It is difficult, I think, for many younger millennials and Gen Z people to fully comprehend exactly how pervasive misogyny was across American society in the 1990s. Fourth-wave feminism allows us to exalt the now-outsized impact of women-fronted bands like Bikini Kill and Tsunami and the intersectional gender theory of Judith Butler and bell hooks. But in truth, the impact of those movements on greater society at the time was mostly marginal, existing on the fringes of the grunge scenes and within tiny pockets of academia. With all of the progress made in the 21st century, it is important to keep in mind the last decade of our last millennium was one that was dominated by a culture that: 1) saw little issue in allowing for direct-response infomercials featuring videos that filmed intoxicated women without their consent; 2) watched inactively Christain evangelical groups reframe the conversation of abortion rights through the lens of “morality;” 3) and ignored the fact that the head of the federal government exploited the power dynamic he had over a 22 year old White House intern so they could turn the young woman into a punchline. It was, overall, still a fucked up time to be a woman.

Which is a long-winding way of saying that there was no room for women’s wrestling when I was growing up. I have the vaguest memories of watching All American Wrestling in my living room in the late 80s and early 90s, and for the life of me I can’t remember a single instance where a woman besides Miss Elizabeth was on my television screen. Like every pre-teen who survived the Attitude Era, WWF subjected me during my formative years to some of the most downright horrifying and degrading oversexualization that pop culture had to offer, being constantly bombarded with bra and panties matches, “lesbian” angles amongst the skantily clad managers of the ECW Bingo Hall, and the barely-dramatized adultery of Vince McManahon, an egotistical sex offender who was too drunk off his own hubris to realize he was actively utilizing his publicly traded media company to foreshadow his own professional demise. I’ve made friends through the F4W/WON Message Board, many of them men close to my age or significantly older than me, and I often think that it is a flat-out miracle these men are such staunch advocates for women and can remain wrestling fans, considering what they were subjected to. And that’s to say nothing of my own personal journey towards gender nihilism.

This was what Sara Ann Amato, born on November 13, 1980, in Martinez, California, was up against when she decided to make a career in professional wrestling. When she started training in the Inoki Dojo under Bryan Danielson at 21 years old, she was entering an independent wrestling landscape that was all but decimated in the United States. She had to be entirely cognizant of the fact that the once-dominant Japanese joshi scene was on the decline, with Toshiyo Yamada, Kyoko Inoue, Aja Kong and 11 other AJW stars splintering from the promotion to create their own independent promotions in front of much smaller audiences. To call her plight in wrestling an uphill journey would be to undersell it: she was setting out as a spandex-clad Sisyphus, departing to the East to learn her craft knowing full well that the opportunities for her back home were few and far between.

Summarizing the enormity of Sarah’s career is a gargantuan task and quite frankly one I am not equipped to do. But what I can say is that Sara—the stalwart of SHIMMER women’s pro wrestling and the company’s inaugural champion, head trainer at CHIKARA and ubiquitous on the indie—was transcendent among her peers. While other women on the scene (Awesome Kong, Mercedes Martinez, Nicole Matthews, Madison Eagles, Sarena Deeb) were incredible in their own right, no one could command an audience and guide her opponent towards the match’s narrative conclusion the way Sara did. One of the things that stuck out about her during my limited viewing over the last two weeks was that her case for Greatest Wrestler Ever is not just limited to her incredible striking, her sound ground game, and her remarkably fucking awesome ability to manhandle her opponents—it was that her opponents so often depended on her to be the central force of each match’s emotional argument, foreshadowing the way she would single-handely shape the future of women’s pro wrestling in this cursed country.

On the podcast, I fumbled toward a half-baked argument that Sara was “the first American women’s wrestler who did not wrestle like a woman,” which Colette (correctly!) checked me on. As I get closer to formulating this argument, I realize that what I mean is she was the first since Mildred Burke and June Byers (both of whom wrestled nearly a half century before she debuted) wrestled in a way that would outright demand a higher place on the card than post-territory-era promoters would have preferred. Sara’s work can be squeezed into seven-to-ten minute matches, but it was best served when given room to breathe and operate with the same structure her peers of the opposite gender were granted without argument. It is one thing to verbally insist on your own importance; it is another for your craft in and of itself to be so so unassailable and undeniable that it can speak for itself. Many, many men and women have made the case for themselves. But Sara, a person with an unassuming ego (and not a particularly charismatic promo), let her work do the talking.

In 2012, WWE signed Sara Del Rey and made her the assistant head trainer of the Performance Center, effectively ending her in-ring career so that she could train a new generation of women who also demanded the respect of the men they shared a ring with. Her work in that regard is inarguable—without her, there are no “Four Horsemen,” there is no “women’s revolution,” and Sasha Banks and Bianca Belair do not become the first women—and the first Black women—to main event WrestleMania. Because of this, we cite Sara as the architect of the “women’s revolution” of the 2010s. But to view her only as a trainer is to ignore the wars she won in venues like the wood-paneled social club in Berwyn, Illinois, wrestling not for glory but for the hope that someone, somewhere, might finally take her and her craft seriously. It makes me incredibly emotional, thinking about the bullshit this woman had to and—because of her chosen employer—most likely continues to have to put up with. She was defiant and prodigious and peerless, hands down the greatest wrestler ever and at minimum the North American women’s wrestler who has ever lived.

The One Match That Makes Her Case: vs. Kana (Chikara Klunk In Love, 10/08/2011)

There is nothing I can say about this match that my brilliant and prolific cohost has not already said. But the brilliance of this match is self-evident: two of the greatest workers of their generation—meeting again for the first time in about half a decade, this time on a different continent—are presented with an unfortunate but manageable reality: they have to main event a show after the bottom rope broke. This malfunction makes running the ropes and climbing the turnbuckle impossible. What could have been a disaster turns into a masterclass in improvisation, as the two legends shorten the ring and brutalize each other with some of the stiffest strikes women have ever dealt to their opponents in this country. Any argument for Sara (and quite frankly, Kana) can be made in this brief 20-minute viewing, a bout Colette called “the wrestling match of the decade” and one I would say is hands down the best American women’s wrestling match I’ve ever seen.

Since that’s out of the way, let me get to the whole fucking point of this post, which is that it’s meant to supplement Episodes #1 and #2 and answer the question: is the subject we just covered the Greatest Wrestler of All Time? We’ve already covered 5 wrestlers; my hope is to write supplementary posts for all of them by the time we finish covering the 6th. If you dig this post and wanna go even deeper with Colette and I, please subscribe to the pod on Spotify, iTunes, or your podcatcher of choice.

Last night, while watching Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Manbo—a harrowing but dreamy & kaleidoscopic coming-of-age drama set against the backdrop of Taipei’s underground nightclub scene—I found myself transfixed not by the film’s languid and haunting melancholy, but by the chasm that exists between the world it depicts and the one we now inhabit. It must be so foreign to young adults in their early to mid twenties to comprehend what it was like to develop socially in emotionally in world where could move through adolescence without the constant pressure to curate the self for an unseen audience, where your movements and curiousities weren’t tracked and sold to companies who sought to manipulate your buying habits, where having cash on hand to buy things like, say, an alcoholic beverage was not an inconveinence but a neccessity. I am trying my level best to not succumb to nostalgia now that I am well into my forties. Still, in a world where governments are seeking to demand access to our ID cards before allowing us to log onto specific websites, it is pretty difficult to reminisce about how the world operated before the post-9/11 surveillance state and think anything besides, yes, some things indeed used to be better.

This is a pretty roundabout way of saying that I have an incredibly difficult time imagining what it’s like to come of age as a wrestling fan in the streaming era. To experience the internet in the late 90s as a pre-teen was to navigate a lawless & unregulated world of poorly-archived subcultures, one that involved sitting in front of a computer, opening up AOL 4.0, and begging your parents not to use the telephone so that your internet session could go uninterrupted. And that’s to say nothing of the viewing experience that largely happened live and in isolation from the internet. Most people seem to forget that TiVo—the first hard-disk-based DVR to achieve acceive commercial success—did not ship its first units until March 1999, a good four years after the first broadcast of WCW Nitro. Which meant that watching wrestling could only be done in one of two ways: either by watching VHS tapes or by watching the shows live on cable.

There are very few things about these days that I remember as well as Steve Allen, my first frenemy, coming into our seventh-grade Religion class and telling my friend Chris and me that we needed to start watching WCW because of Bill Goldberg. Steve had never stopped watching throughout the mid-90s like Chris, and I had, and his pitch for Goldberg—a “cool bald guy” with a goatee who beat the ever-loving shit out of anyone who stepped in the ring with him—was not entirely convincing. We had a Stone Cold Steve Austin at home, after all.

But then I started watching his matches.

There was a kinetic violence to Goldberg, especially in his earlier matches, that seemed to rupture the boundaries of what wrestling was supposed to be. For someone who was so unassuming in both appearance and demeanor, a carbon copy of generic create-a-wrestler who repeatedly insists that he has always been “a quiet Jewish kid from Oklahoma,” it was jarring to witness all 280 pounds of him obliterate the likes of Hugh Morrus and Frankie Lancaster in matches that rarely lasted longer than a commercial break, throwing lariats and gut punches that looked shockingly too real to fake. No one would accuse Bill Goldberg of being too graceful—a large part of his appeal is how the rawness of his approach to in-ring psychology, itself a byproduct of Goldberg’s lack of experience and of self-awareness, never really developed. The fact that he had to repeatedly be reminded that his job as a wrestler was to make it look like he was hurting his opponents, and to not actually crippleonly heightened the spectacle. Watching Goldberg was like witnessing a children’s circus suddenly invaded by the chaos of a car crash: the shock was in the rupture, and the awe was in the unexpected.

