Revisiting WCW Starrcade 1995!

The night New Japan invaded World Championship Wrestling — and nobody really cared.

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Dave Meltzer Sucks and His Star Ratings Are Total Bullshit

...or, why it's time to cancel your Wrestling Observer subscription now.

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

Howdy ho, readers! This is the first installment in a seasonal-long series we're calling BLOGTOBER, in which The Internet Is In America lays into random people who have been irking our Dear Leader Jimbo X for quite some time. If you agree with our condemnatory statements - and lets face it, you should - feel free to send the article along to the social media accounts of the people we're giving the old what-fer to. We've graciously included the online contact information for everybody we're deriding, so it shouldn't be too hard to get a hold of 'em. And yes, we did steal the idea from Opie and Anthony - but hey, at least we're giving them credit, ain't we? - THNX, MGMT

For those of you not in the know, Dave Meltzer (that's @davemeltzer on Twitter and Wrestling Observer on Facebook) is a guy from the Bay Area who has been publishing this thing called The Wrestling Observer newsletter for more than 30 years. For better or for worse, the "dirt sheet" is considered the Wall Street Journal of the pro wrestling business, which really, ought to give you an idea just how shitty pro wrestling business "journalism" ultimately is.

Granted, what Meltzer was doing was kinda' sorta' important before the Internet came along. Back in the late '80s and early '90s, pretty much all the laity had were all those Apter mags that wrote everything in kayfabe, so if you wanted to know what was really happening behind the scenes at the WWF and NWA and all those territories ran by drug addicts who forced their own children to kill themselves in the ring for minuscule monetary gain, The Observer was pretty much your only source for - and I use the term loosely - "inside information."

Like every other wannabe-bullshit industry trade publication, Meltzer's "dirt" has long come in the form of pissed-off employees who wanted to give their bosses what-fer for not pushing them. Like all great purveyors of "fake newz," Meltzer's rag has always made use of anonymous sources and unnamed tipsters, often taking their aggrievements as undisputed fact (you know, not that the wrestling biz as a whole is known as a hotbed for con-men with a borderline sociopathic flare for absolutely grandiloquent bullshit.) Yeah, sometimes the Meltz goes straight to the source for his stories (like when Bret Hart reached out to him after the Montreal Screwjob), but by and large The Observer survives on but one thing: unfounded speculation. 

If you want a taste of that award-winning Meltzer journalism, few WO shit-pieces are as indicative of Davey Boy's reportorial chops than this write-up about Kurt Angle exiting the WWE back in '06. Here, you see all the hallmarks of Meltzer's unique brand of fake-fisticuffs journalism, including: 

• Citing the WWE website (which, by the way, is written in kayfabe) as an actual newsworthy source.
• Simply quoting what some other website already wrote and using their proprietary quotes to make up half his article. 
• Failure to cite a single secondary source to substantiate anything.
• Using quotes from unnamed sources who - as fate would have it - just so happen to say everything Meltzer believes so he can push a certain angle or agenda (in this case, instigating changes to the company wellness policy)
• Making about a half dozen different predictions on what might happen so he can say he "knew it all along" later down the road.
• Pulling a whole bunch of irrelevant, unrelated tidbits from the past and throwing them together in long-ass paragraphs to inflate the word count ... I mean, give readers a more nuanced historical understanding of the issue.
• Using a subjective statement - written from a first person perspective - as a framing device in the very first fucking sentence of the story.
• Flat out delivering his opinion as declarative statements practically every other sentence. 

You don't need to hold a master's degree from Northern Illinois' Department of Communication to figure out a dude who uses "I hope" and "I think" as predicates is anything but an objective journalist. Simply put The Wrestling Observer has never been an impartial news source, it's just a glorified fanzine in which Davey M. espouses his own gospel under the guise of legitimate news coverage. 

Not that the Meltz is even a good subjective writer. Just take a gander at his acclaimed "obit" for Mitsuharu Misawa, in which he simply lifts portions of Japanese newspaper accounts of Misawa's in-ring death - without as much as a single proprietary quote - and book-ends it with nostalgic personal accounts of totally unrelated events, which only serve to showcase the author's encyclopedic knowledge of worthless trivia on the lives and times of Giant Baba and Atsushi Onita. Just soak up this two-paragraph wad of loggorhea: 

"Every argument about what you can’t follow and how long you can go and do on a show without burning out the audience early had been violated for the previous few hours. But it didn’t matter. At the time, the top stars of All Japan Pro Wrestling were just that much better than anyone else in the world.

Those days were long gone on Saturday night in Hiroshima, Japan, a city best known on a worldwide basis for having a nuclear bomb dropped on it without warning by the U.S. forces in 1945, that killed 90,000 civilians that day and probably as many as 200,000 within five years directly related to the residual effects of the radiation, and which ended World War II."

Overlooking the blatant inaccuracy of Meltzer's statement (atom bombs and nuclear bombs aren't the same thing and U.S. forces fucking dropped leaflets on Hiroshima and Nagasaki warning citizens to evacuate DAYS before the bombings), what the fuck does any of that have to do with Misawa's career or the circumstances of his death? The dude had virtually NO hard news to deliver about his passing, so to cover up his tracks he just filled the article with rehashed statements about the All Japan/NOAH split. Imagine, if you will, reading an article that's supposed to be about 9/11, only for three-quarters of it to discuss the financing plans that took place in the 1960s to build the World Trade Center. Well, that's Dave Meltzer "journalism" for you right there. 

But somehow, someway, The Wrestling Observer indeed became a "respected" trade publication, in much the same way sailors come to appreciate the only whore in town despite her only having one tooth and just as many legs. And - even worse - Dave Meltzer managed to convince the pro wrestling cosmos that he was its authoritative voice on what constitutes quality in-ring product. In many ways, Dave Meltzer is the Roger Ebert of pro wrestling, and I don't mean that as a compliment. The same way Ebert's egomania and political self-righteousness tainted his "impartial" movie reviews, Meltzer's measuring stick for what makes "good 'rasslin" is also highly suspect.

It's over, boys. We've officially found the dumbest thing anybody has ever said on the Internet.

For years, Meltzer has been rating pro wrestling matches on a five-star continuum (aka, the Michelin scale), only because he's so far gone on the autism spectrum he probably runs a Thomas the Tank Engine fansite on the downlow, he had to further atomize the scores into a quarter decimal system. This is, in and of itself, pretty stupid, since Meltzer himself has never specifically clarified what a match has to do to earn a high rating, nor offered anything resembling a coherent, non-Aspie rationale as to what makes a match rated two and three quarter stars that much better than one rated just two and a half stars. The problem here is that the Internet Wrestling Community - the horrific hive-mind it is - tends to take Meltzer's star ratings as the literal gospel, and many brainwashed fans are so hung up on Dave's nuts that they can't even determine for themselves whether a match was good or legitimately great until Uncle Dave tells 'em what to think.

The fact of the matter is that Meltzer's ratings have always been bullshit. For example, he gave one of the most memorable matches of all-time - Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant at WM3, a bout that had at least 70,000-something people screaming like crazy, that me and my elementary school lads memorized move from move like a classical piano piece - a negative three star rating. Why? Because he didn't like Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon's booking, or the fact that Middle America would rather watch two tall dudes with limited mobility just slam the fuck outta' each other than watch Meltzy's beloved 180-pound rice-eater Japa-heno kung-fu cruiserweights armdrag each other for 45 minutes straight. Like Ebert, he's always been a snob for the pretentious shit, and now his import on the world of wrestling is more substantial than ever before. 

