Mid-Tier Match Reviews

You know how there’s this industry expression about great wrestlers being able to have entertaining matches with a broomstick? Well leave it to Kota Ibushi to interpret that concept in the weirdest way imaginable and show that some ideas are best left to theory and not practice.

The Story

DDT Pro-Wrestling, f.k.a. Dramatic Dream Team, started off as Japan’s version of WWE. They promoted a more entertainment-driven product with big cards featuring a mix of everything from high-flying lucharesu to hardcore matches involving bottle rockets and everything in between. They also took WWE’s slapstick Hardcore Division to its most extreme with gimmicks and ideas that likely wouldn’t ever fly in North America. YOSHIHIKO was one such a gimmick by virtue of being an inflatable sex doll. Yet this doll’s matches aren’t meant to be lewd or lascivious; those sorts of segments are usually saved for characters like Danshoku Dino. According to Kenny Omega, since YOSHIHIKO could take more punishment than any person, its opponents could do whatever they want. This led to levels of brutality that made audiences feel sorry for it, as though it was a real person.

Ibushi, though, had different ideas. He cut his teeth in DDT and made a name for himself as one of the most fearless, reckless madmen pro wrestling had ever seen. If there was some experiment worth trying he was game. He didn’t mind diving off of random objects; having matches in random, unconventional places; or being dropped on his neck. In fact, he wrote about his appreciation for head spikes in a 2015 NJPW book titled Kota Ibushi Strongest Edition, stating,

“I loved the dangerous neck-drop moves in “Four Heavenly Kings Pro Wrestling,” and before long, I found myself focusing on that angle during matches.  I was completely obsessed with the angle of falling on the neck.  And rather than thinking, “I want to drop someone at that angle,” I thought, “If I can be dropped at that angle and properly take the move, I might be one step closer to being the strongest.” – Kota Ibushi

And so the formula was turned on its head. Rather than have YOSHIHIKO become a literal crash test dummy and get thrown around with techniques unable to be performed on living opponents, this match would see Ibushi test his own body’s limits against, well, basically himself.

The Match

This took place on March 21, 2015, at a show called DDT Saitama Slam Special. A “shadow” carries YOSHIHIKO to the ring and places it in a corner. Ibushi approaches that corner, “locks up” with the doll, and gets a clean break. They trade headlocks with YOSHIHIKO’s lasting quite a bit longer. Ibushi gets a break and switches to a Greco-Roman knuckle lock. YOSHIHIKO wins with an overhead double-wrist suplex. The shadow comes back in to do an Irish whip but Ibushi hits first with a dropkick to the floor followed by a Triangle Moonsault.

YOSHIHIKO resists a chinlock and then “collapses” off another Irish whip. Ibushi applies a high-angle Boston Crab but YOSHIHIKO “gets a ropebreak” so Ibushi applies a Figure-Four Leglock. The doll reverses this on Ibushi and counters a vertical suplex with its own. Then it dives out of the ring as the shadow throws it onto Ibushi like a weapon. Back in the ring YOSHIHIKO lands what looks like a triple-rotation headscissor. Ibushi resists a German Suplex but YOSHIHIKO persists and lands a high-angle Backdrop. In other words, Ibushi spikes himself on his own head. Not done with the craziness, this is followed by a piledriver and a two-count. Ibushi escapes a Dragon Suplex and a kick exchange ensues with both sides going down. Ibushi’s up first and lands a giant swing but the doll reverses a cradle pin for two. Ibushi counters a headscissor with what can only be described as a backwards powerbomb which couldn’t be done on a real person since, well, humans have spines. This leads to a type of camel clutch which the doll reverses with a flipping powerbomb for two.

