NJPW/CMLL/AEW WRESTLE DYNASTY

Tokyo Dome

Attendance: 16,300

MOMO WATANABE vs. WILLOW NIGHTINGALE vs. ATHENA vs. PERSEPHONE (11:13): Some of this show was entertaining. Most of the matches just seemed totally random and thrown together, though. This match was fine. Willow looked good. Athena is really short, that's probably why she's been in ROH forever and never on AEW TV. Persephone is from CMLL and she looked good. Momo is from Stardom. They didn't really get a lot of time to do much. **

THE SONS OF TEXAS (SAMMY GUEVARA & DUSTIN RHODES) vs. HOUSE OF TORTURE (SHO & YOSHINOBU KANEMARU) (9:27): I was wondering what the hell happened to Sammy Guevara. He's apparently in Ring of Honor purgatory these days. He did some great top rope flips and dives in this match. The crowd seemed to like Dustin Rhodes for whatever reason. Match was okay. **

TAIJI ISHIMORI vs. EL DESPERADO vs. HECHICERO vs. KOSEI FUJITA vs. MASCARA DORADO vs. MASTER WATO vs. SOBERANO, JR. vs. TITAN (16:23): Did New Japan really have to pay for airfare and hotel rooms for all these wrestlers? If so, how did they make money on this show? Doesn't it cost thousands of dollars to fly from the U.S. or Mexico to Japan? A hotel room in Tokyo has to be, like, $300 a night, right? This match was all action so it was at least entertaining. I really miss watching CMLL because their Friday night shows used to be free on Youtube and now they charge money for them. Oh, well. Ishimori won and all the CMLL wrestlers were mad and tried to "get" him and he ran away. **1/2

HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. KATSUYORI SHIBATA (5:00): This was an exhibition. I guess New Japan doesn't want to ever let Shibata actually wrestle on one of their shows since he almost died once in their ring. All these two did was slap each other on the chest back and forth until the time limit draw. Yeah...I don't know about the idea to even do this. It was odd. *1/2

MERCEDES MONE vs. MINA SHIRAKAWA (14:06): Pretty good match. I guess the elephant in the room here is that Mina has big tits and she's constantly fixing her outfit so they don't pop out. She was doing this in her match against Mariah May on Dynamite a month ago, too. Maybe she needs a new wardrobe or something. So this was for the REVPro women's title and the NJPW Strong Women's title. Mone came in as the NJPW champ and won the REVPro title. This was entertaining. Mone has had a string of good matches lately. **1/2

DAVID FINLAY vs. BRODY KING (12:53): This was a totally random match. It was okay. The crowd liked Brody's big, running flip dive into Finlay against the ropes. And the crowd liked that Finlay could pick up Brody to slam him. I mean...I'd have rather seen AEW's Okada or Ospreay on this show than guys like Finlay and Jack Perry. **

SHOTA UMINO vs. CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI (14:31): Years ago, Shota was Moxley's tag partner and friend in some of the AEW/NJPW matches. I guess that storyline is out the window, as Claudio is in Moxley's heel group now and just beat the shit out of Umino throughout this match. Claudio even ambushed Umino on the ramp during his entrance. Match was fine but nothing special. I guess Umino kind of had to win here since he lost in the main event yesterday. **

KONOSUKE TAKESHITA vs. TOMOHIRO ISHII (13:30): This match was excellent. It was short but built into something dramatic and awesome that got the crowd fired up. Takeshita delivers the greatest elbow shot in wrestling. It sounds like a sledgehammer hitting a redwood. Just all big moves, all devastating, all power, near falls, drama, a hot crowd. This was great. ***1/2

THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. LOS IGNOBERNABLES DE JAPON (TETSUYA NAITO & HIROMU TAKAHASHI) vs. UNITED EMPIRE (GREAT-O-KHAN & JEFF COBB) (13:46): This was very entertaining and a lot of fun. New Japan just had a tag team tournament...so I have no idea how the fuck The Young Bucks ended up winning the IWGP titles in this match when they weren't even in that tournament. What was the point of that tournament again? The Young Bucks actually haven't even wrestled since November when they lost the tag titles to Private Party on Dynamite. They looked great in this match. Cobb looked good but Naito looked dazed and confused and Great-O-Khan and Hiromu didn't really do much. ***

YOTA TSUJI vs. JACK PERRY (13:12): This was just a bore. I used to really like Jungle Boy years ago. Jurassic Express was awesome. I remember that Omega vs. Jungle Boy title match on Dynamite being really good. Now Perry is a heel and not really that exciting in the ring. Maybe these two just don't mesh well together. 1/2*

