Kevin Wilson

I beat it today... certainly a fun game. My main concern with it is that I think its a "one and done" as I think since it is linear I doesn't have much immediate replay value and is definitely one of those for me that is safe to play and sell while it still holds its used value (or in my case give it to my brother to play next). I got through it in about 15 hours (I didn't time it) with only two side missions not done, neither of which I have any desire to do. It is very NSFW, so if you have kids around I wouldn't play it around them, it is actually less appropriate than the South Park movie if that was even possible, kinda surprised it got through the ESRB without any issues.

has a Sanada singles match ever really "delivered"? the guy has seemed like a lost cause to me for years now (granted I haven't seen anything from him since his TNA stint...). I have always liked Sanada. He is the 'style' of wrestler that I like so I probably give him the benefit of the doubt, although I think he is still in the 'has potential' range rather than the 'delivers on a regular basis' range. I thought his match vs. KAI at the first W-1 show was good, but their match at the next event was very not good. But I try to be optimistic But he hasn't been in TNA yet, you thinking of Okada or Akira Raijin?

Christopher Daniels/Kazarian vs Minoru Tanaka/Koji Kanemoto and Sanada/Aries should both be really good matches, the rest range from trainwreck to disinterest to potential (but not holding my breath). Really hope that Sanada/Aries delivered.

While I don't expect a good real number, 'before the show' shots in Japan are famous for not really showing the full picture since fans don't always get there until after the show starts. Not that I am expecting a packed house or anything.

I would have to vote for Vampiro, unless he is in some hidden classic no one ever told me about or was more useful other places than he was in WCW.

Diamond Ring "Katsuhiko Nakajima Debut 10th Anniversary" Date: February 11th, 2014 Location: Tokyo, Japan 1. "Hollywood" Stalker Ichikawa, CHANGO, and Namazu Man vs. Kikutaro, NOSAWA Rongai, and Antonio Honda (clipped) 2. Natsuki*Taiyo and Sareee vs. Yumiko Hotta and La Comandante (clipped) 3. Go Shiozaki vs. Kento Miyahara 4. Daichi Hashimoto and Tank Nagai vs. Mitsuhiro Kitamiya and Hitoshi Kumano 5. Fujita "Jr." Hayato and Satoshi Kajiwara vs. Naomichi Marufuji and Taiji Ishimori 6. Nakajima Anniversary and Kensuke Sasaki Retirement Match: Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Kensuke Sasaki You can read my review here if you feel so inclined.

You including openthedragongate and dailymotion? I'd have thought that there were MINIMUM 30 shows from 2014 online. as for last year, pretty much everything made it online. I think any talk to the contrary stemmed from people who hadn't kept up with what the current puro hotspots were. I can only think of one show of relevance that has fallen through the cracks in the last 3 years - New Japan's July 2012 Tanahashi vs. Tanaka show. Oh I wasn't even going into February, don't get me started I think every New Japan event taped so far I have been able to find somewhere, so they account for about 10 events by themselves.

I've been watching wrestling for 25 years and just saw a submission move I hadn't seen before. Nice that wrestling can still surprise sometimes.

So this network doesn't offer uncensored content as advertised? And people were making a big deal about WWE showing their COMPLETE PPV library, but get a complete pass on showing edited content? I think right now people have more important concerns than not being able to see Kat's boobs.

That is the reason I think some people are tying it to either their memory of it at the time, or because Owen Hart was one of their favorite wrestlers. Owen hadn't even fallen yet at that point of the PPV, so the wrestlers/announcers still would have been acting normal.