Today, wrestlers don't wrestle for the audience, they wrestle to impress the Meltz in the hopes of garnering a coveted five star rating, which they can then use for leverage in bilking more money out of promoters and procuring more DVD revenue. Back in the 1990s there used to be variety on a wrestling card, but today, ROH, WWE, NXT, TNA (or whatever the fuck its called), PWG, EVOLVE and New Japan all feel interchangeable. Each promotion seems to have melded into a singularity, with carefully laid out spots and painfully choreographed dives and pitch perfectly timed kicks and high spots you can practically set to a metronome. For fuck's sake, there's even a tag team that named one of their moves after him; the same way Steve James and Werner Herzog sucked Roger Ebert's flabby, flaccid cock for free publicity, indie vanilla midgets like the Young Bucks are just flat out pandering to The Wrestling Observer, in the hopes that King Dave bestows upon them his highest honor (and more on that complicated issue in just a second.)

There was a point in time in which Meltzer was extremely hesitant to hand out five star ratings. From mid-2006 until mid-2011, for example, he didn't hand out a single "perfect score," despite that epoch giving us some of the greatest fucking wrestling matches ever (I still say that BURNING/Kensuke Office elimination tag from '08 is the best wrestling match of the past 25 years, and anybody who disagrees is a goddamn communist.) But then, something happened - all of a sudden (and after nearly 15 years of scant WO coverage) Meltz absolutely fell in LOVE with what New Japan Pro Wrestling was doing. 

A lot of people like to comment on Dave Meltzer's (admittedly) impressive biceps. Well, if I had to venture a guess, those muscular arms aren't the result of steroids, but from jacking off Jado and Gedo nonstop for the last five years. Since then, he's awarded no less than 19 New Japan matches his highest possible rating, and even broke his own rating system to give a series of Kenny Omega matches 5.75, 6 and 6.25-star ratings. Hell, if Omega had shown up at the funeral of Meltzer's father and took a shit inside the open casket, Dave's rampant fanboyism probably would have inspired him to give it a 4.75 rating, only taking off a quarter star due to his dad's lack of selling. 

Meltzer has never been able to justify the reason for why a 4.75 star match didn't get a 5 star rating. People on Twitter ask him that all the time and every response he gives is some permutation of "well, it was missing a certain something." I hate to be cynical, but I think it's safe to say that "certain something" is a self-addressed stamped envelope with a money order in it. Think back to the roarin' 2000s, and how ROH was the only U.S. promotion consistently scoring 4.5 star-plus matches (indeed, the promotion netted three five-star rated matches that decade, to the WWE's zero.) Hey, remember which organization had their ads for DVD and merchandise plastered all over the Observer website back then? Why, my goodness, it just so happened to be Ring of Honor. If "real" journalists aren't above money-hats and pay-to-play "good" coverage (and as a guy who spent half his adult life as a reporter, I can tell you such is the truth everywhere) then what makes you think Dave Meltzer - the Fonzie with fetal alcohol syndrome lookalike he is - has higher ethical principles?

I've long been skeptical of Dave Meltzer's "coverage," but all of this New Japan dick sucking did it for me. While I likewise thought the Tokyo Dome Omega/Okada bout was good, Meltzer never gave a cogent explanation as to why that "six star" match was so much technically better than something like 06/03/94. Instead, Meltzer - the oh so impressionable, easily excitable elevated fanboy he is - just got so caught up in the moment that he figured the only logical thing to do was to reward their performances by shattering his own ratings system (which, to his credit, Ebert never had the desperation to resort to.) Well, that, or he knew that he could use his clout to shamelessly promote New Japan, and that by handing out a 6/5 score the match (and the promotion, by proxy) would receive heaps of outside media attention (as evident by the fact even Wendy's tweeted about it.) Naturally, he gave the second Okada/Omega bout an even higher 6.25 rating, and - you guessed it - he couldn't explain why that match was superior to the one he gave 6 stars to just a few months earlier. Hell, at this point, why not stop giving numerical scores at all? I can imagine Meltzer giving the inevitable fourth Okada/Omega bout a rating of a marshmallow and a sunbeam, and the IWC dorks would still lap it up like it was the Sermon on the Mount. 

And why is it that pro wrestling is the only form of sports-ish entertainment that relies upon such critical standards, anyway? I've never read an article where Peter King or Adam Schefter gave an NFL game any kind of arbitrary, subjective numerical value, nor have I seen nerds on the NFL subreddit bicker back and forth whether Super Bowl LI deserved four and three quarter helmets or the full five. You don't see MMA fans badgering Ariel Helwani for his latest UFC PPV ratings and you don't see John Buccigross handing out grades for NHL playoff games ("The triple overtime Chicago Blackhawks win over the St. Louis Blues gets four and half pucks, because there were a few moments where the goalies just kinda' stood there and the finish seemed rushed.") It's long been suspected that the Meltz has autism, and if his peculiar fascination with grading everything (and thus, inflating his own sense of self-righteousness) doesn't confirm it, this snapshot of his work space probably does. 

All in all, I'd say Dave Meltzer is just a big a carnie as the wrestling promoters, writers and stars he's always taking mad shit about. He's never booked a single show or performed a single goddamn wrestling match yet he thinks he has some sort of moral high ground to constantly berate people like Kevin Nash and Vince Russo for disagreeing with his bullshit and then calling him out on his bullshit on social media. He's made a living off the vicarious blood, sweat and tears of other people, and is conceited enough to think that his personal opinions on "the biz" have influence beyond maybe 10 percent of all the people in the world who regularly watch wrestling (do you think anybody in Japan, Mexico or India gives half a fuck about what some Greaser Greg from The Garbage Pail Kids Movie looking-motherfucker thinks about anything?) He's just a glorified fanboy who uses his tabloid piece of shit 'zine to put over people he wants to hang out with and criticize everybody who doesn't think flippity-floppity ADHD indie horse shit starring two 160-pound dorks from El Segundo is trite, boring and silly. He thinks his publication is the voice of the true wrestling fan, when all it is is a cult of personality circle jerk, probably designed with the ulterior motive of getting him one step closer to that long-fantasized penis polishing from Minoru Suzuki.

Dave Meltzer's reporting sucks, his biased op-ed writing masquerading as journalism sucks, his publication sucks and his "industry-leading" star ratings suck. You don't need this asshole telling you what's good or bad - just watch matches on your own and make up your own damn mind. The relevancy of The Wrestling Observer has long-since passed - and so have all the meandering, pointless musings of Meltzer himself.

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Revisiting WCW's Collision in Korea!

With World War III possibly looming in North Korea, how about we take a look back at happier days in Kim Jong Country - you know, back when 190,000 people turned out to watch a joint WCW/New Japan 'rassling show in 1995?

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo___X

A lot of people out there are, understandably, worried about the situation in North Korea. Assuming this blog is being read in the post-apocalyptic fallout of what once was civilization hundreds of years into the future, let me do my best to explain what happened.

OK, so it was the year 2017. North Korea's leader was this really fat guy with an inferiority complex who wanted to look like he had a bigger dick than America's president (who used to host a game show on NBC a few years earlier ... it's really an interesting story.) Well, for years and years, nobody fucked with North Korea even when they were trying to fuck with everybody else because China kinda' sorta' served as their big brother who was there to keep them in check and bail 'em out if they ever picked a fight they couldn't finish. Well, China finally got sick of playing their brother's keeper so when they started fucking around with South Korea and Japan and actually started launching missiles and shit and really trying to hit stuff, they said "alright, tubby, you've got to fight this 'un on your own." Now this relic of the pre-irradiated age was published before the nuclear warheads started flying, so I'm having to guess what caused WWIII to break out. Odds are, the North Korean leader made some wisecrack about the U.S. president, and then the North Korean leader wanted to have a dick measuring contest right then and there so he prolly shot a nuke that didn't work at Tokyo or Seoul and that's when the U.S. cranked up Hulk Hogan's music and turned N.K. into the world's largest parking lot. Of course, that led to Russia launching all their missiles by accident, and next thing you know, half the fucking Western hemisphere is glowing neon green - tsk, tsk. 

