Tully Blanchard vs. Magnum TA, NWA Starrcade 1985 (11/28/1985)

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This was a steel cage “I Quit” match for Blanchard’s NWA U.S. Heavyweight Title.

Chances are you’ve heard of this one.

It’s historic and it is immense. I’m pretty sure a match this bloody and violent had never been on a stage this massive before, and with all due respect to a handful of other matches, I’m not sure one would be again for at least another decade, if not longer. I can’t approach this match from any nostalgic point of view, but it’s very easy to imagine seeing this as a younger fan at the time and being completely blown away, in the same way something like the Undertaker/Mankind Hell in a Cell did for me twelve and a half years later. It’s also one of a select few matches that, at the time it happened, I feel like someone could have credibly left it thinking that this was, to this point, the greatest match of all time.

Nearly forty years later, and that opinion still isn’t too far off.

Suffice to say, I think that it is pretty great.

It isn’t perfect, sure. It isn’t for everyone, or at least not for everyone the first time around, apparently, and that includes me the very first time I saw it when I was fourteen or fifteen and probably just hadn’t lived enough life yet.

There are criticisms that you can levy here, and that I’ve seen levied. The sense of drama you might get in later matches with the positive qualities this match has isn’t always there, or at least not in the same way. There’s not so much of a traditional dramatic flow to it, shine and heat and comeback. You hear “I Quit” and maybe as a younger fan, you maybe don’t expect more brutality, but maybe larger spots and more big highlight reel moments. You can also criticize something like the cut to Blanchard’s arm and the brief attack on it not really mattering, that’s something I wish they did more with just based on the principle that things ought to matter when they’re done.

So, I get it, I suppose.

Because of how this match is approached though, not only does very little of that matter, these things that effectively communicate a much higher idea, but sometimes, it’s even a strength, and arguably the match’s greatest strength.

The strength is that this does not feel like a wrestling match, instead like something much realer.

Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard have had wrestling matches before. This match, however, makes absolutely zero attempts to model the actions and rhythms of a professional wrestling match. There are maybe a handful of moves or, more accurately, actions taken in this match that professional wrestlers would know — such as a throw down into the top rope, Tully’s leaps off the top rope to add some height to a punch or elbow, a hammerlock Magnum uses to throw Tully into the cage — but this is a fight. There’s no traditional structure because it is not a wrestling match. Nobody controls this for minutes at a time, because that is not how this works. There could be some more twists and turns, sure, but this is a dirty and guttural thing, committed to that feeling above all else, and every choice made has the effect of allowing that feeling to grow.

Even the one major prop spot is done in what feels like the least clean and easy way possible, literally taking a more common wrestling object and breaking it apart into something sharper, realer, and more harmful than typically seen.

More mechanically speaking, independent of the larger spirit or approach, all the bigger and smaller parts of this are fantastic too. Every punch is not only an absolute mother fucker, but they’re all just a little different, because that’s what would happen. The same goes for the kicks thrown in more tired and desperate moments, along with Tully’s few elbows and the few moves. Tully and Magnum are also both individually fantastic in ways that are a little harder to fully quantify, with great moments of exhaustion selling in not only how the react to every blow, but the way they gradually throw them a little sloppier as the match nears a conclusion. The match is full of those moments in the second half especially, to its benefit, things not landing perfectly cleanly in a way that makes it all feel that much heavier.

Both men also excel on a character level, especially Blanchard. Magnum’s job is a little easier — although not easy — having to look cool and throw great shots and sell sympathetically but never too much on a Ricky Morton type of level, and while he nails it, Tully is even better. There are obvious things like how he begs off or the desperation in his own attacks, but yet again with him, what impresses me so much is how everything, including advantages he gets fairly, feels commendable at all. Few wrestlers ever have mastered this like Tully, the balancing act between being tough enough to be an impressive guy to beat but also always a little bit of a coward, respectable in theory but also the farthest thing from admirable, physical enough to be a threat to anyone but also played just small enough to offer up the thrill of seeing him hurled and pounded into oblivion. In a career full of performances like that, this might be the very best.

The match also ends exactly how it ought to.

Blanchard spends the match using the microphone as a weapon, this modern technology tool of the referee in the match itself, but when it breaks down further into something else, he can’t do it. The wooden chair Baby Doll throws in gets stomped into shards, but when he goes for something far more violent and primitive, some of the greatest pure textbook babyface shit to ever happen goes down.