I watched it. It really wasn't a good PPV, the main event was an overbooked clusterfuck. But I also have no issue watching matches with Benoit, Snuka, Kensuke Sasaki, Great Kahli, or other events/wrestlers that may make some people feel weird so maybe I am not the best person to judge. It is not that I am a cold person, it just didn't still resonate with me 15 years later. I would have completely understood if WWE didn't include Over the Edge since it does have a lot of emotion behind it. Some people form emotional bonds with wrestlers, I do too, but Owen wasn't one of those wrestlers for me personally. So I can see where Antacular and Bix are coming from, they are just more extreme in their opinion on it than I am as in the grand scheme of things I don't think it matters if it is included or not. At the time I saw it live it made me uncomfortable to watch the rest of the event knowing someone had just died, now 15 years later it is just another event that happens to have a tragic footnote. That disclaimer at the beginning was unintentionally funny though and needs to be changed post haste.

Are more events becoming available this year than the last couple years? I didn't really follow puroresu last year, but I remember people kvetching about shows not being available to watch. So far this year just for January, by my count roughly 18 events are available to download from somewhere or another. Trying to review every event from this year is going to be a lot harder than I thought.

Abyss vs. Yoshihiro Takayama sounds fascinating.

I don't think the quality ever was up in order to drop off, it was just a bad show.

YES to Mochizuki vs. Yoshino, January 16. I didn't think it was quite as amazing as Alan did but I still thought it was a really good match.

For those asking, it looks like they bleeped some of the language on the ECW PPVs (I can't imagine ECW censored it themselves at the time but I don't have an original to compare to) but they didn't try to mute the crowd's inappropriate chants. Also frontal nudity is blurred which is funny as that is a very American thing to do (show excessive violence, censor breasts) but I guess understandable.

Got in on my first try, guess they worked out some of the kinks. Streaming WCW New Blood Rising 2000 with no buffering. Yes, I picked a random WCW PPV that I haven't seen before to start with. Awesome.

I'd rank him higher than anyone currently in NOAH in terms of appeal. Except maybe KENTA. Which says less for NOAH than it does for Nagata.

People complaining about the six month contract are amusing. Cable, satellite, Internet, cell phones... pretty much all have contracts when you first sign up, and all automatically will keep on billing you forever unless you call and tell them to stop. This isn't something WWE is inventing. I mean Netflix, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime require a credit card for the free trial, I don't recall anyone getting up in arms about that, its a pretty common thing for companies that offer free trials to do. People getting annoyed at WWE doing what the majority of other companies do is odd. My big concern is simply that WM being the first live PPV streamed is a big risk. I plan on watching it but I am too scared to have a party because I don't know if it will work properly and I don't want a house full of angry people. I have watched MLB games over their network that buffered if it was one of the more popular games of the day, will WWE PPVs do the same thing? How much buffer will people find acceptable and how much will make people angry? I mean 5 seconds of buffer once an hour, I can deal with that. 10 seconds of buffer every five minutes would be annoying. I am hoping for the best since I am getting it, but it does scare me a bit.

Do I even want to ask?

I am more annoyed that the UFC put on a card with the co-main event and main event were so lopsided both on paper and in reality. Even if the stoppage was early (Rousey hit her three times in the head with no defense so I can see where Herb was coming from), Rousey was on her way to winning regardless. If I had paid $150 bucks to be there or $55 to watch on PPV I'd be pissed.

