Haven't put up anything interesting for a while, but little of actual interest has happened. Planned to have a day of watching loads of wrestling (as the Lord intended of the Sabbath), so here I present...

Craig's Day of Watching The Professional Wrestling Log of Words and Thoughts

The story so far: Of late, I have mainly been watching my two favourite Japanese indie promotions, Zero-One MAX and Kaientai-Dojo. Of my most recent batch of DVDs, I have one K-Dojo show left to watch. That will occur later.

Looking through my hard drive, I appear to have one Ring of Honor show (a north-east US independent promotion that is, by some way, the biggest and most celebrated indie in the country), and one WWE PPV that I'm really not all that interested in. WWE shows vary dramatically in quality, but there's one match I've been sold on, so I'll probably skip to that at some point. There's a couple of unwatched matches from New Japan's April 13th show, including the the Tanaka vs. Kanemoto that's being heavily praised.

What else? A 4-DVD set of the best 20 lucha libre matches of the 1990s, as voted by on the DVDVR. Awesome. I've seen some of the matches before, but there's also some real hard-to-find matches on that list that I've wanted to see for ages.

But first, I'm on the second day of the GPWA's 2007 Differ Cup, a junior heavyweight tag team tournament featuring representatives from NOAH, and loads of smaller indie promotions. The final, the main event from this show, will be DDT's HARASHIMA and Kota Iibushi vs. K-Dojo's Madoka and Kengo Mashimo, which should be great. But first to plow through the undercard.

12:10pm: Show opens with the two Big Mouth Loud shoot-fight guys who were knocked out in the first round against two other indie guys who I don't know. Fun and kicky, and a nice story - two shooters target the smaller opponent, finally isolating from his larger partner who has been saving him from defeat. Nothing else particularly interesting in the first half - a tag with TAKA and Kikuchi that was less than the sum of its parts, and a ten-man tag with Marafuji and Minoru Fujita that was entertaining but forgetable.

13.30pm: Second disc goes in. This should be better. El Dorado's Hercules Senga and KAGETORA versus Osamu Namiguchi and Ikuto Hidaka. I'm a huge Hidaka fan, and this match didn't disappoint. Loads of actions, high flying, Hidaka using his rookie partner as a weapon. Cool. The Ring of Honor world title was then defended in Japan, with then-champion Takeshi Morishima against K-Dojo's KAZMA. My general impression going into to this is that its a total mismatch. Morishima's the guy who will beat Misawa within a year to win the GHC title, and has been dominant in matches in NOAH and ROH. KAZMA's one of only two heavyweights in K-Dojo, but isn't the ace or champion. And that's how the match played out. KAZMA got some offence in, but I never felt like he was close to winning. Morishima moves up a gear in the last couple of minutes, and easily finishes him off. Good story, if not the best wrestling contest because of it. What a paradox.

A small break of several hours occurs, while tasks are done and girlfriends are entertained.

18.00pm: Time to watch the final before I make some dinner. Rightfully so, the match features four of the top names in Japanese indie wrestling in 2007, including K-Dojo's champ Mashimo and DDT's champ HARASHIMA. Mashimo sells a weak leg from his semi-final, which occupies the early focus of the match, before the switch to the heat section on Iibushi. But the finishing stretch (at it is a huge stetch) is the really exciting part. All four work in all of their big moves except for Mashimo's brainbuster, which Iibushi keeps avoiding. Finally, Madoka takes HARASHIMA out with a super-fast tope suicida, and Mashimo lands his knockout blow. This match is really what is great about Japanese indy wrestling - hard work, exciting sequences of moves, stiff kicks. Plus, it managed to not seem like overkill, which happens a lot in big indie singles matches - seemingly endless repetition of moves until one finally gets a win. Here, the tag team structure allows multiple near falls, as each team's partner's are able to stop their opponents winning by breaking up pins. The selling was good too, unlike many indie matches, where guys take a load of offense, and then pop up as fresh as at the beginning of the match.

19.54pm: Put WWE Judgement Day on. I'll be skipping over it pretty fast. Cena vs. JBL was all psychology, and was good because of it. I would have prefered a brawl, but there was nothing wrong with what they did. I'm not a huge fan of the WWE surprise-finisher ending, and with better finishing stretch, this would have been great. Kane/Punk vs. Miz/Morrison was energetic, but pretty short and formulaic.

