Kevin Wilson

It will be interesting with Sting/Hogan gone, as they were wrestlers I believe Spike was helping pay for (Maybe Angle and Hardy too? I can't remember if they were also on the list). Really the promotion will die when Spike says "we've had enough." When will that be? Who knows. All channels go through phases in terms of what they want, that is one reason WWE has jumped around a few times to different channels. If Spike gets a new "direction" that goes away from wrestling, I don't know what other channel may want TNA. I mean TNA has failed at just about everything they have tried to become "bigger" (hiring Russo the first time, hiring Bischoff/Hogan, switching to Mondays, going to live Spike, monthly live PPVs, taking Impact on the road) and eventually have now gone back to what they were back in 2007. As long as they have a cheap place to broadcast from and Spike is happy with a wrestling show that does 1.0, then they will be around forever. I mean TNA Impact! has been hitting low 1.0 ratings since late 2006, so if nothing else they are consistent as hell, there just has been no growth no matter what they try and I don't see any evidence there ever will be.

Please let it be Russo. That will actually get me to watch TNA again at least for a few weeks to see what kind of weird shit they are going to do. If it now ends up being someone like Styles or Sting I will be very disappointed.

Mine is coming tomorrow and should be a bigger package since I ordered lots of stuff. Possible they just ran out of gum.

Seems a little excessive. This actually wasn't a bad little card, a bit random but New Japan tends to do that for the Tokyo Dome. I think the Steiners match was boss but that may be because I am a huge Steiners fan. Not sure.

This was requested awhile ago, but I forgot to actually post the link to it. See kids, sometimes having an actual physical DVD collection comes in handy, not all the good matches are on youtube Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship Event: New Japan "WRESTLE KINGDOM II" Date: January 4th, 2008 Location: Tokyo Dome Link: Download Here (382 MB)

New Japan "FANTASTICA MANIA 2014" on 1/14/14 TAKA Michinoku and Taichi vs. Titan and BUSHIROAD I was all ready to kvetch about the unnecessary attempted removal of the masks which normally makes no sense since it doesn't hurt your opponents or lead to a victory, but then it directly lead to a victory. I love that taking off the mask of a Mexican wrestler (or a Japanese wrestler in a mask) is like an automatic victory since protecting their identity is more important than winning a match. Anyway good heel work by Michinoku and Taichi here, it did drag at parts since they were so focused on the masks but overall things went at a fast pace. I hadn't seen Titan before, he has some nifty move, I've always loved the Asai Moonsault off the top rope instead of the middle rope, just looks so much more difficult. Solid opener. Score: 6.0 OKUMURA, Vangelis, and Niebla Roja vs. Stuka Jr., Fuego, and Rey Cometa Way too short, on a six match card I don't understand having a six man match not even go seven minutes. The action was perfectly fine but obviously you can't any type of flow going when each wrestler is in the ring for such a short period of time. It wasn't even long enough to let any of the luchadors really display their skills as it wasn't really even a spotfest. Disappointing as Fuego and Niebla Roja in particular caught my eye but they just didn't do enough to really stick in my memory. Score: 4.0 Jado and Gedo vs. Jushin Thunder Liger and Maximo Just to explain, Maximo is an exotico and acts kinda girly, which is why Gedo was avoiding him and he was, you know, kissing his opponents. Kinda like a slightly toned-down Danshoku Dino, if that helps any. This was an odd blend of comedy and real action, I can see that having Maximo in a match does change the dynamic since while he does know how to wrestle he has to get in his 'exotico' spots. It wasn't a bad match, it was just disjointed between the wrestling spots and the comedy spots since there was only one comedy wrestler. On the plus side, unlike Ultimo Dragon in the last event I reviewed, Maximo did hit a nice La Magistral. Score: 4.5 Máscara Dorada and KUSHIDA vs. Tetsuya Naito and Volador Jr. This was a better display even if it was still shorter than I'd have preferred. There were a few miscommunications here, honestly I am surprised there are not more of them on this card but nothing horrible. The front flip piledriver somehow is still an awesome move even after Petey Williams tried to kill it all by himself, and there were some great high flying moves in this match. So for the spots, really good match, just don't go in expecting structure or anything like that. Score: 6.0 La Sombra and Rush vs. Shinsuke Nakamura and Ultimo Guerrero Oh this match. I haven't watched Lucha Libre in probably five years so I don't know if this is the norm, or they are just putting on a display for Japan. But man they weren't even trying to sell moves, there were times a wrestler would do a big move, and their opponent would just casually get up first and they'd go to the next spot. They also were really cooperative with each other for top turnbuckle moves. On the flip side I do enjoy the big moves, I saw moves in this match I haven't seen in a good while, they certainly know how to put on a display. So as a.... Lucha Libre Exhibition I think it was fine, there just was a minimal attempt to make it look like a real competition. Score: 5.0 Hiroshi Tanahashi, Mistico, and El Desperado vs. Kazuchika Okada, Mephisto, and Rey Escorpión Just to be clear, this of course is not the original Mistico but the wrestler that took over the gimmick once the original went to WWE. New Mistico looks bigger than old Mistico, but he sure can hit a mean hurricanrana. Like the last match this was more of a match for fun than anything else. But it was certainly fun, although not a long match so no one wrestler got much of a chance to do anything except fly around the ring. Even Tanahashi got in on the flying, and El Desperado naturally looked right at home since he had been in Mexico the last few years. A more entertaining spotfest than the match before, but still just a big 'ol spotfest. Score: 6.5 Overall: The biggest problem with this card is simply that there wasn't much wrestling. Actual in-match time for the entire event was under an hour, which to me is not really enough. There were only six matches and five clocked in right at ten minutes or less. That being said for a kinda laid back fun display of Lucha Libre it did its job in that regard, and I am sure it was an absolute blast to be at live. I just wish there was a match at the top that was longer and more of a "real" match and less of an exhibition. So worth watching since most of the matches are entertaining, there just isn't much of it and there isn't anything that you need to go out of the way to see.

