5-Star Match Reviews

WrestleMania 42 is right around the corner and there’s a lot to be both excited and worried about. For a little while the build towards this year’s WrestleMania was largely underwhelming outside of Brock Lesnar versus Oba Femi. Then things exploded in the wrong way with WWE’s parent company TKO making the blockheaded decision of inserting Pat McAfee of all people into the main feud on SmackDown…which then bled into RAW as well. For every big pop for guys like Oba and Rollins there have been just as many groans over the growing influence of a faceless board of directors who are largely seen to be negatively affecting the most-watched wrestling show of the year. I issued a bit of a warning about this when I reviewed last year’s John Cena/Cody Rhodes/Travis Scott fiasco and, lo and behold, the powers-that-be managed to live up to these low expectations and set a negative tone going into WrestleMania. To that end, and expecting a possibly disappointing show this year, I figured we should take a moment to revisit better days – and by “better” I mean the greatest WrestleMania of all time, WrestleMania X-Seven. I know we’re a few days removed from the show’s silver anniversary, but better late than never.

It’s kind of a sad thing to say but there seems to be a correlation between higher match quality lower attendance or revenue. Let’s use 1997 as an example. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin is widely regarded as the best match in WrestleMania, WWE, and wrestling history, and it took place on one of the least financially lucrative ‘Manias ever. Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi headlined two AJPW shows in 1997 and the better of the two took place in front of a much smaller crowd yet it is widely considered the best match in AJPW history (at least judging by how much Kobashi talks about it). NJPW’s best match of 1997 took place not at the Tokyo Dome, but in Osaka in front of 6,000 people. Then there’s AJW which had the worst year of its existence up to that point. And yet despite facing an implosion worse than maybe any other promotion in the world at the time, the women who competed in that unforgiving ring still put on classics as if everything was still fine. They were true professionals who gave everything to their craft, and the end results are some of the most exciting and worthwhile matches available today.

Now that I’m back from vacation I have a lot of catching up to do on the writing side. As such I received an email from a regular reader to go over this match. And for good reason: everyone seems to have loved this match. Both Dave Meltzer and Scott Keith gave it the full 5-Star treatment. The BoD community voted it the Match of the Year for 2024 and it came close to winning the staunchly opinionated Wrestling Observer’s MOTY as well. It was even considered MOTY for 2024 in WWE (though it tied with Cody vs. Reigns at WrestleMania XL). Personally I didn’t get to enjoy this match to the fullest live because I suddenly fell ill while watching it live. By the time I recovered this show was long over so that cast a pall on things for me. Now, though, I can revisit this beloved match and see what all the buzz was about.

Yes, this is a ten-plus-hour, 23-match show.

Yes, I’m reviewing the whole thing in one go. In detail.

Yes, this single column has about 14,000 words. But hell, if these women embodied the notion of “go big or go home” then it’s only fair that I do the same in covering this famous show over three decades later.

I was originally going to post this last year on the show’s 30^th anniversary but I couldn’t get to in time for a number of reasons, namely burnout, family issues, and the fact that, again, THIS SHOW IS OVER TEN FUCKING HOURS LONG. I’m a very patient man when it comes to wrestling but not even I could watch this in one sitting. It was so painfully long that I had to work on it in segments and eventually I had to focus on more pressing things. And now that I’ve had time to do a bit more research on this show (including a mixture of online video essays and some books on AJW written by Japanese journalists and some by Rossy Ogawa himself), I can finally tackle this gargantuan show and see how it holds up over thirty years.

So this was and still is considered to be the single greatest “women’s wrestling” show in modern history. I put that term in quotation marks because technically it’s not a purely women’s show because, among other things, there are two matches involving men. But if we’re talking about a show promoted or carried by women’s wrestling performances, then yes, it’s still the biggest of them all. After all, how many other women’s wrestling shows can say they drew between 32,500 and 42,000 fans to the Tokyo Dome and kept most of them there for almost eleven full hours?

