Konosuke Takeshita vs. Mike Bailey, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix II in Shinjuku (11/30/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2019 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

While not on the level of their singles match earlier in the year, due to Takeshita wearing his normal gear rather than the flame tights (the Hoodie Melo attire of Japanese professional wrestling), it is still one of their better outings together.

In large part, this is because, finally, nobody has any silly ideas like trying to work a limb in some half-hearted attempt to make this some bullshit ass prestige wrestling style Great Match.

Rather, it comes by that status naturally, and I like that a hundred times more.

Through the natural process of two incredibly skilled offensive wrestlers simply emptying the arsenal for nearly seventeen minutes, the match simply becomes great through the skill involved. Soup and Seedball remove themselves from all of that title match style wrestling bullshit, the sort of thing neither has the propensity to pull off when removed from the steady hand of an all-time great like HARASHIMA, and they simply deliver the goods in a classic sort of lizard-brained approach, aided by the only the very smallest bit of narrative momentum at the end. Everything is precise and loud and crunchy, and to the match’s absolute benefit, it gets the mix nearly exactly right. Close to the correct amount so that I am impressed and enjoy the fireworks, but unlike something like their first try at it, never so much that I begin to lose patience. It’s the exact right mix, and given how often Takeshita and Bailey had failed to find that in the past, and in the 2020s in America, would fail to find it in the future, the one time they got it right feels like something worth celebrating.

Bailey finally gets his victory over the wunderkind at the end, innovating the Flamingo Driver in the process, for a win that probably ought to have amounted to far more in the long run than it actually did.

Lovely little match.

***

WALTER vs. Mike Bailey, RIPTIDE International Waters (7/6/2018)

I put off watching this for nearly a full five years.

Just saw it get booked, saw my friends react to it and (probably?) love it, kept saying I would get around to it at some point, and just simply never did. Life gets in the way, or maybe it was a sort of apathy starting to sink in about how many different great WALTER (and/or Speedball) matches were happening in 2018, or maybe it was ghosts. Who knows? Many things are not knowable. So anyways, this match that one imagines would greatly appeal to me was simply one I did not watch until now.

It was exactly the match I hoped it would be.

This is not to say the best possible version of this, or the ideal one conjured up in my head (WXW main event title match on a big weekender, Reseda Classic maybe, something not in front of British fans.), but the exact best case scenario for the exact time and place in which this match happened. It is a dream match presented by a British promotion (to my delight, the only one with no commentary), without a lot of story or narrative behind it outside of that they (smartly) knew that an easy way to get a lot of eyeballs on one of their shows was to book a match that had never been seen before and that a whole lot of people badly wanted to see. It is indie wrestling as hell, and I kind of respect it. Throw one of wrestling’s best bullies against one of wrestling’s better underdogs, get out of the way, and put it on film.

WALTER abuses Young Karate, and poor Speedball tries his best to stay alive.

Read that sentence again, re-read it, imagine there are more words essentially saying that over and over and/or in different fun ways (I am deputizing you, The Reader, to make up a review in your heads. Do not abuse this privilege by imagining I said something problematic or incorrect.)

It is the most plug and play shit of all time, and I God damned LOVED IT.

The match is almost all hitting, and they are talented enough to make the most out of it.

You might think, as it may appear on paper, that it is a little ridiculous to have Bailey go toe to toe with the big guy for fifteen minutes, but the way they do it makes complete sense. Both in the sense that it takes one for WALTER to knock Bailey on his ass while it takes five for Bailey to do the same, but also in how the thing is structured. Bailey’s attack is fast and diverse enough to stay alive, especially when he throws his kicks. WALTER’s size winds up helping them out here as because of his height, the kicks land below his chest and right on the ribs, making them look far more vicious than usual. Combine that with an overall strategy of trying for distance to hit those kicks over and over, as well as his consistent targeting of the leg, and it really does feel like WALTER can get brought down.

Functionally, the match is a struggle for Bailey to try and crowd and hurt WALTER before the big man can really turn it up, and it mostly works, until the exact, deeply violent, and ultra sudden moment in which it does not. WALTER gets hurt and embarrassed enough to start hurling moonshots with every swing, and Bailey has no answer at that point.

WALTER totally loses it with a series of deeply petty clubs to the chest, before sinking in the real deep Gojira Clutch for the win.

