Kairi Vs Mercedes Moné - NJPW Battle of the Valley (18/2/23)

Mercedes Moné didn’t make a great first impression in NJPW.  The IWGP Womens title match before her debut lasted six minutes buried in the undercard just to let you know how important the division she’s joined is, her new music is a big downgrade and she completely blew hitting her new finisher on Kairi.  It was a lacklustre arrival after months of excited speculation that Sasha Banks was returning to wrestling and not with WWE.    

Thankfully in the never-ending world of pro-wrestling there’s always a chance to make a second impression.  At Battle of the Valley Mercedes challenged her former colleague Kairi for the newly established IWGP Womens title and even on a show headlined by the famous rivalry of Okada Vs Tanahashi, it was the womens match that felt like the main event - Echos of Takeover Brooklyn.   To the fans in the arena, Mercedes’ Tokyo Dome disappointment didn’t matter, she was a bonefide star and the reason they were live in attendance. 

Mercedes took the early advantage in the match, showing no-ring rust as she ran through some lucha inspired armdrags and threw Kairi into the turnbuckle posts before focusing in on the arm to reduce the impact of her cutlass backfist and insane elbow drop down the pike.  As popular as Mercedes is, once the bell rings she’s at her best when she’s a heel and here she leaned into those mannerisms that have served her well in the past.  Mercedes paid tribute to Hana Kimura in her entrance with the gas mask and furry boots, but as the match got more intense, Mercedes ripped off one of the furry boots and chucked it at Kairi. 

This wasn’t just the Moné show though.  Kairi put on a great performance throughout the match, incredible facials and selling to put over Mercedes offence, but when it was her time to attack she made her impact.  Her rolling spear was a highlight, her pirate march corner elbow is always over, and in kayfabe her ‘Anchor’ double leg submission really worked well against Mercedes who’s knees would have taken a self-inflicted pounding from the multiple meteora’s she went for in this high-stakes match.

As the match heated up, Mercedes paid tribute to her best friend with a Belly-to-Bayley nearfall which the fans loved.  I hate the three-amigos tribute spot to Eddie Guerrero, so when Kairi countered the third suplex into a nasty vertical drop DDT I was howling.    This match took place on the same day as The Elimination Chamber, so I was certainly not in the  mood to see more ref bumps in big matches when Mercedes pulled the referee in harms way to eat Kairi’s backfist.  Thankfully this one set up for a big set piece spot up on the ramp resulting in Kairi powerbombing Mercedes through a table with the chefs kiss of her celebrating by kicking Moné’s fake dollar bills from her entrance down to her limp body.  Kairi dragged Mercedes back into the ring and attempted the insane elbow, only for Mercedes to counter by raising her feet – a textbook counter to a top rope move you’ve seen 1,000 times but looked incredible this time around.  Case in point, this is followed up immediately by Mercedes doing a frog splash and Kairi getting her feet up which looked less impressive. 

After some lovely counter-wrestling, Mercedes was able to get Kairi into a Gory special position and float her over into a DDT for the Moné Maker to end the match and win the title.  There must have been some nerves from Mercedes about executing her new finisher after the botch inside the Tokyo Dome, but this time everything went swimmingly. 

Mercedes is in a really exciting time in her career.  She was already in my mind the best womens wrestler the US has ever seen even if WWE never fully appreciated her, but now she has the chance to break new ground by being a top level drawing star in the business and establishing the womens division in New Japan.  Selfishly for me it’ll be great to see her have all these fresh matches with great wrestlers from Stardom rather than get back on the WWE hamster wheel against the wrestlers she’s spent the last decade facing.  I always admire it when wrestlers bet on themselves and go for a fresh challenge (look at Jon Moxley), and in Moné I’ve no doubt this next chapter of her career will be a successful one. 

Ed's Ongoing 2023 MOTY List

WWE Worst Match Ever - 94 - Dolph Ziggler & John Cena vs. Kane & King Barrett - Beast in the East 2015

 94.

Dolph Ziggler & John Cena vs. Kane & King Barrett

Beast in the East 2015

It’s fitting that this match takes place in Japan, as I haven’t felt a sense of existential dread watching an overly long piece of supposed entertainment since I watched Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour. 

Yes, long before venturing to Australia and Saudi Arabia in recent years, the early days of the WWE Network saw the company experimenting with converting house shows into live events. With the Network still relatively new, they hadn’t quite worked out the quirks of these events. Beast In The East was nothing more than a house show that was promoted to a live event at fairly short notice - similar to Elimination Chamber 2015. What we have is the most house show match that ever existed to close out the show. But not only is it a house show match, but it is long. Very long. At 23 minutes it is easily the longest match on the card, and make no mistake you feel every second of it. While the other matches on the Beast in the East card felt like fairly big affairs that could have easily aired on a regular TV show or PPV, this was wrestled exactly like a house show match. Safe, boring, exaggerated expressions. One of my main gripes about this match is how distracting and corny the babyface mannerisms are on the apron all the time in this match. It's even worse considering Ziggler and Cena are both prone to being corny over-actors at the best of times. I think it reinforces how unsuitable for standard television this style is. There’s a reason that house show matches stay as house show matches. 