The main story was the one-night V*TOP Five Star Tournament which featured eight of the best women’s wrestlers selected from AJW, JWP and FMW, all fighting for a winner’s purse of ¥15,000,000 and the title of Best in the World. Some of the names involved are well known by now: Aja Kong, Manami Toyota, Dynamite Kansai, and Megumi Kudo are among the participants. But there’s one more whose star shone brightest during that time: Akira Hokuto, who was arguably the best wrestler in the world at the time, regardless of promotion or gender. Earlier in 1994 Hokuto announced that she planned to retire at the end of the year, citing her many injuries as reason the decision. This was understandable: she broke her neck in 1987 when she ate a second-rope Tombstone Piledriver and continued the match holding her head in place with her hand, suffered a serious leg injury in a 1991 match and had to be physically restrained from continuing, got so battered in her DreamSlam I match with Shinobu Kandori that she went back to the Matsunagas and to Rossy Ogawa crying, and in general was so often seen covered in bandages that earned a second nickname of “The Mummy”.

The initial plan was for Hokuto to work three big shows for AJW, with the Dome being her final. As time went on this angle ended up being less of a last hurrah and more of a departure abroad as Hokuto found immense success wrestling as ‘Reina Jubuki/Rain Storm’ in Mexico and even married Mascara Magica. But their marriage fell apart and with time Hokuto returned to Japan which changed the ultimate outcome of this Dome Show to now have a new stipulation: if Hokuto won the whole tournament she wouldn’t retire.

The other stories center more on the historical aspect of the show. It was meant to mark the 40^th anniversary of Mildred Burke’s 1954 tour of Japan which is often considered the birth of women’s wrestling in Japan. This isn’t quite true, though: women’s wrestling originated almost ten years earlier in immediate post-war Japan as more of a cabaret/side show attraction with heavy burlesque elements and was seen as pure entertainment on an almost exhibitionist-level of public immorality. So while Burke added some degree of competitive credence to the medium, it would be inaccurate to call her its originator.

The show’s planning and promoting spanned months with plenty of changes and rumors coming out leading up to it. Initially there were reports that Tonya Harding would appear, either as a wrestler or as a special guest of some sort, but those plans fell through mainly due to Harding having a multi-million-dollar insurance policy on her legs through Lloyd’s of London and her at the time staggering demand for $2million to wrestle just one match. This arrangement never materialized but at least it served as a halfway decent publicity stunt for the show.

Notably absent from this show were two big names in joshi: Devil Masami and Mayumi Ozaki. Both of them were high-profile figures during the 80s and during the 1990s interpromotional era, with Ozaki in particular being central to this big-money period thanks to her trio of tag matches alongside Dynamite Kansai opposite Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada. Details on Ozaki’s absence remain murky with some rumors blaming a supposedly bitter relationship between her and AJW booker Rossy Ogawa. As for Devil, she’d recently won JWP’s world title from Dynamite Kansai and JWP was not in any position to have their world champion job in a one-night tournament. So now that we have that out of the way we can begin.

Twenty years ago the greatest indy wrestling match of all time took place. For years it was revered as this fabled encounter, one that would become an indelible piece of independent wrestling history. It helped cement Ring of Honor as a (for that time period) viable alternative wrestling company, it brought new eyes to Pro Wrestling NOAH, it elevated Samoa Joe into a star, and it helped cement Kenta Kobashi as arguably the most selfless and admirable wrestler in the world.

Much has changed since then: Kobashi has retired, Joe has gone on to play Sweet Tooth, ROH peaked, almost died, and was revived in a pro-wrestling version of necromancy, and the wrestling business has changed. Nowadays there’s an entire cornucopia of indy wrestling feds great and small, though very few of them have gotten as much attention as this match did when it was first announced. It was such a big deal that ROH’s then-booker Gabe Sapolsky basically decided, “screw storylines, we’ve got Kobashi” and built around him making his first appearance for a major American wrestling company. And as someone who has documented Kobashi’s career extensively through translated his books and other detailed volumes about the Four Heavenly Kings, I think there’s more to know about this match that adds to its already stellar reputation.