Go vote for it in the Yes/No thread up top so I am not the only one that is on record for liking it

I think a lot of it is just that New Japan is hot right now, I mean none of the venues could seat more than around 2K so they kept it realistic. New Japan has also been good about having CMLL wrestlers on their cards sporadically over the years so the fans know what to expect. But mostly it is New Japan, they ended December with back to back nights at Korakuen Hall and both of those events sold out too, they have really good attendance there.

If I had a dollar every time I have heard that.... Just finished watching it, thought it was quite good. Haven't watched NOAH in years, is this thing with showcasing young wrestlers new, or has it been happening for awhile and I just never knew? In four of the matches there was a wrestler under the age of 30 highlighted to make good, a departure from the NOAH of yesteryear. So I was impressed by that, hopefully the young guys will continue to develop.

NOMINATE: KENTA vs. Takeshi Morishima, January 4th I went back and forth a bit with this match. I think its incredibly good, but it was missing that special 'something' that would get it into my likely Top 20. But Morishima did a good clubbin' job as I would say, they focused on the strikes which is both of their strengths, and there really wasn't any wasted time with pointless submission holds or mat wrestling as there shouldn't be in a Morishima match. I am pretending when I am nominating this match that KENTA intentionally didn't hit Morishima with the GTS correctly (I know he didn't on the second, not sure on the first) since that would add to the story that KENTA wasn't able to hit his finisher but couldn't do enough damage on Morishima for the Game Over to work. So he was just screwed. When Morishima focuses on what he is good at (big strikes, power moves, etc.) he is really fun to watch, and he has lost weight so his stamina is better than it used to be. This was the only match on the card I thought was nom-worthy, even though there were several other good matches.

