tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4941606387396137562024-03-18T03:19:33.579-04:00Not Just MoviesPersonal blog of freelance critic Jake Cole, with exclusive content and links to writing around the Web.Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09078001374402400232noreply@blogger.comBlogger1443125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-52762178561035779872018-02-09T00:00:00.001-05:002018-02-09T00:00:17.859-05:00LinksSo it should be obvious from a cursory look that this site isn't really updated anymore but I am still writing around the internet so here are links to my work to keep up with my reviews<br />
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My writing for <a href="https://www.slantmagazine.com/author/1019">Slant Magazine</a><br />
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My writing for <a href="http://spectrumculture.com/author/jakecole/">Spectrum Culture</a><br />
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My <a href="https://letterboxd.com/jakepcole/">Letterboxd page</a>, which for all intents and purposes will likely replace this as my place for casual reviewsJake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com739tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-45096204580124741082016-12-31T09:30:00.000-05:002016-12-31T09:30:32.073-05:00The Best Wrestling Matches of 2016 (15-1)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Continuing from yesterday's post, read on as I count down my favorite wrestling matches of the year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">15. Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Naomichi Marufuji </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IWGP Heavyweight Championship, NJPW, King of Pro Wrestling, 10/10</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pro Wrestling NOAH was in bad need of a shake-up when it was sold this fall, but the unfortunate side effect of their transfer of ownership was the sudden termination of a buddying invasion storyline with NJPW that had all the potential to boost both companies. As is, this match, a rematch of the pair’s great outing in the G1 tournament, stands as the final word on the aborted crossover. But if that is the case, at least the match itself is great, with Marufuji absolutely demolishing Okada and forcing New Japan’s ace to work as underdog the entire time. Okada takes wild bumps from his opponent, including a piledriver on the apron and a return to the ring to eat a dropkick, that make Marufuji look better in a single match than he has years in NOAH. The energy of this match never flags, even when Okada takes control and slows it down to recover, and in some respects his willingness to bump wildly for another promotion’s talent is a better show of ace-like qualities than his matches with Tanahashi.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">14. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">EVOLVE, Evolve 58, 4/1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾ </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Zack Sabre Jr.’s “Best in the World” series was an early highlight this year, proving his versatility against wrestlers of varying styles in a slew of great matches, none better than his work with Will Ospreay. Ospreay wasn’t the only flyer that Sabre worked, but arguably no one benefitted more from being put with the technician. Sabre consistently grounds Ospreay, forcing the younger wrestler to adapt his game to free himself from Sabre’s endless pretzel holds. That makes Ospreay’s aerial offense more thrilling because it can only be used in short bursts, offering an object lesson in how much more one can say with fewer moves. Sabre too looks even better than usual, actually wrestling like the ace that he somewhat unsuccessfully played in several promotions in the latter half of the year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">13. Trevor Lee (c) vs. Andrew Everett </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">CWF Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Championship, CWF-MA, CWF-MA #60, 7/6</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O9b4f4cvMzo/WGXh9O5uqhI/AAAAAAAAGXA/U7YNSJnDDioupfTnHMYWq-KFyvYFOUOngCLcB/s1600/lee%2Beverett.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="470" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O9b4f4cvMzo/WGXh9O5uqhI/AAAAAAAAGXA/U7YNSJnDDioupfTnHMYWq-KFyvYFOUOngCLcB/s640/lee%2Beverett.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All respect in the world to Will Ospreay, but for my money the finest 23-year-old wrestling prodigy around is Trevor Lee. Largely wasted in TNA’s half-assed attempt to rejuvenate its X-division, Lee is truly in his element in CWF, where he has defended his championship in a slew of no-time-limit matches that reveal not only his wrestling talent but his bewilderingly mature sense of in-ring storytelling, capable of altering his character to fit each opponent. Set against close friend and frequent partner Andrew Everett, Lee moves away from babyface into heelish territory to offset how likable his opponent is, particularly given Everett’s long stint on the injured roster that preceded this match. Not unlike the Shirai/Iwatani match, Lee is merciless in protecting his belt, and his goaded taunts to Everett to fire up come across as both dickish and, in some way, encouraging. Though they work an intricate series of moves and hit various highspots, neither Lee nor Everett makes a move just to make it or to impress the crowd. Instead, everything flows logically as a reaction to what came before, and the pair work such an old-school mentality that even Everett’s blade job could be called tasteful. Barring the shooting star presses and corkscrewing splashes, this is the kind of match you expect to see on a compilation of great ‘80s or ‘90s main events, not as a legally free-to-watch bout on a promotion’s YouTube page. Lee posted ****+ title defenses with regularity in 2016, but this one alone will make you a believer in this wunderkind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12. Hirooki Goto vs. Kenny Omega</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NJPW, G1 Climax XVI Final, 8/14</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rPNGODuAkxc/WGXjKQ9sT9I/AAAAAAAAGXQ/N68PzqDLHW8jzbAPW7BHukZIZ5WKcgUlACLcB/s1600/Goto%252Blariat%252Bto%252BKenny%252BOmega.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="356" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rPNGODuAkxc/WGXjKQ9sT9I/AAAAAAAAGXQ/N68PzqDLHW8jzbAPW7BHukZIZ5WKcgUlACLcB/s640/Goto%252Blariat%252Bto%252BKenny%252BOmega.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Baffling in its night-by-night progression, this year’s G1 Climax only truly coalesced at the end, when the booking of its final event made it clear how much of the tournament existed to get over the second tier of talent to rebuild the company. The final, strange on paper, was worked to perfection. Sentimental favorite Goto effectively slid into the match on his laurels, there only because Okada and Tanahashi drew with each other, while snot-nosed heel Omega fought such a war to make it in that audiences practically had no choice but to invest in him. The heat only intensified when Goto took every cheap shot he could at the leg that Naito mangled the night before, but Omega’s quick-thinking managed to find ways around his injuries to score offense. Then there’s the almost poetic finale, in which Omega reaches the narrative climax of his years-long gimmick of stealing the finishers of defeated opponents, lobbing power moves from Kota Ibushi, A.J. Styles and more until, at last, he drops the work of others to score a One-Winged Angel. That Kenny Omega, erstwhile the broom-wielding, comically oriented junior heavyweight, should ride out the first gaijin victor of the G1, cut a gracious promo in Japanese and soak in the adoration of a packed house, is proof of the possibilities of wrestling and how, when it’s done well, it is transportive. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11. Meiko Satomura (c) vs. Aja Kong </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sendai Girls’ Pro Wrestling, Sendai Girls, 4/8</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D43vywdrZu8/WGXicoM2mjI/AAAAAAAAGXI/9FfJcSjJJtMMywPfyRdOiiNfcSapa2pVACLcB/s1600/sendai.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="478" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D43vywdrZu8/WGXicoM2mjI/AAAAAAAAGXI/9FfJcSjJJtMMywPfyRdOiiNfcSapa2pVACLcB/s640/sendai.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Satomura is possibly the best active women’s wrestler in the world, Kong a legend who is imposing even in the twilight of her career. This match is absolutely vicious; Satomura tends to lead most of her matches, given how much both her own stable and Stardom’s is filled with young, developing talent, but here she is the minuscule underdog against Kong’s immovable force. Kong may not have much mobility left, but she uses her bulk to sell her complete insurmountability as Satomura bumps wildly for every little thing. In one moment, the champion goes for a frog splash, only for Kong to bring up her legs, driving Satomura so hard into her heels that the poor woman literally bounces off the attack before crashing back to the mat. Kong devastates Satomura in and out of the ring, forcing the ace to time her strikes carefully leading into stretches of total power moves. Satomura’s usual Death Valley Bomb finisher has so little effect that Kong can take one and nail a brainbuster without going down, forcing Satomura to break out her rare Scorpio Rising attack for one of the best near-falls of the year, then another when Kong comes back. Women’s wrestling had a watershed year in America and joshi looks to be making a comeback thanks to increased international access, but leave it to these seasoned veterans to put on the women’s match of the year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10. John Cena vs. A.J. Styles</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WWE, SummerSlam, 8/21</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Styles’s match with Reign at Extreme Rules was the better wrestling showcase. It proved that the newcomer would be a loyal company man and reliable seller who was also the best in-ring guy on a stacked roster. But Cena/Styles II is something unique, one of those once-in-a-blue-moon moments where the company tries something completely different. After only a few minutes of standard wrestling, the match turns into a series of finishers and near-falls. Remarkably, though, Styles survives everything that Cena throws at him, with the selling not done through weakened limbs or feigned fatigue but the facial expressions of Styles’s defiance and Cena’s bewilderment. In a way, this structure is the flip-side of Cena’s infamous ragdolling at the hands of Lesnar two years ago, this time with Cena dominating on offense but never wearing down Styles’s resolve. Everything great about Cena’s contributions to WWE can be seen when he nails an Attitude Adjustment from the top rope and proceeds to be frozen in awe when Styles kicks out, replacing the usual selling of despair and frustration with complete disbelief. More so even than the image of Daniel Bryan victorious at WrestleMania XXX, Styles’s clean-as-a-sheet pin here is the definitive announcement of the new era of WWE programming. Ironically, it also confirms Cena, in the latest of a run of stellar SummerSlam events, as the PPV’s best MVP since Bret Hart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9. Go Shiozaki & Yuji Okabayashi vs. Yuji Hino & Daisuke Sekimoto </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fortune Dream, Fortune Dream 3, 6/19</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ATcZSiNU0EY/WGXhpgzftxI/AAAAAAAAGW0/waj6kQdM8FoqAKL648NnBanboCq-2u8WgCLcB/s1600/fortune-dream-3-e1466066459739.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ATcZSiNU0EY/WGXhpgzftxI/AAAAAAAAGW0/waj6kQdM8FoqAKL648NnBanboCq-2u8WgCLcB/s640/fortune-dream-3-e1466066459739.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kenta Kobashi’s Fortune Dream supercards always feature a slew of compelling inter-promotional match-ups, and this year’s event was a show of the year contender from nearly top to bottom. The main event was the ultimate tribute to the man behind the annual expo, a tag-team match involving four of the stiffest hitters in Japan that featured too many chops to count, endless slams and lariats. Somehow, they all survived until the 30-minute time limit, at which point Kobashi himself got the most overwhelming pop of the night when he called for five more minutes. To see the legend himself first overjoyed, then brought to proud tears by the display of strong style action only deepened the emotional investment of these four men tearing each other apart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>8. Trauma I vs. Canis Lupus</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Mask vs. Mask 2-Out-of-3-Falls Match, IWRG, Máscara vs. Máscara, 9/4</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>****¾ </b></span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ju-ztFz0TM/WGXhkK1gheI/AAAAAAAAGWs/MaBCT8L91c8S5PjC7hGz9_LQQx4JTesGACLcB/s1600/trauma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Ju-ztFz0TM/WGXhkK1gheI/AAAAAAAAGWs/MaBCT8L91c8S5PjC7hGz9_LQQx4JTesGACLcB/s640/trauma.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Things start off hot with a tope suicida out of the gate, but the rest of the first fall settles into a methodical groove as the wrestlers trade strike that opt for the impact of mutual disgust over the usual acrobatics of lucha libre. But the atmosphere never flags, and the crowd explodes when Lupus locks Trauma into his own Lo Negro del Negro leg submission and forces a tap. The momentum slowly increases, only reaching a full frenzy in the final few minutes, but all three falls feature brutal interactions, with both men attacking each other’s masks to the extent that you start to think that both will end up completely exposed before a victor can be crowned. The match’s only negative aspect is that the ref’s counts are so agonizingly slow that it’s obvious this will come down to submissions, but that only calls attention to the passion that both wrestlers put into each hold. The final stretch, in which a tattered and freely bleeding Lupus takes advantage of a ref bump to nail a piledriver, only for Trauma to kick out and work his way up to a figure four, is a thing of beauty. To top it off, a defeated Lupus has his girlfriend come remove what remains of his mask, and he proposes to her on the spot. Wrestling is the best.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>7. Chris Hero vs. Zack Sabre Jr. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>EVOLVE, Evolve 60, 5/6 </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>****¾
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hero and Sabre are on such a different level with each other that despite working a possible MOYTC only four days earlier, they managed to main event Evolve 60 with a match that called back to their long history together while taking different twists and turns. Hero isn’t just the best striker in the business right now, he’s also the king of counters, and he has a response for every last one of Sabre’s labyrinthine, pretzel-like holds. Hero brings out the best in Sabre by bringing out the worst in Sabre, who rises to the bait of his opponent’s bully tactics by maximizing his own smugness. It should be ridiculous to see someone Sabre’s size take the fight to Hero, but he lays into the man with stiff strikes and holds that look as if he might genuinely snap Hero in half. By this point, each man has a counter for all the other’s moves, and it’s amazing how two guys who have worked each other so much can remain so unpredictable. As he has throughout the year, Hero gets the W in clean, devastating fashion, only to drop his arrogance for a promo in which he expresses genuine gratitude for what his opponent has brought out of him. Far from a breaking of kayfabe, the moment only reinforces the greatness and meaning of the match and puts over both men in the best indie feud since El Generico and Kevin Steen went onto to bigger stages.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6. Kazuchika Okada vs. Tomohiro Ishii</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A-Block Match, NJPW, G1 Climax XVI Day 13, 8/6</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*****</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">Ishii always seems to come out of G1 as its MVP, the guy who looks like a monster but can sell for anyone and build even the most throwaway match into something compelling. Ishii walks into this match with the entire crowd on his side, and he gives them what they want by laying into Okada, hitting a lariat and sliding lariat for a near-fall within the first minute that is so believable that the audience completely buys the false finish. Great, hilarious sequence where Okada hits various moves that target the neck, only for Ishii to power through, in part, because he doesn’t have enough of a neck to weaken. Ishii’s unstoppable offense brings out the desperation in the champion, opting for quantity over quality off strikes as Ishii responds to flurries of weak forearms with but one or two smashes that make Okada reel. Even when Okada connects with a wild, flailing DDT, Ishii shrugs off the faceplant as an irritant. But when Okada does nail a strong strike, like a corner dropkick that sends Ishii to the floor with his leg caught in the rope, Ishii sells his ass off to make the ace look good. This is up there with the finest non-final matches of the recent G1 tournaments, and it features a feverishly great spot in which the hard camera zooms out when Okada throws his Rainmaker pose, only for Ishii to pop up as the camera is adjusting to nail the champ right in the throat before he can actually go for the lariat.</span>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5. (TIE) Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Sami Zayn</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WWE, NXT Takeover: Dallas, 4/1</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*****</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KBxyaE6Ss3w/WGXhQ_xiY1I/AAAAAAAAGWg/SXcIIAEfy34usgDF0QnLuwUKmwjh4v7uwCLcB/s1600/zayn%2Bnaka.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KBxyaE6Ss3w/WGXhQ_xiY1I/AAAAAAAAGWg/SXcIIAEfy34usgDF0QnLuwUKmwjh4v7uwCLcB/s640/zayn%2Bnaka.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shinsuke Nakamura (c) vs. A.J. Styles</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IWGP Intercontinental Championship, NJPW, Wrestle Kingdom 10, 1/4)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ytF7mzu7m2w/WGXhBXdu0jI/AAAAAAAAGWc/ciOGGUhkmSAuQjwMyb6BJkjQJ8aPFgiZACLcB/s1600/naka%2Bstyles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ytF7mzu7m2w/WGXhBXdu0jI/AAAAAAAAGWc/ciOGGUhkmSAuQjwMyb6BJkjQJ8aPFgiZACLcB/s640/naka%2Bstyles.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nakamura has spent so much of the year having safe matches on NXT that it’s startling to go back to his last major New Japan event and his first WWE match and see just how much he brought to dream matches that had no build other than the hype of their very existence. But watch how each match builds its story in the ring. At Wrestle Kingdom, Nakamura and Styles spend a few minutes feeling each other out, acknowledging their lack on in-ring interaction to that point. But then, Nakamura goes for Styles’s back, then reported to be in legitimately bad shape, dragging Styles from the top turnbuckle right onto his lower vertebrae and later countering an attempted clothesline with a backbreaker that Styles sells like attempted murder. The two put over each other’s adaptability by stressing their own, to the point that even a blown spot or two (most notably an asai DDT attempt from Styles) is covered so quickly that it seems to be planned. The sequence in which Styles goes for a lariat, is caught in a jumping armbar that Nakamura then converts into a triangle, which Styles powers out of to hit a one-armed Styles Clash, is the single best moment at Wrestle Kingdom 10. These two served their notices the morning of the event, but they still went out and made sure to treat the company, the title, and each other with such respect that you’d never guess they’d be gone by February.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Meanwhile, at TakeOver: Dallas, the mere fact of the dream match becomes inspiration for both men. For Nakamura, it is the chance to prove that leaving his wildly successful career in Japan was justified and that he could just as powerfully earn his place in an even bigger company. For Zayn, it was the NXT farewell he never got, a chance to show that he had fully recovered from injury, and an opportunity to serve notice to the main roster to watch their backs. Structured like a Tokyo Dome event, the match put over Nakamura’s strong style, which looked even more vicious in America than it does in Japan given what an aberration it is in WWE, while Zayn poured increasing anger and drive into his performance to make even his most ostentatious moves look purposeful and stiff. This match was a masterclass to the entire company that fundamentals, when applied smartly, can win over a crowd more than a formulaic series of teased and executed finishers and kickouts. Check the power of the final stretch, in which Zayn counters a Kinshasa attempt into a Blue Thunder Powerbomb, Nakamura stops an attempted corner dive DDT with a savage kick to the face, and the Kinshasa becomes the most protected finisher since Taker’s tombstone. The finish completes a narrative that did not even begin until the start of the match, and it ups the ante not only for both the stars involved, but the entire company.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WWE, Battleground, July 24, 2016</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*****