The Story

After losing the GHC Heavyweight Championship in March 2005 and having one of the best matches of the past forty years with Kensuke Sasaki in July, Kobashi continued his work as NOAH’s elder statesman. This work translated into a working relationship with Harley Race, a man who had deep respect for Kobashi and asked him to come to the US for Race’s fledging World League Wrestling promotion in Missouri. On one hand this was a major step down for Kobashi, going from having ~62,000 fans in the Tokyo Dome chanting along for his chop battle to getting next to no reaction in front of a tiny local crowd in Eldon, MO since few of them knew who he was. On the other hand Kobashi was a guy who vowed to give the fans 110% every time regardless of crowd size. But on this occasion he got worried: his post-surgery style was one that required the crowd to basically give him energy and for him to feed off that and respond. So when the tiny crowd in Eldon barely so much as reacted to him, Kobashi panicked, which made him doubt whether his style would translate to an American audience. And this was despite Harley Race going out of his way to present Kobashi as a wrestler of mythic proportions, going so far as to call him “Mr. Puroresu” and gift him his NWA Heavyweight Title belt.

Now, as some of you may recall, Samoa Joe went onto Steve Austin’s podcast years ago and basically told his version of events about how Kobashi was convinced that no one in America knew who the hell he was. As such Kobashi thought that to get over he’d have to construct a match as though he were a 1960s Mr. Fuji-style token evil Japanese invader. And all the while Joe had to remind Kobashi that no, so many of his AJPW tapes were traded around the US illegally that the audience coming to ROH would know EXACTLY who he was.

“In my first match at WLW in Eldon, my opponent was a local babyface. Even when I entered the ring, the venue was silent because I was not well-known at all. I understand that it’s natural to cheer for the local wrestler, but it was frustrating to have their support completely overshadow mine. “How am I going to turn this around?” I had that excitement. However, without doing anything particularly special, as the match went on, the crowd gradually became more and more excited. I was convinced that even if the language barrier existed, if I put on a passionate match, it would resonate with everyone, and the same happened when I went to ROH in New York next.” – Kenta Kobashi, 2013

It was around the same time that Dave Meltzer was reporting on each and every lead that he could find regarding Kobashi and this match. He was told that Kobashi was going out of his way to research Joe and ROH in order to create “the perfect match” and that Kobashi vowed to give fans MORE than their money’s worth. This reputation would stay with Kobashi for the rest of his career, and indeed, has become a defining part of his aura as a performer.

“He [Kobashi] believed in always delivering a great match and showing everything he could do, even if he destroyed himself in the process.” – Dave Meltzer, WON, June 20, 2011.

Hulk Hogan’s death on July 24th has been one of the biggest wrestling news stories of the year so far. It was one of the rare instances when something about pro-wrestling made national headlines and received coverage by outlets that normally didn’t care for it. His passing brought a wave of tributes and renewed discussion about the man’s legacy, with some people focusing on him at his peak and others focusing on the many controversies that followed him for the better part of his life. For those who’ve opted to focus on Hogan the wrestler, most of the attention has been given to his WWF/E contributions, but what about the things he did elsewhere? Well luckily I’ve found a rare match of Hogan wrestling outside of North America and it’s a nice little example of Hogan being smart enough to understand that different things get over with different audiences.

A bit late on this one but it’s still relevant given Pro-Wrestling NOAH’s anniversary celebrations.

Twenty years ago Pro Wrestling NOAH held their second Tokyo Dome show. It was another sign of NOAH’s time at the top of the Japanese wrestling landscape. And if some fans are to be believed, this show was the best PPV/premium event all year, given that it was voted Best Major Show by the Wrestling Observer’s audience. You can take that distinction for what you will but there’s still something to be gleamed from this show two decades later.