I am just going to dump all three of these in one post since they were from the same tour. New Japan "FANTASTICA MANIA 2014" 1/17/14 Stuka Jr., Fuego, and Rey Cometa vs. TAKA Michinoku, OKUMURA, and Taichi Pretty solid opener. It had a lot less dives than I am used to, maybe wrestling in front of only 300 people will tone them down a bit. The match was pretty simple but it is hard to really tell a story in a six man match that only goes eight minutes. Still, nothing offensive here, and all the wrestlers got a chance to at least do something. Score: 5.5 Máscara Dorada and Titan vs. Mephisto and Vangelis For a match that wasn’t too long, the heel beatdown segments still seemed to take up too much time. Dorada was “off” in this match as he had two different moves that he did not hit very smoothly at all, maybe he got a little hurt at some point and that affected him the rest of the match. Also seemed odd that kind of out of nowhere Mephisto hit the ‘super’ version of his finishing move, the same move he used to win the main event of the next much more attended event. Not their best outings, I have seen all four do better on other matches during the tour. Score: 3.5 © Rey Escorpión vs. Maximo CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship I guess I shouldn’t complain too much since Maximo did 99% of this match without his usual shtick, and in general he held his own against Escorpión. I can’t say I really enjoy the fact that the selling of moves is so suspect, it really doesn’t matter who hits the move sometimes as it isn’t uncommon for the victim of the move to still be the first one back up. I don’t expect them to sell moves like death but at least let the attacking wrestler get up first from the mat. Besides that small annoyance the match was pretty good, and Maximo got a number of legitimate close near-falls so it wasn’t too one-sided at all. I am assuming this title is pretty low on the important scale to be on the mid-card on the smallest show on the tour, but overall it wasn’t a bad display. Score: 6.0 Mistico and Rush vs. Ultimo Guerrero and Niebla Roja If wrestlers would stop clearly setting themselves up for their opponent’s moves I’d enjoy this better. It is one thing to be in the right spot, but when a wrestler jumps up on the top rope and waits five seconds while their opponent sets up a move to do, it begins crossing that line from simulated combat to choreographed dancing. Beyond that the match wasn’t bad, but with limited time I wish they’d cut out the first five minutes of the “feeling out” process as then there really isn’t time to get a full match in before the bell rings. Individually these wrestlers are all solid, it is more the match structure/time constraints that is holding them back. Score: 5.5 La Sombra vs. Volador Jr. I found two different versions of this match and both versions miss the vast majority of the match. I don’t think it was designed to be that way, the video freezes. Since this is the only version I can find I can’t do much about it, but the dive after the match was cool anyway. If I ever find a real version of the show that does not have most of this match missing I will update the review. Score: N/A Overall: I feel bad reviewing an event where most of the main event wasn’t shown, but let’s not pretend that it was going to save this show. This was clearly designed as a card to be shown for free on TV in front of a small crowd, as the matches were short (around 50 minutes of actual in-ring time on the card) and aside from Volador Jr.’s dive at the end it didn’t have a lot of memorable spots. I don’t want to say they were going through the motions, the effort was just average. Even if the main event was great, it still would have been a below average card overall. 1/18/14 Jado vs. Maximo vs. Taichi Ok, I just got done watching DDT, I have reached my “men kissing men” humor for the day. No mas. It is an interesting character, I mean that pretty much is his shtick but the crowd loves him. To me, it gets old really fast… I’m not personally disgusted, I just don’t understand the humor when it happens five times in one match, it would be funnier if it was just once a match to throw off opponents or something. But the crowd enjoys it so he has that anyway. Solid action otherwise. Score: 4.0 Stuka Jr. and Rey Cometa vs. Yujiro Takahashi and OKUMURA They did a lot with the small amount of time they had and made the most of it. There was literally no down time at all, they were just moving from start to finish. I loved Stuka Jr.’s random dive to the outside, it caught everyone off-guard and was a neat visual. A fun tag match, just wish it was a bit longer. Score: 6.5 Rey Escorpión, YOSHI-HASHI, Niebla Roja, and Vangelis vs. Tiger Mask, Titan, KUSHIDA, and Fuego This was clearly just a free-for-all exhibition type match, they basically just took turns doing moves to each other, swapping who was in the ring, and repeated that for eight minutes until the match ended. Which isn’t bad per se as it was