The background here is that Joe and JJ were briefly tagging, but JJ betrayed Joe in a heel turn to join Hulk Hogan’s new heel stable, Immortal. Joe offers a great promo in a video package beforehand, telling JJ, “I’ve been over your picket fence, I’ve been in your house, I’ve pet your pets.” It’s menacing in a way Joe excels at, it’s personal, it’s intense. I must like wrestling home invasions apparently because I also loved the controversial Swerve in Hangman’s house segment. Wrestling is often at its best when fighters stop feuding about titles and start acting like they genuinely hate each other and plan to do truly horrible acts to one another.

The crowd is hot for Joe. Honestly they are hot in a way I have not seen a crowd be hot in TNA in the last two years. They even break out the first “Joe’s gonna kill you” chants we have heard since I started looking at this era. It is a reminder of what a star Joe still is here. TNA has spent years cooling him off, pushing him down the card, surrounding him with increasingly silly stories and face tattoos, and yet all it takes is putting him opposite Jeff Jarrett and letting him be Samoa Joe again for the crowd to immediately remember.

This is what you want from the heel finally gets caught story. JJ betrayed Joe and then attacked him a few times, but now he is in the ring. He tries to escape, he tries some heel tactics, but this is pure catharsis. Joe is bigger and badder and JJ is getting what is coming to him. This is honestly fun. 2010 JJ kind of sucks and this is just a pleasure to watch him get beat up by a fan favorite. Jarrett spends much of the match looking like a guy who suddenly realizes the consequences of his actions have arrived and they are substantially larger and more painful than expected.

Jarrett tries to stand up and go toe to toe with Joe and it is the disaster you would expect. A chop battle ensues, but it is really a chop massacre. Jarrett’s chops do nothing and Joe just obliterates the man’s chest. There is something deeply satisfying about watching a wrestling trope fail completely. Jarrett wants the dramatic fighting spirit exchange and Joe treats him like an inconvenience.

JJ gets some offense in, a brief window of advantage with a top rope slam, but Joe is never really in trouble here. Even when Jarrett gets a little momentum the match never stops feeling like Joe’s fight to lose. Joe hits his tope spot and takes out JJ and the ref. The tope never fails to look great. It remains one of those moves that survives every era of of his career and always feels violent.

For most of the match the story is refreshingly simple. Joe is not trying to outsmart Jarrett. He is not trying to wrestle circles around him. He is trying to hurt him. Jarrett keeps looking for shortcuts, for openings, for anything that might let him survive, and Joe keeps closing the distance and beating the hell out of him.

Then some no name goons named Murphy and Gunner come out who work for Hogan. Sigh. Ok, whatever. Now JJ is beating up Joe with a nightstick. As a result JJ wins by submission.

This was an interesting match. It started off as a great “beat the shit out of him” story, a great one sided match built around the satisfaction of finally seeing Jarrett get caught, and ended in a very dumb interference spot. The frustrating thing is not that the interference happens. It is 2010 TNA, interference is basically a constitutional requirement. The frustrating thing is that the match had already found something that worked. The crowd wanted to see Joe destroy this man. The audience was invested. The story was simple and effective. Instead TNA did what 2010 TNA was always going to do.

So Jarrett wins, Immortal stands tall, and Samoa Joe gets robbed. The ending is dumb, but for about ten minutes in the middle of this thing the company accidentally remembered why people loved Samoa Joe in the first place. That alone makes it worth watching.

It took a lot for Nigel McGuinness to get here.

It took an absolute murderer's row of a Continental Cup field. Shibata, probably the hardest hitter of all time. Hechicero, the technical master of his era. Kyle O'Reilly, not only a great grappler but a man who made champion Jon Moxley tap out twice.

It took even more to get here, though, really. It took the first meeting of these men over twenty years ago in HWA that we looked at recently. It took an improbable comeback from a man who was all but forgotten. I think many of us thought the final act of Nigel was the documentary he made about himself featuring a brutally heartbreaking scene of recounting his experience of watching Bryan in Wrestlemania 30 while he was out of wrestling, thinking he was a failure.

It goes even further back than that, thirty four years before, to a young Nigel watching Davey Boy Smith here in Wembley.

This Nigel story is what they wanted the Ospreay story to be and to feel like, the culmination of a life, the accumulation of triumph and defeat coming together at a time and place that only could happen here.

Early on Nigel has a spot where he European uppercuts Mox right out of the ring and it’s an absolute thrill. For his end Mox is working the injured ankle. He has a plan. He is still as mean and violent as that maniac from HWA, but now it has calcified into a cold, calculated killer.

Bryan Danielson being on commentary is an interesting inverse and they do not highlight it. He is separated from Bryan. The paradigm has shifted. Nigel is no longer the guy who is not Bryan, not Bryan's rival. Nigel is his own man in his own match.

Mox removes the protective tape on his opponents ankle. He is not smiling or in a fit of madness. This is just the plan. Everything he does is designed to hurt the ankle and this is something he can do all night.

Mox being so methodical makes the match feel like a foregone conclusion. He is already younger, stronger, better, less hurt, but he is coming in here and working an already injured man in an incredibly efficient manner.

This near certainty allows us to really investigate the match because the question of win or loss fades away and it becomes about what Nigel can handle, how far he can go, how he can measure himself against the best in front of his home crowd.

Time merges together. Nigel is both in the ring and in the stands as a kid dreaming about being in the ring. This is more than wrestling. This is a man holding himself to the impossible dreams of a child and finding he is nearly equal to the scene.

Every move Nigel gets in feels like a moment of glory, the glory even sweeter knowing it will not culminate in a win. When he gets the Tower of London, or lays Mox out with a lariat, we cannot help but feel happy for him. We cannot help but see the guy in the documentary calling himself a failure and realize he is here now, doing this.

Nigel locks in the London Dungeon and we get to watch Mox sell a submission. He is so fabulously good at that. He wiggles and writhes, he doese’t look cool, he looks panicked and frightened.

Mox wins with a strong ending sequence. He locks in an ankle lock and Nigel looks for a rope break. He extends his body fully. Mox sees he is overextended so he lets go and nails him with a stomp and locks in another ankle lock.

What follows is one of the best rope break reaches in wrestling history. Nigel reaches out for the rope, for relief, a foot away. He finds a little bit more. Inches away. He wiggles his fingers. He is so close. He is so fucking close.

But he cannot take any more and taps. Mox walks away with the cup. Nigel stands and bows here in his home country. On this sceptered isle, this seat of Mars, the British crowd sings his name.

The thing that made Kenny Omega special for me during his best years in New Japan was how fearless he was. Not because of the way he wrestled or the moves he did, but his fearlessness as a performer. Kenny was wild. His face was wild. His promos were so far over the line into overacting they became stellar. His facial expressions were so exaggerated they became unforgettable. He was a man who was truly free. He had absolutely no worries about how he would be perceived, and it made him exciting, fresh, and urgent.

For the most part we have only seen snippets of this in AEW. It is not his fault. The act was the act of a wild young man and he is now an elder statesman. It makes me feel cold a lot about Kenny, which I do not want because I genuinely like his work. His opening video package is very much the opposite of Ospreay’s, just highlight after highlight, not just of AEW but all his New Japan and DDT classics. This may set us up for disappointment because it is unlikely we see that Kenny tonight, but the package makes me want it badly.

There are versions of Will’s entrance with his mom that could be great. In many scenarios this would be touching, but frankly this just makes him seem lame. I think it is just how badly he wants it, how much the company wants us to love this guy. To watch this voiceover of his mom while he helps kids just feels inauthentic.

They make up for this with the walk through the back where he faces friends and enemies and future challengers, a wonderful way to show us where Will has been and where he is going.

The opening ten minutes are oddly paced. They start slow and then get into a small bit of flipping each other around and then into a choppy stop and start of attacks that leave them both seeming much more hurt than you would expect five minutes in, and then a few minutes later they again seem fresh as the driven snow.

Kenny does a heel move of removing some protective padding from the ring rope to use as a weapon against Ospreay’s injured neck. It is a bit boring to bring this stuff out so early, but Kenny does a shhh motion to the camera and again it is the kind of weird over the top shit that should be lame, but Kenny totally pulls it off and delights me.

I sort of hate being the kind of wrestling critic who complains about whether or not limb work is being sold well, but the first ten minutes here are basically all about Kenny attacking the neck and Ospreay just does nothing to sell this as an ongoing problem. I would say the effect seems to be that when Kenny attacks the neck it hurts him a little more, but he seems to suffer no real damage. He whips it around, he runs and flips, and the neck is fine. Look, you do not have to do perfect limb work, but you are forcing me to think about this by having Kenny do so much neck work.

The cheating continues. Will pushes the ref and Kenny nails him with a monitor. It is fine, but it is just not what I was hoping for. Once again Kenny goes weird and big and it works. He holds the monitor up and says, “Look mom, I’m on TV,” and I am kind of buying back in.

About twenty minutes in this match is all Kenny. Ospreay is bleeding, tired, beaten up, still not selling the neck, and we have to hope we are in for a significant comeback here soon.