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SDjzIIVoOVg/WGXg8J-2qJI/AAAAAAAAGWY/0IRS0_uoitQax06eoei5BqSac2Jk0NCeQCLcB/s1600/Zayn.0.0.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-SDjzIIVoOVg/WGXg8J-2qJI/AAAAAAAAGWY/0IRS0_uoitQax06eoei5BqSac2Jk0NCeQCLcB/s640/Zayn.0.0.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The greatest wrestling feud of the 21st century reached the latest of its many peaks in July at what should have been a disposable PPV just prior to WWE’s brand split. Both men brought years of history to this match, but just as he did in his earlier bout with Nakamura, Zayn in particular injected his performance with the urgency of a man struggling to make up for lost time. Without calling attention to it, Zayn made his time on the injured list feel like yet another roadblock to resolving his ongoing tensions with Owens, who so memorably demolished his foe at NXT TakeOver: Rival in early 2015. Months of mutual antagonism on </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> finally exploded here in a mid-card match that nonetheless felt like the main event of WrestleMania.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The match itself is structured in the super-King’s Road style that both WWE and New Japan have occasionally tilted into parody, but the sheer familiarity that each man feels with the other kept the rhythm consistent and intense. Zayn is the greatest babyface-in-peril in the business today, but it was obvious that he’d had enough before the bell even rang, quickly taking the fight to Owens as the two spilled out into a brawl by the barricades. Both men amped up the crowd not only with their moves and counters but their body language and interactions, with Zayn persistently fired up and Owens demanding his attention or screaming at him to quit when he locked in even the mildest of holds. The match climaxes in one of WWE’s two most iconic images of the year: Zayn, having definitively gained the upper hand, pausing as he hoists up his limp enemy, staring down at him and silently running through an entire life history of friendship and (kayfabe) hatred as he contemplates mercy. At last, the sheer accumulation of betrayals, beatings and humiliation wins out over his kinder nature, and he puts Owens away with the most vicious Helluva Kick of his career.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3. Kazuchika Okada (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IWGP Heavyweight Championship, NJPW, Wrestle Kingdom 10, 1/4 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*****
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Sg_SeCr9_A/WGXgi9kWcRI/AAAAAAAAGWM/FLXSbHKmspscslfgAj6e4o_YsnVI1biNQCLcB/s1600/okada%2Btana.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Sg_SeCr9_A/WGXgi9kWcRI/AAAAAAAAGWM/FLXSbHKmspscslfgAj6e4o_YsnVI1biNQCLcB/s640/okada%2Btana.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px;">If you follow New Japan at all, you’ve probably heard the complaints about this match. It epitomized the stagnation of the promotion’s main event cards. Okada and Tanahashi have worked together so much that we’ve seen it all by now. Okada doesn’t bother to sell the many, many minutes of offense that Tanahashi lays into his leg, rendering large swathes of the match pointless. The first point is hard to argue, what with WK10’s sharp decrease in ticket sales and Nakamura’s likely departure over frustration with stale cards. But the other two complaints don’t hold water. Despite working their seventh main event in four years together, Okada and Tanahashi managed to expand the ever-growing narrative of their war. These two had counters for everything, and Okada’s cockiness at the start of the match compounded his usual dickish persona with a desire to project confidence after leaving the Dome in tears last year. Once again, Tanahashi targeted the leg, to the extent that he spent months getting over a cloverleaf as a viable finisher just to bring to bear in this match.</span>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Which leads into the final and most pertinent criticism of the match: Okada’s selling. Admittedly, on a first watch it can be frustrating to see Okada react to the minutes of strikes, dragon screws and holds with a few minutes of selling followed by a barrage of slams, dropkicks and suplexes that seem to invalidate Tanahashi’s methodical work. On a second viewing, however, it all makes sense. Okada’s selling isn’t inconsistent, it’s rhythmic. Whenever he takes some particularly nasty leg attacks from his opponent, or hits a move on or heavily dependant on said legs, he either slows down or goes down to the mat in agony. To name but one example, Okada attempts a tombstone piledriver half a dozen times before he can actually hit it, and when he does he’s so weakened that his follow-up Rainmaker looks like a desperate flail instead of the devastating, protected finisher it is. But as he makes a comeback, however, he rallies, not forgetting to sell but ignoring the “pain.” In seeking to supplant Tanahashi, he of the Cena-esque powers of fortitude and recuperation, Okada must not merely best him in a match (something he’s already done multiple times) but prove that he can truly take Tanahashi’s place as company ace.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These two chuck in a host of callbacks to prior matches—a High Fly Flow to the outside, Okada hitting a crossbody over the rail—and the closing stretch is one long sequence of reversals, finishers, near-falls and escaped submissions. In one killer sequence, a seemingly endless parade of counters ends with Tanahashi scoring a beautiful German suplex that he bridges into a count of 2.999999 that earns a deafening pop when Okada kicks out. Perhaps nothing in their long, already legendary rivalry can top the finish, in which Okada hits a German of his own but cannot muster the strength in his leg to bridge, so he promptly goes for a Rainmaker and hits two more for good measure to confirm him as New Japan’s ascendant star. Okada and Tanahashi had a great G1 draw a few months later, but one hopes this is the finale of their actual feud. Though one should never say never with them, it’s impossible to see how this can be topped.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2. The Revival (Scott Dawson & Dash Wilder) (c) vs. #DIY (Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2-Out-Of-3-Falls Match for the NXT Tag-Team Championship, WWE, NXT TakeOver: Toronto, 11/19</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">*****
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Revival have been arguably the single greatest thing in WWE this year, at worst a not-too-distant second from AJ Styles, and any one of their matches could have made the upper tier of this list (including a house show match I saw between them and American Alpha that was better than any of their TakeOver bouts). But their rematch with #DIY was far and away the finest moment in WWE in 2016, a masterpiece of storytelling in and out of the ring. Going into this match, Ciampa and Gargano were hanging together by a thread; Gargano beat Ciampa in the first round of the Cruiserweight Classic, only for the team to lose to The Revival in Brooklyn and Gargano fall in the second round of the CWC, making Ciampa tacitly feel as if he’d lost for nothing. Practically everyone expected them to not only eat a pinfall here but to finally drive Ciampa to turn his Psycho Killer persona onto his friend and tear apart their bond. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gargano certainly eats shit for the first fall, masterfully isolated from tagging out by Dawson and Dash and taking a dive on a Shatter Machine only five minutes into the match. From there, he struggles to get to his partner as the Revival played games, from Dash yanking Ciampa to the floor just before Gargano could reach him to the team distracting the ref so Gargano’s actual tag-out was not seen and therefore not counted. The Revival’s matches with Alpha stressed the styles clash between the bully heels and technical wizards, but Ciampa and Gargano’s strike-based offense may mesh even better with the other team’s limb targeting and old-school tactics. Near falls aplenty until #DIY connects with a superkick/knee combo that looks even more brutal than the Shatter Machine, then a finale in which all four men are in the ring as Ciampa cuts off Dash from breaking up Gargano’s submission hold and slaps on an armbar of his own. In a year with such instantly iconic images as Omega’s G1 victory, Okada’s Wrestle Kingdom defense and Sami Zayn’s ambiguous stare at a defeated Kevin Owens, nothing has stuck in my mind more than the last image of Dash and Dawson grasping each other’s hands to prevent the other from tapping out before finally giving in to the pain.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NJPW, G1 Climax XVI Day 18, August 13, 2016</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AJbf1GcxTm8/WGXgt-mDy4I/AAAAAAAAGWU/BSVPdqTnpzYgdVdMgGrwghEi2ZvC7mUVACLcB/s1600/omega%2Bnaito.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="364" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AJbf1GcxTm8/WGXgt-mDy4I/AAAAAAAAGWU/BSVPdqTnpzYgdVdMgGrwghEi2ZvC7mUVACLcB/s640/omega%2Bnaito.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This match was great before it even started. One on end is Kenny Omega, the comedy junior wrestler who got thrust into the heavyweight upper card after the departure of AJ Styles made him by default the leader of the Bullet Club. On the other, Naito, whose Los Ignobernables de Japón faction only accelerated the Club’s slide into obsolescence and made Omega look like a first mate put hastily in charge of the Titanic. As such, Omega comes into the match without an ounce of his usual shtick, instead bringing the fight immediately to his surprised opponent, who nonetheless has every incentive to just drag out the match to a draw to advance to the finals. But Naito’s initial refusal to engage belies occasional bursts of offense, which cut off Omega’s increasing aggression with finely tuned strikes and precisely targeted work on Omega’s knee.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The rest of the match builds off of those knee attacks, with Omega getting heat every time he goes for a move, only to have his leg buckle beneath him. Early on, Omega slams Naito on the corner of the apron, and Naito rallies he catches a weakened Omega in a modified figure four that his foe sells like agony. About halfway through, Omega sends Naito into a barricade and then musters the strength to powerbomb him through the announce table to a </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">huge</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pop, </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">then</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> goes for a springboard dive over the barricade to an even bigger reaction. That these moves have to be built up, with Omega visibly overcoming his weakened limb to perform them, only makes them more dramatic. The final stretch of nearfalls and super moves (peep Naito’s outlandish super-reverse-hurricanrana) finally culminates in a One-Winged Angel that gets a crowd that had started fully behind Naito screaming for the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">gaijin</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Naito lost nothing in defeat, but in one fell swoop, Omega cemented his rise to the upper echelon of the NJPW roster, and abruptly made him the crowd favorite to win the tournament. This is how you build new stars.</span></div>
</span>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com139tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-75339006018215651742016-12-30T09:22:00.000-05:002016-12-30T09:22:55.887-05:00The Best Wrestling Matches of 2016 (30-16)<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I posted a list of my favorite wrestling matches of the year last December, I had only just gotten into wrestling, converted rapidly by the excellence of NXT’s women’s division and my introduction to New Japan Pro Wrestling. That budding interest exploded in 2016, which was a horrible year in nearly every respect save one: the worldwide quality of wrestling seemed to skyrocket. Even those who’d followed it all their lives said 2016 was special, and new avenues of access to smaller promotions made it easier than ever to keep track of wrestlers all over the globe. Even limiting myself to hyped matches from indies and smaller international companies, I still managed to watch more than 350 matches this year, an outlandish number of which were so good that when I thought about my favorite matches of the year I could rattle off about 70.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But since I do have some sort of life, I decided to write only about my 30 favorite matches. In an attempt to prevent any one performer from dominating the list (looking at you, Chris Hero; be on the lookout for a separate list of his jaw-dropping work this year), I’ve limited the amount of times that a wrestler might appear, especially for matches between the same opponents that may have resulting in multiple year-end contenders. Despite this selective editing, though, everything on this list was as thrilling, innovative, and impactful as what was cut, and the result is that in a list of 30 matches, 15 promotions are showcased. Read on for what can only be a brief overview of one of the greatest years for in-ring action ever.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ricochet vs. Will Ospreay </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NJPW, Battle of the Super Juniors Day 4, 5/27</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iP1pQtem8M8/WGXSN6n86ZI/AAAAAAAAGVU/Zpn5Qb-kzjwbSl_ypU_6LKaM8TMD36XMwCLcB/s1600/ricochet-will-ospreay-flips.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iP1pQtem8M8/WGXSN6n86ZI/AAAAAAAAGVU/Zpn5Qb-kzjwbSl_ypU_6LKaM8TMD36XMwCLcB/s640/ricochet-will-ospreay-flips.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve somewhat cooled on the initially great Ricochet/Ospreay match-ups this year; despite their many interactions, they’ve largely wrestled the same match, and Ricochet hasn’t pushed Ospreay out of his comfort zone in the way that, say, Zack Sabre Jr. has. Nonetheless, there’s no denying the intensity of their BOSJ bout, in which Ospreay, still relatively new to the promotion, completely dazzled the audience by keeping up with Ricochet’s dynamic flying. Tossing out any kind of work that would require selling from either man, the wrestlers instead worked a match built around Ospreay proving he could be just as incredible as one of New Japan’s hottest gaijin. Seemingly designed to be made into a series of GIFs, the match featured one wild spot after another, and the setting here brought out a fire that is lacking in their Evolve 59 match, which is effectively the same but lacks the added element of Ospreay getting himself over to a new promotion. Ospreay may have worked better, more complex rounds this year (his stuff with KUSHIDA and Taguchi alone challenged him in a way Ricochet didn’t), but few matches seemed as tailor-made to intrigue a whole new generation of potential fans.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TNA, Impact, 12/15</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5tO1m0YZKkQ/WGZpLup9Q8I/AAAAAAAAGYw/x4rrUxzkcxIdkEawig9a1GO1eCerNMYqACLcB/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-12-30%2Bat%2B8.59.11%2BAM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5tO1m0YZKkQ/WGZpLup9Q8I/AAAAAAAAGYw/x4rrUxzkcxIdkEawig9a1GO1eCerNMYqACLcB/s640/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-12-30%2Bat%2B8.59.11%2BAM.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This technically should not count as a favorite match, given it encompassed an entire two-hour episode of </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Impact</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. But the sheer, glorious illogic of Matt Hardy’s baffling, brilliant reinvention is totally embodied in this episode, in which no two segments go together and yet everything flows from what preceded it. From the opening, in which Matt’s infant son, through hilarious over-editing, scores a pin over Rockstar Spud, the entire event plays out as a colossal inside joke that nonetheless epitomizes the genuine innovation and spirit behind the Broken Matt Hardy arc. A match involving Jeff Hardy’s latest alter ego, Itchweeed (with three e’s) winks at Jeff’s spot-monkey career with a single table spot that is replayed to Simpsons rake gag levels, while the only true wrestling match of the night (Lashley vs. Edwards) literally does not end, disappearing into the night as the action turns to a tag-team bonanza that mixes the huge cast of a Dragon Gate match with the sheer abandon of DDT. Cranes, fireworks, a volcano, and a Triple H joke for the ages all factor in to the final fight, backyard wrestling elevated to the realm of mad comic opera.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">29. Tomohiro Ishii (c) vs. Katsuyori Shibata</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NEVER Openweight Championship, NJPW, Wrestle Kingdom 10, 1/4</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½ </span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yo0jswBBbb8/WGXcAIGPmtI/AAAAAAAAGVk/C1TjniJMQ2IoaCJdaI4nLicm3Vi6Vcq6QCLcB/s1600/Ishii-vs-Shibata.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="504" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yo0jswBBbb8/WGXcAIGPmtI/AAAAAAAAGVk/C1TjniJMQ2IoaCJdaI4nLicm3Vi6Vcq6QCLcB/s640/Ishii-vs-Shibata.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shibata’s long road back into his peers’ good graces appeared to finally end in 2016, starting with his Wrestle Kingdom bid for Tomohiro Ishii’s NEVER Openweight title. As much as Ricochet and Ospreay is a mutual showcase of aerial acrobatics, Ishii/Shibata is a chance for two of the toughest SOBs on the New Japan roster to absolutely rattle each other’s skulls for what seems an eternity. The early segment in which each man patiently sits mid-ring and welcomes the other to chop or kick them as hard as possible is simple but brutal, especially when Ishii gets Shibata right in the throat as the man gurgles but does not go down. From there it becomes a war of chops, strikes, knees, suplexes, lariats and headbutts, all of them echoing around Tokyo Dome so intensely that at times this match is hard to stomach despite a lack of weapons or blood. After an absolute war, Shibata takes it home with a PK that put him into the NEVER line for the rest of the year with a series of great defenses and storylines that have carried him all the way to WK11 in little more than a week.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">28. MONSTER EXPRESS (Masato Yoshino, Akira Tozawa, T-Hawk, Shachihoko BOY) vs. Dia.HEARTS (Masaaki Mochizuki, Dragon Kid, Kzy, Big R Shimizu) vs. VerserK (Shingo Takagi, YAMATO, Naruki Doi, Kotoka) </span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nnDMKo6Ici0/WGXj9rq5iKI/AAAAAAAAGXo/Et9eTrqsyUsbwiAtKRZ5LT6y7HfpoHUYQCLcB/s1600/dg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nnDMKo6Ici0/WGXj9rq5iKI/AAAAAAAAGXo/Et9eTrqsyUsbwiAtKRZ5LT6y7HfpoHUYQCLcB/s640/dg.