself as Superman, so it makes sense for him to book himself in such a way. ***

Someone tweeted Meltzer compared the Young Bucks to the Midnight Express and Jim Cornette saw it and replied... Get the popcorn ready.

I thought the match was underwhelming, but that finish was pretty neat.

So Shane vs. Bryan at WM 34?

When will there be a PPV where the commentators table isn't broken in the co-main event and/or in the main event? It's getting pretty predictable it will happen once per PPV at least.

Reading Cormier's series of tweets on the Young Bucks video and someone told him he was an alley brawler and Cody could beat him up... OK, sure...

3 - Charlotte, Becky and Naomi.