A silly “strike exchange” follows and this leads to the match’s most infamous spot: the so-called Infinite Destroyer, nine Canadian Destroyers in a row, which get another two-count. YOSHIHIKO follows with a head-spiking Dragon Suplex variant for another near-fall but Ibushi hits back with a clumsy lariat. Ibushi lands a Last Ride Powerbomb and goes to the top rope but the doll, with the shadow’s help, cuts him off. Ibushi counters into a diving Razor’s Edge and follows with a top-rope springboard overhead German for two. A Phoenix Splash is enough for Ibushi to secure the pinfall and retain his title.

Winner and STILL KO-D Openweight Champion after 18:56: Kota Ibushi

You can watch the full match here.

Review

If you’re a purist or someone who takes wrestling seriously then this will give you an aneurysm. It was one of the most ridiculous things ever seen in wrestling. It was so absurd it made Stadium Stampede look like Flair/Steamboat in comparison. I get what they were going for trying to be as innovative as possible, yet this was a bit too dumb. Despite being somewhat visually impressive, Ibushi bumping around and dropping himself on his head for what was likely half-decent pay doesn’t sound like a smart thing to do, even by wrestling standards. But even if you like these absurd and boundary-pushing ideas, Ibushi went about this match all wrong. If the intent was for people to, as Omega described, sympathize with YOSHIHIKO, then the match failed to portray that narrative. It was a rudderless display of wild techniques and Ibushi showcasing his bumping abilities, which emphasized YOSHIHIKO’s uselessness rather than create any dramatic hook. If Ibushi’s goal was to showcase his toughness and flexibility then he could’ve achieved those same ends with any human opponent. Here, his movements came across as scattered and, save for a few admittedly unique ideas, unimpressive. Ibushi copying or emulating the Four Heavenly Kings wasn’t exciting on its own, especially since he largely missed the crux of what made them so good, that being the balance between motion and stillness and not the pure head drops themselves. It also didn’t help that YOSHIHIKO technically had support from the shadow which lessened the broomstick argument and further added to the general sense of “WTF am I watching” that coated the entire match.

Final Rating: *1/2

I watched this match so that you don’t have to if you hadn’t already. Although it was serviceable as something to kill time, it was very much deserving of the criticism it got and has little value beyond seeing Ibushi do a serviceable job of making light entertainment out of something so absurd. Ibushi’s attempt at bringing that broomstick expression to life was admirable yet it was drowned out by the silliness of the situation. As such, your mileage on this match will vary depending on whether you’re willing to put in maximum effort suspending disbelief and accepting the most absurd thing imaginable as Ibushi “wrestled” an inanimate object. While it’s a step up from the even more ridiculous invisible wrestler gimmick found all over various local indy federations, this was still way too silly and is best reserved for when you REALLY want to turn your brain off.

Thanks for reading.

This is a match I’ve wanted to write about for a while because it’s such an interesting case study in booking complexity. It was a match born out of necessity rather than organic need. It was an example of trying to satisfy multiple and at times competing priorities during a period marked by a frantic need to improve business as much as possible. It showed just how hard it is to please everyone and no matter what decision a wrestling booker makes someone is going to be unhappy. Granted, most of us know these things already but it’s refreshing to see these ideals applied outside of the English-speaking world as well. And since NOAH was once an adored promotion atop the world and Jun Akiyama was once considered a future ace, it’s interesting to see where things went wrong for them both.

So for this review I figured I’d venture outside of my usual wheelhouse and look at a company that I’ve never seen before: IWA Mid-South. With many of today’s wrestlers having started their careers on the American independent scene it’s interesting to see what many of them went through before becoming stars, champions, and in some cases, legends. Samoa Joe is one such a wrestler. He had an amazing year back in 2005, having taken part in three of the best matches you will ever see in a four-month time span. Digging deeper into his career I came across this match which a lot of people liked back then and still like now. So I watched it and…time hasn’t been all that kind to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold, the Sharknado of professional wrestling.

