Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Jonathan Gresham, ROH Final Battle 2018 (12/14/2018)

A famous trilogy becomes a quadrilogy.

(Quadskillogy? yeah, how do you like that one? you fuckers. fucking skillogy. get out of my god damned face.)

If you’ve seen the Beyond Wrestling trilogy from 2016, you’ve seen the best that Zack and Gresham have to offer. This is not giving that series a run for its money any time soon. That was this drawn out process, a successful attempt to truly elevate Jonathan Gresham over the course of three matches, along with an expert display of scientific grappling, with what felt like little to no restraint put upon those matches. Those matches were maybe not any of my favorite matches of the year (in a tremendous year, to be fair), but collected into one singular thing, it’s a genuine achievement.

This is merely a nice thing in the middle of the show, an introductory display to Zack Sabre Jr. (as if anyone is watching ROH at this point who doesn’t know who he is) for a run that does not ever wind up happening, and is, I think, very deliberately scaled down. Zack and Gresham deliver something in between a greatest hits parade and a more streamlined match for a less patient audience, and that’s that.

You could wince or squint here and find something approaching strategy, I suppose. Zack is successful at keeping Gresham away from his arm, immediately doing something that the champion of the company (Jay Lethal) was never able to do. Zack’s reach also prevents Gresham from getting in close more often than not and after the last year plus of Gresham being presented as ROH’s best technician, Zack hanging with him and besting him doesn’t feel like nothing. If you need that sort of thing to enjoy a match, put your mind to it, and you can fanwank the hell out of this thing.

Really though, it’s just a tremendous riff session.

Zack and Gresham spent ten to fifteen minutes floating in and out of a bunch of really cool and really mean holds on the ground, and the joy is in how great every little thing is. The match is full of a bunch of cool stuff, but every little transition also has something to take joy from. They get pettier and more hostile as the match goes on, holds get nastier and nastier, and if nothing else, the match is a stellar display of steady escalation in a match like this.

Gresham tries for one of his classic sequences ending in a roll up at the end, only for Zack to reverse that into his European Clutch to win.

More of a teaser than the real thing, an appetizer of a match from a pairing that previously only produced richly satisfying three course meals, but a hell of an appetizer. The appetizer platter of years later ROH adopted half-grapplefuck reunion tours.

***1/4

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Hechicero, PWG Smokey & The Bandido (10/19/2018)

Another dream match, now for an entirely different sort of pervert.

To their credit, there is very little in terms of an attempt to alter the DNA of this for a PWG audience. You get maybe a nearfall or two more than I would like from these two and a highspot or two that I would not necessarily have expected from Hechicero, but for the most part, it is the match I both expected and wanted.

Sabre Jr. and Hechicero spend eighteen and a half minutes primarily riffing it out on the ground, and it is a delight. A match tailed for the exact sorts of people excited by it to begin with.

It’s not the easiest thing to write about and better off simply seen, but it really is a ton of fun. Hechicero once again lives up to the alchemist billing, seemingly inventing brand new and unbelievably cools holds out of thin air, with the sorts of raw materials that you would not expect a man to be able to transform into gold. Zack isn’t quite as gifted at scientific wrestling transmutation as his opponent, but he has a natural level of pettiness and a meanness of spirit that allows him to contribute just as much.

Above all, it’s a contest, and between the skill of one side and the hostility of the other, they’re able to create a feeling and a certain tension to everything that a match like this requires to be great.

Zack wins with the European Clutch.

With all due respect to Satoshi Kojima vs. Rush, secretly, the years best FANTASTICAMANIA match.

***

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Shota Umino, NJPW Sakura Genesis 2023 (4/8/2023)

Commissions continue, this time from Harry. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

(Generally, I don’t love reviewing current year stuff. I think my strengths lie elsewhere as a writer, talking about historical context and having the benefit of hindsight, and all that. It’s why I stopped doing current/recent year YEAR IN LISTS pieces or doing much of this in general. I do not generally recommend asking me to do this. However, if you absolutely feel the need to know what I thought of something current in a longer format than simply asking about it on Twitter, I will not tell you how to spend your money.)

