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I reviewed this match here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-japan-womens-wrestle-marinepiad-91.html Thoughts: Kyoko Inoue beat Akira Hokuto after a powerbomb/spinkick combo. One of the ultimate flash over substance matches. So many cool and dangerous moves, little meaning to them, little story and little selling. They did a million things here and at the end they all just popped up like it never happened. Really disappointing as all of these girls know better and a lot of those bumps were for nothing. Check the gifs for the various spots as there were no lack of them but a huge lack of any of the good stuff that makes wrestling work. Tons of botches here as well with Yamada/Inoue being way too cute and not being able to hit everything they could do. It stopped feeling like a match after a while and was most of a cool moves exhibition. Very disappointing overall despite tons of effort likely put in. Some shots from the match:

WWE's ratings and attendances are down and TV ratings are the most important thing on their business model.

Yeah I don't know what went on with the Brazilian guy, which is a shame, because from the clips I saw of him, his capoeira stuff would have been a hit and he would have been in a similar position to Jack Gallagher. We are definitely seeing WWE getting ready to start setting up the pieces to get strongholds set up around the world and there's a ton of places that are ready for it. Other countries are much more nationalistic than the US is and they really do support their guys like Khali and would definitely get into some soccer like stuff where it's country vs country. I think there's a lot of room to grow in that department.

I feel like discussing today, so: What's your thoughts on the state of the wrestling business as a whole in 2017? Work wise: Probably more good wrestling ever, but it comes at a cost. Everyone keeps upping the danger levels of their matches is leading to injuries and undermining more basic and less dangerous moves. I also think matches have stopped standing out due to everyone looking similarly and working the same indy style. Buisness wise: The only promotions who seem to be up from previous years are DDT, UK indies and ROH, and they had rather low bars to improve from, so it doesn't mean much. WWE's down. TNA's barely existent. NJPW isn't as strong as they were a few years ago and I'm not 100% sure how various lower level major Japanese groups like AJPW, Z1, W1 and NOAH are making any money. Joshi is down as well. Mexico is down from the Mistico heydays. Technology/Production/Accessibility/Awareness: VOD is where its at right now. Every promotion in American and the UK are getting their own VOD service, while Japan is slowly getting there and Mexico has ignored it for the most part. This stuff is probably the future of wrestling but it has its issues - the value for what you get isn't that great, it doesn't help gain non-wrestling fans and the competition is getting high. The good stuff is that there is more legal wrestling available than ever before, there's more live wrestling than ever before and its in crystal clear quality. Promotions are also starting to get on their way to opening up to the world. Future of wrestling: I think we are going to end up with WWE revamping the territory system on an international stage and start putting the hits on hot indies and lesser companies. WWE owns most of the best wrestlers in the world right now and that's only going to continue. With this, I think we are also going to see more super indy guys and others who will get booked around the world and may not need the WWE to make bank off wrestling. People like Ibushi have also opened the door to where people can compete once in a while for WWE while going elsewhere too. I think we are going to see the current style going more towards athletic "can you top this?" style of matches. Your next gens of wrestlers aren't going to be big guys like before. They are going to be smaller and in better shape. The old stuff like managers, characters, promos and all of that are clearly going away for 5 star matches. I'd have to think at some point though that it will get old and people will start looking for basic wrestling again. I do think less people are watching wrestling than ever before and it's only going to get worse. There's going to be a big generation of the 2000's -2020's who didn't grow up with family members being wrestling fans and it's going to be hard to grab the younger fans who will carry wrestling for generations to come. I do think some developing countries are ripe for local pro wrestling to start up and get hot. Places like China, The Philippines, South America, India and others do have the people and potential, just it hasn't happened yet for whatever reason. With WWE taking steps to get bases in other countries, I think it's going to happen sooner than later. One really cool thing is that by 2035, we are basically going to have every wrestling tv show for a 50 year span, since most footage starts popping up around 1985. That's incredible to think about. Add youtube and various VOD services and pretty much everything wrestling is going to be documented and available. On the other hand, if anyone is sitting on old footage from the 70's-80's and hasn't released it yet, it's likely as good as gone soon. What do you guys think?

That's what would happen too. I will promise you that at minimum 90% of that audience didn't see the UK tournament.

