The shortest month brought just a few title changes, all of them seeing veteran wrestlers defeating more interesting younger wrestlers.
February 12, 2021 – Tokyo, Japan
Keiji Muto def. Go Shiozaki {GHC Heavyweight Championship Match}
From NOAH Destination 2021: Back To Budokan. In terms of GHC title reigns, I think this from Shiozaki will be considered a top one. He won the title from Kaito Kiyomiya in a great match, rolled into the pandemic as champion and kept NOAH in the headlines with bizarre and notable matches against Kazuyuki Fujita, Naomichi Marufuji, Kenou, and Akitoshi Saito. At the end of 2020 he put on a pair of matches that fans went absolutely insane for against Katsuhiko Nakajima and Takashi Sugiura. I’m a little more bearish on those matches than most, but that doesn’t change the fact that his title reign carried the company through a dark time and did it in style. So for him to lose the title to Muto kind of bums me out. I do believe that someone like Kenoh will ultimately benefit more from beating Muto for the title than he will from beating Shiozaki. Shiozaki has been around for a long time, but Muto is Muto. That said, Muto is older than the oldest North American fossils being shoved down our throats in the United States. Well, except Sting. Also, Muto is in a stable now called M’s Alliance with a bunch of other old dudes who have names that start with M. Masato Tanaka and Masaaki Mochizuki are in it, which I dig.
Anyway, this match probably didn’t have enough of the goods for the amount of time it took up. However,the length of the match wound up being very important to its final beats. Muto was tired. Not Bill Goldberg after two minutes of work tired, but struggling to keep up with a guy 20 years younger after thirty minutes of wrestling tired. Shiozaki attempted twice to beat Muto with the moonsault, so Muto got it in his head that he’d dust off the Mutasault too. In a sad moment, he hesitated on the turnbuckle in fear and exhaustion, leading to Shiozaki nearly killing him with an avalanche Go Flasher. Muto survived and snuck in a hurricanrana for the win at 29:32. This guy thinks he’s YAMATO apparently. This far exceeded my expectations, with Muto looking more like late-career Ric Flair than Goldberg. I’m not particularly interested in him as the champion, but they told a great story here and that’s enough for me. Muto becomes the third person (after Kensuke Sasaki and Yoshihiro Takayama) to have held the GHC, IWGP, and Triple Crown Heavyweight Championships. It looks like Kaito Kiyomiya will be the first challenger. ***¾
February 12, 2021 – Tyrone, Georgia
Arik Royal def. AC Mack {ACTION Championship No Disqualification Match}
From Eyes on the Throne. Mack was the inaugural champion,
and my review of his title win can be found here
. Royal had beaten Mack by disqualification in a title match a few months earlier. This was pretty jarring to watch right after watching the match in which Mack won the title. Mack is now a babyface, and so is Alan Angels. Well, at the beginning of the match anyway. There’s some good stuff here, but it goes on too long and then the finish is terrible. Graham Bell, who had injured Mack’s leg before the match in order to collect on a mysterious bounty, ran in to hit Mack with a chair. Angels ran out and stole the chair, but then he hit Mack with it in the leg. Then, he revealed that he put out the bounty and gave some of his new AEW money to Graham. Was the Dark Order still heels in AEW at this time? I feel like they were not. Anyway, Royal came in and hit a Pounce to finish off Mack at 23:49. The storyline sounds interesting, but the way it was executed made me feel like I wasted my time watching the match. You could argue that Graham and/or Angels would have preferred to let Royal win on his own, with Graham likely getting the bounty anyway because he’d injured Mack before the match. And that works for Graham waiting to interfere. But Angels took so much joy in flaunting that he was behind the bounty that it doesn’t make sense that he let all this other stuff happen before revealing himself. **¾
February 14, 2021 – Kawasaki, Kanagawa
Jun Akiyama def. Tetsuya Endo {KO-D Openweight Championship Match}
From DDT Kawasaki Strong. Akiyama won the D-Ou Grand Prix to earn this title shot. I think it’s important to remember that DDT and NOAH are owned by the same parent company and knew ahead of time that in the same weekend they’d both crown guys who are in their 50s as champions. The Muto win has to take some of the wind out of the sails of this title change, which is a bummer because they hyped this a lot with Endo being trained by Kenta Kobashi for the match. Endo’s asymmetrical gear is giving me Final Fantasy flashbacks. I’m a little cold on Akiyama in general, but I think this worked as an exclamation mark at the end of Endo’s reign. He beat a legend to win the title, defended it with his incredible skill, but came up against a brick wall in another legend in Akiyama. Endo basically wrestled around Akiyama here, which I think would have worked better had the match been about ten minutes shorter. At first, Endo worked over Akiyama’s leg. That seemed to be working and then suddenly just wasn’t effective anymore. I didn’t love that. From there, Akiyama just withstood Endo’s swift offense until he was able to find an opening to hit his mega moves. Engaging, but I wish there’d been a better transition between the two portions of the match. Akiyama finished Endo with the Sternness Dust α at 31:11. Akiyama defended the Triple Crown against Muto back when they were merely in their 40s, so I’m curious if they’ll do a champion vs. champion exhibition now that they’re a decade closer to their pensions. This same weekend, Tommy Dreamer turned 50 and got a title shot in Impact. He’s no Akiyama or Muto, but given the trend it’s a major relief he didn’t win the title too. ***½
February 21, 2021 – St. Petersburg, Florida
The Miz def. Drew McIntyre {WWE Championship Match}
From WWE Elimination Chamber. The Money in the Bank contract rears its nauseating dome again. McIntyre had just defended the title in an Elimination Chamber match against Jeff Hardy, Sheamus, Randy Orton, Kofi Kingston, and AJ Styles. After winning, he was attacked by Bobby Lashley because Miz paid him too or something. Miz ran out with the contract after that and beat McIntyre with the Skull Crushing Finale in 28 seconds. I don’t see how this gets folks excited for WrestleMania, but they’re putting all their eggs in the Roman Reigns Universal Championship basket this year so I guess McIntyre doesn’t matter. N/A
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
