Best Matches Seen June 2018 |
Fight Nights Global 73 9/4/17, Shamil Amirov vs. Rousimar Palhares 3R. I like FNG's handling of UFC rejects much more than Bellator's, putting them against young, hungry fighters looking to make a name for themselves rather than having a middleweight vs. a light heavyweight if they were in shape in a heavyweight tournament & Chael beats Rampage by virtue of still training at a gym rather than at McDonalds. At least in this case, when the veterans are the hasbeens we know them to be, they lose & that makes a new star. Palhares isn't actually washed up though, as he's instead been banished down to FNG for being in competition for the #2 spot on the list of shadiest fighters of all time behind Gerard Gordeau. Amirov should have been totally overmatched here as the 21-year-old had just 3 MMA fights against nobody you ever heard of compared to Palhares 28 including wins over fighters such as Fitch, Shields, & Branch, but he was able to stay on his feet & land now & then. Amirov was mostly focused on staying on his bike to gas the overly muscled Palhares by making him constantly pursue, but he was also accurate with his blows. Amirov wasn't afraid to take the submission master down either, though he pretty much just let Palhares up to avoid getting caught. Palhares spent the fight pursuing with middle kicks because that's about all he could touch Amirov with, while Amirov landed side kicks to keep Palhares away & jabs when he could connect then escape. The first two rounds were more interesting than entertaining, as they were very competitive but without many highlights. The match was definitely dramatic because this little known hometown prospect was arguably beating a fighter who didn't actually lose the WSOF title in the ring. Palhares opened up in the 3rd, throwing a bunch of wide power punches, and this was a genuinely exciting round even though Palhares was running out of gas by the time he hurt Amirov a few minutes in & couldn't fully capitalize. Nonetheless, Palhares had a decent Kimura attempt & went after the heel hook when the arm slipped out. Later, he swept with the Kimura & had a near submission. Both guys just willed themselves to continue in the last minute, with Amirov making a big final push, landing punches against the cage with a slouching Palhares no longer having the energy to keep his hands up, but still dodging some of them. Palhares won the 3rd despite Amirov's strong finish, but the first two rounds could have gone either way depending on which style you value more . Amirov was originally awarded a split decision, but the result was overturned to a draw by Russian MMA Union. Good match.
NJPW 7/17/17
G1 Climax 2017 Block A: YOSHI-HASHI [2] vs. Yuji Nagata [0] 16:29. Your basic Nagata striking match with some exceptionally hard hitting to differentiate it. YOSHI-HASHI is a decent enough worker, but while he followed adequately & I commend his willingness to take a bunch of potato shots, Nagata could basically have had the same match with Kota Ibushi's doll. It's supposed to be a veteran vs. young lion bout (though YOSHI-HASHI is 35...), but YOSHI-HASHI has no roar. He just lacks anything to distinguish himself or earn the respect of Nagata or the attention of the audience, who theoretically should be reacting strongly to him, either pulling for him because of his fire (if he had any) & heart or rooting against him because Nagata is the sentimental favorite & he drew Nagata's ire. Nagata was really nasty here, bullying YOSHI-HASHI the whole match, so YOSHI-HASHI did score points for not wilting, but he didn't do so in any manner that would connect with the audience. The match wasn't completely one-sided by any means, but YOSHI-HASHI's cute more lucha oriented offense didn't really register compared to Nagata's brutal blows. The idea was that YOSHI-HASHI would somehow survive this whipping & score the dramatic upset, but the match just showed what we already know, that Nagata still has it & YOSHI-HASHI never will. Granted, Nagata at his peak is the best native heavyweight on the roster, but even if we try to look past that & see him as an old man in his final G1 Climax, still nothing that takes place in the ring makes him losing to this guy credible. That being said, I commend Nagata for being humble & "doing the right thing", though honestly keeping himself strong would make the losses to guys like Sabre & Ibushi that actually can do something with the wins over him be more meaningful & compelling. In any case, this is the kind of match that elevates the entire tournament in general. It's not a great match by any means, but with a 50-year-old who has a lot of hard matches on the docket against a never was, it's a match that has every right to be the sort of somnambulism we see on the Best of the Super Jr. undercards, except Nagata instead tried to steal the show & carried YOSHI-HASHI to one of the best matches of his career. ***1/4
G1 Climax 2017 Block A: Hirooki Goto [2] vs. Tomohiro Ishii [0] 13:43. You know what you're going to get from these two, and they delivered as always. Nothing fancy in this collision, but an energetic, no b.s. slugfest where they pounded one another until someone finally caved. Though Ishii kind of only does one souped up Choshu match, Goto does that style really well also, and can also add some more counters in & out of the big moves to make it a little more diverse with more emphasis on the power moves & less on the striking exchanges. Still, it built to the big elbow exchange as the final burst before the finish. I don't feel like there's a ton to say about the match since it was pretty narrow & straightforward, but these are the kind of matches we watch both Ishii & the G1 Climax for, where even though it's not the main event fought really hard from start to finish & did what they do well. ***
G1 Climax 2017 Block A: Zack Sabre Jr. [2] vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi [0] 17:18. Sabre kicked around NOAH for years, but only had a couple undercard matches that even registered. It's not because he didn't have the talent as he was delivering elsewhere (although obviously he's gotten a lot better during & since that time), but throughout the years NOAH would almost never book the gaijins that were under contract with another indy league in anything beyond undercard walk throughs with the likes of Izumida & Masao (their relationship with ROH produced classics for ROH because when the match was in ROH it was treated as an all out big match rather than filler or at best a good match). I'm a big fan of NJ's booking here, taking a guy who has potential to be a main eventer & establishing him right away with a huge win in his first ever G1 match. Tanahashi was a good opponent for Sabre because even though there's a lot of differences in their technical wrestling style & the way they approach their matches, they both want to be using their grappling to break down a body part & thus tell a story. You could guess how this match was going to go down given Tanahashi had a torn bicep for Sabre to attack, hence his excuse for losing, & Tanahashi, like his idol Muto, has never really been able to think outside the knee attack box. Sabre's first big moment came when he turned Tanahashi's elbow drop into an armbar. Sabre still manages to be somewhat unpredictable, especially compared to Tanahashi, because he's about being opportunistic, and he doesn't need every move to work toward accomplishing the same goal, he just needs to eventually counter or chain his way into that 1 deep lock. The bout was kind of slow early even for a technical match, making me think the issue was Tanahashi really laboring, though it's possible that this is simply a big match for Sabre but not for Tanahashi. Tanahashi's effort, whether a necessary evil or not, was definitely a limiting factor one way or the other, as the intensity wasn't near the level that Nagata, Goto, & Ishii produced earlier, so the match lacked aura to the point of not feeling like anything out of the ordinary even though it was quite good in its own right. Tanahashi was more than