A lot of the complaints I had about ROH in 2013 still seem to be extremely relevant today. Giving people title runs and main event slots based on loyalty is straight out of the 70's. I think another important thing is the ROH style isn't as impressive in 2017 as it was in 2002. The flips, All Japan tribute matches and big moves were a lot more cool and original then, while it is the norm right now. And ROH loves their generic flippy dudes, likely making it hard for them to gain any followings. One idea that I've always had to keep WWE from picking off talent is to have more masked guys who are covered up. One of them gets hot and WWE wants to sign them? Stick someone else under the mask. Most of the crowd won't know the difference and it won't make a big difference.

I reviewed Riddle/Shibata here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/revolution-pro-wrestling-1212017.html Some shots from it: Overall thoughts:This was fine but nowhere near the MOTY many people are making it out to be. No disrespect to the UK fans but they are passionate about hyping matches up they like and usually, the hype doesn't match the quality. This match was basically built around no selling. Shibata sold very little of Riddle's offense which ruined the match. Having just seen Goto/Shibata a few weeks ago, I didn't think this was anywhere near that and it was just a long squash. Shibata and Goto can no sell some and get away with it, but in the end, both are going to nail each other so hard and go on for long enough that you will buy into it, while this didn't really go to that length to get there. Shibata just never really sold and never got me to the point where I thought "Riddle has got this". Easy night for Shibata and Riddle does have some of the traits to being a star with looks, charisma and legitimacy but he has to work on his striking first.

I reviewed Riddle/Shibata here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/revolution-pro-wrestling-1212017.html Some shots from it: Overall thoughts: Katsuyori Shibata beat Matt Riddle with a choke. This was fine but nowhere near the MOTY many people are making it out to be. No disrespect to the UK fans but they are passionate about hyping matches up they like and usually, the hype doesn't match the quality. This match was basically built around no selling. Shibata sold very little of Riddle's offense which ruined the match. Having just seen Goto/Shibata a few weeks ago, I didn't think this was anywhere near that and it was just a long squash. Shibata and Goto can no sell some and get away with it, but in the end, both are going to nail each other so hard and go on for long enough that you will buy into it, while this didn't really go to that length to get there. Shibata just never really sold and never got me to the point where I thought "Riddle has got this". Easy night for Shibata and Riddle does have some of the traits to being a star with looks, charisma and legitimacy but he has to work on his striking first.

Who are some of the up and coming or even just generally underappreciated hosses in wrestling right now? I haven't seen them yet Dijack, Rex Lawless and Ryan Rush seem like some possible candidates, along with Jason Bane who never got any love for whatever reason. Big Daddy Walter is one guy who I can't figure out why he isn't signed anywhere. If you got a link, post it!

The junior heavyweight division is not as prestigious as the heavyweight division in any way shape or form and no one really cares about weight classes. In fact, I dare say that calling someone a junior is kind of a black mark in wrestling where usually size > skill. They totally wasted Shibata. They had the obvious programs with Tanahashi and Nakamura that they totally ignored and now they can't even do a Nakamura/Shibata match. I salivated for years over a Shibata return and they turned him into "just another guy" from the start.

AJW 8/22/1985 - WWWA Title - Jaguar Yokota vs Lioness Asuka Full review here:http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-japan-womens-8221985-wwwa-title.html Some shots from the match: My review of it: Jaguar Yokota beat Lioness Asuka with knee clutch backdrop. This was something and must have been insane for 1985. The crowd was nuts for Asuka all match. They started out working the figure four and a leglock along with a keylock on the leg. Really good leg work and lots of awesome facial expressions as you can see above. They did it for a significant portion of time and it didn't get stale one bit. They started going into spots from there with less focus on the selling. That really pained me because they did so well in the first half and they mostly did the opposite in the second half. They had a string of really big moves/spots with a TTD, which is Tenzan's sitout tombstone, Asuka throwing Jaguar from the suplex position to the floor, Asuka diving and missing out on the floor onto her, a slingshot suplex then the finishing stretch. It was one of the fastest stretches of spots I've ever seen and unfortunately, while impressive, it was disappointing. They did both sell their legs on the bigger spots and they did involve the injured knees even on the finish, but it really just wasn't enough for me. They could have cut most of it out and it would have been a much better match and that's where it broke for me. The finish did involve the knees though as Asuka missed a diving double knee and then Jaguar grabbed her by the injured knee and suplexed her for the win. The ending was a bit sudden and I thought they could have milked it more or let the crowd know "hey, this is it" to get them really into it. Jaguar got a huge trophy as you can see above for the win and I believe it was bigger than her. She had a heck of a time lifting it as Asuka watched on. Now for the rating. It's a brutal one to judge, because the first half was great and the second half was good, but they just forgot the selling and opted for spots in the second half. They wrestled so smart yet so dumb at the same time. This had all of the features of a 5 star match, but I wouldn't be true to myself if I gave it that due to the rush of spots in the second half that disregarded mostly everything minus the knee. This easily could have been my pick for the best match ever without that, but that wasn't the case. I can't give this 5 stars and 4.75 is too much for something that ignored basic logic. Rating:****1/2

