World Tag League 2014 - Day 1

World Tag League 2014

(2014/11/22)

1.       Bullet Club (Karl Anderson, Doc Gallows, Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga) vs. Ryusuke Taguchi, Jushin Liger, Tiger Mask, Cpt. New Japan

Good opener, they worked around the size difference well. The never ending Captain story still has life in it, it’s remarkable actually.

***1/4

2.       Matt Taven & Michael Bennett vs. KUSHIDA & BUSHI

The useless Taven is No. 1 in his team, for some reason. Oh well… *** 10 min later… *** Fuck me, this was shockingly good. Okay, not that shockingly considering the caps lock guys were in there, and they’re awesome, but the ROH duo was pretty good here, they worked the old school style based on simplicity and punching, and you know that’s very appreciated in my book. Taven looked very good, and that’s like the first time ever under my watch. The Maria stuff was whatever, but I didn’t totally mind it, she is ridiculously hot after all. Good match.

***1/2

3.       WTL 2014 – Block A: IronGodz (Rob Conway & Jax Dane) vs. TenKoji (Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima)

Conway is looking like some weird mixture of Cpt. America, Thor and Tig from Sons of Anarchy, lel. The match was mediocre but with a nifty finish that hopefully leads to Tenzan capturing the NWA WHC, that’d be so swell. :)

**3/4

4.       WTL 2014 – Block B: Killer Elite Squad (Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr.) vs. Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka

First time viewers were probably stunned during the post-match stuff, because you couldn’t guess in a million years these two teams are the members of the same faction, lel. Smoke, mirrors and heated brawling, great match where everyone worked hard.

****

5.       WTL 2014 – Block B: Hirooki Goto & Katsuyori Shibata vs. Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi

The old dogs can still hunt.

***1/2

6.       WTL 2014 – Block A: AJ Styles & Yujiro Takahashi vs. Tetsuya Naito & Sombra

La Sombra should do few tours next year and get pushed as the equal to the big three on the top, the dude’s money and would probably put AJ’s run to the shame.

***1/2

7.       Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, Kota Ibushi vs. CHAOS (Shinsuke Nakamura, Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano)

Makabe and Ishii had an unnecessarily long (truly long) elbow exchange to start the match that kind of threw me off right away, and it was hard to get into the match after it. The rest was nothing special anyway, just a basic road to WK9 stuff.

**3/4

8.       WTL 2014 – Block A: Kazuchika Okada & YOSHI-HASHI vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yoshitatsu

Good main event despite Tatsu’s obvious neck injury. I guess that stiff sliding big boot from Okada sealed the deal. One more thing, Tanahashi/Okada needs to happen in Korakuen some day, it’d be madness.

***1/4