One of my major arguments throughout Patron Saint’s short runtime has been that the best in-ring wrestlers are the ones who can identify exactly what their emotional connection to the crowd is and exploit it. It is utterly fascinating to me that, despite his aforementioned lack of self-awareness, he managed to forge an emotional bond with the audience that remains unmatched in modern American wrestling. Part of this, inevitably, was a matter of timing. By the time Goldberg emerged, WCW had become a mausoleum of its own past glories, with Eric Bischoff clinging to the old guard at the expense of …well, everything else. After having squandered the coronation of Sting at Starcade 1997 for the sake of protecting Hulk Hogan’s ego, the WCW audience was eager to find someone else to get behind. And it was thus relatively easy for them to throw their energy behind an up-and-coming behemoth who was quite literally unstoppable. Had he arrived at any other moment, perhaps his impact would have been diminished. But he arrived precisely when he was needed, and in doing so, became the lightning rod for a fanbase’s accumulated frustration. He understood, perhaps instinctively, that to succeed in that moment required a kind of brutal simplicity: to be raw, to be unmistakable, to be indestructible.

Goldberg has been copied many times, and it should come as no surprise that every iteration of him since has been an abject failure. In a culture where every flaw is instantly cataloged and broadcast to the world, and where every virtue is drowned in the endless churn of discourse, it has become nearly impossible to manufacture the kind of myth that Goldberg embodied. Which is to say: yes, Goldberg is absolutely the Greatest Wrestler Ever. In this era of streaming abundance, where every fan has access to an infinite archive and a thousand voices eager to curate their opinions, no one else has ever managed to channel the collective malaise of a fanbase and transform it into something so new, so unrepeatable, that it could never be duplicated. There can never be another Goldberg. And there probably never should be.

The Match That Makes His Case - Golberg vs. Diamond Dallas Page (WCW Halloween Havoc, Oct. 10, 1998): I was tempted beyond belief to go with Goldberg vs. La Parka, a 2 minute ass beating in the middle of Goldberg’s undefeated streak that might be the single greatest squash match of all time—I am unsure if I’ve ever heard a wrestling crowd more nuclear. Instead, I am going with the first PPV Main Event of Goldberg’s career, against another Patron Saint in Diamond Dallas Page, because it serves as direct evidence that the criticism about Goldberg’s inability to wrestle a 10+ minute match is a fallacy. In a match built around Page’s Diamond Cutter being as insurmountable as the sum of Goldberg’s oeuvre, Goldberg keeps the crowd consistently involved before vanquishing the first earnest challenger to Goldberg’s streak. It’s a glimpse at what could have been, and some foreshadowing around what’s about to come.

I am trying my level best to approach this review in good faith. For full transparency: I did not see the 4 hours and 40 minutes of wrestling that preceded this match. There wasn’t a ton on AEW Revolution 2026 that I was interested in seeing. I could not justify devoting my precious Sunday evening to a 330-minute-long wrestling show. One could watch Paul Thomas Anderson’s best-picture-winning One Battle After Another twice in that same time frame. So, any criticisms I have about this match are separate from the excessive length of this show.

But even still, this is a match that doesn’t just revel in excess—it cannonballs headfirst into it. The spectacle becomes overwhelming, spilling over the rim until it drips off the table and stains the carpet, making the overindulgence more of a stubborn nuisance than a fun spectacle.

So much of wrestling depends on match structure. It’s foolish to go into a gimmicked match like this expecting limb work and bodily deterioration. Still, one would hope for some inherent logic in how the gimmicks are introduced. This match doesn’t ignore that completely, but Page and MJF take a hack-kneed approach early on. Page inexplicitly introduces a windowpane, Max slams it in the center of the ring, yells YOU AIN’T GONNA CATCH ME DOING THAT INDIE BULLSHIT into the ringside camera, and immediately gets bodyslammed into the shards. This is just one instance where the sketch of logical progression shows, but missing the details removes every element of surprise.

The sheer number of plunder spots also works against the establishment of a logical structure here. While AEW has consistently absconded from the “pinfall first” rule that was a feature of how Texas Death was originally conceived, past iterations from the company have heavily relied on the ten-count to both heighten drama and naturally build tension. But the sheer number of weapons introduced in this match—garbage lids, tables, barbed wire chairs, light tubes, skewers, a needle, and more—makes it so that this match resembles a Deathmatch more than it resembles a Texas Death Match. While this might feel like splitting hairs, it does point to one of the largest issues I have with AEW: instead of leaning on the traditional elements of the match that made it such a staple of southern-based promotions, they have to lean so far into maximalism that it bastardizes the very best parts of the stipulation. The ten-count in these matches should not be a feature but the functional outcome that each competitor is working towards, and in this match, it almost feels like neither.

Arguably, a worse offense is how gimmicky and artificial these spots were. The chain links on the dog collar looked plastic; every light tube/chair shot was taken squarely on the back; the barbs on the barbed wire were measly and slid on the wire. The most glaring example: when Hangman dragged MJF through the shards of “glass” from the aforementioned window pane, streaks of sugar stained the middle of the mat (somewhere in Chicago, a heavily-tattooed landlord is smiling). The two discords I was in during the match had widely different opinions on whether the blood came from gigging or packets—while I can’t weigh in definitively on that, I can say that I don’t think blood was used effectively, considering how dry both competitors looked by the 25-minute mark. While I understand the instinct to prioritize performer safety (especially in a major company), the match would be much better served if more focus was given to the inherent danger of just one or two of these elements: imagine how much more tense the match would have been if the hypodermic needle was teased for a third of the run time, instead of immediately being inserted into Hangman’s mouth and then been rendered a non-factor in the match’s outcome after three measly minutes.

And all of this says nothing of the individual performances of the wrestlers. I have been hypercritical of Max since...forever, but his work during this title reign is significantly more focused than his first, if only in that he recognizes his role as the company’s top villain (his Terry Funk-inspired gear was certainly groan-inducing, but that is largely the point). Max leans on some tried-and-true heel work here, stooging as much as possible and avoiding any uber-athletic high spots that would have the crowd cheering for him. Even still, he is so insistent on over-exaggerated facial expressions and vocalizing his discomfort that he comes off more like a cartoonish henchman than a savvy and calculated mastermind. While I give Max credit for honoring the face/heel divide, his work here adds too much levity in what should have been treated as the most consequential (and thus serious) match of Hangman Adam Page’s career.

And speaking of Hangman: putting my personal feelings aside about how his extracurricular actions make it difficult for me to treat him as the moral compass of the company, this is another example of him working down to his opponent’s level instead of dragging them up to his. Maybe this is because he is far too giving when it comes to agenting his matches, but we are on Year Seven of him being positioned near the top of the card in AEW and more often than not, he has not delivered when he’s featured in this spot. This match was in desperate need of someone to reel back on the maximalism—or at minimum, someone who recognizes that what makes wrestling consistently interesting is not the spectacle but the struggle. In a match that extends past the 45-minute mark, this feels like a cardinal sin. Hangman has shown he can do it before (vs. Lance Archer in 2022, vs. Jeff Jarrett in 2025), but when he’s paired with someone who doesn’t get it, he misses the mark. It’d be one thing if this were a one-off instance, but at this point I question whether or not he has the instincts to be the top babyface in a major promotion.

At multiple points, Tony Schiavone (AEW’s resident queen of hyperbole) emphasized that this was a night we would never forget. While I don’t anticipate remembering many details from this match, he might be correct: if AEW continues to put on matches this disjointed and hapless at the top of the card, I fear they might lose me for good.

RATING: *1/2

It feels almost impossible to believe that Sabu, the homicidal, suicidal, genocidal, death–defying maniac who set the independent scene on fire in the nineties (and flamed out in one of the most awe-inspiring and controversial retirement matches of my lifetime), has been dead for almost a year. The passings of our most beloved wrestlers often put us nose-to-nose with our own mortality: if life can end for people as seemingly physically and culturally invincible as Hulk Hogan, Antonio Inoki, or Balls Mahoney, then surely it will one day come for us. But to imagine that Terry Brunk—a man who made his career courting death and/or paralysis with equal affection, a person known for supergluing the wounds he’d receive in barbed wire matches, a mortal being who started training to be a wrestler shortly after being shot in the face at a house party—was a mortal human being like the rest of us is particularly difficult for me to fathom. And that’s to say nothing about how difficult it is for me—someone who was lucky enough to be alive when ECW Hardcore TV was being broadcast at midnight on my regional cable broadcast channel, to articulate the mammoth influence Sabu had on the entirety of the culture, both inside the ring among wrestlers and outside the ring among spreadsheet nerds and tape traders. It’s such a daunting task to memorialize such an influential-yet-underappreciated performer that Dave Meltzer ultimately punted on his plans to write a “lengthy story in two or three weeks” for in favor of other wrestling coverage.

What I am saying here is that this is not an obituary for Sabu; it’s a review of his children’s book, Sabu vs. The Three Little Pigs.

To read the full piece, please visit: Violent People

Full disclosure: my father passed away two weeks ago and I’m currently in the process of settling up his estate. Working on this has been a welcome way to get my mind off of things in the evenings, but I simply didn’t have the time to finish it or copyproof. I do think continuing to work on this stuff will be very helpful to how I grieve, but please bear with me a bit.

Koichi Yoshizawa Award (Japan MVP): Sareee

When Bryan Danielson effectively retired last year (he ain’t coming back, guys), I worried that my interest in wrestling would dwindle. While his booking in AEW is often criticized, it was incredibly effective at broadening my horizons and getting me to start watching promotions and wrestlers I might not have otherwise noticed.