A remarkable one-time only match. As great as it could be in the exact time and place in which it happened, getting in and out with a lot of efficiency, but still delivering the sort of quality people expect from them. It’s the sort of match that genuinely does impress me a whole lot, a match with very little in the way of larger ambition, thrown out there simply to exist, and that still succeeds through force of talent if nothing else, enough so that I still consider it one of the year’s better matches.

Something like the best 2004 IWA Mid-South upper midcard match of 2018.

***1/3

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Mike Bailey, DDT Same Day & Night Box Office Festival in Matsuyama 2018 (6/17/2018)

Of all the matches that Takeshita and Bailey have had together (and may one day have again), this is my favorite.

Why‘s that? 

There are a lot of reasons that could be the answer, realistically.

Most vaguely of all, it could simply be that it is their second match together. People have a way of figuring things out in a rematch after the learning experience of a first match. Hell, that applies to just about everything in life. You drive a car better the second time, you cook a meal better the second time you try it, whatever else you want to throw in there. Repetition makes things easier, you work out the kinks, refine the processes, all of that. It‘s to be expected, more often than not, that a rematch will probably be better, which is why most repeat match ups don’t get to their big hit on the very first try. 

You could also look at the things they did differently to explain it.

Something like the focus now on Bailey‘s arm instead of his knee helps them out a whole lot. Bailey is still not a great seller, although he does put in the effort, but simply not forcing him to express pain in his leg while spending like eighty percent or more of his offense using said pained leg is an improvement. He doesn’t throw a lot of elbows or chops, and so the less intense selling is a lot more appropriate, if not great. The removal of a large mark against their first match is, for sure, a benefit. 

Another thing they did differently, and probably the biggest part of this being better, is that they cut it down from nearly twenty-eight minutes the first time around to now a much more manageable thirteen or fourteen. Konosuke Takeshita and Mike Bailey are not twenty or twenty-five or half-hour kinds of wrestlers. They‘re action and energy and fireworks, and virtually all of their best work is either (a) under 20:00, or (b) has an all-time great like HARASHIMA there to hold their hand through a longer match. Shoving them into a box here and forcing them to cut out a lot of the clear filler results in a match that’s not only more efficient on an intellectual level, but also one that is allowed to satisfy the more lizard-based parts of the brain by simply whipping a ton of ass, free from parts that do not whip ass, or that whip less ass. 

None of these things are the answer to the question though.

The answer is instead something far simpler, both larger and smaller than all of those potential reasons, and incredibly stupid, because it is simply that this was is a Flame Tights Takeshita match.

All of the above may stem from this one specific gear that always resulted in one of the better versions of Takeshita that we ever got, or it may be an incredibly silly coincidence that more often than not, Takeshita‘s best work during this period of time happened to be whenever he wore this laundry day ass more ordinary attire. The beautiful thing is that one can never really be sure, creating the sort of weird alternate version of an otherwise mercurial performer that you don’t often get to see in pro wrestling, but that real sports are filled with. 

The Hoodie Melo of pro wrestling does it again.

***+

Yuko Miyamoto vs. Mike Bailey, DDT April Fool 2018 (4/1/2018)

(photo credit to @puroresueikaiwa on Twitter.)

This was a Ladder Match for Miyamoto’s DDT Extreme Title. 

In this match, they did a lot of cool stuff and, more importantly, never did anything that wasn’t entertaining on one level or another.

Sometimes that was a comedy bit based around neither man wanting to use a ladder and instead each trying to make a gigantic chair structure that they inevitably ate A TON of shit on, either through their own lack of balance or the construction giving the opponent enough time to recover and knock them off. Sometimes it was Mike Bailey taking basic K-Hall chair whip spots unbelievably hard and going careening into the bleachers with enough force to cut his forearm open. Other times, it is simply these two bumping obscenely hard on simple ladder stuff, bumping even crazier on the truly inventive bits, and generally going after this thing as hard as possible given the subject matter and limitations of a DDT semi main event hardcore thing. 

It is all cool as hell, and proof that at the end of the day, the thing that really separates great matches like these from everything else is simply commitment.

Miyamoto eventually knocked Mike off the top onto a ladder bridge in a real real real gross landing, first on his back sideways on the bridge, then bouncing off of it onto the mat below, and gets the title down.

Not an especially novel finish, but it completely fits a match like this. Relatively simple, but done with total commitment and visibly disgusting enough to leave an impression.

A delightfully uncomplex thing.