NOAH "NEW YEAR NAVIGATION 2014" on 1/5/14 Hitoshi Kumano vs. Kenou Kumano debuted in NOAH in early 2013, and Kenou was one of Michinoku Pro’s top wrestlers before joining NOAH in December of 2013. One thing I liked about this match is that even though Kenou wasn’t really knocked down by Kumano’s elbows, he still showed pain on his face. So it read like “this hurts, but I am not going down because he is a rookie” rather than “this rookie is so weak he can’t even hurt me.” Which is better, I think. And Kumano did get in plenty of offense so it was definitely not a squash. Kenou is really good, and it will be interesting to see what he does in NOAH. A solid opener and a good veteran/rookie match. Score: 6.0 Mohammed Yone vs. Yoshinari Ogawa This match existing is proof that there is no God. Two of my least favorite wrestlers in a singles match. Really though it wasn’t terrible, it was just boring as hell and the arm work was just kinda meaningless. Yone wasn’t going to tap to an arm submission, and Ogawa doesn’t really have any finishing moves that focus on the arm. So it came across as them just fishing to tell a story, but not really a logical one as the hurt arm did not really hamper Yone in any way. He wins with kicks, lariats (with the other arm), and the Muscle Buster. Now if he was hurting the right arm and Yone couldn’t hit his lariats, then that would make sense. But that’s not what they did. Also even though Ogawa controlled the match in a not incredibly interesting fashion, it didn’t take a lot for Yone to pick up the win at the end which really just emphasized how little damage Ogawa was doing even though he had the upper hand for the bulk of the match. You’d think two vets could put together a more… cohesive match than this. Score: 3.5 Atsushi Kotoge vs. Daisuke Harada This was fun, just seeing two young wrestlers go all out in the mid-card is a hell of a lot better than watching old veterans plod through a match on the mid-card. There were a lot of hard hits here and I really think Harada was knocked a bit loopy doing his own move at the end as he didn’t release the hold for about five seconds after the bell rang and then kinda just laid there. The brainbuster on the knee was brutal, I just wish these guys would sell moves like that a little longer as ten seconds after being hit with it, Kotoge was back up exchanging elbows. Everything here worked though, even if at times some of the moves were a bit over-contrived (we did learn though that Kotoge can get from the apron to inside the ring incredibly quickly). A really good match, I think they both show a lot of potential and should be some level of champions in NOAH this year as they need a little more excitement. These two and Kenou show me that maybe there are some young stars in NOAH worth watching. Score: 7.0 Naomichi Marufuji, Nakajima, and Ishimori vs. Takayama, Hajime Ohara, and Hirayanagi I am generally not a big fan of six man tag matches, but I have to admit that this one was pretty damn entertaining. I like that younger wrestlers now are modifying so many moves, it can’t be good for their health but seeing moves like brainbusters to their knee, swinging side slams into backbreakers, etc. at least keeps things fresh. Since most of these guys are smaller it was very fast paced, and even when Takayama was in the ring he played his part very well (big dude that hits hard) but didn’t stay in the ring long enough to slow the match down. Ohara and Ishimori had a really good stretch run and had multiple convincing reversals and near-falls. Ohara really came out of the match looking like a star which I am guessing was the point, but no one looked bad here. Much better than I was expecting when I saw the line-up, you can’t get a lot of serious ‘psychology’ in a match like this but it was good mindless fun. Score: 7.5 Shane Haste and Mikey Nicholls vs. Shinya Ishikawa and Yuji Okabayashi Certainly nothing wrong with this match either, even though some of the moves looked soft. A fair number of the kicks and knees you could tell didn’t land, I am probably just spoiled by wrestlers like Takayama and Nakajima in the previous match that don’t mind hitting people, but the Australians seemed a little more tentative than their Japanese counterparts. Haste took a good beating though and even though Okabayashi is hard to pin he took a lot of damage in the last minute so it didn’t seem like a cheap or unearned victory. Pretty solid match. Score: 6.0 Maybach Taniguchi vs. Yuji Nagata More of a storyline-driven match as Taniguchi turns the ‘evil’ up a few notches. I don’t like the “take the mask off” offense of the faces, especially in this case where Taniguchi wrestled in the same promotion without a mask for years. It is not like he is going to uncover anything we didn’t know, he still uses the same name, he isn’t trying to fool anyone. There were also a few miscommunications as the pair didn’t seem to always be on the same page. Not a ‘bad’ brawl and the ending made sense for what they were going for, it just lagged in parts. Score: 5.0 © KENTA vs. Takeshi Morishima This match is for the GHC Heavyweight Championship Both these wrestlers can certainly take some damage, even though they did steer away from the big “dangerous” spot that GHC Title matches used to be known for. I am going to hope/assume the two Go 2 Sleeps were supposed to miss the head since neither of them got the pinfall, as you can imagine Morishima isn’t the easiest guy to hit that move on. Aside from one or two mishaps these two were on the same page throughout, which is a good ratio for a match that was over twenty minutes. But the strikes/moves looked snug and they avoided doing ‘limb work’ so there was nothing to blow off later. Very little downtime as they just stayed on each other for most of the match. The only thing really lacking was that moment that pushed it over the top in terms of being a “must see” match, and I think it looks silly when big clubbin’ Morishima does moves like the missile dropkick. I don’t know if the right man won for NOAH overall but for the night it felt right as Morishima dominated the match and KENTA was never able to smoothly hit his biggest move which was his downfall. Definitely worth a watch, a great way to end the show. Score: 8.0 Overall: I have to admit, this event surprised me. In the past I always dreaded reviewing NOAH events as they were always very top heavy. Usually they had a two must see great matches to end the event, but the under card and mid-card were terrible multi-man matches with veterans that were just going through the motions (Ogawa, Taue, Inoue, Bison, etc.). This event wasn’t like that at all as the young stars were really given a chance to shine and in the only big multi-man match the wrestlers were really trying and all filled their roles well. Then you have a great main event to cap it off. If this is NOAH’s current direction I am pleasantly surprised and now I am actually looking forward to reviewing more of their events to see if this is the new norm or just an anomaly. But definitely worth the watch.

I just posted this event in the Matches folder, if y'all wanted to check it out.

Match by match this time, in case you just want the main event. Matches: 1. Kenou vs Hitoshi Kumano 2. Yoshinari Ogawa vs Mohammed Yone 3. Daisuke Harada vs Atsushi Kotoge 4. Naomichi Marufuji, Katsuhiko Nakajima & Taiji Ishimori vs Yoshihiro Takayama, Hajime Ohara & Genba Hirayanagi 5. Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls vs Shinya Ishikawa & Yuji Okabayashi 6. Yuji Nagata vs Maybach Taniguchi 7. GHC Heavyweight Championship: KENTA vs Takeshi Morishima