Fortunately for my sake, Sareee exists. While it feels borderline blasphemous to compare her to Danielson (and she does have a long, long way to go to reach his level), there isn’t a single worker in the world who is better able to immerse me in the fictive dream of puroresu while also demanding that her opponent work up to her level, or face the consequences. One of the best strikers in the world regardless of gender (her forearms often sound like gunshots), she’s also able to play the plucky underdog who will force herself to get through a beating with sheer will, as she did against Chihiro Hashimoto in their Sendai Girls World Title match in November. I have four of her matches in my Top 20 for 2025, which is the highest share of anyone not named Jon Moxley.

Being a freelancer allowed her to wrestle in 88 matches in 2025, and she held five championships across 17 separate promotions throughout the calendar year. A participant in Stardom’s 5STAR Grand Prix, she also played a significant role in Meiko Sakamura’s retirement tour by challenging for the Sendai Girls World Championship at Sareee-ism Chapter VI and by teaming with her against Team 200kg at a freelance show in June. While a majority of voters will be considering Saya Kamatani for this award due to her role in raising Stardom’s profile throughout the year, The Sun Goddess gets the nod from me due to her ability to elevate so many companies and the consistency of her in-ring singles work, which quite frankly puts Saya’s to shame.

United States/Canada MVP: Jon Moxley

I know I already wrote a bit about Moxley’s 2026, but one thing I’ll add: after reading Corwo’s 2025 Awards, I find myself dumbfounded by how someone could develop their character from “despised heel” to “scrappy beloved babyface” in the course of 5 months. Jon Moxley forever champion, fuck you.

Europe MVP: Iceman

I find this category to be utterly hilarious: Britwres is pretty much a plague at this point, and I am 98% sure that Dave hasn’t watched a single wXw match since ZSJ joined New Japan. I, however, am a scholar, so I watched exactly one European match: a Three Way Fans Bring The Weapons Match between Iceman, Green Phantom, and Matthew Justice.

In this match, Ice took:

• a lemon shot at into his dick

• a barbed-wire-wrapped tube to the chest

• a cheese grater to the bicep

• three sets of BBQ skewers to the dome

• A dildo to the nose

• Probably other stuff

This wasn’t a particularly inspiring match, but Iceman was the fattest guy in it and he is also significantly fatter than Michael Oku, who will probably win this award even though he might be the worst wrestler who ever lived. Long live Iceman.

Feud of the Year: Sareee vs. Natsupoi

Years ago, my wife and I were browsing Crunchyroll and threw on a silly-looking anime titled Umamusme Pretty Derby, a show that follows a group of “horse girls” who have been reincarnated from legendary race horses and train against each other to become idols, pop stars, and champions in the “Twinkle Series." Obviously, we were immediately hooked: it’s a campy and precious melodrama that focuses on the friendship of these elite athletes as they form rivalries, push each other to new limits, and occasionally suffer the same tragic fates of the horses they’re named after. There is something beautifully simplistic in this sort of melodramatic approach to fictionalized competitions: a hero calls out their best friend and confronts them about their weaknesses, tells them they aren’t reaching their true potential, and promises to push them to heights they’ve never reached—if they have the gall to challenge them, of course.

And that was the simplicity of this feud: Sareee calling out her real-life best friend Natsupoi—who had “lost her spark” after Cosmic Angels stablemate Tam Nakano retired—and daring her to show up at Sareee-ism Chapter IX. After a cracking tag at that show, the rivals ended up in the same block of the Goddesses Of Stardom Tag League and ended the last match of the group stage. When Sareee’s partner Miku Kanae pinned Saori Anou in the final Block match of the Goddesses of Stardom Tag League, knocking her and Natsupoi out of the tournament. It seemed as if Natsupoi's fire was fading, but she furiously insisted she wasn't done chasing the heights her best friend had reached, eventually pinning Sareee in a tag match in December at Korakuen Hall for the first time in her career. And that set the stage for a their first singles match in six year at Dream Queendom, Stardom's biggest show of the year.

I won't spoil the outcome of that match: if you haven't seen it, its truly worth seeking out. But the simplicity and pacing of the three-month long feud had me watching every match of Goddesses of Stardom tournament even though I'm not a particularly big fan of the promotion. While this rivalry doesn't stand a chance in the WON awards, I couldn't help but vote for it.

Women’s MVP: Sareee

I'm not sure if this entirely clear yet, but I really like Sareee.

Most Improved: Kyle Fletcher

Fletcher won this award last year and I don’t think he deserved it. But he certainly did this year: he spent the entire year scraping away the “Ospreay clone” stigma that followed him around for the majority of his NJPW career and re-invented himself. He’ll probably get a lot of consideration for most outstanding, but he really deserves credit for making such gigantic strides that he’s genuinely turned himself into a future world champion.

Most Charismatic: Adam Priest

Sure, he is short. Sure, he has a weird accent. Sure, he follows Tucker Carson on Twitter and probably has terrifying politics. But this one promo, which he cut after winning the vacated DPW World Heavyweight Championship in Vegas, perfectly encapsulates why Adam Priest is as celebrated as he is:

I don’t believe a single word of that promo is true, but it surely makes me hate him even more than I already do. Keep going, my little prince.

Bryan Danielson Award for best Technical Wrestler: MIRAI

A sentimental pick here. While there are certainly more skilled technical wrestlers in the world—Hechicero, Shiya Aoki, and Lee Moriarty come to mind—I have pretty much become infatuated with MIRAI for her unconventional offense, her passionate selling, her shocking strength, and her ability to turn a seemingly standard submission hold into something so sound, so disgusting, and so efficient. This spot in her match against Utami Hayashishita for the Marigold World Championship really had me yelling: after spending the majority of the match depending on strikes and holds, she rolls out of an inverted full nelson and turns it into a leg-trapped Kuzure Kami Shiho Gatame (someone who knows judo can slap me if I’m wrong about this) and catches Utami’s leg as she reaches for the rope so that she can keep the hold locked in.

This isn’t even the best example of her technical work; it’s just the most memorable submission spot from the most recent match of hers I’ve seen. While others are more sound, I admire MIRAI’s innovation and want to give her some props in a category that most likely will be won by another British guy.

Bruiser Brody Award (Best Brawler): Mad Dog Connelly

When it comes to exercises like this, I am an incredibly open-minded person: I embrace the subjectivity of art and thoroughly enjoy that there are different ways to appreciate different genres of professional wrestling, even if many in the audience have a neurotic obsession with pretending you can critique it objectively. I don’t fall for tribalism and I’m not one to chastise people I disagree with.

Except in this one instance: anyone who votes for someone besides Mad Dog Connelly in this category is objectively wrong.

A true throwback, Mad Dog has more in common with Bruiser Brody and The Pitbulls than he does Necro Butcher or Abdullah Kobayashi. Though capable of working a good death match, he is someone who elevates a contest beyond its stipulation: he pushes his opponents to drive deeper into their bags and work spots they typically wouldn’t, like when forcing Erick Stevens to drive a screwdriver between his toes on DPW 4th Anniversary Show in December or when Gabrial Skye hit him in the head with an actual cinderblock (or something that appeared to be an actual cinderblock) at Beyond Wrestling’s Boston Hardcore show in August. Which resulted in the following:

A darling among the spreadsheet loggers and link sharers, his work is lauded not because of it’s grotesque violence, but because he wrestles an immersive style that transcends the typical crawl-and-brawls that work more as segments in American maximalism, extending them throughout the entire match to ground the audience in the depravity and hyper-violence of a forgotten era. If you’d had the pleasure of watching this man wrestle this year, you know that no other vote makes sense.

Most Underrated: Lee Moriarty

Moriarty only had one match on AEW Dynamite this year, which is an absolute shame. But his reign with the Ring Of Honor Pure Title has been especially exceptional—having now surpassed 550 days (making it the longest reign in the title’s lineage), the reign really found its groove when Taigastyle started defending the belt against luchadores. While his matches with Xelhua and Nigel McGuiness were exceptional, the highlight was his two-match series against Blue Panther where he turned in exceptional heel work in Arena Mexico at Global Wars Mexico and then a more even-handed technical match that had the 65-year-old legend paying respects to the younger Moriarty after an emotional bout.

I don’t understand the logic behind why one of the best wrestlers in the world is stuck wrestling most of his matches behind a paywall. Is the problem that he’s too charming and too handsome? Whatever the case, I’m hoping Moriarty gets more opportunities to wrestle in CMLL this year, as he really found his groove in those matchups.

Rookie of the Year: Senka Akatsuki

This is another one of those non-starter convos for me: you either go with Senka or her rival Seri Yamaoka, as I largely suspect both of them will be the top two women’s wrestlers in the world within the next 5-10 years. But I’m going with Senka here, largely because she is capable of being as captivating as Seri despite having a much more limited repertoire of offense at this point in her career. If you don’t believe me, seek out her 5:05 match against Aja Kong in Las Vegas—it’s one of the most impressive showing you’ll see from someone with less than six months of in-ring experience.

Worst TV Show: AEW Dynamite

It’s a bit hypocritical of me give this award to a show that (until December) I have watched every week for the last four years. While I don’t think its atypical for most fans to eventually run out of steam with modern wrestling products, AEW’s overall sloppiness has been taxing for me to watch for quite some time: long-term angles are too frequently abandoned, wrestlers who have worked for the company for years lose screen time in favor of new hires, and the same eight women have been facing each other in “all-star” multi-person tag matches for almost 11 months at this point.

But they really lost me on their December 17th episode, when MJF interrupted a three-person promo and delivered an uninterrupted (and somewhat unplanned) seven-minute monologue that reportedly left talent backstage upset. I could overlook how lazy and borderline offensive the promo was—I’ve come to expect so little from Max that I usually just fast-forward through his segments. But what I can’t overlook was the follow-up promo the next week, where Hangman Adam Page and Swerve Strickland delivered a toothless quasi-shoot rundown of MJF that might have been payback for MJF’s promo.