This was for Sabre Jr.’s NJPW World Television Title.

It’s a good to very good match that I definitely do not think is a great match, for a few different reasons.

The first thing is that, at this point, Shota Umino is in probably the hardest place for a wrestler like him. He is mostly very good in terms of his execution. His selling is not all that good, but in a match with a better point of focus, might be passable. The issue for him here is that he wears his influences very clearly on his sleeve, and sometimes comes across as a tribute act to two better wrestlers in Hiroshi Tanahashi (the gear, the hair, not just that he goes to the knee, but some of the ways in which he does it) and Jon Moxley (the use of the Paradigm Shift and Death Rider), and seems to not totally know who he is yet. It’s minor, but significantly off-putting, resulting in the match committing one of the greatest sins that any piece of media can commit, which is reminding me of something better I could be watching. In this case, two better things.

In and of itself, that is not the end of the world though.

A lot of wrestlers have real clear influences they cannot live up to, and while they seem less cool and a little phonier and less worth supporting as a result, they can still have/be a contributing factor to/be part of genuinely great wrestling matches. Shota himself previously included.

The other problem here is, predictably, the brain of Zack Sabre Jr.

Once again, Zack Sabre Jr. is the most frustrating wrestler alive and maybe of the entire twenty first century so far. I am never sure if he is the greatest bad wrestler or the worst great wrestler I have ever seen.

His moment-to-moment individual work is good, but the same weaknesses (total lack of focus and ability to stick with any one idea) are there alongside new ones. He picked up the all-time frustrating habit of me-first limbwork from Suzuki clearly, targeting Umino’s right arm instead of the left, forcing the kid into a position he isn’t ready for. He tries to sell it while still using it a lot, but isn’t really capable of doing it well, and eventually forgets entirely. That’s not all on Zack, the selling is the selling (and Umino is particularly bad in the closing moments, forgetting about it entirely despite just going through a big series of armbars), but like always with this sort of thing, it’s an unforced error by big brain Zack that makes everything much more complex than it has to be.

Still, there is a lot of good in this match.

Zack’s attack on the arm is good. His selling of the leg after the brief attack on it early on is also very good. He is a despicable mother fucker also. On the other side of the match, Umino has some quality offense to him, even for his many weaknesses, and does possess a certain natural babyface energy and charm. The match begins in a surprising and interesting way, never feels like I’m watching something that has lived past its expiration date (a virtue of the TV Title, and most TV Titles in general), and has a few very thrilling nearfalls.

They even stumble upon a fairly interesting idea in the end, as Umino’s reliance on well known moves probably helps Zack out, combining with Umino’s more limited late match arsenal. Umino finds himself attempting to repeat the Death Rider, combining the two sins into one, allowing Zack to trip him and go into a jackknife pin to keep the title.

For the most part, I liked it. It’s a good match with several good ideas, that never quite organizes into being a great match itself.

There is theoretically a great match here somewhere down the road, possibly to be found on a later occasion once Shota Umino becomes his own wrestler, and assuming he catches Zack on the right day, upon which his gigantic brain does not insist on weighing down his matches, as it so often can.

a gentleman’s **3/4

 

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Juice Robinson, NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day Fourteen (8/4/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 G1 Climax tournament.

After the embarrassing output against Kenny Omega on Day Twelve, Zack Sabre Jr. redeems himself just a little, finding himself back in his element now, on the midcard against a wrestler with one clear and obvious injury to exploit.

Before you ask, yes, it does help that Juice Robinson’s injury just so happens to be a hand injury.

I like what I like.

The match is also just really great, and the best possible use of both guys in it.