The lineup of this match is tragic. Wade Barrett is the latest in a long line of guys that get given a king gimmick following a King of the Ring victory, complete with the stupid recycled costume. He’s also feuding with R-Truth at this time. Kane is the Director of Operations for the Authority, and his ring gear is at its absolute worst. Plain black dress trousers, with a bad haircut. He’s currently in a sort-of feud with Seth Rollins. Meanwhile Ziggler, fresh off being depushed after a promising close to 2014, is in the middle of his summer romance with Lana - arguably the worst romance put to television since Anakin and Padme. He’s in a feud with Rusev which derailed both men's careers.  Meanwhile John Cena is actually having one of the most lauded years of his career as the United States Champion and having fun matches every week. He’s currently feuding with Kevin Owens.

So we have four guys in a thrown together tag match and none of them are feuding with one another. 

And I think John Cena sums up my frustrations with this match because it feels like a waste. The show is named after Brock Lesnar, so why not put him in the main event? Or what about the NXT Championship match between Kevin Owens and Finn Balor? Those two were special matches in their own way. If Cena needs to main event, why not make it an open challenge match to make it slightly interesting?

The match is so long and tedious that any commentary on it feels redundant. There’s a face in peril section featuring Cena which goes on for eternity. Cena, in what would become a running theme for 2015, would hit an AA in the middle of the match to zero consequence. Ziggler gets a hot tag, injects a bit of energy into the match, before we get a second excruciating face in peril section. Seriously, why does this match need two face-in-peril sections? Barrett and Kane are hardly the Midnight Express and they can’t keep a match like this interesting. Not only this, but they also lack credibility in comparison to Cena. This match would also be why I would not say Ziggler is a great seller. He’s fantastic at bumping, but for prolonged selling he kind of sucks. It’s why he’s never been a very good babyface wrestler. 

I think if this match were anywhere else on the card and a bit shorter, I’d just consider it a shit tag match. But the fact they made this a main event match with zero stakes, no build, and made it about twice as long as it needed to be, makes this an easy pick for this list. 

Up next - we’re sticking with a Japanese theme as we venture into the dark, miserable world of mid 2000s Smackdown. 

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Zack Sabre Jr Vs Tomohiro Ishii - NJPW The New Beginning in Sapporo (5/2/23)

How fitting that in the week that Lanny Poffo passed away, we were treated to yet another battle between these two former 'Champions of the British'

This was the first defence of Zack Sabre Jr's NJPW Television title after he became the inaugural champion at WrestleKingdom when he defeated Ren Narita in the tournament finals.   New Japan have had a chequered past with introducing new championships over the last decade.  The NEVER Openweight title originally was supposed to be defended exclusively on NJPW's NEVER events, before it quickly turned into an undercard title coveted by typical strong style wrestlers such as Katsuyori Shibata, Hirooki Goto and Tomohiro Ishii in show-stealing matches.  The IWGP United States Championship never really differentiated itself enough from the IWGP IC title as their US expansion stalled and both titles felt devalued by the existence of each other.  The NEVER Trios titles have been pretty worthless ever since their inception and the KOPW title was an pandemic era experiment that should have been abandoned by now.  By making 35-year old Zack Sabre Jr your first TV Champion instead of Ren Narita, and the next challenger being 47-year old Ishii, the early premise of the title being something for the younger wrestlers to challenge over already feels compromised.  What does give me hope that this title can find it's niche is in it's time limit rules.  By imposing a 15-minute time limit for every title match, it forces wrestlers to cut out the fat and the stalling of the house style and cut to the chase in a dramatic fashion.  I was a big fan of the 2012-2018 boom in New Japan, but have long since grown tired of the 30-40 minute epics that get served up for title matches in this company.  The main event of this show was Hiromu Vs Yoh for 30 minutes for example.  Who has time for that? 

Another cool aspect of this title is that all TV title matches are free to watch on NJ World without a subscription, so if you have a spare 15 minutes today there's no excuse not to check this out!

Zack is now the leader of The Mighty Don't Kneel, teaming up with Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste (remember TM61?) which feels like a step up after being an upper-tier guy in Suzuki-Gun since he joined the company six years ago.  He also now sports the famous WrestlingClique Orange and Black colour scheme 😉  I'm not certain this will ever lead to him becoming a top guy in the company, but it's a positive sign nevertheless that he has been given the opportunity to lead a faction and carve this title in his image.  

These two have met six times before in singles action, so by now both men should know what to expect from each other, but Ishii has a trick up his sleeve straight away with a cross armbreaker which transitioned into a kneebar.  Zack was thrown off guard slightly by Ishii's 'teckers' as he called it,  This later turned into Zack returning the favour and firing off some Ishii like chops in the corner to let him know two could play at that game.  