While this is minor, it really was the breaking point for me. Ever since A Certain Someone has arrived and infected the company with a specific type of maximalism, I find myself more and more bored with the company and it’s overall direction. So I’m checking out the weekly episodes and will be prioritizing my Wednesdays to catch up on the various joshi promotions I find significantly more minimalist and interesting. Tony can win me back—the roster is too talented—but for now, I remain adamant that AEW taught me to love wrestling but to hate AEW (or more specifically, weekly episodic American wrestling shows).

Best Gimmick: Saki Kashima

My homie PTO from Violent People Radio often talks about how comedy wrestling is the best example of problem/solution wrestling we have in the modern age, and I couldn’t agree more. When I started watching Stardom more regularly in the fall, I found myself immediately charmed by Kashima’s gimmick: although she’s in Syuri’s God’s Eye stable—which is supposed to be made up of shoot-influenced wrestlers—Kashima spends the majority of her matches running away from her opponents or begging for tags after her teammates will lay out their opponents. At the Crimson Nightmare show, Saki paid off a months-long feud where she had been running away from Bozilla and turned in one of the most cowardly performances I’ve ever seen, eventually tapping out before Bozilla could powerbomb her into oblivion.

I am charmed beyond words by Kashima’s work: how many wrestlers can you set Peanuts edits to and actually have them work?

Maybe you think this is stupid—it is. But stupid can be good! Especially when it’s thoughtful. Which is the polar opposite of the below wrestler’s deal.

Worst Gimmick: Toni Storm

During a week where I wasn’t cleaning out my childhood home, I could rant about the gimmick that started out incredibly rich and layered but have devolved into the some of the most pathetic high-concept for a while. But I am instead I am going to just quote my good friend DJ Convoy’s words:

Other Categories I Didn’t Have Time To Write About

• Best Major Wrestling Show: DPW 4th Anniversary

• Worst Major Wrestling Show: AEW Revolution

• Mexico MVP: Abstain (I don’t think Mistico needs my help here).

• Danny Hodge Award (Non-Heavyweight MVP): Kira (CMLL)

• Best Flying Wrestler: Mr. Iguana (lolol)

• Worst Match of the Year: Swerve Strickland vs. Will Ospreay in Portland on 6/11/25

• Worst Feud of the Year: Adam Copeland vs. Jon Moxley

• Worst Promotion of the Year: Abstain

• Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic: Brock Lesner’s Return

• Most Overrated: Konosuke Yakeshita

• Best Wrestling Maneuver: Saree’s Uranage

• Booker of the Year: Anthony Douglas, James Darnell & John Blud (Deadlock Pro-Wresting)

My Wrestling Observer subscription will end in three weeks, and I don’t plan to renew. Between last year’s price increase, the scarcity of coverage for any non-American wrestling promotions, the deteriorating quality of the message board, and Bryan’s sophomoric and repetitive criticisms (yes, babe, we get it: you love video packages), it just didn’t feel like I was getting my money’s worth anymore. But as I prepared both my ballot for the Voices of Wrestling 2025 Match of the Year and my list for the Violent People 100, it felt like submitting my ballot for the Observer Awards would serve as good preparation for the awards I actually cared about. The submissions were due yesterday evening, and I got my ballot submitted just under the deadline.

Below are my A Category nominations; I’ll have my B Category nominations posted next Monday at the latest.

Lou Thesz/Ric Flair Award (Wrestler of the Year):

1. Jon Moxley

2. Adam Priest

3. Chihiro Hashimoto

This is easily my least favorite category in Dave’s awards. By definition, it’s meant to be “for a combination of everything, being both important and influential this year in a positive manner from a business perspective, combining both box office impact as well as strong match quality in worked matches.” This is such a strange amalgamation of undefined criteria that I want to thumb my nose at the award entirely.

If I am trying to take it seriously, though, it would be impossible to deny the impact Moxley had throughout the year. Even if the feud with Copeland was a genuinely abysmal start to the year (more on that in Part B), Moxley had worked AEW fans into such a shoot that a small portion of the audience was genuinely rooting for him to drop the Men’s World Title to Powerhouse Hobbs on a televised episode of Dynamite. He turned the best heel work of the decade into signature moments that rehabilitated Adam Page as a top babyface, established Darby Alin as the rogue moral center of the company, and briefly made Kyle O’Reilly look like someone who could vie for a midcard title. And that’s to say nothing of a truly awe-inspiring performance in the Continental Classic that turned him back into a babyface by sheer force of will. After a middling 2024, it’s incredible to see the range of the worker who is well on his way to establishing himself as the wrestler of the decade.

Most Outstanding Wrestler

1. Chihiro Hashimoto

2. Mad Dog Connelly

3. Kazusada Higuchi

Since this category is solely related to in-ring work, it’s the only A-level award that I genuinely care about.

For someone who seemingly fits into a very specific archetype, I remain fascinated by both the quality of Hashimoto’s pacing and execution and the range of emotions I feel during one of her matches. She has a unique ability to bring out the absolute best in her opponents, highlighting their strengths without ever diminishing her own, which is incredibly rare on the modern joshi scene. She played a huge role in two separate retirement runs, setting herself up as the true heir to Meiko Satomura on the Japanese independent scene and beautifully closing the book on her tag team partner (and best friend) Yuu’s in-ring career, which each had entirely different emotional tones. While she only wrestled in nine singles matches this year, her Sendai Girls World Championship defenses against Miku Iwata and Sareee solidified her as the true final boss on the independent Japanese wrestling scene, and her match against Seri Yamaoka highlighted what the super rookie might be capable of against the right opponent. Toss in the incredible quality of her tag team work (especially with Natsupoi at Saree-ism Chapter IX) and it’s hard for me to consider anyone else for this: even during a down year, Hashimoto still has a legitimate claim as the best wrestler in the world.

These three choices are not a true reflection of my top wrestlers for the year and my VP100 will look much, much different. But since my taste doesn’t typically line up with most WON readers, it feels important to give these three some love.

Tag Team of the Year

1. Team 200kg (Chihiro Hashimoto & Yuu)

2. Spark Rush (Sareee vs. Takumi Iroha)

3. The Astronauts

I had Sareee & Iroha in a slight lead over Hashimoto and Yuu up until December, but an absolutely abysmal match against Magenta on 12/28 had me reconsidering. Since the race felt so tight, I opted to give it to Team 200kg since their schedule was so closely tied to Yuu’s retirement and thus set them up for a more cohesive narrative arc that featured some truly special matches down the home stretch of the year, especially against Natsupoi and Saori Anou at a special Stardom show in December. The two balance each other out so well, with Yuu’s comedic charms taking some of the weight off of Hashimoto’s stoicism. There was a levity to their act that didn’t interfere with their act, which is much harder to do than it seems (I’m looking at you, Nomora and Abe). I also really grew to adore Yuu, who is just…so incredibly charming and silly. And since I was generally bored by American tag team wrestling this year, I opted to go for a more sentimental route.

Best on Interviews

1. Blake Monroe

2. Tiffany Stratton

3. Jon Moxley

OK, here’s the first of my (many) snarky votes :)

Now that kayfabe is dead and WWE is not a wrestling show but “a movie… or a TV show about a sport”, American wrestling promos have seemed to turn into ouroboros. Unless the performers are packaged as caricatures of fictional human beings, audiences seem to forget that they are watching a fictional program and thus judge the works less on how the intended narrative is executed and more on whether the story is going in the direction they personally want it to. It’s reasons like this that make me wonder why we decided to refer to hyper-engaged fans as “smart,” considering how incredibly dumb this community (which I am a part of! I’m not immune to this!) can be.

So I’m voting for Blake Monroe here, an incredibly talented & beautiful wrestler who has to talk into a microphone very frequently but is allergic to delivering a single sentence without dramatically pausing between every six syllables and seemingly invented a new speaking tic: the monotone vocal fry. Couple this with some of the most godawful gimmick work of the decade and Blake’s promos have become must-see television that I somehow always seem to miss!

I am rooting for Monroe: she is pretty talented in the ring and possesses the type of charisma that we rarely see in wrestling. But if “sports entertainment” is truly the type of thing she wants to make a career of, I truly hope she decides to hire an acting coach one day.

Promotion of the Year

1. Deadlock Pro-Wrestling

2. CMLL

3. Sendai Girls Pro-Wrestling

Image Credit: Jonathan McLarty

For reasons I can’t comprehend, this category is supposed to take “box office and marketing combined with product quality” into account: this feels both boring and incomprehensible considering how little information about attendance figures & profit margins is public (or accurate).

No matter: even with the weird criteria, I have no qualms putting DPW in this spot after the year that had. When world champion Jake Something had to take time off due to a shoulder injury, they pivoted and put the belt on Adam Priest—hands-down the best heel in independent American wrestling—and had him put on high-workrate matches until Something could return from injury and reclaim the title in a fantastically worked cagematch at DPW Super Battle 2025. The midcard for the company was also exceptional, giving room for veterans like Erick Stevens, Matt Tremont, and Nicole Matthews to have rich story-driven matches while still leaving room for up-and-comers like Mad Dog Connelly and Sinner & Saint to increase their profile. While it’s a shame the company is seemingly folding after a few Japan shows in 2026, Deadlock is a testament to how rich and vivid the independent wrestling scene still is.

Best Weekly TV Show: Abstain

Strange, huh? More on this coming in my follow up post.

