The Wrestling Section

 Well, the 2021 Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards have been released, and I have a problem regarding the Worst Match of the Year award. Not with the fact that the Zombie Lumberjack match won, because it absolutely deserved it, but because I've already covered the match previously, I don't have the opportunity to cover it again now that the awards have been announced. Covering the Worst Match of the Year winner is generally something I do, so now, I have to go back to the drawing board. And low and behold, I've got something, courtesy of New Japan Pro-Wrestling's resident Sublime Master Theif; Toru Yano. Like I said the last time Yano popped up in the series, Yano's not exactly a bad wrestler, and I do find some of his comedy spots funny, but when the bar for in-ring work is a lot higher like it is in New Japan, Yano's work is a lot worse by comparison. Case and point; Yano has three of the lowest-rated matches from Dave Meltzer in 2021, and two of the lowest-...

(Special thanks to Otter Empire for suggesting this match. If you'd like to see a match covered on the Worst in the World, leave a comment down below.) Considering how I cover a lot of bad wrestling on this site, it's not surprising that I rarely talk about New Japan Pro-Wrestling. Often considered the best professional wrestling in the world right now, New Japan often delivers in the ring, and even when they don't, the standard of quality is so high that an underwhelming match is still pretty good. That being said, NJPW has not gone without some major blunders. I've already covered one match from the ill-fated Final Countdown BVD tournament where half of the participants were shootfighters and not wrestlers. That tournament laid the groundwork for "Inoki-ism" where Antonio Inoki put the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship on guys like Tadao Yasuda and Bob Sapp, one of which was a mediocre veteran while the other wasn't even a wrestler, purely because they...