But you know, times weren't always so bad in North Korea. In fact, in the mid 1990s, things were actually pretty decent there. Well, I mean, just as long as you overlook the totalitarian death camps where countless families were systemically slaughtered, but come on, how hard is that?

Rather, I'd like to turn your attention to April 1995, when the notoriously secretive North Korean government actually opened its doors to outsiders for something called the Pyongyang International Sports and Culture Festival for Peace. Over the course of two days, more than 300,000 people flocked to the Rungrado 1st of May Stadium (to this day, the largest stadium on the planet) for a celebration entailing gymnastics, massive choreographed routines and, of course, the absolute best kinda' entertainment anywhere in the world ... pro 'rasslin. 

Yep, that's right. The North Koreans could have pretty much booked ANYTHING they wanted for the super rare public display - indeed, it was the first time many Western journalists were EVER permitted inside the country - but instead of bringing in the Rolling Stones or Michael Jackson, they wanted World Championship Wrestling, gahdammit. The two-nights of grapplin' goodness was a joint production with New Japan Pro Wrestling, headlined by a battle of two of the most iconic faked fisticuffs showmen in history; representing the good old U.S. of A you had "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair, and in the other corner, representing Japan and kinda sorta North Korea, you had Antonio motherfuckin' Inoki. Needless to say, that match - which I believe only happened once, but I could be wrong - shattered pro 'rassling attendance records. Even the low ball estimate - 150,000 people, per the Meltz - gives it nearly 50 percent more attendees than the largest claimed WWE attendance ever. So yeah, to say this event was just a little bit historic is a mild understatement. 

WCW being WCW, though, they didn't actually broadcast the event until four months later. What should have been the biggest WCW show ever was treated like a one-off oddity, and despite literally having the entire world media looking at it, the company never took advantage of the global publicity opportunity. But yeah - that really shouldn't surprise nobody, I 'spose. Even now, the WWE has all but forgotten the event happened (prolly because it makes their grandiose, exaggerated attendance claims look like shit), and the crossover card - officially titled Collision in Korea - remains one of the very few WCW PPVs unavailable on the WWE Network. 

Thankfully, old Jimbo here has an old -ass VHS copy just laying around from back in the illegal cable box days. This sumbitch sure is dusty, but I'm just certain the contents inside the black plastic case just have to be solid rasslin' gold, right? RIGHT!?! Well, let's stop the conjecutrin' and fire this baby up on the old Sanyo and see if this stuff was ever worth going out of our way to watch in the first place ... 

Our announcers for the festivities are Mike Tenay, Eric Bischoff and New Japan representative Kazuo Ishikawi - a.k.a, SONNY MOTHERFUCKIN' ONOO, who naturally, is about a foot shorter than his two American co-hots. Ishikawa (fuck it, I'm just going to call him Onoo because it's easier) sums up the Flair/Anoki main event thus: "it's an American, it's a Japanese and it's in Pyongyang ... this is wrestling diplomacy at its best." 

Eric B. said Korean fans are much like Japanese fans in that they are both really polite. He also notes this is the first time many Koreans have ever seen pro wrestling before, when in reality, it's probably the first time most of the audience has ever been outside of their detention holding cells before. Too Cold Scorpio is out first, breakdancing in his American flag pants. All of the announcers are extremely quiet and subdued, prolly because there was an imperial guardsman with an AK-47 standing right off screen ready to plug a bullet in their skull for saying the politically incorrect thing. "You have to remember, this is a communist country," Eric B. reminds the TV viewing audience. "Everything is controlled by the government ... this is one of the most closed societies on Earth, and that's one of the tings that makes this event so unique."

Boy howdy, I bet all them North Korean critters sure loved them all this interracial homoeroticism!

Anyhoo, Scorpio's opponent is "Wild Pegasus" Chris Benoit, and Teny keeps calling him all four names like that over and over again. We get a shoving contest to begin and Tenay talks about Benoit winning the Super J Cup. We get a wristlock exchange, and the Koreans go crazy when Scorpio starts doing his flips and shit (and remember, this is undoubtedly the first time anybody in the crowd has ever seen a black person in real life, which makes it about a million times funnier.) We get a test of strength and Mike and Eric argue over which wrestler is stronger. Like, they get really into it, comparing Benoit's upper body muscles to Scorpio's leg tendons and shit. Scorpio does a series of monkey flips, complete with this one spot where it looks like Benoit is trying to fuck Scorpio missionary style. Tenay brings up the fact both these guys were on the same tag team at the When Worlds Collide PPV from 1994, which for some stupid ass reason, I've never watched in its entirety although I probably should have a long time ago. Scorpio hits a moonsault, then a super kick. Onoo says Benoit probably doesn't know much about martial arts because he's Canadian and I legitimately laugh my ass off.

Scorpio misses on a body splash off the top rope and Benoit hits him with a knee to the midsection. Eric says wrestlers usually come flying off the ropes at 25 to 30 miles per hour, which is so much bullshit it might actually work as garden fertilizer. Benoit racks Scorpio on the top rope and stomps him a little. Scorpio whiffs on a spinning kick so Benoit rocks him with a dropkick. There's this great moment where Eric asks Onoo if he is impressed by Scorpio's kicks and he 's all like "eh, it's OK." Too Cold with a standing side kick. Benoit lands a Tombstone piledriver, then he goes up top. He hits the diving headbutt and that's enough to get the three. So yeah, you have two of the best wrestlers of the 1990s and you book 'em in a barely six minute long throwaway curtain jerker - yep, this really is a WCW show. Believe it or not, Marky Mark Dave Meltzer actually gave this thing four stars in The Wrestling Observer back in the day. Alas, I'm a much tougher critic, and the best I can allot something this short is a meager [** 1/4].

Up next its Tokimitsu Ishizawa vs. Yuji Nagata. They both come out to the most stereotypical Japanese restaurant ching-chong rice-munching music you've ever heard in your life. The in-ring announcer is dressed like a move theater usher - well, that, or a member of the Lollipop Guild. Both wrestlers are wearing black underwear and boots, so good fucking luck telling them apart. 

Onoo is hilarious as shit as he just fucking buries WCW alive, talking about how great it is to see Japanese competitors performing "professional wrestling the way it was meant to be." Eric can only respond with a meek "well, that is yet to be seen," when deep down, you know he's really thinking "gook, I'll slap your face if you bad mouth my company one more time."