Match of the Year

1. MJF vs. Mistico in Mexico City on 9/29

2. Hirooki Goto vs. Zack Sabre Jr. in Osaka on 2/11

3. Chihiro Hashimoto vs. Meiko Satomura in Toyko on 3/19

I’m truly shocked at myself for this pick: Mistico rarely resonates with me, MJF might single-handedly kill my love of wrestling one day, and (even though the work is awesome!) CMLL’s presentation is such an assault on my senses that it occasionally gives me headaches. But MJF’s jingoistic heel work plays so much better when he’s a foreign rudo in Arena Mexico, and it serves as such a fantastic building block for Mistico’s white-meat technico act to build off. MJF busts Mistico open early in the match and it’s a particularly beautiful gusher, but what makes it so impactful is Mistico’s selling: there isn’t a single moment post-blade job where Mistico isn’t stammering around the ring, truly milking it to the point where I was genuinely worried he might pass out. By the time he stammers into his first La Mistica, it truly feels like the sold-out arena is going to explode.

If you don’t understand why so many people prefer CMLL over other promotions, this match will serve as the perfect primer: it highlights the beauty of what pro wrestling can be when it’s stripped down to its studs. While it’s not on the same level as El Satanico and Sangre Chicana’s 1983 Lucha de Apuestas match, it certainly comes close. That we can even compare a match from 2025 to one of the greatest ones that’s ever happened is a testament to the magic MJF and Mistico were able to find. It’s easily the best match in a year full great ones, and I’m going to be incredibly bummed (but not shocked) if it doesn’t crack the honorable mentions for the AEW-leaning WON awards.

It’s interesting that this match is immortalized in The Rise and Fall of ECW as if it’s some groundbreaking achievement. For many folks who were deep into tape trading at the time, it was their introduction to ECW. There had to be some novelty in seeing Terry Funk five years removed from his last run with ECW wrestling for a world title against a former WWF/WCW mid-carder in Douglas and the often-celebrated magazine darling in Sabu; the crowd-brawling had to be a significant shock to fans who grew up on Hogan-era WWF. In the 2/14/1994 episode of the Observer, Meltzer called it “to have been the most highly regarded house show in North America so far (in 1994)” and reported that “various” readers rated it between 4.5 and 5 stars. I’m sure this one paragraph is a large reason why Heyman has been able to spin this as a significant match.

But unfortunately, the match does not hold up. It is not well-worked: the selling is inconsistent, the run-ins are nonsensical, and the majority of the match is fought one-on-one as Sabu and Funk are brought backstage at various points due to worked injuries and interference. There is much better brawling to be found in the Memphis territory-era days, and the novelty of this match being a Three Man Dance isn’t there after decades of this tired stipulation (it’s also worth noting that Heyman often frames this as wrestling’s first-ever three-way match, which is just patently untrue). There are some highlights (mostly from Funk, who is selling like his life depends on it at multiple points), but this is largely an immersion-breaking, middling clusterfuck.

But anyways. A fun project nonetheless, one that will be incredibly helpful as I work on my next one.

Track “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order (music video link)

Full match here: Internet Archive

As the year gets closer to wrapping and I think about who deserves to win wrestler of the year, I have a hard time thinking it should be anyone other thank Chihiro Hashimoto. Between Meiko Satomura’s retirement show, the immensity of her work with Team 200kg, her brilliance on every Sareee-ism show, and the two best title defenses of the year, it’s hard to find another wrestler who had as complete of a resume this year. And unlike her competitors, her year had zero low points.

This match against Mika Iwata on September 29 for the Sendai Girls World Title is not my favorite match of hers this year (the main event of her 10th Anniversary Show against Saree and her last few tags with Yuu have stronger grips on my heart), but is easily her best. I’ll say more about it in the coming week. I started editing this as soon as the bell rung. I hope you enjoy.

Full Match: view here, on Dailymotion

I hope to write something more detailed once they square off in a singles match at Dream Queendom on December 29th, but I made this video to hype up what’s been one of the few in-ring storylines that kept my prolonged attention this year. It’s excessively Yuri (I barely know what this word means), but that’s what this matchup has deserved.

• Watch the full match of Natsumi Maki vs. Sareee at TJPW’s January 4, 2020 show (link here)

• Watch Stardom’s official hype video for Natsupoi vs. Sareee at Dream Kingdom (link here)

• Download the MP3 for “Undrunk” by Fletcher (link here)

I’m hoping to make another 6-8 edits over the next few weeks and (if all goes well) do some writing, too.

A remix of Blake Christian’s original edit, view it here.

Many of the matches covered below won’t be on most casual fans’s Best Of The Year lists, but I found something special in all of them. They all should be relatively accessible, especially if you’re well-versed in navigating …alternative international video services. But if you’re having difficulty finding any of these, shoot me a message and I’ll find a way to hook you up.

1: Jon Moxley vs. Shingo Takagi (1/13, NJPW Strong Battle in the Valley, No Disqualification)

It pains me to say this, but this was not a particularly good year for the best active wrestler in the world. Sure, there have been moments where Jon Moxley has come off as the world-beater who tore through the B Block of the G1 Climax in 2019, but his two World Title reigns (albeit historic) have been lackluster and led to some pretty underwhelming defenses. Not all of this lies with Moxley—Ren Narita & Shota Umino were weak challengers, and few people were interested in his 400,000th matchup with Orange Cassidy. But it is somewhat telling that his efforts to elevate younger talent have fallen short and to question whether his input will ever match his output in instances where the matchup isn’t particularly favorable to him on paper.

This match, however, precedes those disappointing moments. It’s a little long and is more prodding than a plunder match of this nature needs to be, but it leans heavily into gross visuals and the tape-trading type of brawling that Moxley has staked his reputation on at various points over the last 6 years. Sure, this is in his comfort zone. But it’s not in Takagi’s, and it’s equally as shocking to see the good-but-formulaic New Japan stalwart shove a broken kendo stick into his opponent’s groin as it is to see viscous-but-clunky Death Rider deliver a top rope elbow drop through a table on the outside:

That this match was punctuated by a bloodied and victorious Moxley calling out Tetsuya Naito, citing the “smell of the air in the valley, the taste of blood and sweat on his lips” as the forces that guide him towards this moment of clarity: that he is completely capable of saving two major promotions that have been floundering creatively for the better portion of the year, a man who was destined to be the first person to hold the AEW, WWE, and IWGP World Titles. He believed he was the Ace of the World, and for a brief period in January, we all believed him, too.

2: Chihiro Hashimoto vs. Shinya Aoki (4/7, DDT April Fool 2024)

Aoki and Big Hash are lauded in a few communities I'm a part of, but up front: I had not seen either before this match, and I haven't seen much since. This is a giant mistake on my part because both are fucking incredible.

Chihiro is an intimidating presence, but her mat work here is crisper than any other modern joshi I’ve seen. She doesn't merely “hang” with the lengthy Aoki in the early sequences of this match—she flat-out dominates him, which is impressive considering Aoki built his reputation as a MMA fighter needlessly breaking his opponent's arms (please notice my use of plurals). There are moments when she’s locked him in joint-bending wrist locks that make it look like Aoki’s shoulder tendons are about to burst from his skin. It's borderline disgusting at points, in large part because of Chihiro’s technical prowess. Still, she doesn’t avoid the power game, hitting multiple suplexes on Aoki, the best being this gut wrench:

Outside of a few small circles, Aoki is rarely named on larger wrestling publication’s Best Technical Wrestler lists. Watch him just once, though, and this will feel like a criminal offense. He finally gets the upper hand after exploiting Hashimoto’s hubris and locking her into six different nerve-pinching shoulder holds before forcing a rope break, which lets him set the pace for the rest of the match. But the thing that sticks out about his grappling work is that its less fluid and more spastic, to the point where even his arm drags look like they could dislocate an elbow. It's not that he isn't fluid; it's that he's intentional in his motion. It's not unique to this kind of wrestling (Hechicero works in a similar manner and is more well-rounded as a professional wreslter), but in 2024 it's shocking to see someone who is built like a Japanese Slender Man apply a flying arm bar to a woman as if he's trying to end her life.

So: I probably enjoyed this match a little more than others might, as both have had more impressive showings (Aoki’s match against HARASHIMA was pretty incredible). But if you haven't seen either before, I think it will blow you away. In terms of intergender matches, this is easily one of the best I’ve ever seen.

3: El Desperado vs. Kosei Fujita (5/12, NJPW Best of the Super Juniors 31, Tag 2)

It wasn't obvious at the time, but now that Zack Sabre Jr. is holding the Big Belt, Haste and Nichols have had two separate tag title runs, and Ryohei Oiwa is back from an excursion, it's clear that Gedo is attempting to build TMDK into a CHAOS-level babyface stable. Kosei Fujita’s run in the BOSJ was the first glimpse of this plan.

At 21 years old and having not gone on an excursion (outside of a very brief stint in Australia, NJPW elected to keep him in Japan under the tutelage of ZSJ), Kosei is still very green. His offense is inconsistent & his selling leaves a lot to be desired, but there is an undeniable crispness in his movements, especially regarding his counters & mat work. He is not quite at the level that Oiwa is, but I think he'll prove to be a better long-term prospect than at least two members of the Reiwa Musketeers (Yota Tsuji, you're safe (for now)).

But the real joy here is in watching El Desperado carry the young boy. In a company that has lost most of its top stars, he has proven to be the most consistent and versatile performer left. Here, he is no different: tasked with going 18 minutes with a guy who had never had an NJPW singles match go longer than 10, Desy elects to keep things simple, structuring the match by working Fujita's left knee relentlessly, spamming Numero Dos holds (his modified Stretch Muffler) and grinding the match to a snails pace to frustrate Fujita. This isn't a one-sided affair, though, as Desperado sells like crazy for Fujita’s submission-filled hope spots.

Despy would go on to win his first BOSJ trophy in the finals against Taiji Ishimori at Dominion, the first time a junior heavyweight match would ever main event a major NJPW show in almost 25 years. This early tournament drawing isn’t his best of the year, but to me, this is the match that best proves his place on the pecking order as NJPW tries to rebuild after losing its biggest stars as the most reliable & consistently excellent junior heavyweight in the company.