Kenny does his boxing bit, which I think is very good. He squares up, he jabs and blocks. It is not Terry Funk level, but it looks cool and feels like a logical thing to do. Ospreay is on the ropes, so finish him off with the bread and butter.

Ospreay starts to come back and I appreciate the realism here. He is not suddenly better. He gets a desperation Hidden Blade and then a headbutt with all he has left. Of course then he does seem to be regaining energy, still not selling the neck.

The first twenty minutes of a thirty minute match just did not feel like much. Neither a slow burn nor a high intensity spot fest, just Omega beating up Will mostly and mostly in kind of boring ways we have seen before.

Will just does not offer much in the way of in ring storytelling. What does he want here besides winning? How is his history with Kenny playing out here? How is the last three months of build affecting him? How is he using the influence of the Death Riders and what does having United Empire with him mean? I do not know. He gets beat up a lot and then gets some moves. He does not meaningfully emote.

Think back to previous All In main events:

In Texas the entire match was steeped in the events of the previous year.

Danielson was all emotion at his main event. We knew how badly he wanted to win this one more time and win for his family.

MJF and Cole told the story that had been going on for a year, callbacks to moments and pathos and the power of friendship playing out in each moment.

Kenny hits a One Winged Angel and Will kicks out and again it kind of feels flat. It feels like a moment designed to make me excited rather than a moment that genuinely draws me in. It is not a unifying moment. It is just a thing that happened.

Will gets two finishers in. He does the One Winged Angel and Kenny kicks out at one. Then Storm Breaker and Kenny does it again. This is the opposite of the moment with Ospreay kicking out. It feels shocking, surprising, urgent, and thrilling. Eventually Will gets the win with the Hidden Blade.

I wanted to like this match. I had my concerns, but I always want a match this big to be good. In the end it felt a little average, a little inessential. It was not bad. I was not bored, but I was almost never emotionally engaged. Will did nothing to make me think more of him.

Kenny, however, was a surprise. I wrote yesterday that I thought he might not have anything new to say and for me he did. We saw flashes of the fearless performer, the wild unhinged maniac, mixed with the veteran who is a little slower but meaner, made harder with years. Very little of this match brought me inside, but the moments that did were all Kenny.

Secondly, the match came at a time when the hype had died down, which seemed shocking for such a big rematch. The second Okada joined AEW we all started wondering when he would wrestle Kenny, who was out at the time with injury, and I think most of us assumed it would be within a year or so and be a world title match.

Here we are several years into Okada’s run and the match is a unification for the Continental and International titles, which do not stay unified very long. It was a big deal, but it took a little too long to happen and it was not the main event. Hangman Page finishing his redemption arc to end the year long Death Rider story felt bigger. It was immediate, it was emotional, it was a payoff to something we badly wanted to see paid off.

So here we are in Texas. Kenny entrances are indicative of Kenny overall. So much of what Kenny does can rightly be called overacting or cringey, but sometimes he comes out dressed like the Terminator or with a custom 8 bit rpg video opening and he manages to do the impossible and get this over in the biggest possible way.

Here Omega comes out to some Gregorian chanters and it turns into what sounds like an opening for an anime, complete with heroic vocals and some deep vocalizing from the chorus. It works, he does it this is cool. This is Kenny.

The opening here is about pace. These two men have fought multiple very long matches with each other and both know this will not be short. There are no shortcuts. The path to winning is the same for both, Okada hitting the Rainmaker or Omega hitting the One Winged Angel, but there is only one way to get there and that is to wear each other down, keep the pace slow, get your hits in when you can, and conserve energy for the inevitable escalation.

These two men have always been a contrast in style. Okada is a minimalist. He rarely runs, he rarely even moves fast, he does the fewest moves he can. In general the most thrilling thing you will see him do is a dropkick, although he arguably has the best dropkick of all time. He just smiles like a little asshole and drops a slam or a punch or a mean little offensive maneuver when he can.

Kenny is a maximalist, although in the state of professional wrestling in 2026 what made him a maximalist ten years ago can sometimes seem almost tame. He is always moving, always emoting, screaming with rage or excitement or pain, sprinting into V Triggers, scampering up the ropes for aerial attacks, looking for any excuse he can to high jump over the top rope.

Okada starts taking control in a bigger way. Outside of the ring Okada again attacks in small ways. He bashes Omega into the barrier with a short tackle, throws a two handed punch like a Starfleet officer, and is happy to get back in the ring quickly and hope for a count out win.

Kenny starts to hulk up (Omega up?), letting Okada hit him repeatedly in the face, which he no sells and works him into a frenzy, but Okada’s calmer demeanor helps here. An angry Kenny comes off the ropes at him and Okada hits him with a light little low kick and knocks him to the ground.

Kenny does his Kenny spot. He bounces off two sets of ropes for maximum momentum and then flips over the top rope unaided to Okada below. He did this in their previous matches, he did this in this match, and this is the kind of thing that makes me worry Kenny might not have anything new to say. Okada has a story here of how his belief in himself and his self assured attitude allow him to wrestle a calm measured match to success. Kenny’s story seems to be, check me out, I’m still Kenny Omega.

The pace quickens and the fight is even, but Okada brings it to a halt again with the aforementioned incredible dropkick. Kenny gets the closest he is going to get for a while with a powerbomb into two V Triggers, but he is too exhausted to keep the attack on. With great effort he manages a move off the top rope, but it seems to hurt them both equally, if not Omega more, who is damaged both by the impact and the effort it took to hit it.

Okada reverses out of a One Winged Angel into a two count and a big discus lariat, but can only get two himself. It seems only a matter of time here. We get the requisite finisher sequence where both attempt their finishers and both cleverly block or reverse them into another move. It is good, but again it is something we have seen a lot. Every Kenny Omega match becomes about him trying to get the One Winged Angel over and over and either getting it or not.

Omega does in fact hit the finisher, but that dastardly Don Callis pulls the referee out of the ring. Sigh. This match did not need this kind of ending. Another referee comes out. Okada hits the Rainmaker, but Omega kicks out. Maybe he has still got a little something here. The match is a year old as I write this and I know he does not, but it is a neat spot.

Again, this match is playing the hits and painting by numbers, and we are now in the third act where exhausted men stand in the middle of the ring and throw punches at each other. Finally Okada hits another Rainmaker and evens the series at 2-2.

Tonight Kenny Omega fights Will Ospreay and I worry that Kenny Omega just has nothing left to say. I worry his match with Ospreay, like this match, will be a combination of callbacks to their Forbidden Door match and Kenny hitting his Kenny spots. Okada seems to have a continued story to tell here and across his career overall.

Part of being a wrestling critic is applying narratives to things that might not really be there, but to me Okada tells a clear story in this match and Kenny just lays back in the recliner and throws on the highlight tape.

Eddie Kingston, who had to drop out of the Continental Cup a week ago because of injury, finds himself back in the ring just a week later in Arena Mexico, one of the great temples of this art, against the CMLL Heavyweight Champion Hechicero. Is this foolish? Is this dangerous? Is this too much to take on? Eddie doesn’t care. He’s a man at work.

Fighting Hechicero is intimidating. He’s a very over performer, a technical mastermind, and a wrestler at the top of his game. But Eddie does not fear the sorcerer. Eddie has wrestled ants and a praying mantis and a communist boar. Eddie is ready for whatever the moment calls for. Eddie has wrestled in the G1 and he’s main evented pay per views, and every time people said he didn’t belong there. Eddie himself often wonders if he belongs in these places, but he shows up and he does what he does best, kick ass.

Eddie knows he’s in over his head with a crowd supporting the champ and a younger, tougher opponent, so he comes in with a smart game plan, a very Eddie plan, come at Hechicero quick and hard with an overwhelming barrage of violence. The audience immediately boos the move and Eddie gestures at the beaten up champ and plays masterful heel to the crowd.

Eddie’s heel performance is very good. He blows kisses, he jaws with the crowd, and he even stooges and begs for mercy. For the most part Eddie’s plan works and Hechi is never able to get the types of moves he wants going. Eddie takes it outside of the ring, uses the ring steps as a weapon, and as a street fighter he’ll use anything he can to win.

Eddie’s crowd connection is fascinating. He does something impressive, he really pisses them off. I have a lot of positive things to say about MJF in Arena Mexico. Max got over with the fans doing a meta, winking foreign heel bit. It was wonderful. But Eddie is an earnest man. He’s not here to comment on tropes, he’s here to fuck the local guy up.

The match has some notable weak points including some very light chop exchanges, a sequence Eddie generally excels at. In the end he was not ever really going to win this. Hechicero nails him with a fancy top rope kick to take him down and then puts him into a twisting submission, a very Hechicero thing to do, cause pain in ways I don’t really see often. Eddie, disoriented, takes the pin.

Another chapter in the life of the hard luck palooka. No matter where he goes and what venue he’s in Eddie carries his scars and his demons with him. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses, sometimes they cheer, sometimes they boo, but Eddie is there no matter what.

