2025 Matchguide Week 50

 
Kotaro Nasu vs Yukito, Heat-Up 5/25

A very good little quasi-shootstyle match. Reminded me a lot of a Fu-Ten undercard match which is a very good thing in 2025. Yukito continues to be decent while Nasu continues to elevate things by being really vicious. He had some of the most vicious kicks and open hands I've seen all year in this. Him looking in a cool calf slicer and then going in further on Yukitos leg with brutal low kicks was quite good, poignant shootstyle action. There was also a nice punishing aspect since Nasu is the veteran so he is obligated to try and kick right though Yukito. It's really really fun and if it hadn't been for the somewhat awkward insertion of a few irish whip moves it would've been one of my favourite singles matches of the year. My man Nasu deserves more recognition (and more bookings so I can watch him more, dammit).

Sareee vs Chihiro Hashimoto, Sendai Girls 11/16

A no-brainer great match up that delivers pretty much what you expect. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the opening half of this which was really good, smart pro wrestling. We get some cool matwork where Hashimoto shows off her Alexander Otsuka-ish cartwheels and granby rolls and what not, dominating Sareee in cool ways, then cutting her of with those massive body checks. It was great stuff. Sareee was fighting against a wall here, and she had to figure out how to get by and start bombing her with her signature crowbar dropkicks and stomps. Sareee then trying to break Hashimoto leg with nasty twisting legbars and diving stomps was quite great. Of course, that legwork was pretty much forgotten as soon as Hashimoto got back on offense. They have their obligatory 'we both no sell a suplex' moment and the match is a lot less interesting suddenly. Some Takaiwa-ish crowbar strikes, headbutts, bombs and lariats happen to get me back into the match. After some more trite no-selling we get at least a graceful finish. I really wonder if it's possible for a Japanese big match to exist these days without a bunch of suplex no-selling. Even the crowd seems bored of that stuff at this point. It's a slight let down because there was a bunch of objectively really great work here.


Shinya Aoki vs T-Hawk, GLEAT 10/9

As usual, Aoki provides plenty of entertainment toying with his opponent on the mat and trying to force his shoulders down for the pin in painful looking ways. T-Hawk knocking him off the top rope and then proceeding to bitch slap him around on the floor was some surprisingly adept brawling considering T-Hawk is a Dragon Gate guy. Still, I thought Aoki needs to learn how to sell. I get that he's supposed to be a monster but he shouldn't be making stupid faces after getting punched in the face. As such the end of the match was a bit underwhelming. Fair play to T-Hawk as throwing Shinya Aoki into a row of chairs and then bitchslapping him was probably the greatest thing he ever did.

 

AKARI vs Crea, PURE-J 5/16

Impressive 2/3 falls match between two skillful wrestlers. Crea is quite the fun hard hitting machine with her boots and chops and AKARI had lots of nifty lucha-esque takedowns and submissions attempts. Though Crea also had some good submission work of her own. There was some quite evil stomping and smacks to the face here. Really liked the struggle over the tarantula attempt. Creas jumping big boot thing that she does is awesome. The match felt gritty and most importantly, they fought really hard in all 3 falls and had an unpredictable match that had some thought put into everything down to how they built up things throughout all the 3 falls without going cookie cutter. Definitely felt like more people should have their eyes on these two. Admittedly, Crea could've done with a bit less slapping of the thigh, but other than this was great. 

2025 Matchguide 

2025 Matchguide Week 49

Pantera Jr vs Sangre Azteca Jr, Michinoku Pro 11/2

Really enjoyable lucha libre action here, with both guys busting out some creative and unhinged big spots. There was also some surprisingly deep selling and match psychology. There were some 2025esque thigh slappy spin kicks and such which I didn't love, but the overall energy here is good. Mostly, this is a match about two guys nailing every spectacular thing they now, and they nailed all that. Pretty enjoyable. 

 

Kotaro Nasu & FUMA vs Kotaro Suzuki & Tetsuya Izuchi, GLEAT 12/6

Pretty good UWF style action here. The main reason this is worth watching is NASU, who looked like a killer. He was hitting insanely hard and constantly trying to rush through guys with his quick hands, crowbar kicks and powerful suplexes. The action was great pretty much anytime he was in the ring. FUMA is solid at best, but I liked his weird submission a lot, and both Suzuki and Izuchi are pretty competent at this style, which is enough to produce some excellent exchanges with Nasu. Nasu almost caving in Izuchis skull with a massive high kick was awe inspiring and Izuchi fired back with a sick Maeda level kick of his own. Suzuki is pretty good here for his old age and he does pull off a cool finish. Still, Nasu was the man here pretty much.

