Almost 5-Star Match Reviews

It has been almost 25 years since Ring of Honor first launched. As a promotion it has undergone many ups and downs. But that seems to be the case with almost every promotion not named WWE: a new start up is announced, it has an impressive showing on its first show, and then a honeymoon phase follows for the next few years. But then once a certain standard is set it becomes harder to meet on a regular basis. Then for one reason or another interest wanes or fades completely and over time that promotion struggles to maintain momentum. This pattern isn’t unique to ROH, either: it also happened to TNA, NOAH, AEW to some degree and, most recently, post-Vince McMahon Triple H-run WWE. Sometimes people lose faith in a brand they once loved and reminisce over better times. That’s what brings us to this match, the one that put ROH on the map in the first place.

If there was ever a match that could be described as “chicken soup for the soul”, it’s this random televised singles match between Bret Hart and the 1-2-3 Kid.

As a Canadian Bret Hart’s name is still considered royalty up here even if much of his image has been somewhat shaken by years of alleged bitterness and criticism of the medium that made him famous. What cannot be shaken, though, is his reputation for being able to get a good match out of anyone, which has served as the cornerstone for his career and his post-retirement reputation. Then there’s Sean Waltman. a.k.a. X-PAX/Syxx-Pac/Lightning Kid/1-2-3 Kid, a midcarder who, like Bret, earned a reputation for being so good at his job that it became WWF’s unofficial mantra that, if you couldn’t have a good match with him, you weren’t a good wrestler at all. Strangely these two men only met one-on-one once but the sole match they did have was hailed as a classic when it first took place over thirty years ago. It was also considered arguably the best RAW match up to that point, so let’s see how well it holds up all these years later.

I never watched WCW growing up and didn’t learn about it until much later which, in hindsight, is a big shame because I clearly missed out on a lot of great wrestling. But that’s one of the benefits of the modern digital age: someone somewhere has footage of these older matches and has been gracious enough to share that with the world. In this case it’s a WWE-managed YouTube account centered on that old school WCW goodness. And with it being Christmas I figured I’d give myself a gift and watch one of the best ironman matches to ever take place.

I received a request from a reader to review this match and it’s been sitting unfinished for quite some time now. And now that I’ve finally gotten around to rewatching this match I understand why. What has been called one of the best opening matches of Daniel Bryan’s WWE career is, in hindsight, underwhelming and unworthy of such high praise. Then again when this match is the only redeeming quality on a show featuring at least four bad-to-terrible matches then obviously something with two lovable darlings will stand out positively by comparison.

The Story

Nothing here, just two midcard champions being booked against one another as part of the larger Raw versus SmackDown gimmick that WWE kept resurrecting, even though no one fucking cared about this since the winning brand received nothing of consequence. But that was late 2000s-early 2010s WWE for you: full of talented athletes forced to work with piss-poor gimmicks and less-than-stellar writing.

Professional wrestling is usually seen as a young person’s business. Given how serious of a toll it takes on the mind and body it makes sense for most wrestlers to get in when they’re young and get out by their forties. Wrestlers who keep going beyond, say, forty have been, up until recently, rare, and wrestlers stepping into the ring when in their fifties, sixties, and beyond, has been rarer still. There’s an obvious reason for this: once a wrestler hits a certain point where their physical declines become impossible to ignore people start to wonder if they’re better off hanging up their boots. But once in a while a story comes along in wrestling that seems to ignore the ravages of time. The last major feud of the career of Jushin Thunder Liger is one such a case.

The Story

In spring 2019 Jushin Liger announced that he would retire at Wrestle Kingdom 14 when NJPW hosted their annual Tokyo Dome show. This announcement was symbolic: not only was it the same venue in which the Jushin Liger wrestler character debuted back in 1989, but his retirement would coincide with the changing era brought about by a new Emperor assuming the throne in Japan. Since Liger was a Heisei Era wrestler and the new Reiwa Era was upon him, Liger saw this as a fitting pretext to let the next generation of junior heavyweights to take over.

