maciej

It's been covered already, but i finally caught up this morning and damn was that Page/Kassidy match a pleasant surprise, to the point that it's prolly my 2nd or 3rd fav AEW match of the year so far. Page really laying in those punches and lariats at the beginning really sets the tone, and while Kassidy working over an arm for the whole match, wouldn't seem like his wheelhouse, you can't really complain about anything he does here (and Excalibur even works in how it isn't in his wheelhouse during one of the holds, the cross armbreaker maybe?).

Really loved that show from DDT. I feel like them being so story-focused in often comedic ways overshadows (for folks that aren't often watching) how great they are at storytelling in more traditional ways. I loved the video of Ueno training with to counter Sakaguchi's choke and how that got worked into the match.

i was gonna say, these two big boys running at each other at increasing speed is the most excited I've been by a rope running spot in forever.

Goddamn that match was good. Fenix when given this kind of opportunity is maybe the best in the world, certainly the best at combining athleticism and impact. The angle stuff afterwards, I was never a huge Bullet Club fan, so there's no nostalgia value in this for me. Earnest question: do y'all find this stuff exciting? The will they or won't they, the cute little hand signs and all? Especially aside from, like, how it affects ratings?

Obviously overshadowed by the main event, but that tag title match was terrific. Love Tana slapping Taichi to avoid him winning via iron glove, and then getting completely decimated by the full Dangerous Tekkers arsenal.

god damn Thatcher/Oney and Io/Sasha made me so happy

I'm trying to remember the last time before that last man standing I so viscerally hated a match and struggling

they Rhea/Charlotte match and Firefly Funhouse were both wonderful

this is just semantics but i'm pretty sure even those of us that loved it agree that it's very stupid, haha

Boneyard ruled, and, honestly, I thought everything else was at the very least good as well (maybe Goldberg/Strowman aside? and if the only bad thing is 2 minutes long, that's more than fine). I dunno if I'm just being a softie trying my hardest to appreciate what all these wrestlers are doing trying their hardest to have memorable Mania matches in a crowdless and wildly unsafe environment, but I found it surprisingly easy to drown out the lack of crowd noise and just get into it.

I'm on board with White/Naito as match of the night too. I've never been a huge White fan but his specific offense to the knee here worked great, and Naito's efforts to proactively counter the Gedo-ness of it all and trick White were terrific. The main has the same issues as most of the Okada matches people call classics do to me, wildly entertaining second half, but I can only recommend a match that kinda bored me for 15-20 minutes so highly. The part where Kota smacked the hell out of Okada was amazing. Yo, have I missed something not paying attention to NJPW that much the last few months, does Ibushi have a cocaine gimmick now, what was that?

just realized I hadn't been on this thread all year, but here's a list! I loved that second Garza/Rush match so much: 1. Matt Riddle vs. Velveteen Dream, 4/5, Takeover: Brooklyn 2. Tyler Bate vs. Walter, 8/31, Takeover: Cardiff 3. Kofi Kingston vs. Daniel Bryan, 4/7, Wrestlemania 4. Sasha Banks vs. Ronda Rousey, 1/27, Royal Rumble 5. Lio Rush vs. Angel Garza 12/10, NXT TV 6. Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Andrade Cien Almas, 1/15, Smackdown 7. Kassius Ohno vs. Jack Gallagher, 5/29, NXTUK TV 8. Pete Dunne vs. Walter, 4/5, Takeover: Brooklyn 9. Johnny Gargano vs. Ricochet, 1/26, Takeover: Phoenix 10. Velveteen Dream, Aleister Black, & Ricochet vs. Adam Cole, Tomasso Ciampa, & Johnny Gargano, 2/3, Halftime Heat 11. Asuka vs. Charlotte, 3/26, Smackdown 12. Becky Lynch vs. Sasha Banks, 10/6, Hell in the Cell 13. The Revival vs. The Undisputed Era, 11/20, NXT TV 14. Matt Riddle vs. Drew Gulak, 2/6, NXT TV 15. Rhea Ripley, Candace LeRae, Tegan Nox, and Dakota Kai vs. Shayna Baszler, Io Shirai, Bianca BelAir, and Kay Lee Ray, 11/23, Takeover: War Games 16. Lio Rush vs. Hector Garza, 11/13, NXT TV 17. Finn Balor vs. Brock Lesnar, 1/27, Royal Rumble 18. Io Shirai vs. Shayna Baszler, 6/26, NXT TV 19. Chad Gable vs. Jack Gallagher, 7/16, 205 Live 20. Pete Dunne vs. Damian Priest, 11/6, NXT TV 21. Street Profits vs. the Undisputed Era, 10/2 NXT TV 22. Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch, 9/15, Clash of Champions 23. Velveteen Dream vs. Johnny Gargano, 2/20, NXT TV 24. Finn Balor vs. Andrade Cien Almas, 4/15, Raw 25. Io Shirai vs. Candace LeRae, 8/10, Takeover: Toronto