KENNY OMEGA vs. GABE KIDD (31:55): Holy shit. This match was insane. Omega didn't wrestle in 2024. He was in the hospital with diverticulitis. This was his first match back and everyone wondered if he'd be a shell of his former self. Nope! This was a classic Kenny Omega balls-to-the-wall epic. At one point, Omega power bombed Kidd over the guardrail and through two tables (one broke). The trainers all ran out when the AEW referee yelled, "Help! Help!" While all the trainers and the ref and the War Dogs were tending to Gabe Kidd at ringside, Kenny jumped off the top rope and did a Swanton Bomb over the guardrail down onto everyone. Gabe Kidd was busted open now. Eventually Kidd slammed Kenny onto a table then hit him over the head with the broken table. Omega was now a total bloody mess as well. They threw chairs into the ring and Kidd gave Omega a top rope suplex onto the chairs. They both hit each other on the head with a chair...something we don't see any more and with good reason. The crowd was going ape shit at this point. Kenny gave Kidd a bunch of knees to the face. Kidd put Omega in a submission and jammed his fist into Kenny's abdomen because, well, Kenny had diverticulitis and was holding his stomach in pain throughout the match. Kenny tried to lift Kidd up for a One Winged Angel but collapsed and held his gut. At one point, Kidd kicked out at 1 to shock and awe from the crowd. Omega gave Kidd a knee to the face and then won with the One Winged Angel. Fuck. It'll be hard to beat this for match of the year in 2025. This was wild, crazy, insane, dramatic, awe-inspiring. Tanahashi was sitting at ringside doing commentary and after this match he was crying. It should also be noted that English commentary guy Chris Charleton was suspended for two months for bad mouthing Tony Khan and AEW during this broadcast. Bad mouth AEW all you want, but AEW wrestlers were the stars on these two shows. Omega is a legend. And Takeshita was in the 2nd best match. This match was so epic, so awesome. And Tanahashi crying tears of joy at what he witnessed was the perfect ending to this. ****

ZACK SABRE, JR. vs. RICOCHET (20:57): Okay. Good luck following that. This match was good but the crowd was obviously quiet and also nobody on Earth thought Ricochet was winning the IWGP title. He's not even in the main event picture in AEW. Ricochet did wrestle his heart out, doing every possible flip, dive, and maneuver he's ever learned. Ricochet wrestled perhaps the greatest he could ever wrestle. It was a good match but the high drama was absent. Zack submitting Ricochet. Good match, but they should have put Omega/Kidd in the main event. ***

NJPW WRESTLE KINGDOM 19

Tokyo Dome

Attendance: 24,107

RAMBO (HIROOKI GOTO) (34:35): New Japan is back doing two straight nights of Tokyo Dome shows. That's a bit surprising considering the company isn't "hot" plus a lot of their big stars left to go to AEW. The second show was a NJPW/AEW/CMLL show. The second night was better only because it had an awesome Kenny Omega match. This show had a few good matches and it was mostly entertaining, though those days of Wrestle Kingdom being this show of the year, epic event are long gone. The show started, as usual, with this terrible Royal Rumble match with mostly has-been legends hobbling down to the ring and doing very little when they got inside the ring. The winner of this match would get an IWGP title match. Honma, Great-O-Khan, Josh Barnett, Sanada, Yuji Nagata, Taichi, Satoshi Kajima, and a few others were in this. Sanada was in the main event of last year's WK. How the mighty have fallen! Match was terrible. Kenta came out and did a funny fast walk to the ring. I guess he realizes this match is a joke. Yano was in there. Maybe if this match didn't go so long it'd be, like, fine. 1/2*

ICHIBAN SWEET BOYS (KOSEI FUJITA & ROBBIE EAGLES) vs. INTERGALACTIC JET SETTERS (KUSHIDA & KEVIN KNIGHT) vs. BULLET CLUB WAR DOGS (CLARK CONNORS & DRILLA MALONEY) vs. CATCH 22 (FRANCESCO AKIRA & TJP) "LADDER MATCH" (13:05): Match was entertaining though not as great as I thought it might be. They botched a lot of moves, sometimes bafflingly hilarious. Drilla Maloney tried to powerbomb someone onto a table at ringside and missed the table. Kevin Knight jumped off the top of the ladder in the ring and barely touched the person he was supposed to land on. Eagles took a rough slam onto a ladder bridge that cracked. You can tell they never do ladder matches in Japan because when someone would start climbing up the ladder everyone  "oohed" and "ahhed" like they'd never seen it before. Fujita and Eagles won the Jr. tag titles. **1/2