What interested me was something else entirely. These two started together. Before the arenas, before the television deals, before the world titles, they were wrestling in Heartland Wrestling Association, learning the craft in front of small Ohio crowds. Twenty one years ago they wrestled each other for the first time.

Jon Moxley vs. Nigel McGuinness, HWA, 4/25/05

Nigel McGuinness is mostly famous for not making it.

The average casual wrestling fan might not know who he is at all. To the sickos he was long known as Bryan Danielson’s great ROH rival and as the wrestler who was so thoroughly left behind by history, retiring just as Danielson began his meteoric rise. For years it was impossible to talk about Nigel if Bryan was not in the conversation.

Following their final match at AEW Grand Slam, Nigel has quietly built a career that is about Nigel. He does not wrestle often, but when he gets in the ring he remains as dynamic and interesting as ever, a submission master and a charismatic performer. Now, improbably, he has advanced to the Continental Cup final and will face Moxley in Wembley.

Let’s look back at their first meeting in HWA in 2005, the promotion where they both got started. Before the match, both men had already crossed paths several times. As noted by Adam from Heartland Wrestling History, a terrific historian devoted to the promotion, McGuinness and TJ Dalton had unsuccessfully challenged Jon Moxley and Jimmy Turner for the HWA Tag Team Titles the previous month, while Nigel and Chad Collyer had also come up short against Moxley and Turner in another title challenge. This, however, was their first singles match against one another.

The worst thing Nigel ever did was bleach his hair blond. I find Nigel almost hard to look at sometimes here. His spiked bleach blond hair is so bad that he looks fantastic now simply by virtue of returning to his natural color.

Nigel is six years into his career and watching him wrestle is not that different from watching the guy in ROH pure classics or the man who wrestled in the Continental Cup this year. The growth in his character work would come later. Here he is not especially emotive and wrestles fairly cold, conveying very little about himself through his work. The technical side, however, is already there. He is essentially wrestling a shoot match. He is fast, creative, and constantly turning anything Mox gives him into a submission before advancing it in interesting and innovative ways.

Mox is very much the inverse. He does not want to face Nigel in a shoot style match. He wants to wrestle. Unlike Nigel, Mox here is all personality and very much a rookie in ring. You can already see the things that will eventually make him great. He is angry, always moving, and constantly frustrated. He also looks a little like a Midwestern Takeshita with bicep bands and a ponytail. Halfway through the match he leaves the ring to fume outside and throw water bottles around before deciding to get back in and face the Brit.

In the second half Mox gets what he wants. The shoot style portion of the match ends and it turns into more traditional professional wrestling. It favors Mox, though frankly he is not really good enough yet for all of it to work. I am not here to criticize one of the best wrestlers of all time two years into his career. Frankly, Mox was cool as hell here. The match ends with Mox climbing the ropes and screaming, “I’m climbing to the heavens!” which is just a very cool, weird thing to do. Nigel takes advantage, gets him off balance, delivers the Tower of London, and takes the win.

Mox did not yet have the MMA and shoot style abilities he would later develop, and if he had this match probably would have been great. It was already fun, but the professional wrestling portions felt a little bland at times.

Jon Moxley vs. Nigel McGuinness, HWA, 3/7/06

Indie wrestling is just the best. The match begins with Nigel flipping off Mox and Mox doing the jack off motion back at him. The Continental Classic final in Wembley surely will not start like that.

As Heartland Wrestling History helpfully shared with me, this was their first encounter since the 2005 match. Both men were in featured positions heading into HWA’s CyberClash iPPV. Moxley was preparing for a steel cage match against Cody Hawk, while Nigel was set to face Chad Collyer. Nigel had just returned from a Pro Wrestling NOAH tour two days earlier, while Mox had spent the year developing into one of HWA’s featured performers, particularly through his feud with Hawk, a legitimate teacher versus student rivalry given Hawk’s role in training him.

The animosity is much stronger here and, in just a short time, they are both noticeably improved wrestlers. Nigel is showing the personality we would later see in ROH, the sneering heel who is a little condescending and a little mean. Moxley, for his part, is even stronger as a character, an undisciplined version of the man he would become, an unhinged maniac who now is pretty capable of pulling off a wrestling match.

In the match we see two competing but strangely similar philosophies. Nigel always has a plan. If he goes for a stomp and misses it, he follows with a lariat. If he goes for a pin and gets a kick out, he transitions into a submission. He is thinking things through.

Mox is just always doing something violent. It often does not seem to string together logically why he does each thing. Maybe he does not even know before he does it, which makes him an exceptionally dangerous fighter because you cannot really plan for him.

At about the halfway mark this match turns into something we may very well see tomorrow. It follows a very common modern AEW main event structure. Finishers are executed and dramatically kicked out of. Both men seem barely able to stand, but after dramatic false finishes they somehow find bursts of energy that allow them to continue well beyond the point where you expect the match to end. The bout lasts a good six minutes past the moment I was certain it was over based on the pace of the action and the beats of the story.

Mox even unveils a proto version of his Bulldog Choke. For several minutes he has Nigel trapped in a choke hold, at one point getting him to the ground and wrapping his legs around him. Mox is a dog with a bone. Twice Nigel shakes him off and twice he is immediately back into the hold. It is not easy to make a lengthy submission sequence work on Midwestern indie wrestling television, but this thing is a thrill ride. Mox eventually picks up the victory with a finisher I had never heard of before called the Moxicity.

So what does this tell us about Wembley?

I suspect the match we see in the Continental Cup final will resemble what I watched here. Nigel is going to focus on submissions and use his creativity and cleverness to make up for his age and lesser physicality. Mox is going to overwhelm Nigel with bursts of violence and, when possible, trap him in the Bulldog Choke.

I am expecting a hell of a match in Wembley, technical, violent, fast when it needs to be, and slowed down whenever necessary to highlight the strengths of the two men. Looking back at these HWA matches, what strikes me most is not how different they were from the wrestlers we know today, but how much of the finished product was already visible. Nigel was already thinking three moves ahead. Mox was already impossible to predict. Twenty one years later, they are still trying to beat each other with the same ideas, only now the stage is a little bigger.

This is, in many ways, a meeting of super rookies, two wrestlers frequently discussed as part of the future of joshi. What interested me most was not necessarily the future they represent but how clearly defined they already feel. Wrestling often mistakes move sets for personalities, but both women arrive with something more substantial than that.

Like her trainer Chigusa Nagayo before her, Senka is a wrestler who seems incapable of hiding what she feels. Everything passes visibly across her face. We have seen her as the heroic figure fighting against impossible odds. Here we see something else. We see how much she enjoys bending another person’s limbs into uncomfortable shapes. We see how quickly determination can curdle into irritation and then outright anger.

Early on she levels Chi Chi with a shoulder tackle that feels like a declaration of intent. Senka does not merely collide with her opponent, she runs through her. What strikes me continually throughout the match is Senka’s face. Her expressions are extraordinarily readable. Anger, hatred, frustration, fear. Nothing is hidden. There is something almost old fashioned about it, a willingness to let the audience understand exactly where she is emotionally rather than cultivating the detached coolness so many contemporary wrestlers prefer.

Chi Chi responds not with power but with technique. She repeatedly wraps herself around Senka in submissions that seem geometrically improbable, her entire body coiling around a standing opponent and wrenching limbs in directions they were never intended to travel. To escape, Senka must drag herself toward the ropes while carrying the full weight of another human being attached to her. The journey is slow and unpleasant and every step feels earned.

Chi Chi has a wonderful little flourish during one sequence. Standing over a beaten Senka, she lifts her leg high and out to the side like a cheerleader beginning a routine before snapping it violently downward into Senka’s midsection. It is a small thing, but wrestling often lives in these small things.

The crowd is hot throughout, not because either woman is doing anything especially spectacular but because they have made the struggle intelligible. The audience understands what each wrestler wants and what stands in the way of getting it.One of the match’s strongest sequences arrives when Senka hoists Chi Chi for a suplex. Chi Chi slips down and immediately transitions into the same octopus submission she had used earlier. They struggle briefly before Senka regains control, finally connecting with the suplex, then another, then another, only to discover that all this effort is worth merely a two count.

The emotional center of the match arrives through a choke. Senka applies it with a degree of violence that feels almost excessive. She does not simply hold Chi Chi in place. She seems to be trying to shake the life out of her. Both women sell magnificently. Senka constantly readjusts her grip, searching for something tighter, more painful. Chi Chi approaches the problem differently. She does not seem to have a plan beyond movement itself. She twists and squirms and pulls at whatever she can reach, hoping an opening presents itself. Eventually it does in the form of a rope break.

Senka does not want to honor said break. She holds the choke long after she should. The referee is forced to intervene. Senka shoves him away and immediately attempts to reapply the hold. At that moment the match stops feeling sporting. Senka is no longer interested in winning correctly, she wants this over.

Later Chi Chi finds herself down outside the ring while Senka jaws at her from inside. I do not speak Japanese, but the meaning is clear enough. Come back. Get up. Keep fighting. Senka refuses the easy victory of a count out and drags her opponent back into the ring herself. It is a decision she quickly regrets when Chi Chi catches a second wind and begins delivering nasty apron slams that suddenly shift the balance of the match.