20.30pm: Chris Jericho vs. Shawn Michaels is the match I wanted to see. I loved their Wrestlemania XIX match in 2003, so I knew this would likely be good. The early section featured some great sequences and matwork. What I liked about this match was the variety of counters both men found for each other signature spots - Jericho's dropkick, Michaels' kip-up, Jericho's Lionsault and then Michaels' counter to the Lionsault. And Jericho feigning injury, given the backstory, to avoid Michaels' finish was a nice touch. The Jericho/HBK/Batista feud is pretty much the most interesting thing in the promotion, and the lack of good guy and bad guy definition is what is doing it. Quickly watch the women's three way - this was good by Diva standards. I've been a fan of the WWE women for a while, especially when they just let the girls go out and wrestle. Mickie James and Melina are the best the division has to offer at the moment.

I'm not interested in anything else on the show, so I go and do the washing up.

22.40pm: The January 6th 2008 K-Dojo show goes on. Quite an unusual show, in that there's a lot of participation from guys from other promotions: Osaka Pro, El Dorado, Big Japan Wrestling, Michinoku Pro, Zero-One MAX and Dragon Gate are all represented. That's basically everyone, ever. Short clips of the first couple of matches. The MEN's Club vs. OMEGA six-man was as fun as Oishi/Asahi tag always are - a bit of comedy, lots of cool flying. The hardcore match between Inematsu and Toshima and the two heavily scarred guys from BJW, Sasaki and Miyamoto, was by no means the most crazy deathmatch I'd ever seen, but it was a significant change of pace for K-Dojo. Dive to outside through table? Check. Powerbombs on barbwire board? Check. Miyamoto taking a facefull of lighttube glass as Inematsu smashes one right in across his chest? Check. Miyamoto is really something. He bumps huge, has great looking non-deathmatch offense and does everything at top speed, even before all the hardcore stuff.

23.40pm: Dragon Gate's BxB Hulk and Shingo Takagi vs KAZMA and Taishi Taiazawa was fine, but forgettable. BxB Hulk flippery is amazing though. It's like gravity isn't trying as hard. I must get some Dragon Gate. Yoshito Sasaki and Masato Tanaka from Zero-One MAX vs. Kengo Mashimo and Madoka was next, and this is the one I was excited about. I fully expect finishers overkill, but it should be a riot (watches match). Hey, I wasn't wrong! It went: matwork, screw it, finishers. However, it didn't feel like overkill. For instance, Tanaka number one finisher was enough to win the match - in other matches, he'd hit that four or five time before it got a pinfall.

0.25am: Main event time - OMEGA vs. TAKA, Handsome JOE and Great Sasuke. Quite the notable pairing in TAKA and Sasuke. This was entertaining, but I wouldn't say actively good. OMEGA pulled out all their rudo tactics and interference on the way to victory, which was the main story. Highly entertaining show overall. I hope they're not losing TV coverage - they are such an excellent little indie.

0.51am: Still got a bit of life left, so lets work through some stuff on the hard drive. First up, a trios from Mexico's CMLL between Sagrado, El Volador Jr and La Sombra vs. El Hijo Del Fantasma, El Valiente and La Mascara. This is from 30th April of this year, and its totally great. The first two falls are just non-stop graceful lucha libre - the sort of wrestling that can only be described as beautiful. Loads of dives, loads of armdrags, loads of very happy minutes watching. The third fall slows down a little, and there's about a five minute section that is the only thing letting the match down. Great finishing section though. Mascara rolls through a pin attempt into a campana submission on Volador, Sagrada then eliminates Fantasma with a moonsault, Valiente does his amazing no-hands top rope springboard moonsault to the outside, and Sombra counters Mascara going for the same thing he did on Volador with a roll up pin.

1.40am: Last thing, I put on the episode of ECW I started in the week. CM Punk wins a shot at Kane's ECW title later in the show. Some other stuff I didn't care about. Oh, CM Punk's against Kane later in the show. It was actually pretty good, and the crowd were hot for it. I don't get what they are doing with Punk - his push seems slightly in limbo. It's a shame, because he's putting on consistently high quality performances, and in the meantime, the crowd seem to be turning on him.

Finally done: 2.05am. Sleep now. A good day.