Before there was John Cena versus Bray Wyatt in the Firefly Funhouse, before there was the Swamp Fight between the Wyatt Family and Braun Strowman, before the Boneyard match, there was The Final Deletion the poster child for 21st century “cinematic matches”. And man was it weird. It was far from the first cinematic match; that honor goes to Antonio Inoki versus Masa Saito in their 1987 Genryu-jima Island Death Match and I’ve been trying to find footage of that match to see how well it holds up but so far the only places hosting that match are dubious-looking adult sites. So while I continue searching I figured I’d look at this somewhat famous “match” that didn’t just save Matt Hardy’s career but it turned into one of the most famous unexpected success stories from the past decade.

With 2025 being John Cena’s final year as a wrestler it makes sense to revisit big moments in his career. I’ve already covered his first WWE Championship at WrestleMania 21, one of his more infamous matches with Randy Orton from 2007, and some of his more famous matches from later in his career like his first match with The Rock and his match with Mark Henry. From all of this it’s safe to say that nostalgia tends to color our memories of past experiences since much of Cena’s career was…MID. He wasn’t an outright bad performer but he was very much a step down for a very long time. It took him over a decade to become consistently good as a wrestler. His first genuinely great match was against Umaga in 2007 and that was because he had both an experienced Samoan doing much of the heavy lifting and the entire WWE machine working hard to conceal his shortcomings. But not even the all-powerful WWE machine could protect Cena when he was literally in enemy territory in front of an audience that wouldn’t ever consider giving him the benefit of the doubt, as this match demonstrated.

The Story

Rob Van Dam won the Money In The Bank briefcase at WrestleMania 22. Then on May 22nd he became the first person to announce his cash-in ahead of time: that he’d cash it in at ECW One Night Stand. This was part of a larger project to revive ECW as a third brand in ECW following the overwhelming success of the previous One Night Stand show in 2005.

On one hand WWE attempted to add as much authenticity to this resurrected ECW as possible: the show would emanate from the Hammerstein Ballroom, the most famous venue in ECW history. Many ECW originals like Tommy Dreamer, The Sandman, and Sabu (RIP) would appear in segments attacking Cena and other RAW wrestlers. The show even featured ECW’s old color scheme and overall aesthetic, and who better to represent ECW going forward than RVD, arguably the brand’s most famous wrestler and the one outsider to survive the ill-fated Invasion storyline largely unscathed?

On the other hand putting all of these elements of old ECW were mere distractions to keep the focus away from the power behind the throne. Even with Paul Heyman serving as on-air authority figure and to some degree a creative consultant, this was WWECW, a.k.a. Vince McMahon-approved ECW, which meant that this brand would never achieve more than challenger/third brand status as it wouldn’t be allowed to question the “supremacy” of the main roster brands.

With this in mind, there was still an element of doubt circling this match. Few people expected Cena to lose the WWE Championship since he was well on his way to becoming an institutional figure in the company. And yet it didn’t make sense for RVD to lose in this big match and in the process bury himself, ECW, and the MITB gimmick. So with that many people came to the venue hoping for RVD to win, but could he do it, or would this all be one big swerve from WWE higher-ups just to kick a dead body one last time out of spite?

Back when I reviewed the unintentional comedic masterpiece that was Shawn Michaels versus Hulk Hogan at SummerSlam 2005 it underlined an important point about wrestlers as performers. One of the reasons Michaels is so celebrated these days is because he was dynamic: he could fit into almost any setting and make it work, whether it was serious or being funny. There have also been other guys who have tried to be both serious and funny like Kurt Angle, The Rock, Steve Autin, John Cena, and many others. Well now let’s look another guy who might fit into that mold in Kenny Omega.

Even though Omega has made a career out of competing in (mostly) serious matches, the man does have a funny side…that is, if you like his particular brand of comedy or weirdness. For the longest time he wrestled in an intentionally douchey way and carried himself like this over-the-top cartoon character. And yet he also managed to balance this weird behaviour with a seriousness in the ring and plenty of widely-praised performances. By 2017 he had shown plenty of seriousness, and yet the urge to be silly was too much for him to overcome, as seen with this unbelievable display of wrestling lunacy.

