Here we will see the best of wrestling with the matches of the week from Monday 11th March to Sunday March 17th.

Photo courtesy of Ring of Honor

3rd Placed Match: Shane Taylor vs Jeff Cobb (c) ROH Television Championship Match – Ring of Honor 17th Anniversary Show

This was a match that I had kinda slept on, in all honesty. In my experience with Shane Taylor, he’s very hit and miss despite how compelling his Hitman for hire gimmick is, whilst his opposition in Jeff Cobb always exceeds expectations with his sheer quality in matches and athleticism.

This match turned out to be a dazzling big hoss championship encounter. A truly incredible match, and arguably Shane Taylor’s best, which had me mindblown. This unbelievably was their first ever encounter and they gelled together like they have been in a long-time rivalry spanning many matches. Taylor is a 300 lbs man and Cobb was tossing him around like a cruiserweight at time, such as impressively german suplexing his challenger with a delay and bridging!

There was a crazy spot where Taylor, which I reiterate is a 300 pounder, did a running Canadian Destroyer, the absolute best I’ve ever seen. Then Taylor took to the top rope to be lobbed off by Mr. Athletic and he had enough energy in him to follow up with a Standing Moonsault! Cobb is truly Superhuman. The finish was spectacular with Cobb putting the match to bed with TWO Tour of the Islands, which is a reverse-spin scoop powerslam, which with all things considered and a hard fought battle just shouldn’t have happened. This is why the Ring of Honor Television champion is an absolute beast in my eyes.

Photo courtesy of Ring of Honor

2nd Placed Match: Matt Taven vs Jay Lethal (c) ROH World Championship Match – Ring of Honor 17th Anniversary Show

I want to preface this choice by saying I understand that this match was not everyone’s cup of tea. Some may claim the match was too long, didn’t reach the heights of other matches and/or various other reasons. This is perhaps my first controversial choice.

In what was set to be the main event, was brought to midcard by Taven himself. ROH ran a video package after Iwatani vs Klein which saw recapped ROH TV where Lethal tore up Taven’s purple belt which provided him to think he was the ‘real’ Ring of Honor World Champion due to the paranoid Kingdom Conspiracy. Once the package had ended, Taven took to the ring, stole the mic off of Bobby Cruise and wanted Lethal then and there. He refused to wait for the main event which was over an hour away at that point.

Lethal, being the honourable champion he is, accepted Taven’s proposal and the match was to start. This left alot of fans skeptical of some sort of Kingdom trap or a short match resulting in Taven begging for a rematch to go ahead last on the show… instead we got a 60 minute wrestling classic!

The escalation in pace was brilliant. In a 60 minute match, the key is to keeping each stage of 10 minutes or so, at seperate paces in order to maintain attention and intrigue. Its not humanly possible to go 60 minutes at an extremely high pace, not even the 2 out of 3 falls no time limit match between Okada & Omega could’ve managed that.

I can’t breakdown what happened in 60 minutes because this will turn into an essay. But Matt Taven didn’t just kick out of 1 Lethal Injection (a feat many before him hadn’t achieved), he kicked out of TWO! This was a complex match that saw, in truth, an uneventful first half before it really kicked into the next gears in the second. We saw Taven’s Kingdom teammates looking to help via distraction game on Lethal, but Mark Haskins and Tracy Williams would come to the aid and chase off Marseglia & O’Ryan.

Todd Sinclair, the ref, was extremely lenient understanding the magnitude of this match. Believe it or not, this match has had a 3 year build so he had to let a few things go. That included low blows, a table spot and a ladder being involved. Taven was my pick from earlier in the day due to the build this match has had in their previous encounters such as Taven pinning Lethal in a six man tag encounter where Taven and his Kingdom bretheren faced Lethal, Rush & Gresham. Lethal would level matters in the return match in Japan where Lethal had a massive upgrade in teammates – Kazuchika Okada & Hiroshi Tanahashi.

I cannot explain how much I loved this match. This match went on for 60 minutes which had me fully invested despite the drab first half. Both men scored near falls over one another before the bell would ring. The match would reach its conclusion, not via pinfall nor submission… the time limit had been reached. The match was announced to be a draw, which meant Taven didn’t lose but Lethal ultimately retained. Had the Kingdom Conspiracy continued? Was Taven to be robbed of another title match despite not losing? He took the champ to his absolute limits and kicked out of everything Lethal threw his way.

What I loved about this Ring of Honor crowd that after 60 minutes of a wrestling match, they wanted FIVE MORE MINUTES! They wanted more from these guys. I think that says alot about this match, that it went for an hour with no winner and fans wanted more time.