Literally the only way to distinguish the two wrestlers is that Ishizawa has knee pads on. Ishi with a toss. Nagata working on a kneebar. Ish gets a clean break at the ropes. Onoo says their technique is superior to American wrestlers. "When was the last time you saw good sportsmanship in American wrestling?" he quips. Nagata looks for an armbar. He keeps hammering Ishi's elbow. Nagata with a hiptoss takedown and another armbar attempt. Ishi trying to lock in his own armbar, while Nagata looks for a pseudo-rear naked choke. Eric B. said that few American besides him and Muhammad Ali have been to North Korea before, because good luck finding anything to talk about during this match. Ishi is still working that arm. He stomps Nagata a million times, and then Nagata misses on the enziguri. More stomps from Ishi. Nagata with a release belly to back suplex, three kicks to that stomach, a crossface on the mat and Ishi taps. The whole thing barely lasted four minutes, in case you were wondering. It was too competitive to be a squash, but too unremarkable for me to really give a damn. [**]

Bischoff said the North Korean government spend a solid year planning the event. Masahiro Chono and Hiro Saito then come out to what would later become Rey Mysterio's music in WCW. Their opponents are El Samurai and former sumo star Tadao Yasuda. Eric B. and Mike T. talk about the transition from sumo wrestling to pro wrestling being like the transition from pro football to pro wrestling. Chono and Yasuda to begin. Yasuda with a headlock. Time for a test of strength, because who doesn't love that shit, amirite? Chono with a gut kick, then a wristlock before Saito clobber shim with a hammerfist off the top rope. 

Now Saito is working a wristlock. Bischoff explains this is a compilation of two days' worth of matches, so if the audiences see wrestlers competing more than once, that's why. Saito with a bodyslam and Samurai gets tagged in. Samurai hits a scoop slam and a leg drop. Chono with a big boot to Samurai's chin. Samurai with a sunset flip for just a two count. Yasuda is tagged in. He gets a boot, a bodyslam and whiffs on an elbow drop. Chono gets the tag and his opponents wallop him with a double clothesline. Saito lands a HYUGE spinebuster on El Samurai. Chono gets tagged in and he puts him in a camel clutch. Eric B. wonders aloud if they call it an "Irish whip" in Korea.

Chono hits Samurai in the balls and Eric B. asks Onoo if that's the kind of scientific wrestling he was talking about earlier. Onoo wins the whole fucking world and all its treasures past and present when he responds by saying that it's simply Chono punishing Samurai for working in Mexico for so long. Yasuda is tagged in and he suplexes Saito. He lands a couple of E. Honda sumo slaps then Chono gets in and Yasuda crushes him in the corner with his flab. LOL, even as a sumo wrestler, Yasuda is barely that much fatter than the average American. El Samurai is tagged in. He hits a body splash, but it's only worth a two count. 

Chono kicks Yasuda in the balls and Onoo refers to it as "a heel kick." Chono hits El Samurai with a flying shoulder tackle off the top rope and yep, that's what gives us our three count. Eric Bischoff questions the sincerity of Chono's courteous behavior after the bell. "Yeah, that was a real polite bow," he said, "after kicking his opponent in the groin three times." Holy shit, the jawing between Bischoff and Onoo is literally the best thing that's ever happened to the universe. I consider it a meh-inducing [**] bout, but commentary like that automatically makes it an infinity snowflakes plus one affair in the sheer entertainment department.

We get a quick montage of Ali, Flair, Giant Baba and the Steiners sightseeing around Pyongyang. Than Mariko Yoshida and Manami Toyota come out wearing angel costumes and kimonos. Onoo says Toyota reminds him of his sister and that's why he's never introduced her to Bischoff. Their opponents are Bull Nakano and Akira Hokuto. You've got to dig Bull's Marge Simpson blue hair and Hokuto's gas mask/giant white afro ring attire. "How would you like to have that knocking on your hotel door at six in the morning?" Eric asks. Tenay somehow manages to do him one better by saying that Bull has a lot in common with Vader, and not just because they look alike.

The heels double team Yoshida. Bull clotheslines those hos and she fucking LARIATS Toyota to death. Eric B. with this hilarious insight: "Toyota, feeling like she just got hit by a Dodge Ram!" Toyota with three missile dropkicks off the top rope. Just a two count. Yoshida tagged in. She gets clotheslines and scoop slammed. Akira tagged in and she hits a body splash and a spinning kick to the face. Akira with a piledrive, than a bunch of kicks to Yoshida's thighs. Time for the Mexican Surfboard treatment, which Tenay calls "The Rito Romero Special." Fuck, what a dated reference ... carbon-dated, actually. Bull is back in. She works a mean surfboard variation of her own. Toyota breaks it up. Akira with an elbow drop off the top rope and then Bull tries to bend Yoshida in half. Akira hits a leg drop, but it's only worth a two.

Yoshida gets a crossbody block and then lands a handspring elbow like the Great Muta. Then another. Her fisherman (err, fisherwoman) suplex only registers a one count. Akira hits a superplex for two. Bull lands a clothesline off the top rope, then Toyota gets the hot tag and Akira immediately makes her eat some knees on a splash off the top rope. Bull gets tagged and she fucking MURDERS Toyota with a power bomb, but it's only good for a two count. Yoshida lands a double missile dropkick (that means each leg hits a different bitch) and then she wipes out both those hos with a suicide dive over the top rope, which is followed up by a Toyota springboard plancha. Toyota hits a moonsault on Akira, but it's only good enough for a two-count. Akira counters with a victory roll - it's only a two. Yoshida tagged in. Akira hits a German suplex for a two count. Bull is tagged in. Yoshida with a splash off the top rope, and you guessed it, it's only good enough for a two. Yoshida and Toyota land stereo dropkicks then Akira hits a solo dropkick off the top. Akira then wipes both of them out on the show floor with a full rotation senton off the top rope. Back in the ring, Bull hits a top rope leg drop on Yoshida and that's all she wrote. It may not have been as good as some of the other joshi classics these broads have been in, but it's far and away the best match of the show thus far, and it ain't even close. [***]

And you know what? I WOULD tap it, and I don't give a fuck what you think about me.

Scott Norton comes out wearing a spandex Beetlejuice ensemble. I totally forgot just how big of a motherfucker this dude was. His opponent is SHINYA HASHIMOTO, you motherfuckers, and he comes out to what would later become Dean Malenko's WCW music.

These two guys' body types couldn't be anymore different. Eric B. says there are different kinds of conditioning, and Hashimoto has mastered the art of conditioning his body for abuse. He also makes a crack about Norton spending all his free time at the gym and Shinya spending all his free time at the Japanese equivalent of Pizza Hut, which oddly enough, I think is Domino's.

Hash with a full nelson. Norton easily breaks free. Norton sends Hash reeling with a shoulder tackle. A knife edge chop sends Hash to the canvas. Norton with more shoulder butts in the corner, then a good old fashioned avalanche splash. Hash with a kick to the stomach, then a kick right to the jaw. The spinning wheel kick only gets a two. Hash works an armbar, then he throws in some elbows for good measure. Mike Tenay says Hash trained in Canada, but delicately tiptoes around using the name "Stu Hart." Meanwhile, Eric B. just keeps talking about what it was like working in AWA back in the day, because there really ain't shit to say about what's happening in the ring.

Norton with a shitty flying clothesline. Tenay says Norton and Road Warrior Hawk went to the same high school and wonders what it would have been like to be bullied by them. Now Hash is working the arm again. Eric B. tells a story about one time Norton allegedly beat up Oakland Raiders receiver Dave Casper at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. Hash kicks Norton in the stomach and he no sells it. Norton hits him with a clothesline, but it's only worth a two. Norton with a facelock then a neckbreaker. Shit, this match sucks. Norton with a bodyslam. Then an elbow drop. And another. Norton looking for a powerbomb. Hash counters with a back-body drop, followed by a dropkick. Hash working for another over-the-shoulder armbar. Onoo chides Norton for grabbing his opponent's hair and scratching his eyes like "Americans do when they are in trouble." Norton with a backbreaker. He goes up top and lands a Vader-ish splash. Just a two. Norton punching Hash in the midsection. Norton works a sleeperhold. He gives up the submission and just starts stomping him. Holy fuck, can you imagine the WWE having a relationship with New Japan this chummy today? You know, one in which they not only cooperate with another promotion, but actually agree to let THEIR talent look good against them, too??

