LogFAQs > #933777795

Got some obscure stuff showing up today.

#40 - Tomohiro Ishii vs Jay White - NJPW - G1 Climax Night 4, July 15th
This was simply two very smart wrestlers working a very smart match. They get the obligatory Gedo stuff out of the way early, which makes it a lot less annoying (especially because Ishii is just having none of it), and from there we essentially get a role reversal. White, both in kayfabe and out, tends to make his competitors wrestle his style of match. Ishii turns that around on him and baits him into a slugfest, up to and including a rarely seen prolonged Jay White forearm exchange.

Ishii, for the most part, is what makes this match great. He does everything that he normally does in his important matches to get the crowd very much on his side, not that they need much of a push when Jay White's the other guy. It's easy to forget that this is personal for him - it's the first time he's gotten his hands on White since he and Gedo turned on CHAOS, and all his strikes seem to have a little extra venom behind them. White's great in his role too, though. In multiple instances he'll pull off a move and grin at the crowd, extremely proud of himself, only to turn right around into an Ishii elbow. We also get a fantastic finishing sequence; Jay doesn't get to show it off very often because of the nature of his character, but he's great at those. Just a very enjoyable match all the way through that played to the strengths of two excellent wrestlers.

#39 - Arisa Nakajima vs Nanae Takahashi - SEAdLINNNG - Dynamic Show Case! ~ Kawasaki Monogatari, November 2nd
I get the impression that people who aren't super familiar with Joshi might think that all women's wrestling companies in Japan work the same (or at least a similar) style, and that said style is more or less using the blueprint from the big Joshi companies in the 90s like AJW, with a lot of ultra-stiff strikes, submissions that look like they're meant to rip off limbs, and screaming like banshees.

That's not what most Joshi is nowadays, but it's absolutely what SEAdLINNNG is.

This match in particular is beautifully brutal from the word "go." There's a lot of history in this matchup and I won't pretend to be an expert on all of it - despite watching more Joshi than the majority of the people on the planet, relatively speaking, my knowledge has its limits - but you can infer a lot of it by how hard these two hit each other. And, in addition to being for Nakajima's Beyond the Sea Championship, it's a Hair vs Hair match, so there's extra layers there as well.

I don't have much more to say about the match itself, but I do about one of the competitors. You know how there's that one movie or song or food that you don't watch or listen to or eat very often, but on the rare occasion you do, you're like, "Wow, I forgot how great this is, it's one of my favorites! I need to seek it out more often." That's Arisa Nakajima as a wrestler. She doesn't get a lot of buzz or visibility, (in no small part because Joshi is a niche of a niche of a niche, but also because there just always seems to be a younger and hotter act on the upswing somewhere), but she's one of the best wrestlers in the world, man or woman, and has been for a very long time. Not only can she bring violence with the best of them, I've seen her in technical sequences that would make Zack Sabre Jr.'s head spin. If you're ever in the mood to watch some wrestling but there's nothing current striking your interest, go to Cagematch, peruse her top rated matches, and look them up; they're easy to find. I doubt they'll disappoint.

#38 - Will Ospreay vs Rocky Romero - NJPW - Best of the Super Juniors Night 4, May 16th
One of the things that makes Ospreay so enjoyable to watch is that he always gives his all in making his opponents look good, even when he really doesn't have to. This guy beat Ibushi at WK13 for the NEVER title and is on the very cusp of moving up to heavyweight, whereas Rocky is in the twilight of his career as a wrestler, spending more time behind the commentary desk or as R3K's manager than in the ring these days. For that reason, incidentally, the fact he was included in this tournament to begin with was a head scratcher for some folks.

Not me. Rocky rules. I knew we would get a match or two like this out of him. He showed the younger CHAOS member that he still had a lot to learn, and the crowds that he himself had a little left in the tank if he needed it. Realistically, he was never winning this match, but he had me biting on near falls by the end anyway, and Ospreay was scrambling like mad to stay out of his armbar. This was the classic pro wrestling story of the wise veteran using everything he'd picked up in his long career to stand toe to toe with who, besides being quicker and harder-hitting, was one of the tournament favorites. And it was executed wonderfully.

#37 - Kento Miyahara vs Shuji Ishikawa - AJPW - Super Power Series Night 2, May 20th
These two had a banger in the Champion Carnival, and then they went out a month later and just did it again.

There's a very interesting dynamic in this match. Ishikawa (another very underappreciated wrestler in terms of consistent greatness), often plays the bully who beats the hell out of the smaller babyface in a match, even when he's not exactly a heel himself. Miyahara, though, presents himself as such an utter asshole early in the match, continuing with the sort of tendencies he's been building over the last couple years, and it puts the audience firmly on Ishikawa's side. They love watching him ragdoll Kento around the ring.

And then, because Kento's so good, he starts throwing in the big fighting spirit spots that have defined him as a worker, and the crowd slowly starts to cheer for him again. It's a fairly typical AJPW finishing sequence from there, but it's a formula that works for Miyahara and it never quite gets to the point of feeling like overkill. Plus, there are few things more dramatic in modern wrestling than him struggling to lock the arms and then lift his opponent for the Straitjacket German, especially when it's a giant like Shuji. There's a reason he's the ace of that company, and it's on full display in this match.

#36 - T-Hawk vs Jiro Kuroshio - Wrestle-1 - Wrestle Wars, March 21st
Miracle worker and uncrowned Hall of Famer CIMA does it again. Dragon Gate spent multiple years trying to get T-Hawk over as the next big star of the company, and it never worked. Then CIMA takes him along in his split from the company and he instantly becomes awesome, up to including this excellent title reign. I just don't know how he does it.

This is set up from the entrances as a match of contrasts. Jiro is one of the most showy wrestlers in Japan, well-known for having an