Zack’s work on the taped up appendage is the sort of Zack work I like to see the most. Not only technically proficient, a display of a ton of cool holds, but super direct as well, with him having one clear focus for the entire match. As much of a fun intellectual exercise as the Two-Pronged Approach, Zack’s recent version of the old shell game technique, can be, there is just something about a match where he immediately sees something, goes for it, and stays on it. It’s also incredibly mean, as Zack does all of this to a genuinely likeable wrestler that the crowd likes a lot, making it feel that much worse, on top of how clearly painful everything looks. It is the ideal Zack Sabre Jr. performance and environment, one in which the match and/or opponent goes out of its way to give him direction rather than letting him riff around by himself, one that casts him as the antagonist he naturally is against someone worth supporting, and one that also gives him no more than sixteen minutes to play with.

Juice is the reason why this works like it does though.

For all of the great things Zack does here and all of the qualities he suggests, it’s Juice as the beating heart of the thing that allows those attacks to have value and to give those disgusting qualities a baseline to be held as a counterexample too. Juice’s selling of his left hand is, once again, superlative. He’s done great with it not only all tournament but all summer, and I don’t want to repeat myself time and time again, but his work with a hurt hand is the best work of his entire career. It is not only that he always sells it well, or how he holds it, but how he always seems to know exactly how much to sell it relative to the work an opponent puts in. Juice is also an expert in how to take it with him when the match moves past it, executing the big stuff but always with the injury there in mind, so it never feels abrupt when a match goes back to it after periods elsewhere, as Zack matches are often wont to do.

It takes two, and this is a wonderful marriage, one that I badly wish had been explored beyond simply this singular G1 meeting.

Yet again, Juice’s hand just hinders him too much against top level competition. He unwraps it to move more freely, but still can’t quite reel off the one move he needs to win because of it, and especially cannot throw his big cut off left hand without risking it doing more damage to himself than anyone on the other end of it. Zack sticks with it and it eventually pays off. Juice fights the usual double armbar, but Zack rolls him over and adds in a Stump Puller to help pull his body back even further. With no free limbs to get out, on top of the hurt arm, Juice has to give up.

Another great chunk of meat and potatoes ass pro wrestling from New Japan’s current foremost expert in the form.

(Zack Sabre Jr. wasn’t bad here either.)

***

Kenny Omega vs. Zack Sabre Jr., NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day Twelve (8/1/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 G1 Climax tournament.

It is a fascinating match.

Not so much a great one. Don’t mix up my words. Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kenny Omega was a nightmare match of mine from the day Zack Sabre Jr. first started to even flirt with coming into New Japan, and this is almost every nightmare (being the G1, they can not quite have the absolute nightmare of a 30:00+ minute title match version of this match) come to fruition.

Being entirely fair, this was not an absolute lock to be a bad match.

I can imagine a version of this that might be very good, and maybe even great. Rather than his typical shit, Zack keeps it loose with his attacks, or focuses on the neck or the back. Something Omega can sell while still running through his bombs, like the Okada matches or the last two Naito matches have allowed him to. He isn’t even a bad seller in a situation like that, and Zack has shown an ability to do matches like that very very well in the past. Keep them around twenty minutes like this match with a match that plays to the strengths of both

That is not the match that happened.

Instead, Zack went for his two-pronged limb attack that worked in the New Japan Cup, working the knee in the first half to set up openings to go to the arm, and Kenny Omega predictably does not do all that well with this, despite his genuine effort in trying to keep up with it, while also fulfilling the demands of a semi-main event Kenny Omega match in New Japan in 2018. He holds his knee and his arm, does his best to always keep it present, but through the amount of explosive offense and sheer physical activity that his matches require, that they are basically advertised to include, it is more of a hinderance than anything. Kenny look a little dumb for never altering what he does, and Zack looks a lot ineffectual for doing all of this, but never once being able to really stop him from doing the things that he was always going to do.

What we wind up with, to me, is an intriguing litmus test for the brains of both wrestlers in the match (and also for anyone watching). It is not a match with maybe the most obvious route to being good/great, but it is one where there is a clear history of what works and what doesn’t with one of these guys. Given the choice to be stupid about it and given the choice not to be, one wrestler chose the former and one chose the latter in response. The shock comes not in that it was not a match I enjoyed at all, but instead in who it was that made the bad decision, and particularly, who it was who did all that he could (if not enough) to counteract that.

