Ramblings About’s Matches of the Year 2022: The Best Of The Rest

Somehow, we’ve made it through another year, and while I think it’s safe to say all is not well in the world, the wrestling has at least been very good. 2022 was a year of change in the world of joshi, a lot of which was quite anxiety-inducing for someone who takes comfort from this nonsense, but I think we’ve come out the other end of it all with the scene in strong and (more importantly) interesting health. There have also been a lot of incredible matches, and this is my list of the ones that aren’t quite my match of the year but which, on a different day, may well be so. Enjoy!

Quick note: I sorta cheated this year and snuck an extra match in by writing about it elsewhere. The brilliant and lovely Flupke (FlupkeDiFlupke on Twitter) invited me to write about the wonderful Ice Ribbon gauntlet of gauntlets as part of his newsletter. You can find my thoughts (alongside his much better ones) on that here. Then, once you’ve read that, you should also read the rest of his end-of-year stuff, which is equally great.

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Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for January 2022

Not a bad pair of champs. Credit: TJPW

I’m still not over 2021 being done and dusted, but we’re somehow already a month into 2022. However, the increasingly fast and unrelenting nature of time aside, January was a hell of a month for wrestling. A whole host of companies came out of the blocks quickly, and I had a lot of stuff to talk about. So, let’s stop jibber-jabbering and get on with it.

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Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for April 2021

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Flying Goblin Apple. Credit: ChocoPro

Okay, so removing the ten-match limit for these lists has maybe caused me to go a bit overboard. In my defence, April was a hell of a month for wrestling, despite the event I was looking forward to most, GAEAISM, being postponed because of Japan’s COVID issues. Thankfully, plenty of other stuff was there to pick up the slack, and, well, scroll down to see how much I had to talk about.

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Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for February 2021

This is wrestling. Credit: Gake

I’ve decided to make a couple of tweaks to my matches of the month round-up. The most obvious one is that this hasn’t been a top ten list for a while, so there is no real need to stick to ten entries. Some months it might be more, some months it might be less, and it’s silly to force myself into a corner for no reason. Secondly, I am going to make a tiny change to the kind of things I write about. There are often brilliant wrestling matches where I have nothing to say. That doesn’t take away from how good they are, but not everything requires analysis beyond saying it rules. On top of that, if they come from one of the promotions I write about regularly, I’ve often reviewed them before. So, rather than stretching myself to come up with something new, I’m adding an honourable mentions list to the bottom of each month, where I’ll round up all the stuff you should watch, but where I have nothing new to add to the conversation.

Apart from that, it’s business as usual! Here are a load of matches from the last month that I loved.

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Ramblings About’s Match Of The Year: Best Of The Rest Part 1

A perfect moment. Credit: TJPW

According to some, 2020 has been a lousy year for wrestling, an opinion fuelled by New Japan not doing what people want them to do and an aversion to the dreaded clap crowds. Unfortunately, no-one told my match of the year list, which was quite frankly unwieldy. So yes, this is part one of the best of the rest because when I started writing it very quickly got out of hand. Excessive? Perhaps, but despite its many faults, wrestling is still the best, so a bit of excess isn’t too bad.

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Ramblings About’s Top Ten Matches of August 2020

Spoiler. Credit: ChocoPro

Another month, another list of my favourite matches. This feels like the first full post-COVID four weeks of wrestling we’ve had, which doesn’t make any sense when you consider two of the biggest joshi companies had to cancel shows, but there was a hell of a lot of wrestling! That means there are a fair few impressive bouts that didn’t make the cut, but they’ll have to forgive me because what is there, was brilliant. Enjoy.

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Ramblings About’s Top Ten Matches of June 2020

If wrestling keeps being so great, I am going to have to ditch the top-ten element of this and make it even more rambling because there are at least another ten matches that I would like to have on this list. That doesn’t even take into account the Ice Ribbon that I need to catch up on! (I still haven’t seen Suzu vs Maya, hence its exclusion, I’m sure it’s great.) Gosh darn it, there is too much wrestling. Oh well, there are worse problems to have.

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Ramblings About’s Top Ten Matches of March 2020

Spoiler. Credit: TJPW

March 2020 might be the month the wrestling died, but there was still a remarkable amount of the stuff despite that sad state of affairs. There was certainly more than enough to make up my monthly top ten, and if you’re looking for something to pass the time, well, I guess you better read on because that might not be the case in April.

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Miyako Matsumoto vs Chikara: Wrestling Can Be Anything

Everyone had a lovely time! Credit: Gake

I have long been a supporter of the idea that wrestling can be whatever you want it to be. Whether it’s the Marvel-esque crash and bang of New Japan main events, the art-house genius of Gatoh Move or whatever the fuck it is WWE is up to, wrestling’s beauty comes from its ability to be twisted into any form.

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Ramblings About’s Top Ten Matches Of January 2020

Least shocking spoiler of all time. Credit: NJPW

In an incredible twist of fate, this round-up isn’t too late! Now, that comes with the caveat that I completely missed December’s, but that was because I had a lot to do. If you don’t know, I went to Japan and watched a lot of wrestling, can’t remember if I mentioned it anywhere. A decent amount of said wrestling makes this list, so let’s get on with it.

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