4: The Workhorsemen vs. Daniel Garcia and Katsuyori Shibata (5/30, AEW Collision)

I have a hard time rooting against Anthony Henry, as he resembles the versatile tweeners like Jerry Flynn that I had such an affinity for in my youth. But he's so smart in matches like this, re-introducing myself as the heel to an audience that doesn't see him nearly enough as they should by moving Garcia’s patented dance. He also throws the most convincing strikes and kicks out of anyone in this match, which shouldn't shock anyone who's seen him wrestle in DPW (his match versus Colby Corino is essential watching, by the way).

This version of Garcia, perpetually stuck between gimmicks and his stock hurt by a near-constant stream of stop-and-start feuds that lasted until the second he took pen to paper on his new contract, feels unrecognizable. Pairing him with Shibata in this match feels like a thought experiment more than an intentional booking plan, it gives Garcia the opportunity to get back to basics: sound technical wrestling, simple crowd interactions, and white-meat babyface selling. He still works the crowd a bit, mimicking The Wrestler's sitting pose & doing his own signature dance before clocking Henry with a meteora in the corner. But this pairing with Shibata reminds us of the rock-solid foundation that laid the groundwork for the type of babyface Garcia might be destined to become.

The unsung hero of this match, though, is JD Drake. He tags in quickly and is visibly hurt before he delivers his first offensive maneuver, rolling out of the ring and limping after hitting Garcia with a shining wizard as the crowd grows anxiously quiet. I remember being heartbroken at first, expecting the match would be called short.

But no. Drake tags backs in, still limping as he hits Garcia with a big powerslam. You would never know the man just tore his tendon: The Workhorsemen relentlessly beat the fighting spirit out of Garcia. And there's a delightful pacing from that point, the type that resembles early NOAH tags with sprinklings of American showmanship tossed in for the Californians in attendance.

But this. This shit right here is the true highlight:

But no. Drake tags back in, still limping as he hits Garcia with a big powerslam. You would never know the man just tore his tendon: The Workhorsemen relentlessly beat the fighting spirit out of Garcia. And there's a delightful pacing from that point, the type that resembles early NOAH tags with sprinklings of American showmanship tossed in for the Californians in attendance.

In what was ultimately a snakebitten for the Workhorsemen (Henry broke his jaw earlier in the year and suffered a torn bicep in October, while JD broke his ankle on the moonsault in the above video), who were supposed to have a matchup with FTR at DOW this fall, I'm glad we at least got this gem.

5: Harimao vs. Astronauts (6/21, BASARA 251)

I'm not as familar with Pro-Wrestling Basara as I am with its founder, Isami Kodaka. I was introduced to him during watchthrough of Kenny Omega's career in Japan, which I hope to eventually write about. What I do know is that its a smaller company meant to highlight '“ecclectic” wrestling, which pretty much sounds perfect for my sensibilities. So I'm hoping to watch more in 2025.

I'm pretty familiar with The Astronauts, who have been internet darlings after their incredible run in 2023 that peaked with their matchup against each other at WE ARE FIGHTING DETECTIVES. They popped up in the American Indies scene numerous times since then (the matchup against Violence Is Forever at GCW is pretty good, as was Fuminori Abe's singles bout against Roderick Strong), it always felt like something was missing.

This match felt different though, in large part because of Kazusada Higuchi. Abe can't ever seem to stop himself from being a silly little guy at times, and Ryota Nakatsu unfortunately seems like the perfect partner for him in that regard (he inexplicably decides to start a YES! chant in the middle of an early strike exchange). But Higuchi is such an intimidating presence that Abe and Takuya Nomura have no choice but to limit the bullshit. They take turns grinding him down while Nakatsu plays Spoiler, up until the very end. It's a hard-hitting match, but it's not afraid to work in some silliness to go along with high workrate & a good in-ring story. And the total shifts are logical and delightful.

I watched this with my wife on a lazy Friday afternoon, an unexpected day off where we both needed to take a deep breath. It's surely not the best Astronauts match, but it was the one I enjoyed the most so far.

Part 2 coming next week!

I won’t lie—a large part of this blog fizzling out this year was because I found large-platform American wrestling to be absolutely dreadful this year. In previous years, I could have blamed this on the lack of original, engaging, logical plot points and storylines. But the in-ring work feels really homologous in both companies, as one company leans further into excessivism while the other one is incorporating friendship bracelets into bloody cage matches. I am both exhausted and confused, sentiments that most in-and-out fans like myself eventually feel after prolonged periods of watching wrestling television shows.

But even despite that, cutting Raw and Smackdown out of my viewing habits has allowed me more time to watch wrestling than I ever have. I’ve found fuzzy streams and nefarious websites that helped me watch more independent and classic wrestling than I've ever had at any point in my life. I’ve subscribed to Wrestling Playlists and purchased DVDs of forgotten DDT circus matches. I’ve read some incredible books about wrestling (most notably Phil Schneider's The Way Of The Blade, Jonathan Foye's Ganbaru : How All Japan Pro Wrestling Survived the Year 2000 Roster Split, Tim Hornbaker's Death Of The Territories, and Michelle Cain's Dramatic Dreams and Those who have them) and have many more sitting on my shelves. I've done full feud watch-throughs of The Briscoes, and started a rewatch of 8 years' worth of Kenny Omega's New Japan matches with my brilliant wife, a once-casual viewer who now enjoys watching wrestling streams with me and has become incredibly literate on the art of professional wrestling to the point where I'm learning things from her. I’ve written the introductions for former AEW champions Swerve Strickland and Ricky Starks, former WWE World champion Big E Langston, and others for my homie Emilio Sparks’s new YouTube series, were he interviews wrestlers about their wellness and health routines. I started making video edits that has gotten positive reactions from the performers featured in them (one was even featured on Botchamania #499, which was viewed by over 250,000 people). I have become casually acquainted with the woman who designs Cody Rhodes’s chain mail. And to top it all off, Dave Meltzer blocked me on Twitter last week!!!!!

So, suffice it to say, I’ve had a pretty great year! But even with all that, I couldn't figure out what I wanted this space to be.

All of that changed when Colette Arrand asked me to fill in for Joseph Montecillo at Big Egg last month. Talking to Colette, who is brilliant and one of my favorite people in the world, about a very bad Inoki Genome Federation match and hearing Joseph plug it during one of his Twitch streams (which truly have been a delightful and essential part of my weekly routine, I truly cannot recommend it enough to people who want to expand their horizons) to match reminded me of how much I love being in community with other people about the things I love. I've been able to build community, but mostly in closed-off spaces like message boards and discords. I haven't done it publicly, like the way I did with poetry.

So: my new years resolution is to spend less time on closed communities and more time building community, here and in other places. I'm going to start a few series. I'm going to write some op-eds on the state of wrestling. But most importantly, I'm going to start collaborating with the people I have been building community with, and I want to build that community to be even deeper.

So: watch this space. Over the next few days, I'm going to make two posts about some matches I loved this year. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to post a creative essay about The Briscoes and Steenerio. And in the next month, I'm going to try to launch an almost-monthly series where creatives share art and conversation with me about their favorite matches. Hell, I might even rebrand. I won’t be sticking to strict deadlines, but I will be intentional and enthusiastic about putting more time into this.

If you're a creative or a critic that loves this gorgeous [word for joke] as I do, get in contact with me. I’ve got one person lined up and will be asking a few more over the next few days.

Lastly though, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to the members of the Wrestling Observer message board, the Violent People discord, the friends I’ve made over on Twitter, the wrestlers who let me work for them and were kind enough to engage me in conversation, and you, beautiful subscribers. While their tastes, tones, and temperaments often could not be more diametrically opposed to each other, I’ve been constantly touched by the generosity and curiosity of each of these communities. This has been an incredibly taxing year for me and there were points where I truly didn’t know if I was going to make it through the next day, let alone to the new year. If you happen to be a member of one of these communities who was kind enough to read my work or link me to a very weird Russian website, thank you. Our conversations around this silly form of escapism kept me upright. Truly.

Track: "This Charming Man" by The Smiths

A few hours ago, it hit me that none of this would be relevant after tonight’s PPV, so let’s get this out the door before the show starts (pardon any typos, but I would like to spend at least 45 minutes of this weekend thinking about something besides wrestling).

Anywho~!

Dynamite, 6/26

MJF and Daniel Garcia have an in-ring Fifeteen Minutes In Heaven Session (featuring Swerve Strickland): MJF comes to the ring in a leather coat and quickly interrupted by Daniel Garcia, who is also wearing a leather coat. I want to make fun of them for this but it was kinda cold in upstate NY on Wednesday so who’s the real idiot here, these guys or the idiot who retroactively looked up the Buffalo weather report in in the hopes that she could make a stupid lil quip? Daniel proves he doesn’t listen to Wrestletalk by promising to do someone no one else is willing to do: complement MJF. This exchange quickly divulges into a series of cliches and platitudes about barking pit bulls from New York before MJF challenges Garcia to a match at Wembley Stadium. MJF is then upstaged by William Peter Charles Ospreay for the third week in a row Ospreay is grinning ear to ear while he enthusiastically admits that he has a weak dick game, and then challenges Garcia to a match for the International and World Championships on next week’s Dynamite. MJF tells Garcia to focus on that opportunity while an unhappy Swerve watches from the strangely angled flatscreen TV set up backstage.

I am going to withhold judgement on this for the moment: my biggest criticism of AEW at the moment is that there haven’t been many interesting things happening at the top of the card. They are obviously building towards MJF and Ospreay: to say I’m underwhelmed by that matchup at the moment would be a massive understatement, but there are a few things they could do to make it more interesting, so my heart remains open.