Magnum blocks the sharp chunk of wood under an inch away from his eye, fights back and decks Tully, before grabbing it and doing what the bad guy lacked either the will or the strength to do and shoving this new far more basic weapon — something grotesque, closer to nature, created out of anger and barely resembling like what it came from — right into his face (maybe the eye, the camera and Magnum are both great at positioning themselves so that you can never know entirely).

After screaming out like never before, Tully gives up.

This is the good stuff.

It would be a lie to even call this the greatest basic morality play in wrestling all decade, something like MS1 vs. Sangre Chicana not only comes first but maybe does it better, but along with that and a few others, it gets to the heart of the thing like few others. Sure, wrestling can be a billion things and a million great ones, but very few of the hit with the force or accuracy of something like this. The real pure stuff. The most unlikeable person in the world finally being caught, cornered, and punished by one of the most likeable people in the world, who he stole from and then ran from for all these months, wrapped up in beautifully assembled and nearly flawlessly performed bloodbath. Not everyone can do it like the do, of course, so it almost feels rude to say it can always be like this, but the spirit at the heart of the thing still feels like one of the most correct versions of this thing possible, and a road map that I wish more people knew how to read.

Pro wrestling ass pro wrestling ass pro wrestling.

Magnum TA and Tully Blanchard do not invent violence in wrestling, nor really even violence in wrestling to this extent or with this level of feeling to it. It is not the first gruesome bloodletting, it is probably not the first nasty grotesque steel cage match, and it may not even be the best North American bloodbath of the decade. Of all the great monuments to violence though, few are constructed with the same craft as this, and even fewer stand as tall.

****1/3

 

Dominic Garrini vs. Joshua Bishop, AIW Slumber Party Massacre (4/4/2019)

This was a Submit or Surrender match, so basically I Quit.

It fucking rocks.

Just whips tons upon tons of ass, man. It’s just such a cool god damned match.

One of the most fun things to see happen in wrestling — and predominantly it happens in independent wrestling, both because of the freedom, the settings where atmosphere can easily develop and impact a match, and also that it’s full of younger wrestlers starting to pull it together — is when for no clear or obviously discernable reason, something just comes together.

This match, at the time and maybe a little in retrospect too, this had no real obvious reason to work as well as it did.

Dominic Garrini, while steadily improving for years, had yet to really break out like he would for the rest of the year. Hell, this is the match that made the idea of Deathmatch Dom a thing to begin with, an idea then later cemented by a string of great brawls later in the year. Joshua Bishop is not a guy I’ve ever really loved and who I cannot recall having a match that I liked as much as this either before or since. The math or science or whatever you put on paper to figure out probable outcomes does not look entirely in the favor of this match .

Again though, math is bullshit, this is as much art as it is science, and sometimes these things just happen.

So, as it happened, some sort of spirit came into the ring and possessed the two of them. Dominic Garrini reveals a true talent for bleeding and for fighting and for creating a sense of danger and chaos in matches like these. Joshua Bishop is put in the perfect environment to be an absolute freak. They have a bunch of incredibly sick and awesome and grotesque ideas, specifically involving Garrini’s cauliflowered ear getting stabbed with stuff. Additionally, the match benefits immensely from a relatively short eleven minute runtime, and mostly, its place early in the show in front of a real hot WrestleMania Weekend crowd.

Everything that could go right here goes even more correctly than one could ever reasonably expect.

The fill the thing up with jaw-dropping stuff from beginning to end, like Dom taking a horrific powerbomb through some chairs off the stage, nasty skewer and thumbtack spots, real wild shots, and an endearingly cavalier dive early on.

Even the finish — a non-impact type of finish where instead of a big gross thing to cap off the festival of violence, Dom is handcuffed to the corner, doused in lighter fluid, and threatened with immolation until surrendering — works out pretty well. It’s never my favorite way for one of these matches to end, the threat of something actually happening rather than the pain of something currently happening, but if it’s gonna be that, you really have to go as far as this match did. Don’t half ass it, if an I Quit match is ending with the threat of something, it should be something as insane as almost being set on fire and murdered.

Really, that’s the trick here. The dial is turned past ten on every single thing that happens in the match, on every idea they had, and on the environment itself, pushing past what the clear limitations might be in a normal match in front of a more normal crowd. The result of everything that works here, by design and through the magic nobody can ever plan for, is in my eyes, your annual Mania Weekend sleeper.