It was NOAH’s second event in the hallowed Tokyo Dome and at this time cracks were starting to form. Unlike last year’s Departure show which was both a critical and commercial success, Destiny was only a critical success. Despite its positive reception NOAH ultimately lost the equivalent of $100,000.00 on the event. Departure had a more linear progression, culminating in the heavyweight title dream match everyone wanted to see. Meanwhile, Destiny had a more mixed card, as we will see below. It was clearly a gamble of a show and it didn’t really pay off, either in the short term or long-term. But for now, let’s see how the matches themselves hold up.

NOAH Destiny 2005
July 18, 2005, Tokyo Dome
Attendance: 62,000

This is a special match for me: this is the second match I ever reviewed and it’s the one that forever sold me on puro. Going into this I had no idea about any background; I just saw Kenta Kobashi in a tag match, heard great things about this from secondhand sources, and thought I’d check it out. And here we are years later and it’s still an amazing, time-tested masterpiece of professional wrestling. And now that thirty years have gone by, let’s see how well it holds up.

Full disclosure to get things started here: I had never watched a WarGames match prior to this. Not the originals and not the new ones in NXT or AEW. The originals took place before I got into wrestling and from the summary clips I’ve gathered from the resurrected ones in the 2010s to today the newer ones are basically timed spotfests inside two enclosed rings instead of one. That being said there’s this almost universal admiration for WarGames as a stipulation and this one in particular stands above the rest. I’ve read in other places that this match is something akin to a canonical or critical piece of American wrestling history which is enough to convince me to check it out and see how it holds up in 2025.

Now, my having never seen this match before actually helps because I can go into this blind and not know all that much about what’s going on. Thus it falls on the commentators to explain this match to viewers like me. And lo and behold do Jesse Ventura and Jim Ross to an OUTSTANDING job of setting the scene and summarizing key points to viewers both new and existing.

The Story

Sting had been involved in a brutal and personal feud with The Dangerous Alliance for months, going as far back as Starrcade ’91, with the Alliance going after Sting because he was considered “the franchise” of WCW. The Alliance wanted to destroy the WCW that Sting represented and thus put together a crew of some of the most capable villains they could fine: Arn Anderson, Larry Zbyszko, Bobby Eaton, Steve Austin and their biggest star Rick Rude.

Meanwhile Sting gathered a crew of allies that had been likewise drawn into feuds with the Alliance, including Barry Windham, Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat, the relatively inexperienced Dustin Rhodes, and Nikita Koloff. That last one was especially important because there was a concern that Koloff wasn’t as loyal to Sting as the others, which left people wondering if Koloff would betray his friend Sting and join the Alliance.

There might not be two people more closely tied to AEW history than Jon Moxley and “Hangman” Adam Page…and there also might not be two people in AEW right now who polarize AEW’s audience as much as Jon Moxley and “Hangman” Adam Page.

Moxley has proven to be a divisive figure. He has been a central figure in the company’s biggest feuds since the start and has become synonymous with the company. To me Moxley gives off CM Punk vibes: he’s a guy who wears his “alternative” or “maverick” philosophies on his sleeve and draws people to him the same way Punk did two decades earlier back when being straight-edge was still on the fringes. But while Moxley has been popular with AEW he has been controversial as well: his obsession with CZW-inspired ultraviolence has made him into an extremely niche character and his penchant for using smoke-and-mirrors in his big feuds hasn’t helped improve his reputation. Even diehard readers who come to this site regularly and big Scott himself have expressed frustration with Moxley before, which is never a good sign when a guy is so deeply entrenched in the company’s biggest feuds and booked in its headlining matches.

Then there’s Adam Page, a guy who, on paper, has the potential to be the company’s ace. He’s athletic, has worked his way up to the main-event scene, is solid enough in the ring, and seems to resonate with his audience (bad jokes of him being a “cowboy with anxiety” notwithstanding). And yet it seems like he has already hit his ceiling, constantly flirting with the main-event scene but never made into someone around whom AEW could built its brand.

And yet despite these pros and cons these two men apparently had a 5-Star match two years ago…or did they?