Hash clips Norton's knee and kicks him in the sternum. Just a two. Elbow drop. Only a two. Hash with a DDT. Just a two. Onoo gives Norton credit for his resiliency, which he attributes to his time working in New Japan. Hash works a sleeperhold. Norton fucks up a powerslam so he just hits a shitty looking DDT instead. Holy goddamn shit, this match is the devil's asshole. Norton hits a knife edge chop and Hash collapses. Now Hash is chopping back. Hash with a kick to the sternum. Just a two. Norton finally lands a powerbomb. He goes up top and hits a splash. Yep, it only garners a two-count. All of a sudden, confetti starts falling out of the sky, indicating South Korea has officially invaded. No, wait, that just means the 20-minute time limit has been reached. Of all the fucking matches on the card to go Broadway, they had to pick this one?  This was just one big stankin' old turd of a match, and a firm reminder why Scott Norton never got a push despite looking like a fucking Marvel Comics villain in real-life. We all weep for Hash, who certainly deserved better than this snoozer. [* 1/2]

Hey, let's take a look at some gymnastic routines and people waving giant flags in the stadium, why don't we? There's this great shot of Scorpio sitting in the stands in a suit and tie clapping and being palpably horrified he's the only black person in at least a 3,000 mile radius, and it is glorious. 

Alright, here comes Yasuda again. He's taking on Road Warrior Hawk on night two of the festivities. Tenay talks about Hawk being in a tag team with Kensuke Sasaki back in the day. Eric B. tells a joke about being on a plane with Hawk in his shoulder pads and nobody laughs, which ironically enough, makes me laugh.

Yasuda with some sumo slaps. Hawk splashes his ass in the corner. Hawk with a headlock, a shoulder tackle and the Yasuda assumes the traditional sumo stance. He smacks Hawk, the he gets right back and clotheslines the fuck out of him. Hawk with a bodyslam. He goes up tope but misses on the body splash. Yasuda with a body slam, then a butterfly suplex, but Hawk no sells it and clotheslines him again. Hawk with a power slam. He hits hit with a flying clothesline off the top rope and Yasuda botches the shit out of it, but it's still good enough for the three count, anyway. Gah, what a totally pointless, boring-ass squash. [*]

When the nearest black dude is literally two continents away, you REALLY have to convince the locals you're enthusiastic about things. 

Up next it's the Steiners vs. Hiroshi Hase and Kensuke Sasaki. Hey, remember their one match from 1991 in the Tokyo Dome, that even now pro rasslin' nerds on the Internet can't determine whether or not is vastly overrated or vastly underrated?

Hase (with a hilariously gay mustache) and Scott (with his sweet ass mullet) to begin. Scott with forearm smashes in the corner then a hiptoss. Scott with a headlock and a shoulder tackle, then he gorilla press slams his foe out of the ring and onto one of the NJPW trainers - you know, all them motherfuckers ringside rockin' gaudy silver windbreakers with their last names on the back of 'em. Rick comes in and belly to back suplexes Ken. Eric B. wonders what Korean fans think about the Steiners and Onoo fires back "well, probably that they're a bunch of crazy Americans and they're wrestling."

Hase and Scott back in the ring. Time for a Greco-Roman knuckle lock. Hase with a wheel kick and dropkick. Scott hits a snap suplex, stomps him a little then lands a tilt-a-whirl powerslam. Rick is tagged in and so is Ken. Rick feeds him a couple of hand burgers. Ken keeps no-selling Rick's clotheslines, but he misses on an elbow drop. Ken with a German suplex. Ken leaps off the top rope but gets hit with a belly to back suplex from Rick. Ken with a powerslam. Hase tagged in and it is chops galore. Rick with a short arm clothesline, then he slams Hase into the turnbuckle sternum first. Scott is in and he drops Hase with a belly to back powerslam. Scott knocks Ken off the mat, then feeds Hase a running boot to the face. Then Hase dropkicks that white nigga' and Rick gets the tag. Rick with a release German suplex. Ken breaks up the pin attempt. Scott gets the tag and he locks Hase in an STF. He gets out, so Scott hits him with another belly to back suplex. Rick is tagged in. He punches the shit out of Hase's face and then Scott stomps on his solar plexus. Scott is tagged in and he hits Hase with a tiger suplex variation, bu it only gets a two. Rick is tagged back in and Hase hits a t-bone suplex. Ken finally gets tagged in and he powerslams the fuck out of both Steiners. Then Scott hits him in the balls, but it's kinda' for naught because Ken fires back with a double clothesline to take out both of his American adversaries a second or two later. Hase is tagged back in. He puts Rick in that stupid fucking giant swing and of course he's dizzy as fuck afterwards, allowing Rick to hit a release German suplex and tag Scott in. He immediately hits Hase with an abdominal stretch-powerslam combo, but it's only worth a two-count.

So Ken and Rick fight on the outside and Scott hits Hase with the fucking Steiner Screwdriver but the camera COMPLETELY MISSES THE FINISH. Anyway, you know ain't nobody getting up from the Steiner Screwdriver, so yeah, that's our match, ladies and gents. An alright bout, overall, but these four are definitely capable of putting on much better - and it ain't nowhere close to matching their Tokyo Dome match, that's for damned sure. [** 3/4]

Onoo says Inoki was trained by Rikidozan (a famous Japanese 'rassler who was born in North Korea, before "North Korea" was actually a thing), so that by proxy means Flair don't stand a chance in the main event. Eric B. just looks like he swallowed a turd and says Onoo's stance is, and I quote, "premature." 

Flair, of course, comes out to the theme from 2001, while Inoki comes out to some truly regal sounding shit which, in my humbled-ass opinion, is WAY better than that goofy "Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye" nonsense.

Inoki is pretty much the only wrestler on the show to get any kind of reaction out of the crowd. Onoo says Inoki is using wrestling as a bridge for peace, and in the very next sentence he buries American pro wrestling as "barbaric."

There's a collar and elbow tie up to begin, then Ric gets a headlock takedown. Then Inoki gets a takedown. He's looking for an early armbar and the crowd cheers. Flair gets to the ropes and locks in an armbar of his own. Flair takes a quick breather on the outside. He rolls back into the ring and hits Inoki with a shoulder tackle. Then Inoki recovers and he just stomps the FUCK out of Flair. Ric rolls to the outside and takes another respite. Ric with a kick to the gut and some knife edge chops. Onoo thanks Bischoff for finally saying something positive about a Japanese wrestler. Now Flair is stomping the hell out of Inoki, and then he rolls out for a breather. Flair jacks Inoki's huge assed jaw on the top rope. On the outside, he hits Inoki with some chops and tosses Inoki into the metal ring post. Flair suplexes him back into the ring. Just a two count. Flair with an atomic drop (on a Japanese wrestler? How distasteful!) and he starts working on Inkoi's left knee. Now he's working an STF, then he stomps on Inoki's ankle. Ric clips Inoki's knee and hits a knee drop. Ric with chops and stomps in the corner, then another atomic drop (because as we all know by now, it takes at least two atomic drops to get the Japs to surrender.) Now he's looking for the figure four leglock. He has it. Inoki looks fucking MANLY grimacing in pain. Inoki starts peeling his way out of the leglock. He's free. Flair pulls him right back out and tries to lock it in again, and Inoki goes for a roll up. It's only woth a two. Inoki tried to go for a backslide. That's just a two. Flair lands some chops and Inoki lands some punches in an awesome exchange. Inoki coldcocks Flair and starts clapping his hands to get the crowd pumped up. More chops and punches are exchanged. FLAIR FLOP TIME! Flair begs Inoki to stop pummeling him, but Inoki don't understand our American constructs of sympathy and keeps rocking Ric with right hands. Flair takes his patented turnbuckle bump to the outside. Flair with a gut kick and a snapmare. Flair goes up top. Inoki, of course, grabs him and launches him off. Inoki with a dropkick with easily three miles of daylight (for the non-wrestling-watching normies, that means Inoki's move didn't even come close to looking like it connected), and Flair kicks out. 