For most of the contest Senka appears firmly in control, but now she looks diminished. Chi Chi begins landing unprotected kicks to the head. The neat architecture of wrestling starts to break down. The holds become messier. The exchanges become uglier. They are no longer executing sequences so much as pushing, grabbing, and surviving.

The closing stretch becomes a sprint toward the time limit. A big boot from Chi Chi. A lariat from Senka. A side headlock from Senka, because it is the summer of side headlocks after all. Senka gets a body drop and a near fall, but Chi Chi kicks out and the bell rings.

The time limit draw feels exactly right. Wrestling often feels compelled to manufacture definitive outcomes for matches that do not need them. Neither woman required a victory here. What they needed was twenty minutes to demonstrate why people believe they matter. The draw accomplishes that perfectly, allowing both wrestlers to leave with their momentum intact while giving the audience a glimpse of what the next generation might look like.

Mustafa Ali defends his TNA International Title against the man many are calling the future of European wrestling, Erin Ordo, here in the French promotion APC.

Ordo enters with aura to spare. He’s only four years into his career and he approaches the event with the confidence of a veteran. He has a long hip hop intro, he does the assault rifle version of the Batista howitzer machine gun and then very slowly plays to each corner before calmly sitting in the middle of the ring to await Ali, completely unconcerned about making his more experienced rival wait, looking uncomfortably, almost maniacally calm.

Ali enters looking more ripped than usual, holding the very gold International Championship and an extremely large and also very gold necklace that looks like a prop from the Quaranta production of Aida. I think this is what the TNA International Title should be, and the AEW International Title for that matter, a belt largely defended in promotions across the world, and the more obscure the better. I loved watching MJF in Arena México and RevPro, but get me belts defended in promotions I would not otherwise watch against talent I might not otherwise see.

Ali is someone I have a lot of time for. He was a stalwart of WWE for some of the pre-pandemic and pandemic years, constantly bopping between the midcard and upper midcard and frankly this is the kind of guy I think they should have made a top star. I would much rather have seen main events with Mustafa Ali than constant Brock Lesnar returns, but such things were dreams in the McMahon era, and now honestly. Now he is in TNA where he is inarguably one of their better members and does hold a title, but should be the kind of guy they just fully build the promotion around. The TNA main event scene should be Cedric Alexander, Leon Slater and Ali and not both Nemeth and Hardy brothers.

Back in Paris, the match begins and the older Ali shows respect to the younger man, but after Ordo goes for another handshake and Ali feels one was enough, so he shoots on him and they are off into the kind of opening you would expect from these two. Tosses that go nine feet in the air, super athletic flips and movements and no damage to either man, ending with Ordo repeating his signature rifle pose at Ali.

Basically they start off fighting the same style, lots of wrist control where the other does a ton of flips around it, catch wrestling reversals, which makes sense. This is branded as a catch promotion.

The tone of the first half is Ali is delighted by the young guy and the young guy starts off kind of respectful but quickly gets cocky and aggressive. Soon Ali isn’t laughing anymore, but as he starts to get serious Ordo gets more serious and nails him with a huge flipping plancha to the outside. Ali responds with a nasty dropkick that sends him into the very supportive Parisian crowd and then a huge tope that gets the crowd to his side. It really is a wonderful tope and goes multiple rows into the crowd, unfortunately, as with all dives I see in modern wrestling, it features like six security guys standing there to base very obviously.

One of my favorite things happens here, we get an “oo la la” in the wild. After a stiff strike the French commentary drops one. I kind of always thought this was just a stereotype from cartoons, but I lived for a short time in Paris and watched a lot of soccer in bars and you had a genuine “oo la la” once per game.

Ordo runs the blade and is bleeding after a neckbreaker. It’s a little obvious of a blade job, he didn’t really take the damage needed, but they use it to good effect. First of all he looks cool as hell, second Ali rubs the blood in his hand and then chops Ordo with it.

Ordo nails a DDT from the top rope on Ali. Both seem damaged by it but respond how one might expect. Ali is older, wiser, tougher, he gets up right away, but Ordo is all youth, speed and aggression. You get the sense Ali thinks he is going to play possum and trip up Ordo and then Ordo does four power moves in the space Ali was expecting one and now he’s figuratively and literally on the ropes.

Ordo basically dominates the whole back half of this match. He gets kicks, he gets stomps, he generally can do anything he wants to Ali, who stubbornly keeps getting up and not taking a pin.

The ending is high paced. A rookie mistake, taking too long on the top turnbuckle, leads to an opening for Mustafa to nail Ordo and now they are trading moves and both battered and slow.

Ali wins like the older pro he is. He sees an opportunity for a win, takes it and locks it in with a technically perfect bridge.

This is basically ideal territory wrestling. A more famous champion shows up in your promotion, faces the hometown guy, the hometown guy gets a ton of shine, you think he might win and in the end he loses but with honor and then the champion puts him over on the mic.

This was fun. It’s worth watching because Ali is great and because you are going to see a lot of Erin Ordo in the coming years.

I am cheating a little here. I don’t really like being negative so I am cherry picking matches I think I will like. Last time we checked in on the Ace of the Universe was against a young Goto and now against the wrestler himself, Katsuyori Shibata. I’m almost certain to enjoy some of this match. Don’t worry, there are some real challenges ahead for you haters in my reading audience.

This match is a rematch from that summer’s G1, which Shibata won, but also a chapter in a long simmering rivalry going back to their dojo class. I have talked about Tana as the bland good boy trope before and it plays out in this relationship. Shibata left the company and he stayed. Shibata wants to be a cool maniac shooter and Tana wants to entertain the hard working ticket buying fans with pro wrestling. It’s fine, I mean that is good but it’s not particularly exciting.

Tana enters and as always I feel nothing but I will say the fans reach their hands to him like he’s George Harrison getting off the plane at JFK. One thing I can freely admit is that I am in the minority here. People very clearly adore this man and connect with him on a deep emotional level.

An early strike exchange just highlights the difference. Tana is delivering perfectly fine worked forearms and Shibata looks like he’s fighting for his life and trying to take the Ace’s head off. So much of Shibata’s style is “offense always.” Tana climbs the rope and does Shibata stand there like a fucking dope waiting in a base position? No he fucking drop kicks the feather haired nerd off the turnbuckle to the outside.

Another strike exchange of which this match has many is much better for both. It’s a clever little set piece. Outside of the ring they exchange forearms while Red Shoes calls the count out. Both look great. Tana sells his aggression here. He seems like he was maybe taking it easy earlier and now he’s really mad and the results are hard hits and a great stereo entrance back into the ring at exactly 19. The combatants restart the strikes.

The thing to really note here as a critical analysis is that Shibata is not actually shoot hitting him. You can watch especially in this exchange where it’s fairly clear that they are both throwing worked punches. Shibata is just so much better at it. He’s a much better pro wrestler. It looks realistic, he sells his aggression. You can barely see the strings and Tana looks like Sting. It’s cool, it’s good enough but you never get the moment where you are lost in what’s real and what’s not.

New Japan always seems to have like 8 guys doing camera work but actually rarely show new or interesting angles. Here we get a great one. The camera angle is close to the back of Tana’s head while a close up of Shibata viciously beats him and screams. To use an overused wrestling compliment, it’s cinematic. It’s cinematic in a way that it uses the camera to invite you to more deeply understand and identify with the action. You can both feel Tana as his head dips and he enters a stupor and feel Shibata’s rage as he attacks him. It’s also the equivalent of close up magic where part of the trick is inviting you to look so closely where you could not possibly be tricked but are anyway, nothing here looks worked.

Tana has an excellent sequence. Shibata has him up over his shoulders but Tana wiggles out and on the way down delivers a sling blade followed immediately by another. Into another strike exchange, like many New Japan matches it’s on the knees, exhausted. Again Shibata looking better here but the Ace comes up on top when he lays Shibata out with a nasty slap to the face. The Ace forced into a disrespectful mean little move makes him a little more interesting.

An inverse to earlier, we return to the intimate turnbuckle shot but now Shibata is beaten in the corner and it’s Tana’s feet we see up close as he obliterates his nemesis’s face with a vicious running dropkick. Tana wins it with two High Fly Flows. The High Fly Flow to me is indicative of everything I don’t like about Tana. It’s boring, it’s all flash and no substance and it’s not even much flash. This is not just a Tana problem. Most finishers end up looking like they wouldn’t actually do much damage but when you are the face of this company it’s just hard to buy that you beat this vicious enemy with a frog splash.

Ultimately I liked the match although I liked Shibata a lot more in it. Watching Tana in a more dedicated way is certainly making me appreciate things about him but also confirming some things I never liked. Excited to see how this evolves.