The Story

Months earlier in October, Moxley and Page had a match that ended prematurely when Moxley concussed Page. The match was stopped and Page was taken to hospital for evaluation. Page returned on November 30^th and immediately went after Moxley for putting his career in jeopardy. The two had another match on January 11, 2023, which Page won, but that left them with one win apiece and a tie-breaker was needed. Thus a rubber match was announced for Revolution and it would be…a Texas Deathmatch…in California. And so, after many heated confrontations and barbed promo exchanges these two men vowed to commit extreme acts of violence and carnage on each other. Even the commentators used words like “scary” and “dangerous” to describe what they thought was going to happen.

In other words, we were left with the impression that this was going to be a sickening match, one that would leave the audience feeling anything from uncomfortable to worried for the wrestlers’ safety. But would it actually reach that level of violence?

I was originally going to post this on Wednesday but I had some other matters to attend to first. Anyways, since so many of us in the wrestling fandom are always wearing nostalgia goggles I figured I’d go back in time once again on this, the 30^th anniversary of a famous match between two of the most celebrated women’s wrestlers in modern times in Manami Toyota and Kyoko Inoue.

Of the two of them Toyota is by far the more famous wrestler. She was one of the most creative and innovative in-ring wrestlers of her time, coming up with some of the craziest techniques ever seen. Some of the stuff she did during the 1990s was a decade ahead of its time and yet still not replicated all that much elsewhere. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that everyone’s favorite match critic, Dave Meltzer, lauded her as the greatest thing he’s ever seen, showering her with stars while Will Ospreay was still in his swaddling clothes. But were she and her peers really that good, or was this praise simply the result of an overreaction to something new and different?

The Story

Toyota and Inoue had a years-long rivalry that saw them trade wins back-and-forth in singles and tag matches. They were already turning heads as early as 1992 when Meltzer rated one of their matches “*****+++”, that’s how awesome it was. Their rivalry continued as both women won singles and tag titles but then the stakes were raised even further when Toyota won the WWWA World Single Championship, arguably the most prestigious and historically significant title in all of women’s pro-wrestling. but Toyota’s celebration was short-lived: once she beat Aja Kong to win the title she found herself swapping one big woman for another. Inoue was heftier than most of the other women and had an easy time throwing power moves and trapping her opponents in submission holds since most of her opponents were much smaller and lighter than her. So Toyota had a problem: though she had the champion’s advantage Inoue was bigger, stronger, and just as quick. Would Toyota retain her title on her first defense, or would she end up a transitional champion once all was said and done?

I was originally going to post this yesterday but got sidetracked with other stuff. With lots of great matches happening in past years ending in “5” – 1995, 2005 and 2015 – I figured this would be a good opportunity to revisit some classics from previous years to see how well they hold up. And today we look back at a match from thirty years ago, one of the rare sixty-minute matches from AJPW cannon, and one that helped cement both Toshiaki Kawada and Kenta Kobashi as legends in the wrestling business.

The Story

The main story here was that Kawada had recently won the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship from Steve Williams and Kobashi was his first challenger. AJPW put a heavy emphasis on wins and losses, creating stories from these records. Kawada was much older than Kobashi and had beaten him in each and every one of their prior matches. But while Kawada had history and stats on his side, Kobashi had his raw determination and unbreakable spirit. had proven in many matches before that he just wouldn’t lie down and die and that his opponents often had to go to greater lengths than normal just to keep him down.

But Kobashi was still an underling, a lesser man, a cut beneath him. Kawada had his sights upwards, on his archrival Misawa, who still stood far above him as company ace, with or without the title. Kawada hoped to make easy work of Kobashi and have a strong reign of his own to show that he was just as good as Misawa in every possible way.

This was the in-ring story. Outside of the squared circle there was a much bigger story, one that would have a huge impact on the match and the wrestlers. Two days earlier the Kansai region was hit with the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. Buildings collapsed, public infrastructure was destroyed, and somewhere between 5,500 and 6,400 people lost their lives. For many years this was considered the worst disaster to hit Japan since The Second World War. As such, there were talks of canceling the AJPW show to be held in Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, wrong place and wrong time and all that. But Giant Baba had other plans: he went ahead with the show anyways hoping that a night of puroresu would bring a small flicker of joy to grief-stricken fans and that the conflict in the ring could help those real people overcome the struggles they were dealing with at that time.