The records, the spreadsheets, the consistency and/or peaks or whatever may say otherwise, but I think above all, you simply have to trust your eyes. When put against each other, one of these two wrestled a stupid match that only benefited himself, and the other tried his best to fit into that, despite it not being his strongest suit at all. I would not have predicted writing this before now, but my eyes do not often lie to me.

Kenny Omega is a better wrestler than Zack Sabre Jr. in 2018.

A remarkable case study, resulting in a conclusion I did not expect, and I guess, also technically a professional wrestling match.

Toru Yano vs. Zack Sabre Jr., NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day Four (7/19/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 G1 Climax tournament.

Following a truly delightful month or so of build up tags, based on unrestrained bullshit and nonsense and things of that nature, each man trying to one up there other in these aspects so as to be as insulting as possible, they get to their singles match, and there is no better place for it. Not only inside an ultra-responsive Korakuen Hall, but at the beginning of the G1 Climax. It’s not just in a tournament where almost anything can happen, but at the exact moment where it is easiest to believe in anything happening, before things like points and probable outcomes can get in the way.

Outside of the big matches — your major Tanahashi or Okada main events, Omega/Naito III, the two main events of the final days that are near-locks at this point to be de-facto semi final matches — there is no match in the 2018 G1 Climax that was more anticipated than this match.

(In my home, at least. I can’t speak to whatever nonsense you carry with you.)

The match is nearly the ideal version of this thing.

Everybody knows that Zack Sabre Jr. is at his best when playing the antagonist. This is not an interesting point and I do not assume I am telling you this for the first time. The reason for that is that few people play a mean-spirited but fake aloof guy better than Zack, and the result of that is that it feels better to watch Zack eat shit than almost anybody else. It is especially gratifying when it comes against someone who Zack doesn’t see on his level in one way or another.

Perhaps never before has Zack come across someone who he perceives to be less on his level than Toru Yano.

Zack is the latest to assume Yano is full of shit, and immediately rushes and begins trying to humiliate him, but simply cannot. Yano even hanging with Zack on the mat and occasionally suplexing him away or taking him down when overzealous feels as good as (if not better) than every time Gresham caught him in 2016 and almost as great as the time Biff Busick choked him out in 2014. Likewise, it is also a blast to see Zack try and out-Yano Yano, also not believing him at all, and going to some real Pure Champ Nigel McGuinness style bits with the railing and attempt count out spots.

The real joy and genius here is the way they hit the Yano story, but because Zack went to all of that first, Yano not only feels justified late in the match when he returns the favor and begins cheating again, but it works as an actual babyface comeback. The least admirable traps in the world, all exposed corners and low blows and referee distractions to create some of the year’s best nearfalls, all happening to these uproarious and hooting and hollering ass reactions, both from the Korakuen faithful and inside my home as well.

It’s a really beautiful thing, Zack Sabre Jr. forced to fight for his life yet again in a match like this rather than one he almost definitely would have won with only a little hard work, entirely because of his own inabilities to (a) feel pressured for even half a second before lashing out & (b) leaving well enough alone.

However, I said nearly the ideal version.

This company being what it is, it cannot resist throwing a wrench in the works of one of the most joyful results and finishes to a match possible. Yano almost has him, but goes for a second turnbuckle pad removal, and Zack ducks it and goes right into a European Clutch to just barely steal it.

It would be one thing if it was a title match or part of a New Japan Cup style push for Zack, or something understandable. Instead, it’s just sort of a weird ending, not really genuinely upsetting, but super annoying. A downer finish with no real cause to happen, given how funny and cool the alternative would have been, absolute coward shit especially coming in the exact situation where they could have gotten away with something truly bizarre.

New Japan fucks up the payoff, as they often do to anything outside of the Great Match Factory old, but what a wonderful thing this little chunk of nonsense was over the last month anyways. Another perfect Toru Yano program.

three boy

Kota Ibushi vs. Zack Sabre Jr., NJPW G1 Climax 28 Day Two (7/15/2018)

This was a B Block match in the 2018 G1 Climax.