fine though, it's just that Sabre's matches are more interesting when the opponent is countering him all the time as well rather than what we got here, which was the younger, quicker, and far more diverse Sabre just outmaneuvering Tanahashi time and time again, sometimes getting caught, but more often than not being a step or two ahead & seeming to just be toying with Tanahashi. Sabre did most of the work stretching & contorting Tanahashi, and Tanahashi, who was clearly putting himself in the underdog babyface role as the wounded warrior, did a lot of good selling, & exploded into a Dragon screw or one of his usual tropes now & again to stay relevant. The match built slowly, and while it was interesting & good, it just lacked the juice to come off as much more. Tanahashi finally had a nice run, but Sabre got his knees up for the high-fly flow & slapped on the Jim Breaks armbar. I didn't expect this to be the finish as the match was built as though it were going another 5 or 10 minutes, but Tanahashi had no answer, and Sabre as some nice touches took Tanahashi's support off, ripped at the ace bandage, and then just started contorting his wrist at every nasty angle until Tanahashi finally surrendered. Desperado briefly interjecting himself before the finish took the match down a notch because this had been like a real Sabre match you'd see elsewhere rather than the usual Suzuki-gun EWW chicanery, and that was really important because in order for the result to be meaningful Sabre needed to earn it on his own merit, which he has plenty of, but at least Desperado was typically completely ineffective & useless, so Tanahashi didn't waste any more time disposing of him than he probably would have showing off for the crowd. ***
Fortune Dream 5 6/11/18, Three Way Match: Hiroyo Matsumoto vs. Io Shirai vs. Meiko Satomura 15:00. I'm not a big fan of 3 Way matches because they're kind of like watching an Ingobernables match, someone's always laying around doing nothing, just because. Accepting that this was going to be somewhat contrived though, the efforts were really strong & the action was very consistent. If there was one problem, it's that once you added a 3rd high quality worker, there was just too much material for the allotted time, but that's a very good problem to have. I expected a big performance from Io because she only had 2 matches left before retiring down in Chainsaw Vinnie's Morgue, but she was the least of the performers here, and Satomura was the one that was on fire. I've been somewhat disappointed with Satomura this year because it usually takes her a long time to get going, and by then she just rolls out some big moves for the finishing sequence, but she was energetic & intense from the outset today, and this was the best I've seen her look thusfar in 2018. Io & Hiroyo locked up a hand to start & waited for a hesitant Satomura to join, but Satomura just middle kicked both prone opponents instead. Io came to life with a series of elbows after Satomura tossed her sister Mio Shirai, who was special referee, for trying to break up Satomura's series of big kicks to Hiroyo in the corner, but the match never felt like it was Io's, with Satomura pitting her striking & power moves against Matsumoto's power moves, and Io's flying being more of an aside that came in when the opportunity presented itself. Satomura wasn't exactly making friends here, and Hiroyo held her on her knee after a stomach breaker so Io could hit a swandive footstomp to her back. Hiroyo also powerbombed Io onto Satomura, but that wasn't exactly an idea Io was going along with. Shirai hit her moonsault to Satomura, but then Matsumoto pulled her off for a big backdrop & Satomura gave Matsumoto her Death Valley bomb. Shirai hit the moonsault on Hiroyo just before the bell, but Satomura pulled her off & took her out with a Death Valley bomb as the bell rang. Matsumoto pulled Satomura up by the hair even though there wasn't going to be a cover since the match was already over, and they went at it after the bell to put all the heat on the match that can still happen while Shirai didn't budge until the altercation was over. It was odd seeing a match on a random self produce show be designed to write someone out of the script, but this sort of reminded me of the final Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu match from 4/19/90 where Tenryu was betraying AJ taking half their roster to his new SWS, so All Japan did their best to transfer all the heat off of him & onto Jumbo vs. Stan Hansen. This match really felt too short, but they did a great job with the Satomura vs. Matsumoto rivalry, and because of that intensity, it felt a lot less like an exhibition than 3 way matches normally do. ***1/2
UFC Fight Night 132 6/23/18: Shane Young vs. Rolando Dy R2 4:40. These two really went to war, and althought there were a lot of big blows, it was also an interesting fight because both fighters were doing well at the same time even though Young was clearly dictating the entire way. Young controlled the octagon with constant forward pressure, and though his takedown game wasn't working the way he wanted it to, he kept Dy near or against the cage so he had trouble finding space to defend or escape. Dy's specialty is counter punching, and he did a fantastic job of cracking Young with lefts to the body & overhand rights. He was landing heavy blows, but Young was the aggressor, getting off & landing first in every exchange, not only throwing a lot more but landing at a 50% clip. Young began to take over midway through the first when he had Dy stuck on the cage & used to right high kick to cut off his escape route. Dy blocked it, but was now stuck right in front of Young, and Young clocked him with a right before Dy could figure out a new escape route then flurried with hooks. Dy was able to fight his way off the cage with a couple counter lefts that were good enough to make Young rethink his approach, and Young then found the opening for the double leg. Dy was up quickly & they were back to exchanging bombs, but Dy was obviously still hurt, as he was moving a lot less basically spent the rest of the fight trying to rely on his power. To make things worse for Dy, the ref missed Young countering his step knee with a low knee, so Dy got attacked after hobbling around holding his cup. Young really had no answer for Dy's left hook to the body & right hook to the head, but Dy was just giving too much space & eating too many blows in order to land it. Dy made an effort to hold the center of the ring at the start of the 2nd, but Young was dodging his heads & plowed him back into the cage with a flash takedown. When Dy landed, he was bobbling Young's head & knocking him backwards, but it's hard to win a fight when you are spending most of it standing against the cage. If Dy had the footwork or energy to keep himself off the cage, this would likely have been a different fight but Young just wore him down with endless pressure even though he took a lot of punishment to achieve his end. Dy's nose was bloodied & he was cut outside the left eye 2 minutes into the 2nd from one of Young's short elbows, though the entire side of his face was covered before long, the former still seemed more detrimental given his cardio was already his biggest problem. Dy just seemed to lack the ability to maintain an offensive against Young. He would land his combo, time & time again, but he was never really able to add onto it, so ultimately, even if he did sometimes try to follow up with something else, he never really had any more success until Young went back on the attack & hit him with a couple more shots. When Dy did at least fight his way back to the center of the ring, Young would go for a high takedown that wasn't so much designed to succeed as to allow him to just drive Dy back to the outskirts of the cage, working the clinch & landing more short elbows. Young finally timed an overhand right, countering with a short elbow to wobble Dy back into the cage. Young continued to throw, but Dy just had nothing left & really just wilted down to the canvas on his own. Good match.