The Story

I’m assuming that most of you know who Kenny Omega is but might not know all that much about his opponent so here’s the QRD on him. Toru Yano is an accomplished Greco-Roman wrestler who won several regional and national-level titles in Japan. But instead of making a gimmick out of that, Yano became the pro-wrestling version of an internet troll. He does silly slapstick, cheats, and relies on over-the-top shenanigans to win. And he is very, VERY, good at his job: despite being positioned as an opening act or an undercarder for most of his career Yano also has a reputation as a spoiler, winning big upsets here and there when people least expect it. This makes him an important person in the G1 Climax: in a tournament in which advancing to the finals can come down to the tiniest difference in who got points how, nobody wants to lose and especially not to Yano.

As a result, a match with Yano can mean the difference between advancing and not so everyone needs to beat him as quickly as possible. So when Omega, a favorite to win his block following his incredible rise to superstardom beginning in the previous year’s tournament, faced down Yano he had to try and win as quickly as he could…or did he? Would Omega try and put Yano down decisively, or would the urge to engage in comedic nonsense compel him to entertain Yano’s wild ideas?

Well, here we are, the eve of WrestleMania. The long-awaited biggest two-night affair of the year in professional wrestling. Like most of you I’m excited to see what’s going to happen given how much effort has been put into making this show as big as last year’s show if not bigger. But there’s one match that I’m personally not looking forward to all that much because it involves someone that, in my opinion, isn’t worth the spot: Jey Uso.

I’m going to get this out of the way now: I don’t like either of the Usos and never have. Yes, they’ve been around forever and they had a great match two years ago at WrestleMania 39. But I’ve never seen anything special about them. They move and hit like bigger versions of the Young Bucks and their greatest success came from them being in Roman Reigns’ orbit for so many years. And in my opinion Jey Uso the character isn’t even “over”; his entrance and his catchphrase are over. He’s like the wrestling version of a musical artist that’s all look and marketing but once you actually put a mic in front of him you realize that he’s artificial and autotuned to shit.

Then again, his opponent tonight could be so much better. I might be the only person in the world that wants GUNTHER to win tonight but that’s in all likelihood not going to happen. I don’t doubt GUNTHER will carry Jey to a good match and Jey is at least experienced enough to play the hits and get the biggest pops here and there. But once WrestleMania ends and Jey Uso moves past GUNTHER, how will he actually fare as a champion? Well maybe on way to answer that question is to see how well he did against the one person who knows him best, that being his twin brother.

So despite my own personal apathy towards these two men, I’m going into this match with a blank slate. With that, let’s see if their match from last year’s WrestleMania was really that bad or not…

On paper a singles match between John Cena and Mark Henry might look like a complete wash. After all neither man was ever known for setting the world on fire in terms of quality matches, especially in 2013 when WWE was firmly in its own self-contained universe and any notion of other styles was immediately swept under the rug. But sometimes all it takes is one spark, one surprise, to change everything. And that’s exactly what happened with Mark Henry.

These days Mark Henry is known for a handful of specific things: his Hall of Pain gimmick, his ludicrous strength (which, all things considered, wasn’t used to its fullest when he was in his prime), and his epic, 5-Star retirement speech. You know, the one with the salmon jacket that had everyone getting all teary-eyed, only for him to swerve everyone with one of the best-executed swerves in modern times? That one.

In the years that followed that speech has taken on a life of its own. Henry’s fellow legends have praised it for how captivating and believable it was. Henry alleges that he got a phone call from Hulk Hogan who said that was the only time someone in the business actually got him. Even Henry’s salmon-colored jacket has become a talking point among nostalgic fans. But at the end of the day this was still a promo to setup a match. And if the promo was so outstanding, surely the match it led to was just as good, right? Right?