As is now seemingly legally required of New Japan whenever there is a singles tournament from 2017 through 2021, Zack Sabre Jr. and Kota Ibushi are forced to wrestle each other again, going three for three since Zack joined the roster between the 2017 G1 and this year’s New Japan Cup.

You will not see me complaining.

Zack and Kota are natural opponents.

One might not think that when one considers some of Sabre Jr.’s proclivities, but more often than not against Kota Ibushi, he seems to know exactly how much limb nonsense the match can support, and rarely overloads Ibushi with so much of it that he will have to turn in a non-Ibushi style performance to make it work on the other end. They also have a natural ability to bring out the pettiness and mean-spiritedness in each other, in a way that works perfectly.

Mostly, I mean that about Kota Ibushi, who benefits from the Zack/Ibushi match up probably far more than Zack does.

Usually when Ibushi indulges the weird voice in his head, the dark passenger who tells him to point a bottle rocket towards his chest or do unspeakable horrors to opponents or probably hunt Japan’s transient population for sport, he comes off as an unlikeable weirdo and my natural inclination is to root for whoever’s on the other end of it. There are exceptions of course, even less likeable and/or even deader-eyed weirdos, but this is typically how it goes. Against Zack though, one of the least likeable people in all of wrestling (at least 49% through presentation, to be fair), it actually rule, and I am in full support of Ibushi being a vacant-eyed lunatic killing machine. It rocks to see annoying people getting beaten up.

These matches are also fantastic because, more often than not, they are not really about anything that require so many words to convey, I don’t think. They are not all empty calories or anything, there is a sense of struggle, but they have very little to offer up outside of whatever stylistic/ideological argument you want to take out of your brain and put onto the screen. It is a match about two extraordinarily petty and weird men, each in their own unique ways, trying to hurt each other, always in the same way. Sometimes Zack will be able to catch Kota, and other times like here, he simply will be pummeled into the Earth before he has the chance.

Kota wins with the Kamigoe, and it whipped a ton of ass. Again.

The next time it happens, it will also whip a ton of ass, this time for a fourth time.

And so on.

***1/4

Minoru Suzuki/Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Tomohiro Ishii/Toru Yano, NJPW G1 Special in San Francisco (7/7/2018)

The year’s most heavily anticipated rematch (in my home) to date, as New Japan runs back the second or third best match from Dominion.

It is, more or less, the same sort of match.

Naturally, four great wrestlers are smart enough not to hit the exact same beats over and over again, but the reasons laid out in the previously linked piece as to why this is a great match up are basically the same. Zack and Yano are a perfect pairing, among the best possible for either man due to how delightfully they contrast with each other and how badly both men needed a new pairing in this style. Suzuki and Ishii are as good against each other as ever, not offering up the big hits in an undercard tag exactly, but finding a successful balance and hitting just hard enough to still thrill.

The wonderful things here are the slight changes, both in terms of riffing around with new bits, and the continuations of bits from their previous outing.

Suzuki and Sabre Jr. have this wonderful new spot where they take limbs next to each other while Yano is face down on the ground and rotate around his body in all sorts of different torturous holds. There’s also this great bit in the middle where as Zack tortures Yano on the ground, the two old men pummel each other on the floor in the background of the same shot. Suzuki and Big Tom also find a way to change things up just a little bit in their usual exchange, adding in some disrespectful slaps to the usual elbow trading, making it feel even more petty and disrespectful than usual.

What advancement the match offers comes from Yano and Zack Sabre Jr., hitting the same catchy little notes as before, and moving forward in the same fashion. Zack again has Yano’s nonsense entirely scouted. He catches a low blow once or twice, avoids the exposed buckles the first time, dodges the shot with the removed corner padding, and again seems to have totally figured Yano out, leading to one of the great feel-food (albeit super minor) payoffs of the year.