Mickie Knuckles vs. The Great Sisaki

As far as I can tell this is one of two matches that took place at a metal festival in Richmond , VA. That can also be totally wrong, this was exceedingly hard to find info abut and if you know anything shoot me a message and I will update this. We open on Sisaki solo, under the bridge, before a sparse crowd, all in black, doing a dance that is perhaps erotic, perhaps setting the tone, or perhaps honoring the eldritch gods of deathmatch wrestling and asking them to bless her in this coming war.

Mickie is sitting on a stool smoking what appears to be a cigarillo, although she shares it with Sisaki a few moments later, which makes me think it is probably a blunt. Before the match Mickie grabs the microphone and gives a speech. She says she has had a tough three months. I suspect it has been tougher for longer than that, but this kind of attitude is what helps someone keep going in the face of adversity, what makes Mickie such an inspiring figure. She calls this utterly insane match her “mental health booking.” She is doing this to feel good.

She says she is wrestling seven deathmatches every weekend and here she is, wrestling under a bridge for maybe twenty four people. Long live the queen of deathmatch wrestling.

A shirtless man in a pink mask is standing nearby holding a fairly large dildo and a staple gun. Clearly he is hoping this is a fans bring the weapons match. Mickie then picks a fan out of the crowd and places her in a camp chair. The two proceed to have a dance off and lap dance contest with her and I want to be very clear that if you skip ahead in this video to get to the wrestling you are absolutely missing the point of this whole affair. This is not an obstacle standing between you and the match, this is the match, this is the culture, this is the strange little universe these people have built under a bridge somewhere and it rules.

The action starts out of nowhere. There is clearly no bell. One moment people are dancing and the next they are rolling around in the dirt throwing low blows at each other. Mickie grabs the broken remnant of a crutch and breaks it further over Sisaki. She then grabs the broken remnant of a walker. I am nearly one hundred percent sure these items were simply found under the bridge and not specifically brought for the match.

She throws Sisaki into the camp chair and let’s pause for a moment to appreciate this. She is throwing someone on dirt under a bridge into a chair that the wind could probably knock over and Sisaki lands in it perfectly. This is legitimate great footwork and ring IQ. There are wrestlers working major television who could not hit this position so cleanly. As a reward Mickie follows up with a running cannonball that connects with the sickening thud of flesh on flesh on gravel.

Mickie bashes Sisaki’s head into a drum because naturally there is a drum kit under the bridge and, like the professional she is, she pauses so a photographer can get in closer for the shot. She is repaid for her professionalism by having her own head smashed into a cymbal, which is an absolute delight.

At one point what sounds like a gun goes off three times in the distance. Nobody addresses it and nobody seems concerned. The match continues uninterrupted. We are operating under a different set of assumptions here.

In an inverse of the earlier spot Mickie takes the cannonball through the chair herself. Sisaki the throws a steel chair directly at Mickie and Mickie actually leans forward into it, seemingly determined to eliminate any possible trace of fakery and ensure this hurts as much as possible.

Then, in a moment that feels completely out of place and therefore perfectly appropriate, the match briefly transforms into a technical wrestling contest. Sisaki locks in a technically sound armbar and Mickie slowly reverses it into a pinning combination like this is a 1986 llave match. When she escapes she immediately nails Sisaki with a nasty senton and we are right back to the madness.

The referee, who is clearly not needed for any purpose whatsoever, chooses this moment to stand directly in front of the camera during a spot that apparently took a while to set up, meaning we completely miss Mickie going through a board and into a highway pylon. Some people might complain about this. I consider it part of the gritty realism I am looking for.

I have seen my fair share of light tubes but Mickie pulls out the longest light tube I have ever seen. She appears to injure her own hand while attempting to use it to open Sisaki up. Sisaki gets a tube of her own. Mickie responds by throwing dirt directly into her eyes. A lot of matches feature somebody throwing dust or dirt but this is certainly the most diegetic it has ever felt. The blinded Sisaki goes down. Mickie rolls her up and gets the win. The man in pink never gets to use his staple gun. He never gets to use his dildo. I am confident he left satisfied anyway.

There is a tendency among wrestling fans to view this kind of thing as lesser than. It is not in a famous arena. It is not beautifully lit. Nobody is making seven figures. There are no giant screens, no elaborate entrances, no corporate sponsors, no commentators screaming catchphrases into headsets. Instead there is dirt, gravel, a drum kit, a walker that may have been actual garbage five minutes before bell time, two wrestlers beating the hell out of each other because they love this art form and a crowd of a few dozen people who are completely invested. This is not wrestling despite its limitations. It is wrestling distilled down to its purest form. Under a bridge, in front of almost nobody, creating something unforgettable.

Early match is mostly feeling out, like any good shoot style bout. Moriarty shows off a bit, he’s younger and more athletic, while Shibata does some heel shtick, a wily older veteran who can take advantage of the younger man. They engage in a particularly good looking figure four, both selling well and forcing Lee to burn his second break. Then Lee does something stupid. There are rules in life: you don’t play cards against a guy with a city in his name, you never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line, and you don’t fucking chop battle Shibata. Lee chops away and Shibata feels nothing. Instead of returning shots, he tricks Lee into leaving his lower half open and takes him down with a low kick.

Only ten minutes in and Lee has no breaks left, and Shibata has all of his. Moriarty, seemingly seeing he will not win this in a submission battle, moves to pure pain. He nails Shibata with a huge elbow and then one of the better topes I’ve seen in years, coming out fast and hard like a missile.

They get back into a submission contest and again Shibata always has the answer. He can escape from anything until he can’t. Moriarty reverses a submission into a clever pin and takes the win.

I like Shibata, and coming into this I hoped he would win, but really that would not have been the right choice. The best choice was for this phenomenal beast to give us a great performance but be taken down by the younger man, the baddest man, the longest reigning Pure champion, a future superstar, Taigastyle, Lee Moriarty.

Some people don’t like modern art, citing the “I could do that” defense when confronted with something that appears to be the wailings or scrawlings of a madman. The thing I think that often eludes these folks is the knowledge that the modern artist they think they can mimic is usually a fantastic traditional artist who simply advanced in ways the normal human mind can’t comprehend. John Coltrane plays “My Favorite Things” beautifully on the eponymous album and then he plays it a lot more until he gets bored and it becomes slightly weirder and then he splits the very atoms of the song, creating something new and scary and beautiful and thought provoking. That’s a long way of saying Survival Tobita can hang in a regular wrestling match.

This is a rare mainstream match for Tobita, who won a battle royal for a shot at the GAORA TV Title held by the fifth pillar himself, Jun Akiyama. The match opens with lots of careful circling and positioning as befits a 10’s AJPW match. It is honestly the best camera work in the history of Survival Tobita, which sounds like a joke but is not. It is wild to watch him in such good video quality, presented with the same seriousness and production values as everyone else on the card. The contrast somehow makes him seem even stranger.

Tobita immediately goes for the plunger, but Akiyama is having absolutely none of it. One thing that stands out here is that Tobita sells submissions really well. His facial expression, as always, says, “Ah, I have found myself in an improbable set of circumstances, but I am here to work. I fear nothing. I will fight whoever comes before me.” There is something wonderfully blue collar about him. He never seems surprised by the absurdity around him, he’s just here to shrug his soldiers and try to unplug the drain.

Akiyama gives him a brutal headbutt and continues to wrestle this as though he is defending the Triple Crown against Misawa. To his immense credit, Akiyama takes this shit very seriously. This is just regular Jun Akiyama, he is not doing the thing some serious wrestlers do when they get put into comedy matches and start hamming it up or winking at the audience. He treats Tobita like a legitimate challenger and the match is infinitely better for it. Tobita, naturally, responds by hitting Akiyama with what I believe is a giant keychain.

At one point Tobita simply lays down, looking so exhausted. Is it the powerful knee strikes of Akiyama? Is it the cumulative toll of a life spent monster fighting? Has the weight of existence finally become too much? The match never really answers these questions and is stronger for it. What I appreciate most is that this never feels like comedy. The absurdity is obvious, but the match itself is not played as a joke. Tobita is operating on a different artistic wavelength than most wrestlers. This is not comedy, this is high art.

Akiyama of course wins, but really we are all winners. I am sure when Akiyama draws his last breath he will remember the names of his greatest opponents: Nagata, Misawa, Tobita, Kobashi.

KO is aggressive and in charge early, in total control with hard, angry strikes. Helping this is something Punk excels at: Fed selling. He’s not doing limb work here. It’s wildly theatrical, but it’s what’s needed. You have to be seen in the cheap seats, and the style here is spectacle. Punk makes everything look painful without ever looking fake or over the top.

There are almost no rest moments in this. KO is aggressive and running hard and doing everything he can. Punk seems to be conserving energy a bit, but he’s always got an answer, always a way to get the momentum back in his direction.

This match lacks a classic heel/face dynamic but instead presents something more interesting. Owens is the returning vet, the local hero, but he’s aggressive and mean and imbued with years of betrayal and madness. Punk is doing something interesting as well. He’s playing the foreign heel, and the way he’s doing it is by playing the broad face. He flexes, he plays to the crowd, he stands on the ropes for adulation. He doesn’t care that they are cheering against him, he just assumes they love him and it’s delightfully dickish.