RPW British J Cup 7/8/17
British J Cup First Round Match: KUSHIDA vs. Kyle O'Reilly 21:27. With two matches in NJ & two matches in the RPW, we can now pretty easily categorize the KUSHIDA/O'Reilly matches by saying the former are must see match of the year level encounters while the later are fun technical matches that lack the intensity & all out effort. This certainly doesn't mean you should skip the UK ones, these guys have so much talent & their styles mesh so beautifully they're still better than the best match on most shows anywhere in the world even when they aren't trying to make the encounter anything truly special. Though they didn't do as many high spots here, the grappling was excellent, and with so much focus on it, you believed O'Reilly would win with a leglock or KUSHIDA would win with an armlock. The match wasn't always outstanding, but the action was consistent & really solid with very little waste. Due to it being such a hard fought serious match that went back & forth so many times, the drama really began to escalate as the match progressed. Highlights included KUSHIDA springboarding off a chair to dropkick O'Reilly who was sitting on another chair, O'Reilly countering KUSHIDA's moonsault with a triangle, & O'Reilly turning KUSHIDA's Back to the Future into a guillotine. The finish saw KUSHIDA hit a crazy hoverboard lock off the 2nd, which O'Reilly eventually fought his way back to his feet on & was kneeing a prone KUSHIDA repeatedly as KUSHIDA was still fighting for the submission until KUSHIDA switched it up, catching a knee & going into his Back to the Future for the win. I liked this finish because while KUSHIDA won with a big power move rather than a submission, the submission allowed him to be opportunistic in finding the perfect spot to hit a move in that was a little out of the scope of what they were generally doing here (in this case, I would have liked it more had he not failed on it earlier) in to get the kill shot. ***3/4
Tomohiro Ishii vs. Matt Riddle 11:47. Energetic Ishii sprint exchanging strikes & suplexes until someone caved in. Riddle is one of those wrestlers I'm not sure whether to be impressed or unimpressed by. He's such a good athlete that he's very far ahead of the curve for his 2+ years experience level in pro wrestling at the time of this match, but what's frustrating is he just adopted all the bad habits of pro wrestling rather than carrying anything over from what would have been a 10-3 MMA career had two of his wins not been overturned due to his reefer madness. Seeing someone who is a quality striker in a real situation roll out one of the most embarassing series of middle kicks you'll ever see here & be blown out of the water by the striking of someone whose athletic background is low level baseball is somewhat tough to take, but Riddle is a game opponent who, for the most part, fit into the very narrow scope of what Ishii tries to do quite well. There's not a lot of depth here, but this is the kind of undercard match I want to see, it's short, but that's fine since both guys really bring it for the time they have, and thus the match is intense, the outcome seems somewhat meaningful, and the brevity seems reasonable given the level of violence. That being said, I thought the finish was rather uninspiring with Ishii just kicking out of 3 big Riddle moves then straight up winning with his vertical drop brainbuster. ***
WGP 42 11/12/17, Super Middleweight Title Match: Diego Gaucho vs. Rodolfo Cavalo 5R. Really hard fought, high paced title fight. Gaucho wanted to capitalize on his length using his kicks & knees, but Cavalo applied massive forward pressure, backing Gaucho into the ropes with his heavy punches & continuing to work him over there, cutting him under the left eye. Gaucho finally landed a nice right hook counter & followed with 3 big knees in the final minute of the 1st, but he was just having a really hard time slowing Cavalo down or keeping him off him. Gaucho showed better footwork in the 2nd, cutting the corners so he was usually backing into open space rather than the ropes, and could thus use front kicks to keep Cavalo at bay. Cavalo was supposed to slow down so Gaucho could begin to take over, but instead Gaucho quickly tired from all his backing, and Cavalo was working him over on the ropes again, and doing more damage to the eye. Gaucho's defense was a little better in the 3rd & he had his moments with knees late, but it was another round where he was simply outworked. Gaucho came out firing in the 4th, but the fight changing knee to the back of the head he caught Cavalo with against the ropes after ducking an overhand right was blatantly illegal given he threw it with Cavalo's chest on the ropes. The gutless ref didn't take a point, so Gaucho also got a much needed rest, and was able to come out firing on the restar, landing some more knees & wobbling Cavalo with a left hook late. With Gaucho mounting a strong burst at the start as well as after the foul, this was the first Gaucho round he won, so on my scorecard he needed at least a knockdown in the 5th. Gaucho managed just that with a series of hooks a minute into the 5th. Cavalo beat the count, but was already exhausted from all the rounds of pressuring, and was basically a sitting duck, still punching but mostly standing against the ropes. Gaucho's knees to the midsection weren't helping Cavalo's cause any, but Cavalo managed to stay on his feet. Nonetheless, with the 10-8 final round for Gaucho, he retained the title via draw. To some extent, this was an amazing comeback, though if the ref takes a point for the foul, Cavalo walks away with the title, and if not for the foul, Cavalo might have won the 4th because it's doubtful Gaucho would have somewhere found the energy to make the 2nd push. Good match.
NJ 6/4/18, Best Of The Super Junior 2018 Final Match: Hiromu Takahashi vs. Taiji Ishimori 34:01. When you take two guys who can't carry a match and are very explosive but short on material & suddenly ask them to go more than twice as long as normal, you can't really expect to get anything but an inconsistent, meandering up & down contest. These aren't guys you necessarily look to for solid wrestling, but over the course of 15 minutes they would have done enough crazy stunts that it wouldn't have really mattered. When you are instead stretching those stunts over 35 minutes, that obviously makes them much less explosive & leaves you with a 20 minute void. I love long matches, but you have to actually have something going on & do something with the time. This match had more padding than extra thick memory foam. Hiromu was in kamikaze mode even much more than usual, actually coming up with a new sequence that will take more time off his career where he did a running dropkick on the outside to set up one of the most reckless stunts I've ever seen, trying to powerbomb Ishimori but taking an absolutely insane bump down a flight of stairs when Ishimori reversed with a Frankensteiner. There were plenty of other cool spots, for instance Taiji countering the sunset flip powerbomb by backflipping off the apron, Takahashi getting his knees up for the 450 splash, & Takahashi armdragging his way out of the bloody cross then getting his Frankensteiner turned into a powerbomb but locking his triangle which Ishimori eventually escaped slamming him into the turnbuckle. For the most part though, they just did the moves they always do without incorporating them into their overlong exhibition, and outside of some bad brawling & hokey schoolyard chasing, the rest of the body largely consisted of someone doing some random thing & walking in a circle or playing to the crowd then eventually doing some other random thing, wash, rinse, repeat. There was no flow to the action & no real purpose to virtually anything they were doing out there. These guys are great athletes who are capable of fantastic things when there's someone to pull it out of them, but together all they could do was to take some risks & roll through their arsenals. It was basically Sabu vs. RVD level stuff minus the handful of horrible miscues. This might be the worst Super Jr final ever. I'm not even sure it cracks the top 10 matches of the tournament, and this was one of the weaker tournaments to begin with. ***
