Almost 5-Star Match Reviews — page 4

Will Ospreay has certainly gone through an incredible journey over the past decade. He was scouted by New Japan after getting rave reviews from Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada, and AJ Styles. He became a polarizing figure from the moment he reached a major stage after having that absurd match with Ricochet that got him both praise and ire from different corners of the wrestling fandom. He took the world by storm as this weird mix between cruiserweight and heavyweight, later becoming too big for the former but still too small to be convincing as the latter. He has been showered with praise and accolades all over the world. And if the most notorious wrestling critic is to be believed/taken 100% seriously, then Ospreay is a better in-ring performer than pretty much every person to come before him.

So what better way for us to judge these claims for ourselves than by watching Will Ospreay compete against the wrestler that represents and symbolizes AEW more than any other?

AJPW had a lot of classics in their 1990s heyday, many of which still hold up to a present-day standard. Countless wrestlers to have made their names in North America have drawn inspiration from these AJPW legends, either directly or indirectly. And while the industry has changed quite a lot over the decades, there are still plenty of people that prefer stuff from the past. It’s in that spirit that we look back at another big match from AJPW’s heyday to see if it still holds up.

Who would’ve thought that, when this match took place, these two men would become the two most powerful men in the wrestling business.

When these men clashed in the ring no one knew how big both of them would become. Although The Rock came from a venerated wrestling family no one expected that, come 2024, he’d be worth over $800 million and would sit on WWE’s Board of Directors.

As for Triple H, his time in WWE has seen more ups and downs than a Game of Thrones character. He was loathed for a very long time, became a legitimate go-away-heat-having monster, and is now among the most beloved people in the industry.

With Vince McMahon gone from the company, Triple H has assumed more or less complete creative control of the company. Under his leadership WWE has seen a surge in popularity not seen since 2000 which, incidentally, was also quite possibly the best year in modern WWE history. There’s still plenty to be happy about WWE in the present, but how well does the company’s last peak year hold up to a modern lens?

Few wrestlers were more alpha and badass than Goldberg and Steiner. They were two insanely strong monsters that lived up to the hype as larger-than-life monsters. But what also gave both of them appeal was the fact that both of them were grounded in realism. Goldberg was a straightforward wrecking ball that didn’t need all that much finesse or skill because the few things he knew how to do he did extremely well.

Meanwhile Steiner started off as an amateur standout that could throw people around effortlessly and then grew into becoming one of the most unintentionally exciting wrestlers of his day. Not because of anything planned for or around him but because he earned a reputation for being such an unpredictable powder keg who did whatever we want that fans genuinely wanted to see what he’d do next.

So when these two mammoths clashed, who would win?

It’s often said that wrestling careers are short (at least in North America) and very few people end up having storybook careers with fairytale endings. Both of these men certainly know a thing or two about that.

Michaels was once the most hated man in the English-speaking wrestling world; if social media existed in the 1990s during his prime he’d have enough hate mail – both physical and digital – to cause a mental breakdown. Yet he went away for four years, found God, and then had a complete career renaissance. He almost ruined his legacy when he prostituted himself for a hefty paycheck and a shitty match in Saudi Arabia, only to turn things around once again and become a much-adored and respected booker as the new head of NXT.

Jericho, meanwhile, has seen his fortunes sour in the eyes of many fans. Once heralded as the central figure behind AEW’s original success, as one of the greatest in-ring workers of his generation, and as a certified legend, Jericho has go-away heat with a lot of people. Some people point to allegations of bad behavior backstage while others point to his worsening creative ideas/catchphrases and the fact that he has stuck around so much that fewer people really care about him.

This is one of the reasons why it’s better to look at wrestlers’ matches instead of wrestlers’ careers in their entirety. You get a better snapshot of a wrestler’s skills in individual matches than you get when looking at careers that can span through different phases. It’s with this in mind that we revisit one of the best feuds in WWE during a time when the company was still on something of a downward slope popularity and interest-wise.

