LogFAQs > #934020362

Pretty fun set of matches today.

#20 - Arisa Hoshiki vs Jungle Kyona - STARDOM - Stardom x Stardom, August 10th
So, for some perspective, back in 2016 Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo(Sane) had a match that I came very, very close to going five stars on. Before that, you'd have to go back to the early 2000s to find another women's match I liked better than this one.

And to explain why, I'm gonna have to get on my soapbox for a minute and talk about selling. I strongly believe that the majority of people, fans and wrestlers alike, get selling very wrong these days when it comes to limb work. Adrenaline is a big deal - athletes play through pretty severe injuries all the time in sports. So why is it that people act like some wrestler's a terrible seller if they don't treat their leg like it's been amputated after their opponent does one dragon screw and kicks it a couple of times?

This match doesn't have that issue in the slightest. Kyona does some work on Hoshiki's leg early on in an attempt to take away the lethal kicks that have been bringing her so many victories. Then Hoshiki kicks her in the head anyway a couple minutes later and Kyona thinks, "Well, damn, that still really hurt!" and abandons that strategy. She tried something and it didn't work. That's not bad psychology - that's just the normal course of an athletic competition. I love that sort of thing.

It's not the only thing that made this match awesome, though. Jungle Kyona is the Tomohiro Ishii of the joshi world - rarely gets pushed and often works as the underdog despite her size, but no one would call you crazy if you said she was the best female wrestler in the world, and if Stardom ever wants a great in-ring match, they inevitably go to Kyona for it. Her fans, me among them, have been clamoring for her to finally win a singles title for years, and this match had us collectively living and dying by every near-fall. There was a message being sent: for Arisa to win this, she was gonna have to kick Kyona's head into the fifth row.

There's a deceptive amount of depth here, too. Hoshiki, to a degree, represents every one of the younger and more attractive (conventionally speaking) wrestlers that have come into Stardom and found immediate success while Jan-Kyo looks on from the background. And the glittery, squeaky-clean nature of Hoshiki's STARS stable looks conformist to the fiercely individualistic Tokyo Cyber Squad that Kyona's a part of. The turning point in the match where she gives up on the leg targeting and starts throwing bombs feels momentous as a part of that story - she's Jungle Kyona, she doesn't do limb work, she just runs into you with lariats and elbows until you don't get up anymore.

You could really pick any of Hoshiki's White Belt defenses from 2019 at random and it wouldn't feel out of place on this list, but if you're invested in Kyona the way I am, this stands as the clear best. And because I can't talk about Hoshiki without posting this gif, here she is murdering Hazuki. https://i.imgur.com/ZYE3lMO.mp4

#19 - Yuji Okabayashi vs Dylan James - AJPW - Champion Carnival Night 12, April 20th
2019's was the best Champion Carnival in recent memory, and these two guys were big reasons why. James stepped up in a big way after his return from injury, and Oka was just the straight MVP of the tournament despite technically being an "outsider."

There's no deep background here, no additional context needed to understand. It's a longer match, but it breezes by as these two just slap and chop and elbow and lariat and suplex the life out of each other. You want to see two big tough guys trying to figure out which one's tougher? Watch this match.

#18 - Daisuke Sekimoto vs Michael Elgin - BJW - August 24th
... Or this one. Or both!

Elgin's really fallen out of the public eye since the controversy that surrounded him and his subsequent departure from NJPW, but he's still one of the very best going right now, especially in Japan. You can just see a certain pep in his step in that country that isn't present elsewhere, and when he gets to work against a guy like Sekimoto, it's only amplified.

Again, it's a big boy formula match. Fighting spirit and stiff strikes abound. And it's awesome. I can't wait to see what variation of the dancing gimmick Sekimoto gets in WWE.

#17 - Strong BJ vs Violent Giants - AJPW - Dream Power Series Night 6, March 19th
With apologies to WALTER, these are the best four wrestlers in the world at the 2v2 hoss fight, and Yuji Okabayashi is the one true Sekimoto partner. This match had the tidy little story of the Giants, the most prolific AJPW tag team of recent memory, trying to reclaim AJPW's tag titles from the outsider team that took them away in January, which worked perfectly as a backdrop to what was yet another amazing hoss fight. Strong BJ aren't "invaders" or even heels, they're just simply not All Japan, so they brought their regular style here just as they should have. Suwama is a full step (or maybe two) below the other three guys in this match as a worker, but one thing he always does well is timing, so he thrives in this environment where he can just throw in a perfectly placed lariat or suplex and bring the match to emotional highs. I mentioned yesterday that 2019 wasn't a great year for tag matches, but this is absolutely an exception.

#16 - Will Ospreay vs Robbie Eagles - NJPW - Southern Showdown Melbourne, June 29th
Thought you were gonna get away without an Ospreay or NJPW match today, didn't ya?

I love this rivalry, and this felt like the culmination of it. Callbacks to their previous matches, playing off their recent history in NJPW proper, building up the tension between Eagles and ELP that would lead to Eagles finally turning on the BC after the match, all backed by the kind of smooth but hard-hitting wrestling that these two do better than maybe anyone else in the world. Eagles came off like a huge star in his native country, too, which added a really cool atmosphere to the match as Ospreay had to work to a hostile crowd despite Eagles not technically turning yet, and they popped huge for every tease of discord between the Bullet Club contingent. I'm running out of praise to heap on Will at this point, but it really can't be overstated just how much he did for both himself and all his opponents in 2019.

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https://imgur.com/UYamul2
Spurs - Yankees - Eagles - Golden Knights