And so Liger embarked on a retirement tour. Yet along the way he crossed paths with someone who really didn’t have all that much respect for him, that being Minoru Suzuki. Suzuki mocked Liger for not being able to go anymore and wanted to show everyone that the “Beast God” was nothing more than a fable. To really hammer this point home at one point Suzuki called Liger “Yamada” (Liger’s real name). The verbal bouts escalated into brutal ringside brawls, frequent chair-shits (a rarity in NJPW outside of acts like the Bullet Club) more American-style pull-aparts. Then things reached a boiling point: Suzuki tore off Liger’s mask and wig, leaving him a battered mess in the ring, his face concealed only by a towel thrown on him by Young Lions at the last moment. In response, a six-man tag match featuring Liger and Suzuki ended after about a minute when Liger became so enraged that he intentionally disqualified himself…and unleashed his demonic alter-ego Kishin Liger for only the fourth time in his career.

Kishin Liger proceeded to spit black mist in Suzuki’s face and attempted to stab Suzuki with a ring spike. The look on Suzuki’s face said it all: for the first time in years, Suzuki was afraid of something. “What hell hath Suzuki wrought?”, noted Kevin Kelly on commentary. Backstage, however, as Kishin’s attacks continued, Suzuki’s fear turned int maniacal laughter. Suzuki, a man notorious for terrifying his opponents whether they were rookies or headliners, was suddenly thrust into a whirlwind of emotions courtesy of a now-fully-awakened Liger. But would this level of intensity and animosity follow them into the ring when they finally squared off?

As I work my way through my Jumbo Tsuruta books to get those reviews going I figured I’d pivot for a moment to a match that kinda involves Tsuruta in spirit by way of Jun Akiyama. Though much smaller than Jumbo, Akiyama shared many similarities with him. He was an amateur wrestling standout, loved suplexes, wrestled in a smooth and aesthetically-pleasing way, and had the jumping knee bat as one of his trademark moves. To this day Akiyama is one of my favorite wrestlers who put on incredible matches over the course of his career despite never quite reaching the same level as the legendary Four Heavenly Kings. But how would Akiyama handle a wrestler as unstoppable and rehabilitated as Big Van Vader?

AJ Styles has been called “the Shawn Michaels of his generation” which is about as high praise as one can get in wrestling. He has been active as a performer for almost thirty years and has been consistently across different promotions and in different settings. Yet for all the regular praise he was getting as early as 2003 he was initially dismissed as just a small indy guy by the bigger power players in wrestling. Much of the evidence for this ignorance was based on how he looked and how he was mostly relegated to wrestling similar-sized high-flyers or flippy guys that permeated the independent scene at the time. But like Michaels at many points in his career, Styles was also very, very good at creating exciting matches against much bigger and heavier monsters, as seen here.

Few wrestlers have seen their reputation experience so many ups and downs as Triple H. He was loathed for many years as a midcarder, despised by many for his involvement with The Kliq and the Montreal Screwjob, hated even more during the 2000s for his backstage politicking and underwhelming main-event matches, loved again when he took over NXT, and now…is starting to see his reputation sink again due to how he’s perceived to be handling WWE’s business and creative directions in 2025. But there were a few times in his career when his talent couldn’t be ignored or denied. These were short windows when he was a lot better than many people believed. The most obvious of these periods was from January 2000 to May 2001 when he was more or less on top of the mountain as the WWF’s top heel and world champion. And few people were more critical to HHH’s blossoming into a true world champion than Mick Foley and his various personas.

The Story

Triple H and Foley – as Cactus Jack – faced off for the title one month earlier at the 2000 Royal Rumble in a Street Fight. That match is often hailed as one of the best matches in WWF/E history and one of the best in both of these men’s careers. Two weeks later Triple H decided to grant Cactus one last shot at the title but with the condition that if he lost he’d have to retire. Cactus agreed but he’d get to choose the stipulation…and he chose Hell in a Cell.

This frightened the champion: Cactus/Foley still carried the weight of his most famous Cell appearance with him and it solidified him as a monster that was next to impossible to kill. If Cactus managed to leave the Cell then HHH would have a harder time maintaining control. To this end if he wanted to win he’d have to do everything in his power to tip the scales in his favor…which we will see wouldn’t work out as he intended.