Can anyone become a pro-wrestler?

Even in the colorful and at times absurd world of professional wrestling there can be philosophical discussions about what is and what can be. The question above is one that many fans have argued over the decades: should pro-wrestling change with time and open its doors to any who want to pursue it, or should it be restricted so that only the best and most well-trained are able to showcase it in front of big crowds?

This match between two of the most recognizable figures in modern wrestling history sought to give one answer to that question. Hulk Hogan was the most iconic wrestler and, in many ways, still is. Meanwhile, Vince McMahon was instrumental to creating Hogan’s nationwide appeal and bringing WWE to a national level. Vince was also critical to his company’s second golden age during Attitude Era by becoming the ultimate villain.

But how well did Vince do in the ring against one of the greatest stars he ever had a hand in creating?

Thirty years ago New Japan Pro-Wrestling put on one of the most interesting and exciting shows in modern wrestling history. Not only was it entertaining but it changed the wrestling landscape in general. This show proved that smaller, quicker wrestlers could draw big houses and have high-caliber matches just as well as the heavyweights that usually closed the shows.

Much has changed in the wrestling business since then, but one thing that remains the same is that smaller wrestlers do usually steal the show. Guys like Bryan Danielson, Will Ospreay, AJ Styles, and Rey Mysterio are all hailed as some of the best to ever do it. But none of them would’ve ever gotten a chance to showcase their talents had it not been for this show, which was put together by this man.

By 1994 Jushin Liger was the unquestioned centerpiece of New Japan’s junior heavyweight division and one of the company’s most popular wrestlers. Wanting to extend that popularity to other wrestlers his size, and to shine a greater spotlight on other “juniors”, Liger convinced NJPW to give him complete creative control to book a one-night single-elimination tournament composed of junior heavyweights from both New Japan and elsewhere.

The tournament brought fourteen wrestlers from six different promotions together to see who the best would be. Some of these wrestlers were going to wrestle multiple matches in one night with little to no preparation against people with differing styles. This gave some of the matches more of an on-the-fly nature as the people involved had to do what was best in the moment rather than follow some pre-prepared outline. But that also made it more of a test: how would these wrestlers do under the added pressure of having less time to put their matches together?

Kurt Angle is one of the most respected and admired wrestlers of the past 25 years. Many fans and active wrestlers have plenty of good things to say about him and have fond memories about wrestling with or against him. However, there seems to be a divide in which parts of Angle’s career people appreciate more.

Though his WWE career has gotten the most praise, the same couldn’t be said about his time in TNA. Many people have used terms like “sad”, “washed-up”, “past-his-prime” and so on to describe Angle’s time in TNA. I think that’s an unfair generalization, both of Angle’s time in TNA and of TNA’s reputation as a whole. Instead of being a retirement home for WWE superstars that were either cast away or grew tired of the grind, TNA had a few unique things to offer, at least for a while. And one of those things was the sight of seeing Kurt Angle overcome physical and personal challenges and leave it all in the ring. He did this plenty while in WWE but did he live up to the same standards elsewhere?

This is the match that started a legendary two-year war between Jumbo Tsuruta and Mitsuharu Misawa. That brutal war carried All Japan until Tsuruta’s unfortunate and premature departure and while it went on All Japan was white hot. This match also includes something unusual as far as All Japan classics are concerned: Akira Taue as Misawa’s partner rather than as his opponent. Anyone who has followed that period knows this to be rare, and outside of the odd ‘special tag match’ would never really happen again.

With All Japan’s roster devastated by a loss of talent that would be completed by the end of the summer, how well did they manage to pivot towards pushing new talent? Let’s find out.

If there was ever an example of “Hollywood Hogan versus The Rock” done in another company it would be Antonio Inoki vs The Great Muta.