***

Bobby Gunns vs. Mike Bailey, WXW 16 Carat Gold 2018 Day Two (3/10/2018)

(photo credit to GD Photography.)

This was for Gunns’ WXW Shotgun Title.

If you’ve seen this match before, you will never forget either the match itself, or at worst, a few minute stretch in it.

Before that though, and independent of maybe the spot? idea? segment? of the year, it is kind of just a fun little efficient midcad match between two guys who, on paper, maybe do not match up all that well, and another piece of proof from this show of how you really ought to just wait and see sometimes. These two do not immediately match up on paper, with Gunns being more of a character guy at this point despite having a few great matches to his name, and Bailey being all action. Both are really good at their specific things, but not so much historically when they try and overlap, especially when one considers Gunn’s penchant for arm work and Bailey’s less-than-perfect selling in limb-focused matches. It’s not to say that this looked like total shit on paper, so much as that a bridge had to be made somewhere, and neither of these two had proven to be all that great at or all that interested in building bridges.

Sometimes all you need is one good idea to build that bridge though, relieving either man of the responsibility on their own.

Or rather, sometimes you need one really really really really fucking great idea.

To be clear, it is not perfect.

Mike and Bobby get a little scatter brained sometimes in terms of the arm work that Bobby Gunns puts in, Bailey is still not the world’s greatest seller in terms of a specific focus of a match, along with other real minor ass complaints here and there about some facials, the few bouts of shout-selling that the match maybe doesn’t earn in some moments (this especially doesn’t matter because they really really earn it in other moments), issues getting moving, not committing entirely to the one really cool thing they do.

None of this especially matters all that much.

When Gunns adds onto that arm work by not only bending Bailey’s pinky entirely backwards, but then uses his wrist tape to hold it there for a real good chunk of the match, all of those smaller complaints just have a way of rushing right out the back side of my head, as if they never existed in the first place.

It is both the coolest and grossest thing in the world at once.

(Hard to imagine why I love this match, I know.)

The idea alone would have elevated an already great match somewhat above its station, but it’s the work they add to it that does so much.

Bailey has it there for at least three or four minutes, and it makes every single thing a thousand times more interesting. Obviously, Gunns’ attacks on the hand in that position are way grosser now, a punt to the hand or wrist that clearly catches the bent pinky first are the most brutal part, but even regular attacks on the arm have way more weight to them like this. It also makes Bailey’s own attacks so much more dramatic and sympathetic. His inability to grab the ropes when he tries to climb or hook his hands for a Dragon Suplex feels more genuine because, fuck man, look at his hand.

There’s this stretch where he tries to throw palms with his right hand but Gunns keeps ducking and Bailey repeatedly almost falls over as a result of how weird the other side probably feels and/or how desperately he’s swinging, leading to him hitting Bobby with one from the left featuring the four fingered hand. Usually, that’s the sort of thing I hate to see, but in this moment, with this great a set up, there’s a real triumph to it, and to Bailey finally getting some distance from all this.

Bailey gets his finger free and does a few moves and nearfalls, disappointingly sort of giving in to what’s expected, but thankfully, it’s over before too long, allowing at leat for an idea this great to be close enough to the climax to still feel important. Gunns wins with a double armbar with his legs and a Stretch Muffler with the arms for good measure.

Again, it is maybe not the best finish in the world. Given the novelty of the match’s greatest feature, I would have preferred that playing more of a role, or alternatingly, Gunns reverting back to being a truly despicable goon when this fails, but it still works. You can buy Bailey having a real hard time getting out because of the messed up hand, and it doesn’t really hurt Gunns’ entire thing, because he is naturally scummy enough that there’s kind of a cap on how legitimate he can ever feel, in the best way possible. Good pro wrestling.

2018’s reigning and likely full-term leader in the what is the name of this blog awards.

***1/4

WALTER/Mike Bailey vs. John Klinger/Bobby Gunns, WXW 16 Carat Gold 2018 Day One (3/9/2018)

Going into Day Two’s two big title matches (Klinger/WALTER, Gunns/Bailey), it’s a nice little classical build up tag.

Classical only in the sense that, yeah, throwing a two on two tag team combination out there there night before the four involved have two different one on one matches together, because otherwise, this is a God damned sprint and a half.

In terms of, like, analysis, there is not all that much to it.