AJW 8/22/1985 - All Pacific Title - Chigusa Nagayo vs Devil Masami I did a full review on this here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-japan-womens-8221985-all-pacific.html Some shots from the match: My review of it: They had went to a double knockout draw at 36:52 when neither could answer the ten count. Epic match. The first half was all about the selling and the second half was about Chigusa working the sharpshooter, while they stood toe to toe and brawled like boxers.They didn't do a ton of fancy stuff here and there weren't that many crazy moves, but they fought for everything and made it look like a fight all the way through. I loved the various sections with Devil boxing vs Chigusa's kicks, the suplexes were all good and the crowd carried this match all the way through. Both sold and made big enough facials to reach the peanut seats and this is the closest you can get to a heavyweight boxing fight in wrestling. I never had to say to myself "gee that looked fake" or "aren't you going to sell that?". It was just classic wrestling and there's a lot today's workers could learn from this. Anyone could have done this match, but this was a match where you had to have the basics down, and they did here. Great match that is really different from anything else you are going to see just for how real they were and how it mirrored a boxing match at times and it's definitely worth a look. I know the big question is going to be - was this better than the 4+ star Asuka/Yokota match from the same show and I'd have to say overall it was. That had selling issues and this didn't. Now I really want a Chigusa/Yokota match and a Masami/Yokota match. Also have to add that Devil looked straight out of an anime comic with her wild and crazy eyes while Chigusa looked like the female Rocky Balboa here. Rating:*****

I did a full review of the match here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/ajw-survival-shout-in-korakuen-8191990.html Some shots from it: My thoughts on it: Bison Kimura beat Grizzy Iwamoto with a random german but this wasn't about that at all. THIS. WAS. A. WAR. This match was fricking insane. Bell to bell just absolute violence and war. And it was incredible. The story of the match was the Aja vs Bull feud. This match was building up a future match of theirs and did it ever. Two hosses fighting to be the king of the monsters and putting each other through hell to get there. They sold, they no sold and the went for blood. They hit each other with chairs, canes, trashcans and whatever else they could get a hold of and they just never let up on each other. It was one of the best brawls I've ever seen. There were so many good stories here from Bison and Grizzly not being able to touch either Bull or Aja as they were just too strong to be hurt by their weak sauce. At times, Bison and Griz were looking for tags and saves and Aja/Bull just let them fight it out and often completely ignored their shots, while focusing on the prize of each others heads. The match even ended and neither Aja or Bison cared as they were past that and kept going after each other. They then screamed and cried at each other while challenging each other to another match. This was everything great about pro wrestling. You had the larger than life characters. You had the hate. You had the violence and you had the believably as hate trumped all here and they fought for every move. I'm almost speechless here because this was just everything you dream about out of pro wrestling and more. The finish was the only critique here as it was out of nowhere, but this was no longer a match and it didn't matter who won at that point anyway, because everyone took so many causalities that everyone lost while the viewers won. Rating:*****. A must see war.