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">For sheer fun, few matches this year topped this 12-man, three-team elimination bout. It starts as pure chaos, with everyone clearing the ring as soon as they get inside to brawl at ringside and even in the crowd. Slowly, however, spots begin to intersect with shocking intricacy, often involving four or five wrestlers exchanging moves in the span of seconds as mini-alliances form and instantly dissolve to target the heavy hitters. To describe the match is just to list its pleasures: a conga line of chin locks featuring every participant still in the match, Yoshino hitting a sling blade on Doi before countering Shingo into a suplex and teaming with T-Hawk for a double suicide dive; Doi kicking Dragon Kid when he goes to pin YAMATO so his teammate can roll Kid into a pin; BOY getting a bewildering upset pin on Shingo; and Yoshino’s incessant milking of the crowd. It’s a dizzying ballet in which no one has time to sell because the hits and pins come so fast that only the moves matter. I went into this not knowing anyone in the match and having no clue who remained on what team, but cogent planning and interaction made everything clear by the end, as impressive a feat as the actual wrestling.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">27. Yuji Okabayashi (c) vs. Hideyoshi Kamitani</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strong Heavyweight Championship, BJW, Ryogokutan, 7/24</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0YJ34I5wvp4/WGXkKFzgp0I/AAAAAAAAGXs/ldCYkkVqqyM5-a0RGs7elBBKPUZTJvqKgCLcB/s1600/oka%2Bkamitani.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-0YJ34I5wvp4/WGXkKFzgp0I/AAAAAAAAGXs/ldCYkkVqqyM5-a0RGs7elBBKPUZTJvqKgCLcB/s640/oka%2Bkamitani.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Big Japan is filled with men so comically proportioned that they look like Rob Liefeld drawings come to life, but there’s something awe-inspiring in the wall of flesh that is Yuji Okabayashi. Kamitani surprisingly keeps Okabayashi rooted at the start, locking in holds that prevent the veteran’s terrifying charges and clearly surprising the champion, who did not take his opponent seriously. Eventually, they work to an Irish whip spot and a collision from Kamitani that does not make Okabayashi budge an inch. Several more stalemate bumps follow, cut off by a single lariat from the champ that sends the challenger careening outside. As much as Sekimoto, Okabayashi excels at using his size to make even a throwaway punch look like the most devastating blow in the world, and his offense appears at first glance to be nothing but bombs until you notice how basic and carefully paced the moves are. He controls most of the match, though Kamitani stays busy with babyface selling, enhanced by the tooth that Okabayashi himself had knocked out in a tag match the prior month. Just as Okabayashi makes even the mildest strikes look like death, so too does Kamitani get over even the briefest counters and comebacks, and when he pulls even with his foe it’s a sight to behold. I originally had this pegged at ****¾ until Kamitani’s underwhelming reign took some of the shine off his fire here, but the match itself remains a masterclass in an old-school mentality of wrestling, one that understands that if you’re already over, you don’t have to kill yourself with highspots to send a crowd into a frenzy.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">26. Kento Miyahara (c) vs. Jun Akiyama </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Triple Crown Championship, AJPW, Summer Action Series, 7/23</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vOBY-7zZxlo/WGXkPYlin8I/AAAAAAAAGX0/2FEemSTM4WI4jbW34ikVNi6fkmMAq7xkACLcB/s1600/kento-akiyama.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vOBY-7zZxlo/WGXkPYlin8I/AAAAAAAAGX0/2FEemSTM4WI4jbW34ikVNi6fkmMAq7xkACLcB/s640/kento-akiyama.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Miyahara’s title reign came earlier than planned when injuries forced All Japan’s hand early in the year, but the 27-year-old’s run has played a major role in the company’s rebirth as a meaningful promotion over the course of the year, with defenses against both in-house talent and drifting warriors like Daisuke Sekimoto that range from very good to great. The best of these, though, pit the young champ against mentor and booker Jun Akiyama, who promptly puts his great white hope through the ringer. Miyahara’s knee strikes are a thing of beauty, but much drama in the match comes from how much better, stronger, and smarter Akiyama’s own are. Akiyama never achieved the stardom he was groomed for, but he was apprenticed by the best, and the precision of his offense threatens to completely show up his hand-picked successor. But Miyahara won’t stay down, and Akiyama subtly shifts during the match from detached, technical master to increasingly reckless bomb thrower. This opens a window for Miyahara to outsmart his now-unhinged elder, as when he manages to counter one of Akiyama’s vicious guillotine chokes into a brainbuster. Though they’re playing to a crowd of fewer than 1,000, these two put on a show worthy of one of All Japan’s gigantic ‘90s galas, complete with a closing stretch of too many false finishes to count and so much heat that the few hundred fans in attendance are deafening in their screams. More than any of Miyahara’s other title defenses, this cemented him as the true ace of a revived promotion, and it makes me supremely eager to keep tabs on the company in the new year.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">25. The Miz (c) vs. Dolph Ziggler</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Intercontinental Championship, WWE, No Mercy, 10/9</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QY4ixLh1pUc/WGXcLwMOSAI/AAAAAAAAGVo/hmFD0c31xlwMKnRZwYxCMZl96zQHys8pQCLcB/s1600/miz%2Bziggler.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QY4ixLh1pUc/WGXcLwMOSAI/AAAAAAAAGVo/hmFD0c31xlwMKnRZwYxCMZl96zQHys8pQCLcB/s640/miz%2Bziggler.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fact that, in 2016, Dolph Ziggler could put his career on the line and people would cheer for him to win a match is a testament to the unrelenting greatness of The Miz’s latest and greatest run as perhaps WWE’s only true heel, the only one who doesn’t get himself over but instead utilizes his nuclear heat to boost any face who challenges him. His feud with Ziggler is unquestionably the highlight of the latter’s WWE career, if not his own as well, and their No Mercy match brought out the most vicious tactics in both. Ziggler dominates the early stretch with a series of moves and cover attempts before Miz takes control with moves and gestures that mock Daniel Bryan (subject of the Miz’s other great, promo-based feud of the year). Miz continues to parade around as asshole of the decade until Ziggler reverses a figure four and makes Miz realize he will actually have to exert effort to put this guy away. Maryse gets a lifetime pass for match interference, and here she hits Ziggler with a blast of hairspray to hoist this ‘80s hair metal wannabe by his own chemical petard in time. Her hubby capitalizes to hit a skull crushing finale but Ziggler gets a foot on the ropes at two-and-a-half. A superkick saves Ziggler’s career in more ways than one, and despite winning the IC belt four times before now, not to mention all the other titles he’s won with the company, this is the first time one of his wins seemed to mean something.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">24. KUSHIDA vs. Kyle O’Reilly</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NJPW, Best of the Super Juniors Day 1, 5/21</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2Lb1jXU2GYg/WGXkUYKBIQI/AAAAAAAAGX4/wu8jbPrGa0U2tFV2EgiE03OZpqR_lUiJACLcB/s1600/kyle%2Bkushida.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="366" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2Lb1jXU2GYg/WGXkUYKBIQI/AAAAAAAAGX4/wu8jbPrGa0U2tFV2EgiE03OZpqR_lUiJACLcB/s640/kyle%2Bkushida.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lost in the hype for Ricochet/Ospreay was the simple fact that a better match involving neither man had already set the standard for this year’s Best of the Super Juniors tournament. In the immediate aftermath of New Japan’s talent drain in January, KUSHIDA made a bid for company MVP with his thrilling junior heavyweight title defenses. His all-rounder style fits with just about anyone, but it was great to see his underrated technical offense get a workout with striker O’Reilly, with whom he had waged a year-long program across the world. Their familiarity going into this match was worked into an excellent sequence of chain wrestling, with O’Reilly managing to work the leg to set up an armbar in a show of genuine fight knowledge over straightforward limb targeting. When the spots come, they are outstanding, climaxing with a sequence in which O’Reilly sits a weakened KUSHIDA on a chair at ringside and goes for an apron dive, only to be caught by KUSHIDA in an armbar. The sheer absurd brilliance of the moment somewhat overwhelms the actual conclusion of the match, which dispels with such theatrics for the passion of O’Reilly kicking his opponent into a daze before slapping on the armbar for the win. Regardless, this match is the highlight of a rough year for New Japan’s junior division, and one hopes that 2017 brings that scene the same revitalization that marked the heavyweight card this year.</span><br />
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</b> <br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">23. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chris Hero vs. Matt Riddle </span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">EVOLVE, Evolve 73, 11/13</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2Pm5YWRupE/WGXl_egut_I/AAAAAAAAGYU/kGb_CY4tGgECQaf6sJR_9ZumuooP3i9YQCLcB/s1600/hero%2Briddle.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Z2Pm5YWRupE/WGXl_egut_I/AAAAAAAAGYU/kGb_CY4tGgECQaf6sJR_9ZumuooP3i9YQCLcB/s640/hero%2Briddle.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Matt Riddle’s super-rookie year saw him, among numerous other accomplishments, face Chris Hero three times in an EVOLVE ring, each time hanging with Hero so easily it looked as if they came up together. With their series tied, Hero kicked Riddle during the intro to take any possible advantage, forcing Riddle to slowly battle back as Hero unloaded his arsenal. Riddle’s matches have skewed shorter to maximize his strengths, but the 15 minutes here never give the impression of covering for any shortcomings of pacing. Instead, the concise running time allows both men to work an aggressive, bomb-filled match that trades jaw-dropping spots for the feel of an out and out fight. Riddle’s jumping tombstone looks spectacular, but he learns the hard way never to start a piledriver fight with Chris Hero as the veteran closes out the series.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">22. Adam Cole & The Young Bucks vs. Will Ospreay, Ricochet & Matt Sydal </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PWG, BOLA Night 2, 9/3 </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KrxcQCjRWRE/WGXllWKofEI/AAAAAAAAGYI/5U3C05sGK7w2NIbn8NBo1hO8LooK6YO_QCLcB/s1600/pwg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="370" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KrxcQCjRWRE/WGXllWKofEI/AAAAAAAAGYI/5U3C05sGK7w2NIbn8NBo1hO8LooK6YO_QCLcB/s640/pwg.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">PWG arguably held better, or at least better told, matches in 2016, and it’s entirely possible that this wasn’t even the best tag match on the BOLA Night 2 card. But nothing this year epitomized the empty-calorie splendor of PWG like this epic, convoluted trios match. Is there a superkick party? Of course there is. Ricochet puts himself out as an all-rounder with just as many power moves as flying strikes, while the Bucks’ synchronization continues to lend evidence that the Jacksons share some kind of fraternal, twin-like telepathy. It’s Ospreay who steals the show, though, able to minimize his weakest aspects to maximize his mile-a-minute workrate. Crucially, he scored numerous pinfall saves on behalf of his teammates, including a spot of the year contender in catching one of the Bucks in mid-air as they went for the Meltzer driver and delivering the greatest Os-cutter of his career. Like many PWG matches, the lack of an underlying dramatic element docks it somehwat, but in the moment, the onslaught of perfectly intertwined spots really does feel like a five-star classic.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">21. The Miz (c) vs. Cesaro vs. Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fatal-4-Way for the Intercontinental Championship, WWE, Extreme Rules, 5/22 </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5fs52lqVHLM/WGXl2TggEkI/AAAAAAAAGYM/SnH2emWKNwkj3bDk45Zyzp99amx_RTQnwCLcB/s1600/CesaroMiz-850x540.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="406" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5fs52lqVHLM/WGXl2TggEkI/AAAAAAAAGYM/SnH2emWKNwkj3bDk45Zyzp99amx_RTQnwCLcB/s640/CesaroMiz-850x540.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s remarkable how much storytelling that WWE advanced through multi-(wo)man matches this year, given the company’s usual dismissal of the format. Everyone in this match is not merely warring for the IC strap; they’re also furthering their own characters in exciting ways. No sooner does the bell ring than Zayn runs from his corner to nail Owens with a Helluva kick, immediately furthering their PPV squabbles that had been in play since the Zayn dumped his nemesis at the Rumble. Meanwhile, Cesaro runs wild in typically outstanding fashion, hitting uppercuts, suplexes and everything under the sun on literally anyone who crosses his path. Then there’s the champ, laying down the gauntlet for his incredible year by playing the ultimate chickenshit heel, regularly ducking out of the action only to slip in and nail people with cheap shots before darting back to safety. Matches with Sami Zayn always seem to have perfect finishes, and that’s certainly true here, wherein Zayn lays out Cesaro for the pin, only for Owens to yank him from ringside and start a complete brawl as Miz slips into the ring completely unnoticed to get the three-count on the still-flattened Cesaro. Every single person in this match played his part perfectly, and it’s a testament to their work that they nearly overshadowed the equally magnificent main event.</span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">20. Io Shirai (c) vs. Mayu Iwatani</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">World of Stardom Championship, World Wonder Ring Stardom, Stardom Gold, 5/15</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lNL_3gBF0OM/WGXcTjec5JI/AAAAAAAAGVs/PB76N7nm2-4x-GQVlyKqYgTSN1GnsQ6NwCLcB/s1600/shirai%2Bmayu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lNL_3gBF0OM/WGXcTjec5JI/AAAAAAAAGVs/PB76N7nm2-4x-GQVlyKqYgTSN1GnsQ6NwCLcB/s640/shirai%2Bmayu.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Stardom ace Io Shirai has one of the best characters in wrestling today, imbuing the face champion with heelish ruthlessness with a spirit all her own. Shirai plays that character to the fullest against friend and tag partner Mayu Iwatani, who herself is so eager to take on her pal for the top belt that she requests a no-time-limit match before the bell. The action hits early, spilling ringside with a wild suicide dive from Shirai before Iwatani whips her into chairs and sets up her deadly dragon suplex that Shirai worms out of to hit a German. Shirai spends the rest of the match doing anything to avoid the dragon suplex, and when Iwatani finally nails one, on the apron, no less, the champ barely rolls back in for the count, and Iwatani wastes no time letting her opponent recover before going for another dragon. Iwatani looked like a million bucks here, completely worthy of challenging her partner, but Shirai always looked that much better, that much more able to do anything. Watch her hit a desperate suplex on Iwatani, lock in a cloverleaf on her prone foe, pick her up from that into a tombstone and then go up for a moonsault attempt, all of it rendered as one continuous motion. Also check out the pair’s year-closing rematch at the 12/22 Year-End Climax to see an equally great match.</span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">19. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chris Hero vs. Trevor Lee</span><br />
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">AAW, Epic, 4/9</span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****½
</span></div>
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-63OjrPHL2d0/WGXk3gYOWCI/AAAAAAAAGYA/8Hzy7HqbeLM1_3xRgzrepffrBkxohh_OwCLcB/s1600/hero%2Blee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-63OjrPHL2d0/WGXk3gYOWCI/AAAAAAAAGYA/8Hzy7HqbeLM1_3xRgzrepffrBkxohh_OwCLcB/s640/hero%2Blee.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dream matches always run the risk of failing to build a genuine story beyond the immediate thrill of their existence, but Hero spent all year having incredible match-ups that he consistently found ways to differentiate from his other dream fights. Take this match; he meets 60-minute man Trevor Lee, he of the wild, no-time-limit CWF Mid-Atlantic title defenses, on neutral ground in AAW. Though Hero directly puts over the young prodigy after the match, the bout itself makes it clear how highly he thinks of the kid. Hero’s entire persona is built on bully tactics and the sheer difficulty of overcoming his endless offense, but his generosity is never more apparent than here, where he dispenses with usual David/Goliath structure and instead takes such a brutal, fast-paced fight to Lee that he sells the man as not merely his equal but someone who must be completely demolished to keep down. Both men strike with force, but it’s when they drift to the furthest reaches of their wide-ranging abilities—Hero launching a moonsault, Lee deadlifting his bigger foe—that the match explodes. Both men excel here, with Hero adding yet another notch to his 2016 belt and Lee coming off like a man that needs to be signed to the biggest promotions in the world the very second his TNA deal expires.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br />
</b> <br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">18. Shuji Ishikawa (c) vs. Kazusada Higuchi </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">KO-D Openweight Championship, DDT, Who’s Gonna Top That?, 9/25</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">****¾
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gjA9yEYIA_c/WGXmMU94GnI/AAAAAAAAGYY/87kJSmrP3Xs5ouSTT0CcLJDQoDiAMltUgCLcB/s1600/higuchi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gjA9yEYIA_c/WGXmMU94GnI/AAAAAAAAGYY/87kJSmrP3Xs5ouSTT0CcLJDQoDiAMltUgCLcB/s640/higuchi.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In a year dominated with excellent BJW strong-style matches, the best example of the style actually came out of DDT. That’s not particularly crazy; KO-D champ Ishikawa is a BJW regular of course (peep the network of deathmatch scars freely visible on his back and arms). But it is surprising that rising star Higuchi puts up a match in which he comes off every bit the equal of his legendary opponent. Though he heads outside with a plancha dive within the first minute, Higuchi spends much of the match on defense, though his counters and general endurance ensure that he never looks mismatched. Headbutt battles, thunderous bombs and lariats galore give this a classic AJPW feel. Higuchi’s heat in the second half is megawatt-level, and the closing stretch of him managing to eat a dozen knee strikes and keep kicking out blows the roof off of Korakuen. Ishikawa retains after wearing down his foe, but both men leave the ring looking like champs, and Higuchi in one go made himself as a main eventer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Extreme Rules Match for the WWE Heavyweight Championship, WWE, Extreme Rules, 5/22</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A.J. Styles hit WWE like a bomb, so utterly great a performer that he managed to burst out of a planned fixation in the mid-card to become the company MVP on both TV and PPV. It’s arguable that the best of his matches in the promotion this year came at Extreme Rules, in which he challenged perennial audience whipping boy Roman Reigns for the title. Still dogged by rumors of his abysmal back condition, Styles took seemingly every bump a man could take right on his injured area, including a slam into the pre-show announce table at the edge of the arena floor that should have officially marked Reigns’s heel turn. More viciousness follows with the pair abandoning the usual Extreme Rules overreliance on gimmick weapons in favor of just wrestling as brutally as possible. The match stip makes the interference by both the Club and the Usos logical, and the Club attempt to toss a limp Styles over Reigns to get him the pin was the first and, to date, last time the Club looked good and purposeful in the WWE. Complete with the final image of a rehabbed Seth Rollins sprinting down the lane to pedigree the victorious Reigns, this match injected purpose, however briefly, back into Reigns’s arc and completely reoriented Styles to set up his growth into the face that runs the place.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Falls Count Anywhere Match for the Raw Women’s Championship, WWE, Raw, 11/28 </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite its admitted overbooking, the Charlotte/Banks feud consistently pulled out the best in the two wrestlers, and they managed to bring urgency back to a number of gimmick matches (Hell in a Cell, Ironman) that long ago lost their power. But despite the spectacle of their PPV matchups, it was Banks’s Raw wins that tended to showcase their full potential. The finest of these was their last, a Falls Count Anywhere match that was so brutal that the women even managed to sell the nastiness of the Kendo stick, otherwise the most transparently gimmicked weapon to make frequent use in the promotion. Banks’s meteoras looked as legit and punishing as a classic double stomp, while Charlotte made the most of her athletic advantage to look domineering over her opponent. The finish, in which Bank looped Charlotte through a stairwell guardrail and slapped on her Bank Statement finisher, looked like absolute murder. </span>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-559489868951632302016-12-24T23:45:00.000-05:002016-12-24T23:45:17.786-05:00The Unlikely Autobiography of Prince’s ‘Under the Cherry Moon’ and ‘Graffiti Bridge’Hello all,<br />