ZERO1 "HAPPY NEW YEAR" 2014 on 1/1/14 Daichi Hashimoto vs. Kohei Sato Not really sure why Hashimoto is still being treated like a rookie, but I haven’t seen any ZERO1 in years so maybe there is a reason. Anyway, a pretty straightforward match but Sato was definitely set up to look like he could beat Hashimoto whenever he wanted. He messed around with him at the beginning, but as soon as Hashimoto got some real moves in, he went straight to the finish and ended things quickly. Hashimoto has been around for years so I am surprised he is still doing the same type of match he had against Mutoh and Chono right after he debuted, but he is still really young. I wish Sato hadn’t won so quickly or that Hashimoto had come across as having a legitimate chance to win the match, but it was a pretty decent young wrestler vs. veteran match. Score: 6.0 Gokiburi Mask vs. Jason Lee No idea who these guys are, not overly concerned. The beginning was clipped but it was probably just more of the same. Gokiburi Mask’s “big man” offense was not very convincing and even Lee seemed surprised how quickly he went down to one of the elbow strikes. It wasn’t offensive, it just wasn’t really entertaining either. Score: 3.5 "brother" YASSHI and Ken Tsuyoshi vs. Yoshikazu Yokoyama and Tank Nagai Really just clip highlights so it’s impossible to really review the match. Hadn’t seen TARU in a long time, I didn’t even know he was still around so there is that anyway. But not enough shown to get a good feel of it. Score: N/A Ryouji Sai and Ikuto Hidaka vs. Toru Owashi and Takuya Sugawara Since a little over half of it was shown I will go ahead and rate it even though it was really clipped up. First of all, Hidaka is looking old. Which he is, but it makes me feel old because I remember back when he wasn’t…. old. He looked good though here, not backing down to Owashi and getting the pin with a nifty move I hadn’t seen before. How are wrestlers still doing moves I haven’t seen, I’ve been watching wrestling for 25 years. Sai did really nothing in the parts that made TV which is odd, I guess Hidaka was more the focus here. But the action was fine, what they showed us anyway, looks like it had potential to be a really solid match but it’s just impossible to get into the flow when half the match is missing. Score: 5.5 Akebono and Yuji Okabayashi vs. Maybach Beta and Tama Williams Nothing bad but pretty miss-able action. I don’t know what Maybach did to make Akebono want to splash him three times, did he make a joke about his wife or something? As we see happen sometimes, Williams isn’t really big enough to do the “big man” gimmick, as he was smaller than both his opponents. So it just looks a little funny. Nothing memorable about the match other than Akebono squashing people, I still find it odd that he wrestles on a small Indy’s mid-card. Score: 4.5 © HUB vs. Mineo Fujita This match is for the International Jr. Heavyweight Championship and NWA World Jr. Heavyweight Championship I am glad I looked it up – HUB is formally Goa/Super Dolphin/Zero and I always enjoyed his work back when he was in Osaka Pro. No idea he was in ZERO1 now which shows how out of touch I have been with the Puroresu. I enjoyed this match, it didn’t blow my mind or anything but it was solid Jr. Heavyweight action from start to finish. There were a few brief periods that seemed like a spot took longer to set up than it should have, but HUB is such a smooth wrestler that nothing ever seemed out of place. I wish HUB would have made it to one of the bigger leagues as he is just a solid wrestler, but at his age I doubt it will happen at this point. They didn’t get a lot of time and it was very slightly clipped, but definitely the best match on the show so far. Score: 7.5 © James Raideen vs. Demon Ueda This match is for the ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship James Raideen is a young really big (muscle-big, not fat-big) wrestler from New Zealand, and Demon Ueda used to go by Shito Ueda. First I gotta say, it always annoys me when a power wrestler wins a strike battle, and when his little opponent gets up he immediately wants another strike battle. Smaller wrestlers need to stick to their strengths, and Ueda’s chops clearly had no impact on Raideen whatsoever. Anyway the brawling outside the ring and the ending stretch worked really well, but some of the middle kinda dragged. They in a lot of instances just repeated the same series, without any real focus or flow to what they were doing. Ueda got in some good offense and at times he seemed at the cusp of winning, but Raideen just towered over him and was a more convincing character with his power moves. It was not a bad match as they were really trying and Raideen stuck to what he knew, but it was at times repetitive and was plodding in parts. Score: 5.0 Masato Tanaka and Yusaku Obata vs. Shinjiro Otani and KAMIKAZE This match is for the vacant NWA Intercontinental Tag Team Championship A mixed bag for me. Thank God for Obata so they had a young dude who could do a bulk of the fast paced work so the match wasn’t overly plodding. I really think the wrong team won here, I haven’t watched Z1 in many years but it looks like nothing has changed. How does two 40+ year old vets of Z1 having the tag belts help anything? Their level of “draw” doesn’t matter if they have the belts or not, but putting over a younger (in Obata’s case) and fresher tag team would make sense. As for the match, some things I liked and some I didn’t. I thought the leg work on Kamikaze was good, and the ending (even though I hated who won) made sense as the old veteran had nothing left in his tank but still could be wily. The offense was generally varied and it always felt like a toss-up on who was going to win. I didn’t like the table spot meaning nothing, as a minute later Kamikaze was right back to trading strikes. And sooo many strike exchanges back and forth in this match, I am tired of it and so is the crowd who didn’t really react to it at all. So like I said a mixed bag, but at least it got what felt like the right amount of time and was shown in full, so there’s a plus. Just wish the end result was different. Score: 5.5 Overall: I pretty ‘meh’ card from top to bottom. Only one match I felt was below average, which is good, but only one match that was better than solid, which is bad. Also the main event just left an icky taste in my mouth, I don’t understand at this stage why Otani needs a belt around his waist unless it is to help bring up a younger wrestler, which Kamikaze is not. Nothing about this card made me think “I can’t wait to watch more ZERO1!” which is what promotions should be going for, to hook you in. Unless you are a fan of clipped matches, old stars not letting go, and excessive strike exchanges, you can probably avoid this one.

Well we talked about it for eight pages before and after the event here (includes pictures), and the full show was posted here I mean there are a handful of puroresu websites but we always discuss the bigger cards in the Japan section of DVDVR if nothing else.

Pretty sure the first WWF one was Goldust vs. Owen Hart vs. HHH on 6/23/97. So three years or so I reckon after the Night the Line Was Crossed.

I made my first purchase on the shop (not due to gum, I just wanted to get some stuff in case they I dunno close down, I have no TNA DVDs and stuff), and for some reason I can't explain I got a 10 dollar discount. There is nothing on the site (that I can find so maybe its just hidden well) that says if you spend over a certain amount you get a discount, or two of one item, etc. So I have no idea why, but it made a good deal an even better deal. So I am getting 2 different TNA shirts, 2 different figures, 8 different TNA DVDs, 2 different TNA banners, and an autograph Sting wrestling figure for only $59.49 (free shipping). And maybe I'll get some gum. For someone with no TNA stuff so I can't get duplicates, it really is a hell of a deal. I have read if you put in the notes the wrestlers you like they do make some attempt to give you the wrestlers you listed, so we'll see if that works out.