Flair rallies with some big punches. Then Inoki starts firing back with punches of his own. Flair with a bodyslam and an elbow drop coming off the ropes. Flair with a big backdrop suplex, but it's only good for a two-count. Inoki uses leg scissors to get out of a body slam attempt, then Inoki does his trademark cartwheel kick thingy and Flair sells it like a shotgun blast. Inoki goes up top and hits a knee drop. Inoki then hits his jumping roundhouse kick to the back of the skull (basically, it's the same thing as Fighter Hayabusa's back brain kick from Pro Wrestling on the NES) and that's what gives us our three count, folks. Inoki gets some flowers after the match and it looks like Flair is going to attack him so all the New Japan guys in windbreakers look legitimately nervous and then Flair just waltzes on over there and simply shakes his hand and leaves. Well, on a purely technical level the match wasn't much, but the "big event" atmosphere really made this one feel like something special. I might be a tad too generous here, but I feel pretty confident rating this one a solid [*** 1/2] for top "match of the event" honors.

I guess just the thought of getting hit by that dropkick was enough to put Ric Flair on his back!

We conclude the show proper with more montages of the festivities in Pyongyang - and trust me, you ain't missing much of anything right here. So all in all, this is a pretty forgettable show, really only noteworthy for the novelty of transpiring in Kim Jong's backyard. I suppose the main event was a pretty decent match (although not the all-time classic it probably should've been,) and the undercard had maybe one or two halfway decent little offerings (the women's tag, for sure, and MAYBE the Steiners/Hase and Sasaki bout.) Pretty much everything else on the card, however, is totally unremarkable, with the matches fluctuating from way too short wastes of talent (the Scorpio/Benoit opener) to pointless squashes (the one with the Road Warrior and that shitty Sumo fellow) to just fucking terrible (why, God, did anybody think it was a good idea to give Scott Norton 20 minutes of PPV time?) 

Really, the best thing about the whole show is listening to Eric Bischoff and Sony Onoo snipe at each other like a bunch of passive-aggressive junior high bitches. Onoo absolutely pisses all over the WCW product and Bischoff retaliated by ... taking it like a punk and then giving the motherfucker a job working for HIS company just months later! And of course, years down the road Onoo would accuse Bischoff and pals of being racist in the workplace, and that made his ass a couple hundred thousand dollars richer in the process. So I guess that means Onoo wins like, four or five different ways over Eric B., I suppose. 

Anyhoo, is this card really worth going out of your way to witness? Eh, the spectacle of it all is kinda' cool, but the in-ring product is such a mixed bag that it kinda' makes the whole endeavor mostly a disappointment. Shit, the camerawork is so crappy you really don't even take in the grandiose North Korean backdrop, so you might as well just be watching any old WCW program from spring 1995. Flair and Inoki might be worth catching just to say you saw the two wrestle, but beyond that? Much like North Korea as a whole, there really ain't Jack shit to see here, folks.

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Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega (01/04/17) - Is It Really THAT Awesome?

Some are calling the Wrestle Kingdom 11 main event the single greatest wrestling match ever. But is it really as great as the IWC would have you believe? 

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@Jimbo___X

By now, you folks should know I'm a pretty big fan of the pro 'rasslin, particularly, all the great shit that was going on in the 1990s. That said - and I've said this numerous times before - I really don't know what's going on in any pro wrestling organization these days. In fact, I haven't watched a full pro wrestling PPV or super card - or even a single one hour cable TV broadcast - since 2007. Thanks to that great content aggregator/pirated source for all things multimedia called the Internet, I've stayed abreast of the absolute cream of the crop thanks to forums like DVDVR and ProWrestlingOnly and stellar sites like The Armpit (W.P.'s quadannual rankings of the best seasonal matches of the year is pretty much your one-stop shop for the best fake fisticuffs out there.) 

Of course, the authoritative voice on what's great and what's crap in the wrestling biz is still Dave Meltzer, the grand poobah of the long running dirt sheet Wrestling Observer. After being incredibly stingy with his [*****] reviews in the aughties (the dude didn't even hand out a single fiver between 2006 and 2011), the Meltz-man has been showering the modern New Japan product with so many snowflakes, NJPW head honchos Jado and Gedo are pretty much buried alive under a blizzard of paper praise. Think I'm shitting you? Since 2012, he's given no less than 12 NJPW bouts an A+++ "perfect" five-star rating - that's just one less that Mitsuharu Misawa (long considered the greatest fuckin' wrestler ever) throughout the entirety of his career. 

While Meltzer's ratings are generally considered the gospel by forum-dwellers, I've always been a tad skeptical of his methodology. Por exemple, this is the same guy who gave that dime-a-dozen DragonGate match in ROH in '06 a higher score than the after the fact consensus pick for MOTD, the chop-happy Kenta Kobashi/Kensuke Sasaki donnybrook from a year earlier. And this is the same guy who considered the terribly overrated Joe/Punk affair from 2004 a better bout than the hourlong Burning/Kensuke Office eight man masterpiece from 2008. And how in the hell he considered Michael Elgin/Davey Richards a better bout than anything FUTEN has put together is a mystery to me. 

Yeah, I know a lot of you casual readers are probably perplexed about what I'm talking about. And I don't care, either - I'm allowed to get autistically technical about niche shit from time to time. It's in the Bill of Rights or something.

So, long story short: Meltzer is a guy whose opinion, much like Roger Ebert, we can respect, but when he gets it wrong, by golly, does he get it WRONG. 

Which brings us to Davey Boy's latest "perfectly rated" bout: the Kazuchika Okada/Kenny Omega IWGP Heavyweight Championship main event at Wrestle Kingdom 11. Actually, per the Meltz, the bout was so great it LITERALLY broke his rating system, as he issued the Jan. 04, 2017 match an unprecedented "SIX STAR" rating (not to be confused with a six sided star rating - those are only reserved for Bill Goldberg matches.) In fact, D.M. dug the shindig so much he actually said it was quite possibly the greatest wrestling match of all-time. That's lofty, lofty praise, especially considering how great Abe Lincoln's worked shoots were reputed to be, but still - when a dude like Dave says something is arguably the best he's ever seen, that's code word for you to hit up the DailyMotion and start punching in some keywords pronto. 

All right, the background. Kazuchika Okada is pretty much the Ric Flair of his generation - he has flashy robes, he talks mad shit, and he's somehow able to have stellar matches against pretty much everybody despite having a repertoire limited to 11, maybe 13 different moves if you count punching variations. He's to NJPW what John Cena is to the WWE - he's expected to sell all the merchandise and bring all the outside media attention to the promotion and make as many other wrestlers look good enough to sell tickets for the next major TV spectacular. Kenny Omega is this American gaijin that's been working the Japanese indy circuit for damn near 10 years, cutting his teeth on absurd comedy matches like this one where he brawled out in the wilderness with about 20 other wrestlers for an hour straight and this one where he kicked the living shit out of a real 9-year-old girl. Well, after having a string of insanely great matches nobody really expected to be awesome against everybody in New Japan who wasn't named Okada last year, the suits at NJPW said "you know, what the hell, let's give this American kid who looks sort of like the bastard love child of Matt Hardy and Bobcat Goldthwait a crack at the belt ... I mean, shit, we can only do Okada vs. Tanahashi 500 times a year so many times before the locals get restless." And lo and behold, the table for the WK 11 main event is set. 

