We look back over Dave Meltzer’s five-star wrestling matches.
I started watching New Japan regularly in January 2017, so the idea that Tomoaki Honma was having five-star matches only a couple of years before is rather baffling to me. Honma wasn’t awful when I first tuned in (his injury has since seen him drop down to that level), but if you’d asked me to rank the roster, he would have been near the bottom.
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Let’s dive into another five-star classic as we look back at Shingo Takagi going head to head with Masaaki Mochizuki. I say it’s five-stars, but I’ve seen a few places say that Dave has never officially bestowed the rating on it. Truthfully, I don’t care. I want to watch and write about Shingo because he’s my boy, so if it’s bothering you, imagine it says wrestling classics at the top rather than Meltzer’s Classics. Better? Good.
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For a company that produces as much wrestling as they do, WWE/F has had shockingly few Meltzer rated five-star matches over the years. Their focus on entertainment over skill has often led to even hot feuds not producing classically great bouts. However, there have been a few, and today we go back to SummerSlam 1994 where it was brother vs brother.
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Damn, I was almost giddy with excitement about getting to check this one out. Ishii and Shibata are two of my favourite wrestlers of all time, yet, somehow, I’ve never seen this match. Time to change that.
Continue readingIt’s been a while since I’ve dived into a five-star classic, so I’ve decided to mix up the formula a bit. Previously, I was going chronologically, but it was proving hard to find certain matches which kept derailing me. Therefore, in a change to your regularly scheduled programming, I’m going to start jumping around history, picking bouts I’m in the mood for, rather than what Father Time dictates. That explains why we’re going straight into a favourite of mine: Styles vs Joe vs Daniels from TNA’s Unbreakable 2005.
Read moreMeltzer loved his nineties Joshi, didn’t he? We’re back in AJW where Manami Toyota and Toshiyo Yamada are facing off for the IWA World Title with the added stipulation of it being a Hair vs Hair match. It was the blow-off to a long-running feud which grew out of the two having previously teamed together.
The match’s defining moment.
Kenta Kobashi loves a five-star performance. This time, it’s not a six man involving a host of Japanese legends. It’s a straight up tag team match for the All Asia Tag Team Titles with the Gaijin team of Furnas and Kroffat defending the belts against Kenta and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. Shall we have a look at what went down?
I can’t find any pictures of the match. Have Bull instead.
A quick note before we start, the list I’m using for these five-star matches has a Bull Nakano vs Yumiko Hotta cage match on it that happened around this time. However, I can’t find that anywhere. I haven’t even come across any mentions of it outside of that list. I’m assuming it’s a mistake – Bull wrestled Aja Kong in a cage a few months before – but if anyone can clue me in, please do.
There is a slightly complex stipulation for this one. It’s Two out of Three Falls, but it’s actually what WWE would call a Three Stages Of Hell. They start off with a Falls Count Anywhere, then have a Stretcher and finally a Cage. I can’t find if it was a particular section that got five stars or not, so I’m going to watch all three. Also, it’s worth noting that it would be giving these recordings too much credit to say they were terrible quality, which is going to affect the review.
We’ve seen this match before, haven’t we? Yes, a few months after this six-man combo got a five-star rating they went out and did it again. That first one stood the test of the time. Will the second?