<br />
I don't use this blog much anymore, if that wasn't obvious, but I keep meaning to perma-post links to my published bylines and will do that soon. In the meantime, though, I am excited to share a link to a piece I had posted at Musings on Prince's neglected films <i>Under the Cherry Moon</i> and <i>Graffiti Bridge</i>, both of which are goofy, indulgent, but also revealing of aspects of Prince's personality and artistry. Now more than ever, they are crucial pieces to his puzzle. You may read my full article here: http://musings.oscilloscope.net/post/154212251546/the-unlikely-autobiography-of-princes-under-theJake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-16064306480822585602016-01-07T23:55:00.001-05:002016-01-07T23:59:14.797-05:00Wrestle Kingdom 10<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Japan Pro Wrestling yet again throws down the gauntlet for the year with a top flight PPV that boasts a great card and even better work. No use beating around the bush, here are breakdowns and ratings for the event. (WARNING: contains spoilers. I would highly recommend you track down this event, or at least the final three matches, immediately if you have yet to watch them.)</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8gA_C41Jikc/Vo9BIZYHjHI/AAAAAAAAF18/3EQL1-H0kHU/s1600/xvF2hwb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8gA_C41Jikc/Vo9BIZYHjHI/AAAAAAAAF18/3EQL1-H0kHU/s640/xvF2hwb.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">New Japan Rumble</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Participants, in order: Jushin Thunder Liger, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Tiger Mask, Cheeseburger, Hiro Saito, Yoshi-Hashi, Máscara Dorada, Captain New Japan, Manabu Nakanishi, Yuji Nagata, Satoshi Kojima, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Ryusuke Taguchi, Shiro Koshinaka, King Haku, The Great Kabuki, Kazushi Sakuraba, Jado</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: **</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As with last year’s event, Wrestle Kingdom 10 opened with a rumble featuring both legends too old to fit on the card and youngsters who haven’t earned their shot. In practice, it resembles the gimmick battle royal from Wrestlemania X-Seven, a chance for old-timers to get one last go-around at the dog and pony show. No match like this could ever be mistaken for great, but for what it is this is fairly fun. For those (like myself) with little to no exposure to the history of Japanese wrestling, it’s hard to get excited for many names, but it’s clear from this slow mess that everyone is just happy to be there.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The match’s pace is set by the old wrestlers, who hit sluggish versions of what spots they can still do, yet despite it all there’s so much going on that the camera misses all kinds of things, including only catching the fallout of two wrestlers going over the top rope and being eliminated. Still, there’s a goofy charm to seeing the old timers gang up on the new guys, or in sly visual gags like the moment where Saito goes to slam the hapless young gimmick Cheeseburger and Jushin Liger calmy shoves Cheeseburger so that he falls onto Saito and into a pinfall. It’s also cool to hear the crowd, still filing their way to their seats, legitimately pop when King Haku strolls out to the Bullet Club’s music, and despite the whole thing making for an ass-numbing half-hour, it was a silly and enjoyable opening. (Having said that, whatever respect this kind of match is supposed to show for the promotion’s legends was thoroughly muted by the English commentary, which freely mocked the wrestlers for being old and paunchy, a heel move that was just out of character.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly vs. The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) vs. Aerial Dogfight (Matt Sydal and Ricohet) vs. Roppongi Vice (Trent Baretta and Rocky Romero)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Four-Way Tag Team Match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: ***1/2</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If all modern wrestling is limited by history and repetition, tag team wrestling is even more hampered, if only because the pool of viable talent is a small portion of the full roster. NJPW’s tag stable is majorly represented in this giant match, and anyone who’s watched even a single NJPW event lately has seen at least two of these teams face off; in fact, Wrestle Kingdom 9 opened proper with both ReDRagon and the Young Bucks in the same four-way tag. Regardless, this is a killer opener, arranged as a series of spots that nonetheless gets enough time to breathe and build a latticework of moving components. The pauses make big moves mean more, and everyone gets a moment to shine.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As patiently built as the match is, there are highlights out of the gate, like the Young Bucks working over Bobby Fish before Fish flips Matt over the rope in time for O’Reilly to land a brutal apron kick. There’s also the Bucks’ superkick frenzy, including a kick to a leaping Ricochet’s jaw that could have been the match’s conclusion but is instead delivered almost off-handedly, as if without effort. But the time taken throughout to properly scout each move helps the workers to fully interlock their moves so that showstoppers become part of a grand pas de deux (or pas de huit). There’s great continuity here, as in the Bucks absolutely beating the crap out of Trent, only to get cocky and go after his partner Romero, only to give Trent the chance to catch his breath and counter a running corner strike into a vicious double-footed stomp on Matt that sends the suddenly stunned Jackson scrambling to tag in his brother, who rushes in for revenge only to catch a tornado DDT. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then there are just great spots, like Cody Hall interceding on behalf of the Young Bucks to perform his dad’s Razor’s Edge on Ricochet to send him over the top into a crowd of guys, or the hilarious mega-suplex in which everyone locks up except for Romero, who sprints around the hunched, interlocked bodies like the runt of the litter before he finally worms his way into a spot. But really, it’s Sydal and Ricochet who steal the show, from their simultaneous standing moonsaults onto Nick to their perpendicular shooting star presses. The best moment of the entire match belongs to Ricochet, who hits a running kick on a seated Nick, then swerves out into a run back to a rope for a massive springboard into a shooting star press on a ringside Hall. Ricochet gets so much air that the camera, already filming from master shot distance well away from the ring, has to zoom out even further because he sails up out of the frame. A sneaky finish robs the flyers of their rightful win and manages to spoil things a bit, which given the hot potato nature of the Jr. Heavyweight tag title is a testament to how good these two were, but overall this was a superb way to get the heart pumping for a low-stakes undercard.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Briscoes (Jay Briscoe and Mark Briscoe) and Toru Yano vs. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga and Yujiro Takahashi)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6-Man Tag Match for the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: *1/2</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Things cool waaaaaaaay down for the next tag match on the card, this one a two-team, six-man bout for the newly created NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag title, a belt that loses legitimacy before it’s even gained from this weakly booked, slow-moving brawl. Redneck warriors the Briscoes jump out of the gate with a lot movement, hitting tagged kicks and grips that set a pace that soon collapses when their teammate Yano is tagged in and the Bullet Club’s Bad Luck Fale joins the fray. These two large, slow behemoths can only make clumsy entreaties to the crowd as testaments to their strength, but both men move at such a glacial pace that bruising moves instead look like a first rehearsal, with moves so easy to scout that no one could believe a person would sit still long enough to catch a blow. Things heat up a bit when Tonga gets involved and gives the Briscoes an opponent who can actually work with them, but by then the match has had its momentum snapped. The only memorable spots comes at the end, with Tonga hitting a skull-cracking powerbomb on Jay Briscoe and the two getting into a battle on the top turnbuckle that ends with Jay grabbing Tonga and Yano smashing Tonga’s grip on the ropes with a chair to let Jay go for the pin. The Briscoes have enough personality to at least maintain some interest, and it’s almost surprising to see this match lasted nearly 12 minutes as it only feels about five. Even if it was five minutes, though, it would only have enough memorable spots to fill half that time.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jay Lethal vs. Michael Elgin</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singles Match for the ROH World Championship</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: **3/4</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What a strange thing to put on a card, a match for the top belt of another promotion. Ring of Honor and New Japan obviously share close ties and regular interpromotional matches, but this feels like a step too far out of the gate. Not helping matters is the fact that ROH’s current champion, Lethal, isn’t well known in Japan while Elgin is coming off a strong G1 run during the summer that gets him a massive pop. The early exchanges do everything to spotlight Elgin’s strength: Lethal slaps Elgin as they break from a lock, and Elgin responds with a smack of his own that buckles the champion. Lethal hits running clotheslines on Elgin that do not even faze the man, and the challenger not only catches a leapfrog for a powerslam but performs a delayed vertical suplex in which he repeatedly squats the lifted opponent as if he weighed nothing. Truth Martini attempts to help his boss by hitting Elgin on the apron (with, amusingly, a Japanese cover of the Book of Truth), but Elgin avoids even this before catching a dropkick from Lethal that puts him at ringside.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not to be outdone, Lethal goes for a suicide dive that Elgin avoids in time for the champ to crash into an outside guardrail. It’s a nasty fall with nothing to soften the impact, but Lethal still stands right up and goes for another dive. Lethal uses his speed to roll into a few countermoves, but Elgin is always ready, and when he grabs a hold on Lethal, he makes the smaller guy pay dearly. A deadlift German suplex looks particularly nasty as Elgin draws it out not to stress the effort but just to build the impact of the near-fall. Lethal hits a Lethal Combination and then goes for a Randy Savage diving elbow drop that starts to, finally, get some crowd investment. Nothing, however, beats the Deadlift Falcon Arrow that Elgin hits on the second rope, masterfully holding out the move as he lifts Lethal so that the slam breaks the dam on the crowd’s ambivalence. The finish, of Martini distracting Elgin to let the champ defend with a Lethal Injection, illustrates the fundamental issue of the match, in that it makes perfect sense for ROH continuity but no sense in Tokyo Dome where the crowd still doesn’t much care about Lethal while popping for Elgin’s power moves. Overall, both men do some fine in-ring work, but despite performing on New Japan’s top stage, this seems more like the set up for the coming ROH Japan tour instead of a significant event in its own right.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kenny Omega vs. Kushida</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singles Match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: ****</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First things first: Kushida gets the introduction of the night with a bizarre mock-up of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Back to the Future</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with our hero as Marty McFly and an accompanying Ryusuke Taguchi dressed as Doc Brown. Kenny Omega comes out like a Canadian Terminator; he needs your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle, and he’s sure sorry about it. Omega is accompanied by freshly minted champs the Young Bucks, who get involved before the opening bell by tossing Taguchi out of the ring and landing a joint kick on Kushida. The Bucks play up Omega’s Terminator angle by playing that film’s theme on some trashcans they use throughout the early part of the match, including a highlight of Omega jumping up on a guardrail as Matt Jackson hands him a can that Omega then backflips onto a prone Kushida.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Soon, the Jacksons and Kaguchi bow out to pull focus onto the superb work of the two wrestlers. Omega is an outstanding heel, not only in his arrogance and aggression but his silent clown-level pantomime as he gives Kushida what for. Then he sells like an absolute master when Kushida gains momentum, and in particular the way he absolutely lets his left wrist go slack when Kushida targets it is the sell job of the night. Omega is so consistent that he at one point rams his arm into a turnbuckle to shake some blood into the numbed limb, and he hits a one-armed powerbomb that is the best moment of the night to that point. The two work so well together that you start to forget about all their valets, right about the moment they all rush back in to muck up an excellent exchange of reversals that sees Kushida’s running flip kick caught into a German suplex that Kushida grabs into a lock. The interference detracts from the excellence of the ring material instead of adding to it, and it docks an otherwise stellar match that finally gets the crowd going</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bullet Club (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson) vs. G.B.H. (Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tag Team Match for the IWGP Tag Team Championship</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: ***1/2</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Honmamania runs wild on Tokyo Dome as the challenger team of GBH enters the arena to square off against the Bullet Club. After only truly popping at end of the previous match, the crowd sounds electric when Honma gets in the ring. The energy propels a solid tag match, where Honma gets ganged upon early on and tags to Makabe, who gets his jaw given a good pounding by Anderson before finally tagging back to Honma. When Honma enters the ring a second time, he is filled with purpose, and he commences a headbutt display that is both impressive and worrying for his overall health. But for a match that eases off the energy of its predecessor, this is a lot of fun, and Honma looks incredibly charismatic for a guy whose entire narrative hinges upon a reckless, resilient move like a headbutt to represent his overall tenacity and refusal to give in. The moments where Honma gets carried away and gets laid out (as much by himself as at the hands of an opponent) only add to the excitement of him getting back up for more, and despite the bizarre choice not to give Honma himself the victory-assuring pin, it’s an entertaining match that manages to cool down the crowd while getting them heated all over again.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hirooki Goto vs. Tetsuya Naito </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singles Match</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: ***1/4</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Discounting the pre-show rumble, this is the only match of the night to not be for a a title of some kind. Naito comes out in a mask and a three piece suit and is the first person of the night to have a truly star-worthy introduction, only to be immediately outdone by the choral strains of Goto’s music, which is so eerie that the sudden burst of guitar spoils the grandeur of it a bit. It’s all great and then...interference, courtesy of Naito’s Los Ingobernables faction. It’s getting old at this point and spoils the supposed rarity of such distractions in Japanese matches.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The match itself, however, is great. The action spills ringside almost immediately, where Evil jumps into the fray and puts Goto’s head in a chair before hitting that chair with another chair. As with the Kushida/Omega match, these guest spots come and go, with the stretch between appearances the highlight of the bout. In keeping with the straightforward storytelling of the singles matches this evening, the heel initially dominates before a lapse in attention opens a hole that the face exploits to bruising effect. Naito may get in a bunch of early hits, but it’s Goto who looks impressive when he abruptly has enough and lands a sick clothesline before a corner strike and a suplex. Naito responds with a chest-caving top rope dropkick followed by a missile kick from the apron, but this is Goto’s match. The pace moves at double-time, and the speed of the competitors adds to the impact of the spots, especially a Code Red that Goto hits on Naito that sends the latter to the mat so loudly it sounds like his spine turned to powder. A late-stage run-in by Bushi and Evil is just irritating and marks the moment where all the outside crap on the undercard becomes too much to tolerate, but a quick finish after this lessens some of the impact of this unwelcome complication. As with the Junior Heavyweight bout, this is just great wrestling, kept from being a great match by too many complicating factors that misjudge the crowd investment or try to cram too much into the PPV.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tomohiro Ishii vs. Katsuyori Shibata</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singles Match for the NEVER Openweight Championship</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: ****1/2</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This match is brutal before it even starts. The video package used to introduce both fighters is stark and stripped-down compared to the chromatic and bubbly videos for everyone else. Ice blues and whites introduce Shibata simply as “The Wrestler” before an air raid klaxon and a barking dog announce Ishii. These two look </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tough</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; Shibata with nary an ounce of fat on him, Ishii such a hard lump of a man that even the thin line of his narrowly trimmed beard looks like a streak of gravel. The match itself begins viciously, with an open-handed slap exchange that gives way to a sick battle of wills as each wrestler presents his back to the other for kicking, absorbing very real blows and making a great sell out of not selling. That immediately becomes a chop fight so brutal that you can see flesh turning red and purple in real time before Ishii hits a vomit-inducing strike on Shibata’s throat, hits another that sends Shibata down only for him to immediately spring back up and land bury a forearm into Ishii’s jaw before the man has a chance to brace himself.