iidxias
New Member
Posts: 7
Pronoun: They/Them
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Post by iidxias on Sept 6, 2018 14:05:51 GMT -5
I thought he was the runaway last year and this year clearly hasn't been at that level, but he's quietly turned things around after a really quiet first half (mostly due to booking). First half of the year he managed to have two really good matches with Taichi and that was about it for high level stuff- the Minoru Suzuki match was a huge disappointment and would have helped his resume a lot had it been great. But he had a ****1/2 match with Jericho at Dominion that was just this crazy brawl, a better match than Kenny had with him at the Dome, and that ended up being the start of his turnaround, because he had an amazing G1, maybe his best ever. Here's his matches for me by rating: ****3/4 (Omega), ****1/2 (Ishii), ****1/2 (Juice), ***1/2 (Tama, the only time I went over *** for him all tournament), ***1/2 (Goto, probably the one big disappointment of the G1 for Naito as they both clearly took this one off), ***1/4 (Yano), ***** (Ibushi, my match of the tournament), ****1/4 (SANADA), ****1/2 (ZSJ). That run alone should get him real consideration here, and it got him into my top 10 for the first time this year. We'll see if he'll have enough opportunities in the rest of the year to stay there or even rise, but I think he should get strong consideration on that G1 run alone.
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Post by bossrock on Sept 6, 2018 21:38:20 GMT -5
Booking has definitely hurt his output, but I thought the Okada match was still very good and his bum of the month club run gave him pretty good matches with YOSHI-HASHI and Taichi. But while I thought the Suzuki match was mostly fine until the last 10 minutes or so, it was definitely a big black eye on his resume. Since then however he's re-established himself as one of the best big match wrestlers in the world today with a really fun brawl against Jericho and an overall very good G1 stint. That alone makes him a lock for at least the top 30, but another disappointing Suzuki match at Destruction will certainly do him no favors.
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Post by mlev76 on Nov 13, 2018 23:20:10 GMT -5
God, how I hate how he's been booked this year. This should have been his year, but instead they dragged out the Okada reign and then went with Kenny instead of him. I probably could have gotten over that without the Jericho loss and the mixed bag of matches he's had all year.
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