NJ 1/4/17, IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title Match: KUSHIDA vs. Hiromu Takahashi 16:15. Takahashi returned to New Japan after a 3 1/2 year foreign excursion that was forgettable when he wasn't wrestling Dragon Lee, but as with Okada that didn't actually matter, with a lot of hype & an immediate title reign, a star was born. This was a lot more Takahashi's up & down, action & inaction match than KUSHIDA's. When it was good, it was really good with explosive high risk offense, but it should have been a lot more explosive given it wasn't particularly long & Dome junior matches tend to emphasize spectacle above all else. They get off to such a great start with Takahashi jumping KUSHIDA before the bell, knocking him off the top rope while he was posing, but KUSHIDA stopped his dive with a handspring kick & hit a tope con giro then went right into his arm work. Takahashi came back with his sunset flip powerbomb to the floor, & was so excited he completely laid KUSHIDA out he proceeded to sit in the ring, giving him nearly 90 seconds to recover. The match just continued in this vein, doing a great move then just laying around with Takahashi holding his arm whenever he was waiting around for KUSHIDA to recover rather than working some more subtle selling into some actual action. KUSHIDA did a lot of good things in this match as you'd expect, mixing great athletism with a focused arm attack, and Takahashi was fun when he was doing the spots he'd probably be healthier not doing, but the match wasn't really flowing at all because it was all stops & starts, super fast/athletic then dead, with KUSHIDA basically regaining the offensive because Takahashi wouldn't really do anything until KUSHIDA was actually up & ready to counter him. They did a few tremendous sequences when they were good & ready though. KUSHIDA countering Takahashi's 2nd attempt at the sunset flip powerbomb by backflipping off the apron then countering Takahashi's missile kick off the apron with a flying armbar was truly awesome. KUSHIDA began hitting the payoff to all his armwork, his hoverboard lock (Kimura) finisher, which he'd visibly counter himself by putting Takahashi's arm in front of his stomach. There was a nice segment where Takahashi tried to time bomb his way out, but KUSHIDA turned it into a cradle & reapplied. KUSHIDA even had the hoverboard lock on the middle rope before they went to the finish with Takahashi punching his way out then hitting his wheelbarrow victory roll, Death Valley bomb into the turnbuckles, & the time bomb. KUSHIDA, of course, looked a lot better than Takahashi here, leading Takahashi through the match to the point he was providing answers when Takahashi was taking too long to do so on his own, and showing a lot more credible striking. Takahashi has the makings of a fine champion with a lot of charisma in addition to some great moves though, and the Tokyo Dome is always a great place to put the belt on a returning up & coming wrestler, so this was a good move to put the second useful native in the junior division on the map. ***1/2
NJ 6/9/17, IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Hiromu Takahashi vs. KUSHIDA 19:12. The most explosive & brutal of their matches by far, and a tremendous improvement over their Tokyo Dome match as they just packed so much more action & violence into this one. It was a spotfest to be certain, but more of a heavyweight style one with both going all out to deliver a great match & KUSHIDA being at his most aggressive, having a chip on his shoulder & a lot to prove after his humiliating subsequent 2 minute loss to Hiromu at Sakura Genesis. There was plenty of KUSHIDA influence with the lengthy strike exchange & the usual Kimura focus, but it seemed more toward Hiromu's car crash style with the stunts really standing out. Hiromu may not have improved as a wrestler in the past 6 months, but his standing has greatly increased with 2 big wins over KUSHIDA in a row, and already this seemed like a battle between the top 2 natives in the division rather than Hiromu being another guy who just briefly kept the belt warm for KUSHIDA so the division has something going on & they didn't burn KUSHIDA out making him the junior Okada. It had the aura of a huge match, and the intensity to back it up. The first 3 minutes were essentially just exchanging elbows then chops, starting at a furious pace then slowing down as they wore down some. The match slowed down with Hiromu's stalling once KUSHIDA, as everyone else, predictably didn't know enough not to charge Takahashi when he was near the corner, but it was basically full on aggression outside of these few minutes. KUSHIDA redeemed himself having an answer for the sunset flip powerbomb (which Hiromu later connected with), and began to get his arm storyline going countering with an armbar on the apron. KUSHIDA did some vicious kicks to the arm, & after taking a dynamite plunger, turned Takahashi's attempt to do it off the top into an avalanche style Kimura. Aside from Hiromu's usual dangerous moves, the insanity included KUSHIDA springboarding off a chair for a dropkick over the guard rail & the key spot of the match, KUSHIDA hitting an avalanche style Back to the Future that vanquished Will Ospreay to earn him this title shot for a teased double knockout. This set up the finish as once they recovered, they exchanged strikes on their knees until they made their way back to their feet & then Takahashi beat KUSHIDA to the Masahiro Tanaka but, of course, just stood there & waited for KUSHIDA to answer with 2 of his own to set up the finish where KUSHIDA kept stomping him in the face endlessly, which drew boos, until Hiromu was in no condition to fight off the Kimura. The rivalry was really heated throughout, with the finish further exemplifying the lengths KUSHIDA was willing, and forced, to go to just to beat this young punk. Not as good as KUSHIDA's Super Jr. final with Ospreay the week before, but after their previous two meetings, it's awesome that they're even worth putting in the same sentence. ****
NJ 6/3/18
Best Of The Super Junior 2018 Block A Match: Will Ospreay [10] vs. Flip Gordon [6] 19:36. A fun match, but while Ospreay can normally make any completely unrealistic high flying action into a somewhat realistic struggle where the end game is urgent & meaningful, Gordon seemed to undermine that at every turn with both the way he wrestles & his general demeanor. Gordon has cool gymnastic offense, but has yet to figure out how to incorporate it plausibly into a match. It's often just too slow developing, so, at best, his opponent is just standing or laying there watching him do his cartwheels & whatnot, at worst they have to actively make a fool of themselves running into his headscissors when he's walking around on his hands for 30 seconds. Sure, there's suspension of disbelief required for any of this stuff, but the difference between Ospreay & Flip is in their timing. For instance, here Flip waits until Ospreay already has 1 foot on the top rope & is about ready to jump off to do his kip up then hit an enzuigiri so Ospreay is left to just stare at him like a dolt, whereas Ospreay essentially stops Flip's forward progress pushing off him to backflip & is much quicker to follow with the enzuigiri, so it's easier to accept. Part of this is simply that Ospreay is quicker, more athletic, and has better reflexes. You can see it in how much more fluid his kip up counter to the shoulderblock was than Flip's a few moments earlier. They started with a bunch of athletic counters, and this is normally some of Ospreay's best stuff, but against Flip it just felt like a lighthearted exhibition. Ospreay knew he had to be the solid one, and shifted from the flying to strikes & submissions. Flip had his moments, of course, such as an insane swandive double jump tope con giro, corkscrew moonsault off the 2nd, & Samoan special. Ospreay did a number of cool things as well, though this match actually wasn't as flippy as Flip vs. another flipper would lead you to believe. Nonetheless, they did so many good moves that the match is worth checking out even if it's not a match you're likely to get really invested in. I liked Gordon's superkick counter for the Oscutter, and Ospreay later countering a swandive move with a cutter off the 2nd to setup winning with the stormbreaker. ***
Best Of The Super Junior 2018 Block B Match: Hiromu Takahashi [10] vs. KUSHIDA [8] 24:16. One of the reasons KUSHIDA is the best native in the company is he still comes up with matches you haven't seen before. This wasn't his best tournament overall given he was denied the opportunity to deliver a great final, but he still had the best two, arguably even 3 matches of the league, and they weren't the best by the default scenario of simply having great workers going hard & throwing bombs being enough to outshine the competition, they instead stood out because they were different & fresh. This was the progressive rock version of a wrestling match, with all sorts of style & tempo changes keeping things unpredictable. It had an incredibly odd start to say the least, but whether I really liked that part or not, it did set an unusual tone. The 1st 5 minutes literally consisted of them staring at each other & clinching, which was supposed to help elevate this battle to determine the B Block finalist into the realm of epic struggle between the top native juniors, but wasn't as interesting as their big strike exchange to start off the 6/9/18 match, and would have been a lot more believable if someone at least threw a knee or actually, well, tried anything. Suddenly, the match exploded for a minute & they went from this weird sort of leverage game into a full on sprint with Takahashi failing on his sunset flip powerbomb & KUSHIDA hitting his