The confounding thing here, though, is Daniel Garcia. His momentum has been clipped ever since he beat Danielson in September 2022 and his most significant work since that victory has been playing the third wheel in feuds that require a sixth (or eighth, or tenth) member. Right now, he’s a utility player who can still garner a decent pop, even if he hasn’t been booked into a logical feud in nearly two years. I remain high on him because when he gets a chance to work, he’s proven to still be a cagey technician who is over with a large part of the audience. But I worry he’ll lose next week and then disappear back into the either, so it’s hard to get excited about this match against Ospreay. But we’ll see.

Blackpool Combat Club (Claudio Castagnoli, Jon Moxley & Wheeler Yuta) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Hiromu Takahashi, Shingo Takagi & Titan): There’s been an increase in trios matches in recent weeks, and this is the first instance where it makes storyline sense: both Danielson and Moxley have matches against LIJ members. The BCC hasn’t had many opportunities to do matches like this, but they each have enough experience to make it interesting. It’s also Hiromu’s AEW debut: he’s not the same wrestler he was in 2021, but he’s eager to make a good impression on this audience so he’s clearly more engaged. The match ends in DQ when a frustrated Moxley hits Takahashi with a chair. Tetsuya Naito saunters to the stage and a pull-apart brawl ensues before Bryan Danielson slides into the ring to stare down Shingo.

This isn’t a particularly memorable match, but it’s a logical way to build the tension for two matches at Forbidden Door that I’m already invested in. RATING: ***1/2, recommended

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kyle O’Reilly: The purpose of this match is to exhibit the opponent Orange Cassidy will be facing at Forbidden Door, and it doesn’t disappoint: these are two performers who train extensively in Brazilian Ju-jitsu and it’s evident from the amount of mat work that starts the match. Sabre spends most of the match working on O’Reilly’s arms, which is a curious choice for ZSJ considering O’Reilly is more dangerous with his legs. The limb targeting doesn’t have much of an impact on O’Reilly’s strategy, but he’s smart enough to sell the impact of Sabre’s methodical approach and he taps immediately when Sabre locks in the Fujiwara Armbar.

Some might have a little bit of Snoopy fatigue after watching him lose so many singles matches since returning from injury, but Kyle O’Reilly should be utilized as a high-profile enhancement wrestler on a roster this deep. It’s a simple but effective match and I’d recommend seeking this one out ahead of Forbidden Door. RATING: ***3/4, recommended

Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay vs Gates Of Agony: I just want to point to one subtle issue that might be pedantic, but it encapsulates why I take issue with Will Ospreay’s claim as “best wrestler in the world.”

Ospreay has been having a crisis of consciousness over the Storm Driver after the move caused Bryan Danielson’s limbs to spasm. Never mind the fact that Danielson appeared on Dynamite two weeks after this and showed no signs of any lingering effects from being on the receiving end of the move: it’s just a visually confusing story to tell for one pretty obvious reason.

Here’s the setup for the Storm Driver 93, which is actually Mitsuharu Misawa's Tiger Driver '91 (but of course the white British guy had to rename it, because colonialism)

And here’s the setup for The Stormbreaker, a double underhook neckbreaker that has been Ospreay’s go-to finishing move since April 2018.

Considering that wrestling is a medium dependent on non-verbal storytelling, one would think that a performer would want to avoid picking a narrative device that can so easily obfuscate the plot. It doesn’t help matters that for weeks, the commentary mistook every double underhook as a setup for the Stormbreaker, only for Ospreay to hesitate and decide not to do either move. To be fair, this hasn’t happened for weeks. But in most improvised live art forms, it’s generally not a great idea to pick narrative threads that confuse the other members of your ensemble.

Another confounding detail is the success rate of both moves. Ospreay has won three matches in AEW with The Stormbreaker: he used it to beat Cassidy at Forbidden Door 2022, Omega at Forbidden Door 2023, and Jericho at All In 2023. Meanwhile, the Storm Driver was only successfully deployed against Danielson: the two other times Ospreay has used it (against Kenny Omega at Forbidden Door 2023 and then against Konosuke Takeshita at Revolution 2024), his opponents kicked out. It’s almost as if Ospreay looked at the road paved by The Four Pillars of Heaven and set for in the opposite direction. If his goal is to self-sabotage, he’s decidedly on track.

Ospreay is arguably the most well-rounded athlete on the men’s roster; as a storyteller, he lacks the attention to detail to elevate said athleticism into something more meaningful. At the moment, Ospreay matches feel more like watching someone use a create-a-wrestler to breeze through a career mode challenge set on easy mode. That’s perfectly acceptable for someone taking up space on the midcard; inserting the kind of wrestler into the main event picture a mere four months after their debut is another story entirely.

Anyway, that’s the show, looking forward to Forbidden Door!

Rampage, 6/28

Orange Cassidy vs. The Outrunners: this match is the antithesis of the highly technical O’Reilly/ZSJ match that happened on Wednesday night, as it’s a pure comedy match. All three performers are leaning heavily into their shticks here, with Turbo and Truth doing a lot of unnecessary flexing while Cassidy half-heartedly mocks them and goes so far to lay on the mat and simply rolling out of the way to avoid The Outrunners’s elbow drops. It’s a master class in sprezzatura from Cassidy, a fun change of pace from what we typically see in AEW. RATING: **1/2, would recommend

Shingo Takagi vs. Dalton Castle: both of these guys are capable of putting on a good to very good match with the right opponent, but this isn't one of those nights. There's enough synergy between their styles, though, as Shingo’s Strong Style 101 pairs well with Dalton’s propensity for working in Greco-Roman wrestling with his flamboyant character work. It’s a strong showing from Castle, with the highlights being a hurricanrana off the apron and a deadlift single-leg suplex that made me gasp. It’s not Shingo’s strongest showing, but it’s another example that Castle is criminally underutilized. RATING: ***, would recommend

Queen Aminata vs. Skye Blue: A surprising choice for a main event since neither Aminata nor Skye will be on the PPV. Aminata really outshines Skye here, both in terms of ring work and ring presence. It's a basic match, and Aminata wins. After the match, Skye Blue attacks Aminata and puts her in the worst dragon sleeper I've ever seen. Red Velvet makes the save. Surely this is all important to someone. I was hoping there would be more to say here, but it’s a pretty underwhelming affair. RATING: **, wouldn't recommend

Collision, 6/29

Stephanie Vaquer vs. Lady Frost: Mercedes Mone comes down to the ring and watches the match from the entrance ramp. Maybe this company could sort itself out if it cut back on ringside office chairs.

This match should give AEW fans a glimpse of what Mercedes has in store for her at Forbidden Door. When Vaquer executes a buttery leg wrap takedown & transitions into an STF, it's clear that Mercedes has her work cut out for her. I'm a big fan of any wrestler who will cut off a gymnastics move, so I'm thrilled to see Vaquer superkick Lady Frost when she needlessly does a headstand on the apron. Frost looks clumsy in a few spots, but there's a clear logic to this match: Vaquer is a sound in-ring technician who simply won't fall victim to Frost's theatrical flairs, going so far as to fucking giggle at Frost when the icy lady tries to counter a dragon screw in the corner. Vaquer stares down Mone while she puts Frost away with her package backbreaker and I am on the verge of salivating about the PPV match. Not an incredible showing, but a good build to the bigger matchup and a decent introduction to anyone who isnt familar with Vaquer's work.RATING: ***+, would recommend

• Traumatized Cowboy PTSD Flashback: A promo rolls showing Hangman Adam Page drinking copious amounts of whiskey as he knocks over pictures of his friends and spirals into hysteria, causing 60% of the internet wrestling community to weep with joy.

Swerve Strickland & Will Ospreay Weight Watchers Advertisement: Ospreay drops trow and the internet is telling me that he is not circumcised, which makes me want to cancel my Google Fiber account. Swerve is joined by Westside Gunn and EJ Nduka. They weigh in at 220 and 235 respectively, which is interesting to no one since this company does not have weight divisions. Swerve takes the mic and criticizes Ospreay's clothing choice and says that he is dressed like a “boss,” but I assume he meant to say “lifeguard” because he is topless and wearing a pair of board shorts. A scuffle ensures & Ospreay hits Swerve with a viscous Hidden Blade, then holds up both titles for the third time in 3 weeks.

It's been a messy road with a lot of hollow promos, amd I'm not any more emotionally invested in this outcome than I was when Ospreay won the Casino Gauntlet last month. But I will say: I have no idea what's going to and I'm pretty intrigued about the potential outcomes. Considering this company has been incredibly predictable for the last eight months, that's a marked improvement.

WEEKLY ENTHUSIASM INDEX: 71 out of 100

I saw an advertisement for Sonic yesterday that promoted a new menu item called “Groovy Fries with Groovy Sauce.” According to Potatobusiness.com, Groovy Fries were designed “for ideal dipping and have better taste and functionality,” which is interesting to me because I have not come across many dysfunctional french fries in my lifetime. French Fries are not a product that needs to be improved upon. I hope they don't screw this up.

Anyway, let's talk about AEW, a wrestling company that definitely hasn't made a bunch of unnecessary changes to a product that many might argue did not need to be improved upon.

Dynamite, 6/19

MJF vs. Rush: on its face, this should be a pretty interesting matchup. Both wrestlers haven’t done anything of significance since December, when Rush was putting on competitive matches in the Gold League of the Continental Classic and Max was …penning poorly-wrought goodbye letters for The Player’s Tribute and learning valuable lessons about friendship, or something. There’s also a pretty obvious story to tell here about the overly hubristic former champion who overestimates the limits of his recently injured shoulder, which would be easy to tell with some simplistic limb targeting and a couple of botched lifts.