Marino Saihara vs Sakura Mizushima, GLEAT 12/6

It's kinda cool that the athress girls are also regularily called into GLEAT to do shootstyle matches. Mizushima, for someone who has shown zero shootstyle in her AWG matches, was surprisingly good here. This is a striker vs grappler match with Saihara being the obvious striker and Mizushima doing a cool job getting past her kick barrages and hitting some impressive suplexes and latching into submissions. Saiharas kicks were ever solid and she also had some nifty judo throws. The finish was really cool with Saihara having Mizushima in a leg crab hold, with Mizushima trying to gut it out only for Saihara to switch into this nasty achilles hold variation and crank back for the tap.

 

Drew Gulak vs. Timothy Thatcher, Beyond 10/12

This was an exercise in bending ankles in painful ways. Naturally I dug all that, the twisting of the legs, the slow takedown that was done by leaning on the shin. It's a great display of leverage and some carny creativity. Aside from that they didn't do much fancy here, it was pretty much the kind of grappling match between two gruff balding men in front of a small quiet audience you imagine these two having. Just tight armlocks and nothing much fancy besides a few WoS inspired escapes. Thought this was getting really good when Gulak tried to damage Thatchers leg and immediately got punished with a hard kick to the spine. I would have liked them to continue going in a more BattlARTS direction, but they kind of stuck to grappling it out. Gulaks painful looking instep hold thing that bent Thatchers leg all the wrong way was easily the highlight. I like how they kept it in the scope of an opening match, pretty much no big nearfalls, no overkill, no high spots. They seemed to be making it all up on the fly which benefited the match a lot, a nice stark contrast to the current wrestling scene where everything feels hyper choreographed. A fine piece of wrestling that felt a bit like a skinnier leaner version of an Arn vs Ole Anderson match.

 

Mari & Act vs Anri & Erisa Nagai (AWG 7/18)

Another very good little tag. This was built around Mari and Act being monsters with Anri and Nagai hardly being able to touch them. That can normally be trite, but they delivered a number of neat moments here. Anri and Nagai had to work hard to get anything at all and that made this a pretty intense match. Once again, Anri had a lot of aura and even her initial face off with Mari felt intense. Act didn't do a ton in the match, but I'd be lying if I said she didn't add to the match. She was a really effective monster early on. Mari did pretty much the rest of the match, and it was good stuff. Thought she stuck a great balance between overconfident and untouchable badass to being put on her ass with the slim chance of being caught by a rollup. Nagai is pretty much all rollups and a split legged leg drop, but they were slick roll ups and she really had to earn that split legged leg drop. Anris intensity once again jumped off the screen. Her thrust kicks were awesome and she gets a lot of mileage out of those sillas she does. There was also some fun brutality from Mari and Act, at one point Mari was basically cracking Anris ribs with her kicks. In the end Mari and Act finished their opponents off with ease, which I thought was fine since Nagai and Anri only have about one year of experience each. For a top heels vs hapless rookies match this was really good considering it could've just been a low effort squash.

2025 Matchguide 

The Quest for Seichi Ikemoto matches

 Seichi Ikemoto feels like a guy who is nowhere near talked about enough as far as 2022 pro wrestlers go. Really good slick shootstylist with cool Honda-esque submissions who is not afraid to eat and dish out punishment. He's also not afraid to throw down in odd spaces, as we are about to see.

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Atsushi Suzuki, 5/28/2022

We have no achieved an almost perfect synthesis of shootstyle, garbage, and weird office space wrestling. This takes place in a room that I assume would normally have business powerpoint presentation but they lay out some mats and they do shootstyle. For some reason there is a ton of trash strewn about the mat. And they do shootstyle. Ikemoto looks great as usual outclassing Suzuki early on, love the crazy rolling omoplata. Then Suzuki sleazes it up by nailing Ikemoto with a water bottle. Ikemoto takes some nasty bumps including a shoddy piledriver on the mat, and a god damn suplex to the bare floor. Suzuki is a bit clunky but Ikemoto is so stiff and exciting it doesn‘t matter. Nice finish. It all adds up to a memorable fun match.

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Tetsuya Izuchi, GLEAT 8/20/2022

Total Ikemoto show. Izuchi barely brings anything but Ikemoto brings so much neat stuff that the match is still worth watching. Cool mat transitions, cool holds, cool reversals, Ikemotos always doing something interesting. The one cool thing Izuchi did was bust out a nifty Gogoplata. He really needed that. Even his winning KO was lame. You‘ve really got nothing better than a weak slap, Izuchi?