There are plenty of similarities between the two matches. Both were clashes of generations with a fabled icon of the past taking on the top star of the new generation to see if he could still go. Both matches took place in front of tens of thousands of fans in packed stadiums. Both matches were less about the action and more about the spectacle. Both matches received underwhelming reviews from wrestling’s most notorious critic despite getting plenty of praise from almost everyone else. And both were tremendous examples of the less-is-more philosophy working in wrestling, which goes against the contemporary standard of doing more even if means less.

But while Hogan vs Rock has aged well and is still admired some pockets of fans, could the same be said of Inoki’s one and only match with wrestling’s most famous mist-spitter?

When it comes to wrestlers and their legacies, few people in modern times encapsulate the idea of a slow-motion car crash better than Mitsuharu Misawa.

Once the unquestioned ace of AJPW during that company’s widely-heralded 1990s golden age, Misawa experienced a downward spiral that ended in legitimate tragedy. His in-ring style influenced an entire generation of wrestlers and wrestling fans. Even those who might not know who he is might know him from his wide array of crazy moves that found their way into WWE’s video games over the decades. Guys like Eddie Kingston have fawned over Misawa and his accomplishments. Talk of ‘Four Pillars’ in AEW stems from the original Four Pillars of All Japan which included Misawa. Even Will Ospreay, a guy some fans consider the best wrestler active today, devoted a part of his career to surpassing Misawa’s number of 5-Star matches.

But despite all of this praise and reverence towards Misawa, both from within the wrestling business and among its fans, his career includes a dark side: he died in the ring in 2009 after wrestling far beyond his body begging for him to stop.

Misawa’s death left a foul taste in some fans’ mouths, especially since, in theory, it could’ve been avoided. Though it was considered a freak accident at the time, many observers have noted that Misawa’s in-ring style coupled with how long he was on top caused his body to deteriorate to the degree that his spine became weak enough to sever on impact.

One could argue that it was the frequency of Misawa’s bad bumps that did him in, rather than the severity. After all, there are wrestlers who have taken worse individual bumps and have survived. So if Misawa’s death was due to being forced to continue wrestling in-style well past his expiry date, one should look at how he ended up in that questionable position in the first place. To do that, we need to look at one of many instances in AJPW history that could’ve changed the company’s direction but instead left the status quo intact, much to Misawa’s chagrin.

Out of all the words in the English language that could be used to describe something in the wrestling industry, I never thought one of the most appropriate ones would be ‘necromancy’. And the reason it’s so appropriate is because many fans see current-day ROH in this way: not as a functioning entity but as a reanimated corpse.

With all due respect to the brand’s current roster, ROH just isn’t the same these days. When Tony Khan announced that he had purchased ROH after the company was on death’s door, there was a glimmer of hope among its fans that this would lead to some newfound excitement and even more change in the wrestling business. Instead, ROH became a satellite/child/affiliate brand of AEW’s, one without an identity of its own.

But a reanimated corpse still retains some of its original features, and while Tony Khan’s handling of the promotion warrants its own discussion at another time, at least the company’s video library remains intact and matches available for free from its glory days aren’t hidden behind some paywall (at least not yet). It’s in that spirit that we should look at another classic from back when ROH was still exciting and had its own distinct place in the wrestling business.

Many longtime wrestling fans remember Kenta Kobashi for his legendary work in Japan and his iconic singles match with Samoa Joe from 2005. That singles match was so memorable and overwhelming that Kobashi had another match from ROH.

Kobashi’s second ROH match took place the following night. It was a tag match with two other ROH wrestlers that just so happened to be involved with Samoa Joe in some form of another. But ROH’s booker at the time Gabe Sapolsky was more interested in bringing Kobashi in and using him the right way, even if doing so meant contradicting their existing storylines.

In some ways, this whole Kobashi-in-ROH deal may have been a driving factor in other promotions’ (but especially AEW’s) approach to foreign talent. They think that the audience will react to each and every Japanese signee the same way they did to Kobashi here, not realizing that Kobashi was a special talent that entered ROH as a God among men.