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the majority of this match, it’s hard to describe what’s happening as wrestling; it more resembles an MMA fight with pacing. In one of the few observant moments of English commentary during the entire event, Yoshi Tatsu observes several minutes into the match that it has consisted only of kicks, forearms and clotheslines, aptly calling attention to the savage simplicity of the bout. But the no-frils nature of the moves only adds to their sense of power; it’s past the halfway point of the match that Shibata hits the first suplex, a basic maneuver that would be considered warm-up in most matches but here feels as powerful as a finisher because so many minutes have been devoted to straight battery. The crowd groans in unison with suplexes and powerbombs because everyone can see that those on the receiving end are landing on thoroughly weakened bodies. The holds, when they come, don’t look like flashy, for-the-TV-monitors-and-cheap-seats grips of wrestling but the practical grips of true fighting, the kind of moves you use to genuinely snap an arm or choke out an opponent. One of the best spots of the match involves a hold that a prone Shibata locks on a kneeling Ishii, who stands out to turn it into a powerbomb, which Shibata worms his way out of to hyperextend Ishii’s arm and immediately buckle him in pain.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This match is downright unpleasant at times. One extended passage features traded headbutts so hard you can hear the dull thwack echo around the stadium, the kind of ill-advised moves that make you worry for these guys’ health. By the time the action comes to an end it feels like an act of mercy, not for the wrestlers’ sake but the audience’s. It’s a textbook illustration of how the style (and popularity) of MMA can be folded into the structure of wrestling, in which the point is not to knock someone out in under a minute but give people their money’s worth while still going hard. In some respects, this is the match of the night, even if the remainder of the card is so stacked that picking a highlight is impossible. With the sudden overhaul of NJPW talent announced just after Wrestle Kingdom, both Shibata and Ishii prove they are ready to move even higher on the card to fill that vacuum.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Shinsuke Nakamura vs. A.J. Styles</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>Singles Match for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship</b></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Rating: ****3/4</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There wasn’t much build for the penultimate event of Wrestle Kingdom, with nothing more to set up two of the best wrestlers in NJPW (and the world) than the simple fact of their immense quality. As such, the intercontinental bout lacks the same narrative strength of Kota Ibushi’s go-for-broke comeback at Wrestle Kingdom 9, wherein months of inactive-roster injury brought out the fire in the challenger, and substituted a feud for a more concise story of one man’s quest for self-elevation. This match is even more basic, a dream match that exists because it for some reason had not happened yet, and that lack of story should hamper the overall impact of the wrestling itself.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Nakamura and Styles are no ordinary wrestlers, and this dream match had more hype than everything else on the card possibly excepting the main event. And God did it deliver. Last year’s Nakamura showcase roared out of the gate, but here the champ and Styles cool the audience down from the intensity of the previous match, beginning with a series of grips designed to test each other and let the crowd breathe a bit. But even here you can see the in-ring charisma of these two, especially Nakamura, who locks up one wrist but uses his free hand to tease a hold, waving his hand in an out of Styles’s open palm as if playing a game of “I’m not touching you.” Nakamura cites Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury as stylistic influences for his persona, but his general affectation and aloof, alien charm he most resembles Bowie. This is also true of Bowie’s capacity for trying on different styles and discarding them like old clothes; Nakamura leaps in and out of his opponents’ move-sets and their own characters, best seen here when Styles performs his finger gun shot, prompting Nakamura to mime grabbing the imaginary bullet in mid air and stuffing into his mouth, then dropping Styles to the mat and flashing the Bullet Club leader’s hand salute.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once the match heats up, it becomes a clinic, not just a technically proficient exchange of reversals, counters and quick-thinking moves but a clear-headed development of ring psychology and injury selling. Styles’s legitimate back injury plays a part in all of his recent matches, but he has never sold better than he does here, taking a backbreaker knee from Nakamura that leaves him unable to pick up his opponent for a slam. Later, Styles goes for a suplex but drops Nakamura and clutches his back, then converts to a lower center of gravity and less strain with a snap suplex that sends Nakamura into the corner. The American darling has arguably seen the peak of his career in Japan over the last two years, but this immediately slots to the top of his work. And Nakamura, well, he’s Nakamura. The man is only 6’2” but he seems to have 8 feet of limbs. He can get a hold on a guy from impossibly far away, and one armbar he hits on Styles is magnificently shot by the camera crew in a top-down medium shot cropped in such a way that Nakamura extends Styles’s arm across the entire diagonal length of the frame. And those legs? Forget about it; guy could hit a kick on you from Alpha Centauri. Nakamura goes for his Boma Ye finisher throughout, and when he coils his knee, it resembles one of those spring loaded boxing gloves, compressing a dangerous amount of tension that makes a basic running strike lethal.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Near the end of the match, the two trade all manner of finishers, and the interplay becomes nearly balletic. Styles grabs a Boma Ye attempt and converts into a Calf Killer submission. Styles later hits a Pele kick without warning, but Nakamura rolls out and springs back into a sick Boma Ye that gets a hair-raising near-fall. Another Boma Ye is expertly scouted by Styles, who rises just over Nakamura’s knee and pops his own knee into the champion’s face before hitting a perfect 450 off the top top. Nakamura hits a ridiculous rolling armbar, rolls it into a triangle hold when it seems Styles might get out of it, but then Styles manages to stand and deliver a one-armed Styles Clash that sends the crowd into rapture. The two Boma Ye knees that end the match look like they could take off Styles’s head, and whatever drawbacks existed to building this match before the fact are obliterated by the sheer perfection of the ring work. It may not equal the all-around beauty of Nakamura’s match last year, but it comes within a hair of it. With news that both men are apparently now headed to WWE, the respectful fist bump they share at the end of it all may not only be acknowledgment of a job well done but the beginning of a beautiful friendship.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Singles Match for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rating: *****</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After Okada was left beaten and sobbing his way backstage at the end of Wrestle Kingdom 9 as retaining champ Tanahashi mocked him in the ring, any idiot could have predicted how their telegraphed rematch at the following year’s main event would go. But this also set expectations astronomically high for the presumed passing of the baton from the elder ace to his clearest successor, yet the two performers deliver in spades. From the outset, the movement of the match is markedly different from the pair’s bout at last year’s Wrestle Kingdom. That matched started deliberately slow to chill the crowd and get them focused before Okada, playing up the hungry challenger, snapped and went wild. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But Okada this time around is the champion, so his approach is focused solely on defeating his nemesis, not also winning the belt. This time, Okada is no less ferocious, but he scouts his opponent and makes cautious moves designed to goad Tanahashi into losing his cool instead of rushing headlong into battle. Okada set last year’s match into high gear when he abruptly violated a clean break with a challenging slap, and he references that in a wry move at the top of the match when he and Tanahashi lock up and go to the ropes and Okada teases a massive slap before stopping and giving the ace a playful, teasing clap on the shoulders that prompts Tanahashi to take a sloppy, easily countered swing.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The match builds much faster than its predecessor, albeit in such a way that both fighters look smarter than they did before. To cancel out Okada’s Rainmaker finisher, Tanahashi bashes not his opponent’s arm but the dominant leg, sapping the sprint that gives the clothesline its power. People have already complained of Okada inconsistently selling the innumerable kicks and dragon screw whips that Tanahashi performs on his leg, but far from it, Okada comes off like someone who reserves his strength, gingerly putting weight on the limb throughout but exploding in moments of dropkick fury when his adrenaline gets up. Okada is more patient this time around, more willing to take some abuse to make sure he saves up the energy for his assaults.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If the final stretch of WK9’s main event was a devastating series of traded finishers, Wrestle Kingdom 10 sometimes makes that conclusion feel quaint. There’s nothing as jaw-dropping as Tanahashi’s sick frog splash from a corner turnbuckle over a barricade (something that is replicated on a smaller, less dangerous and more comic scale here), but the drama here is vastly superior. Watch Okada rally, hit a series of vicious dropkicks on Tanahashi but then be so depleted that he cannot stand on his spent leg to go for a cover. Listen for the crowd reaction when Tanahashi kills Okada’s momentum with another savage blow to the leg that leaves the champ too weak to land a Tombstone Piledriver. The final minutes, in which both fighters steal each other’s finishers and kick out of each other’s covers, then dance around Okada’s Rainmaker as Tanahashi desperately prolongs the inevitable with a few ducks and counters, is as thrilling as professional wrestling gets. It’s the culmination of psychology developed within the ring and outside it, and the fact that a brief rundown and the simple ring awareness of the performers is enough to communicate everything to English-speaking audiences only makes WWE’s current creative failures all the more pronounced.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 700; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bottom Line:</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> This was a great event, with a solid undercard marred by only one bad match and one too many gimmick interferences, topped by what is almost certain to be the main card of the year, with three matches that each mark a different kind of showcase. Shibata/Ishii is just about the stiffest match you can see without heading into full MMA fighting; Nakamura/Styles is a masterclass of mat dynamics and in-ring psychology; and the main event sold a narrative so well it announced a changing of the guard for New Japan to a roaring crowd. The main event announced the PPV as the end of an era from the outset, but news that New Japan Pro Wrestling just lost a number of its top names, including both Nakamura and Styles, to WWE only further marks the show as a dividing line between the promotion’s recent golden run and an uncertain new age fortuitously timed to a drop in attendance numbers.</span></div>
Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-52730566854733699652015-12-29T23:05:00.001-05:002015-12-29T23:05:29.392-05:00My Year in Pro Wrestling<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s weird to get into pro wrestling when you’re 26 as opposed to, say, just 6. I remember being about that age when Hulk Hogan was attempting to break out of wrestling and into movies, and my earliest exposure to wrestling was by way of god-awful Blockbuster shelf-fillers like </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suburban Commando</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mr. Nanny</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Yet the bizarre tendency for a cluster of cinephiles on Twitter to turn into wrestling freaks every Monday finally made me curious enough to sample some shows, and I was alarmed at how fast I got into it, especially considering how little attention I give to (real) sports.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But maybe the fact that wrestling is fake is precisely what draws me to it. I get no pleasure out of legitimate fights in which people pummel each other into early-onset Alzheimer’s, but I’m very taken with one of the earliest sentences in Bret Hart’s memoir </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hitman</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, where he writes “To me there is something beautiful about a brotherhood of big, tough men who only pretend to hurt one another for a living instead of actually doing it.” That says it all to me: I am thrilled by the notion of highly trained athletes putting on a show that stresses entertainment, putting their bodies on the line while doing their best not to harm the other guy. There’s something kind of poetic in that, and I’ve quickly come to believe that the best wrestling is poetry, capable of silent storytelling with the in-ring continuity of storyline rivalries, injuries both real and faked, and a mixture of careful spot planning and split-second improvisation.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Speaking of Hart, he became my immediate favorite as I began trawling through classics on the WWE Network. His promos were stiff, but his in-ring work spoke more than he ever could on a mic, and no matter who I saw him paired with, he always adapted to their style and made them look as good as they ever did by selling each blow with finesse and showcasing an elaborate series of submission holds, counters and grapples that are a far cry from the finisher-heavy setup of the modern WWE matches I’ve seen. I love how many of his matches were decided by flash moments of quick thinking, like the kick-off from the corner into a roll-up pin that ends his Survivor Series bout with Steve Austin, or the back-and-forth holds in his Wrestlemania X match with brother Owen. I’ve had to venture into Japanese wrestling to see the same kind of ring intelligence today that Hart showed regularly.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Running through a swift redux of the various eras of WWE, I got a more complete picture of the ebb and flow of the company’s push-pull between giants and smaller, savvier technicians; how great commentary can turn a simple fight into a contest of immortals (will WWE ever find another JR?); how the Attitude Era is both much worse and as good as its legend. I ran through the highlights of Daniel Bryan’s hard-won fight to Wrestlemania XXX and marveled at how many great matches Undertaker put on at the big show year after year, especially those justifiably legendary Shawn Michaels bouts. I even dug into the company’s amusingly arrogant documentaries on the ratings war with WCW, a series of self-fellating tributes to Vince McMahon’s genius that nonetheless offered a decent primer on how wrestling went from the edge of obsolescence to its greatest pop cultural heyday.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I moved into this year’s programming, however, I realized it was a bad year to leap into WWE. Injuries sidelined many of the best wrestlers (a running theme even in other promotions), and months without Daniel Bryan, Seth Rollins and Sami Zayn showed how poorly the creative team had built the rest of the roster as a fallback. Though the company has one of the strongest rosters ever, and technical ability has never been more readily on display, the company’s main programs were typically abysmal, filled with plotlines that grew stale even for this total neophyte and matches that failed to capitalize on the performers’ abilities and instead featured sloppy brawls and repetitive pairings. Worst of all was the total flop of the “Divas Revolution,” in which an extremely talented roster of female wrestlers got reduced to amateurish match plotting, directionless narratives and an over-reliance on teams to ensure the maximum amount of t&a was on-screen.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But if WWE’s main program was a shitshow, the explosion of talent on their developmental </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NXT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> show made this a great year to try out wrestling. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NXT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> did everything </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> didn’t: it told simple, coherent stories that both new and long-time fans could follow and appreciate, and it foregrounded the wrestling itself with performers who had exceptional ring skills. It’s almost laughable to even think of this show as WWE’s testing ground, as the talent on display and the freedom afforded to that talent made even the average weekly filler better than all but the most focused </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> episodes. Picking out favorite wrestlers was impossible. The Vaudevillains tag team were a hilarious, instantly lovable gimmick; Tyler Breeze took the most obnoxiously “topical” character since World’s Strongest Vegan Daniel Bryan and did as much with it as Bryan did his role; Apollo Crews was like a Goldberg who could actually wrestle, maybe incapable of performing a long-term match but so nimble and risky that you can’t help but pop when he comes out; and Samoa Joe looked so strong and on-form that I couldn’t believe he’d been around for forever. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And that’s not taking into account the greatest aspect of all, how their women’s division did everything right that the Divas roster did wrong, spotlighting the fact that women could be as good in the ring as men. It’s been a shame to see the matches here compared to the way that people like Paige, Charlotte and Sasha Banks have fared on the main roster, and one can only hope that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NXT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s rapturous 2015 reception might trigger at least some changes on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which frankly has to do something to stanch the bleeding of its dwindling viewership.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NXT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> wasn’t the only pleasure to be had. I dipped a toe into NJPW and loved what I saw, wrestling built less on big spots than methodical grapples, stiff blows and ring psychology, so good that I didn’t need to speak Japanese to follow every detail. It’s everything I love about wrestling, and if this was apparently a tepid year for the promotion, then I can’t wait to explore it further and see how good it is when firing on all cylinders. I was also surprised to discover that WWE mounted one great long-form narrative around the unlikeliest of stories: the Fall and Rise of Roman Reigns. Reigns became one of the most hated men in the company at the top of the year when WWE boosted him over Daniel Bryan in two straight PPVs, only for creative to ingeniously win over fans by screwing Reigns for the better part of a year, making his snap at the recent TLC event and subsequent title win the next night feel hard-won rather than gifted on a silver platter. It was a demonstration of how great the company can be when it bothers to pay attention, and I hope the momentum carries into 2016.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s hard to talk about wrestling in broad strokes without a focus on the individual matches that best exemplify it, so perhaps I can better explain what made me an instant fan by talking about my favorite matches of the year. With the caveat that I’ve had little exposure to smaller and independent promotions, my top 10 is as follows:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>10. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks (NXT Takeover: Respect)</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>30-Minute Iron Man Match for the NXT Women’s Championship, October 7, 2015</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u0eHwdi3Jo4/VoNXHdYe46I/AAAAAAAAF1U/z5KvTMfM_CU/s1600/1035x582-Bayley1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u0eHwdi3Jo4/VoNXHdYe46I/AAAAAAAAF1U/z5KvTMfM_CU/s640/1035x582-Bayley1.