The Wrestling Bucket

Shinjiro Ohtani/Daichi Hashimoto vs Masato Tanaka/Kenta Kakinuma, Zero-ONE 4/16

Not great or a MOTYC affair, but a pretty good match of the vet/rookie vs vet/rookie formula. A Zero-ONE level Kobashi/Go vs Sasaki/Nakajima, and even a poor man's version of that formula is pretty good. Every match up delivers, the young lions really bring it and are fired up, the vets lay in a beating on them, good times all round. Kakinuma takes an especially rude backdrop bump for a young'un.

Yuji Hino vs Quiet Storm, K-Dojo 4/17

When did Quiet Storm get so bulky? This was a lot of fun. Two big stocky dudes clobbering each other, throwing each other around and slamming into each other. With this being set up by Storm beating Hino with a lariat, it only made sense for a lot of this to be built around both guys lariating each other and trying to be the last man standing, and it made for some good nearfalls. Every bomb and slam looked impactful, and there was plenty of struggle over moves. It's clipped (not sure how much by), but in a 2011 year, I enjoyed what we see enough to recommend it.

Kensuke Sasaki/Kento Miyahara vs The Kings Of Wrestling, NOAH 4/24

Pretty strong house show effort. Miyahara was spotlighted well and looked pretty good. A bit slow to start but once they got going it was good stuff. Claudio was a bit too resthold-y, and Sasaki wasn't great, but he did what was needed of him and was a fun house of fire. Not worth going out of your way for or anything, but a fun outing.

Daisuke Sekimoto/Yuji Okabayashi vs Manobu Soya/Seiya Senada, All Japan 6/19

Really boring/dull for most of the way. With the exception of a small handful of instances, almost entirely lacking in the positives of their previous bout(s). Bad crowd didn't help, but no one was as intense as they should have been for this and a lengthy feeling out section was stupid on top of dull.