When talking about the greatest professional wrestlers ever by longevity a few names come up right away. On the men’s side these names include Ric Flair, Terry Funk, The Undertaker, Sting, and The Great Muta. There are far fewer options on the women’s side, with Mae Young and the Fabulous Moolah being the most notable multi-decade wrestlers. One name that should definitely be included alongside them – or perhaps top the list for not just wrestling in multiple decades but also for being consistently good in multiple decades – is Aja Kong.

Aja Kong might be one of the best wrestlers of all time, regardless of gender. She has outlasted virtually all of her female peers and even all of the top male stars to make it big in the late 80s and 90s. Many wrestlers have copied her style, including the likes of Vader and Eddie Kingston. Rossy Ogawa, one of the key minds behind the joshi scene for decades, once lauded her for being one of the smartest and most brilliant wrestlers he has ever worked with. And many of her matches still hold up today, more than three decades later, including the one we’ll be covering today.

The Story

On January 3rd Hotta beat Kong in a non-title singles match to earn the right to challenge for the title. Kong, however, didn’t sell this at all and described “feeling nothing” in the pre-match video going into this contest. But as we’ll see once the bell rings, Kong is very good at playing the stoic and saving her emotion and expression for the ring.

When AEW first announced this match it was all the convincing I needed to buy a ticket. Even though AEW’s regular product is, for me, hit or miss, Bryan Danielson versus Kazuchika Okada was something I really wanted to see in person. At the time I was still a big Okada fan and was hoping he would bring some of the magic from earlier in his career to this show. As for Danielson he has a laundry list of tremendous matches, many of which still hold up well today and a lot of those were first-time encounters or otherwise “cold matches” that didn’t have the most heated or complex of backstories. So even though this match didn’t have the deepest ~LORE~ behind it I still thought it was watching live and not through a screen.

Unfortunately, despite a strong effort, this was not the instant classic it was hyped up to be.

It’s often said that opposites attract, and twenty years ago you weren’t likely to find two wrestlers that bit this bill more than Kenta Kobashi and Minoru Suzuki. One was a chiseled pro-wrestling machine who wrestled like the classic NWA champions of the 70s and made his way to the top from the very bottom. The other was a pioneer in shootfighting, received training from a man the Japanese literally nicknamed “Kami-Sama” (“God”) and was one of the pioneers that would lay the foundation for what has become known as Mixed Martial Arts. In 2005, though, the only thing these two men had in common was that their bodies were held together by artificial substances: Kobashi’s by metal rods and steel plates, Suzuki’s by rubber bands and black magic. So what would happen when these two men from radically different backgrounds would clash one-on-one?

There are some pairings that just seem to always seem to work together without issue. Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker. Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat. Roman Reigns and absurdly long entrances. And today we look at another such a paring to see if they could make lightning strike twice in the same place.

The Story

This is a rematch eight months in the making. Back in April at DreamSlam I Akira Hokuto and Shinobu Kandori had an outstanding match together. In fact, it might actually be the single greatest women’s professional wrestling match to ever take place in terms of pure action. Upon more recent rewatching not only would I give it a full ***** rating but I’d also put it somewhere in the top 15 or 20 matches ever, it was that good. Part of the reason why was because of how personal and real it was. Both women threw live rounds at each other. Kandori locked in shoot armbars, to which Hokuto responded, “I want you to break it, idiot!”. Hokuto suffered such a nasty bladejob that several of her peers reported getting nauseous from the smell once she was back in the locker room. And according to Rossy Ogawa, despite the universal praise for this match, Hokuto was frustrated with the end result because in her mind the mismatch between them led to some chemistry issues and the match not unfolding the way she wanted. In other words, she ended up with gold when she wanted platinum.

That match ended with both women punching each other as hard as possible and Hokuto scoring a sudden pin. It was uncharacteristically violent, even by AJW standards, and earned a reputation as something akin to the peak of AJW’s interpromotional war. The best match I can compare it to would be John Cena versus Brock Lesnar from Extreme Rules 2012 except WAY better. After that match ended Hokuto started being called “The Dangerous Queen” and went on to have another strong year as a performer. But at the end of the calendar year there came a need to try and settle the score from DreamSlam. Though considering how incredible their first match was, could these two hope to reach those same heights?

