Tanahashi vs Goto
11/11/2007 - New Japan Pro Wrestling
This, ashamedly, is the first Hirooki Goto match I’ve seen since his return. He’s bulked up and grown out so much, I think he’s actually a different person. It wouldn’t surprise me if the real, skinny Goto is stuck in Tijuana doing indy shows or something. Tanahashi’s hair is ridiculous. Seriously he looks like a gay Japanese version of Noel Fielding. They went balls to the wall all out here. Thirty minutes and no slow down or lack of intensity anywhere in the match. Loads of people ragged on Goto’s lack of selling on the knee when Tanahashi worked it over, but it didn’t bother me at all. Tana compensates for it anyway by constantly working it over and reminding Goto. It’s a testament to how good Tanahashi is right now that he could lead this match and rein in young Hirooki here. That’s not a knock on Goto though as his work was great here too. His new offence is great and he’s adapted well to a heavyweight style of wrestling. He does however mix it up with some junior stuff as well, demonstrated by his second rope springboard flip on to Tanahasi on the outside. Tanahashi is great as always heeling it up really well. I would love to see him as an all out dick, in the vein of Ric Flair, but maybe that will come. They did an awesome job of getting Goto over huge here and there were some spots where the crowd really bought into Goto getting the win. His sunset flip bomb from the turnbuckle at the end had the crowd completely sucked in. It’s a great testament to New Japan that Goto, who’s only been back for a few months from a year excursion that saw him leave as junior, is already being taken seriously as a heavyweight title threat. The finished came when Tanahashi hit a High Fly Flow onto Goto’s knees and followed it up with a Texas cloverleaf. Great match filling with intensity and a real belief that Goto could come away as champion. Maybe not my Match of the Year, but it comes in near the top and is further proof that New Japan is probably the most exciting promotion in world right now.
Thursday 13 December 2007
ROH Man Up PPV
Hero vs Castagnoli vs Marufuji vs McGuiness
Larry Sweeney is a great, great man. Seriously of everything ROH has booked this year from the culmination of the Jacobs/Whitmer feud, Morishima’s title reign, the Briscoes/Steenerico feud and everything else, Sweet and Sour Incorporated has consistently the best thing in the entire promotion, and a large amount of the credit must go to Mr. Sweeney. His charisma is amazing and he turns every segment he’s involved in into five star entertainment. This was one such segment. He came down to the ring shouting about how he sold Matt Sydal to his buddy Vince. That was funny. There was a lot of whackiness to start out with. Hero’s gimmick is that he’s an awesome athlete and of course all awesome athletes do shit loads of flips for no reason. Therefore Chris Hero must do shit loads of flips for no reason. Hero is also a great man. There was a great spot early on that involved Marufuji hitting Claudio with a springboard head claw! A lot happened, too much to recap. In the end Claudio hit his Ricola Bomb on Marufuji and looked certain to get the pin but Hero jumped on top of the referee. He claimed he tripped on the rope and couldn’t help it. Nigel then hit his jawbreaker lariat on Castagnoli for the win. This was much fun to watch and nicely set up Nigel’s next title shot.
NRC vs The Resilience: Best of Three Singles Series
Cross vs Romero
This was the best four minute match I ever saw. Cross gets a lot of stick, but I really like him. His moves are always so crisp and they always look great. He’s got this great, gymnastic-esque offence, which in this match included him doing a Flag on the ringpost (basically holding onto the post and lifting yourself so you are at a 90º angle, like a flag) and dropping down onto Romero, who was on the floor outside. Romero looked like a killer in this match. His kicks look stiff as hell and he hoisted Cross up for a german and planted him on his head. He followed this up with an execution kick for the pin. It’s not like Cross was squashed and came out looking bad either. He got a lot of offence in, but in the end Romero is just a bad ass that kicks people really hard.
Aries vs Richards
I can’t understand the dislike of Davey at all. He’s not spectacularly good, but given a few more years there’s a good chance he will be. He simply does all of his stuff well and draws a ton of heel heat. What’s to dislike? He worked really well with Aries in this match, and there was a lot of good stuff here and a great finishing run. Aries finishes Davey off with a head kick, brainbuster and 450º-splash combo. Fun match.