“The day before the event, Baba-san visited the homes of those in the severely affected areas among the members of the All Japan Pro Wrestling’s official fan club, “Kings Road,” distributing living supplies as much as possible. Additionally, the proceeds from this event were sent as disaster relief funds to the affected areas, and for those customers who had tickets but could not attend, we offered to refund them or exchange their tickets for a video of the event.

In the venue, there were not only people living in Kansai but also fans who came from Tokyo to watch this event. Due to the numerous blockades on the Shinkansen lines, it seems that many took the Shinkansen to Nagoya Station, where it was still running, and then transferred to limited express trains to make their way to Osaka. Moreover, in this emergency situation, hotels were fully booked, and I’ve heard that many people returned to Tokyo immediately after the event by sleeper trains or night buses.

Because they went to such lengths to come, the venue became unusually lively from the very first match. Although it couldn’t be described as a full house, everyone was earnestly focused on the ring in the center of the venue, seeking the vitality to live through pro wrestling.” – Kenta Kobashi, 2016

I tuned in to WWE’s first RAW on Netflix hoping to see something really new and ended up disappointed, mainly because the entrances and breaks between segments have become way too goddamn long, like everyone has started fetishizing The Undertaker for his entrances. As a result, I decided to look elsewhere for something a bit more exciting and…oh look, a Will Ospreay match. This might be wild and ludicrous but at least my time watching will be spent watching movement and not useless entrances.

The Story

Will Ospreay was involved in a short feud with MJF that saw the title change hands and also change names. It was called the International title when Ospreay held it and the American title when MJF held it. Great, it’s not enough for AEW to muddy its own waters with more belts than a department store, but they also thought it wise to change existing title names for…reasons. This isn’t a tapestry of storytelling, it’s a patchwork at best. Anyway, Ospreay regained his title just in time for Pac to win a four-way match to become #1 contender for it. And with that a special sort of ~DREAM MATCH~ was put together. This was the first time Ospreay and Pac faced off in five years, with their last match taking place in the UK and ending in a 30-minute draw. This time though there had to be a winner. But who would end up on top: the original high-flyer from the British Isles, or the younger, faster, crazier daredevil who did everything at breakneck speed and threw caution to the wind?

Hey, did you know that NJPW has their annual Tokyo Dome show today? If not, well that’s not all that surprising. New Japan has been kinda underwhelming since the Pandemic happened and despite some solid efforts here and there the company’s future seems to be a bit uncertain. The days of Tanahashi and Okada headlining big shows with their epic matches are long gone. Naito, Ishii, Shibata, and Goto are way past their primes. And while there is some level of promise in their newest class of rising stars like Tsuji and Narita, there seems to be an overall lack of spark in the company’s roster. So that’s why I figured I’d revisit a genuine classic from the company’s 2010s critical heyday, when they were the #2 company in the world and earning praise left and right. It’s time to look back at a match between two guys who are no longer with the company but who still left an indelible mark on it all the same, Shinsuke Nakamura and Kota Ibushi.

It’s been a while since I watched a modern NJPW junior heavyweight match and this one came highly recommended to me. I’ve heard that the company managed to bounce back from losing Will Ospreay and they’ve pivoted from relying on Hiromu Takahashi to carry the entire division on his surgically-repaired neck. So now that I’ve watched these two guys let’s see if they’re worth your time as well.

Thirty years ago the pro-wrestling world was a very strange place. WWF and WCW hadn’t really started their great war in earnest and both companies, despite having solid rosters, weren’t firing on all cylinders. On WWF’s side, unless the match involved Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels, fans weren’t always getting their money’s worth and tended to be disappointed once all the hype died down. WCW, meanwhile, tried to an extent to fill in the gaps in WWF’s product by marketing to people that WWF largely ignored. This mainly included fans who wanted classic, Southern-style wrestling and less of a cartoon-like presentation.