I’ve been wanting to a deep dive into 1990s New Japan for a long time but just didn’t have the chance. NJPW World, while detailed, doesn’t have all that much from the 1980s and 1990s. And when it comes to 1990s Japanese wrestling, much of the focus when it comes to NJPW has been on the junior heavyweights. When it came to heavyweights, more attention has been given to All Japan since they had the Four Heavenly Kings, whose matches still hold up today as some of the greatest and most timeless contests to ever take place. Thankfully one of the regular readers here brought to my attention a massive online archive of wrestling matches that might be found anywhere else. So again, big thanks to Manjiimortal for sharing a link filled with literally thousands of wrestling matches, including this little gem that has gone under the radar for way too long.

The Story

This is a straightforward G1 tournament match between two big stars in the company. Chono was arguably the bigger star of the two, being one of the Three Musketeers of Fighting Spirit. Before he slowed down and went all looks-crazy decked out in black, Chono was a solid if not passable wrestler, whose biggest contribution to wrestling at the time was creating the STF submission hold. Meanwhile, Hase was lower on the card but arguably the better wrestler. He was more of a midcarder with a much more promising amateur pedigree who had more under his belt already. He created two unique moves of his own: the Northern Lights Suplex and the uranage, both of which would go on to be spammed and copied countless times. He is also credited for his role in the birth of the Muta Scale, for wrestling in that one match that, for a time, was considered the measuring stick for bleeding during matches. And this is an aside, but I just got my hands on his 2002 book and it’s definitely one of the most interesting books I’ve read in a while. Not just because he has a unique perspective on wrestling, but because he also gives insight into his career as a politician and how he thinks a public servant should think about their constituents.

Anyways, the only other important thing to note here is this match took place after Chono suffered a broken neck. That will definitely play a role in how this match progresses.

I’m taking a short break from translating the many books I have covering Mitsuharu Misawa but I figured I’d stay more or less on topic and revisit an important support player in his and fellow Kings’ careers in Terry Gordy. Compared to the other Americans who hung around All Japan during the 1990s Gordy is an unsung and at times unappreciated figure. Most people remember him for being Steve Williams’ partner, and because his greatest successes were earlier in the decade many have forgotten that Gordy was actually a former world champion. Not only that but there was this internal belief within All Japan that, had Gordy kept his personal demons under control then he, not Stan Hansen, would’ve become the greatest gaijin wrestler in All Japan and possibly beyond. And since it’s kind of depressing to reminisce about how Gordy’s career ended, let’s try and focus on his positive contributions. To that end, let’s look at what is arguably the last great match he ever had and one of the most important ones as well.

The Story

This match took place on the Night of the Four Kings, perhaps the most important date in AJPW canon. On that night each of the Four Heavenly Kings of All Japan – Kobashi, Misawa, Kawada, and Taue – each faced off against one of the Four “Foreign” Kings: Terry Gordy, Stan Hansen, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams, and Danny Spivey. All four of these Americans had held either the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship, or All Japan’s World Tag Titles, or in Gordy’s case, both. They were considered the top stars in the company and with Jumbo Tsuruta gone the only way for the younger generation to rise up was to beat these four fabled gaijins.

Though he wasn’t as tall as Spivey, as powerful as Dr. Death, or as hard-hitting as Hansen, Gordy was perhaps the most complete gaijin wrestler on AJPW’s roster at the time. Having read all four of the Four King’s respective books and plenty of other supplemental sources, the overwhelming consensus is that Gordy was a deeply respected and admired wrestler who could’ve achieved even greater heights had his habits not gotten in the way of things. So many of his peers both American and Japanese have sung his praises, but did he back all of this up once the bell rung?

What we’ve got here is something quite interesting: a match involving one of the most accomplished and decorated wrestlers in recent memory who, for better or worse, has been all but scrubbed from WWE history…and Chris Benoit.

All kidding aside, SmackDown was an interesting place in 2002 and 2003. Under Paul Heyman’s initial guidance the blue brand became “the wrestling show” that was more worth watching than the entertainment-heavy RAW. It was also special because, around this time, WWE had conditioned its audience not to expect anything special on live shows or TV shows and to only expect the best moments and matches on PPVs. But SmackDown was largely an exception to this; even after Heyman was ousted from his position as head of the show’s creative department there were still better-than-average matches on that show more often than on RAW. As such, for your average fan who couldn’t always fork up top dollar for “premium” events SmackDown circa 2002-2003 provided more value for money. So with today’s WWE landscape being dominated by exorbitant prices for even B-level shows and a hit-or-miss chance for those shows to actually have anything worth the price of entry, let’s look back at a time when the average fan for more out of what they paid for.