Stevens vs Strong
I believe these two have feuded in FIP for a long time, so they should know each other well. Strong had such great beat downs it’s unbelievable. I remember a time, just after Strong had all those awesome matches with Danielson, when I was convinced Strong would be the next champion. The thing is now I still think he’s not quite there, but his ringwork was excellent here, he just needs a charisma injection. Stevens made his big comeback and really got the crowd behind, especially when he ‘fighting spirit no sold’ a superplex. Eventually though Strong hit a splash mountain for the pin. Stevens got over huge here and I’m pretty sure he’ll have a great 2008 in ROH. It’s a shame that in the end The Resilience came across as inferior opponents to the NRC because both Cross and Stevens have great potential, but they when they lost Aries it all fell apart and even his return wasn’t enough to save them.
ROH Title Match: Morishima (c) vs Danielson
Danielson was sporting an awesome eye patch and wearing his bitching robe to come down to the ring. This man is money. The match was great, because they started out with so much intensity and never let up for the whole length of the match. It was similar in a way to the Tanahashi/Goto match, but at an even faster pace. Danielson hit an awesome dive to the outside onto Morishima and very nearly overshot him and landed on his head. Morishima came off as a monster. Standing next to Danielson he looked bloody huge and Dragon bumped for him like a madman. They also did some cool spots where Danielson tried to roll him up or package him and Morishima just wouldn’t budge. It was some good stuff. Anyway the story here was that Morishima broke Dragon’s orbital bone in their last match and he was out for revenge. Morishima, in the interest of being a good sport, had declared he would not attack his opponent’s eye. So typically Morishima got angry, thought ‘fuck this’, ripped off the eye patch and laid fists and forearms into Danielson’s broken eye socket and the ref called it off. Danielson continues to bring the awesome in 2007.
ROH Tag Team Titles Ladder War: The Briscoes (c) vs Steen/El Generico
Straight off the bat there were chairs flying everywhere. One Briscoe got thrown over the barricade into the big pile of them. It was all rather nasty. They had these cheap as fuck ladders, which looked like they would get decimated. And sure enough they got completely decimated. Generico got hiptossed by both brothers into one in the corner and it might as well have disintegrated. It was carnage. Mark got powerbomb over the ropes onto a ladder on the outside. It looked like it hurt a lot. Seriously this match got to the point where it was ridiculous. Finally after it was decided that the shitty aluminium foil ladders were not going to be sufficient to reach the belts, Jay got a big fuck-off maintenance ladder. This thing was huge, and it wasn’t breaking. They set it up in the ring and two ladder bridges were formed between it and the turnbuckle. Generico took a Jay Driller through one ladder and Mark took a package piledriver through another. That was pretty cool. Jay and Steen climb the big ladder and Steen fell off, leaving Jay to capture the belts. Insane match, but way too over the top. Some people will have loved this, and I can see why, but I though it was overkill towards the end. Nevertheless a good spectacle.
Larry Sweeney is a great, great man. Seriously of everything ROH has booked this year from the culmination of the Jacobs/Whitmer feud, Morishima’s title reign, the Briscoes/Steenerico feud and everything else, Sweet and Sour Incorporated has consistently the best thing in the entire promotion, and a large amount of the credit must go to Mr. Sweeney. His charisma is amazing and he turns every segment he’s involved in into five star entertainment. This was one such segment. He came down to the ring shouting about how he sold Matt Sydal to his buddy Vince. That was funny. There was a lot of whackiness to start out with. Hero’s gimmick is that he’s an awesome athlete and of course all awesome athletes do shit loads of flips for no reason. Therefore Chris Hero must do shit loads of flips for no reason. Hero is also a great man. There was a great spot early on that involved Marufuji hitting Claudio with a springboard head claw! A lot happened, too much to recap. In the end Claudio hit his Ricola Bomb on Marufuji and looked certain to get the pin but Hero jumped on top of the referee. He claimed he tripped on the rope and couldn’t help it. Nigel then hit his jawbreaker lariat on Castagnoli for the win. This was much fun to watch and nicely set up Nigel’s next title shot.
