Red's Pro-Wrestling Digest #81: Male lions will often spray urine as a message, more 2022 New Japan pulls

Match Ratings

1. IWGP US Heavyweight Title: Ospreay(c) vs Finlay ****1/4
2. IWGP Heavyweight Tag Titles: FTR(c) vs Aussie Open ****3/4
3. IWGP World Heavyweight Title: White(c) vs Tama ****
4. Narita vs Ishii ****1/4
5. IWGP Tag Titles: FTR(c) vs UE ****
6. IWGP US Heavyweight Title: Ospreay(c) vs Naito ****1/2

Digest

Yes, some of my entries have weird fucking names. It's party of the shitty decor, folks!

1. Ace Dick Aerial Ospreay starts us off and he basically gave Finlay the best match the latter has had thus far in his career. Brutal spots and a strong intensity throughout, this simply rocked! Nearly a MOTYC and I appear to be slightly below others so likely well worth your time...

2. A nearly perfect tag team outing here with FTR and Aussie Open fucking going nuts. I've been high on Aussie Open for a while and am very happy to see them getting so much more attention of late. A near perfect battle between them and another group of expert grapplers, I consider this one absolutely required viewing.

3. Jay White is so fucking good that, like Ospreay, he can make everything better just by being part of it. Here, he and Tama worked a fantastic title match that I'd argue actually overdelivered by a hair.

4. Ren's match with Tomohiro felt like a big deal and like the guy had finally figured it out. I mean, this wasn't just Ishii carrying the guy because he actually more than held his own and, in fact, their collective efforts made this first round match of a tournament for a random midcard belt feel like a big deal. I mean, I still don't care about the belt nor really the tournament very much, but they almost fucking did it.

This had no fucking reason to go this hard. Such a random near-MOTYC.

5. United Empire's Great O-Khan and Jeff Cobb challenged FTR for those duo straps in pull five.

6. Next, closing out the Battle Autumn tour and this set, we have Ospreay and Naito tearing down the house. There's a reason why Tetsuya is seen by some as worthy of far more than he currently gets in New Japan, and it's shit like this that really does well to showcase it. Ospreay, of course, was excellent as well in this MOTYC and proved he honestly deserved to retain.

Almost anything these two touch is gold.

Historic X-Over gets a separate entry.

Thanks for reading.