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have to say I’m not much of a fan of the Iron Man format. Plenty of one-fall bouts can go a half-hour to 45 minutes and maintain a sense of suspense and drama that the telegraphed, timed back-and-forth of an Iron Man negates. (To be honest, I’m not even as wild about the Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels Iron Man as I am for their other pairings, though each performer’s technical fundamentals makes it the best sold and best told of these gimmicks I’ve seen). But for two women to main event a special and to do so with a format built around the need for endurance and adaptability is such a major event for WWE, not to mention the special chemistry Bayley and Banks have. Everyone will remember Banks going full heel by smashing Bayley onto the screen then taunting Bayley’s biggest kid fan, Izzy, by straight up stealing her headband and prancing around as a laid-out champ was counted out. But it’s no less compelling that good-natured hugger Bayley herself snapped and applied some devious moves, viciously attacking Sasha’s hand to negate her opponent’s crossface wristlock in an echo of Sasha’s moves at Takeover: Brooklyn. The finale was a bit too obvious, but the effort throughout, building from their feud without simply duplicating prior highlights. But it was when the match had ended and the roster filed out to pay their respects to this historic moment, with not only the two competitors but even vets like William Regal openly shedding tears for what it all meant, that this became truly transcendent.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>9. HARASHIMA & Ken Ohka vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yohei Komatsu (DDT Muscle Mates)</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>Inter-promotional Tag Team Match, November 17, 2015</b></i></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NxJHY6pm0es/VoNXc8MlCMI/AAAAAAAAF1g/5KPOWeJFdwU/s1600/tana.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NxJHY6pm0es/VoNXc8MlCMI/AAAAAAAAF1g/5KPOWeJFdwU/s640/tana.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I love Hiroshi Tanahashi. Even a barely exposed mark like me can tell he isn’t the best wrestler in NJPW, and both heir apparent Kazuchika Okada and Coolest Man Alive Shinsuke Nakamura have better ring adaptability and bigger move-sets. But if Tanahashi is the Cena of Japan, he’s also far more versatile in both his moves and his image, a top face who is more than willing to play the heel depending on what he reads from a crowd. He goes full heel in NJPW’s crossover event with independent promotion DDT, having set things in motion by complaining in a preceding press conference of having to take time out of being the biggest star in Japan to help out some rinky-dink indie outfit. So when he shows up for this match, he’s greeted with boos so loud it’s hard to believe they can come from so modest a crowd, and every single time DDT’s HARASHIMA and Ken Ohka gets a hit on either Tanahashi or NJPW scrub Yohei Komatsu, the pops are deafening. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tag matches are all formulaic, but this one benefits from a lack of complicating factors; Tanahashi does his best work at ringside, letting Komatsu deal with whomever is tagged in while taking the other person out into the crowd for an up close and personal brawl. But even this keeps things simple, pitting nasty big-timers against underdogs small fries who withstand the beatings and make well-timed attacks on revealed weaknesses. One thing I like about Japanese style wrestling is how much everyone trusts an audience to be as wowed by well-executed, passionately delivered basic attacks as they would be by big spots, and it’s great to see forearms and slaps get such big reactions thanks to good storytelling behind it. I’m also exceptionally fond of the literal, honest-to-God Power Point presentation that Tanahashi gives after the match in which he manages to go step by step through his love of wrestling and manage to get the crowd on his side while talking all about himself by conveying his deep respect for the sport and thus for DDT and his competitors. It’s both a dorky showing even by the standards of the air guitar-wielding icon and a sweet, shoot acknowledgment of the respect and passion that unites wrestlers regardless of their exposure and fame.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>8. Roderick Strong vs. Zack Sabre, Jr. (PWG Don’t Sweat the Technique)</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b><i>Singles Match for the PWG Championship, April 3, 2015</i></b></span><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-djRAKYnV1XU/VoNXzEWq4rI/AAAAAAAAF1s/h_uwwES1z7I/s1600/Zack-Sabre-Jr_roderick_strong..jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-djRAKYnV1XU/VoNXzEWq4rI/AAAAAAAAF1s/h_uwwES1z7I/s640/Zack-Sabre-Jr_roderick_strong..jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Someone recommended this to me since I expressed an interest in technical wrestling and I was utterly blown away. Strong makes an immediate impression as a solid wrestler with great ring awareness, but Sabre just embarrasses him at times with a textbook command of holds and counters that he wields with fluid grace, forever slipping out of Strong’s rougher attacks and locking up arm into grips that sent limbs at perilously stretched angles. This is wrestling at its purest, so focused on technique that even when the action spills onto the apron or the floor, it immediately gets back in the ring. God bless the exceptionally strong commentary for naming even the moves executed for a split second, as well as for sudden digressions into elaborate poetry, such as an extended comparison of limb targeting to bank deposits, resulting in the greatest ringside line I heard this year: “As the great economist Adam Smith said, ‘There is no greater force in the universe than compound interest,’ and Zack Sabre Jr. is making some wise investments in the early moments of this match.” I loved the back-and-forth of the match, how Sabre’s effortless escapes and reversals got Strong more and more pissed, until he finally snaps and just starts stomping the poor kid’s face. It’s such a simple end compared to how all the other matches on this list end, but it felt just as powerful as a WWE PPV closer for how precisely it tied up a nifty bit of psychology. Sabre is heavily tipped to join </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NXT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> next year; on this strength of this match alone, it’s maybe the wrestling event I most want to see in 2016.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>7. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (G1 Climax)</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; line-height: 20.24px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i><b>G1 Climax Final, August 16, 2015</b></i></span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fj2KgK4ghCE/VoNV4_x5cwI/AAAAAAAAF08/QxxPYZ4Y2KY/s1600/g1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fj2KgK4ghCE/VoNV4_x5cwI/AAAAAAAAF08/QxxPYZ4Y2KY/s640/g1.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t quite know what to make of this match at first, because it was the first Japanese match I watched. The slow pace was confusing to someone who was still watching American PPV classics as an introduction and thus thought of great matches as blow-outs, but as I got more into methodical wrestling, I came to see why everyone’s favorite wrestling geek, Dave Meltzer, gave it five stars. The steady build shows smart psychology from both men, with Tanahashi targeting Nakamura’s legitimate elbow injury as well as going after the leg his opponent uses for his running knee Boma Ye finisher, while Nakamura works over Tanahashi’s arm to set up his armbar submission. The careful establishment of these attacks may not be much to see at first, but it pays off when the opponents suddenly, exhilaratingly kick into high gear, so that when Nakamura rolls out of the way of Tanahashi’s High Fly Flow splash and pops up into a Boma Ye, he executes it at half-strength and immediately lays out in agony as he grips his weakened leg, in too much pain to go for a pin. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing I’ve heard about Japanese wrestling (and very much like) is that finishers are still treated as such, meaning that it means something for someone to actually withstand one and come back for more. Thus, when both fighters rally their strength and start launching power moves at one another, you can feel the crowd go electric when each wrestler manages to get out of a pin or a hold because this doesn’t happen four times a week like it does on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. So when Tanahashi hits a High Fly Flow and then goes up and hits another before the pin, the crowd reaction when Nakamura kicks out at two-and-three-quarters is monumental and venue-trembling, equal to the crazed reactions of Taker/Michaels at Wrestlemania 25. Some have complained that Tanahashi wins and thus gets to main event his umpteenth Wrestle Kingdom while Nakamura settles for second best (or third, given the likelihood of Tanahashi passing the torch to Kazuchika Okada on January 4. But no one who takes the punishment he does here walks out a loser, and the finale of the two men battling it out on the top turnbuckle as Nakamura can only delay the inevitable splashes coming his way is as good as wrestling gets.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>6. Jay Lethal vs. A.J. Styles (ROH Final Battle)</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cExyYnR8GOU/VoNWYJCNldI/AAAAAAAAF1I/n5eBgVAPUzE/s1600/final-battle-aj-styles-jay-lethal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cExyYnR8GOU/VoNWYJCNldI/AAAAAAAAF1I/n5eBgVAPUzE/s640/final-battle-aj-styles-jay-lethal.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A.J. Styles has had an up and down two years, hitting NJPW like a bomb in 2014 and immediately tossing out MOTY contenders, but also breaking two wrestlers’ necks with his Styles Clash finisher before closing out 2015 with a back injury of his own that has fans nervous about his future. Yet he wrestled his best match of the year on that injury, against Ring of Honor champ Lethal at the promotion’s marquee event. Lethal naturally targets A.J.’s back to build heat, and even simple bear hug grapples can make you wince when you wonder about the real impact. But Styles gives as good as he gets, and the two put on an epic show that mixes mat-clinic reversals with free-form big spots. A sequence where each wrestler performs a series of reversals into sick powerbombs, neckbreakers and suplexes is an early highlight, while things get manic around the time Lethal lands two suicide dives, sends Styles into the crowd, only to go for a third in time for Styles to come to and springboard from a barricade to meet a diving Lethal with an elbow to the face. Add a table crash so harrowing that the fact it’s almost entirely off-camera detracts nothing from its power for good measure, and you’ve got an instant classic. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>5. (TIE) Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena vs. Seth Rollins (Royal Rumble)</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--1waaxRRawQ/VoNVPpNDRZI/AAAAAAAAF0k/QNKf8MJBXIc/s1600/cena%2Blesnar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--1waaxRRawQ/VoNVPpNDRZI/AAAAAAAAF0k/QNKf8MJBXIc/s640/cena%2Blesnar.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b> Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns [vs. Seth Rollins] (Wrestlemania 31) </b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match, March 29, 2015</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l4F4oXPBJ1s/VoNVVU_3LXI/AAAAAAAAF0w/rjMSI2_s0hk/s1600/reigns%2Bwm31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l4F4oXPBJ1s/VoNVVU_3LXI/AAAAAAAAF0w/rjMSI2_s0hk/s640/reigns%2Bwm31.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">These are two matches with two entirely different narrative aims that are linked by a core notion: the terrifying indestructibility of Brock Lesnar. For someone who originally left WWE in the most ignominious fashion, leaving a farce of a farewell match to a chorus of boos, Lesnar has received such massive reactions since his return it’s hard to imagine he ever left at all, and he had an incredible year in 2015. After the sluggish, concussed match that ended Undertaker’s Streak, Lesnar and Taker rebounded with two solid, strong showings at Summerslam and Hell in a Cell, but it was these two early matches that really set the standard for the Beast Incarnate.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both the Royal Rumble Triple Threat and the Wrestlemania singles bout are examples of WWE taking its weaknesses with patient building and finisher over-reliance and turned them into comic masterpieces. Cena actually got out there and wrestled a bit this year (his Elimination Chamber match with Kevin Owens is the #11 match on this top 10 list, not just for Owens’s versatility and psychology but for Cena actually rolling with it), and he showed from time to time he could actually do more than just perform his Five Moves of Doom and withstand anything. The Royal Rumble is not such a match; in it, Lesnar and Cena hit so many finishers that they resemble a WWE video game where someone tweaked the settings for endless power moves. All the showstoppers and kick outs become a joke rendition of the platonic ideal WWE PPV, yet the absurdity tells a great story of Cena’s tenacity, Lesnar’s invincibility and Rollins’s intelligence and strategy. When Cena hit three AA’s in a row on Lesnar and the latter stands up from each one like it’s nothing, Cena’s finisher doesn’t look fake and weak, Lesnar looks like Hercules. When Rollins lets the two muscleheads weaken each other before targeting them with high-flying moves that unsettle their balance, he looks less like a chickenshit, Authority-backed yes man than a brilliantly conniving mastermind. The match juggles several balls, giving Lesnar a dominant win while still pointing out that a god can bleed, letting Cena look strong without the usual CENAWINSLOL ridiculousness, and setting up Rollins’s intelligence...</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">...which leads to the Wrestlemania 31 conclusion. After the unmitigated disaster of Reigns’s Road to Wrestlemania, who could have expected that WWE would use the main event itself to set in motion a course correction? After building Reigns too fast, the company caught wise and actually adapted to an audience response instead of just forging ahead stupidly as they did for every other 2015 storyline. Reigns comes into Levi’s Stadium not even as a heel, just a man the fans resolutely do not want, and the “pace” of the match’s beginning, where Lesnar just puts the hurt on the company’s golden boy for an extended period of time to the delight of the crowd, is a testament to their feelings. This isn’t a spotlight for Reigns, it’s a bloodbath, but one where his refusal to stay down becomes less a show of strength than of duty, and his foolhardy resilience speaks better of him than his erstwhile domination. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When Reigns finally rallies and catches Lesnar off-guard, his look of amazement at his own achievement in briefly staggering the Beast is the best acting Reigns has ever done. Then there’s the truly impressive trigonometry of the finale, which cogently maps out a way for Reigns to be humbled without completely killing his momentum, for Lesnar to lose in a believable way, and for Rollins to come in and pull a craven, calculating move that only makes people appreciate the genius of it. Absolutely nothing WWE creative wrote for their main roster this year came close to this level of thoughtfulness, and even if Rollins’ extended medical leave threatened the perfection of this setup, it was so strong that by the end of the year they’d managed to get Reigns over for real, seemingly an impossible feat going into this match.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>4. Mil Muertes vs. Fenix (Lucha Underground Grave Consequences)</b></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yTMlZNXGfmQ/VoNUvOOiwZI/AAAAAAAAF0Y/OMDs6OrXn4U/s1600/GC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yTMlZNXGfmQ/VoNUvOOiwZI/AAAAAAAAF0Y/OMDs6OrXn4U/s640/GC.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Less a wrestling match than a public showcase of attempted murder, this terrifying Lucha Underground showdown takes the limited concept of a casket match and makes it feel like life is truly on the line. Mil Muertes is a man possessed, busting open Fenix’s head after unscrewing a bottom rope (you can </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that?) and belting him with the metal clip, then going right ahead and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">biting at the man’s open wound</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for extra effect. Throughout, both performers show an awareness of the psychology of a casket match that I haven’t even seen in the Taker casket matches I’ve watched. Neither man, least of all Muertes, goes for the casket for forever, because the point is not simply to trap your opponent for a win but to roll a proper corpse into their final resting place. The action spills everywhere, into a crowd that scatters to avoid the blood, onto a balcony for perilous near-throws, and all around a ring that gets more and more trashed. The best move happens surprisingly early, when Fenix gets a second wind and goes for a suicide dive through the ropes at Muertes, only for Muertes to whip the casket up to catch his opponent full in the face, leaving a sickening dent in the lid so deep it’s a miracle that Fenix’s head didn’t punch all the way through.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>3. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (Wrestle Kingdom 9)</b></span></div>