NRC vs The Resilience: Best of Three Singles Series
Cross vs Romero
This was the best four minute match I ever saw. Cross gets a lot of stick, but I really like him. His moves are always so crisp and they always look great. He’s got this great, gymnastic-esque offence, which in this match included him doing a Flag on the ringpost (basically holding onto the post and lifting yourself so you are at a 90º angle, like a flag) and dropping down onto Romero, who was on the floor outside. Romero looked like a killer in this match. His kicks look stiff as hell and he hoisted Cross up for a german and planted him on his head. He followed this up with an execution kick for the pin. It’s not like Cross was squashed and came out looking bad either. He got a lot of offence in, but in the end Romero is just a bad ass that kicks people really hard.
Aries vs Richards
I can’t understand the dislike of Davey at all. He’s not spectacularly good, but given a few more years there’s a good chance he will be. He simply does all of his stuff well and draws a ton of heel heat. What’s to dislike? He worked really well with Aries in this match, and there was a lot of good stuff here and a great finishing run. Aries finishes Davey off with a head kick, brainbuster and 450º-splash combo. Fun match.
Stevens vs Strong
I believe these two have feuded in FIP for a long time, so they should know each other well. Strong had such great beat downs it’s unbelievable. I remember a time, just after Strong had all those awesome matches with Danielson, when I was convinced Strong would be the next champion. The thing is now I still think he’s not quite there, but his ringwork was excellent here, he just needs a charisma injection. Stevens made his big comeback and really got the crowd behind, especially when he ‘fighting spirit no sold’ a superplex. Eventually though Strong hit a splash mountain for the pin. Stevens got over huge here and I’m pretty sure he’ll have a great 2008 in ROH. It’s a shame that in the end The Resilience came across as inferior opponents to the NRC because both Cross and Stevens have great potential, but they when they lost Aries it all fell apart and even his return wasn’t enough to save them.
ROH Title Match: Morishima (c) vs Danielson
Danielson was sporting an awesome eye patch and wearing his bitching robe to come down to the ring. This man is money. The match was great, because they started out with so much intensity and never let up for the whole length of the match. It was similar in a way to the Tanahashi/Goto match, but at an even faster pace. Danielson hit an awesome dive to the outside onto Morishima and very nearly overshot him and landed on his head. Morishima came off as a monster. Standing next to Danielson he looked bloody huge and Dragon bumped for him like a madman. They also did some cool spots where Danielson tried to roll him up or package him and Morishima just wouldn’t budge. It was some good stuff. Anyway the story here was that Morishima broke Dragon’s orbital bone in their last match and he was out for revenge. Morishima, in the interest of being a good sport, had declared he would not attack his opponent’s eye. So typically Morishima got angry, thought ‘fuck this’, ripped off the eye patch and laid fists and forearms into Danielson’s broken eye socket and the ref called it off. Danielson continues to bring the awesome in 2007.
ROH Tag Team Titles Ladder War: The Briscoes (c) vs Steen/El Generico
Straight off the bat there were chairs flying everywhere. One Briscoe got thrown over the barricade into the big pile of them. It was all rather nasty. They had these cheap as fuck ladders, which looked like they would get decimated. And sure enough they got completely decimated. Generico got hiptossed by both brothers into one in the corner and it might as well have disintegrated. It was carnage. Mark got powerbomb over the ropes onto a ladder on the outside. It looked like it hurt a lot. Seriously this match got to the point where it was ridiculous. Finally after it was decided that the shitty aluminium foil ladders were not going to be sufficient to reach the belts, Jay got a big fuck-off maintenance ladder. This thing was huge, and it wasn’t breaking. They set it up in the ring and two ladder bridges were formed between it and the turnbuckle. Generico took a Jay Driller through one ladder and Mark took a package piledriver through another. That was pretty cool. Jay and Steen climb the big ladder and Steen fell off, leaving Jay to capture the belts. Insane match, but way too over the top. Some people will have loved this, and I can see why, but I though it was overkill towards the end. Nevertheless a good spectacle.
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