In 2015, I really got into professional wrestling. In the past, I’ve only occasionally watched WWE, but last year I really got into it. Then I started watched TNA Impact and Ring of Honor. Then I started watching Lucha Underground. Then I stopped watching Ring of Honor because it’s lame. Then I started watching New Japan Pro Wrestling. So, I dove deep into Pro Wrestling this year and am going to to present my best matches of the year. This is going to be broken out into months, two months a day. Then after we’ve gone through all the Best Matches of the year I’ll award some additional year-end awards.
January
1/4/2015
NJPW: Wrestle Kingdom 9 – Togi Makabe vs Tomohiro Ishii NEVER Openweight Championship Match
This wasn’t a back-and-forth struggle. Instead, Makabe kept hitting Ishii with everything he got, but it seemed like Ishii would never go down. Until he finally did. This was also a great showcase for the move variety that Japanese wrestling has that’s not present in American wrestling.
This is the only highlight video on YouTube I can find.
February
So the matches at WWE’s Fastlane were disappointing, NXT TakeOver:Rival was overrated in my opinion, and New Japan’s New Beginning in Sendai ’15 was good but not great. So a tie for two matches I don’t have much to say about because they wouldn’t even be honorable mentions in another month.
2/11/2015
WWE NXT : NXT TakeOver:Rival – Adrian Neville vs Finn Balor – NXT Championship #1 Contender match.
The best WWE or NXT match of this month. There were a few great high spots in this match.
2/14/2015
NJPW: The New Beginning in Sendai ’15 – Tomohiro Ishii vs Tomoaki Honma – NEVER Openweight Championship match
This was a great example of both strong style and how the NEVER matches concentrate more on strength than the other New Japan divisions. It appears the only footage of New Japan for non-subscribers is for whatever TV station that plays it in English.