Chris Sabin vs. El Desperado – Best of the Super Juniors (Block B)
God bless El Desperado. His opening sneak attack and ensuing rampage (tossing Sabin all over the place and beating him to death with chairs) was not only brilliant pro-wrestling, it also lit a real fire under Sabin’s ass and got him to turn in his best performance since that slobberknocker with SHO. Sabin did a good job putting Despy over as a monster heel and then pulled a super explosive comeback with a bunch of great-looking spots. Incredibly well-timed springboard swinging DDT. Nasty-looking tope con hilo off the apron with Despy sitting on a chair. The whole thing was kept short and sweet and managed to strike the perfect balance between flashy spots and good old fashioned hatred. Sabin superkicking a chair right in Despy’s face captured that entire tone perfectly. Despy deserves a lot of credit for bringing out real emotion and fire out of guys who normally don’t show that much. ***1/4
Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Marty Scurll – Best of the Super Juniors (Block B)
My ultimate Marty Scurll hot take is that he’s a good comedy wrestler who’s too often booked to have very serious Epic Matches where I just don’t buy into his act. What I’m getting at is that he’s a perfect match for 2018 Ryusuke Taguchi. The opening comedy had me in stitches:Taguchi completely failing at British chain wrestling and not even understanding the basic concept of reversing a wristlock is the most hilarious shit. The rest of the match was actually really fun too and Taguchi countering that annoying ‘’Superkick/Just kidding’’ spot by hip attacking Marty right in the face was the BEST! Taguchi broke out his big dives, Marty stole a girl’s sunglasses – a good time was had by all. Scurll untying his boot to slip through the ankle lock was genius, even if they flubbed the execution a little. ***
Hiromu Takahashi vs. SHO – Best of the Super Juniors (Block B)
Holy shit, where is the hype for this match? This was my boy SHO, aka. Twitter’s favorite son, stepping up to the plate and working a high-level Hiromu Takahashi match with Hiromu in absolute peak form. Both guys charging into each other with lariats as soon as the bell rang set the tone right off the bat and the action (almost) never let up. Hiromu was smart enough to not let SHO drag the match down with his arm-work and instead just killed him with a Powerbomb on the floor, as one does.
This was the super intense SHO we got from the Chris Sabin match, coming at Hiromu hard with brutal kicks, big-time power moves and cross armbreaker reversals out of wacky angles. The only weak moment from him came when he flubbed a pivotal spot by giving Hiromu the MOST GENTLE apron German suplex you’ve ever seen. They quickly made up for it with the ending stretch where Hiromu was desperately trying to hook on his D submission, which led to SHO countering the hold amazingly with Takaiwa Bombs into his Powerbomb/backbreaker combo. God DAMN.
The crazy thing is that this was the first proper singles match between these two. Extremely high workrate: fast n’ furious pace, hard strikes, intricate counters. The whole shebang. At the rate SHO keeps improving, their next meeting could be an absolute classic. PS – If this happened in Korakuen Hall, the Internet would be losing its mind right now. ****
KUSHIDA vs. Dragon Lee – Best of the Super Juniors (Block B)
A mostly very fun match between two guys who are very good at supplying the high-difficulty, epic junior heavyweight wrestling. They played the familiarity card really well and pulled all sorts of nifty counters to the other’s guy entire move-set, even the low-level moves. Dragon Lee had an answer for KUSHI’s hiptoss into cartwheel dropkick, while KUSHI saw the apron flying rana coming from a mile away and even had a wacked-out cross armbreaker counter to one of Lee’s lucha armdrags. All of that stuff was rad.
KUSHIDA went for the arm, as he does, applying the Hoverboard lock out of every imaginable angle. In theory, it adds a fun layer to the match, KUSHI trying to slow down the manic masked man with submissions, but Dragon Lee just doesn’t sell any of that shit. I had the same issue with Dragon Lee/SHO and I’m questioning the relevance of limb-work in Dragon Lee matches. But it’s also KUSHIDA’s whole thing so I guess it was somewhat inevitable.
Internet wrestling nerd whining aside, a good time was had. KUSHIDA even managed to make the contrived setup for Dragon Lee’s tree-of-woe double foot stomp look like an actual struggle! What a legend. ***1/2