Though WCW had its own share of dubious decisions and questionable creative, they did have one thing WWF didn’t: a willingness to work with other companies. WCW was more willing to test the waters with other companies and even other styles from other countries. Come 1994 there was always at least some interest in Japanese wrestlers like The Great Muta and Jushin “Thunder” Liger. But another big entity making waves and trying to enter the American wrestling market came not from across the Pacific, but from south of the border.

When AAA took advantage of a political schism in lucha libre they found their way into the American market. By working with WCW on this show, AAA was not only able to promote themselves to a largely-ignored Hispanic audience, but the wider wrestling audience could get a glimpse of what lucha libre was all about. And no match did a better job of bridging that gap than this one.

What is better in pro-wrestling, drama or realism? Depending on whom you ask you’re likely to get a different answer. Many people love pro-wrestling for the stories and the (melo)drama; as some outside observers have noted, wrestling was once described (condescendingly) as “male soap opera”. There’s a modicum of truth to this, as seen with which wrestlers get over by playing characters and which wrestlers from the past are still remembered today.

But for those that are tired of the same old shtick and surrealism and want something else, where to they go? Boxing? Mixed Martial Arts? The Olympics? Or is there something still within the confines of pro-wrestling itself that checks that realism box while still also being entertaining? Well a few companies tried that out in the late 80s and 90s, and now we’ve found one such a match that, more or less, encapsulates the kind of action those experimenters were putting on.

Many wrestling fans consider Will Ospreay the best wrestler active today. There are plenty reasons behind this opinion: he has superhuman conditioning, he’s a jack-of-all-trades type who can’t be put into one box or another, and he executes some of the most visually-incredible moves ever seen. But these strengths are also weaknesses, depending on one’s point of view. The very things that make him a standout performer are also the same reasons why some people can’t stand him, no matter who he’s in the ring with. But are there genuine criticisms behind this purported GOAT-level wrestler, or is it merely a case of sour grapes?

Cody Rhodes is on top of the world right now. After finishing a years-long story and finally reaching the top of the mountain, fans all over the world were left with a much-needed sense of closure at the end of WrestleMania 40. But WWE’s never stops and within 24 hours of Rhodes’ big win came the most important question of all: “now what?”

When you watch pro-wrestling for a certain length of time you learn how to follow certain patterns and predict what’s going to happen with fairly good accuracy. In many ways we’ve gone in a circle when it comes to world champions: gone are the days when titles changed hands several times a month. Instead, most champions have long reigns and a quick switch after only a month rarely happens anymore.

Because of that, any wrestler with the dubious fortune of being any champion’s first challenger is almost always presumed to lose. This presents a big challenge for any promoter: how do you sellout a big venue when your audience knows how the main-event will end before it has even started?

WWE’s answer was simple, and, to be honest, brilliant: take the program somewhere the company has never been and let the wrestlers play the hits. This strategy worked in the moment: though there’s still plenty of time still left in the year it’s pretty clear that no crowd anywhere will match the level of noise, passion, and animation as the 11,000 or so in Décines-Charpieu. But if you were to step back and think for a moment, was this match all it was hyped up to be?

Twenty years ago Pro Wrestling NOAH was considered the critics’ choice among dedicated wrestling fans. It was considered the spiritual successor to Giant Baba’s All Japan, which was another critically-acclaimed promotion that shaped the wrestling style of an entire generation. And with wrestling in the United States becoming monopolized and business slowing down across the board, fans had to search far and wide to find something truly special.

But NOAH’s success was short-lived: despite drawing tens of thousands to the hallowed Tokyo Dome the company was on borrowed time the moment this show was announced. It was a big success but a short-term one as well. With wrestling in Japan continuing a slow but inevitable decline that had begun years earlier, NOAH tried to make the most of this rare opportunity.

And yet many people loved this show when it first happened. Top to bottom it was considered one of the most impressive and successful shows of its time, to the point that it was voted Best Major Show by the WON readership (back when those year-end awards had a smidge more credibility than they do now). But was this show really that good?