In a week where I watched AEW’s Double or Nothing at the movie theatre and realized I hated wrestling, I found my love again with some other awesome matches as shown below.

#15
Daniel Makabe vs Fred Yehi
Pizza Party Pro Pizza Party Wrestling
April 3, 2019

A WrestleMania weekend match here, back when that was cool. Two great technical wrestlers doing great technical wrestling and good focus from both. You can tell these two treat wrestling like a sport and have watched sports, the way they work just feels more “realistic.”

Rating: 7/10

#14
BLANK & Still Life With Apricots and Pears vs Chuck Taylor & Orange Cassidy
Beyond Uncharted Territory
June 19, 2019

Cassidy’s ace of North East Indies run is still one of my favourite things in wrestling and I will always enjoy his matches. BLANK is one of those great characters that I’m sad never took off, and Still Life is the future Edith Surreal. This was a really fun comedy tag match, but with a lot of great action too. Cassidy and Taylor doing a run of famous tag team finishers, but in Cassidy’s way was so much fun! More fun than great.

Rating: 7/10

#13
Chihiro Hashimoto vs Kyoko Inoue
“WWWD Number One Contender League”
Diana
February 24, 2019

A really fun hoss battle with the youth vs the legend. They were throwing bombs that felt gritty and it’s so amazing how great Kyoko’s stuff looks even this late into her career.

Rating: 7/10

#12
Giulia vs Sareee
Minoru Tanaka Produce Minoru Tanaka Debut 25th Anniversary ~ The Special One Vol. 1
June 18, 2019

This was fun, as they kept it short and were both fighting for the win. It was also a cool mix of talent you normally wouldn’t see square off. Saree was tremendous and all of her offense was really crisp, especially the dropkicks. Some sloppy moments, but overall a pretty damn good undercard match.

Rating: 7/10

#11
AEW International Championship Blackjack Battle Royale
AEW Double or Nothing
May 28, 2023

I wasn’t too into the early stuff, as it was a lot of just ridiculous dives. Although cool, wasn’t my thing. Once the story started to play out and some of the best wrestlers started to be the focus, this was really good. Especially the Orange Cassidy segments and the ending was great!

Rating: 7/10

#10
Hyan vs Masha Slamovich
“Queen of Indies – First Round”
West Coast Pro/PWR Queen of Indies 2023
May 13, 2023

I’ve always loved these two and they put up a banger first-round match here. I was really impressed that Hyan was so good as an underdog babyface. Her hope spots were tremendous. Slamovich remained quite the force and this match is well worth your time.

Rating: 7/10

#9
Sareee vs DASH Chisako
“Sendai Girls World Championship”
Sendai Girls
July 7, 2019

This was more of a sprint title defense with some great strikes. The real stand out here was DASH’s strikes which seemed more impactful than usual. The pace was high which worked because this wasn’t a really long match.

Rating: 7.25/10

#8
Masha Slamovich vs Mio Momono
“Queen of Indies – Finals”
West Coast Pro/PWR Queen of Indies 2023
May 13, 2023

A fitting finale to this tournament and a great little battle that had lots of great strikes, counters, and nearfalls. The power versus speed aspect of this match early on was fun, but the match really took off in the last 1/3 with the run to the finish.

Rating: 7.25/10

#7
Dynamite Kansai vs Hikari Fukuoka
JWP
August 10, 1995

Dynamite Kansai is a real master of controlling a match, and Fukuoka is exciting which made a great mix in front of a hot crowd. A little spot I loved so much was Kasnai doing a leg kick trip. It was so cool. The finishing sequence was a hot run to cap off this nice little match.

Rating: 7.25/10

#6
Nanae Takahashi vs ASUKA
“SEAdLINNNG Beyond The Sea Championship”
SEAdLINNNG Luckiest 2019
March 20, 2019

This was off to the races from the very beginning and held up an exciting pace all match. It was a nice mix of styles with the flying and speed and wildness of ASUKA and the brawling more bomb-throwing style of Nanae. The finishing sequence was good stuff, and ASUKA especially stood out to me.

Rating: 7.75/10

#5
Mayu Iwatani vs Konami
“ROH Women of Honor World Championship”
Stardom New Years Stars 2019
February 24, 2019

Konami’s leg assault was quite great here. This was all about the submissions by Konami and the selling by Mayu. Kind of a nice change of pace on Stardom’s main events, which makes sense as it’s for a ROH Title.

Rating: 7.5/10

#4
Kagetsu vs Konami
Stardom Shining Stars 2019 – Tag 2: Konami’s Homecoming
May 26, 2019

I loved the idea of Kagetsu trying to ruin Konami’s homecoming and starting off the match by trying to outwrestle her. Kagetsu does a great job of making Konami look great, but also being the great badass he is throughout. It’s a 30-minute draw, so it has that disadvantage, but the work was great and the match was compelling throughout.

Rating: 7.75/10

#3
Lyra Valkyria vs Tiffany Stratton
“WWE NXT Women’s Title Tournament Final”
NXT Battleground
May 28, 2023

This was a tremendous match built around Stratton earlier destroying the leg and Valkyria’s selling of it. I loved that Stratton, after causing the damage, moved onto her big offense for the win and how Valkyria had the leg damage affect everything she did, but not in an annoying overblown way. Things like a little hop, or a little touch here. Then she missed her big spin kick finisher. I had never seen these two before, but they both have a lot of potential, especially Valkyria.

Rating: 8/10

#2
STARS (Arisa Hoshiki, Mayu Iwatani, Saki Kashima, Starlight Kid, & Tam Nakano)
vs
Tokyo Cyber Squad (Hana Kimura, Jungle Kyona, Konami, Ruaka, & Zoe Lucas)
“Elimination Match”
Stardom Goddess o Stars 2019
December 15, 2019

This was a tremendous match built around storytelling and great action. It started off with a lot of fun, the usual big multi-person tag spots, but done so well. They had the lucha star with two in-the-middle doing spots, the five-way joined suplex spot, and one of the best chain corner attack spots I’ve seen. The eliminations of Mayu Iwatani and Hana Kimura were done so well, with great accident spots by their teammates and from there the match was just outstanding. The action and storytelling from the final four were so great and the final two put out a great finishing sequence. I know I have a soft spot for elimination matches, but this was one of the best I’ve seen in forever.

Rating: 8.25/10

“Match of the Week”
Kagetsu vs Tam Nakano
“Cinderella Tournament First Round”
Stardom Cinderella Tournament 2019
April 29, 2019

I love how the short time limit forces everyone in the first round of Cinderella to go all-out sprint and this was a marvelous example. It started with great work on the mat and the quick escalation was awesome. By the end, the crowd was going nuts and so was I as I bit on the German Suplex nearfall. The final moments of Tam holding on trying to get the submission as the time ran out as just awesome!

Rating: 8.25/10

Upcoming!

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