5-Star Match Reviews — page 2

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?

“6-3-94”.

Many pro-wrestling fans consider this to be the greatest professional wrestling match of all time, or at least of modern times. It has maintained that reputation for over three full decades. Words like “legendary” and “mythical” have been used to describe this match, as though it was some kind of fabled piece of artwork that demands immediate respect even after so much change and passing of time in the pro-wrestling business. The tape-trading community once came to a consensus and labeled this as the greatest wrestling match of all time. It was such an intense, physical, brutal and emotional match that, for a time, it was believed to be the first widely-recognized six-star match on the Meltzer five-star scale, a fact that Meltzer debunked in early 2023.

After three decades of well-earned fame and reverence, this is still an iconic match and an undeniable piece of pro-wrestling history…though it has since lost its luster compared to other matches of its time.

This is one of those fabled Dave Meltzer 5-Star matches (back when that actually meant something) that, unfortunately, has been mostly lost to time. It’s also one of the lesser known big All Japan classics since it took place a few weeks after a much more famous and heralded Kenta Kobashi classic that made him one of the biggest Japanese names among outside wrestling fans.

And what’s also interesting is that most of the 1990s All Japan classics have stood the test of time; they haven’t aged poorly (unless you’re one of those viewers who winces at the sight of head spikes given what would end up happening to Misawa and whatnot), and still feel fresh if you were to revisit them more than once. And as we go through the golden decade of the 1990s we take another stop along the King’s Road to see how well those supposed great matches hold up.

Whether we want to admit it or not, Pro Wrestling Guerilla (PWG) has played an important part in shaping the modern wrestling landscape in North America.

This small and “unique” indy federation out of California was instrumental in helping many of today’s biggest stars either get their foot in the door or bring them to something of a larger stage. Central to PWG’s importance in this ‘wrestler builder’ project has been the Battle Of Los Angeles, which is PWG’s premier annual tournament with a unique format. It’s split over three night, one for each bracket of eight participants, with the winners of each facing off in a three-way elimination match on the final night. Wrestlers from all over the independent world flock to PWG in the hopes of winning the tournament and making a big name for themselves.

Although the style of wrestling put on by PWG leaves a lot to be desired and is DEFINITELY an acquired taste, BOLA’s results speak for themselves. The tournament has featured a bevy of participants over the past two decades including AJ Styles, Bryan Danielson, Kevin Owens, El Generico, Kenny Omega, Claudio Castagnoli, Tyler Black, both Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, Drew Galloway, and many others. Previous winners include Generico, Omega, Ricochet, Zack Sabre, Jr., Kyle O’Reilly, and Adam Cole.

While it’d be hard to compare BOLA to King of the Ring, the Champion Carnival, or the G1 Climax, this PWG tournament has served as an important stepping stone for wrestlers on the American indies looking to move upwards and onwards to bigger things. And that’s what these lucha libres hoped to achieve in the 2019 edition of the tournament.

Few wrestlers have served as a better example of artificial praise to push a specific idea than Will Ospreay. If you were an outsider looking into the strange and colorful world of professional wrestling and saw how much praise Ospreay has gotten from (the closest thing to objective) journalists without context then you’d take his whopping 38 5-stars-or-higher matches and think, ‘wow, this guy has had had a more impactful career than everyone since about 1980. Then you’d notice that all of this over-the-top praise doesn’t sound all that organic or natural.

While there have been some great Will Ospreay matches over the last eight years or so, it’s ridiculous to claim that he’s the best in the world right now. Granted, the pro-wrestling fandom is one that’s super prone to hyperbole and losing one’s mind in the moment. But if we take a step back and look at something after the initial excitement dies down, we can look at things with a more balanced view and judge whether or not something really is worthy of such overwhelming praise.

Twenty years ago Pro-Wrestling NOAH reached the top of the wrestling world on the shoulders of its unquestioned ace Kenta Kobashi. He was once called “the perfect wrestler” by the wrestling press and his body of work during the 1990s included plenty of evidence to back up that claim.

A big part of Kobashi’s appeal came from his dedication and work ethic: what he lacked in stats, amateur accomplishments, or rankings on any national lists he made up for in his utter refusal to give up. That mentality bled into his matches: he put so much effort and work into each match that he became the ultimate example of an overachiever.

Most people thought his career was over come 2001 after years of overexerting himself and destroying his knees, hence the perfect wrestler comments which were intended as a career retrospective. But then, against all odds, Kobashi not only came back in 2002 but went on to have one of the best world championship runs in history. That reign made him the dictionary definition of what it means to be the best wrestler in the world: competing at such an elite level while on top that fans couldn’t help but shell out top dollar to see him live.

And today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of one of the best matches of his glorious reign, one that almost redefined what it a David versus Goliath encounter is supposed to look like.

So I hear this Will Ospreay guy’s pretty good…allegedly.

Ospreay is the latest ink in a long chain of smaller workhorses that became ridiculously popular with a certain segment of the wrestling audience that favored action over character. First it was Chris Benoit, then Bryan Danielson, then AJ Styles, then Kenny Omega, and now Ospreay. And if you listen to that diehard fandom then it won’t be long before you hear someone say something along the lines of “Ospreay is the NEW greatest of all time”.