One of the most fun and memorable matches not only of the weekend, but of the entire year.

***1/4

Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso, WWE Hell in a Cell (10/25/2020)

This was one of the Black Friday Sale commissions, this one courtesy of avid reader/reply guy Oregano Jackson. You too can commission reviews over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon for $5 a match. If you want a full show or something, DM me or something. Let’s talk. 

It’s a Hell in a Cell “I Quit” match for Reigns’ WWE Universal Title.

There’s a version of this that rocks.

It’s probably not in the WWE.

Certainly, it’s not in this environment. The Thunderdome is a horrible place for wrestling and while some great matches did happen there — many involving these two — it’s not a great environment for this sort of a half hour Feelings Epic given that nobody is actually there. The screens are meant to simulate that, but the actual result is calling more and more attention to it via this uncanny valley nonsense. It’s the sort of match that, in front of real people, might have played really well and that I might have a different opinion on.

Even without that, this might be better outside of HIAC (given that it’s already an I Quit match), or absolutely, it would have been better if they cut that half an hour in half.

In this case, literally shut up and play the hits.

That’s not to say this is entirely useless.

On a mechanical level, this rules. Roman’s not a guy I like bell to bell as a heel in the same way I liked him as a TV workhorse babyface, but he works really well in the first half of this. Dominant and domineering, and real easy to dislike. The trade off is that he’s now in a role as a character that makes more sense, and the first half or first two-thirds of this match sees one of his better performances from a pure heel perspective. Mean and rough, showing ass, but always able to shut it down against a guy who’s easy to root for. It’s great early reign heel wrestling, establishing why you should want to see this guy lose, and also establishing that it’s going to be a hard thing to do.

There’s a great match within this match.

Unfortunately, it turns less from a wrestling match two-thirds of the way through and becomes some real WE MAKE MOVIES, PAL shit.

Roman talks up a storm about Jey making him do this, Jay passes out, there’s a ref bump to get the door open so Jimmy Uso can come down, Roman fake apologizes and then puts Jimmy Uso into the front choke over Jey’s leg so he can’t help, and then Jey gives up.

The last part isn’t all that bad of a finish, but as a whole, it’s very deeply Not For Me.

A little of the dialogue is good, and Roman Reigns is good at most of it, but it’s so much. All of it is so much. It’s a little of everything instead of picking one thing to excel at. There’s a clear look at what can be in this match, with this story and with these characters, but it always has to be more obvious and bigger and dumber and longer, until you get it, and then you will be asked over and over and over if you get it yet. It’s A Lot when a little would have worked much better. That’s WWE though, things like this both written and executed in caps lock at all times. The words and ideas themselves aren’t bad, occasionally performed in an exceptional manner, but the entire thing is always just off in ways either little or large and that always get in the way of any positive aspect.

Like so much of Roman Reigns’ career, what is is far less interesting than what could be.

AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels, TNA Bound For Glory 2011 (10/16/2011)

This was an “I Quit” match, as since we last joined these two in July, Christopher Daniels has predictably turned heel and decided to try and ruin the life of his former friend.

If someone came into this expecting the blowoff match that this stipulation on TNA’s biggest show of the year might suggest, I can totally understand being disappointed with this match. It’s not the blow off at all though. Instead, it’s just this very simplified and incredibly fun fifteen minute mid-feud brawl that seems impossible to dislike.

This is less a “proper” “I Quit” match than it is a submission match, save for the ending, but it works in its own way.

The highlight is AJ’s response to Daniels telling him to suck it being to hold the microphone at waist level and then trying to face fuck his former friend with it, in a scene so impossibly loaded with subtext that I honestly don’t know where to start, so I won’t even try. Besides that though, there’s a lot to enjoy in the most pared back match that these two ave ever had. Chris Daniels is a comic book villain at this point, for better or worse (worse meaning the Villain Diatribe he goes on in the last third that allows for AJ’s comeback). After getting his ass beaten and his back and ribs attacked for the first half by the person who will always be better than him, he turns more devious and tries to kill him. He uses a few tools, before going to the back to actually accomplish something.