Punk gets a Go to Sleep ready, but Owens drops off his back and immediately counters into a Sharpshooter, the Hart family finisher, Owens’ finisher, the move of the man he named his son after, in Canada. It’s a glorious moment painted with history that is simply the best thing the Fed can do. They are constantly trying to eat themselves with nostalgia, every copy a copy of a copy until nothing exists but corporate pablum, but here it works. It rules. I think Punk will tap. He doesn’t, sadly.

And I’m struck, thinking about nostalgia, by how good both of these guys are. This is a great match, but these are also two guys who could easily be nostalgia acts and yet are performing as well as ever. Time has distilled what is best about them. Owens is angry, mean, charismatic as hell, and a little more athletic than you expect. Punk is a cocky asshole. He fights with a smile. Why not? He’s having fun. He’s better than you..

The phrase “aging like fine wine” is a bit overused, but it is applicable here. The Dean is an oenophile on top of being a wrestling mark. When wine ages it doesn’t just get better, it burns away some of the elements that make it rougher, harder to drink, and accentuates the best aspects. It adds complexity that can only be found with time and learning to really appreciate it. The best part of drinking a twenty year old wine is having drunk the same wine at two and five and ten years old. The same can be said here. On its face this is an excellent TV main event, but when you think about it in the context of these two men it becomes something more.

Nearing the finish we get a ref bump, because this company can’t help themselves. KO gets the Stunner and the pin, but the ref isn’t there to count. Now Punk gets the GTS and the pin, but the ref remains unable to count.

Sami Zayn runs in to help Kevin. For a moment I’m annoyed. Why does every good match in this company have to end in a run in? But again, this is steeped in the history of these men. Zayn running into a KO match isn’t cheap, it’s a chapter in an epic. Zayn tries to help KO win by giving him the belt to nail Punk with, but KO says something we never expected: not this time.

For years KO did whatever it took to win. For years KO pushed Sami, or his former partner El Generico, to push past his moral boundaries and would reward him with constant betrayal. KO makes the noble choice, but it costs him the match. Zayn then attacks Kevin, an inverse of a dynamic we have seen before. What does this mean? What’s next? What could be the next chapter in this forever war?

I’m not sure, but for a rare moment I’m excited to check out SmackDown next week and see what happens.

This thing is so mired in bad Hogan era TNA storylines. Joe won this title shot through Feast or Fired, Eric Bischoff is the special guest referee, AJ Styles is managed and advised by Ric Flair, and we get a pre-match vignette where Hogan apologizes profusely to Bischoff for asking him to call the match fairly. I could research all of this more deeply and give you more context, and if you do want that comment on the article and I will personally email you an essay, but we are really here to see what 2010 Samoa Joe was.

In his most recent match we covered he arrived sans face tattoo and was already much better. As much as this is the worst era of TNA, I assume this is still going to be a good match. Can these two find a way to have a bad match?

Pre New Japan AJ just does not have a good look. He looks so much better with longer hair and a beard. Here he is short haired jock AJ wearing the feathered robe of his mentor Ric Flair, looking not like the wrestling genius he would become and but perhaps a guy who might challenge you to beer pong at a college party.

Joe gets so much mileage out of facial expressions. He never looks afraid and often approaches an enemy’s attack with a kind of wry amusement, already knowing he will have an answer. It gives him a look that is not cocky but fully self assured, the confidence of a man who has been in enough fights to know exactly what he is capable of.

AJ is trying a bit of a version where he wrestles more like Flair, but really it is just pretty standard heel AJ. It is AJ but mean. He is not cheating yet, he is just a bit of a shit. He does try for a figure four and is rewarded by being kicked fully out of the ring by Joe before he can even get started.

The match itself is a pretty standard shine and comeback structure, each wrestler taking turns being the dominant one. Both stretches are showcases for what each man does best. There is nothing notably innovative here, no new wrinkle either man is introducing to the form, but it is fun and enjoyable because both of them are so naturally good at professional wrestling.

The match dynamics are especially fun. At one point AJ comes at Joe while Joe is standing on the top rope and Joe simply slaps him hard across the face once to send him back. It is such a Samoa Joe moment, dismissive and violent at the same time, and it gets more out of a single strike than most wrestlers get out of a whole sequence.

As was always destined, the match eventually gets fucky. Flair interferes and hurts Joe’s knee while AJ distracts Eric Bischoff, and Styles immediately begins brutally targeting the injured leg. AJ locks in the figure four and both men sell it well. Joe makes a desperate effort to reverse the hold, Flair helps AJ cheat with leverage, and Bischoff finally ejects him.

The match is great. It is incredibly competitive, the move execution is flawless, the false finishes are strong, and everyone involved understands exactly what kind of match they are trying to have. This is about as good as it gets for the era and certainly as good as a match featuring Eric Bischoff as special guest referee could possibly be.

Joe hits the Muscle Buster and gets the three, but Bischoff has been dragged out of the ring where he ends up fighting Flair. By the time he gets back inside, Joe is distracted arguing with him. AJ catches him with a Pele Kick, follows up with the Styles Clash, and steals the win.

Another great match here in the winter of Samoa Joe. The result is pure TNA nonsense, the kind of overbooked finish that made people tear their hair out during this era, but the match itself reminds you why Joe and Styles were the defining rivalry of the promotion. Even buried beneath layers of Hogan, Bischoff, Flair, interference, distractions, and storyline sludge, they still find a way to make wrestling feel important. That is the thing about Samoa Joe during this period. The company is losing its mind around him, but every time the bell rings he remains unmistakably Samoa Joe.

I must, of course, begin by saying these guys look like traveling tin salesmen. Never have two more bland looking men entered a ring together. Han is wearing black pants here, which threw me off immediately. It’s the first time I’ve seen him abandon the classic aqua tights.

The match begins with aggression. Usually these RINGS bouts start with some circling, some light kicking, a feeling out process where both men establish distance before committing to anything meaningful. Han wants none of that. he immediately tags Andrei in the face with a kick and spends the opening minutes constantly trying to shorten the distance between them, rushing inside for quick grabs and submissions. The strategy pays off almost immediately as he scores an early down. As always, the RINGS scoring graphic changes every match and the rules while somewhat simple always feel overcomplicated with there lack of ability to commit to a standard.

Kopylov eventually stops Han with what appears to be a fairly light low kick, though it almost feels like Han invited it because moments later he’s already working from guard and has a nasty submission locked on. Han continues improving the position with additional leverage, using his legs to tighten the hold and eliminate avenues of escape. Kopylov is forced to burn a rope break and is clearly in trouble.

Kopylov occupies an interesting place throughout this match. He knows he needs to be aggressive because passivity against Han is death, but he’s also terrified of getting too close. He repeatedly launches forward with strikes only to immediately retreat the moment Han threatens to establish contact. Every attack comes with hesitation because every attack risks a submission.

He attempts one of his own submissions and Han reverses. The sequence that follows, shown from the always wonderful overhead camera, is one of those moments that makes RINGS feel completely unique. The two men aren’t moving quickly and they aren’t striking. They’re simply repositioning their legs, each trying to establish leverage or remove leverage from the other. One man shifts a knee, the other adjusts a foot, a hip rotates or a leg threads inside. The entire battle becomes a chess match played through body positioning. It’s fascinating to watch and Han ultimately wins the exchange, though he can’t maintain control long enough to finish it before Kopylov escapes.

Han is willing to enter close range and commit to attacks in a way Kopylov never seems comfortable doing. One moment here might be the first time I’ve watched RINGS and thought, “Okay, that looked like pro wrestling.” Han launches Kopylov with a beautiful judo throw and, while Kopylov is still falling, seamlessly transitions into an armbar the instant they hit the mat. The movement is so perfect and collaborative that it briefly breaks the illusion, but honestly that’s fine. The goal here is entertainment, not trickery. It looks incredible. Kopylov has no choice but to spend another rope break.

A slower submission section follows with Kopylov finally getting the advantage. He establishes position and immediately Han goes to the ropes. The contrast between the two men is interesting. Kopylov often absorbs punishment, writhes in pain, and tries desperately to escape before conceding a break. Han never bothers with the drama. The second he loses the positional battle, he takes the rope break and preserves himself for later. It feels less heroic, but probably a lot smarter.

About halfway through the match I found myself wondering where the guy from the Maeda fight had gone. The Kopylov who pushed Maeda looked like a genuine threat. Here he mostly feels like someone Han is using to demonstrate how far ahead of everyone else he is.

A few moments later Han scores another quick takedown, immediately transitions into a submission in the middle of the ring, and forces the finish. Just over eight minutes. Volk Han remains terrifying and Kopylov remains interesting. More importantly, this match reinforces something I’ve started noticing while watching RINGS from the beginning: Han isn’t simply better than most of his opponents. He makes them fight his fight. Everyone enters the ring wanting to impose their own style. A few minutes later they’re all trying to survive Volk Han’s.