Another medium quality release, its just the only way I can find these events and it is better than nothing, right? ZERO1 on 1/1/14 Tokyo Korakuen Hall No Announced Attendance Match Card (some matches clipped): - Daichi Hashimoto vs. Kohei Sato - Gokiburi Mask vs. Jason Lee - "brother" YASSHI and Ken Tsuyoshi vs. Yoshikazu Yokoyama and Tank Nagai - Ryouji Sai and Ikuto Hidaka vs. Toru Owashi and Takuya Sugawara - Akebono and Yuji Okabayashi vs. Maybach Beta and Tama Williams - International Jr. Heavyweight Championship and NWA World Jr. Heavyweight Championship: HUB © vs. Mineo Fujita - World Heavyweight Championship: James Raideen © vs. Demon Ueda - NWA Intercontinental Tag Team Championship, Decision Match: Masato Tanaka and Yusaku Obata vs. Shinjiro Otani and KAMIKAZE Full Show Download (579 MB)

All Japan "NEW YEAR WARS 2014" on 1/2/2014 Osamu Nishimura and Ryuji Hijikata vs. Kotaro Suzuki and Masao Inoue Pretty clipped up, but what I am annoyed about is I really like Suzuki and here he was paired up against Nishimura in a heavily clipped match. Seems like a waste of Hijikata and Suzuki, Inoue and Nishimura are in the right place opening the card, but it would have been nice to see more of the young guys. But really there wasn't enough shown to know if it was good or not. Score: N/A Kento Miyahara vs. Hikaru Sato I had not seen Miyahara in a long time, he looks really good and like he has a lot of potential. Sato played the role of underdog well and he managed to get in a few really solid chances of winning before Miyahara's strength was just too much. Miyahara had a brutal streak with the action outside on the floor, and it came across as more than just another undercard match. Good display for Miyahara, I would be interested to see him in a more competitive match against an equal. Score: 7.0 Shigehiro Irie, Keisuke Ishii, and Takao Soma vs. SUSHI, Tyson Dux, and Jon Bolen A very solid match although not in any way spectacular. The Americans both looked good and didn't seem out of place at all, which is really all you can hope for sometimes. SUSHI used to be Akira Raijin and is now wrestling with a goofy mask on for some reason which I am not completely sure of. Pretty crisp action throughout but pretty forgetable, meaning I just watched the match and I already don't really remember much of the action. Fine for the undercard but nothing that will rock your world by any stretch. Score: 5.5 Go Shiozaki vs. KENSO A very definitive win by Shiozaki. KENSO tried to cheat around getting the victory but he is in no match for the younger and stronger Shiozaki. It wasn't a great match as it was more storyline driven and trying to prove a point more than anything else, but it was important for their feud and will hopefully sooner than later allow Shiozaki to get back up to the top of the card where he should be. Decent, but below the quality of a typical Shiozaki match. Score: 6.0 © Ultimo Dragon vs. Atsushi Aoki All Japan World Jr. Heavyweight Championship It started really good and I liked the attention to the arm by both Ultimo Dragon and Aoki, but I thought the ending was awkward and fell flat. Aoki stayed incredibly focused on the arm and kept his offense on it varied so it never felt like he was just killing time. Ultimo Dragon on the flipside sold his arm throughout the match, even when he was on offense, and seemed resigned halfway through that he was only going to win the match by sneaky means. Which he did, but the way it was executed was incredibly not smooth to the point the crowd didn't really react to it. The La Magistral is a classic Jr. Heavyweight way to win a match and a respected method of victory, but usually it has to be done really clean to get the reaction that you'd hope for. So a very good match, it just had a rough ending. Score: 6.5 Akebono, Suwama, and Taiyo Kea vs. Jun Akiyama, Takao Omori, and Yoshinobu Kanemaru This match was mostly done to set up the Akebono vs. Omori match the next day for the Triple Crown. The problem with these types of matches is that Omori pins Akebono to show that he has a chance the next day, but Akebono took very little damage to get pinned. I mean really in the whole match all it took to beat Akebono was a low blow and two Axe Bombers, which doesn't really make a lot of sense. Six man tags rarely do though as each wrestler needs a chance to get their moves in and there just isn't time to really establish a flow to the match. The Suwama/Akiyama dislike was noticeable but the other wrestlers seemed to just be playing along, there wasn't a lot of emotion shown one way or the other. Just a standard six man tag match. Score: 5.5 New Year Openweight Battle Royal This is a battle royal with Takao Omori, SUSHI, Jun Akiyama, Taiyo Kea, Suwama, Ryuji Hijikata, Hikaru Sato, Shigehiro Irie, Tyson Dux, Jon Bolen, Keisuke Ishii, Takao Soma, Masanobu Fuchi, Kotaro Suzuki, Masao Inoue, Osam Nishimura, and Kento Miyahara as participants. In case you didn't know before, these yearly Battle Royals by All Japan are not taken seriously. The bigger wrestlers generally always get pinned early by a large group of people, there are some cute comedy spots, and then someone wins. Which doesn't matter, because the winner doesn't get anything. They have closed out their early January shows this way for many many years so it is just a fun tradition, one that doesn't really mean anything but isn't really doing any harm. In this case it was used to allow the Triple Crown challenger to end the night with his hand raised, so it probably meant more this year than it usually does, which isn't saying much. Score: 4.0 Overall: Not really much I can recommend here. The only Championship match was good, but ended flat. Some individuals looked good but the main event is basically just done for comedy and there wasn't a different "main event quality" match to make up for it. There were a bunch of solid matches and nothing unwatchable though, which is definitely a plus. Still, this is only worth the watch if you are already a big All Japan fan, I don't think this would be a good way to get back into it if you haven't watched the promotion in awhile.

