The Wrestling Bucket

Dick Togo vs James Mason, ASW 8/2

Taken from Togo's retirement world retirement tour, this is from a Liverpool indy show. Pretty cool to see Togo adapt to this kind of match, working as a stooging, cheating heel instead of a more prototypical juniors style. Mason was very game, and is a really slick grappler, which meant some pretty cool mat exchanges between the two, and he hits his offence pretty well. He played to the crowd way too much for my liking, though. Whatever he was doing - in control, selling, mounting a comeback, he was always turning to the crowd and trying to get noise out of them; Felt like he should have focused more on his opponent.

Go Shiozaki vs Jun Akiyama, NOAH 8/6

First part of the match is pretty dry, but everything after Go getting his jaw cracked was really good stuff. Akiyama smashing and kneeing Go in his bloody mouth was not only really sick but a smart way of gaining and maintaining control through the match. Go gave his best effort since the Sasaki match, I thought he was really good and didn't do anything stupid. He has some crazy chops. Akiyama was also excellent, as he always is in the clutch, and the two of them put together a really well built, dramatic match. For a 30 minute match, I was also surpised at the lack of downtime once they got going. Best GHC title match since Morishima vs Sasaki IMO.


Black Terry/Negro Navarro vs Los Traumas, LUCHA POP 8/27

This was pretty awesome. Started off with Terry and T2 going on the mat, and it was actually pretty bleh. Too your-turn-my-turn and too nice, but it did serve it's purpose in helping to build to the big Navarro/T1 stand-off, with T1 instantly slapping his Dad down. Navarro sold that slap like a gunshot and Terry's "what the hell? I thought we were being sportsmen?" reaction was great. And then Navarro getting up and tying to rip his son's arm off as a receipt was SUPER-great. The mat wrestlig wasn't super tricky or flashy, but instead was intense and felt like guys trying to tear each other's limbs. T1 must have never got the presents he wanted for Christmas.

Randy Orton vs Mark Henry, WWE Night Of Champions

This was a good match with a really great, satisfying outcome. Henry has been the hottest act in the company since they nerfed Punk, and has been awesome all year, so to see him finally win the big one felt well deserved. The match itself was exactly what it should have been, with Henry being a total monster and Orton putting up a fight, but ultimately putting Henry over bigtime. Henry's offence all looked brutal (especially the bear paw swipe that knocked Orton to the outside) and Orton made him look like a killer. The commentators actually did a fine job and made the apron DDT feel like a huge moment, and the finish was great with how un-formulaic for a WWE match it was. Let the Mark Henry era begin.

CM Punk vs HHH, WWE Night Of Champions (No DQ)

Hunter is really reaching at this point, I don't think it's possible for him to work a match anymore without a bunch of smoke and mirrors. All of the brawling was actually pretty cool, and Punk's Savage elbow through the announce table was a "holy shit" spot. Once the over-booked interferences started this quickly became a pile of crp, though. Not only did they seemingly go on for what felt like forever, but they made no sense as the guys interfering were attacking both dudes. Punk may have survived one Pedigree, but this was still a massive step back for him.

Masato Tanaka vs Necro Butcher, Zero-ONE 9/17

Thought this was pretty underwhelming seeing as this is a good pairing on paper. The bumps were nasty but not anything memorable and I thought it was blatantly exhibition-y and went from spot to spot, instead of being a brawl. It may have been the bad camera angle but it also looked like Necro was pulling his punches quite a bit on the sitdown duel. Necro punching out the chair was great, but that was all I'll remember about this.

Munenori Sawa vs Hayato Fujita, Zero-ONE 9/17

Rock solid juniors kickfest. This kind of kneepad juniors kickfest is kind of generic and not really that compelling, but it's still better than a mastabatory spotest. Both dudes hit very hard and there was some good exchanges, but it never really reached that "wow" level. This was all about Sawa, giving him a last hurrah before his retirement at the end of the year, and Hayato sold his ass off for him. Sawa can be pretty goofy, and he toned it down a lot here, but still had a stupid grin on his face when getting his ass kicked, which was a little annoying.