Friday 29 May 2009

WWE: Superstars 28th May 2009

Been away for a couple of weeks. Having a little marriage and honeymoon. Don't worry. It's over now. Anyway, I come back, and there's a new WWE show which is just wrestling matches, and I LOVE wrestling matches. Last week there was a nice little CM Punk-Jericho match. This week, there's some John Cena. Let's do it.

Tag match between Carlito and Primo and Haas and Benjamin. I am shocked how much of a turnaround Carlito has had since this tag team run. I'm not saying he's a great worker or anything, but he looks happy in the ring, and the team is over. Decent little formula match. Primo is fun to watch - entirely unnecessary flips aside, he does his share of flying around. WGTT cut Primo off and it feels like 2003 again, with Haas and Benjamin working the arm in tandem. The Cryme Tyme interruption ruins the build of the heat section, leading to a lukewarm tag and a flat finish. I assume this builds to something else, but I was all set to recommend to call this decent.

Finlay and Swagger are the ECW match. The four minute ECW match. If this was longer, it would have been pretty great. We could imagine that the story here is that a continually developing Swagger doesn't get bogged down on the mat with Finlay again, who has been shown to match him there. So instead he comes out with a barrage of strikes and impact moves. Finlay manages a couple of comeback spots to make a little competitive, but this is all about elevating Swagger, which is fine.

And... I have now caught up with the basketball thing. Half of my brain feels the response was stupid, childish and that Vince managed to make himself look like the jerk. The other half of my brain contains a reminder that I'm frequently amused by all those things.

Main event is Cena vs. Ted Dibiase, which I'm looking forward to. Cena's like Rock is being a top guy who always looks to elevate anyone he's with, including midcard guys. The Swagger match a couple of weeks a go is a good example. Cena bumps around for Dibiase, and Dibiase comes off as a smarter opponent against Cena's more highly charged character. In fact, although the commentary puts over Dibiase smartness as learning from Orton, Dibiase seems much more cerebral than Orton ever does. Obviously, Dibiase does falling fistdrops, which are great, and he can throw as punch too. There's a nice crossbody roll-through sequence as Cena puts over his strength and lifts Dibiase in the Attitude Adjustment position. Dibiase avoids three attempts at Cena's finisher, which I enjoyed. Cena finally resorts to his secondary submission finish, obviously playing towards the Big Show match on Sunday. Simple, effective TV match, with a clear dynamic and plenty of energy. Good stuff.

A show worth watching on a regular basis, especially as it is all wrestling. I like the concept of a show case show with each brand getting one match. RAW wins this week for best match. I don't usually get time to watch all four WWE shows, so I'll be continuing to watch this and ECW on a regular basis, and trying to post thoughts when I have them (intermittent).

Friday 8 May 2009

DRAGON GATE - Infinity 127, 128, 129!!

A boat load of Infinitys surfaced recently so I'm gonna blast through all of them now so as to not get behind.

127

1. Dragon Kid & Akira Tozawa vs. Gamma & Susumu Yokosuka

This match concerned me. Warriors-5 were waaaaaay too schticky for my liking here. I have no problem with Gamma being a part of the group but I don't want the group to become a "Gamma Group" per se. They need to tone down that stuff, it really took from this match alot.

2. Akebono vs. Masaaki Mochizuki

Fun squash to get BIG BABY 'BONO over. Mochi won't be hurt by this whatsoever. No problemo.

3. YAMATO, Yasushi Kanda & Ryo Saito vs.
Naruki Doi, Masato Yoshino & BxB Hulk

Your average good DG 6 Man with the focus on building Hulk vs. Yamato. Kanda took the fall after some Speed Muscle double team offence. Post match Doi called for a Dream Gate challenger that has never fought for the belt before. Much to his surprise, out walked Akebono. OH SHIT SON! Doi initially looked petrified but then manned up and got all up in the giants face.

What a weird title match we have on our hands.

Weaker than usual Infinity but still perfectly acceptable pro wrestling.

Infinity 127 - 6.5/10

128

YAMATO & Ryo Saito vs. Masaaki Mochizuki & Don Fujii

Really fun tag. YAMATO/Mochi interaction is always awesome and this was no exception. Ryo continues to settle nicely into his rudo role and the Big Don was his usual charismatic self. Ryo got the duke over Fuji but his celebration was cut short when Killer Hulk hit the ring and laid him out, but then YAMATO took the opportunity to attack Killer and challenge him for Aichi.

Open the Triangle Gate Title: Shingo Takagi, Dragon Kid & Taku Iwasa (c) vs. CIMA, Gamma & KAGETORA

This was great great stuff. Towards the end we started to get some bigtime Korakuen heat and KAGETORA was wrestling like a man possessed. It was tremendous. He was eating big moves like he was starving but 'KAZE couldn't put him down. Eventually CIMA and Gamma came to his rescue and KAG started to turn things around leading to getting a big pinfall win with a SICK Sheer Drop Kekonitteki on Taku. New champs! Little to no Warriors-5 schtick, which is a GOOD thing.