They are MMA fighters, silly bean, it means he knocked him out. Probably with a kick of some sort.

I more just wonder with the sad affairs in All Japan (even the Triple Crown match drew less than 1K), how are they affording wrestlers like Akiyama and Shiozaki? It seems like they would cut costs but signing them couldn't have been cheap. So either their TV "deals" are worth more than I am imagining (I am imagining they aren't worth anything), wrestlers do indeed wrestle for some ramen, or promotions are just losing tons of money every week.

I posted one of them in the Matches folder, its from the event on 12/1. I think that's the only one that made tape.

Since I didn't watch any puroresu last year, this year I plan on doing the opposite and watch every 2014 event I can get my hands on. I'm basically going to try to be a less cool version of PUNQ, and certainly an easier grader than he was But of course anyone can post in this thread any reviews from any year as sometimes we watch stuff that isn't good enough to nominate but we still want to talk about it anyway. New Japan "Wrestle Kingdom VIII" on 1/4/14 Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Tomoaki Honma, Captain New Japan, and BUSHI vs. Manabu Nakanishi, Super Strong Machine, Jushin Thunder Liger, and Yohei Komatsu This was a dark match really just to show off Komatsu. As an aside, Nakanishi looks really rough, looks like that injury took a lot out of him and I doubt he will be anything close to what he was even a few years ago in New Japan. Anyway, New Japan is quite high on Komatsu, which you can tell as he had Liger constantly “encouraging" him and he did at times get in some offense against wrestlers that ranked well above him (like Tenzan). Of course he eventually lost but he put up a fight. It seems like a waste to have so many popular New Japan veterans in a dark match, especially since many were never even tagged in, but like I said it was designed just to give Komatsu a chance to wrestle at the Dome Show and the rest were there just so the crowd could cheer them during their entrances, otherwise they wouldn’t have been on the show at all. Score: 5.0 The Young Bucks vs. KUSHIDA and Alex Shelley vs. TAKA Michinoku and Taichi vs. Rocky Romero and Alex Koslov This was really too chaotic to get into. I mean I love high flying crazy affairs but this really went about two steps past that to it literally just being people hitting their big move, rotate wrestlers, hit your big move, rotate wrestlers. There was no real psychology or meaning behind it, it just was. On the plus side, all of these teams work really well together and there were legitimately some cool moments in the match. So it wasn’t bad or anything since it kept my attention, but the match was one of the biggest “spotfest” matches that I have ever seen in my 25 years of watching professional wrestling. Score: 5.5 © Lance Archer and Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows IWGP Heavyweight Team Team Championship I went in with no expectations but thought the match was solid. First of all it was different than the first two matches and I am a fan of variety. More important than that of course is that it was an entertaining and logical match. No wasted time with limb targeting or headlocks, just ten minutes of clubbing and hard slams which is what I wanted to see. None of these guys will be headlining Wrestlemania anytime soon but they are perfectly fine at heavyweight shit. Some parts were a little repetitive and it didn’t have any memorable “moments” per se but very solid from start to finish. I actually wouldn’t have minded it go a little longer since it was a title match, but on a show like this really only the main matches get time, it is one of the down sides of being on the Dome show. Score: 6.0 © Rob Conway vs. Satoshi Kojima NWA Heavyweight Championship First of all, Conway’s manager and NWA President Bruce Tharpe’s over-acting got on my nerves. A real life heel using over the top antics to try to be a storyline heel. Anyway, my main complaint here is it just didn’t feel like a title match. I know, it’s just the NWA Heavyweight Championship, but they carted out Harley Race and it’s still the NWA which probably means more to fans in Japan than it does here. But the match just felt kinda flat, Kojima worked his ass off to his credit and Conway wasn’t slagging either, but something didn’t click. There was no real structure, although having Jax and Tenzan at ringside made sense and their brief encounter was the only part of the match really memorable. So it was a perfectly fine wrestling match, it just lacked the feeling of significance or urgency to win the Heavyweight Championship after the long feud the two had. Score: 5.0 Daniel Gracie and Rolles Gracie vs. Yuji Nagata and Kazushi Sakuraba This match sounded intriguing on paper and like something that would be on the Dome event as a “special event”, but it fell flat. First of all, understandably the Gracies weren’t overly comfortable with the pro wres. MMA fighters doing pro wrestling matches always can be awkward unless they just go for it like Shamrock and Severn back in the day. Daniel in particular looked out of place. That would be less a big deal but the ending was really lame for such a big event. I mean he had Nagata on the mat, he couldn’t put him in a legit hold? And is he more “dangerous” choking someone with his Gi when he knows how to choke someone with his arm, or legs, or probably a dozen other ways? On the plus side the crowd was into it until the ending, the “Gracie” name still means something in Japan so as far as having “names” on a big show it did its job. It just wasn’t really entertaining. Score: 3.5 Great Muta and Toru Yano vs. Minoru Suzuki and Shelton Benjamin That was good mindless fun. I can’t say I know what the ending was about although Muta has been known to stop caring/get confused, but I am not sure if they are saying the sleeperhold made him loopy or he just remembered he was Muta and didn’t give two shits about Yano. Anyway the match had