This was for Shibata’s NEVER Openweight Title.
If you want to be a real nerd and a stickler for some things, you can do it here. I don’t think it’s quite enough to get offended about, but if you’re an even bigger limb selling/EVERYTHING HAS TO MEAN *SOMETHING* freak than I can be sometimes, you can convince yourself to find issues with this match.
Kyle O’Reilly briefly tries to work the arm of Shibata early on, but gets distracted by either having a bad brain and then doing a legbar before the match kicks into a higher gear or, and this is less likely, realizing nobody came to a fucking Shibata match to watch limb selling. Generously, one could say that Shibata got him off the arm attack and benefited from it. Alternately, one could say that there’s a story here about Kyle suffering for his lack of focus in a way that’s all very uplifting, turning all the problems I often have with Kyle and people like him and turning it into a reason he’s not able to defeat a far better wrestler. That’s probably fanwank, but you know, whatever. It’s out there on the canvas, my interpretation is my interpretation, you Godless little swine. It’s also something that, I think, fits with the tone of the match far more than the latter. The point is that it’s a section of the match that has no real bearing on anything else, save one (1) attempt late in the match by Kyle to grab an arm hold.
There’s a fine line, I think, between limb work that doesn’t matter all that much, and limbwork that means nothing. The latter is inexcusable, a waste of my time as a viewer. The former is more what this feels like. It’s not a long enough segment for me to say it was insulting to watch, and it’s not a thousand percent immediately irrelevant either. It’s just this thing that doesn’t pan out, for one reason or another, and it fits what the match is going for. It’s a sporting sort of an encounter, submissions and strikes, telling a clear and simple story of O’Reilly trying to do what Shibata does, but only being like half as good at it. Kyle abandoning the arm to try and kick ass, only to be owned and trying to go back to it far too late for it to matter, that’s a fun a little thing.
It’s still not great, a thing that maybe ought to have more value and doesn’t, but mostly though, it works. So much of this match kicks ass, and these minor flaws are covered up for just enough by other elements of this match to work.
Said other element is just how much ass the back half of this match kicks.
This is sort of the ideal scenario for Kyle O’Reilly in the back half. Getting to throw hard kicks and slaps, in there with a guy like Shibata who never lets him wobble sell or do anything overly silly, and who also pushes him to always throw his best, loudest, and most violent feeling attacks. Things that can sometimes feel borderline or a little too pre-rehearsed like Kyle’s combo ending in the back leg sweep, are thrown faster and with a little more desperation here, and come off far better than usual.
On the other end of the thing, it’s Shibata doing Shibata Business.
Very few things in wrestling in 2016 are better or more reliable than Shibata dispatching with somebody who isn’t as tough or cool as he is (I don’t know if anyone in the world fits into both of these boxes, maybe Eddie Kingston but that never happened), and this does not aim to break that trend. Kyle steps up and tries, Kyle is found wanting, and Shibata absolutely whips his ass at the end. Following the PK, Shibata once again opts for a pure choke out off of the rear naked, leading to the famous KOR mouthpiece drop sell. It’s showy, and when you watch it a few times, you can see him slip it forward, but like how the entire match is something of a best case scenario for O’Reilly, this is one of those things that just flat out works. It’s an awesome visual with a ton of finality to it, a hell of a period on the end of the sentence, and a great end to this lovely little Shibata vs. reDRagon series.
While not his career work exactly, it’s another stellar example of just what Kyle O’Reilly brings to the table and has to offer, so long as you have a genuine all-timer and all-world level guy like Shibata there to always tug just a little bit on the reins and make sure they stay on message. While Shibata isn’t the genius level structural expert or selling master of other great Kyle opponents, what he does better than anyone in the world at this point is kick a lot of ass, and when you boil Kyle down almost exclusively to a story about how to and how not to kick ass, you get something as gratifying as this.
Not a Grade A board certified God Damner, but a delightful little burst of violence. Yet another undeniable hit from Shibata.
HANDWERK 