Infinity 128 - 8/10

129

Shingo Takagi, Dragon Kid & Akira Tozawa vs. YAMATO, Yasushi Kanda, Cyber Kong

OMG Tozawa vs. YAMMY~!~! This was seriously the greatest thing ever - crazy shrieking, butt butts, random laughter, YAMATO's smirk, duct tape ... I could go on. Surrounding the craziness there was one heck of a TV tag match. Cyber pinned Tozawa with a God damn Ultimae Warrior splash. Unbelievable.

Open the Twin Gate Unified Tag Title Contendership Tournament
- Final: Masato Yoshino & BxB Hulk vs. Genki Horiguchi & Ryo Saito

Doinkloads of interference but for the most part it worked. Crowd was really into the big nearfalls and such down the stretch. They played up Cyber laying out Yoshino multiple times to further their feud nicely. World-1 became overwhelmed by interference so Doi tried to help his buddies and nailed Ryo with a Bakakare but it only got a nearfall. It came down to BxB and Ryo and eventually BxB was put down by a Double-Cross. Good match.

Infinity 129 - 8/10

Monday 4 May 2009

BattlArts: 14th February 2009

My abject disappointment that the world snooker final ended early is replaced by the realisation that I had downloaded matches from BattlArts February show. BattlArts - like snooker, except they punch for real.

First up, Otsuka vs. Yamamoto. Otsuka is my favourite guy in the promotion, and Yamamoto is an undercard guy who seems to be ignored in favour of Yoshikawa in some parts (although not at Wrestling KO, which is why I'm excited about this). The match, though only ten minutes long, is fantastic, and is currently my puro match of the year. The first five minute are all mat exchanges. I knew already that Otsuka is great in complex, intricate matwork and he is here, with loads of slick escapes that moves credibly into the next hold or struggle over the next submission. What I wasn't expecting was for this to be nearly matched by Yamamoto, who has his own line of counters into leg submissions and really contorted, leveraged holds.

Otsuka surprises Yamamoto by abandoning the mat section first, dropping him with a piledriver. The most legitimate, wrong piledriver in the world. The story is then Yamamoto's head versus Otsuka's leg. They do a lovely section where Otsuka goes for his giant swing, which Yamamoto fights into a front headlock, which Otsuka turns into brainbuster. The ending stretch is great - Otsuka goes for a number of head-drop suplexes between headbutts and kicks to the face, while Yamamoto fights for his leg bar, before finally taking one head drop too many. Everything is done with such focus here that the ten minutes it's given is used as well as can be. Great matwork, fantastic selling and a dramatic final struggle all make for an early contender for match of the year, and place both guys comfortably into the top 20 workers of the year.

Usuda (with hair) vs. Yoshikawa next. This got really good. Opening eight minutes or so were fine - nice strikes (especially the opening, with Yoshikawa surprising Usuda and knocking him ridiculous for a second) and good matwork exchanges. They establish some themes early on - Usuda's arm bar is quickly escaped, and Yoshikawa begins the leg work. The turning point is the long leg submission on Usuda, quickly followed by a couple more. Usuda is really great selling in the hold, and although there were a couple of points early on where he kicked with it, at the point where the leg really became the story, this ended. Yoshikawa is pretty relentless here, meaning that the veteran Usuda needs something desperate to turn the tide. This takes the form of the punt - the one he did against Yano last year was nasty, but this one split Yoshikawa open. From there, a series of wrenching arm submissions is enough for a hard-fought victory. The match had the feel of a sporting encounter where youthful energy and intensity dominates, but veteran instincts manage to claw a win out of a desperate situation. Excellent work.

The main event tag was less impressive. It was certainly less driven by any underlying story, and I didn't think the actual work was as interesting. You can normally rely on Super Tiger for some wild kicks, but they were noticeably weaker here, and at one stage he seems unsure what to do - Ishikawa and Yano are in the middle, and Sawa comes in with a kick to help his partner. Super Tiger, in the mean time, stands in his opponent's corner not doing anything. The Yano and Sawa team are fine - they can work around the mat competently, and Sawa is all youthful exuberance, running around and kicking everything that moves and is called Super Tiger or Yuki Ishikawa. Ishikawa is his usual great self - he work almost entirely with strikes and matwork, but makes everything interesting. Take his exchange with Sawa in the middle. They fight over an ankle lock, and Ishikawa combines this with a boot right in Sawa's face. His matwork sections are a highlight - the control and the use of leverage or a stray limb to gain an advantage make for great looking sequences, but there isn't enough of him in this match to make it particularly noteworthy.

Overall, this show continues from 2008 in establishing BattlArts matches as a definite fixture in my end-of-year ballot. The two singles, in particular, are a bit special.