I LOL'd when Beth accused Nigel of being biased towards Vanessa Borne and he somewhat nonsensically replied "I have a vision of love." I hope that this means Nigel's version of Mauro-ing is just dropping in random Mariah Carey song titles.

man Roman vs. even bigger guy matches really rule sometimes

I think the Fenix/Laredo/Puma/Taurus AAA Title 4-way from 8/10 is really really worth a watch. It's all the usual fun stuff you'd expect but a bit of extra focus on Taurus as the biggest guy in the match that everyone has to deal with gives it a little more structure. As good as anything AAA have done this year aside from maybe the Vikingo/Laredo match and the Triplemania main.

This was pretty fun, though that Cody/Spears match was a big old nonsensical stinker. After Triplemania I had incredibly low hopes for another Lucha Bros/Bucks tag but that shit was awesome, as was the Shida/Riho match (despite the placement) and the 3 way, which was also nonsensical but definitely not a stinker. A really great night of introductions, with our dear Orange, [LAX], and perhaps the one that made me the happiest in the moment, tho in retrospect who knows if she's gonna be here permanently, Mercedes Martinez.

I absolutely adore this unexpected DDT out of an early sequence of holds from Ricky Marvin on Arez

Only saw that main but damn that ruled. I especially loved Bate attacking from every angle and with moves that didn't just look like his regular wrestling moves (the leg/butt drops, that one punch in the ear, etc). That kind of extra shit is what makes matches really stand out to me, especially matches this long.

hey, that Andrade/Apollo match, even having to watch a chunk of it silently in a small window during commercials, totally ruled.

I watched the Okabayashi/Nomura BJW title match from 7/21 that people have been hyping and it really is very good. Okabayashi has had a masterpiece of a match built around his arm before, a few years ago against Suzuki, and he's really great at working basically without it until the emotion of the match dictates that it's worth the risk to use it. The confidence Nomura shows throughout the match, especially in the strike exchanges, makes him super fun to cheer for. After watching a ton of the G1 (which I very much enjoyed), it was a really nice change of pace to watch a big match built more around hard hitting, emotion, and selling without the race to the finisher through a million reversals kinda style.

not sure anyone needs this at this point, but in case anyone pops in to check for recommendations on must watch stuff here are the matches I thought were really excellent (let's say ****1/4 and above): - Zack Sabre Jr. vs. SANADA, 7/6 - Jeff Cobb vs. Tomohiro Ishii, 7/13 - EVIL vs. Kota Ibushi, 7/14 - Kazuchika Okada vs. Zack Sabre Jr., 7/14 - Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, 7/18 - Hirooki Goto vs. Tetsuya Naito, 7/19 - EVIL vs. Zack Sabre Jr., 7/27 - Juice Robinson vs. Tomohiro Ishii, 7/28 - Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay, 7/30 - Kota Ibushi vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, 8/3 - Tetsuya Naito vs. Shingo Takagi, 8/4 - Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kota Ibushi, 8/7 - Shingo Takagi vs. Tomohiro Ishii, 8/8 - Hirooki Goto vs. Shingo Takagi, 8/11 - Taichi vs. Tomohiro Ishii, 8/11 - Juice Robinson vs. Jon Moxley, 8/11 - Jay White vs. Kota Ibushi, 8/12 It's funny, this tournament really didn't produce much in the way of matches that I'm gonna call match of the year contenders (that's just down to my stylistic preferences), but I thought it was consistently super fun and I was happy as hell to have time to mostly keep up with it.

aside from Mox, who I think had very good matches both the last few days, I'd say on Day 12 Juice/Naito is very good, Goto/Ishii and Cobb/Takagi are good, and Taichi/White is bad. And then on 14, Taichi/Juice is eh, Ishii/Yano and Goto/Cobb are good, and Naito/Shingo is my fav match of the tournament so far.

yeah, totally. Honestly I could have done without wasting Fenix and Laredo on that match in general, but it is what it is. Every other match over-delivered in some way: the indie dudes doing their wonderful thing in the pre-show, a totally solid mixed tag four-way, the Cain/Taurus exchange, the good violence (even just the good intentional violence) in the TLC match, the awesome trios title match (which wasn't really bogged down at all by being a three way like I was worried it might be), and of course that brilliant red painting of a main event.

Well that show ruled.

SANADA/Okada was frustrating for me because they have both gone to their fun matwork stuff at times (to counter ZSJ for example) and they show some brawling personality midway through, so this could have theoretically been a match where something, anything interesting happened in the first 9 or 10 minutes. Still, the ending was up there with anything in the tournament. Really fun show all around, with Tana/Ibushi particularly to my liking. I don't know what it is about the way they match up but Tanahashi's moves just seem to land a little more satisfyingly on Ibushi than most anybody else.