The Story

A few weeks earlier at Survivor Series 2003 Lesnar and Benoit found themselves on opposite teams in a traditional five-on-five elimination tag match. Benoit’s side won that match and what was particularly notable about this was that Benoit made Lesnar tap out to his Crippler Crossface submission hold. Now, Lesnar tapping out wasn’t a new development since he had tapped out to Kurt Angle already at least once before. But tapping to Benoit was considered a far more serious embarrassment, to the point that, earlier in the night, Lesnar vowed to tap Benoit out in this match.

That being said there was one problem: at the time that didn’t have an established submission finisher. This was before he entered MMA and so LONG before his kimura was even a thing. During his first run Lesnar only had the F-5 as an established finisher and nothing else. So even though Lesnar was dominant and rarely showed vulnerability, with this match he found himself in an unfamiliar setting. Would Benoit tap him out twice in quick succession, or would Lesnar find a new way out of this exceptional challenge?

I’m taking a break from translating Japanese books go back to reviewing matches. But this time the two topics are related since one of the comments on my Akira Taue book reviews suggested this as a “hidden gem” and “an absolute blast of a sprint”. And you know what? He was right.

Most of Taue’s best matches, according to some critics, have been tag matches. As a singles star he often gets dismissed as less skilled or less accomplished compared to the other Four Heavenly Kings. His only Dave Meltzer 5-Star match was against Misawa in 1995 (though to be fair that match is still amazing) but little else stood out. Then again, as we have seen in more recent years Meltzer’s idea of what makes a match great is extremely niche, even by wrestling’s already niche circles, so it’s always better to have more voices talking about the same topic. And with that let’s look at this purportedly great match of Akira Taue’s.

Twenty years ago Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels had one of the best matches in not just WrestleMania history, or even WWE history, but all of wrestling history. To this day this match has been hailed as Angle’s magnum opus as an in-ring performer and it further cemented Michaels’ status as a modern legend in his own right. It has also been a prime example of the dubious validity of wrestling’s most notorious critic, Dave Meltzer. Many, many people believe that Kurt Angle deserved at least one five-star rating in his career but Meltzer, for whatever reason, never gave him. And even though Meltzer’s opinion is just that, an opinion, there are still enough people out there that, either genuinely or facetiously, take Meltzer’s word as gospel when it comes to modern professional wrestling.

With that in mind (along with having met Kurt in Toronto a few weeks ago), I figured it was appropriate to commemorate this occasion with a 20^th anniversary retrospective on the match that stole the show at WrestleMania 21.

This is one of the most historically significant matches of the past three decades that you probably haven’t heard of. This match headlined the biggest wrestling show up to that point that didn’t involve Pay-Per-View. With this contest NJPW raked in the equivalent of about $US 6 million from live gates alone. Not only was it a huge lucrative success but it set in motion a chain of events that would alter the course of wrestling history. This match concluded what is quite possibly the most successful outside invaders angle ever, to the point that Eric Bischoff couldn’t help but copy it and repurpose it for his own reasons and create the Outsiders and then the New World Order. Without this match odds are the NWO wouldn’t have existed. No NWO means no 83 week win streak for WCW. No win streak means no Attitude Era. No Attitude Era means no Steve Austin versus Vince McMahon. And no Austin versus McMahon means no second golden age for WWF/E, which means no chance for the company to go public and eventually become the multi-billion-dollar entity it is today.

Kenta Kobashi is many longtime wrestling fans’ favorite wrestler. His career is filled with outstanding matches, crazy moves, and insane moments. Even though he spent 99% of his career in his native country he created an interesting legacy for himself. Though he was never as famous, wealthy, or popular as the biggest names in American wrestling, he still became beloved among diehard segments of the wrestling fandom for a myriad of reasons. To this day I have yet to see an outwardly bad Kobashi match. Even when he was having an off day he was still putting on mid-to-high-***-range matches. It seems like he is allergic to having bad matches…as proven here once again when a seemingly forgettable match of his ended up being way better than expected.