Well, none of that happens: we start with stiff strikes before MJF does the Flair strut and an eye gouge, and I immediately feel like I am in hell. The match quickly divulges into a typical Rush structure, though, which is exactly what this bout calls for. MJF is at his best (maybe? I kinda just hate the guy) when the match is structured around his opponent’s strengths. Fortunately for him, Rush’s strength is beating the ever-loving piss out of his opponents to the point where they have no choice but to sell as if they have just been murdered. And that’s a good thing: MJF is (supposedly) still a babyface and he needs something to overcome, since we are being asked to pretend as if the last 3 months of his title reign and platonic situationship with Adam Cole never happened.

After a Superman punch causes MFJ to roll out of the ring, and Rush plays all the hits: he follows Max to the outside and pummels him against the barricades, he chokes him with his trademark neon yellow lasso, he hits Max with the German Suplex off the apron. It’s brutal and continues into the ring, but it doesn’t take long for Max to turn things around with a heat seeker. Max wins with a pretty average-looking brainbuster. Overall, it’s a pretty good match. But I think the wrong man won—Rush should be much higher on the card and there is a noticeable lack of main-event heels on this roster. But TK knows better than me. Surely, this was the right call and the ratings will reflect that. RATING: ***1/2, wouldn’t recommend

• After the match, Hechicero appears with …Cage of Agony (weird but slutty), which sets up a match between the lucha wizard & the 4chan chad at Forbidden Door. I am sure the audience who cheered like crazy when Max said “I don’t need a New Japan or Vince McMahon” are clamoring to see this matchup. This company makes complete sense, I promise.

Swerve Strickland and Will Ospreay In-Ring Therapy Session: I’ll start with the good: Swerve has a speaking cadence that’s pretty unique and it’s refreshing to see a slower delivery that isn’t dominated by shouting. He looks like a World Champion and is learning to navigate his way through these types of promos with grace. I don’t see him as an ace yet, but he’s making progress & he’s easy to root for in this role, even if I prefer him as a heel.

My issue with this promo is it’s lacking in substance & consistency: there are illusions to these two being old friends, but (outside of a few matches against each other in Europe 7 years ago) I have no context for that; in the past, Swerve has said that the world title is the most important thing in the world, but now I know he feels similarly about podcasting; Ospreay is being presented as a lovable golden retriever but he is also a killer with a hit list. Guys, I don’t know what to tell you—I’m sure this match is going to be exactly the match we’re expecting it to be. I won’t shit on you if you’re enthusiastic about that. But my enthusiasm is waning as the weeks go by.

Kris Statlander vs. Nyla Rose, Owen Hart Tournament Match: I like this matchup a lot: Kris needs to get some reps as a heel if she’s ever going to move up the card and this is a good matchup for that sort of thing. Nyla is so good at structuring a match, especially with someone who has shortcomings. In this case, she’s able to lay off her typical brutality and let Kris use her very large muscles (🥰) to execute on a number of impressive spots, most notably the tombstone piledriver that serves as this match's finish. It’s simple but it serves as a template for the type of strategy Kris will have to deploy if she’s going to beat Willow Nightingale in the next round of the tournament. I probably won’t remember this match but it serves its purpose and advances a storyline without gobbling up more than 10 minutes of air time, which is exactly what this show needs more of. RATING: ***

• Daniel Garcia squash match: did someone ask for this? Wasn’t Garcia paired with Shibata two weeks ago? Didn’t Garcia call Ospreay out last month? Why is Ospreay making a save? Why is MJF making a save? Does every road agent in this company have short-term amnesia? Is this show booked to give me a mid-week existential crisis? Why wasn’t I reading a book? RATING: I want to try the Sonic Groovy Fries.

Collision, 6/22

“Premiere” Athletes (Ariya Daivari, Tony Neese, Josh Woods) vs. Gentrification-gun (Samoa Joe, Hook, and Katsuyori Shibata): I knew AEW wasn’t for me in March 2024, when Shibata returned to AEW after a 4-month hiatus only to serve as fodder for Bryan Danielson and Will Ospreay in back-to-back 20-minute matches in front of two barely engaged audiences. There’s a large segment of this crowd cheering for him in this match, which would probably be viewed as a good thing by anyone who doesn’t mind seeing one of their favorite performers utilize cheap comedy bits to pander to an audience who are eager to chant “HE’S OUR SCUMBAG!” at a guy who is addicted to hurling vaguely (and occasionally blatantly) racist comments at wrestlers who are not white. Unfortunately, I am not anymore. So this is kind of depressing!!

However! There’s a lot of things to enjoy in this match once I can get over those feelings, as well as the strange feelings I feel whenever I look at Tony Neese’s thighs. Hook incorporating Joe’s walkway spot is a nice touch—I think he still has some work to do in the ring, but Hook is never going to be a major player if he doesn’t put a more concerted effort into making an emotional connection with the audience, and Joe and Shibata have all but mastered the art of “Right Tone, Right Place.” Woods isn’t nearly as as crisp of a technical performer as he thinks he is (see: his positioning on Shibata’s clunky heel hook), but he’s competent enough to have a few average to above-average mat work exchanges with Shibata. This would have been better with a different trio in the place of Premiere Athletes, but there are also a lot of people hurt at the moment so you take what you can get, I guess. RATING: ***, would recommend

Kazuchika Okada vs. Ultimo Guerrero: Phew boy. It was always going to be a difficult sell: Ultimo has an uphill battle with an audience that is generally apathetic towards legendary luchadors, and Okada has a way of coasting through this kind of random matchup. But this is notably clunkier and noticeably slower than I had expected it to be. The unmasking spots are some of the worst parts of the match, which also reminds me that I’ve seen a fair number of pictures of an unmasked Ultimore Guerrero over the years, so let me just go ahead and quote Luchablog on what happened here:

AEW promoted Ultimo Guerrero under his masked identity [but] has not been a masked wrestler in [about] 10 years…Ultimo Guerrero was not aware he was going to be asked to wrestle masked and did not bring one with him. That led to a mad scramble to find a mask or mask up a mask, and Ultimo Guerrero ended up wearing a mask that wasn’t really suitable and would not stay on his head. It appeared Guerrero tried to cut out a lot of spots that would’ve risked his mask coming off, which resulted in a lower quality match – and the mask still came off multiple times during the match.

Well, that stinks. It doesn’t feel fair to rate this, but it does feel fair to criticize the ineptitude of the booking. There is no reason to do this kind of thing, especially with a two-time World Champion of your new partner promotion, especially while people like Chris Jericho seem to have free reign over their creative. RATING: **, wouldn’t recommend

• Boys Night Promo: Dante Martin is topless with the boys and you can see the waistband of his CK boxers. He talks about breaking his leg in a very horrific way and says it will take “a little bit of crazy” to win the TNT title, which is alarming. Lio Rush shows up and he’s wearing a very large t-shirt. In a sultry voice, he tells Dante that he wants the championship; Dante takes a step closer to him and says “yeah, I want it, too.” Lexi looks perturbed; I do not!!!! KISS!!!!!!!!!

Toni Storm & Mariah May vs. Leyla Hirsch & Lady Frost: Speaking of kissing—there’s a lot of kissing in this match. There is also a decent amount of booty slapping and breast-on-breast stimulation. Somewhere in between all of this, there is a little bit of wrestling. The action in this match was good, even if it leaned more “platonic queer eroticism” more than it did “actual wrestling match.” I don’t mean this as criticism: I actually think the Storm/Shirakawa angle has been the best-executed storyline in the company over the last couple of weeks. But we’ve reached the point where the feud is just killing time and I’m personally eager to move to a different story beat for these characters, preferably one with higher stakes. RATING: **1/2, would recommend if you enjoy queer heartbreak

• House of Black Post-Squash Interview: Ian Riccobani asks Malaki Black and Brodie King how they feel after Buddy Matthews was attacked by a dinosaur last week (I completely forgot this even happened). Brodie King says “we feel nothing,” perfectly encapsulating how I feel after watching 5 hours of programming from this company over the last four days.

Will Ospreay vs. Brian Cage: Fuck me, this one hurt. Cage is a guilty pleasure of mine, somone who (with the right opponent) can squeeze enough Dumb Bitch power spots to keep things interesting in defeat. Pair him with someone like Ospreay, however, and you're going to have a match that resembles a YouTube short more than it resembles a fight.

These two get twenty minutes, which is not good. Will's been here 4 months and you can already set a timer to his matches. I am not the sort of person who will ever gatekeep wrestling, but this would have been the most skippable match on a PWG card in 2016, and it's aged like warm piss. RATING: 2, wouldn't recommend

WEEKLY ENTHUSIASM INDEX: 61 out of 100

I could spew a few more words about the two worst shows I've watched this week when the reality is there was a lot of fantastic wrestling going on in the other companies. So instead of shitting on this any further, let me just recommend the three incredible matches I caught this week:

• Harimao (Kazusada Higuchi & Naomi Yoshimura) vs The Astronauts, (BASARA 251, 6/21): the best tag team in the world has a hard-hitting (and occasionally silly) bout with the most impactful wrestler in DDT's recent history. RATING: ***1/2+

• Jon Moxley vs. Josh Barnett (Bloodsport Bushido, 6/22): an immaculate blade job enhances the most spirited Moxley since the final of the Continental Classic. RATING: ****1/4

• Hechicero vs. Zack Sabre Jr (CMLL Arena Coliseo, 6/22): a highly innovative match from two of the most creative technicians alive and a MOTY contender for someone with my sensibilities ****1/2

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now. I’m working on an edit of the Zack Sabre Jr vs. Daniel Makabe match at Prestige that’s been pretty slow goings, and I’ve also been doing rewatches of Kenny Omega’s Junior Heavyweight NJWP run and Sabu’s entire ECW run. Maybe I’ll review one of those matches if I come across something worthwhile, but if not see you after Forbidden Door :*