a logical flow to it, Yano was out-matched and tended to do poorly when he wasn’t cheating, Suzuki is familiar with Muta and his antics and I dunno what Benjamin was doing here. I did like that the first time Suzuki ducked the mist and someone else ate it, then at the end someone else ducked the mist and he ate it. Good placement on the card as it was different than everything we’d seen up to this point, and was an entertaining mid-card match. Score: 6.5 Bad Luck Fale vs. Togi Makabe This is literally the only type of match that Makabe can do. He has the look, and the crowd support, but his offense is incredibly one dimensional. He throws more lariats than Kojima. I hadn’t seen Fale in years but he looked really different, and he made up for some of Makabe’s lack of originality even though he was a bit slow and…. lumbering, if that is a word. The finish was very… absolute, which I liked, none of that two wrestlers slowly crawling to make it up in time, Fale was just knocked out cold. He wouldn’t have made a 50 count. So some good spots (the table powerbomb was rough and the Bad Luck Fall looked boss), some memorable moments, but Last Man Standing matches are notorious for being a bit slow and sluggish and this match suffered from that in parts. Score: 5.5 Hirooki Goto vs. Katsuyori Shibata I really like Goto and I still don’t understand why he got skipped over. He has the look, good moves, the crowd likes him. Anyway this match was very “fighting spirit” in its layout, but again like the few matches it was the first one on the card like that so it came across as fresh. A little excessive at times in my opinion, but at least it went both ways. Goto was fired up in his return and was really busting his ass, and I am so glad to see Shibata back as he was really good as well. The strikes were stiff as hell, the downtime was minimal, and it really came across as two men who thought they were the best and wanted to prove it. An entertaining match, and hopefully the beginning of something good for Goto in 2014. Score: 8.0 © Devitt vs. Kota Ibushi IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship I wanted to love it, and some parts I really did, but the Bullet Club was just too involved in the first part of the match. I understand they are the most active heel group, but it makes the match so disjointed when half of it has constant interruptions. Once they were banished, the last half of the match was really entertaining. Ibushi took some sick bumps as he usually does and hit his moves pretty crisply. If you take out all the interference I would have liked it a lot more, but that was just too distracting to me and took out some of the fun. Great spots, great ending run, but too disjointed to start out. Score: 6.0 © Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito IWGP Heavyweight Championship I loved the hell out of this match. First of all, Okada is so smooth, he really is a complete package. He has the size to be a heavyweight, but he is incredibly athletic (the height he gets on his diving elbow drop was unreal) and just is a natural. Naito is no flake either of course and their chemistry is palpable. Also, I love that Okada protects his finisher. How many wrestlers with a strike as a finisher use it constantly throughout the match? Even the greats like Mutoh, Sasaki, Misawa, Kojima, etc. are all guilty of it, but while Okada went for it a number of times he only hit it once. And that was all he needed. Naito on the other hand was always ready for it, and it took two tombstone piledrivers to make him hurt enough to not be able to reverse it. Nothing here seemed wasted, it was always leading up to the ending that never seemed excessive… never went over the top with big moves. If this is the future of New Japan, I think they are in pretty good hands. Score: 9.0 © Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi IWGP Intercontinental Championship It had a hard match to follow, but this was a really good match as well. It was more traditional with targeting a certain body part, but I liked that Tanahashi never forgot about the leg and really stayed on it from the beginning of the match right up until the very end. There were a few moments that things weren’t smooth, which isn’t a chemistry issue but just them trying to do too much on the biggest stage. The match did seem a little flat after the last match, Okada and Naito just seemed more hungry and had more energy in their match, while Tanahashi and Nakamura have been feuding for so long it’s hard for them to do something really new or fresh. A solid match and a good main event, but it definitely was not the best match on the show. Score: 7.0 Overall: Really, I only thought there was one below match on the entire card. Some were kinda sluggish (IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship and Makabe/Fale), some were disappointing for what the expectations were (Tanahashi/Nakamura and Devitt/Ibushi), but overall the matches still were at least decent and had some redeeming qualities. The only thing holding it back is in my opinion there was only one must-see match with then just a whole bunch of solid matches (although Goto/Shibata was really good as well). So I can definitely recommend it, it wasn't the best show ever but it was still overall entertaining and worth watching. New Japan "NEW YEAR DASH!!" on 1/5/14 KUSHIDA and Alex Shelley vs. The Young Bucks vs. Romero and Koslov vs. TAKA Michinoku and Taichi A shorter and less exciting version of what they did at the Tokyo Dome. There were less “big moves” and more just kinda pedestrian tag team double teaming with little excitement. I did like the spot with the referee getting hit, and as always these teams work together very well, but it was really quite blah for a spotfest. If a match is going to be just a spotfest, it needs to go as big as possible and this match was underwhelming. Score: 4.0 Minoru Suzuki vs. Sho Tanaka I gotta be honest, not what I was expecting. This match was probably 75% Tanaka on offense, if not higher. I mean he wasn’t