Mitsuharu Misawa is a pro wrestling legend. Even if his name might not be as well-known as, say, Hulk Hogan or The Rock, he still left an undeniable impact on the wrestling business. An entire generation of wrestlers were inspired by his wrestling style and with it helped create the American wrestling indies of the 2000s and 2010s. But even the most inspirational and influential wrestlers can have underwhelming performances and Misawa is no exception. Though his matches with the likes of Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi, Akira Taue, Jun Akiyama, and others are still some of the best and most timeless matches still available for free on the internet, he wasn’t able to have such tremendous matches with every opponent imaginable. Such was the case when Misawa took on a newcomer to All Japan after years of strictly enforced isolationism and the end result was…meh.

When people talk about Shawn Michaels and his status as a genuine GOAT contender, they often do so based on Michaels’ more serious and dramatic matches and stories. But the guy was also pretty damn good at making people laugh too. And there was at least one occasion where making people laugh wasn’t even his main intention.

Almost two decades ago Shawn Michaels had one of the funniest matches in WWE history. It wasn’t a typical WWE-style comedy match (thankfully) because no one besides Michaels himself knew what was going to go down here. The result was something truly special for its time, and while it was FAR from any kind of in-ring classic, it added another feather to Michaels’ cap nonetheless.

When people look back at Brock Lesnar’s storied career there’s a clear distinction between his two runs. Though his more recent one has been more successful for him, his career, and his wallet, it was his first run from 2002-2004 that not only put him on the map but also gave the fans more of their money’s worth. Lesnar’s matches with Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero, The Undertaker, and others, during that first run produced not just the best work of Lesnar’s career, but some of the best matches in WWE history, and this was with a guy who was still fairly new and inexperienced. Come 2012 and his second run, though, Lesnar has taken a different turn.

While he has smartened up and protected himself to the point of being formulaic in the ring, his actual matches have, at times, left a lot to be desired. This match serves as a great example of that: it had nothing going for it for the first ten minutes and then it had a shocking ending that caused a huge stir backstage and online. But was it really any good?

From time to time I like to review weird matches to see how well they hold up. It’s one thing to review so-called classics to see if they’ve withstood the test of time; it’s another thing to revisit odd and obscure matches that are better suited to random wrestling-related trivia and see if they were any good as well. And few matches have such an overwhelming “random trivia” air about them on paper as the singles match between The Miz and Jerry Lawler.

These two men couldn’t’ve come from more opposite sides even if they lived at the North and South Poles, respectively. Lawler was an unofficial wrestling GOD among his peers and successors, so much so that criticizing him or saying anything bad about him was discouraged or seen to be in poor taste. On the opposite side of things was The Miz, an “actor” turned wrestler who, in my opinion, deserves some kind of documentary/HBO special about his life and accomplishments considering how he entered this business from such a different background, had so much hate from the beginning that most people wrote him off as dead on arrival, and yet is still thriving over twenty years after his formal professional debut.

Two men who have achieved wider respect for two similar yet different reasons: one for being an exemplary pioneer of American wrestling, the other for surviving in a cut-throat industry hostile to outsiders WAY longer than anyone ever expected. And when these two men clashed it was an…interesting…situation, to be sure.

These days many people react to guys like John Cena and The Rock with overwhelming happiness and hype. Those same people must have either short memories or selective ones because those overwhelmingly positive reactions don’t take into account just how…artificial…things were when these guys first faced off.

When Cena and Rock had their big feud at WrestleMania XXVIII it was promoted as a once-in-a-lifetime happening on par with Rock versus Hogan from WrestleMania X8. But truth be told, while the match was hyped as the greatest thing since sliced bread when, in actuality, the final product was nowhere close to living up to that marketing.

As a result, this match makes for an interesting case study. It’s a terrific example of what happens when complacency and pattern leads to false promises. I’ve noted before that WWE, when unchallenged, had this mentality to deliver less than optimal matches after receiving the fans’ money. This match serves as a prime example of that, and a reminder of what the company could possibly fall back to if they get too comfortable in their dominance in the market.