The challenger comes out first, introduced via a parody of The Terminator. If you haven't see this, you really should - dude comes out with the prop shotgun, leather jacket and shitty metal exoskeleton mask and everything. He is accompanied at ringside by his good buddies the Young Bucks, a tag team that looks just like members of The Screaming Trees circa 1993.

Okada's entrance starts off with planets floating around on the Jumbotron. Omega bounces off the ropes in anticipation of his arrival. The video segment zooms in on Earth, then Japan, then the Tokyo Dome, and the man himself comes out rocking his trademark multicolor robe, accompanied by Gedo (who looks pretty much EXACTLY what you would imagine the cast of Duck Dynasty to look like if they were Japanese.) Dollar bills - err, Yen bills, I suppose - start fluttering all over the arena. You know, because his gimmick is making it rain and whatnot [*coughWAYTOAPPROPRIATEBLACKCULTUREGUYScough*.]

Pulling English commentary duties are WWF castoff Kevin Kelly (you know, that guy The Rock used to call a hermaphrodite) and STEVE MOTHERFUCKIN' CORINO, who was awesome in ECW for approximately one year before vanishing off the face of the Earth (which, in wrestlespeak, means Vince McMahon wouldn't return his phone calls while he was making upwards of $200 a month 'rasslin for such illustrious organizations as Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling and Major League Wrestling.) 

Yellow yen notes (which I'm guessing aren't real Yen notes) are still flying all over the place. Omega picks up one of them and wads it up in his hand, because that's Japanese sign language for "fuck you and everything you believe in." While the IWGP title is on the line tonight (by the way, IWGP stands for 'international wrestling grand prix," if you are ever on Jeopardy!) this bout is really about deciding who the top dog in New Japan is going to be for the remainder of the year. Whoever wins this one is going to be the guy doing all the publicity stops and TV interviews and - obviously - making all of the big bucks. There's no goofy subplot like in 'Merican 'rasslin, where the two guys are scuffling because one of them killed the other guy's chihuahua or dug up his deadbeat dad's coffin or tried to shock his balls with a car battery to make him sterile. It's just two guys beatin' the tar out of one another to symbolically declare themselves the best of the best, just like it was in the good old days of Dory Funk and Mr. Wrestling II. That leads to a brief discussion about the ramifications of a non-Japanese wrestler representing the company (kind of a moot point, seeing as how Omega is actually fluent in Japanese in real life, per the Wikipedia), and our commentatin' duo says that the art of pro wrestling transcends all language barriers and that many non-Japanese speakers enjoy listening to the Japanese announcers call the matches even though they can't understand a single world they're saying (although it is fairly interesting to note that the Japanese word for "suplex" is "BRAINBUSTAAAAH" shouted at the top of your lungs.)

Believe it or not, this is actually one of the more mundane moments from the match.

After we get the linguistic metaphysics out of the way, it's time to RASSLE, dammit. We've got your standard collar and elbow tie up to begin. Okada works a hammerlock early. Omega and his sweet, sweet almost-mullet reverses it into an arm twist. Okada sweeps the leg and Omega counters with an arm bar. Okada in the full mount, with a segue into a headlock. Gotta dig those rainbow panties on the defending champ. Omega escapes and Okada responds with a shower of elbow strikes. Okada lands a European uppercut and Omega ripostes with a headlock of his own. 

Okada lands a backdrop, but Omega holds on to the headlock. Omega grabs his hair and flips out of a back suplex. The we have one of those old RVD/Jerry Lynn million-billion nearfall spots, complete with those ridiculous looking mid-air arm drags. Okada bullies Omega up against the rope. He feigns a chest slap but just pats him on the shoulders and cockily struts away. Okada with a shoulder tackle. Omega responds with some hard overhand shots. Omega looks to land his patented finisher, the One-Winged Angel (basically, an electric chair drop/Mexican flyswatter transitioning into a hook armed package piledriver ... yes, it does look pretty ouchy, in case you needed the visual) but Okada escapes. Omega rolls to the outside for a breather. Okada gives him a big boot to the face as soon as he gets back in the ring, along with a snapmare and a "basement dropkick" for good measure. Omega rolls to the outside again, and this time, Okada follows suit and throws his ass over a guardrail. He lands a SICK DDT using the rail for leverage. Omega sells it like he is half dead. Okada drags a table from underneath the ring and I can't help but laugh it just how much thinner it is than the particle board buffet tables we have over here in the States. Okada tosses Omega over the guardrail again. He lands a running crossbody and the two slide across the arena floor for a good five feet. Then the announcers hard sell their Facebook and Periscope apps, because WHAT A TIME TO SHILL, amirite?

Both men are back in the ring. Okada with a fallaway slam and a slingshot Senton (Do you capitalize Senton or leave it lower case? I think it's a proper noun, even though I'm not sure what the hell  a "Senton" is, exactly - my guess would be a Futon competitor.) And time for an extended chinlock segment, because who doesn't love those?

Swinging neckbreaker form Omega once the action resumes. It's just a two-count. Omega with a dropkick to the shin and a KILLER looking bulldog\churched-up Rocker Dropper hybrid move whose proper name I'm too lazy to look up. Now he's stomping Okada like a pissant hill. He follows that up with your classic Ric Flair\Ricky Steamboat chops and some very hard elbow strikes to Okada's spine. Omega jumps up and down on Okada's back (ah, the good old 1980s "spinal hump!") and lands a very vanilla body slam. Okada misses another Senton and Okada responds by elbowing the hell out of Okada's kidneys some more. The announcers keep putting over Omega's finisher as a one-hit insta-kill - so if he lands it, we know Okada is a goner. Okada with some good elbow shots of his own, but Omega puts his comeback down with a knee to the stomach. A hurricanrana (no joke, en Espanol that translates it into "hurricane frog," and all these years later I still don't know the context of the etymology) sends Okada flying over the top rope and the crowd starts stomping their feet to the tune of The Terminator theme and Omega lands a FUCKIN' ACE Swanton Bomb to the outside, nearly taking out the photog with the Nirvana shirt in the process. Omega body slams Okada on the edge of the mat (shit, why don't we see that spot more often?) and rolls the champ back in. Omega lands a killer missile dropkick to the back of Okada's skull which - if history is any indication - will probably make him kill himself and his entire intermediate family a couple of years down the road. And demonstrating something you would NEVER hear in WWE programming nowadays, the announcers actually crack jokes about Okada needing neck surgery after absorbing the previous blow to the head.