There are rivalries in lucha libre that burn bright and fade, and then there are the ones that refuse to die. Relámpago and Imposible belong firmly in the second category. What started as a fierce war in IWRG’s Arena Naucalpan back in late 2016 and early 2017, complete with a middleweight title change, bloody exchanges, and an unfinished apuesta challenge, went quiet for years. Just last year Imposible lost his mask to Trauma I , Relámpago drifted away from Naucalpan after Japan tours and booking frustrations, and both men found themselves working the independents. By early 2026 the old hatred had reignited at Arena del Valle in Ecatepec, culminating in a no holds barred súper libre singles match. That night wasn’t just another indie bout, it was the long delayed next chapter in a personal war that is still unfinished.

Relámpago arrives in nearly comical face fashion with his son masked in a mini Relámpago mask on his shoulders. Imposible is unmasked but sporting skull makeup, Again, he could not be more rudo, clad in black leather and intimidating tattoos.

Immediately outside the ring, Relámpago dives to the floor and starts tossing Imposible into the stands, running the length of the ring to jump at him like he’s Callum Newman in every single G1 match this year. Relámpago is in complete control, at one point tossing a whole row of seats at Imposible. Imposible is bleeding already and we are less than five minutes in.

Imposible heroically squares up but really can’t get anything going. He is fully at the mercy of the técnico hero here, who is willing to fight not dirty but extremely aggressively and brutally. Relámpago is throwing everything he can find, using the environment like a weapon, and generally treating poor arena infrastructure as an enemy combatant.

Imposible finally gets a reversal on a whip and he desperately needs the momentum to stay with him. He picks up a row of what feels like five seats and launches it at Relámpago, then immediately begins tearing at the mask. In one rip he almost has it off. He nails a nasty shining wizard outside the ring, driving Relámpago through the seats. The biggest victim of this fight is honestly the seating section of Ecatepec, Estado de México, which gets brutalized and destroyed throughout the match. Entire rows are sacrificed to the wrestling gods.

Only briefly does this resemble a modern lucha match as Relámpago does a spinning attack off the ropes that looks cool but is also boringly collaborative, requiring Imposible to stand there awkwardly and wait for him. Almost as if commenting on those matches, Imposible responds not with another sequence but with violence: brutal powerbombs, suplexes and strikes directly to the face of his heroic opponent.

We get a few run ins and referee interference spots before the lights suddenly go out. Commentary has no idea what is happening, and frankly neither do I. When the lights come back on, as if summoned by lightning itself, Relámpago appears on the balcony. What I love here is that almost no time is wasted. There is no dramatic hesitation, no long sequence of teasing whether he will jump. He just fucking goes. Relámpago launches himself from the balcony into the ring and the crowd loses its mind.

Now we have tables and chairs set up and, wonderfully, the construction spot pays off immediately. Sometimes these things take forever. A table appears in a wrestling match and twenty minutes later someone finally remembers it exists, nbut here. The moment it is there, Imposible grabs Relámpago and hurls him through it for the win.

After the match a visibly disgusting and blood covered Imposible cuts a promo and tells the crowd he is immortal. He reiterates his desire for the long awaited apuesta match. These two were supposed to have an apuesta in 2017, but it cooled off. Imposible has given multiple promos this year expressing his desire for a mask versus hair match, and after watching these two spend twenty minutes attempting to murder each other with chairs, tables, and the entire seating inventory of Arena del Valle, it is hard not to agree with him.

Some rivalries fade because the wrestlers run out of things to say. Relámpago and Imposible seem to have the opposite problem. Nearly a decade later they are still finding new ways to hurt each other, still finding new reasons to hate each other, and if this match is any indication, the story that should have ended in 2017 still hasn’t found its ending.

Doink remains one of wrestling’s great creations because he is not really a clown. He lies constantly about celebrity friends and impossible talents, claims he can perform tricks he clearly cannot, and when people call him on it he becomes angry. He tries traditional clown comedy and fails, then insists the audience simply doesn’t understand. He is not a circus performer but a tortured artist convinced the crowd is too stupid to appreciate the work.

His facial expressions are fantastic here. The painted smile never quite lines up with what the rest of his face is doing. Underneath the makeup he always seems irritated, annoyed, or quietly plotting something mean. Every grin feels hostile.

Bret opens aggressively, immediately getting into something that resembles a hockey fight. Maybe that is just Canadian instinct. Doink’s shirt gets pulled up over his head, trapping one arm while Bret peppers him with punches. Bret’s striking remains one of those things that becomes more impressive the more wrestling you watch. You can see the mechanics if you look for them. He often lands with the inside of his forearm rather than a closed fist, but the wind up is so good and the timing so perfect that it still looks devastating. It helps that Doink sells like a professional stuntman being launched from a cannon.

As the match goes on and the SummerSlam lights start cooking everyone alive, Doink becomes more unsettling. The makeup begins fading under the sweat. The more human he looks, the more menacing he becomes. The clown paint stops disguising the person underneath and instead starts revealing him.

Doink finally takes control with a stomp and immediately Bret reminds everyone why he is one of the great sellers. Nothing is wasted, every hit matters, every movement looks like it costs him something.

Doink works a head wrenching submission and Bret slowly fights his way upright before escaping, only to get blasted by a nasty running knee. Doink follows it with a Dusty Rhodes style elbow and keeps pouring on offense.

He even breaks out some genuinely unusual offense, including a rope assisted submission and a bizarre bottom rope assisted jumping one foot stomp that I genuinely cannot remember seeing anyone else do.

The clown is rolling until he makes a mistake. Charging in, he walks directly into Bret’s knees coming through the ropes and gets planted square in the balls. The finish arrives when Jerry Lawler miraculously recovers from his devastating automobile injuries. Shockingly, the King is completely healthy. He storms to ringside and attacks Bret with the crutch, giving Hart the victory by disqualification while setting up the real feud.

The match itself is good, but what sticks with me is Doink. Wrestling history remembers him mostly as a gimmick, but evil Doink is a genuinely great character. He is a failed clown who cannot make anyone laugh, a liar who insists his lies are true, and a bully who hides behind face paint. Bret Hart gives him the structure of a great match, but Doink provides all the strange little details that make the thing memorable.

Early Sunday morning I found myself deeply invested in the G1 final, both in the outcome and with the overwhelming feeling: don’t let this end, keep going, go an hour, go an hour, this is so compelling I cannot imagine it being over. In the end it was the breeziest forty minutes I can recall in watching wrestling.

If you have read my G1 coverage this year you will see a lot of me talking about how boring these two wrestlers are, how lacking in personality Yuya seemed and how much Oiwa felt designed to appeal to a certain audience while his utter blandness made me feel nothing. I also often struggled with why I felt these things, especially when many of my most respected wrestling critic peers were telling me these two were so great.

As the block section began to wind down I started to see it. I started to see that Yuya was all personality, that what I had mistaken for a flat affect actually belied a cleverly subtle character built around facial expressions of cool confidence mixed with restrained effort. I began to see Oiwa not as someone with a boring finisher but as a man in possession of a dangerous weapon, his enormous biceps and terrifying grip becoming the ultimate source of tension. Would he get it here? Could the opponent possibly escape? By the time we got to the semifinals I was thirsty for these two to meet.

As the finals began I was also struck by a wrestling rarity: it made absolutely no difference to me who won. I found both of these men collectively great and the winning had already happened. The win was New Japan getting me so invested in these two. The win was making me so excited for what came next. The final was pure enjoyment, pure art to be enjoyed for its beauty and what it would make me feel. The crowd was with me. They were hot in Ryogoku Sumo Hall but unlike me they had a favorite, and that favorite was Oiwa, whose name rang out loudly through the arena all night.

Both of these men are only a few years removed from excursion and you can see it in the way they wrestle. Yuya is a man who can do it all. He is the avatar of the new standard of strong style, someone who can utilize effective submissions, as shown by him beginning the match with his own long headlock, almost daring Oiwa by showing he could do the thing his opponent did best. At the same time he can go off the top rope in a way that thrills me in a manner that has not happened since Ricky Steamboat. Virtually every wrestler in every match goes off the top rope, but when Yuya goes it feels dangerous, a risk he is taking and a devastation to his enemies. He is super athletic, he is strong, and he can pull off a kind of ridiculous outfit. Like the Rankin-Bass Heat Meiser he is called the Heat Storm, and he has fiery highlights and fiery gear. He poses like a Power Ranger mid fight, something you can only learn to do if you spent time tagging with Joe Hendry and feuding with Tommy Dreamer, being forced into ridiculous situations but still getting something out of them and importing those experiences into your character.

For Oiwa the excursion shaped him in a completely different way. His unusual path transformed him from a promising Young Lion into a polished, charismatic heavyweight contender with a distinct technical power hybrid style and a clear self-assured character. He came back not feeling like someone searching for himself but someone who had already figured out exactly who he was. Everything about him is direct. The giant biceps, the feathered hair, the old-school offense, the absolute commitment to the grip. He feels less like a wrestler who developed organically and more like someone deliberately engineered to appeal to a certain vision of what New Japan wrestling should be.

