Current Watch List:

• Atsushi Aoki vs. Kotaro Suzuki for then2015 JuniorBattle of Glory championship
• Burning Wild (Jun Akiyama & Takao Omori) (c) vs. Evolution (Joe Doering & Suwama) for the AJPW Tag Team championship
• Xceed (Go Shiozaki & Kento Miyahara) & Zeus vs. Akebono, KENSO & Yutaka Yoshie

Atsushi Aoki vs. Kotaro Suzuki
Japan
AJPW

There were parts that were good.  Loved the early rope running/counter segment they did about a minute or so in.  Sort of high end junior stuff I don’t expect to see from AJPW juniors.  Suzuki’s arm bar focused offense was a lot of fun, but I am partial to that to begin with.  Also thought the pinning combo segment towards the end of the match was well executed.

The match did meander some in the middle.  That early sequence mentioned above was so good that the stuff after was a bit of a let down.  As said, the arm work was good during the body, but on a whole the match never quite reached that next level in action and/or intensity.  The one-count kick outs were not necessarily bad, but rather just totally unnecessary.  I get why guys like Ishii do them in the way they do them even if it is not my think.  I didn’t get the point of these two guys doing them in the manner they did.

Better than expected and just above average overall.

Burning Wild (Jun Akiyama & Takao Omori) (c) vs. Evolution (Joe Doering & Suwama)
Japan
AJPW
AJPW Tag Team championship

It had its moments like Akiyama and Suwama engaging in a fun grappling/scrambling for position scrum at the start.  Omori got worked over for a significant period of time and that general came of well.  There were individual moves I liked as well.  Doering’s bump into the ropes after the missed crossed body looked all kinds of dangerous.  As a total package, the match was lacking.  The structure was not engaging in any meaningful way.  The transitions and hot tags were poor.  Some of the offensive execution was poor as Doering was out of place several times and both he and Go have poor stomps.  There was no need for this match to go 25 minutes other than because it was a title match and there is an expectation for title matches to run long.  A “just there” type of match overall.