Tuesday, January 8, 2019

Shitty selling & great lucha!

AJPW 01/03/19: KAI vs. Kento Miyahara
Let's get to the very brief positives first: the match had a good energy to it, and the start of it was fine. Like the first 2 minutes or so. Then happens the major moment of the match w/ Kento hitting his knee hard in the ringpost. KAI goes to work on it for a few moves, they brawl in the crowd & Kento regains the control; Kento on top for a while, and then when they've been in the ring for a while, KAI does a dropkick in the knee that Kento hurt. How does Kento react? Well, immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY he catches KAI in a perfect Triangle Choke. Legs locked all the way through & all. Kento's selling is all-time bad - he makes Okada's worst selling performances look like the best ones of Kawada's, and Omega's spotty knee selling performance at the Dome the day after is some Terry Funk level selling after watching this shit. He no sells everything KAI does, and wins with his suplex, doing the BRIDGE on the pin perfectly without any problems. That was a real big turd on top of an already huge shitcake. DUD

CMLL 01/04/19: Dragon Lee vs. El Barbaro Cavernario
The first fall is all about Barbaro delivering a quick, vicious beatdown to Dragon Lee. It's awesome & continues right away in the 2nd fall, but then in the final fall Dragon gets back into things by busting out a fantastic comeback right as the fall starts. He has great intensity w/ his dives, and so does Barbaro w/ everything he does in this, really. Great urgency & brutality (that powerbomb on the apron, damn!) - truly feels like anyone's game in the last fall. They built well to Dragon's big comeback in the final fall w/ the first 2 being all about Barbaro being nasty & vicious. Intense pace & great urgency all the way through makes it a very good package of lucha. ***3/4

No comments:

Post a Comment