The match itself is largely about Yuya being in control. Ten minutes in he has dictated almost everything. He is quicker, more dynamic, constantly finding angles and forcing Oiwa to react. Oiwa keeps reaching for the grip but cannot quite secure it. Every attempt feels thrilling because of how he goes for it. His arms are already forming the circle before he even reaches his opponent, like a fishing hook being cast into the water, like a trap already closing before the prey realizes it has stepped into danger.

Fifteen minutes in Oiwa finally gets it. The crowd erupts. This headlock is somehow thrilling in a way that sounds impossible on paper. A headlock should not be one of the most exciting moves in wrestling and yet Oiwa has transformed it into something terrifying. Yuya sells it like a man whose oxygen is being slowly drained away while Oiwa keeps adjusting and tightening, always looking for a better angle, always finding a deeper level of control.

The centerpiece of the match comes around the twenty-five minute mark during a long grip section that is, to me, perfect professional wrestling. Everything is hitting. Both men are selling beautifully but so is Red Shoes. He pleads with Yuya, he looks to the outside for advice. He genuinely appears unsure if he should stop this. On commentary Chris Charlton says Oiwa is going to decapitate him, and for a moment that does not sound like hyperbole, it sounds like a reasonable concern.

The crowd is entirely behind Oiwa now, loud and clear. Every tiny movement is met with gasps. Every attempted escape is greeted with hope. Every adjustment of the grip feels like doom. Wrestling at its absolute best is not about convincing you a move hurts. It is about convincing you the move matters, and this grip matters more than almost anything else in the company right now.

Oiwa seemingly removes the Heat Storm’s head with a lariat but Yuya kicks out. Yuya survives things he should not survive. He keeps finding another level. He keeps fighting. The match becomes not about offense and defense and more about two men refusing to surrender their future.

Much has been said already about the return of simple moves and I do think there is something to that. I have written before about how the endgame of Ospreayism seems limited. At some point doing ridiculous athletic movements stops being thrilling and becomes banal. If you can master a basic thing, however, you can build a career around it forever.

I think this match is about so much more than what moves are done. This match is about emotion. It is about eliciting emotion from the audience at the highest possible level. The crowd here is bought in in a way you rarely hear anymore. Nobody is chanting “this is awesome” or repeating things they have been trained to chant. They are reacting. They are living and dying with every moment. I can barely take notes as I watch because I am too engrossed. We are all enthralled. These are two men struggling and only one can win, yet they feel so equal that the idea of either one losing seems impossible.

Eventually it ends the way these fans are so desperate to see: Oiwa gets the grip and Yuya cannot escape. The submission comes and the tournament is over the camera cuts to Tenzan on Japanese commentary, in tears. I understand why, we all do

The story of the G1 is often about finding the future. Sometimes that future arrives fully formed. Sometimes it announces itself with a Rainmaker or a Stardust Press or a shocking upset. This year the future arrived as two wrestlers I spent half a tournament insisting were boring. It arrived slowly. It made me work for it. It made me pay attention. By the time Oiwa finally let go of the grip, I did not want the match to end. I did not want the tournament to end. I only wanted to see where these two men go next, and that may be the highest compliment I can give professional wrestling.

The Grip enters wearing the devil headdress of Tenzan, who retired tonight, and Newman enters wearing a giant fucking bruise he got from wrestling HENARE. This match opens a bit too collaboratively for my taste. Oiwa has impressed me a lot lately, but he has a tendency to do these spots where he tosses his opponent and they always look like they are tossing themselves while he makes a little motion.

Newman kicks into high gear early, nailing Oiwa on the apron with a dropkick from the floor. He gets a ton of air here and it barely registers because of how easy he makes it look. He follows up with the Newman G1 Special and hits another big dropkick as Oiwa is seated outside in the audience. Oiwa slowly makes his way back in before Newman nails him with a big Excalibur from the ring to the floor. Newman is working multiple planes here in his attack and it is great.

About halfway through the match Oiwa gets his first Grip and honestly they have made this work. I started off finding it kind of boring, but he makes it so thrilling. He can grab it from anywhere, it is so hard to shake off, and they are properly selling it like a brutal submission.

The match abandons any real sense of one wrestler being in control. The pace increases and both wrestlers trade blows, suplexes, big slams, a nasty looking headbutt, and a discus lariat from Oiwa. It is a war. After a long headlock session Newman barely survives. He nails a low blow but cannot get the pin. The crowd here is hot for Oiwa and pops hard when he kicks out of a Prince’s Curse.

Oiwa has really won me over in a big way. I like Callum Newman, I like heels, but I find myself cheering for The Grip to pop his head off. The match ends the way a great puro match should, with two exhausted men throwing lariats at each other until one falls. The one who falls is the prince and The Grip advances to the final.

Yuya Uemara v Yota Tsuji

Tsuji comes out here wearing trunks and high boots, which makes it look like he is wearing his normal pants just without the upper thigh. This match also opens with some tosses and it is a good way to see the criticism I have of Oiwa. Yuya tosses Tsuji and it looks like it takes effort. He fully hooks Tsuji’s arms so he can feel his weight and it looks like it is hard to do.

The build here is different. The earlier match allowed one wrestler to dominate almost the entire first half, but here it is a constant back and forth, setting up both characters": Tsuji is the vet, the champ, stronger, wiser, meaner. Yuya is the younger guy full of fire, both a strong catch wrestler but also a little more athletic and capable of dropping both a huge dropkick or top rope attack or a big slam.

The long Boston Crab section in the middle is everything you want in a submission sequence. Yuya sells the pain aggressively and Tsuji sells the effort it takes him to keep the hold. Yuya escapes and we are clearly entering the final phase. Things get reversed and Yuya gets the Boston Crab and it looks even better here. Yuya gets a High Fly Flow. He goes for another, but Tsuji rushes and intercepts him midair with a Gene Blaster. Yuya kicks out after a superplex and a Gene Blaster and I scream in my living room at 7 a.m.

Yuya comes back with another top rope attack, a jumping elbow, and a brutal slam into a bridge before advancing to the finals. I have an immense amount of respect for the booking here. American booking would say making the champ lose clean makes him weak, somebody needs to cheat, he needs to pass out, he cannot just lose. Tsuji has lost many times in this tournament and never once looked like he was not the top guy in the company. Yuya came out on top here, but Tsuji is as strong as ever.

I almost cannot believe how excited I am for this final. Even midway through the tournament I found both of these guys fairly boring, but something clicked, both in me and in their performances, that made this final, which once felt improbable, into something that feels inevitable and epic.

My pal Corey just released a great interview with Daniel Makabe where he mentioned this match as an underrated gem of his, so here we are giving it a watch and a review.

I’ve never watched Kaden Talbain before, but he seems to have a puppy gimmick. They introduce him as a good boy and he barks a bit. I love indie wrestling, man. There is a long opening wrist control section, the sort of thing I used to find boring but now, after becoming a fan of shoot style, see as absolutely essential. These sequences serve so many purposes at once: character setup, overture, tone setting, and a way to establish who these wrestlers are before the violence really begins. This one tells us that Makabe is clearly the stronger technical wrestler, but the challenger has some chops of his own, and like jazz it creates an art form of tension and release. The longer the wrist reversals happen, the more satisfying it will be later when we get those bursts of action.

Jesus, Makabe chops this guy’s chest like he’s Ishii. No chop battle ensues because a second chop is not needed. The first one feels like it caves Talbain in. That is followed by a nasty looking punch from Makabe, who consistently understands how to make the important stuff look great.

About halfway through the match I finally realize one of the reasons I find Makabe so visually compelling. He’s not sloppy, all of his moves are executed perfectly, he’s just not overly crisp. He doesn’t move like an action figure or a Cirque du Soleil performer. As far as I can tell, he looks exactly like what a skinny dude in a soccer jersey from Vancouver who could kick my ass would look and move like.

The second half of the match becomes a story of Talbain finding ways to stifle Makabe. Makabe wants this match in the ring, so Talbain takes it outside. He prevents Makabe from locking in bridges, uses his superior strength to break a few submissions, and applies some of his own. The ending is befitting of the nickname “Wrestling Genius,” as Makabe allows himself to take a superplex knowing that the moment he lands he can lock in a vicious armbar. It takes into account something wrestling physics often ignore, which is that a move like this should hurt both men relatively equally, and that fact benefits the wrestler who already has a plan, Talbain taps.

I want to be very direct here that Kaden Talbain is a good wrestler. I hadn’t seen him before this match, he has fewer than one hundred matches on Cagematch and may even be retired, but he is good and he does good work here. At the same time, he performs like a guy who doesn’t necessarily have a million reps. His strikes can be a little weak, he occasionally seems to be in the wrong place, and there are moments where his experience level shows.

All of that is really just another way of saying that Makabe brings out the best in people. He is a magnificent seller, his big floppy hair becomes a selling tool all its own, and nobody screams more organically or realistically than he does. Talbain is good, but Makabe elevates this match into something gently great, the kind of bout that sneaks up on you and ends with you wondering why more people don’t talk about it.