going to beat Suzuki but Suzuki gave him a lot. And the crowd was really behind it as well, cheering on everything that he did. For a four minute match they managed to go through the full “rookie tries against veteran, veteran too strong” arch… sometimes less is more, if this was a ten minute match they may have lost the crowd or it may have been less noticeable how much offense Tanaka had. Good match here. Score: 6.5 Toru Yano, Iizuka, Jado, and Takahashi vs. Yuji Nagata, Nakanishi, Super Strong Machine, and Komatsu Actively not a good match. A “stomp” is one of the lazier moves in pro wrestling, and it does have its place, but ideally not at such a high quantity. Nakanishi is pretty hard to watch at this point and Machine isn’t much better. All Japan used to be bad about letting old wrestlers stink up the undercard for years after they should have gone to the back office, and now New Japan is doing it. Great. Anyway, the ending was ‘hot’ but other than that just a listless way of wasting ten minutes on a house show. Score: 3.0 El Desperado and Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Kota Ibushi and BUSHI I thought this was a really solid debut for El Desperado (formally Kyosuke Mikami). He made it clear he didn’t really care about Liger, which I like since…. why would he? He just wanted a piece of Ibushi. His dive into the crowd was nuts and I am assuming that is a spot he won’t be repeating as it isn’t the 1980s in Japan anymore, they generally don’t attack the fans, even though it is entertaining. Add in a painful looking finisher and out-smarting his future opponent for the belt and overall I think things went quite well. And that is really the only way to view this match, but the other wrestlers looked good as well and they kept things to the point. Score: 7.0 Prince Devitt and Bad Luck Fale vs. Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma Fale is one dull mofo, I don’t hate him but his offense is just plodding, and Makabe’s is no better. But the match did pick up when Devitt and Honma were in there, and really if they just focused on them with Fale/Makabe doing an occasional ‘power’ spot that would have been fine. But a bit too much Fale and Makabe for my taste, the match just dragged when they were involved. Good showing for Devitt and Honma though. Score: 5.0 Lance Archer, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Shelton Benjamin vs. Karl Anderson, Gallows, and Tama Tonga I must say, even though parts were a bit cookie cutter and predictable, the crowd was really into this match. They loved them some gaijin clubbin’. And some parts were quite good, power contests in small doses are entertaining and the action stayed at a decent clip. I don’t know where Smith’s Tiger Suplex came from, I’m sure it’s not the first time he has done it but I just didn’t know the move was in his repertoire, it’s not the easiest move to hit. After all these years I am still not an Anderson fan, he is always just “serviceable” to me which is probably why he has been the face of the New Japan Gaijin Tag Team since 2008. A solid mid-card tag team affair that won’t blow you away but kept the crowd engaged from start to finish. Score: 6.0 © Rob Conway and Jax Dane (with Bruce Tharpe) vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima NWA Heavyweight Tag Team Championship I appreciate they are trying to make the NWA bigger again, but rehashing match endings from the 80s that don’t really work today isn’t the way to do it. Stupid and lazy ending aside, Dane and Conway just had way too much offense for this match to really be interesting. Conway really tried and I don’t want to just knock a guy but him and Dane really don’t have ‘it’ and no amount of ‘it’ from TenKoji was going to carry this match. But really all I am going to remember is the ending anyway which was stupid and insulting, and not really want I want to see in my current wrestling. It’s cute to go back and watch old matches from back in the day that the manager interfered and stayed in the ring and the wrestler would act like he wanted to hit him, etc. but now it just comes across as hokey and contrived. Score: 3.5 Tanahashi, Goto, Tetsuya Naito, and Captain New Japan vs. Okada, Nakamura, Ishii, and YOSHI-HASHI Better than I thought it would be, eight man tag matches tend to be pretty pedestrian but they really focused on the stories they wanted to tell and the other wrestlers mostly just watched. This was mostly about Ishii/Naito as they went at it throughout, but we also got some Tanahashi/Nakamura snuck in there as well. The beatdown segment of Captain New Japan didn’t have to last so long since it served no ‘bigger picture’ purpose, but I guess the main event of a show can’t be a 15 minute match. It plodded at points but the feuding pairs did try to make it meaningful, so not a bad match either by any means. Score: 6.0 Overall: In a lot of ways this was just a glorified house show. Lots of multi-man tag team matches (which I don’t really like), and most the action being pretty predictable. The only “big” match (the title match) sucked, but we did have a fun debut of a new character and a few other really solid matches as well. If you are a completest or want to check out El Desperado this isn’t a bad event, but a casual fan can probably skip it since El Desperado will have a title match in a month that should be a better display of what he has to offer going forward.

That is odd that he has a random opening match and they don't have another show for a week. I am mostly interested to see what WRESTLE-1 comes up with for their upcoming Sumo Hall show. I don't think their "don't announce the line-ups in advance" thing will really work there and they better have something special planned or its going to be an embarrassment.

Not sure if you were being ironic intentionally, but Destructoid had The Last of Us as GOTY. So did Giant Bomb. And Game Informer, GamesRadar, Game Revolution, Kotaku, MMGN, Yahoo!, and Good Game. I dunno what half those things are, but it still won a shit ton of awards.