tope con giro. It immediately slowed down to start the body of the match with KUSHIDA working the arm, but would continue to have more & more bursts of action as the match progressed, with Takahashi soon getting in his missile kick of the apron. They had three big title matches in 2017, the third being the best by a mile, so it's not that they were doing a lot of new moves, but it just felt so different because they were actually doing something during the "stops". The upside of Takahashi is his daring explosive action, but that's often negated by the downside of him not having anything else interesting to do & thus just wasting time until his next explosion. The way KUSHIDA structured this match really accentuated the good Takahashi while minimalizing the bad, as the starts & stops not only helped tell the story of the match with Hiromu wanting the wild spectacular action while KUSHIDA preferrred the technical wrestling, but allowed them to make the slower segments useful by delivering interesting technical wrestling that was crucial to the story they were telling. They were able to move from one style to the other effectively, with big spots such as KUSHIDA stopping Takahashi's avalanche style move & countering with the armbreaker off the 2nd & Hiromu lifting his way out of the Kimura & countering with his dynamite plunger. The match may have started slow, but it built up a ton of momentum & intrigue as it progressed. Takahashi's triangle is an element of surprise rather than something you wear down into (granted in reality essentially all submissions are). He got it after a Frankensteiner, but KUSHIDA cartwheeled out. Later, he got it after the Masahiro Tanaka & KUSHIDA failed to cartwheel out but protected his neck with his hand long enough to make it to the ropes. Hiromu followed with his deadly new martinete especial into another triangle to advance to the final. This really blew away their Tokyo Dome match last year & was a little better than their Dominion match. I can see people preferring the Dominion match because it's more spectacular, but this match was more original & compelling to me. It's hard to imagine the final being better given Ishimori hasn't shown much this tournament & both are wrestlers who can do their own thing well & work to the level of the opposition but aren't going to make anyone better. ****1/4
NJPW 6/2/18
Best Of The Super Junior 2018 Block B Match: Hiromu Takahashi [8] vs. SHO [4] 16:19. SHO was once again really impressive here, as he worked a match that purported to be the typical Takahashi match, but actually turned it into something much more consistent & intense rather than the usual car crash with a lot of walking in circles. The pacing of this match was much better as SHO kept the running sequences, but they also mostly pressed their advantages rather than it being so uneven with all of Hiromu's stops that just let the opponent off the hook, with SHO often inserting his technical wrestling, in this case working the arm, into Hiromu's usual gaps. It didn't have the highs of most Hiromu matches, but it was a much more complete match that was interesting from start to finish. Takahashi still won when SHO twice failed to slam his way out of a triangle, but it's definitely SHO rather than Takahashi that looks like they'll eventually succeed KUSHIDA as the top working native in the division, unless SHO is just moved up to heavyweight. ***1/2
Best Of The Super Junior 2018 Block B Match: KUSHIDA [8] vs. Dragon Lee [6] 18:17. These are the two best workers in this block, but the match took place at a very inopportune time with both wrestlers needing the win to have any real chance of making the finals, but KUSHIDA obviously having to come out on top so his big main event match the next night with Takahashi would decide the block. As there was no day off & KUSHIDA was going 25 minutes tomorrow, it was a tough ask for him to deliver the match this deserved on this small show. Lee is a workhorse though, and KUSHIDA wasn't just going to allow himself to be shown up, so they wound up giving a big match effort anyway. What was really good about the match is it just kept going, there were a lot of running sequences because of Lee & a lot of submissions because of KUSHIDA, but there styles blend together a lot better than you might think & they both did a good job of countering in & out of styles as well as showing what they had to offer in the other guys style. Because both are diverse, they were able to get away with never deciding on a particular style & instead showing more of what they have to offer. Sometimes they were just throwing out their lucha/flying, submissions, & strikes, but the match was always entertaining, starting good & gaining momentum for excellent stretch run. There was a great spot early where Lee tried to counter the wheelbarrow with an armdrag, but KUSHIDA jumped & hooked an armbar in midair. Later, Lee turned the Masahiro Tanaka into the Shibata standing sleeper, but KUSHIDA escaped with an ipponzeoi into the Kimura. Lee matadored KUSHIDA & hit a killer German suplex as he bounced off the ropes then, when KUSHIDA tried to comeback charging with a lariat, Lee took him down hard & fast into a wakigatame. Lee added the headbutt to his Shibata tributes, breaking KUSHIDA's armbar in the ropes & setting up his corner hanging footstomp. KUSHIDA did a sick, fast DDT counter to a Lee's desnucadora & hit his Back to the Future, but Lee hooked the small package on impact to nearly steal the win. Lee followed with an awesome reverse Frankensteiner & again tried the desnucadora, but this time KUSHIDA turned it into his Back to the Future for the win. I liked this match a lot more the second time I watched it when I was over it not being the match it could have been, but it still seemed like something was missing. I'm not sure if that was from them or the way the match was shot, but I feel like there was probably more urgency & intensity than came across here. Still, it's at least in the running with Lee vs. Takahashi for the 2nd best match of the tournament so far. ***3/4
WOS 3/27/82: Marty Jones vs. Caswell Martin. Jones was one of the most technically proficient opponents of Tiger Mask, able to chain grapple at lightning speed & really bridge the gap between gymnastics & technical wrestling into its own sort of ballet that was similar to lucha libre except with the emphasis totally on the locks rather than the flying. Martin had some tours of Japan as well with NJ & original UWF, & had a lot of success in Germany & Austria, winning some tournaments, but wasn't nearly as big a star in the UK as he should have been because they somehow never figured out what to do with him beyond billing him from Antigua in the West Indies & giving him the nickname Cast Iron. He was a great athlete as well, & was right there with Jones in everything he tried. They had great timing & chemistry & did a really exciting junior style face vs. face technical match where both used their speed & athleticism to make their technical wrestling a lot more impressive, and especially to counter everything the opponent threw at them. It was one of those matches where the aggressor was made a fool of 8 times out of 10, though by starting the sequence of counters they still won the war sometimes. Neither man had anything resembling big moves, but they were fantastic tumblers who fought a no b.s. perpetual motion style where they found one escape from what the opponent was trying to do after another until they finally caught the opponent off guard & got a fall before the opponent knew what hit them. No one ever gained any kind of a decisive advantage & the match never slowed down, with each getting a flash pin then Jones finally winning in the 5th when Martin tried a high cross body but was too close to the ropes so instead of Jones going all the way down to the canvas, he hurt his back when he was stopped by the top rope & Martin was thus sent crashing to the floor for the TKO. The match felt like a legitimate sporting event, and Jones, unsatisfied with winning such a good back & forth contest by accident, did the honorable thing & had the decision overturned to a no contest. ****
