The Wrestling Bucket

Jun Akiyama/Makoto Hashi vs Manobu Soya/Masa Fuchi, All Japan 4/13

Fuchi failing to escape a headscissors early on was a great way to establish his role as being “past it”. It was also interesting to see Soya losing an opening exchange to Hashi of all people. Neither of them really lead to anything exciting though. Fuchi just got some token offence in before tagging in Soya to do some basic stuff with Hashi and token stuff with Akiyama. That’s all I got from this. More “interesting” than “good”.

Daniel Bryan vs Cody Rhodes, Smackdown 5/27

This fell just below the bar of “worth recommending” but was still really fun. The matwork was nifty and I dug Cody’s use of his protective mask. The Beautiful Disaster after Bryan’s corner backflip was sweet, and the finish was also well executed.

Randy Orton vs Sheamus, Smackdown 6/10 (No DQ)

The No DQ stip was tacked on just for the sake of the finish, which annoyed me, but this was still good stuff. Intense, hard-hitting match with both guys looking like badasses. Orton isn’t really a guy you think of being that stiff, but uppercuts looked nasty here. Also liked the spot with Sheamus hung upside down in the ropes and getting caned.

Avisman vs Freelance, IWRG 5/29

There was some bullshit with a heel ref, which brought this down and stopped it from being a great match, but was still real good. The first fall matwork was solid but not mind-blowing, a couple neat counters and a couple awkward moments. But this really kicked into another gear once they started brawling. Avisman was really great at beating the shit out of Freelance and throwing him all over the arena. His elbows to Freelance’s bloody face in particular were brutal. Freelance also brought it and his dives reckless dives will never stop being awesome. I’m not sure wether it was great selling or legit, but his second dive looked like it knocked Avisman the fuck out. Also dug up BT Jr. getting a close up of the welts on his chest from the stiff chops. The heel ref stuff sucked, but crazy IWRG brawls are about sure-fire things in wrestling these days, and this delivered.

Dr. Cerebro vs Multifacetico, IWRG 6/2

Pretty cool lucha title match. There was a good amount of struggle between holds, which prevented it from falling into the pitfall of being mindless submission trading, and most of the matwork felt like it had a natural progression to it. Multifacetico is a green rookie who had to re-adjust his mask every five seconds, which was a little distracting, but Cerebro could carry anyone in this style of match. His facial expressions are also great and I thought the couple of sneaky headbutts he threw to escape holds he couldn’t counter “cleanly” were a cool, subtle rudo touch.

Best Of 2011