When people talk about the best performers in WWE history Shawn Michaels’ name is one of the first to come up. His Hall of Fame career is filled with great moments and matches, many of which get replayed from time to time to this very day. And up until recently, included in those replays was a big moment when he had a match with Vince McMahon. But given recent events it’s unlikely that we’ll be hearing of this match anytime soon.

That’s somewhat unfortunate because this is an…interesting…match to say the least. It’s a fine little case study in watching WWE scramble to create a WrestleMania-worthy match after their initial plans fell apart due to an unexpected tragedy. Few people expected this match to be any good; spectacular yes but nothing worth crowing about. But if there was one person still in WWE at the time that could live up to the old “broomstick” argument it was Shawn Michaels. So let’s see if the closest thing to him wrestling an actual broomstick does indeed hold up after almost two full decades.

Concluding our trinity of infamous Roman Reigns WrestleMania main events we have his last before the entire world turned upside down. Which is sort of fitting because the Roman Reigns from before the pandemic and the one that returning after it began were worlds apart from one another.

Despite being arguably the biggest wrestling star of the past ten years, Reigns had one of the bumpiest roads to the top in recent memory. Much of this wasn’t entirely his fault: as his most recent run has proven he is more than capable as a draw and has actually become a babyface with most of the wrestling world despite being portrayed as a heel. Indeed, it was the material he was given with at first that made him into such a reviled wrestler; and since those passionate and vocal opponents of his knew they couldn’t target or affect Vince McMahon directly, they opted to try and tarnish his next handpicked creation in any way they could.

And so, Reigns main-evented four consecutive WrestleManias and in all of them he was met with significantly more boos than cheers. Yet each match was different: his first in 2015 was largely positive thanks to arguably the biggest surprise in WrestleMania history. His 2016 appearance was more slow than it was outright bad, thanks to it bookending the longest and most exhausting WrestleMania of all time. His third was a damning indictment of his lack of skill and his opponent being clearly unfit to wrestle. But after all of those ups and downs, how did Reigns fare once things came full circle and he found himself facing Brock Lesnar once again?

I never thought I’d ever type these words, but even wrestling legends like Kenta Kobashi and Vader can have underwhelming matches.

Though both men are widely hailed as two of the best to ever do it, their chemistry together doesn’t compare to how they fared with others. Kobashi in particular is kind of like a 1990s/2000s version of Kenny Omega or Will Ospreay: a guy who has/had a reputation of being able to have an exciting match that exceeds expectations with a broom and while asleep. That reputation followed him into the main-event scene in Japan, where the pressure to live up to the hype was at its highest. And it seems like on this occasion that pressure got to him and while he put on a good match, it was far from the great match everyone had come to expect of him.

WrestleMania 32 is still considered one of the worst entries in the event’s illustrious history. It stands as a terrific example of a company treating its audience as cash cows and not as actual people to be entertained. It started the trend of painfully long Big Four PLEs, a trend that would continue unabated until the COVID Pandemic. It featured some of the weirdest booking decisions imaginable, including a few that even the youngest or most casual of viewers would question. And it concluded with a main-event that only one person really wanted.

Triple H and Roman Reigns were put in the unenviable task of closing the show in front of a tired, annoyed, and in some cases frustrated live audience. Dave Meltzer accurately described the sentiment going into the main-event as “fruit after its expiration date”. Say what you want about the guy, from time to time his analyses do, in fact, hit the mark. This match did indeed leave a bad taste in many people’s mouths, to the point that many people left the show either disappointed or outright mad. But were they mad because the whole show was, top to bottom, long and filled with questionable storyline conclusions? Or was the main-event really as bad as the live audience, spoiled by what happened the night before at NXT TakeOver: Dallas, claimed it to be?