fun for the crowd and certainly was fast paced, but it didn’t really feel like a match and no one really got a chance to shine since there were so many people in the match. Good for spots, but if you like anything resembling psychology then I wouldn’t recommend it. Score: 6.0 Máscara Dorada and El Desperado vs. Volador Jr. and BUSHIROAD Certainly the best match on the card so far. It had the high flying and fun spots, but they also had time to go a bit deeper than that as well. The spear/mounted punches for example was a nice change of pace and made it look like Desperado really did want to hurt his opponent and not just find creative ways to toss him to the mat or the floor. I am really liking Desperado so far, I hope that he doesn’t get his legs cut out from under him in his upcoming title match. Score: 7.5 Rush vs. Shinsuke Nakamura A good match that I would have liked better if it went a little bit longer. This is the most I have seen of Rush but he is fun to watch, he is a bigger guy but has a nice range of high flying moves and power moves. It really felt like if he had just hit the Rush Driver he would have won, but without it he was overmatched by Nakamura’s striking ability. Nakamura really emphasized the knee here but since his finishing move is also a running knee it made sense that would be his main weapon. Nothing really wrong with it at all, it just felt like there was more they could have done. I enjoyed it while it lasted though. Score: 7.0 Hiroshi Tanahashi, Tetsuya Naito, and La Sombra vs. Kazuchika Okada, Ultimo Guerrero, and Ishii Thoroughly entertaining from bell to bell. All the little parts worked well, I thought Ishii would be out of place but he mostly focused on Naito since they are feuding and let everyone else do the Lucha spots. They had enough time to tell a few different stories and while it had big spots it did not come across as a spotfest like some of the previous matches. Really good match, nothing really wrong with it, I’d have preferred this was three singles matches since they are all so good but this was fun non-stop lucha action. Score: 7.5 © Mephisto vs. Mistico II This match is for the Mexican National Light Heavyweight Championship Any wrestler that will die for me trying to do a springboard shooting star press is a-ok in my book. Actually though, the match was pretty disappointing. It was so oddly structured, I mean the first real move that Mephisto hit on Mistico was his finishing move several minutes into the match. At the end, Mephisto gets back to his feet and is running around like nothing after getting the Shooting Star Press, and in general they really didn’t do any “long term” selling. It was constant sprinting, but they were doing big moves that deserved to be sold for a little bit, not shaken off to get to the next big spot. I mean the spots were good, don’t get me wrong and both wrestlers looked good, but the structure of the match was severely lacking. I was expecting a bit more for the main event title match, the psychology seemed off even for Lucha Libre matches which negatively affected the match. Score: 5.0 Overall: I enjoyed this event a lot more than the event from a few days before. The matches here got more time, which allowed them to actually tell a story in some of the matches and not just throughout high spots. Many of the matches were really good and there were only a few stinkers. I just wish that the main event was better, I thought it just fell flat. Overall though a fun night of action, I’d recommend grabbing it if you get the chance and want to see some a new style of wrestling if you haven't watched Lucha Libre before. 1/19/14 Máscara Don and Maximo vs. TAKA Michinoku and Taichi Ok so it wasn’t a good match, but seeing Nakanishi trying to do lucha spots was quiet amusing. And of course we were in on the joke so it’s not laughing at someone that isn’t good, it is laughing at a 47 year old wrestler doing moves he either has never done before or hasn’t done in a long time. Beyond that though there really wasn’t much to the match, but at least it did have a special attraction. Score: 5.5 OKUMURA and YOSHI-HASHI vs. Stuka Jr. and Rey Cometa Really short match here as it clocked in at less than five minutes, so they pretty much went straight for the bombs even if it didn’t make any sense at the moment. I guess when you are putting on a display of big moves and are on a time constraint you don’t really have much of a choice. And don’t feel bad about the woman getting thrown around, she is a wrestler too. Score: 3.5 Tiger Mask, Titan, Fuego, El Desperado, and BUSHIROAD vs. Yano, Jado, Gedo, Niebla, and Vangelis Well that was clustertastic. I apologize if I mixed up anyone’s name in there somewhere, there was a lot going on and BUSHI was wearing a different outfit than usual which kept confusing me. Anyway this match was what it was, I did like that El Desperado picked up the pinfall though and was given a few key moments in the match. If he is going to be a new star