UFC 225 6/9/18: Robert Whittaker vs. Yoel Romero 5R. Romero is one of those fighters that winning is so important to he seems to spend every ounce of effort trying to game the system, and UFC keeps enabling him to get away with it, whether it's winning after getting not answering the bell against Tim Kennedy, getting a reduced roid sentence (that's technically not UFC's decision but they've only pushed him harder since his return), missing weight but still getting a title shot, etc. All that being what it is, what's interesting to consider is what he could be if he cheated at more typical levels because it seems like whatever bump he gets is then negated by the fact he has to deplete himself so ridiculously to make weight with all that unnatural muscle, losing his opportunity to leave with the title once again by coming up short & entering the ring at far less than 100%. Thus, he can only fight in spurts with the muscle depleting his gas tank more than a persistent & consistent opponent pressuring him the entire fight does. This was really two fights, the 3 rounds where Romero barely moved & Whittaker just put a ton of volume on him & the two rounds where Romero got a knockdown. Romero got a couple of big shots in at the end of the 4th, which was a clear Whittaker round, but outside of the 3rd, the rounds themselves weren't back & forth or in question, the debate was whether Romero's highlights & big damaging blows outweighed Whittaker's much more consistent, volume attack. Without round scoring, Romero probably wins the fight, with round scoring, the fight should most likely be a draw because the 5th round was marginally a 10-8 round. I didn't think the 3rd round was a 10-8 round for Romero because that was the one round where both fighters did good work, with Whittaker quickly coming back & hurting Romero with a short elbow then being more or less competitive even though he was losing, and Rogan's idea that Anik later adopted about the 5th round possibly being a 10-7 round was so beyond nutty because Romero mostly just let Whittaker off the hook, not having the energy to actually land anything notable on the ground to the point that Whittaker was able to just rest on his knees for a long stretch holding onto a single leg. And that's really the thing here, Romero can be unhappy that he didn't get this decision if he wants, but when you literally just hand over 3 rounds to the opponent by being a statue to conserve energy & then you can't put away an opponent who doesn't have much left in the 5th because you don't have enough energy, you only have yourself to blame when things don't turn out in your favor. Though Romero's finishes usually come late, this was an atypical fight for him because rather than starting strong then fading, he literally did nothing in the 1st two rounds then came on. In the first fight, Romero was 4/18 on takedowns, 3/10 in the 1st 2 rounds. Tonight he was 3/10 overall, and only 0/1 1st 2 rounds with this attempt coming so late in the 2nd it wouldn't have had any bearing had it succeeded. Whittaker's strategy was to hit Romero when he came forward, but he could easily have walked through a shot to get a takedown, even by his standards, he just didn't have the energy to go hard for that long so he abandoned what should be his biggest asset. To some extent, all of this is neither here nor there though. The fact is, Whittaker sustained a massive injury very early in both fights & big bad Romero still failed to finish a guy who was injured for the majority of the fight. This time Whittaker broke his hand in the 1st round, and had no feeling down his forearm, so his offense was severely hampered as he wasn't able to throw his power hand essentially the whole fight & had to instead rely on his knee hyperextending side kicks, front kicks, & jabs that were supposed to be wearing Romero down while he created openings to get the big shot in, and the short range elbows he had to use instead. Whittaker once again proved himself to be a class act throughout all the nonsense & adversity, never complaining about the situation he found himself in, and just being all heart in the ring. He won the fight because he was able to will himself to do enough where Romero wasn't. The injury was a huge reason Romero even got himself into the fight because a healthy Whittaker isn't a volume striker by trade, he's a guy that when he's at full strength, will rock you & often finish. We didn't really see any of that here though. I mean, Whittaker had his moments, but he wasn't wobbling Yoel, bobbling his head, or anything to that effect. Whittaker really chipped away in the first two rounds, with Romero moving so slowly apart from the random haymaker that he looked like he was trying to fight in a pool. Whittaker was mostly chipping away at distance with the side kick & body kick, but Romero's eye was injured midway through the 2nd from a jab, and within a minute had swelled almost completely shut. The corner did a fantastic job of taking care of it, turning an injury that looked to cause an imminent stoppage into something that wasn't a big issue once they used the endswell on it in between rounds, and perhaps Romero being compromised finally woke him up because economy of movement doesn't begin to describe his style in the 1st 2 rounds. Romero got himself into the fight early in the 3rd when Whittaker's push kick only grazed so it didn't reestablish distance & thus Romero was able to come forward with a left & a big right for the knockdown. This was a great round as Whittaker was proactive going for the desperation takedown & Kimura, & while he then took a few good shots against the cage, he also hurt Romero enough with an elbow that Romero had to go for the takedown as well. They spent a lot of time exchanging in close quarters, and though Whittaker's forehead was busted up & Romero had one nice flurry with Whittaker stuck on the cage, for the most part Whittaker was hanging in the exchanges & he got a solid high kick in. Romero emptied his tank in the 3rd, so he was as flatfooted as your average pro wrestler throughout the crucial 4th round. With Romero applying no pressure, Whittaker was able to fight the way he did in the 1st 2 rounds, just chipping away with the jab & kicks out of the side stance. Whittaker wasn't exiting quick enough at the end of the round, and got caught with 3 big counters, one of which wobbled him. These shots carried over into the 5th round, and Romero also started moving again after the round break. Romero dropped Whittaker with a big left hook 90 seconds in, and should have been able to finish the fight here, but Romero really did nothing significant with a prone Whittaker just holding on to a single leg waiting to clear his head. Romero did land a couple big punches against the cage when Whittaker got back up, but mostly he just held onto him & again let Whittaker off the hook. Honestly, the only reason for this being a 10-8 round is that Whittaker did absolutely nothing, not that Romero actually did much to capitalize on his knockdown. I don't think it's terrible that none of the judges gave Romero any 10-8 rounds. I think it was wrong, but not to say the extent that Dan Henderson not getting a 10-8 round against Michael Bisping was blatant robbery. Whittaker won a split decision 48-47, 47-48, 48-47. Good match.
ARSION 5/24/03, THE ARTIST ONE FINARY 5min 3R: Mariko Yoshida vs. Megumi Fujii 3R 3:30. What made ARSION an excellent league in their first 2 years is Mariko Yoshida got most of the wrestlers to adapt to the changes in combat sports & modernize pro wrestling into something more MMA oriented. They all trained with Pancrase fighters & assorted martial artists & picked up the basics & some things beyond, but outside of judoka Hiromi Yagi, none of Yoshida's opponents came from a legitimate combat sports background. Long before 2003, ARSION had completely homogenized into something largely indiscernable from any other joshi league, & even Yoshida rarely had what had become known as a Yoshida match, but here, in the league's penultimate TV show, we got to see what Yoshida could do with a real mixed martial artist, and it's otherworldly. Yoshida carried AKINO to one of the best debuts ever on 7/21/98, but Yoshida is not at all the story in this match, and although she facilites the pro wrestling aspects, dragging Fujii from one weird lock or throws with no real world application to another, the match is more about her trying to keep up than Fujii. Maybe it should be obvious that Fujii is the story given what an unreal competitor she was in BJJ, sambo, ADCC, MMA, anything she tried & this was no exception, but Yoshida is the best woman wrestler ever in this MMA oriented style match by a wide margin, and this is the master vs. a debuting student who hasn't put the usual amount of time into pro wrestling training because it's just a fun side project. Fujii wasn't the best women's MMA fighter of her generation yet, in fact she'd yet to make her MMA debut when Yoshida befriended her at the AACC dojo & eventually got her to give pro wrestling a try. This was her pro wrestling debut match, and it's not only the greatest debut ever, it's truly a classic of the genre. Puroresu organizations getting known, credentialed athletes from other combat sports to moonlight jobbing for the stars has been a huge part of validating the superiority of pro wrestling & enhancing the reputation of their stars, but the matches themselves were almost never any good whether it was Antonio Inoki, who obviously couldn't be carried if he was the only one who actually knew what he was doing or Shinya Hashimoto, whose matches always seemed way more credible & dramatic when he fought a faker who understood how to tell the story rather than a real fighter who didn't understand how to fake it. Sure, there were exceptions such as Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Trevor