Personally I’m doubtful of that kind of hyperbole. Not only does it scream of recency bias but it comes across as artificial. What’s more, if you take Dave Meltzer at face value (and that’s a BIG if), then Ospreay has had more of the best matches of all time over the past eight years than anyone else since 1980.

So is Ospreay really some kind of pro-wrestling master, or is his rise to the top merely a case of him having the loudest cheerleaders in the room?

Few wrestlers better define the term ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ than Akira Taue. At first glance he didn’t look like much: a lanky Giant Baba copycat that moved slowly and lacked power behind his moves. And yet this unimposing man is part of the most fabled quartet in modern Japanese history (The Four Pillars of Heaven) and one half of the most successful tag team in AJPW history.

At the same time, the man does have his critics: ask almost any diehard puro enthusiast to rank the Four Pillars and it’s almost guaranteed that Taue would be at the bottom. Some would even replace him with Jun Akiyama under the argument that Akiyama was a far more credible wrestler while Taue benefited from being in the right place at the right time.

I don’t see things that way; Taue is a much more impressive wrestler than most people give him credit for. He was a master at all the little things that most people don’t care about and while he wasn’t a big moves sort of guy he was a clever and crafty wrestler not unlike peak heel Ric Flair or Eddy Guerrero.

And what better example of Taue’s greatness to look at than the best singles match of his career?

Even though we’re only in March the best match of 2024 might already have been decided thanks to Bryan Danielson and Zack Sabre Jr.

Back in October 2023 these two had a match truly worthy of the WrestleDream’ show name. Even though it was, by most definitions, a cold match without much storyline reason for being, the two wrestlers put on one of the most exciting displays of grappling skill seen in years. Some people were comparing it to the best work from the likes of Kurt Angle, Bret Hart, and other past legends whose greatest strengths were shown in what they did and not in what they said or how they looked.

Many people adored that October match, to the point that few believed that they could top themselves. So did they accomplish that this time around? Read on to find out.

No wrestling company has more 5-Star matches (according to Meltzer) than New Japan Pro-Wrestling. As of this writing, he has rated 95 NJPW matches 5-stars-or-higher. Of those 95 matches, 48 took place during the 2010s, 35 took place during this decade, one took place during the 2000s, six took place during the 1990s, and two took place during the 1980s.

Now, Meltzer’s star ratings are very hit or miss and they should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, these ratings do serve, at the very least, as an opportunity for someone to discover otherwise unknown wrestlers and then judge these alleged classic matches for themselves. That’s why we’re going back in time once again to see one of the early Meltzer 5-star classics to see how well it holds up to time.

Will Ospreay is believed to be the greatest pro-wrestler wrestler of the past four decades…that is, if you take the Wrestling Observer at face value.

Ospreay is one of many wrestlers active today that most fans either love or hate. Some people love him for many reasons, such as his ability to wrestle at the same breakneck speed on a nightly basis, his ability to defy gravity, his hybrid wrestling style, and so on. Meanwhile, some people loathe him for these same reasons, which is why there’s always plenty of discussion whenever he has a big match that gets praised to the moon.

If Meltzer is to be believed then this random exhibition match from 2023 is the best match in TNA/Impact history. That’s certainly high praise, especially given how many wrestlers have come through that company in the 20-plus years it has been in operation. So once again we’re looking back at a match after the initial excitement around it has died down to see how well it holds up.

The term “dream match” gets thrown around a lot these days and it was used to describe the second singles match between Bryan Danielson and Kazuchika Okada. Both NJPW and AEW thought that a rematch from Forbidden Door II was worthy of being the semi-main-event of NJPW’s biggest show of the year.

This is a dream match that many wrestling fans, myself included, wanted to see for years. It was the perfect meeting between two stylistically equal wrestlers. Both of these men were known the world over for being smaller wrestlers that compensated for their small statures with incredible technical wizardry. Both men were known for putting on some of the most unpredictable yet realistic matches in modern times. Both of them were known for having unique personalities both on-screen and off.

And yet only one of them could claim the title of “best technical wrestler in the world?” So who would be, Bryan Danielson or Zack Sabre, Jr.? Read on to find out.

It has been a VERY long time since an AJPW match received the “coveted” 5-star treatment from Dave Meltzer…or in this case, 5-star PLUS.

The last time All Japan reached this supposed level of historic greatness was in October 1999 in a match involving two of the fabled Four Pillars, an Olympic-level grappler that is considered the unofficial “fifth pillar” and a guy who was known as “Rat Boy”. But not only is this the first AJPW match in 24 years reach such a level, but if Meltzer’s ratings are to be taken at face value and supposed biases taken out of the equation, then this is considered the best match in AJPW history. And considering how much wrestling that encompasses and how much the modern wrestling landscape has been influenced by AJPW’s 1990s golden decade, claiming that this is AJPW’s ultimate magnum opus is a bold statement, to say the least. Let’s see if such praise is deserved.