Zack being Zack, he cannot help but celebrate his success even before he has it, allowing Ishii to run in and clothesline him down, turning Yano’s failed low blow into another of the master thief’s cradles. Yano gets the pin on Zack Sabre Jr., an immediate punishment for hubris, proving again that the silliest matches often include the most important lessons.

Right up there with the original match as some of the most fun I’ve had watching wrestling all year.

***

Minoru Suzuki/Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Tomohiro Ishii/Toru Yano, NJPW Dominion 6.9 (6/9/2018)

Between this an a U.S. rematch a month later, genuinely, I love these matches.

If there was ever a modern New Japan tag that felt like a Ditch special, it is one of these matches. They are not only efficient but downright short (this one is under nine minutes), heated, funny, and complete with four distinct great performances and two tremendous pairings.

Suzuki and Big Tom spend their time together teeing off on one another, and while it is nothing new at this point, it is a genuine delight. They glare and laugh and shout at each other all throughout, and Suzuki brings some great ones out of Ishii (who has started to get lax with the elbows sometimes as the wear and tear gets to him). It is an enormous amount of fun, with exactly enough time having passed to get a point where it feels fresh and a little novel, even if it is primarily just two older guys hurling their elbows and forearms as hard into the neck and/or jaw of the other man as hard as possible. It’s the energy and the facial reactions that do it for me here, just as much as the raw mechanics of hitting the exact right spot to create as viscerally pleasing of a sound as Minoru Suzuki and Tomohiro Ishii consistently do.

Zack Sabre Jr. and Toru Yano are magnetic together too, in a totally different way.

You can, if you would like, talk about all the great Zack opponents. Thatcher, Hero, Gulak, Ospreay, Roddy, Tanahashi, Ibushi, and the list goes on. Toru Yano absolutely belongs on that list. It might not be as long or as epic, it might not even be a singles match, but they are so perfect for one another. Yano’s absolute insistence on bullshit whenever possible pairs perfectly with Zack’s refusal to tolerate any nonsense (despite he himself being a purveyor of another kind of nonsense, in a great character bit), and it’s paired great with Suzuki’s established contempt for Yano after their multi-year long feud earlier in the decade.

The comic mastermind of his generation meets one of the great foils of the time, and the result is the rare occasion where I wish a New Japan undercard tag match was twic as long.

Sadly, Zack eventually figures out the traps, and with Suzuki holding Big Tom at bay on the outside, Sabre Jr. eventually ties up Yano in a complex pin for the win.

One of the year’s most fun matches, full stop.

***

WALTER vs. Zack Sabre Jr., WXW We Love Wrestling Tour: Hamburg (5/18/2018)

(Photo credit to GD-Photography.)

(Before we start, WXW’s vaunted English commentary again has a way of shining through, claiming in the first minute that WALTER has never beaten Zack Sabre Jr. despite (a) him literally doing that in a big WXW title match in the formative years of the company & (b) him having also beaten Zack twice already in fairly high profile settings in 2018 so far. Always a good idea to advertise how totally full of shit you are at the very start.)

Honestly, I am bored of this.

So so so so so so so god damned bored.

I have run out of words to say about WALTER vs. Zack Sabre Jr. as a match. I don’t know how many different ways there are to talk about Zack being a cocky little shit and WALTER constantly punishing him for his addiction to flourish, and favoritism of sizzle over steak. I could force myself, again, to write about how I hate WALTER chopping through the arm attack and how weird Zack’s bumping is and how annoying his inability to focus can be, but also about how much fun it is when they get really really mean and petty with each other. These are all things that, by this point, I am confident I could stretch another few hundred words out there about. 

The thing is though, I have done it a million billion times already, and given that this match is not exactly near the top of their greatest hits list, I don’t see the point in wasting your time or mine by rearranging the same old words and phrases again. Both because repetition makes me feel gross, but also because it is deeply boring, and there is already too much wrestling in 2018 to watch and write about as there is.

Most annoying is that despite how exhausting it is at this point and how you could probably call at least half of this match if you’ve seen two or three of them before, it’s still a great fucking match.

(Even if it isn’t even their best match in the city of Hamburg.)

***