Power Clarke, but they were few & far between the plethora of punch pulling groanfests where the real fighter generally looked worse than the wrestler even at their own strengths because they didn't know how to work beyond easing up so much it was laughable. It definitely made a difference over the typical wrestler vs kickboxer debacle that grappling is a lot easier to just do than striking because you can more or less really grapple without hurting one another as long as you don't hyperextend the appendages on the submissions, but it was a lot more that Yoshida is a great trainer & Fujii is a great athlete & quick study who already knew most of what she needed to know. Sure, she had to learn to take some bumps here & work out escapes to some unusual positions, but mostly she did things she'd learned long ago elsewhere. What's so astonishing is she was able to do all her chain grappling with such speed & confidence despite Yoshida's reactions being different than the usual opponent who wasn't cooperating, but this was like nothing you've ever seen even in a RINGS ring. The pace of this match is fantastic, they just go all out, almost nonstop (Fujii escapes to the floor late in the 2nd) like an MMA match, doing 5 more cool things in the time when the usual clowns are posing or aimlessly walking in circles. Fujii's quickness & athleticism was much more striking here than it probably ever was in an MMA match, and she really just hit it out of the park in all aspects to the point the only argument against her as rookie of the year is she didn't continue wrestling, and in this case, she's so many miles above anyone else I'm not sure that's a good argument. One thing that really impressed me about the match is it wasn't particularly repetitive. This may seem a weird comment, but given they took most of the traditional pro wrestling highspots out & one of the competitors was a novice, you'd think they might just have some basic material that they altered slightly, but no, this match was really diverse in all the positions, sweeps, & submissions they were able to slow. They do keep going back to Yoshida's air raid crash & spider twist, but Fujii keeps having different answers for them, so the story aspect doesn't really make things easier on her. Fujii had Yoshida on the defensive from the get go, using the Imanari roll, a jumping leg lock, some crazy jumping guard pull sweep into an armbar, & a flying armbar that Yoshida was saved from by the bell. The weakness of the match is Fujii is so obviously superior to Yoshida on the mat that there isn't a lot of space for Yoshida to try to compete with her there, so she's almost pushed into using her pro wrestling oriented offense, kind of having success because Fujii is out of her element & doesn't have as many counters & escapes for things no one ever actually tries in a real situation. For instance, Yoshida gets a pedigree in after being ready for Fujii's second double leg takedown & stuffing it. Yoshida has never been so owned on the mat, and she takes some of the frustration out stomping Fujii even after she gets to the ropes. Fujii seems like she's going to be totally by the grappling book, but then near the end of the 2nd round she does pull out a Frankensteiner into a 1/2 crab. The match kicks up a couple gears late in the 2nd, and Fujii is saved by the bell from Yoshida's spider twist. The third round is just nuts, working at overdrive doing one speedy submission or air raid crash counter after another. I'm probably making it sound like the match is a lot less competitive than it is, the whole thing is back & forth a light speed, and though Fujii seems to be dominant, it's more that she's just a lot more dynamic. Yoshida might answer her more for move, but you've never seen someone in a pro wrestling ring that's going so hard & fast on the ground as Fujii is. The third round in particular is just answers, answers, answers from both with Yoshida really pushing herself to the absolute maximum of her capabilities to keep up with the lightning speed & does it in her sleep confidence of Fujii's matwork. Yoshida, of course, wins, and Fujii unfortunately doesn't return often, but Yoshida did send her students to train with Fujii. If the question is how can pro wrestling exist in an MMA world, the answer is Yoshida vs. Fujii! ****1/2
NJPW 6/7/15, Best Of The Super Junior XXII Final Match: KUSHIDA vs. Kyle O'Reilly 30:45. Tremendous epic final that never felt long & wasn't "limited" by being a junior match, managing to meld most of the good aspects of pro wrestling from the past 5 decades into something that was not only still cohesive, but kept adding layers of goodness. From the get go, it felt like an athletic contest, and rather than try to trump up some nonsense about why they suddenly hated each other, O'Reilly offered a handshake before the match & they proceeded to do an honorable technical classic that actually gave wrestling a good name & made it come off as a sport rather than the sideshow farce all the haters associate it with. A lot of matches are serious, but this or their 5/21/16 rematch would be great to show your friends who think there's nothing to wrestling beyond Hogan flexing his muscles & punching his hand or some poor sap lying on his back forever while Rock spends a minute telegraphing his elbow drop then has to slap on a chinlock to catch his breath. The match had enough crediblity & intensity, while still being diverse, spectacular, & exciting. Though both are more MMA leaning than almost any other junior in the actual offense they use, and I think those aspects are among the strongest of the match, at least compared to the cringe worthy grappling & striking you see from most others, the match doesn't even start out as a quasi worked like a shoot as KUSHIDA's 5/27/18 match with SHO leans toward being throughout. Instead, it's more a modern updating of the old UK/US grappling masters blended into the more technical end of the hybrid melting pot junior style, maybe some weird combination of Robinson vs. Gagne & Samurai vs. Otani, but no example I can come up with really feels right because its a unique match in its own right. This isn't a match that blows you away from the start like a lot of high end junior matches with a really hot opening or an aerial explosion before they get into the match, but they have really great chemistry, flowing so fluidly in & out of all the styles that very little feels out of place or wasteful (KUSHIDA's swandive northern chop never really works for me). The match builds exceptionally through a focused but never overbearing story, is smart & well thought out, and they do a lot of things well that you don't normally see from others. Right at the outset, there's more thought put into how they are going to get the opponent down with both actually using some reasonable entries to engage, though "leverage" ultimately plays a bigger role than solid wrestling takedowns. O'Reilly is one of the only wrestlers who is actually willing & able to throw something that even resembles a kickboxing strike combo, though striking is generally a minor aspect that comes in late when all else has failed. Both men have an arm submission they like to win with, KUSHIDA the hoverboard lock & O'Reilly the armbar, and KUSHIDA had a bad elbow coming in, so it was only natural that both men targeted their opponents arms, but they eased into it. The arm story was the main thing going on, but while neither forget about it for too long, they also didn't unnaturally force it trying to be consistent. KUSHIDA's first big success came escaping O'Reilly's guillotine by rolling into the Kimura. This set up the key spot of the match where KUSHIDA tried the Kimura off the 2nd, but O'Reilly stopped it & accidentally gave KUSHIDA a concussion with an armbreaker off the ropes. In a sense, this isn't a big move by avalanche style standards, but the problem is there's no good way to soften or cussion the bump, so even KUSHIDA's arm & shoulder hit first, his head bounced off the canvas. O'Reilly basically just released his armlock because KUSHIDA wasn't responding with the counter, but from that point KUSHIDA recovered, somehow. One of the amazing things about the match is KUSHIDA miraculously managed to do another 17 or so minutes of the best wrestling of his career in this state, including taking a ridiculous avalanche style backdrop, and although he forgot the match so O'Reilly had to keep calling the spots for him, which was somewhat distracting at points, KUSHIDA's performance wasn't too compromised apart from the injury arguably causing him to more or less miss his corkscrew moonsault right before the finish. KUSHIDA didn't ease up, not at all, he just plowed forward with a tope con giro & moonsault that O'Reilly awesomely countered with a triangle. Though the match had started somewhat cautiously, they really built a ton of momentum in a short period, and throughout the 2nd half you really felt like the match could end any time. Everyone knew KUSHIDA was going to