Sunday 3 May 2009

Big Japan: July to October shows (part one)

I've been working through all the Big Japan shows since the last one I reviewed in full. Come 2009, I'll start on show-by-show reviews, as Big Japan is moving towards my favourite promotion in Japan. My girlfriend has recently looked over my shoulder whilst I've been watching these shows, expressing disgust at the gory deathmatch stuff. I explained to her the validity of watching deathmatch wrestling as something other than morbid. I talked at length about a basic psychology of professional wrestling matches which build towards a certain winning move, something teased by early attempts, or something which logically follows from wear down hold. I elucidated that the weapon based offence of these match is just a tool and mechanism for telling the same story, but instead of finishing moves, the winning blow is the big hardcore spot.

Anyway, she'd walked off a long time before I finished this thesis, which is probably for the best because the next line was, "plus, some of this stuff is really cool", which lacks a certain intellectual rigour.

What's been good in the second half of 2008? Let's do this by type of match, of which there are basically four in Big Japan. Firstly, the MEN's Club matches. Most shows, especially the bigger ones have one. To be honest, a lot of these matches, especially in the final bit, are entirely interchangeable, but they do a good line in continuous motion wrestling. Watching these matches is furiously entertaining, which is really there purpose. They do have a small degree of continuity between matches, generally with some issue between a couple of the guys, which tends to get lost amongst all the other action. They also tend to play off comedy spots from match to match, taking the joke a little further, or doing something else with it.

I know the October 27th match got mentioned by several people as the pick of the bunch, but I certainly can't find reason to single it out. The stuff with Onryu and Sato was amusing, playing off the previous month's eight-man. MEN's stuff, especially with Shinobu is always nice - they do a spot where MEN's uses Shinobu to charge into one of the other guys in the corner, and keeps reversing the Irish whip so Shinobu is always the one running into the corner. Then he uses his as a projectile and catapults him. Actually, thinking about this, the seven-way UWA Middleweight title match from August 18th might be my favourite for number of entertaining spots - the invisible sword, and the human chain submission bit stand out in my head. Anyway, it's all very simple and fun, and exactly the sort of thing that undercards need.

Second type of matches is the non-hardcore heavyweight stuff, usually based around Sekimoto and Mammoth. They won the tag belts in July, and have defended them a few times. My general impression of these isn't particularly favourable. Nothing actively bad, but also nothing I can really recommend. The September 14th match against Numazawa and Kasai is the best of the lot - it breaks down into a brawl early on (and a good one), with Kasai and Numazawa taking a load of shortcuts having earlier indicated they wanted a straight wrestling match. Mammoth was a lot of fun here.

Also need to mention the rookies. This, to me, is one of the most positive aspects of Big Japan is the amount of time they have spent in the past year in building up a new generation of guys to freshen up the entire card - they have newer guys in their deathmatches in Hoshino and Isami, as well as new guys in their non-hardcore stuff. Hoshino is fantastic as a slightly unlikely-looking wrestler who will take a bunch of crazy bumps (especially onto the edge of ladders and tables) and even more of a beating. His August 18th hardcore match with MASADA, blowing off their summer feud, was surprisingly great - wild brawling all around Korakuen, Hoshino takes a suplex off a raised seating area, loads of big, nasty looking nearfalls with the drama of Hoshino trying to sneak a upset victory. MASADA is a guy I never really liked until recently, and I can't quite put my finger on why that has been. He is a bit workmanlike (in a good way) in his matches, moving between each spot with a sense of purpose. He's also suitably reckless with some of his weapon stuff - which only makes a guy like Hoshino more sympathetic for his eventual comeback. His match with Takeshi Sasaki on November 1st was almost as fun. MASADA dominates again (using his head sticks in a spot that appalled my girlfriend more than anything else she happened to see), and Sasaki gets to play more of an underdog than he usually would, is is pretty good in that role. And his roundhouse kick is better than anyone else in wrestling.

Big Japan, to confuse me, now have two S. Ishikawa's, and even now I can't quite remember which name goes to which guy. Shinya Ishikawa is working non-hardcore tag team undercard stuff. He's energetic and works hard, and he could be useful, although I've been enjoying the stockier Okabayashi in those matches. I shall call him mini-Sekimoto. He's like Sekimoto, only one-eighth the size (of seven Sekimotos). Shuji Ishikawa is a bigger guy, and although he's not been around as much, I think I'm going to enjoy his work - he has a simple offence, but uses his size well. I know in 2009 he tags with Ito a lot, and I'm looking forward to seeing him on a more regular basis, both in deathmatch and non-deathmatch stuff. The standout match for me so far is from October 27th, in a six-man hardcore match with Ito and other rookie Takeda, which was a lot of fun. Ito's been tagging with the rookies a lot, which gives those matches an smart simple story - the young guys end up taking a lot of offence from the more experienced opponents, while Ito tries, ultimately in vain, to get into the match and take control. Shuji Ishikawa presence changed this a bit - he's a lot more dominant, as a bigger guy, making the match slightly more even.

I'll talk about Isami next time. Next time: deathmatches. And Isami.