MAYU IWATANI vs. AZM (8:46): This match was fantastic. These two are in Stardom but this was for the IWGP women's title. I'm not sure why that title exists as there are no women in New Japan. Supposedly these two have had a heated rivalry in Stardom and Iwatani always beats AZM except during their tournament last year. They didn't get much time but it was all action. ***

EL PHANTASMO vs. REN NARITA vs. JEFF COBB vs. RYOHEI OIWA (10:04): ELP won the TV title. Match was fun but short. It was fast paced and all action. ELP looked great. Cobb broke Narita's stick in two and the crowd popped for that because Narita always cheats by using that in, like, every single match. **1/2

HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. EVIL "LUMBERJACK MATCH" (15:07): This is the start of Tanahashi's Retirement Tour. His last match will be at next year's WK show. It's funny, but the WWE is doing the same thing with John Cena this year. This was fine, nothing special. It had a lot of interference as usual. At one point, Dick Togo was jumping off the top rope to chop Tanahashi in the groin. Hopefully AEW's Death Riders doesn't ever fall to the absurd level of HOT's antics. Because Moxley and his gang is pretty much the same gimmick. *1/2

KONOSUKE TAKESHITA vs. SHINGO TAKAGI (12:42): This match was good but probably went too short to turn into anything spectacular. Takeshita vs. Ishii was actually better on Night 2. Takeshita retained his AEW International title and won the NEVER title. It was good while it lasted but seemed to end before it heated up. ***

EL DESPERADO vs. DOUKI (5:23): Douki jumped off the top rope down onto El Desperado and dislocated his elbow. The ref called for the bell and Desperado won the Jr. title because of a forfeit. Match was decent but obviously never got going. I feel so bad for Douki because this was the biggest match of his life. 

YOTA TSUJI vs. DAVID FINLAY (19:39): These two had two good matches in the G1 tournament last year. Tsuji beat him in the semi-final of the G1. They definitely have good chemistry together, and Finlay has definitely gotten better in the ring. Tsuji won the Global Heavyweight title. What the fuck does that even mean? ***

TETSUYA NAITO vs. HIROMU TAKAHASHI (17:08): Zack Sabre, Jr. won the G1. That means that the main event of this show should have been Zack winning the title from Naito. They decided to do that match in October, probably because Naito is old and can barely wrestle coherently anymore. That reason doesn't exactly make sense, though, considering Naito was in the semi-main event anyway. Zack winning the title in the main event of this show would have been a better ending than him beating Shota Umino. The match wouldn't have been as good...but they were putting on a bad match (this) anyway. This was slow and dull and not good. I guess they wanted to do this match at least once before Naito is in a wheelchair. 1/2*

ZACK SABRE, JR. vs. SHOTA UMINO (43:44): Shota is referee Red Shoes' son. Maybe that's one reason why he's been pushed as the next big star. I watched the whole G1, and when Shota would come out he came out through the crowd and would give everyone a fist bump and then give a kid a bracelet. NJPW is really pushing him hard. So it wasn't that surprising that he started getting booed late last year when the crowds found out he would be put into the Wrestle Kingdom main event for no reason. He didn't even make the semi-finals of the G1. The last big match he had was in 2023 in that 40 minute main event against Ospreay that he lost. They didn't boo him in this match until he kept kicking Zack after the ref (his dad) tried to stop him. That was the only time they booed him. Everyone complained that this didn't feel like a WK main event. I think the idea was to have a long, epic match that would get him over with the crowd for doing a good job. Match was good but wasn't excellent or anything. Sometimes these long matches don't feel long because they're good...but this one felt long. Shota is a good wrestler and they had some good, fast sequences of back and forth moves that were great. The drama wasn't there, though, and it never turned into an unforgettable classic. ***

The Best Show of 2024: AEW REVOLUTION 3/3

 