 

Daniels’ work on the back is good enough. Mean, basic, and effective. It’s a nice little touch for Daniels to try and do the same thing that AJ Styles did in the first half, but to blow it in the end. It’s an even better touch for him to blow it because of his own behavior, and not because he’s any worse at it than AJ is. Daniels always measures himself in the shadow of AJ Styles, but it’s really mostly in his own terrible brain in the first place. TNA being TNA, this isn’t ever really spelled out, but watching how the matches unfold, it seems like a very obvious decision to help tell the story.

Because Daniels insists on going through a monologue about how he’s going to kill AJ Styles and that his kids shouldn’t watch this, which is all very embarrassing and beneath these two in a bad TNA sort of way, AJ Styles gets to fight back. When he does, he completely dominates Daniels and it’s all the payback he deserves. Instead of escalating the match further, AJ grabs the screwdriver Daniels tried (and failed) to use earlier on. Being a perfect coward, Daniels immediately quits.

AJ wins, but he gains no revenge for anything. Christopher Daniels loses, but evades any sort of real punishment in the process. It’s not the end of the feud, and he shouldn’t suffer that yet.

Every so often, TNA is capable of getting a thing completely correct, and this was completely correct.

A disappointing finish if this was supposed to be the end, but it isn’t, so anyone crying about that misread the entire point of the thing. In another repeating theme on this blog, things like this are a lot more enjoyable when you take the pressure of your own expectations off of them and enjoy them for what they actually are. It’s the middle of the feud, and this is a great middle of the feud match.

***

 

Jimmy Jacobs vs. Jon Moxley, DGUSA Bushido Code of the Warrior 2010 (10/29/2010)

This was an “I Quit” match.

I’ve been watching a lot of DGUSA on and off over the last few months. A lot of that is wanting to cover every possible base for a series of 2010s lists and pieces that I’m planning on releasing over the next few years. A lot of it is also revisiting stuff I loved and/or liked and/or hated at the time but never reviewed and put on record how I felt about it. I hadn’t planned on reviewing any of it, and I’ve been able to stick to that, for the most part. Of what I focused on and might have written about beyond just “this was bad, meaningless limbwork that meant nothing”, things either didn’t do it for me like they once did (Shingo vs. Davey), were disappointing but still good (Bryan vs. Shingo, Bryan vs. Moxley), or were a blast but in ways that left me nothing to write about (the big four way spotfests and tag bombfests). This put my ass on the floor, and while I’m still in awe of it and watching something else, I might as well write about it. I don’t think this is MOTD level stuff, but as people do more decade type work, I think this is something people should look at again.

This is the end of a long feud. As Jimmy Jacobs has come to EVOLVE and DGUSA in 2010, trying to make good and be a positive influence, following a series of wonderful promos talking about his drug and attitude problems over the last few years, Jon Moxley has very much not been like that. He is where Jimmy was. Jon Moxley has been a mirror. He’s repeatedly antagonized Jacobs about losing his edge, and at one point, Moxley brought Lacey back from retirement as a mind game in a match against Jacobs before then attacking her. Jimmy’s talked about how Moxley behaves like he used to, and Moxley’s taunted Jacobs about how he no longer has it in him to go as far as Moxley does. Their previous matches have all proven this correct. Moxley’s cheated and benefited from interference, and while Jimmy’s tried to turn back the clock, even bringing back the white and blood stained MAN UP gear last time, but cosmetic change isn’t real change. In response, Moxley has embarrassed and hurt him for approaching him with half measures like that. That last match ended with Moxley beating Jimmy down into the mat with chain whips and chair shots, leading to Jacobs collapsing backstage and vomiting, completing as absolute a loss as he possibly suffer.

As any good blow off does, the things said in a pre match summary video matter, and the themes of the last ten months matter. They start hot, as Jacobs dives off the small balcony overhead onto Moxley before whipping him with a belt, again hoping a cheap and unexpected trick might work. It doesn’t. He can’t hold onto the advantage for more than thirty seconds before he loses it. Moxley plays up to the themes more overtly by being the one to produce railroad spikes this time. Before long, Jimmy is bleeding, and he is bleeding BAD. The full and complete Crimson Mask. Jimmy has his bursts, but Moxley is a younger, crazier, and more physically gifted version of the man he was at his best, and it’s just so hard.