Four guys throw out some sick offense for a while, and eventually, Mike Bailey beats Gunns with the Green Tea Plunge. It is not a build up tag that expressly tries to establish anything going into these matches, but instead, offers up samples to whet the appetite, and it feel impossible to say they don’t succeed in that task.

It just rocks, I guess.

Wrestling’s weird sometimes. There is no formula. There is no right thing. It is an art and at the same time it is a science, and then also at the same time, it can just be the presentation of the raw materials themselves. Sometimes it is as simple as letting four great wrestlers riff around for fifteen minutes.

***

Kazusada Higuchi vs. Mike Bailey, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Shimizu (1/13/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

Once again, this whips just a whole ton of ass.

You maybe ought to just go read that, because it mostly all holds just as true here. Two of the world’s more purely reliable wrestlers meet in a nearly perfect match up (Higuchi is not quite enough of a bully to be a perfect Speedball opponent as a bigger guy, but he’s so good at so much else that it doesn’t matter all that much) yet again, and toss some great stuff out at each other. It is not all that complex, save for a shadow puppet on the wall of some big vs. small stuff. Mostly, as with that 2017 DNA match, this is simply an offensive showcase between two guys with some of the absolute best offense in all of wrestling.

They get it a little more correct here than they did in their DNA match, likely due to the fact that this is a DDT match, but also due to the fact that it is a few minutes shorter as well. Not only do they aim a little higher, but with less time, they cut whatever fat was there eight months ago too, and have, if not the absolute best version of this (K-Hall title match, the best version of most singles matches), certainly the best one we ever got to see, a real mother fucker of an artillery show between two outstanding marksmen.

To take a page from this match and other great matches like it, that’s all you get, because that’s all you need.

***1/4

Mike Bailey vs. Yukio Sakaguchi, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Yokohama (1/11/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

It is beautiful professional wrestling.

Two of the world’s greatest kickers meet up for ten minutes to trade shots. Yukio tries to drag Young Karate down on the ground and back into his element when Bailey proves too fast for him standing up, but Bailey proves just slippery enough to avoid it. Given Sakaguchi’s success dragging larger men to the ground and defeating them through his own slippery nature, it also serves as this stellar chunk of tournament booking as well, being outdone at his own game.

While Sakaguchi devotes his time to trying to get Bailey on the ground after all the live rounds thrown out, all Bailey is concerned with is not getting caught on the mat though, and eventually finds his opening.

Speedball finds his way out of a choke, lands a standing Ultima Weapon, and kicks Yukio as hard as possible in the temple for the win.

Stylistically, maybe the best AMBITION match of 2018.

***

Mike Bailey vs. Soma Takao, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Osaka 2Days (1/8/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

Whereas the D-Oh GP Mike Bailey matches so far have been variations or straight-up reruns of his usual hits (Little Mike Bailey vs. Big Guy, Eye-Rolling Knee Work Match), what we have here is something far more novel, far more interesting, and yes, despite the name on the other side of the match from him, somehow also far better than the previous two matches.

Mike Bailey is a genuine bully, and it is a revelation. Despite all of the fun fireworks shows and dream matches he’s had in DDT, the UK, and Canada in the time since his U.S. ban in early 2016, it’s the best performance he’s had in years at this point, probably since that career year of 2015. He does everything that he’s always done that’s made him such a joy to watch, and not only cuts out the sort of stuff that’s held him back on and off for a few years, but does it all in entirely new way.

In the interest of total and complete fairness, this is not just a one man show.

Shockingly, Soma Takao brings it.

Or, at least as much as he is physically capable of. He’s got smaller arms, there’s only so much that he can bring, you know? His arms are full here, if nothing else. He does not light the world on fire exactly, but given his inability to even create a spark for most of his career, even a nice little campfire is impressive. It’s more than he’s been able to conjure up in over three years, ever since the miracle KO-D Title match against HARASHIMA in November 2014. He throws a lot of elbows, and something like sixty to seventy-five percent of them are genuine heaters. He’s got a few real nasty ones that he throws to the body that leave a real impression. There’s some weaker offense too, and he is still not an especially likeable wrestler, but there is a real effort from Soma Takao, and he does not let the match or his opponent down like usual.

He could probably have been anyone though, and with a Mike Bailey performance as great as this, the match would have been just as good, if not better.

In this match, Mike Bailey is not an underdog. He is not even wrestling an equal in some stylistic battle, like you might get on any non-U.S. indie in the world at this point.