The match then settled down more into the styles clash we expect of these two.  Ishii brings the brutal strikes and Zack goes for the submission work and show-off pins and as the clock ticked on it was a battle of whether Zack could snatch a win before Ishii knocked him out.  I particularly enjoyed Ishii countered an arm wringer with a headbutt.  I don't want to see a code red become a staple part of Ishii's moveset, it felt a bit PWG-era John Cena for my liking, but it was a cool spot in isolation.  The last 3 minutes or so of the match you could feel the pace and intensity increase as Ishii knew he needed unload his big hitters now-or-never otherwise the title would stay with Zack in the event of a draw.  There was a good nearfall off the sliding lariat for a 2 count, before Zack countered the 2nd lariat attempt into a roll up.  Zack's offence is perfect for this TV title environment where a quick, sneaky pin out of nowhere doesn't feel like a deflating finish.  That's actually how I expected this match to go down, so I was surprised when the brainbuster was countered into a Zack Driver to end this one with 22 seconds left on the clock.  

It might not be the best match these two have ever had together, but I'll champion anything that proves you can have a great match within 15 minutes - ESPECIALLY in this company.  

Ed's Ongoing 2023 MOTY List

WWE Worst Match Ever - 95 - Chavo Guerrero vs. Hornswoggle - Raw, 31st August 2009

 95.

Texas Bullrope Match

Chavo Guerrero vs. Hornswoggle

Raw, August 31st 2009

If you’ve ever thought modern wrestling was bad, let me remind you what the depressing world of 2009 Raw was. The everlasting main event trio of Triple H, John Cena and Randy Orton. The guest hosts. A jarring and excruciating overcompensation to the PG era. This is, for good reason, my least favourite era of WWE wrestling.

I’ve often said that the top end of the list is a perfect spot for matches you want to give a special shout out to that otherwise don’t fit every criteria. Consider this a sort of lifetime achievement award to this infamous feud which unanimously fit onto every worst feud of 2009 list. On its own this is a stupid segment befitting of 2009 Raw. But on its own this would just be forgotten about to history, like the Pilgrims vs Indians diva match; or JR vs Michael Cole main eventing the first ever Mexican Raw. However, this isn’t just one match. This is match SEVEN in this two month feud between the two men. We’ve seen a boxing match; a falls count anywhere match where Chavo Guerrero gets knocked out by Macaulay Culkin in a Home Alone skit; a tuxedo match; a match where Chavo is blindfolded; a match where Chavo has a hand tied behind his back. But this is the one I chose to include as the culmination of this feud that made the summer of 2009 feel excruciatingly long.

As the Raw Guest Host is Dusty Rhodes, the match is a Texas Bullrope match. First person to tie their opponent using the Bullrope is the winner. Chavo however has to wrestle this match in a full cow costume because that’s funny apparently.  “This the first time ever on Raw. A leprechaun dressed as a cowboy versus a cow” - Michael Cole summarising the sheer stupidity of this. 

The match itself lasts around 90 seconds, but through this whole segment, Cole and Lawler have just about every bovine joke known to man at the ready. This just reinforces my belief that Cole and Lawler were the worst combination of commentators ever. And I say this as someone who is a bit of a Cole sympathiser, but the combination with Lawler didn’t work at all. This is one of those matches where you just know that Vince McMahon was watching on his monitor laughing his ass off for every second of it. A particular highlight of this match is Hornswoggle grabbing Chavo’s tail, and Chavo selling it as if it were actually attached to his body. 

If you’ve ever seen one of these Chavo vs Hornswoggle matches, you know how it goes. Hornswoggle takes maybe a bump but otherwise it’s Chavo getting frustrated, making himself look like an idiot, and losing in a contrived way. It wasn’t funny in the first match, it wasn’t funny in the second match, and it certainly isn’t funny in the seventh match. Hornswoggle hog ties Chavo for the win of course.

The post match continues the shenanigans as Evan Bourne sets Chavo up for Hornswoggle to hit a Tadpole Splash. It also features perhaps the most painfully mistimed joke maybe in the history of humanity. Michael Cole says “I tell you one thing …” ready for the big joke when Hornswoggle hits the splash. Unfortunately, it’s a good 15 seconds before Hornswoggle is ready to hit it, meaning that Lawler has to awkwardly set it up once again, before a cow sound is played across the arena - and finally Michael Cole exclaims “WHAT A MOOOOOOOOO-ve”. All that set up … for that. It’s probably the most awkward joke in wrestling since Eric Bischoff’s “can’t find your scissors”.

Let’s not mistake this as the true end to this debacle. In 2010 they would briefly reignite the feud in the iconic Hornswoggle vs Swagger Soaring Eagle match. I did think about that match making the list, but the masochist in me actually enjoyed the comedy, and it wasn’t presented as Chavo in the eagle costume. Plus as it was a Thanksgiving episode it had somewhat of a reason to exist. This match is irredeemable. I do find a sense of strange enjoyment that Hornswoggle, having defeated Chavo for the Cruiserweight Championship he would retire, was probably Chavo’s biggest rival in WWE outside of Eddie and Ray. Poor guy, not even Chavo deserves that. 

Up next, terrible matches on international network events are not limited to Saudi Arabia.

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