<b><i>Singles Match for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, January 4, 2015</i></b><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZiknAxfmFaE/VoNUKdVsPUI/AAAAAAAAFz0/fTtFBUwYWps/s1600/wk9%2Btana.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZiknAxfmFaE/VoNUKdVsPUI/AAAAAAAAFz0/fTtFBUwYWps/s640/wk9%2Btana.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wrestling in 2015 arguably peaked four days into the year at NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 9, an event with such a great card that even this masterpiece of a main event is not even the best match of the night. In fact, the first segment of this fight seems to be an extended cooldown of its showstopping predecessor, with both wrestlers exchanging holds and scouting each other to bring down the energy and to focus the crowd on what limbs are being targeted and what moves being set up. Both of the closing matches of the event set up a conflict between a dominant belt-holder and a long-struggling challenger who for various reasons, finally snaps and goes for the jugular. Okada sets things into motion properly by spoiling a clean break with a forearm before launching attacks that send the champion ringside, and from there he goes to town with a flurry of moves, including a hangman DDT on a guardrail that could make Randy Orton blush.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Okada’s energy is infectious, but unfortunately for him, Tanahashi catches it and begins to battle back with equal tenacity, including a signature out on the ramp. But more importantly, the champion, that goofy icon with the big hair and the air guitar, starts to show flashes of annoyance, then desperation as Okada repeatedly breaks through defenses and neutralizes Tanahashi’s assaults before he can get momentum. You can start to see the champion play a little dirty and hit a little harder to gain the upper hand. Then comes a downright insane move, where Tanahashi sends Okada over a guardrail, runs back into the ring and mounts the corner turnbuckle, and proceeds to hit a flying body press over the barricade and perfectly onto the challenger. In actuality the dive is probably “only” 20 feet or so, but when the camera throws out to a long shot of Okada crushed at the very edge of frame, behind the steel rail, as Tanahashi coils his legs, the distance between the two looks twice as long. And when Tanahashi hits the move flawlessly, you can feel the entire stadium rock with unleashed awe.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The match is so epic that even Okada’s Rainmaker finisher, a move so protected that no one has kicked out after receiving it, is not enough to keep Tanahashi down and stop the fight. (The only criticism you can levy at this match is that the wrestlers get back into things just a few seconds too soon after this momentous moment, but the crowd’s shock makes up for this miniscule miscalculation.) Tanahashi ingeniously manages to make this kick-out itself a vaguely meta heel turn, as if he legitimately refused to stay down and play ball just so he could teach this upstart a few more lessons. The post-match ridiculousness, with Tanahashi taking the mic to berate a crying Okada, is obvious set up for the aging Tanahashi to start fully passing the torch to Okada, maybe even at the Tokyo Dome show next week, but who wins this match, or the upcoming one, is irrelevant in the face of such entertainment.</span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Y657gexQ8I/VoNUXhM-TOI/AAAAAAAAF0A/rWeCIZfa0M0/s1600/nakamura.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Y657gexQ8I/VoNUXhM-TOI/AAAAAAAAF0A/rWeCIZfa0M0/s640/nakamura.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No other contemporary wrestler I watched this year entertained me as much as Shinsuke Nakamura. Daniel Bryan was an early favorite as I hustled through his arc against the Authority as well has the general quality of his wrestling in both WWE and his early ROH/Dragon Gate days, but a combination of terrible booking and potentially career-ending injury made his 2015 an unmitigated disaster and took some of the fun out of marking for him. But even if Bryan had a great year, it’s hard to imagine I still wouldn’t put Nakamura at the top. He is maybe my ideal wrestler, he cuts every bit the iconic profile of a heavy-hitter, with that leather get-up, his tendency to dance along to his own entrance music, and that to-the-rafters facial acting that sells everything from brash charisma to howling pain at the perfect balance between just enough and too much.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Wrestle Kingdom Intercontinental match is the perfect showcase for Nakamura; even more than the Tanahashi bout later in the year, it allows him to deftly mix his “strong style” martial arts knowledge with his ring awareness. The G1 Final with Tanahashi is a meeting of two powerhouses, each scoping out the other, testing for weaknesses, then plowing ahead with everything. But Nakamura responds equally as well to Ibushi’s agility and high-flying antics, working to slow the pace to prevent his momentum from getting out of hand but also busting fast and furious attacks of his own, as in a stretch early on where he hits different knee attacks in the corner, on the apron and at ringside in a matter of seconds. It becomes downright hard to watch at times toward the end, when both men look like they’ve just thrown technique out the window in favor of beating the holy hell of the other guy.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Aiding the verve and passion of the wrestling is the focus of the story on display, of Nakamura, ever the bridesmaid for Tanahashi, belligerently holding onto the Intercontinental title as both proof of his worthiness and his chance to go after the top title. Ibushi, meanwhile, is the mid-carder who sees his chance to rise up by defeating the #2 guy, and a 2014 sidelined by injuries has made this a make-or-break match to get his name back into the conversation. Watching him steal Nakamura’s moves and mimic his expressions bypasses language barrier, and the elaborate move-set he employs is used with ferocious abandon. (Just watch him hit a brutal double stomp on Nakamura to send him out onto the apron, at which point Ibushi executes a dragon suplex from the second rope to hurl him back into the ring.) Ibushi was one of a horrifyingly long list of wrestlers who suffered major injuries in 2015, so this may be his last hurrah. But he damn sure left this match a star; Nakamura proves in this fight that he can do anything, but Ibushi proves he’s the man who will make him do absolutely everything to win.</span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m-6X2EUcQpQ/VoNUlRNdDEI/AAAAAAAAF0M/Yvj9i8aA02c/s1600/sasha-banks-bayley-nxt-takeover-brooklyn.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="444" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m-6X2EUcQpQ/VoNUlRNdDEI/AAAAAAAAF0M/Yvj9i8aA02c/s640/sasha-banks-bayley-nxt-takeover-brooklyn.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I watched the Wrestlemania 13 main event between Bret Hart and Stone Cold Steve Austin, I felt like I was getting an education into the potential of great wrestling. Every single aspect of the match is perfect. Both performers are at the top of their game, and their minimal pre-show planning is actually a boon, as every single move has the feel of being fresh because most of it is improvised. Hart gets the win, but it’s Austin who emerges the victor, bravely refusing to tap out to the Hitman’s Sharpshooter hold while bleeding profusely from the forehead, passing out rather than give up. The commentary from Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler hones in on the details of each move to explain the complexity of the back-and-forth, but more importantly it subtly builds a narrative that shifts sympathy and reverence away from longtime babyface champion Hart onto the brash, antiheroic rising star Austin. Every single piece fits perfectly, to the point that it is not only a five-star classic piece of work but the mark of a major shift in WWE creative, away from its struggling transitional era into its Attitude phase.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That match came to mind watching Bayley face off against reigning NXT Women’s Champion Sasha Banks, not only because of, barring a few early botches, the quality of the wrestling but because it felt like a sea change for a company that has a horrid track record with women. This match isn’t nearly as technically proficient as the two Wrestle Kingdom showcases just before it on this list; the early stretch features one too many botches, however minor. But no other story in 2015 wrestling was as vital. The in-ring personality clash was a testament to how simplicity and clarity can be infinitely more sophisticated than needless complication; the Divas roster is constantly being reshuffled in heel turns that come and go on a weekly basis, but there is focus and consistency in keeping Bayley as a plucky, kind-hearted underdog and Banks as a vicious heel whose aggression masks a vulnerability that powers her most desperate and arrogant outbursts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NXT</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s commentary isn’t exactly amazing, but I’ll gladly take its directness and consistency to whatever the hell </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’s haphazard use of JBL, Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler is. The announcers call clear attention to Bayley’s freshly healed broken wrist, a concise setup for the grisly, uncomfortable focus Banks puts on Bayley’s hand, as if she wants nothing more than to break it again. Divas matches, even to this newbie, fall into an easy patterns that set up submissions or roll-ups to end things after a few minutes. But Bayley and Sasha go to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">war</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and even Bayley, who maintains her face image throughout, looks like she might truly put Sasha Banks into an early retirement. Bayley’s dropkick through the corner, Sasha’s brutal Bank Statement hold that Bayley miraculously reverses, and that top-rope inverted hurricanrana that brings things to a close are great moves on their face but are even more powerful as shows of intense effort. When Sasha cries at the end as Bayley stands victorious, it isn’t because she lost, it’s because she understands that she’s been a part of something truly major, and even if she and three-quarters of the Four Horsewomen have been utterly wasted on </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raw</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> since, it’s clear from this match that WWE can no longer afford to dismiss its women as eye-candy filler. Of course, WWE will almost certainly do so anyway, but if only for a night, these competitors made women’s wrestling the greatest thing in the entire world.</span></div>
Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com143tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-5516505541776614962014-11-25T20:17:00.002-05:002014-11-25T20:17:38.545-05:00TIFF14/NYFF Round-UpHere are links to my TIFF coverage from earlier this year, plus some reviews of films I saw in Toronto but pitched as NYFF reviews.<br />
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<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/toronto-film-review-a-pigeon-sat-on-a-branch-reflecting-on-existence">TIFF Review: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/horse-money-review/">TIFF Review: Horse Money</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/review-goodbye-to-language-3d/">TIFF Review: Goodbye to Language 3D</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/jauja">NYFF Review: Jauja</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/pasolini">NYFF Review: Pasolini</a><br />
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Capsules:<br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/toronto-film-review-eden-rosewater-jauja">Eden, Rosewater & Jauja</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/toronto-film-review-pasolini-tales-dont-go-breaking-my-heart-2">Pasolini, Tales & Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/toronto-film-review-phoenix-tokyo-tribe-hill-of-freedom">Phoenix, Tokyo Tribe & Hill of Freedom</a>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com36tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-54731394437914667192014-11-25T20:14:00.005-05:002014-11-25T20:14:27.892-05:00The Smart Dumb Films of Lord & MillerHere's a piece I wrote back in June on the super-smash team of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, whose satiric chops are overstated but who are nonetheless making some of the most enjoyable films around as of late. Read my full piece at <a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/the-smart-dumb-films-of-phil-lord-and-christopher-miller/">Movie Mezzanine</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-46003733971689829322014-11-25T20:08:00.002-05:002014-11-25T20:08:40.100-05:00Beyond the LightsI had some reservations about aspects of Gina Prince-Bythewood's critique of celebrity itself, but overall <i>Beyond the Lights</i> is a gorgeous, well-acted romance and, very often, a devastating and necessary critique of the ouroboric nature of the modern fame machine that eschews the self-pity that weighs down male works on this subject even as it finds far more fertile ground for outrage in the general treatment of famous women.<br />
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Read my full review at <a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/beyond-the-lights-review/">Movie Mezzanine</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-76631640423367778182014-10-03T08:31:00.001-04:002014-10-03T08:31:50.583-04:00Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)<b>Warning: contains spoilers</b><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y7eQ1e452N4/VC6XBdl5OeI/AAAAAAAAFoY/GlbhCh9SS8g/s1600/movies-gone-girl-teaser-poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y7eQ1e452N4/VC6XBdl5OeI/AAAAAAAAFoY/GlbhCh9SS8g/s1600/movies-gone-girl-teaser-poster.jpg" height="320" width="215" /></a></div>
Give David Fincher some credit: he may have cemented his name as the man who converts grim bestsellers into self-consciously removed, “arty” films, but he loads an early shot of <em>Gone Girl</em> with board games like Mastermind, Sorry! and Let’s Make a Deal, portents so obvious that they can only be taken as a self-deprecating lark. Even when Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) plays a quick game of Life with his twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon), their overly precious exchange—”Life. I don’t remember the point.” “Hmm, deep Hasbro thoughts.”—is too silly to give the impression that anyone means it seriously.<br />
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The sense of playfulness surprisingly holds even after Nick returns home on the morning of his fifth anniversary to find his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), missing, kicking off an investigation that only ever points in his direction. Soon, Nick is constantly flanked by Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and Officer Jim Gilpin (Patrick Fugit), forever debating amongst themselves not so much the question of Nick’s guilt but how much evidence they need to accrue before confidently arresting him. Affleck’s star power is hilariously used against him, casting his All-American good looks, stiff performance, and inoffensive charm as inherently suspicious, fleets of trailing photographers evoking memories of the actor’s own relationship-based ordeals with constant media surveillance. This slippery distinction between actor and character is only compounded when Nick eventually turns to sleazy lawyer Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry) for help, leading to a scene in which Bolt, played by the director Perry, resembles director Fincher as he coaches Nick for an interview, conducting numerous “takes” to erode Nick’s normal behavior and delivery in order to remold it to his liking.<br />
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The usual Fincherian tics are all on display. Jeff Cronenweth’s sickly yellow hues infect perfectly ordered scenes in the present scenes along with the memories visualized from Amy’s diary, heightening the sense of toxicity as Nick deals with his wife’s absence as well as perverting the usual, sepia-toned wistfulness of Amy’s interspersed recollections. It gives the sense that something is off, as much as the too-tidy crime scene left in the Dunnes’ living room, not to mention the irritating buzz of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, which replaces the vaguely clubby beat and textural flavor of their <em>Social Network</em> and <em>Dragon Tattoo</em> soundtracks, respectively, for an intrusive, willfully banal composition. Kept at the sidelines of the surround system, the score is the sound of a refrigerator humming, or an HDTV left on after a cable box or Blu-Ray player is shut off, something you don’t register until, all of a sudden, it’s the most grating, distracting thing in the entire world. The antiseptic crispness of everything allows unease to build less at the expense of Nick than an unplaceable feeling of malaise that cannot quite be articulated until the rug is pulled out from under the viewer.<br />
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Yet if the common line on Fincher is that he wrests paperbacks to his will, it’s worth noting how sharply this film diverges from his other work. Where his films often unfurl through a procedural collection of clues and raw data, <em>Gone Girl</em> reduces its knottiest Rube Goldberg plans to swift montages, and it rushes the book’s endless series of precisely timed twists and reversals to steamroll past revelations of infidelity, fabrication, and any other clues that make its characters look worse and worse. Instead, the film creates a kind of emotional process, propelling the film less by its series of clues than by the private and public response each revelation entails. You could even argue that the defining moment comes not with the twist that upends the film at the halfway mark but Nick’s early, awkwardly smile for photos in front of an inflated poster of his missing wife, the slip-up hammered home with a blink-and-miss-it insert shot of Margo seizing up with dread at how the media will spin it. Fincher and editor Kirk Baxter draw out the film with dissolves that slightly protract otherwise brief scenes, the slurred transitions helping to obscure the line that separates early reminiscences of kissing in a fogbank of baker’s sugar to Nick’s later outbursts as he comes to grips with how thoroughly his life has been ruined. For all the talk of the director’s usual iciness, this is perhaps his most intimately stylized work.<br />
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I made no secret after I read Gillian Flynn’s novel that I hated the book, but in fairness, her self-adapted screenplay deserves as much commendation as Fincher and the cast for the quality of the film. First on the chopping block of necessary cuts is the majority of the Dunnes’ first-person thoughts, a change that drastically improves both characters. In the book, Nick’s every single thought and utterance served to make him look guilty, which primes anyone who has ever read a mystery to immediately dismiss him as a red herring, and thus his terrifying character defects, including outright misogyny roiling just under his thin veneer of polite calm, were ultimately subsumed by the pity the story inadvertently forces a reader to feel for him as he is pilloried for a crime he didn’t commit. However, by reducing any knowledge of Nick’s personality to fleeting images of his almost imperceptible chauvinism, dejected sloth, and obliviousness toward his wife’s feelings and desires, it is actually far easier to hate the man.<br />
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Even better, Amy has been pared down from a complete psychopath at war with anyone who crosses her into a woman who restricts her chessmaster torture to the men who presume to understand her. This revised Amy makes good on the phenomenal “Cool Girl” monologue she gives to the reader when the extent of her deceit is unveiled, an extreme, avenging spirit who who turns all the preparation, observation and self-discipline needed for women to live up to men’s warped and unreal standards into a weapon against that casual sexism. The character always represented this, of course, but the excision of muddying ideas and even whole characters maintains Amy’s formerly blunted edge. Once again, simplification paradoxically leads to complication, and Amy 2.0 comes closer to the villain of Takashi Miike’s <em>Audition</em>, a young woman who attracts an old widower with her beauty and supplication but who reveals a ruthless, wrathful side when lovers fail to uphold their own image of commitment. Still, Pike does not play Amy as a monster, instead reacting in each moment to the men around her, whether it’s trying to please Nick while taking tabs, or dealing with the unctuous hanger-on Desi (Neil Patrick Harris), a rich man-child still nursing a crush, promising to take Amy away from Nick’s neglect and abuse while gently insisting that she exist as his own hallowed image of her.<br />
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Like <em>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</em>, the <em>Gone Girl</em> novel suffered from a plurality of half-formed ideas: satire of speculative punditry, hat-tip to laid-off colleagues in the publishing industry, resentment for a generation of yuppie parents who profited on their children’s childhood and left their kids a world of debt, and a muddied, high/low attempt to illustrate a grotesque exaggeration of the pitfalls of marriage. And as with the movie version of <em>Tattoo</em>, this film either removes or redirects all these miniature themes to focus on a single essence, in this case the surface tensions between people either trying or willfully refusing to live up to their partner’s idealized vision of them. It is a mordant comedy about the battle of the sexes, one that redefines the term “bloody climax.” (“He came and went at the same time,” as the old Pryor bit goes…) But battle is too soft a militarized term for the endless war that the film envisions, divided between women who know the gains and losses that will accompany every slight gesture and vocal inflection, and men too safely ensconced in fortresses to realize they’re even being shelled. Perhaps the funniest joke in the movie is how overwhelmed Nick feels at having to compete with Amy’s sick genius, when in truth he’s closer to the hare who suddenly snaps awake from his nap during the race to see the tortoise about to cross the finish line.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-55217572172677502842014-10-03T08:29:00.001-04:002014-10-03T08:29:08.635-04:00Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014)<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Filled with Nic Roeg-esque montages and a finale that repurposes Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life as some sort of metaphysical chase sequence, Luc Besson’s Lucy certainly attempts to add more visual flavor to its trim 90 minutes than most blockbusters can achieve at twice its length. But what should be a refreshing dip into trash-art instead plays out as an incoherent, tonally inconsistent chore that, among other things, plays on regressive Asian stereotypes to fuel its suspense.</blockquote>