Instead, Mike Bailey is a rotten little prick.

Young Karate is out of this world great in this match, delivering the sort of absolute shitheel performance that I genuinely had no idea he had in him before this match. He’s aggressive and incredibly mean, but also such a preening little showoff. Everything he does is either incredibly petty and spiteful, or athletically incredible, which is always followed up by him smiling at himself or taking a bow. He holds things for longer than usual to show off, he kicks a little sharper and harder than usual, and goes out of his way to taunt little Soma Takao. It doesn’t just stand because it’s so unique from Bailey, but on top of that, because it is simply so good. As great as he’s been in the past as an underdog, he’s just as great here as in any of his better and/or more acclaimed matches. It’s not only a performance that whips a ton of ass, but a genuine eye-opener.

The reason I’m often so hard on Mike Bailey is because of this match, not just because he showed the ability to do something different and more sensible, but because he was better here against an otherwise complete dud than he’s been in at least a hundred matches against far better wrestlers. It’s the sort of thing he ought to be capable of all the time, but often doesn’t reach, for any number of reasons. It’s the sort of performance that raises someone’s ceiling in my mind, and that makes every lesser effort stand out that much more.

Soma wins with a cradle, but the result of this is the least important thing about it.

If not the absolute best match or performance of Mike Bailey’s career, given the situation, card placement, and opposition, it may be the single most impressive performance of Mike Bailey’s career.

The sleeper of the tournament.

***1/5

Mike Bailey vs. Akito, DDT D-Oh Grand Prix 2018 in Osaka 2Days (1/7/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 D-Oh Grand Prix tournament.

It would be easy to say that, as with every great Akito match, this is one just for the perverts, but that isn’t entirely true. Mike Bailey has another match where he, very frustratingly, has his left leg worked over. It’s been written about so frequently on this blog, the different positives and negatives of this match he likes to have, that I am honestly bored of talking about it. He sells well in the moments and occasionally after, but as a wrestler who runs and kicks a lot, I’ve never enjoyed these matches from Seedball half as much as the ones where he doesn’t do this sort of a thing.

The differences between many of those matches and this match though are that (a) it is only eleven or twelve minutes, & (b) Akito is much better at this match than a lot of the other people Bailey is doing it against.

Firstly, the time really helps them out here.

Bailey tends to have this sort of a match when he has fifteen, twenty, or God forbid, thirty minutes to work with, and it’s those times where it becomes real frustrating. Both because the segments where his leg gets pulverized tend to go on a little longer to fill up that space, but also because it means he has to do a lot more while still selling the leg, for the same reason. So, while it’s annoying when he fills like ten minutes up throwing kicks and then holding his leg, like he’s learned absolutely nothing every other time he’s done it, it is significantly less annoying when that sort of a thing is held back to three or four minutes of that. Carve these twelve minutes up pretty evenly for one-third grappling and back and forth, one-third for the Akito knee attack, and one-third comeback and finishing run, and it works. It’s still not my favorite sort of a match that Mike Bailey can have, but the twelve minute version is so much more palatable to me.

It’s also real beneficial that Akito is also one of the better attackers of a leg in recent wrestling history.

Whereas your garden variety Bailey opponent in a match like this may not be the best at working a leg, this is not only the sort of thing that Akito does all the time, but that he excels at doing. The attacks on the knee are not only so wildly different from what everyone else is doing — setting up bits for Bailey to counter so he can hit something grosser, unique holds, specific move set up only to drop Bailey on his kneecaps instead on the way down — but it’s also all real mean and nasty at the same time. It’s not the world’s most delicate balance exactly, but there’s still a real level of skill to it on display when Akito gets it right, and at least on his specific end, this is one of the better examples of Akito getting it right.

The match also benefits a lot from a real strong ending, as rather than some cliched story about Bailey fighting through and mustering up the strength, he actually adapts to what Akito’s doing. The last time Akito tries a complex transition into a hold, Bailey is able to pull him over when he first tries a Scorpion Deathlock, and with his legs crossed around Akito’s, the little freak cannot kick out. It’s a much better and more memorable ending to a match like this, not only making Bailey seem tougher and more likeable for fighting through it in a believable way rather than some phony show of heroism, but it makes Akito look real great too for forcing him into that, on top of the classical kind of thrill one gets at seeing a too-smart-for-his-own-good character like Akito foiled.

One of the best versions of one of my least favorite things.

***