Watched this for the first time today and this was just outstanding and I really wanted to see if y'all loved it as much as I did. Total war from bell to bell. One of the few matches where things got so heated that the finish was an afterthought. The match is here: This is what I wrote about it with/pics from: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/ajw-survival-shout-in-korakuen-8191990.html Bison Kimura beat Grizzy Iwamoto with a random german but this wasn't about that at all. THIS. WAS. A. WAR. This match was fricking insane. Bell to bell just absolute violence and war. And it was incredible. The story of the match was the Aja vs Bull feud. This match was building up a future match of theirs and did it ever. Two hosses fighting to be the king of the monsters and putting each other through hell to get there. They sold, they no sold and the went for blood. They hit each other with chairs, canes, trashcans and whatever else they could get a hold of and they just never let up on each other. It was one of the best brawls I've ever seen. There were so many good stories here from Bison and Grizzly not being able to touch either Bull or Aja as they were just too strong to be hurt by their weak sauce. At times, Bison and Griz were looking for tags and saves and Aja/Bull just let them fight it out and often completely ignored their shots, while focusing on the prize of each others heads. The match even ended and neither Aja or Bison cared as they were past that and kept going after each other. They then screamed and cried at each other while challenging each other to another match. This was everything great about pro wrestling. You had the larger than life characters. You had the hate. You had the violence and you had the believably as hate trumped all here and they fought for every move. I'm almost speechless here because this was just everything you dream about out of pro wrestling and more. The finish was the only critique here as it was out of nowhere, but this was no longer a match and it didn't matter who won at that point anyway, because everyone took so many causalities that everyone lost while the viewers won. Rating:*****

Yeah, that felt like a Vince 1980's move. I also want to point out that Omega didn't need "made". He was already a big DDT star and main evented Sumo Hall. NJPW was just stupid to waste him when he first got there like Ibushi and Shibata.

Chigusa vs Devil definitely was better. They really tried to make it look like a legit match and it felt like a heavyweight boxing match at times. Asuka/Yokota was flashier though and had they took out some of the moves and sold a little, would have been the better match. I thought this show was really a great example of the changing of the times and style in wrestling. Chigusa/Devil was pretty old school while Asuka/Yokota was the future.

WWE wouldn't have a problem with Japan. They have more TV there than anyone else already. They can easily form partnerships with any of the Noah/Z1/W1/AJPW/Dragon Gate/BJPW crew and start offering big bucks for talent. WWE also already has a few NJ guys and could easily sign more since NJ doesn't have that type of money. They can counter-run, they can loan guys out and they can easily run a dome show. Plus they have the network, meaning the show can air any time they want it to and everyone can see it. Japan would also love some interpromotional WWE vs Japanese matches since Japan loves to feel like the big leagues. It really wouldn't take much with NJPW's small roster size.

I like the guy a lot, but he ain't the guy.

I have Chinese friends in China and they have no idea what pro wrestling is. I'm honestly not even sure if it would work. Best way though would be to have a Chinese superstar who fights the Japanese and Americans ala reverse 1950's Wrestling.

Basically, through wording, WWE has taught wrestling fans that athleticism = high flying and that how many muscles you have or how ripped you are - how in shape you are. If you guys remember the NJPW weight lifting competition in the 80's story where Andre and Hogan were supposed to take part against people like Atlas and then they dropped out because it would expose them, this destroys the argument above. People like Patera and Henry didn't have great bodies at some parts of their career, but these guys would destroy anyone in the gym. People like Flair went 60 minutes every night at time. If that's not being in shape, I don't know what is. Wrestlers definitely do more flashier moves than they used to, but the older guys could work enough that they didn't have to do stupid stunts.