Both Kobashi’s singles match with Joe and the tag match with them on opposing sides had little to no build besides a press/news release. Both were treated as ‘cold matches’ but took place in front of nuclear hardcore crowds. Both were exciting and adored by the fans, especially those that took the time to write into the WON about how much they enjoyed the matches live. But was the tag match on the same level? Read on to find out.

Few wrestlers from recent times have been more daring and willing to risk their wellbeing for their craft more than Pro Wrestling NOAH’s Yoshihiro Takayama. For over a decade he treated his face and body like a literal punching bag and achieved quite a lot for doing so. As a result he became a relatively rare kind of wrestler: a giant that could go to the mat and could endure all kinds of punishment.

But did Takayama’s penchant for throwing caution to the wind lead to any memorable matches? Read on to find out.

For most wrestlers getting injured is a warning sign to slow down and change how you wrestle. For Naomichi Marufuji, getting injured meant “I must be doing something right”.

The first few years of the 2000s was marked by enormous change in the wrestling business. What was happening in Japan mirrored whatever was taking place in North America; industry giants split and splintered creating more participants in a shrinking and increasingly competitive market. This led to both hyper-competitive promotions and wrestlers all vying to steal as much attention for themselves as possible. It also led to cooperation among companies, which in turn led to unusual and unexpected match-ups. Not exactly “dream matches” but more something more along the lines of “this never happened before so let’s see what these two can do together” situations.

There’s this laughable notion among some pockets of wrestling fans that if a certain wrestler can’t or won’t do certain things then they “can’t wrestle”. This decades-old claim has been used to describe a myriad of different wrestlers: Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior, Triple H, and countless nearly-immobile giants to lumber their way through WWE. Whether these people actually deserved those claims is a matter of opinion. But few wrestlers have endured these claims as consistently and for as long a time as John Cena.

Having lived through the ‘we hate Cena era’ I recall how many times the guy had to deal with that argument. It was everywhere during the mid-to-late 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. Despite putting on some great matches during his prime (his matches with Umaga, Bryan, and Punk in particular), many people simply didn’t want to recognize that Cena was at least somewhat capable in the ring.

This match came highly recommended to me and is considered one of the greatest matches in TNA history. It’s not hard to see why: it was one of those rare cases where spot-heavy indy craziness mixed with serious old school tag team wrestling and the end result wasn’t some haphazard mishmash of two opposing styles.

What these four did in this match was special: they had a serious match with a relatable story behind it that paid off in spades. Not only that, but it featured something for both the diehard regular followers and the casual fan looking for something jaw-dropping to look at. How did these four men achieve this? Read on to find out.

If you’ve ever wondered who you should thank for creating the modern indy-inspired wrestling style, it’s KENTA and Naomichi Marufuji.

During the 2000s these two were pushing the boundaries in pro-wrestling like no-one else. At the time critics were comparing their singles and tag matches to what the Dynamite Kid and Tiger Mask were doing in the 1980s. They were called revolutionaries and many times they stole the show even when they weren’t in the main-event.

The 1990s was full of historically great matches and one of the men involved in many of them was Toshiaki Kawada. He was and is one of the most copied wrestlers of the past three decades with many wrestlers copying his move-set and his penchant for dishing out stiff and brutal punishment in the ring. To this day fans debate where Kawada ranks among the so-called Four Pillars of All Japan, especially since he never made any journeys to North America after becoming a star.

But was Kawada always such a stellar wrestler, or did he have his off days like everyone else? Read on to find out.

The 1992 Royal Rumble is often called the best Rumble match ever and in some circles it’s listed as one of the best-ever wrestling matches in general. That’s high praise, especially for one of the most nontraditional and convoluted matches ever conceived. After all, how can a match involving 30 people be anything but an hour-long display of controlled chaos at best or an utter clusterfuck at worst? Read on to find out.