Moxley has never seemed to me like a particularly dangerous person so much as he has a crafty survivor type, but the mirror element to the match casts him in a more dangerous element than usual. When Jimmy was like this two or three or four years ago, it always felt a little sad. A lot of that, and a lot what’s always connected me to the Jimmy Jacobs character, is a personal thing. It’s a little bit of growing up with this character, it’s a little bit of just having the same roots (what’s up Grand Rapids?), and it’s a lot of these ways that I’ve been able to look at this character and its turning points and being able to see something there that reflected what I was going through at the time. Certainly not entirely, cut out the stabbings and the ex-girlfriend kidnapping angle that was never TOTALLY explained, but the root causes? The motivations? The promos about kicking a drug habit around the time I was trying to do the same? It’s not a one to one mirror, but it was a mirror. Pro wrestling rarely ever gives me so accurate a mirror. As a result of all of that, there’s been very few times where I didn’t at least get a sense of weight behind Jimmy Jacobs doing horrible things. Something had gone wrong with this kid somewhere, and it always felt like I was watching someone who had descended into this from a mugh higher starting point, like a cautionary tale. In comparison, Jon Moxley felt like he had always been like this. He didn’t feel like he changed to become like this, there wasn’t a descent into this, it’s just how he is. He himself is not dangerous, but I felt a sense of danger for my guy specifically when he was against somebody like this.

Of course, experience matters. While Moxley is making a show of using all these old tricks that Jimmy used to, Jimmy starts to use the tricks that people used against him. There’s specifically the transition where he pulls a spike out of the top turnbuckle pad and turns to jab Moxley with it, a direct echo back to the Windy City Deathmatch against Colt Cabana three and a half years prior. Moxley’s opened up, as happens when you get stabbed in the face, but he’s not really slowed at all. Jimmy’s again turned the clock back in some way, and once again, it does not matter. At all. Moxley continues to beat the shit out of him, it’s just that now he’s also bleeding. Moxley ties Jimmy’s arms behind his back with the belt introduced earlier, and unlike how that’s spot gone with chains before, it’s actually tight. Moxley begins to really go to work, including one tremendous moment that I’d put up there with the best work of his entire career.

Moxley focuses more on torture than victory though, and never once (maybe once only?) does he actually ask Jimmy if he quits. So, he doesn’t. You can’t win unless you try to win. Jimmy is able to sneak in a low blow, and for once his size helps him out. He can scoot his arms underneath his legs and back in front, and bite his way out of the belt. They manage to trade spikes to the head, and Jacobs repeatedly lands the chair shots in revenge. Moxley keeps getting up in a way Jimmy hadn’t been doing when the roles were reversed. Moxley won’t give up when Jimmy jabs the spike in his face, so Jimmy goes and does what Moxley either didn’t think of, didn’t think of YET, or (least likely) would not do. He digs the spike into Moxley’s groin, and unlike the famous 2008 “I Quit” match against BJ Whitmer, it’s not this manic stabbing motion. That felt like an act of hate, with desperation behind it. This feels like an act of panic, still with desperation behind it. Jimmy holds onto the spike and keeps pushing at it desperately, and Moxley gives up.

Beyond just hitting an emotional chord with me because of who and what this was based around, this does so many things that I absolutely love. It’s a bloodbath, it’s incredibly efficient at under fifteen minutes, there’s stabbing, and it’s a story both about an underdog and about a veteran turning back the clock. It’s also specifically just so smart about everything it does. Moxley always comes off tougher and stronger, even at the end. Jimmy found a way and pressed his openings in very specific ways, but they did everything correctly to make this feel like a situation where everything broke perfectly to result in this outcome. Everyone looks better coming out of this, and most importantly, it allowed for perfect fanwank continuity, as Jimmy embracing the evil at the end is enough to pretend it’s a direct bridge to the SCUM stuff when he resurfaces in ROH again within the next year.

One of the best blowoffs and best matches of this type of the decade, and I absolutely accept being on an island there.

****

Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk, NWA Clash of the Champions IX ~ New York Knockout (11/15/1989)

This was an “I Quit” match.