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Read my full review at <a href="http://spectrumculture.com/film/lucy/">Spectrum Culture</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-89545578849034912092014-10-03T08:29:00.000-04:002014-10-03T08:29:00.430-04:00Love StreamsOne of two pieces I wrote recently about John Cassavetes' not-quite-swan song, his masterpiece <i>Love Streams</i>. An excerpt:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The film’s title alludes to an idea Sarah has as she reels from losing her family, a notion that “love is a stream; it’s continuous, it doesn’t stop.” If it does not stop, however, it can slow and divert like a stream, and contrary to the feverishly over-complicated efforts of Sarah to push love forward and Robert’s own attempt to dam it, it will always take the path of least resistance. At its heart, the film is a comedy: in an oeuvre filled with all-time classic drunk scenes, the sequence of Cassevetes throwing himself in the car of club singer Susan (Diahnne Abbot), driving to her place, crashing, then being unable to get out of the vehicle is a mini-masterpiece. The physicality of Cassavetes’ acting in this moment could be a precursor for Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘luude scene in The Wolf of Wall Street: Robert turns into an assembly of arms and legs all connected to a mass of nerves without an organizing brain, and about the only thing he accomplishes as he tries to get out of the car is to cause noise, from leaving the door open until an alarm goes off to flipping on the radio and sending jazz blaring around the neighborhood.</blockquote>
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Read the rest at <a href="http://spectrumculture.com/film/oeuvre-cassavetes-love-streams/">Spectrum Culture</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-50643067332576601932014-08-10T15:33:00.000-04:002014-08-10T15:33:49.557-04:00Blu-Ray Review Round-Up (08/10/2014)Here's a few months worth of Blu-Ray reviews from Slant and Movie Mezzanine.<br />
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Movie Mezzanine<br />
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<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/blu-ray-review-sleepaway-camp/">Sleepaway Camp (Scream Factory)</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/blu-ray-review-rollerball-1975/">Rollerball (1975) (Twilight Time)</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/dvd-review-lewis-black-old-yeller/">Lewis Black: Old Yeller (Image Entertainment) [DVD]</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/blu-ray-review-cheap-thrills/">Cheap Thrills (Drafthouse Films)</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/dvd-review-hell-divers/">Hell Divers (Warner Archive) [DVD]</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/blu-ray-review-ravenous/">Ravenous (Scream Factory)</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/blu-ray-review-the-unknown-known/">The Unknown Known (Anchor Bay)</a><br />
<a href="http://moviemezzanine.com/blu-ray-review-deadly-eyes/">Deadly Eyes (Scream Factory)</a><br />
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Slant Magazine<br />
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<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/a-hard-days-night">A Hard Day's Night (Criterion)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/under-the-skin">Under the Skin (A24)</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/pickpocket-bd">Pickpocket (Criterion)</a>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-54728762502498386292014-08-10T15:22:00.000-04:002014-08-10T15:22:28.352-04:00The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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By the same token, it’s also a fitting summary of everything that hinders the film’s aspirations to a singular vision. The highly chromatic, ill-fitting series of tableaux admirably abandon the illusion of objectivity (or even a rationally viewed subjectivity) to celebrate the role imagination plays on memory. Yet for a film intended to reflect both its maker’s personal experience and unorthodox aesthetic, so much of <i>The Dance of Reality</i> feels old-hat, begging the question whether something can be surreal if you feel like you’ve seen it before.</blockquote>
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Read my full review at <a href="http://spectrumculture.com/film/the-dance-of-reality/">Spectrum Culture</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-23161838343467420302014-08-10T15:19:00.001-04:002014-08-10T15:19:26.648-04:00Music ReviewsI'm trying my hand at more music reviews this year, mostly for the site Spectrum Culture. Here's links to my music-related pieces:<br />
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<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/holy-hell-illmatic-turns-20/">Nas, <i>Illmatic</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/miles-davis-miles-at-the-fillmore-miles-davis-1970-the-bootleg-series-vol-3/">Miles Davis, <i>Miles at the Fillmore—Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/lily-allen-sheezus/">Lily Allen, <i>Sheezus</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/marc-ribot-trio-live-at-the-village-vanguard/">Marc Ribot Trio, <i>Live at the Village Vanguard</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/revisit-the-human-league-dare/">The Human League, <i>Dare</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/fucked-up-glass-boys/">Fucked Up, <i>Glass Boys</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/various-artists-c86/">Various Artists, <i>C86</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/led-zeppelin-led-zeppelin-led-zeppelin-ii-led-zeppelin-iii/">Led Zeppelin, <i>I, II and III</i></a><br />
<a href="http://spectrumculture.com/music/holy-hell-live-through-this-turns-20/">Hole, <i>Live Through This</i></a>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-89246165443194249272014-08-10T15:18:00.001-04:002014-08-10T15:18:35.740-04:00Finding Fela (Alex Gibney)<blockquote class="tr_bq">
A greater sin still is how the film saps Fela’s music of its energy. It’s not entirely Gibney’s fault: no documentary about an artist has ever captured the thrill of personal discovery of that artist’s work. Being flatly informed of the military raid on Fela’s Kalakuta Republic compound after hearing a snippet of “Zombie” pales in comparison to hearing all of “Zombie” first, being galvanized by it universal anti-military lyrics, then gradually filling in the context around that composition. When it is served to a viewer already wrapped in significance, the whole progression of immersion is thrown out, teaching detached admiration instead of passionate discovery.</blockquote>
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Read my full review at <a href="http://spectrumculture.com/film/finding-fela/">Spectrum Culture</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-59127271373083740582014-06-28T18:15:00.000-04:002014-06-28T18:15:27.413-04:00Blu-Ray Review: The Lego Movie<i>The Lego Movie</i> is too scattershot and content to be the satire some claim it is, but I nonetheless find its 40-jokes-per-minute mania pleasing, and liked it as much a second time as I did the first. Kids movies tend to come with loaded Blu-Rays, albeit dully so with features that even a child has no use for. So I was happy to see, then, that Warner's put together a great package, starting with a hilarious group commentary and filled with interesting production featurettes that delve into how the movie was made. Read my full review at <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-lego-movie">Slant</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-86625950002129948522014-06-28T07:00:00.000-04:002014-06-28T07:00:01.018-04:00Blu-Ray Review: The Man from Laramie<i>The Man from Laramie</i> is the last Anthony Mann-James Stewart collaboration, and if it's not the best of their work (I'd narrowly give the edge to <i>The Naked Spur</i>, and possibly <i>Bend of the River</i>), it is nonetheless their most impressively ambitious, an acid-western take on <i>King Lear</i> that may be one of the most violent films to obscure most of its violence from explicit display. Twilight Time releases are always fairly modest, but the 4K restoration given the film results in their best looking release to date, and I'm pleased that this dirty B-movie now looks as good as its A-list counterparts. Read my full review at <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/the-man-from-laramie">Slant</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-8285897450203315892014-06-28T02:00:00.000-04:002014-06-28T02:00:05.931-04:00Blu-Ray Review: L'EclisseThe more I watch and return to Michelangelo Antonioni, the less concerned I am with "solving" his elliptical form and the more I'm content simply to bask in it. <i>L'Eclisse</i> rates with <i>Red Desert</i> and <i>The Passenger</i> as one of the directors most beautiful, enrapturing works, along with one of the most unsettling. Criterion give their old DVD a solid upgrade to Blu-Ray, though I do hope they append a few more of the directors early and late shorts to some future release, maybe their inevitable upgrade of <i>L'Avventura</i>. Regardless, this is a fine release, and you can read my full thoughts on the film and its Blu-Ray at <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/leclisse">Slant</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-46118090787624451082014-06-27T19:00:00.000-04:002014-06-27T19:00:01.624-04:00Blu-Ray Review: Like Someone in LoveAbbas Kiarostami's <i>Like Someone in Love</i> was one of my favorite films of 2013, and Criterion's Blu-Ray is predictably superlative, presenting its intricate sound design and Red camera cinematography without error and tossing in a few solid features. Check out my full review at <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/like-someone-in-love">Slant</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-77066279465663351152014-06-27T18:23:00.004-04:002014-06-27T18:23:54.088-04:00Blu-Ray Review: A Hard Day's NightI watched <i>A Hard Day's Night</i> for the first time back in 2009 when the Beatles remasters came out and loved it so much I was instantly ready to call it maybe the greatest of rock films. Watching it for the third time with Criterion's outstanding new Blu-Ray release, I'm only more committed to that notion, but now I'm struck by what I never saw in the movie before: underneath (and often, directly parallel) with its many irreverent jokes is a glimpse at why adults were so afraid of these mop-topped goofballs, how their unkempt images and rakish lack of tact made them revolutionary well before they turned to drugs and started writing counterculture anthems. Criterion honors the film's 50th anniversary with one of their most impressive single-film releases: there's a commentary track, the short film that inspired the Beatles to use Richard Lester, many in-depth features and one of the thickest booklets the label has put with a release that was not an actual, honest-to-God book. It's currently sitting at the top of my list of Blu-Ray releases for the year.<br />
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Read my full review at <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/a-hard-days-night">Slant</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-59798009494428161952014-06-27T17:20:00.002-04:002014-06-27T17:20:39.306-04:00Louie Season 4 RecapsRather than do individual posts, here are links to all of my Louie coverage<br />
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<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/05/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-1-2-back-model">Episodes 1 & 2: "Back" and "Model"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/12/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-3-4-so-did-the-fat-lady-elevator-part-1">Episodes 3 & 4: "So Did the Fat Lady" and "Elevator Part 1"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/19/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-5-6-elevator-part-2-elevator-part-3">Episodes 5 & 6: "Elevator Part 2" and "Elevator Part 3"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/26/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-7-8-elevator-part-4-elevator-part-5">Episodes 7 & 8: "Elevator Part 4" and "Elevator Part 5"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/02/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-9-10-elevator-part-6-pamela-part-1">Episodes 9 & 10: "Elevator Part 6" and "Pamela Part 1"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/09/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-11-12-in-the-woods-part-1-2">Episodes 11 & 12: "In the Woods"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/16/louie-recap-season-4-episodes-13-14-pamela-part-2-3">Episodes 13 & 14: "Pamela Part 2" and "Pamela Part 3"</a>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-42627161739218216272014-06-27T17:16:00.000-04:002014-06-27T17:16:09.256-04:00Two Rode Together (John Ford, 1961)Here's my review of John Ford's excellent late-period <i>Two Rode Together</i> and its fine Blu-Ray release from Twilight Time. Read my full review at <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/two-rode-together">Slant</a>.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-18375890134451713242014-05-11T20:39:00.001-04:002014-05-11T20:39:47.198-04:00Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel, 2005)<i>[The following is a belated Blind Spots entry.]</i><br />
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The grainy black-and-white imagery and raw sound give <em>Regular Lovers</em> an impression of verité instantly belied by Philippe Garrel’s aesthetically minded composition. Often, the film resembles a documentation of experimental theater more than a recreation of the director’s memories of May ‘68, particularly in its first half. The frontloaded scenes of violent student protests are presented as flattened, static looks at both students and cops, each group set against a pitch-black void as they shuffle nervously from side to side rather than in deep recess toward the opposition. Canned explosions and minimalist barricades only complete the oneiric vision of protest, so much so that a dream sequence of the students rendered as 18th century Jacobins almost passes by unnoticed for looking no less real than the riots in the present.<br />
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This alienated, dispassionate rendering of May ‘68 protests, the opposite of more vividly captured replications in films like <em>Something in the Air</em>, avoids nostalgia or belated self-justification on behalf of the author in favor of his mature reflection on the events of his youth. <em>Regular Lovers</em> stretches out for three hours to cover a well-worn subject in French cinema of the last 46 years, and by getting protests scenes out of the way quickly, it does not bother to tease the audience with thrills from a foregone conclusion. Other films on this subject attempt to capture the fury and defiance of youth in revolt, but this one cannot muster any excitement for so bitter a loss.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>That approach allows the rest of the film to act as a protracted comedown, slipping in and out of the opium daze of protagonist François (Louis Garrel), a poet who partakes in the protests. Like François’ slowly deflating energy, May ‘68 did not suddenly cease so much as stubbornly peter out, and the film’s lethargic, rambling movement charts the mounting realization of the movement’s futility, as well as some reasons for its failure. In the funniest scene, François finds himself before a judge when apprehended for refusing to show up to the draft office and gets off when his defense attorney argues that military service could negatively affect his client’s poetic mind, robbing France of a contribution to its artistic legacy. The bourgeois privilege that this anti-bourgeois crusader relies upon echoes in a later scene of another young intellectual blaming the failure of May ‘68 on the ignorance of the working classes, the same proletariat for whom they nominally fought.<br />
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The ambivalence of the film is overpowering. Early on, François tells a friend that he was given a Molotov cocktail to throw at the police, but he lost his nerve at the thought of taking a human life. A more strident film would lambaste François for his cowardice and lack of commitment, but Garrel’s takes a more measured tone, recognizing the movement’s doom in such individual action but also the moral justness of pulling back from radicalism. That colors Garrel’s reminiscence of the protests’ failure with as much relief as regret, and the inability to square these feelings into an easily digested opinion contributes to the film’s sense of anomie and detachment as much as the opium that freely passes between dejected students.<br />
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Not content to just focus on political disappointment, the film lets its defeatism ripple out and affect personalities. François and his peers meet at the opium den of their friend Antoine (Julien Lucas), who at one point explains that he received a hefty inheritance when his parents died and uses it to keep himself in narcotic bliss, a tragic glimpse into his psyche, and the perverse means he uses to make and keep friends, soon swallowed by the pervading sense of ennui. Later, François' sadness over the movement's implosion turns into hand-wringing over the state of his relationship with Lilie (Clotilde Hesme), a sculptor he met while hiding from cops. Her love helps him move on from the protests, but it causes him stress of its own when she gets lured to America with the promise of good connections in the art scene there. <br />
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<em>Regular Lovers</em> is a film that, despite its relative feelings of stasis, always pushes its way forward through life, and as François' political frustrations become romantic ones, the film subtly explains why revolutions are youth movements, and why they fail. The young have nothing to distract them, nothing to tie them down. When they finally start to take on the responsibilities of life, however, they do not so much see the light of the status quo as they cannot keep their own fire stoked while keeping track of everything else.Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-494160638739613756.post-41055735893047951342014-05-06T16:28:00.002-04:002014-06-27T17:20:03.854-04:00Game of Thrones Season 4 RecapsVery pleased to say that I am covering this season of <i>Game of Thrones</i> for Slant's House Next Door blog. Here are links to the first five recaps, and this post will be updated with links to future coverage.<br />
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<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/06/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-1-two-swords">Episode 1: "Two Swords"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/13/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-2-the-lion-and-the-rose">Episode 2: "The Lion and the Rose"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/20/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-3-breaker-of-chains">Episode 3: "Breaker of Chains"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/28/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-4-oathkeeper">Episode 4: "Oathkeeper"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/05/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-5-first-of-his-name">Episode 5: "First of His Name"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/12/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-6-the-laws-of-god-and-men">Episode 6: "The Laws of God and Men"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/19/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-7-mockingbird">Episode 7: "Mockingbird"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/02/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-8-the-mountain-and-the-viper">Episode 8: "The Mountain and the Viper"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/09/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-9-the-watchers-on-the-wall">Episode 9: "The Watchers on the Wall"</a><br />
<a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2014/16/game-of-thrones-recap-season-4-episode-10-the-children">Episode 10: "The Children"</a>Jake Colehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15532951308638768249noreply@blogger.com0