win, yet the match was so good you actually often forgot that. All that being said, they tended to avoid near finishes until the very end, with O'Reilly kicking out of the sliced bread, which isn't a normal KUSHIDA move but rather the finisher of his tag partner, Alex Shelley, and also the afformentioned mostly missed flying move. I liked that when they worked the striking into the match, they did so blasting away at each others arms with the logic being if they couldn't break it one way they'd try another. One of the best arm sequences saw O'Reilly hit a brainbuster into an armbar, but KUSHIDA's hold his clasp, so Kyle transitioned into an omoplata. One of the great things about the match is they kept answering each other & escalating the proceedings without things seeming too cute or contrived. For instance, O'Reilly did his guillotine on the apron, & just as Bobby Fish was screaming for the ref to stop it because KUSHIDA was out, KUSHIDA answered with his own brainbuster onto the apron, which set up a great double sell spot where KUSHIDA was face first drooling onto the mat as Fish cracked me up screaming at him "WHY? WHY? WHY? YOU'RE EVIL!" There were a few perfect opportunities for Fish to interfere, but they refused to soil the match with such circus shenanigans. The worst part of the match for me was predictably the big strike exchange, which was just all sorts of contrived beyond the usual just waiting for the opponent to eventually hit you back when they got around to it, starting super slow because both couldn't use the arms & were doing as much damage to themselves by doing so anyway, so instead of just doing something else they kept making silly faces then began mixing the pace until it's super hyper because who knows why? Thankfully, they did see the story through with KUSHIDA winning with the Kimura. This match combined with KUSHIDA's subsequent 7/5/15 junior title win over Omega helped establish KUSHIDA as the first real ace of NJ's junior division since Devitt was "promoted". As amazing as KUSHIDA's performance was, especially given the circumstances, it was really O'Reilly who carried the day & kept things together amidst the adversity. Even well above his Never title shot against Shibata, this & the league match rematch stand as his best work in NJ, and show him at the height of his powers. ****3/4
RPW/NJPW Uprising 2015 10/2/15, Kyle O'Reilly vs. KUSHIDA 17:43. The much anticipated rematch of the Super Jr final was rolled out in the mid card with nothing at stake, and subsequently was only half the length, which would have been fine if they wrestled like their 5/21/16 rematch rather than doing half the match. Part of the problem with doing this match in the UK was there's no Brits, so it was behind a lot of stuff that was very obviously going to be vastly inferior, but it was interesting that they shifted the technical style even more toward their idea of a World of Sport match. Leaning less toward MMA in their submissions early on didn't improve the match, but they used legit stuff when it mattered, and apart from what I'd consider to be fundamental errors having O'Reilly repeatedly using the ropes for leverage when he had KUSHIDA in the abdominal stretch to get cheap heat after KUSHIDA readily shook hands with O'Reilly to start based on the honor he earned in the previous encounter & O'Reilly then KUSHIDA moving away from the real sports intensity & aura of the first match by clowning around a bit, it was okay in the sense that this at least felt like a different match rather than the radio edit of the original classic. The main story of O'Reilly wanting to win with the armbar & KUSHIDA wanted to win again with the Kimura was the same though, and despite the hamming it up early surrounding, and thus lessened the importance of these crucial finishers, there was some really intricate technical wrestling going on here, with a lot of sweet reversals back & forth. The match really took off when O'Reilly turned the handspring back elbow into his ARMageddon. From here the sequences were excellent as they both had one answer after another & were just chaining counters until something finally momentarily stuck. The striking was better in this encounter because it was less predictable & they weren't just waiting for another. Down the stretch, they exchanged discus elbows then instead of KUSHIDA standing there so O'Reilly could hit him with a 2nd discus elbow, they both landed one at once, & instead of O'Reilly letting KUSHIDA hit him with the Masahiro Tanaka, he countered with the guard pull guillotine. The match just rather randomly ended a little after that though with O'Reilly getting the submission with the triangle. I didn't expect the match to go 30 minutes or anything, but it seemed reasonable that if they were just going to pull the plug with O'Reilly catching KUSHIDA in something, it would be with the armbar, so this finish was surprising to say the least. ***1/2
NJPW 5/21/16, Best Of The Super Junior XXIII Block A Match: Kyle O'Reilly [2] vs. KUSHIDA [0] 20:06. Not only a huge improvement over their 10/2/15 RPW rematch, but a distinct, legitimate rival to their amazing 6/7/15 Super Jr final. O'Reilly improved considerably in the year since their first meeting, & was now able to put so much more of his game together, chaining, comboing, & countering crisper, faster, & more aggressively. The match was cleaner & flowed a lot smoother from the combination of familiarity & clearer focus due to KUSHIDA not being woozy for the majority of the match. Back in the main event where they belong, this was just a wonderful way to kick off the 2016 Super Jr. league, a match that had more of a junior style feel than their previous matches while also having more of an MMA style feel. Due to being 10 minutes shorter than last years final, it was a lot more briskly paced & aggressive, and while obviously not as important without the trophy on the line, they actually seemed to wrestle with more urgency, increasing the stiffness & adopting a full steam ahead style, just really using their speed a lot more & having the confidence to take it to each other so beautifully & brutally. This was as good a match as the league portion has ever produced, having all the intensity & aura that the RPW sequel was missing & always feeling like a meaningful match where both were giving their all. They had a really clear idea of what they were trying to do here, and were firing off all sorts of great chain wrestling, being really technical but also using their speed & athleticism to enhance everything they did. The striking was excellent here as everything was either a combination, a single shot that left the opponent prone so they could immediately hit the next move or sequence, or a series that added to the story of the match (KUSHIDA's kicks to the arm). There was a n effortless sequence where O'Reilly had a double leg takedown, mounted, used a little ground & pound to open up the armbar then shifted to a heel hold when that didn't work. KUSHIDA still worked the arm, though with much less emphasis on the Kimura, while O'Reilly switched to the knee, though his push was more to get to the point of a submission so he could chain them until something worked. This was really the style of the match in general & what made it so riveting, the perpetual get something & then keep switching & progressing until something sticks. It wasn't so much about doing a move as making something of whatever position you happened to be in. Sane wrestlers would learn from what went wrong in the past, but instead of avoiding the dangerous spot that gave KUSHIDA the concussion, KUSHIDA this time used the arm breaker off the 2nd on Kyle. Fish wasn't at ringside this time, but he was surely back in the dressing room screaming "you're evil!" Another play off the 1st match saw O'Reilly turn KUSHIDA's standing moonsault into a triangle, though KUSHIDA quickly cartwheeled out of the move that cost him the 2nd match. This set up the spot of the match later on where O'Reilly set KUSHIDA up on a chair & ran the apron trying for a dropkick, but KUSHIDA turned it into a flying armbar, taking out the chair in the process. Whereas O'Reilly holding the ropes in the RPW match just seemed like the usual cornball pro wrestling shenanigans to get a reaction, his introduction of the chair & his low blow after catching one of KUSHIDA's kicks to his arm came off much better here, they seemed like he'd become desperate enough that he stooped from his honorable perch & didn't stop trying to win the match to toy with the crowd. These guys were coming up with nutty counters all over the place, KUSHIDA even turning O'Reilly's guard pull guillotine into a Dragon suplex. Finally Kyle got KUSHIDA in the triangle again, but rather than waiting, this time he quickly switched into his ARMageddon for the win. For me, this is their best match, and a match that's actually pretty underrated. It's more creative & the level of difficulty is higher, yet this time they pull everything off to perfection. ****3/4