Photo courtesy of NJPW

Recommended by Zachary https://twitter.com/ProjectZach and Chris https://twitter.com/IWGPChrisBFC

Match of the Week – Taichi vs Tomohiro Ishii – New Japan Cup Day 5

The most surprising match tops this week of wrestling. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a Taichi fan, I really don’t understand his character. Is he a lipsyncer who can’t actually lipsync and decided to do wrestling on the side? Anyways, Taichi faced Tomohiro Ishii in the New Japan Cup Quarter Finals on the 5th day of the knockout tournament.

This match tops this week because of purely its surprise factor in quality. This really shows how good the Stone Pitbull truly is to elevate a midcarder to a phenomenal match. To put this into perspective, Taichi had a NEVER Openweight Championship match against Hirooki Goto and the match got heavily criticised, Dave Meltzer (love him or hate him) rated this match minus 1 star, which effectively says he thinks this match was worse than a dud i.e. a match with remotely nothing special/notable.

Taichi actually looked like he could have slayed the Stone Pitbull at times. I mean, this wasn’t silly Taichi who’d look to always cheat and slyly grab his way to victory (he still tried to cheat), this Taichi was here to throw hands with the Best Bout Machine in Japan. He freakin’ no sold a piledriver, he was hanging with the hoss of NJPW. He was taking massive chops and firing back with kicks that were actually impactful.

The early storytelling of Taichi trying to compose himself on the outside and trying to conjure some dirty tactics to try and surpass Ishii was brilliant. Once Ishii saw past Taichi’s plans, he foiled them with outsmarting Taichi who was exiting and re-entering the ring. As Ishii was firing insults Taichi’s way, something changed. Taichi wasn’t going to continue this cheap wrestling style, something clicked. Taichi was going to fight! Taichi was going to get down and dirty with Ishii, something very few can do. But he did! He was going strike for strike, counter for counter with one of the very best.

A magnificient moment came where the ref was knocked down and opened up an opportunity for Taichi to return to his dirty ways. Taichi grabs his mic stand and looks to put this match to bed with a foreign object strike, but he hesitated… then, he set his mic stand down and tried to win clean. This minor detail was perfect, Taichi going from somewhat a joke in the wrestling community to putting on a clean, fantastic wrestling match hopefully is the start of his character’s redemption. He can still be a bad guy, but be effective than cheap.

This act of sportmanship, however, would cost Taichi who was befall to the Vertical Brainbuster! Perhaps, he needs to play dirty to get the wins but regardless I had gained some respect for Taichi as a character after this match. This match hopefully is a turning point in Taichi’s career.

Honourable Mentions:

Hirooki Goto vs SANADA – New Japan Cup Day 4 recommeded by Chris https://twitter.com/IWGPChrisBFC and Pete https://twitter.com/crazypete315

Cedric Alexander vs Oney Lorcan – 205 Live Episode 120 recommended by Chris https://twitter.com/IWGPChrisBFC

Tony Nese vs Drew Gulak – 205 Live Episode 120

Jordynne Grace vs Tessa Blanchard – IMPACT Episode 762 recommended by https://www.reddit.com/u/SMRTGuy297/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app

Moustache Mountain vs Forgotten Sons – NXT Episode 343 recommended by Connor https://twitter.com/Connorisajerk1



Ricochet & Aleister Black vs Johnny Gargano & Tomasso Ciampa – NXT Episode 343 recommeded by Chris https://twitter.com/IWGPChrisBFC

Will Ospreay vs Lance Archer – New Japan Cup Day 6 – 14th March recommended by Dan https://twitter.com/danspursquins

Kazuchika Okada vs Mikey Nicholls – New Japan Cup Day 6 recommended by Dan https://twitter.com/danspursquins

SANADA vs Minoru Suzuki – New Japan Cup Day 8

Colt Cabana vs Toru Yano – New Japan Cup Day 8

Kota Ibushi vs Zack Sabre Jr. – New Japan Cup Day 7

Bandido vs Rush – ROH 17th Anniversary Show

Villain Enterprises vs The Briscoes (c) – ROH Tag Titles – ROH 17th Anniversary Show

Go Shiozaki vs Takashi Sugiura – NOAH Spring Navigation Day 2: Thank You & Goodbye Hakata Starlines recommended by Will https://twitter.com/PunkyTeuchter

Ryusuke Taguchi vs Hiroshi Tanahashi – New Japan Cup Day 7