of New Japan (which I hope he will be) he needs the exposure. For a ten minute ten man match it was actually a bit slow at times, I am not a big fan of the sequence where there are multiple heels in the ring and the faces just come in one at a time to get beat up. No real opportunity for the wrestlers to do much here, and even though there were some good spots I am getting a bit immune to that after watching three of these shows in a row. Score: 4.5 Tetsuya Naito and Rush vs. Tomohiro Ishii and Rey Escorpión I like that Ishii and Naito live in their own little vacuum and on all these shows are the ones much more interested in their own feud then interacting with the CMLL wrestlers. Not that I see that as a bad thing at all, it makes them both look focused on the bigger picture as they should be. This was pretty average all the way around, it picked up in parts but the beat down segments were a bit slow. Naito and Ishii showed good fire and Rush is exciting, but Escorpión doesn’t do much for me. Not a bad match by any stretch, just nothing really memorable about it. Score: 5.5 La Sombra vs. Ultimo Guerrero It started slow, but once it picked up it stayed there until the end of the match. I have no idea what type of dive La Sombra was going for on the first one that he undershot by about five feet but it was certainly unique, luckily no one got hurt or anything since wrestlers are impervious to the type of pain that you or I feel. Matches like this make me sad that wrestling on TV in the US isn’t more diverse, it wasn’t great but it was different. Not a lot of structure or reasoning to it, but the spots were good and nothing was offensive. Score: 6.5 Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, and Mistico vs. Nakamura, Yujiro Takahashi, and Mephisto I am starting to notice a pattern, watching these shows virtually back to back. As I know I have mentioned, the beatdown segments where a face wrestler rolls in, gets beat up by three men, rolls out, a new face wrestler rolls in, gets beat up, rolls out etc. etc. doesn’t really do it for me as even in the world of wrestling it isn’t logical. They would just go in together and certainly not follow the same pattern they did in a previous match. The match wasn’t bad and the last few minutes were entertaining, it is just starting to get repetitive and there was nothing about it that set it apart from the other matches from this tour. Score: 6.0 © Volador Jr. vs. Máscara Dorada This match is for the NWA World Historic Welterweight Championship I jokingly called this tour a Lucha Libre Exhibition, well this match was literally a Lucha Libre Exhibition. I mean there were probably ten dives out to the floor, it wasn't unusual for the wrestler that got a move done on him to be the first one up to go to the next spot, and generally it was just a series of big spots. Now some of the spots were really nice and their execution was flawless, but others were just really contrived and it felt like I was just watching a small indy with two young wrestlers that just wanted to do lots of big spots and nothing else. I have no idea if this is the same way that the matches are laid out in CMLL, I am assuming they are not, as while kinda fun to watch for the spots this match didn't really resemble a wrestling match at all. Score: 5.0 Overall: In terms of quality of matches, this event was between the two other events I have reviewed for this tour. It did not have a real blow-away or standout match, and like the others some of the matches came across as an introduction to Lucha Libre more than anything else. Which was probably the goal, and the live crowd seemed to be having a really good time, but these types of matches just typically don't produce a lot that stick in your mind more than a few hours. For some Lucha Libre fun, it is worth a watch, but as a stand-alone event it had just as much good as bad so I can't really recommend it.

That youtube upload is too funny. Here is the full version in watchable quality. © Kanemaru and Kikuchi vs. Koji Kanemoto and Liger Date: January 26th, 2003 Location: NOAH at Kobe World Hall Reason: IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship Download: Download Here (Mediafire) or Download Here (Mega) I don't always include the post and pre match but I did in this case. Took two officials holding back the teams just to get through the wrestler introductions (as seen in the picture), so it wasn't your normal start or post-match shenanigans.

Haha that is so ugly, and it is clipped too. Blows my mind that was uploaded in 2013. I have that match around here somewhere.

I just read somewhere that the reason WWE prefers people not use AppleTV is that AppleTV takes 50% but other devices like the Roku only take 30%. Are these numbers really accurate? 30% seems really really steep considering the WWE still has to pay for their own servers, employees to keep things running, etc. I knew of course the devices got a little cut but I had no idea it was such a big cut.