Almost 5-Star Match Reviews — page 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah, Goldberg, the textbook definition of “it was fun while it lasted” in pro-wrestling.

Goldberg was such an incredible success story that his run is still talked about to this day. Despite having wrestling skills ranging from passable at best to non-existent at worst (depending on one’s point of view), Goldberg is still considered a legend by many current and lapsed wrestling fans. He was so successful that not only did WWE try to mock him with parody character (that failed and only made him an even bigger star) but many wrestling companies tried to replicate his success, only to fail, be met with deafening “Goldberg” chants, or both.

This match between the Great Muta and Hiroshi Hase was once called the bloodiest match in modern times. It spawned the Muta Scale, an informal measure of blood loss in wrestling matches that has come up many times in the decades since. This all came about by accident, yet it set a new standard, one to which all future matches would be compared.

But was there more to this match than just the amount of blood lost? Read on to find out.

Hulk Hogan versus Stan Hansen has to be one of the rarest matches of the past forty years. The two men only faced each other twice prior and that was back in 1979 when Hulk Hogan wasn’t Hulk Hogan but Sterling Golden. Throughout 1980 and 1981 Hansen and Hogan tagged together in New Japan and only faced each other once during that time. Neither one would face off again for nine years. And in that nine years both of them went on to achieve considerable success.

Few wrestlers have had as good a year in 2023 as GUNTHER. He set a new time record in the Royal Rumble match, put on a MOTYC at WrestleMania 39, held the Intercontinental Championship for the entire calendar year, and finally surpassed the Honky Tonk Man’s record for longest-ever reign.

With all the time and effort WWE put into making GUNTHER’s reign into something special, it stood to reason that they’d do the same with his big make-or-break match. This was the big one, the match that would determine whether GUNTHER would break the historic record or come up short. And by most accounts it was an outstanding match live, but how well does it hold up now after the initial hoopla has died down? Let’s find out.

When wrestling fans see or hear the names “Jumbo Tsuruta” and “Mitsuharu Misawa” together, one of two things comes to mind: the collection of top-tier tag matches they had between 1990 and 1992; or their historic singles match from June 8, 1990 that changed the course of wrestling. What often gets forgotten is that these two had another big singles match only a few months after that more iconic encounter, and it’s safe to say that this match is the better of the two.

Remember when Kota Ibushi was actually a big deal?

Time isn’t kind to most wrestlers, and that’s definitely the case for Ibushi. Once upon a time he was actually a huge star both in Japan and internationally. Not only was he ripped to shreds and actually looked the part of a menacing fighter that could cave your chest in with a single roundhouse kick, but he backed it up with stellar matches that were, more often than not, contenders for MOTY.

When longtime wrestling fans reminisce about WWE’s Attitude Era, it’s because of matches like this one and what it accomplished.

Steve Austin is widely regarded as the biggest pro-wrestling star in modern times. Even if subsequent made more money for the company, few, if any, matched Austin’s reach, popularity, and appeal. No wrestler has accomplished so much in a 4-5-year period than what Austin achieved between 1996 and 2001.

Many people consider Kenny Omega to be one of the best wrestlers in the world today, if not the best. When he was first ascending to the top of New Japan years ago, many people were awestruck by how quickly he was rising and how much he was changing the wrestling landscape, for better or for worse. He was like the wrestling equivalent of a bullet train passing through a station at high-speed without stopping: an overwhelming force that came in and left before onlookers had enough time to register what happened.

Few wrestlers in modern times have been as controversial as Roman Reigns. At the same time, few wrestlers are as universally admired and praised as AJ Styles.