Omega with a Camel Clutch/STF hybrid submission. Omega has Okada in the piledriver position, but Okada sinks to one knee. Omega hits him with a ton of elbows and knees and out of fuckin' nowhere Okada lands a high angle suplex/brainbuster and Omega is (kayfabe) OUT OF IT. Omega miraculously recovers but Okada puts him right back down with a DDT. He kips up and hits Omega with another running European uppercut. Okada with a flapjack and an STF variation whose proper title Steve Corino can't remember. Omega gets a rope break. Okada goes up top, Omega roll out of the way on the splash attempt and Okada lands a SATANIC jackknife reverse neckbreaker - you just got to see this to grasp its awesomeness. Omega gets his knees up when Okada goes for the old Macho Man top rope diving elbow. Omega with a backbreaker and a dropkick that sends Okada flying to the outside and over a guardrail. Kelly asks Corino if he has any advice for the Japanese announce team and he politely responds "move the hell away." Omega does two full revolutions on a springboard moonsault to the outside. Okada acts half dead after the collision, gasping for air while rolling all over a bunch of electrical cables. Omega drapes the ridiculously small table over Okada and does a running double stomp at full speed - you KNOW that shit had to hurt for real. Omega retrieves Okada and throws him back into the ring. Omega hits him with back-to-back powerbombs but all he can get is a two. The Young Bucks set the table up on the outside, while Gedo just kinds of waddles around like a flannel-clad penguin with a mountain-man beard. The ref prevents Omega from doing whatever he was thinking about doing with the table, so he just wallops Okada with big knees and a couple of hammer fists to the back.

Sure, it looks like it hurt like hell, but it's probably only the fourth or fifth worst thing that happened to Okada's skull throughout the bout.

Loud "OKADA!" chants echoing throughout the Dome. Okada takes a big back-first bump to a corner turnbuckle but makes Omega eat a big boot on the rebound. And another. Now Okada is elbowing the shit out of him. Okada with that old Ken Kennedy barrell roll thingy and a moonsault for a two-count. Okada has a huge gash on his back now. Okada hits Omega with a dropkick that sends him flying over the top rope and spiraling to the outside. Omega teases putting Okada through the table with his finisher, but he snakes his way out. Omega lands some stiff knife-edge chops, bounces off the rope and - of course - gets back body dropped a good 10 feet in the air before crashing through the anorexic IKEA furniture. The Young Bucks tend to Omega, but Okada says "fuck that" (probably in Japanese, though) grabs Omega and rolls him back into the ring. Omega eats a HUGE missile dropkick, but it's only good for a two. Corino lets the audience know that submission move he couldn't remember 15 minutes ago is called "Red Ink," if it was really bothering you that much. Okada with an elbow drop and a SUPER DUPER DRAMATIC CAMERA PAN OUT SHOT to let you know shit is about to get all kinds of real in this motherfucker.

Okada signals for his finisher, the Rainmaker (basically, a fat-assed short armed clothesline his opponents sell by doing 45 flips before falling down.) Omega counters and rams his head into Okada's back in the corner. He acts like he threw his back out trying to pick Okada up. Omega with some hard slaps and Okada fires back with some elbows that knock Omega off the top rope. Omega keeps clobbering him on the back and he KILLS THAT NIGGA' DEAD with a belly to back off the top rope that sends Okada crashing to the mat head first from about 10 feet in the air. And it's only worth a two count, if you can believe it.

Omega with a funky one-legged neckbreaker thingy. Okada retaliates with a high angle German suplex. Omega with a jumping knee to the face, and Okada hits a beautiful dropkick on the rebound. Okada whiffs on his finisher and Okada lands a reverse hurricanrana, dropping the champ on the top of his fuckin' head for about the sixth or seventh time in this match. He adds to the inevitable CTE damage with a stiff running knee to Okada's noggin. Omega looking for his finisher, but Okada reverses and tombstone piledrives that motherfucker. The crowd is MOLTEN at this point. OKADA LANDS THE RAINMAKER! But it's only a two. Omega is on his knees, throwing pillow-heavy punches at his foe. Another dropkick sends Omega flying 10 feet across the ring. Omega reverses another tombstone attempt into a package piledriver, but it's only a two count. Both men on their knees, trading winded elbow shots and slaps. "This is pro wrestling," Kelly says. Both men back on their feet. The crowd is shouting every time a shot lands. They do a brief homage to the old PRIDE Takayama/Frye slugfest and Omega lands a German suplex/running knee combo for a two count. Omega with another knee shot and yet another One Winged Angel attempt. Okada reverses it and lands another Rainmaker, but Omega is right back up, kicking the shit out of Okada's face. Okada's still holding onto Omega's arm though, and eventually, he murder-death-kills him with a third Rainmaker. Now it's time for a million billion feigned finisher reversals. Omega hits a dropkick and a GHASTLY knee to Okada's face. Okada counters the OWA again and lands a twirling Tombstone and one more Rainmaker, and THAT's what gets him the three count.

Happy Japanese fans with Yen throw towels jump for joy while women openly weep in the stands. Both men are temporarily laid out while Okada's music plays. Okada has his arm raised and immediately falls down. Omega rolls out of the ring and stumbles around a bit. Okada gets back up and has the IWGP title wrapped around his waist. In the post-bout interview, he says some stuff in Japanese - not quite sure what, to be honest, but if I know the Japanese the way I think I know 'em, he probably wasn't using the airtime to apologize for killing more people than the Nazis. And, as they say in Italy and Spain, that's all she wrote, folks.

Okada's shameless attempts to net a toothpaste sponsorship, however, has to be worth at least a 1/4 * demerit.

As Mr. T is oft fond of spouting, I pity the fool who thinks he's going to top this one in 2017. The same way Okada/Tanahashi at WK 10 set a standard no other match in 2016 could reach just four days into the new year, pretty much every match that comes down the pipes in '17 is going to be judged by the insanely high bar these two competitors set. It's definitely a MOTY candidate, and if we see anybody anywhere put on a better 'rasslin match then this one over the next 300-something days, we truly are some lucky motherfuckers. 

Alright, so there's no denying that Okada/Omega is one of the best matches of the decade, but is it really the kind of bout that ought to be bandied about as the single greatest of all time? 

From my stance, this thing is a SOLID [****3/4] match, teetering on the edge of being a legit [*****] effort. Of course, time is the greatest gage of quality out there, so I'll have to rewatch this thing around July to see if it still razzle dazzles me the same way it did just a couple of days after watching it en vivo on the livestre ... I mean, through the official New Japan World app, available for now for Android! I might change my mind on this one, but just initially, I STILL think last year's WK10 main event was the better of the two. Indeed, I might even consider that AWESOME Cena/Styles headliner from SummerSlam a superior outing, but like I said - give it time, young grasshopper, give it time. 

Of course it's a great, great, GREAT match, but Dave Meltzer must've been high on bath salts when he said this was a contender for GOAT. Uh, aren't we still mesmerized by the great Flair/Steamboat trilogy from '89, D.M.? Hell, for that matter, there's a ton of shit from Japan and Mexico older than that that still holds up absurdly well, like the MS-1/Sangre Chicana hair versus hair bout from '84 and the Maeda and Fujinami shit from '86. Of course, me being the '90s All-Japan mark I am, if I was pressed to pick the best of all-time, I can check off about 25 permutations of Kawada/Misawa/Kobashi that I believe beats the pants off Omega/Okada. Sure, 01/04/17 is absolutely tremendous, but in my books, it ain't even close to capturing the magic of 06/03/94. And for the record? I'm still torn between picking that absurd L.A. Park/El Mesias bout from 2010 and that goddamn masterful Ishikawa/Suzuki vs. Ikeda/Super Tiger II BattlArts bout from 2011 as this decade's best, if you were wonderin'.

So yes, if you consider yourself anything even remotely resembling a wrestling fan, you owe it to yourself to see Omega/Okada by any means necessary because this shit really is outstanding. It's definitely an early frontrunner for 2017 MOTY, but for those of you expecting something that makes Tsuruta/Tenryu look like a throwaway Sunday Night Heat Crash Holly match from 2001? Eh, it's good, but I don't reckon it's AS good as the dire, desperate Internet hordes have convinced themselves it is.

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