As we’ve all said goodbye to 2016, it’s time to take a look back at the stuff we’ve watched – the good and the bad!
2,168 Matches Seen: perhaps an asterisk is needed here, as this includes stuff we’ve watched and have “saved” ahead for reviews in 2017; including our Retro BritWres stuff, with FWA lookbacks having been written up until April. If you take those out, we’re still looking at over 2,000 matches though!
73 Matches Seen, Not Reviewed (included in the above number…): this is stuff like the NXTs we’ve not seen, the Superstars, Main Events and other random TV shows we’ve not written up. This is probably on the low side, but what the hey!
6 Matches Seen, Not Written Up: aka “Unboxing Live” – we’ll have these written and starred once they’re dropped on Demand-PROGRESS.com in the New Year!
5 ***** matches: three of these came in successive days, as August 12, 13 and 14’s G1 cards gave us a hattrick of memorable matches. The 12th gave us the draw in the Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada outing, on the 13th we had Tetsuya Naito vs. Kenny Omega, then the G1 final itself between Omega and Hirooki Goto. The G1 also gave us another ***** match in the form of a 2013 outing between Katsuyori Shibata and Tomohiro Ishii that we looked back at in a Random Review… whilst the lone US five-star outing in our minds was at November’s NXT Takeover event, with the best-of-three falls NXT tag title match between the Revival and DIY getting the full five.
6 matches came close: in no way are these bad matches, but these fell just short of the full five snowflakes in our mind. Will Ospreay’s Best of Super Junior tournament final over Ryusuke Taguchi; a pair of matches from August 6’s G1 Climax card came close, with Tomohiro Ishii vs. Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji almost getting the score. Tetsuya Naito vs. Michael Elgin’s Destruction in Kobe main event as well as a pair of Zack Sabre Jr matches completed the set – Sabre vs. Ospreay in this year’s BOLA tournament, and Sabre & Marty Scurll vs. Death By Elbow (Chris Hero & JT Dunn) also collected ¼* under the full five.
1 – One match came close to the famed “minus five stars”, in the form of a TNA One Night Only, Knockouts Knockdown match between Rebel and Shelly Martinez. Weirdly, this isn’t the match we gave “worst match of the year” to in our Observer awards ballot – that one instead went to Will Ospreay vs. Vader… which we’ll explain separately.
122 – Different wrestlers we’ve seen live this year; ranging from Pete Dunne’s 10 matches live (from 8 appearances, thanks to double-shots at PROGRESS and WCPW), to Marty Scurll (at 9, without any double-shots), all the way down to one-and-dones like Jushin “Thunder” Liger, Matt Riddle and, erm, Jack Sexsmith’s Gimp!
12 – Shows we’ve seen live in person. That’s two PROGRESS ENDVR shows, five PROGRESS chapters, four Rev Pro shows, and one WCPW show. At time of writing, we’ve already got ten shows booked up until Easter…
There’s a hell of a year in the books: here’s to an even bigger 2017!