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Soma Watanabe, GLEAT 3/13/2022

This was really good. The match had serious fight and scrappiness, with lots of punishing striking and uncooperative matwork. With a hot U-Style crowd this would have been quite great. Watanabe is about on the level of, say, UWFi era Kenichi Yamamoto. Nothing special but he had fire and could look competitive going at it with Ikemoto, and he wasn‘t afraid to get palm striked in his mush. He also dealt Ikemoto a really nasty face kick while Ikemoto was on his knees, and that was enough to get me behind Watanabe. Ikemoto did a really nice layered performance balancing his flashy moves with how he was punishing Watanabe. Check out how he sold a random Watanabe armbar, really putting over how even random hold can be a possible injury. Finish was great as Watanabe was outclassed but made a big rally trying to put Ikemoto away and I ate it up. Most importantly, the match didn‘t feel like by the numbers shootstyle which is impressive in 2022.

Seichi Ikemoto vs. Yu Iizuka, GLEAT 9/6/2022

This had the kind of flashy moves and matwork you hope for from an ex-U-Style guy and a Volk Han obsessed kid like Iizuka going at it. The match was a good mix of flashy matwork and Ikemoto punishing a rookie. Though I wonder why Iizuka is still this low on the pecking order. He dealt a pretty big blow to Ikemoto spiking him with a Dragon Suplex and then hitting a big jumping kick, but then Ikemoto just won. It felt like they had to rush the ending. It was still an enjoyable match, though.

2021 MOTY Project Update #3

 6. Yu Iizuka vs. Takuya Nomura, GLEAT 7/22/2021

Basically a slightly stiffer U-Style match. Both guys beat the hell out of eachother with shots to the body and later open hand strikes. Nomura is always great in shootstyle matches, I have no idea why he wasn't utilized as the Hiroyuki Ito of GLEAT from the beginning. Nomuras submissions were great as usual too and both guys produced some slick mat exchanges. This is all about the last minute where Iizuka is down 2-1 and both guys start throwing hell at each other with Nomura trying to stay on his feet. Very satisfying use of the points system.

2021 MOTY Project MASTER LIST

Some 2020 pro-wrestling worth watching

 I am admittedly pretty hard on wrestling in the year of our lord 2020. There is more of it than ever, and it all sucks harder than ever, not to mention the virus delivering a near-death blow to an already struggling industry as promoters and wrestlers failed to come up with experimental solutions to the given problem and instead gave us some pro wrestling that feels even dumber, even more forced and more Jackass-like than ever before. However, there have been some bright spots, and I am going to highlight some of them in this post.

Junichi Hanawa vs. Takahiro Tababa, H-Production ?/?/2020

Meth lab BattlARTS style match taking place in a small bar without a ring. Hanawa is dumpy and balding. I've never seen him before, but the way I know Japanese sleaze indies he probably has been running his own micro-shootstyle shows since 1993. This was really entertaining thanks to some unexpected psycho stiffness and Hanawas tough old man charisma. Tababa was doing some subtle heel tactics in between crowbarring his opponent. The brawling portion where they ventured into the street was a bit of a letdown, but there was a funny spill down a ramp and a kneedrop off of a railing. The finish was very good with both guys throwings some brutal strikes and the German suplex on the floor has to be the spot of the year.

Junichi Hanawa vs. ZIMA Yoshida ?/?/2020

This seems to be taking place in Hanawas backyard garden in the pouring making it essential pandemy era viewing material. Another fun unexpectedly stiff little match that had some pretty nasty low kicks and shotais and some neat matwork. ZIMA describes himself as the self-declared Volk Han of Adachi but with the hair and condition of Andrej Kopylov.

Takanori Ito vs. Yutaka Yoshie (GLEAT ?/2020)

GLEAT is uploading random exhibition matches to their YouTube. I didn’t really like the first GLEAT show, but if they are to continue giving Yutaka Yoshie things to do they are getting on my good side. Takanori Ito is one of the GLEAT boys with a shooter gimmick. He isn’t very impressive, especially not if you compare him to Pioneer Senshi rookies, but he has a decent enough variety of strikes, and he didn’t do any stupid shit like 99% of modern pro wrestlers too. So this ended up being a good no frills match. Yoshie doesn’t really enage in shootstyle, but he is really fun here potatoeing the young guy, working simple pro-style holds in a very snug and no-nonsense way, and absorbing Itos strikes with his blubber. Nasty nasty finish.