Weekend Watching

Yoshihito Sasaki/Shinya Ishikawa vs Shinobu/Kazuki Hashimoto, BJW 4/28

A match of two halves. Ishikawa and Hashimoto were solid, but kind of underwhelming and just doing the basics. Sasaki and Shinobu still hate each other though, and they both brought it here. Their exchanges weren’t as stiff as they have been, but made up for it by being super un-cooperative and intense. The finish was pretty abrupt, felt like the match was just about to take off, but atleast we got a taster of the hate.

Daisuke Sekimoto/Yuji Okabayashi vs Manobu Soya/Ryota Hama, BJW 4/28

After being left cold by every Strong BJ tag this year, and seeing that this went 25 minutes, my expctations for this were pretty low. But make no bones about it, this was one of the best matches I've seen this year. Tonnes of interpromotional heat, tonnes of BEEF, tonnes of action. Hama was born to be a fat boy heel - everything involving him squashing dudes or being diffcicult to lift was gold, and he reveled in the boo's. Sekimoto and Soya pick up where they left off in All Japan, Okabayashi stepped up big time and there was practically no downtime, filler or restholds, which is just amazing for these guys going this length. The finishing run was also shockingly well done with very little overkill and loads of build to a small number of huge nearfalls instead of a dosen 2.999 counts over and over. My favourite moment was Ok coming in for a hot tag only to get flattened by Hama. Tremendous. Puro kind of stinks in 2011, but this felt like the kind of heavyweight epic we've been needing.

Black Terry/Romano Garcia/Dr. Cerebro/Oficial AK47/Comando Negro/Oficial Fierro/Cerebro Negro v. Rocky Santana/Robin Maravilla/Sadico/Yakuza/Herejia/Rambo/Terry 2000, AULL 5/15

This was fun but I wasn’t in love with it. There was tones of interpromotional dissent with shit boiling over before the match even began. The crowd were loud and there were sirens and horns going off, which made the match feel like a riot at times. Awesome. Loved the out of control brawling, and there were some crazy highspots from Sadico and Terry 2000 (who was the standout of the match). My gripe with the match was more with the Cibernetico format, which requires lots of falls to happen in a short space of time, which took me out of it slightly, and the lack of any real structure. Still, a fun match in a spotfest-y kind of way.

Freelance vs Avisman, IWRG 6/12 (Hair vs Hair)

This was a fun match brought down by a lot of bullshit. It was essentially a hate-filled sprint with the first two falls only lasting a couple minutes each, but being really intense brawls with Avisman beating the shit out of Freelance all over the arena. Then he botched the finish to the second fall really badly and it all went downhill from there. The final fall was OK but they didn’t really keep the hate going and there was a bunch of shit with interference and refs and a bunch of other stuff that lost me. Oh well.

Best Of 2011