I watched this match and was a bit conflicted. This is what I wrote on my review: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/all-japan-womens-8221985-wwwa-title.html Jaguar Yokota beat Lioness Asuka with knee clutch backdrop. This was something and must have been insane for 1985. The crowd was nuts for Asuka all match. They started out working the figure four and a leglock along with a keylock on the leg. Really good leg work and lots of awesome facial expressions as you can see above. They did it for a significant portion of time and it didn't get stale one bit. They started going into spots from there with less focus on the selling. That really pained me because they did so well in the first half and they mostly did the opposite in the second half. They had a string of really big moves/spots with a TTD, which is Tenzan's sitout tombstone, Asuka throwing Jaguar from the suplex position to the floor, Asuka diving and missing out on the floor onto her, a slingshot suplex then the finishing stretch. It was one of the fastest stretches of spots I've ever seen and unfortunately, while impressive, it was disappointing. They did both sell their legs on the bigger spots and they did involve the injured knees, but it really just wasn't enough for me. They could have cut most of it out and it would have been a much better match and that's where it broke for me. The finish did involve the knees though as Asuka missed a diving double knee and then Jaguar grabbed her by the injured knee and suplexed her for the win. The ending was a bit sudden and I thought they could have milked it more or let the crowd know "hey, this is it" to get them really into it. Jaguar got a huge trophy as you can see above for the win and I believe it was bigger than her. She had a heck of a time lifting it as Asuka watched on. Now for the rating. It's a brutal one to judge, because the first half was great and the second half was good, but they just forgot the selling and opted for spots in the second half. This had all of the features of a 5 star match, but I wouldn't be true to myself if I gave it that due to the rush of spots in the second half that disregarded mostly everything minus the knee. This easily could have been my pick for the best match ever without that, but that wasn't the case. I can't give this 5 stars and 4.75 is too much for something that ignored basic logic. Rating:****1/2 What do you guys think?

I can tell you as someone who has done lucha reviews and compared it to other reviews, most online fans and general fans do not care about lucha.

I don't know what match you are referring to unfortunately. But I'd be cool with a break from commentary for a while. Most commentary is just an extra distraction nowadays. If a wrestler is actually good, you shouldn't need it anyway. The "ouches" and the "RAWRs" along with the usual trash talk and crowd banter should be more than enough to provide context to the match. While not wrestling, I know an NBA game would be 10x more entertaining if we could hear some of the stuff they say. People like Jordan and Bird supposedly had better trash talking game than a lot of pro wrestlers.

Shotzi's hair isn't the only thing about her that is green but, you are correct her charisma and work ethic is going to take her far she already got put on the main show based on her work at the 1st Rise seminar and now will seemingly be used regularly for the company most likely leading to a roster spot with Shimmer. I've seen her a few times live now & seen her in attendance for a lot of wrestling shows in CA she's really working hard and I think it will pay off for her sooner rather than later. Thunder on the other hand I can take of leave but she seems to just keep getting opportunities I reviewed this match here: http://prowresblog.blogspot.com/2017/01/heelface-wrestling-172017-thunder-rosa.html I thought the match was pretty good. Rosa's submission game is really good and anchored the match. The stuff they hit looked like it hurt. Both of the girls were really good in getting the crowd involved in the match and in the WWE/NJPW world, where everything is so over-produced, you don't get to see that stuff. A few years ago, I went to an All Japan house show along with the NJPW Tokyo Dome and a bunch of other promotions. You know why AJPW was the best show of that trip? Because they made us a part of the match. The heels messed with us, the faces fought for us and it felt like we(as in the crowd) mattered. Looking back, I don't remember many of the shows I went to, but I remember that. Shotzi is definitely green, but she already has the full package and is probably ready for NXT. She has charisma and she has the look. Just google her and she honestly stands out more than any girl on the WWE roster. The one thing I really loved about All Japan Women's was that most of their roster looked like superstars. People like Hokuto and Nakano had iconic looks. Shotzi while not being quite as iconic, stands out. This is something I really want to see wrestling focus on more, because most wrestlers look like each other right now. I really recommend checking this one out. I haven't felt so involved in a match in a long time.

There was a Shotzi Blackheart vs Thunder Rosa match posted in the Southern Indies thread that made me want to make this post. The match is here: I really liked the way this was filmed. The ring was low enough so the camera could get in the ring. The camera picked up a lot of the jarring between the girls and you could hear various fans in attendance. Since they worked the mat, you got a full in your face view of a lot of the submissions. I felt like I had the best seat in the house and was actually there at the match. I would honestly love to see this style of filming used more. A lot of the Japanese companies like LLPW and FMW used to film this way and I always loved it. Yeah, sometimes you might miss a shot, but I think it's worth it for everything else. I thought this match was honestly filmed on par with WWE, who has a budget of about 1000x what this show did. The match also worked because they didn't mic the ring that much, so when people fell, you could hear how it really sounds, which is more realistic and makes you "feel" the bump more. And even though the camera's used were probably a lot shittier than WWE's, it looked more clear and life-like than what WWE can produce. What do you guys think?