It’s nearly impossible thirty years later, but in the 1980s and 1990s especially, there was a period where you could actually see a new greatest match of all time semi regularly. I don’t think there’s a specific reason for it as far as talent or promotions, but just the artform not having peaked just yet, and that it wouldn’t for another seven years or so (12/6/96). I’m not so silly as to believe that the wrestlers in the 1960s and 1970s didn’t also push the envelope and achieve things like this, as matches like Baba/Destroyer, Tsuruta/Funk, and Lawler/Dundee (to just throw three out there) also felt like the best stuff wrestling could do at the time. In the 1980s though, there’s a few times where you can see a match and semi reliably say that it’s the best match in the history of wrestling to that point. The Boot Camp Match, very possibly. Tully Blanchard vs. Magnum TA, even more possibly. Some of the better mid-decade Japanese tag matches. I first had this thought when I was watching a lot of 1989 NWA and 1989 All Japan around the same time. I watched Flair/Steamboat from the Clash and then Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu from 6/5/1989, and I had the thought that these were probably the two best matches in wrestling history to that point.

This is definitely the best match in wrestling history, to this point. Hell, it’s the thirty year anniversary and if we talked and you said this was the best match of all time, I’m not disagreeing at all. It’s a top five match of all time for me. It’s about perfect. Neither man ever had a match or performance better than this.

Context certainly helps this. I’m the sort of psycho that watches and reviews entire years of wrestling, so I’ve seen it all. It helps knowing how their feud began, or how Funk tried to outdo Flair at the Great American Bash before it broke down, and then he went that much more over the line. The angles, promos, and everything in between all help, but this is not a match that’s hard to get into. You can jump in, I think, and still get a lot out of this. To that point, the match may as well take place in a vacuum, in the best way. It doesn’t take long for it to break down into the fight and the brawl they teased at the Great American Bash. It’s full of great little sells from Terry Funk, to my absolute SHOCK. Selling his hand after a punch, his usual punch drunk wobbly stuff, and then killer knee selling when Flair goes there near the end. It’s a virtuoso performance, and it’s arguably the second best performance in the match. Flair throws the most brutal chops of his career by far.

In the best possible way, it feels like and comes across as a real life fight between two guys who happen to be trained pro wrestlers, with the way they throw each other into anything near by, and how Flair jumps at Funk repeatedly when he tries to walk away for distance. Flair can’t really hang with Funk in a pure slugfest, and Funk takes control once again. He lands the Piledriver inside AND ON THE FLOOR JESUS CHRIST. There’s something really magnetic about the idea that Funk is at a place mentally now where he could have Flair beaten easily in a real match, and could have won the title, but because of everything he’s done, they’re here now in this environment, not for the title, and it means nothing. Terry Funk isn’t whi I think about at all when I talk about loving tragic figures in wrestling, but there’s something here.

Flair’s comeback rules and again, it’s just pure violence and punishment. After trying to just fight Funk and getting his ass beat again, Flair goes to the leg now. Terry Funk’s selling is just about perfect. He fights the Figure Four off once, but when he tries a suplex back in, FLAIR REVERSE INTO A SUPLEX ON THE APRON AND FUNK LANDS RIGHT ON HIS LEGS JESUS CHRIST.

There’s a million ways that spot could have gone and we’ve seen most everybody’s take on it in the thirty years since. Very few, if any, have made that choice. It’s an insane choice, but for where they’re at in the match and the feud and as characters, it’s the perfect choice. Following that, there’s this amazing little chunk of ten seconds, right as they head back in, where Funk is swinging desperately at Flair, and Flair ducks all of this blows and throws increasingly nasty chops at him, before kicking his leg out and taking him down. Fans hoot and holler and pump their fists. Ric Flair is always talked up as this legendary heel, but his best performance is in this match, and his best run is here in 1989, as one of the greatest babyfaces of all time.

If I was a fan at this point, let alone alive, it feels like that’s the moment I would decide Ric Flair is the greatest of all time. It all feels like his dominant face victory in the way that WrestleMania 30 is for Bryan, Tana/MiSu is for Tanahashi, etc. Flair gets the Figure Four on from there. Funk yells “NEVER” and throws the ref down in desperation and can’t land any punches and screams about his leg AND FINALLY SHOUTS “YES, I QUIT”. In a really great year, at least for two companies, this is the best match of the year. It’s the crown jewel of Ric Flair’s legendary run in 1989. It’s the best match of an entire decade. It’s the best match in company history, and expanding back to the JCP days, the best match in the history of the territory and more than likely in the entire country. This match is everything. It’s a purely reactive and violent mess. It’s mean, it’s nasty, relative good overcomes relative evil, and the best wrestler in the world overcomes the mean old psycho. Tanahashi vs. Minoru Suzuki for the territorial set, if I can try to upset as many people as possible.

Do yourself the honor, if you haven’t.

****3/4