The Story

At first glance this looked like one of the biggest mismatches imaginable at the time. Post-knee surgeries Kobashi was built like a classic heavyweight champion who could hit like a freight train and take hits like a planet. Think of him as a wrestler with John Cena’s physique, Kurt Angle’s in-ring ability, and Rey Mysterio’s knees. In 2003 Kobashi was on a tear as NOAH’s world champion, having accomplished a lot in his first six months on top. His world title reign was something of a template for all world champions to follow. He won the title from Mitsuharu Misawa in what many call THE best match of all time (and is also my personal favorite match), and then proceeded to elevate the title by defending it against all comers. First he beat a near-Olympian grappler in Tamon Honda. Then he had his first and only match for NJPW by beating Masahiro Chono ~IN THE TOKYO DOME~. Then he beat a token gaijin hoss in Bison Smith. And after that defended his home turf against then NJPW ace (read: the only guy wrestler in the company with a shred of credibility remaining following Inoki’s disastrous MMA obsession) Yuji Nagata. After surviving such a wide variety of opponents, including some that outclassed him in some way, Kobashi needed a new challenger…and I guess with NOAH having a dearth of credible homegrown guys built up, they went with one of the most perplexing choices imaginable.

Ogawa will probably go down as the least-threatening Japanese wrestler in the past 30 years. He was pencil thin, unimposing, and lanky. He was too tall to be a full junior heavyweight and too small to be a heavyweight (his official stats show him as standing 5’7” and weighing 180 pounds, motherfucker is smaller than ME!) And yet there were three reasons not to dismiss Ogawa so easily. First, Ogawa was AJPW’s wrestling trainer who oversaw technique training in the All Japan dojo. Since he lacked overall strength and looked like he could be knocked over by a passing breeze, Ogawa built his own wrestling ability around countering, fluid techniques, and being crafty. This led him to be a mainstay in AJPW’s fledging junior heavyweight division, it also made him an interesting partner for Misawa when the green machine found himself without a partner once again (Misawa originally wanted to team with equally small UWFi guy Masahito Kakihara while Giant Baba wanted him to team with Hawaiian wrestler Maunakea Mossman and Ogawa was ultimately selected as a compromise).

This led to the second reason: Ogawa was surprisingly good in his role as the sneaky weasel who cheated and used underhanded tactics to win. He earned the nickname “Rat Boy” and wrestled like a mixture of William Regal on the mat with Ric Flair at his eye-poking best, all while looking less menacing than Jack Perry. Yet with these attributes Ogawa was able to have at least two outstanding, MOTYC-level tag matches with Misawa against Kobashi and Akiyama in 1999.

Third, these skills helped Ogawa reach the top of the mountain NOAH once before. That’s right, this scrawny little geek is a former GHC Heavyweight Champion, having beaten Jun Akiyama with his countering and reversal specialty in only four minutes a year earlier.

So on one hand people saw these two very different men square up and probably concluded that this was going to be a night off for Kobashi. After all, Kobashi’s arms were wider than Ogawa’s torso so it was only a matter of time before Kobashi caught this little rat and cleaved his head from his shoulders with a lariat. On the other hand Ogawa was as unscrupulous as he was quick, which meant he wasn’t above cutting corners to get what he wanted. And since Kobashi was this righteous do-gooder who believed in sportsmanship and digging down deep to get the most out of himself and his opponent, it was only a matter of time before these two diametrically opposed ideologies led to an explosive clash.

It was only a matter of time before Will Ospreay wrestled his doppelganger.

There are many people who adore Ospreay as a wrestler and it isn’t hard to see why. He’s flashy, acrobatic, willing to risk everything on a regular basis, and he has ludicrous conditioning for a guy who has spent the past 15 or so years throwing himself around like a pinball, both on defense and on offense. Personally I’m not all that convinced of his purported historic greatness: I’ve seen awesome matches from him against the likes of WALTER, Hiromu Takahashi, Tetsuya Naito, Zack Sabre, Jr., and even once with Kenny Omega. But the thing with Ospreay is that he’s a guy that requires a very specific type of opponent to really shine and show off his strengths.

So who better to fill that role than the man who, at one point, did Ospreay’s shtick better than he did?