    The best match of the year was on this show (Ospreay vs. Takeshita), as was Sting's retirement match, which I gave 4 stars to. I called this "maybe the best AEW PPV ever." It feels like AEW PPV's will always win this award as long as the company is around. They're always so stacked, so long, and so entertaining. The moment of the year in a match was probably Darby Allin falling off a ladder in the ring through a pane of glass on chairs at ringside. I still remember the audience gasping in horror when a shot of his bloody back was shown on the big screen. That Ospreay/Takeshita match was a masterpiece. Everything involving Sting's retirement was fantastic. His sons coming out dressed up like Wolfpac Sting and Blonde Colorful Sting. Sting's old partners and opponents at ringside like Ric Flair, Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat, and Lex Luger. Sting being tossed through a pane of glass by The Young Bucks in the ring. It was very, very memorable. And while there were some bad matches on the show (I gave zero stars to Deonna Purrazzo vs. Toni Storm), there were a lot of good ones besides the two 4 star affairs. I gave 3 stars to Christian Cage vs. Daniel Garcia, Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Danielson, Wardlow vs. Chris Jericho vs. Brian Cage vs. Dante Martin vs. Hook vs. Magnus vs. Powerhouse Hobbs, and Samoa Joe vs. 'Hangman' Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland. I mean...a show with 2 four star matches and 4 three star matches. That's rare. This show happened way back in March and I still think about moments from it. Hell of a show. 

The Best Match of 2024: WILL OSPREAY vs. KONOSUKE TAKESHITA "AEW REVOLUTION" 3/3

     This match wasn't the main event. This match wasn't for a belt. When this match happened, these two wrestlers were in the same heel group and thus fighting for no reason. None of that mattered. This was an excellent match between the best wrestler of 2024, Ospreay, and Takeshita, who's at least one of the best. This was Ospreay's debut as in AEW after he signed a contract with them. He had wrestled in AEW before, at Forbidden Door, All In, and on a few Dynamite episodes. When Ospreay did some of his lightning fast moves, though, the crowd gasped and cheered and roared in amazement as if they'd never seen him or his insanely crisp, wild moves. That was part of the reason why this match was so great. The other reason was that it was simply two great wrestlers delivering awesome moves back and forth with some great near falls for twenty one minutes. They had a sold out crowd thanks to Sting's retirement on the show, so the packed crowd making noise for every big move made this seem like it was a Wrestlemania main event or something. This was all action, super entertaining, and a total classic. 

Other Notable Matches:

Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Bryan Danielson  NJPW The New Beginning in Osaka  2/11

Will Ospreay vs. Michael Oku  RevPro High Stakes  2/18

Sting & Darby Allin vs. The Young Bucks  AEW Revolution  3/3

Will Ospreay vs. Bryan Danielson  AEW Dynasty  4/21

Will Ospreay vs. MJF  AEW Dynamite  7/17

Konosuke Takeshita vs. El Phantasmo  NJPW G1 Day 12  8/7

Will Ospreay vs. MJF  AEW All In  8/25

Swerve Strickland vs. Bryan Danielson  AEW All In  8/25

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Will Ospreay vs. Ricochet  AEW Wrestle Dream  10/12

The Best Wrestler of 2024: WILL OSPREAY

     Will Ospreay has won this award in 2023, 2022, 2020, and 2019, so it's no surprise that he won in 2024. He left New Japan to join AEW and didn't wrestle the cavalcade of indie shows he used to do. That didn't really matter, though. He had some all time classics in 2024, and every single time he stepped into the ring you knew you'd be seeing something special. He finished his RevPro days with an awesome, dramatic, 47 minute match against Michael Oku in February. His debut as an AEW contracted wrestler started with the best match of the year and a match I noted at the time might have been the best AEW match in history against Takeshita at Revolution. In May he wrestled Bryan Danielson in a fantastic match that won most of the best of the year match awards and ended up being #1 as the highest rated match of the year on cagematch.com. He didn't win the title at Forbidden Door in June, but he did main event in a great match against Swerve Strickland. In July he had a 59 minute match on Dynamite against MJF that was epic and fantastic. At All In the re-match against MJF was great as well. His match at All Out in September against PAC was excellent. At Wrestle Dream, he was in a match against Ricochet and Takeshita. I noted that "if someone named this the best match of the year then I wouldn't have a problem with that." His match against Kyle Fletcher at Full Gear was another 3.5 star match. And then he had a bunch of great matches in the Continental Classic against Darby Allin, Kyle Fletcher, and Okada. Was he in the best storylines? Probably not. Was his company the hottest? No. But wrestlers like Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes, who were a part of the hot WWE year selling out arenas and stadiums and on shows with bigger ratings than AEW TV shows, were never in many if any great, classic matches. Ospreay did it every month. He's also likeable as hell, dramatic as hell, and, shockingly, really good on the mic connecting with fans, showing his passion, and sounding like a, gasp, real person. He will go down in legend as one of the best wrestlers in the history of the business, and 2024 was a stellar year full of a ton of highlights from him. Thank God he's practically still in his prime.