Edwin

Not a MOTYC by any stretch, but a really entertaining indy-rific match. Having been there, I'm sure I liked this more than most peeps. Anyway, they work pretty evenly and develop this by putting over Riddle as a former UFC fighter and legit bad ass taking on an up and coming future star with Riddle getting the upper hand when involved in the rough striking exchanges and finding a way to always counter whatever it was Swerve was able to bring to the table. Both guys landed some fantastic strikes, with Riddle murdering Swerve with some brutal slaps and there's a point where he blasts Swerve with a nasty body kick that sounded like a gun shot. Swerve also brought some pretty great looking strikes, namely some cool looking face kicks while he tried pulling off the Keys to Swerve City. Pretty cool finishing stretch which turned into a bomb fest featuring some pretty nasty stuff. Loved Swerve countering the Bro 2 Sleep into a double stomp. MLW has far better production values than a lot of other U.S. indies and thus they made great work of putting over the lively split crowd at the venue and really brought out the big match feel this had. Plus Tony Schiavone and Rich Bocchini are a fun commentary team. You can put any type of spins you want on this, but the crowd left home happy for the most part and they were pretty lively for it, so it served it's purpose perfectly. Easily the best Swerve singles match I've seen, however not on par with a lot of Riddle's best stuff from WM weekend, but still well worth a watch if you dig the U.S. indy stuff.

Otani's invasions of Noah were always great and produced some quality matches. This is no exception. He gets a ton of love from the Korakuen fans which are pretty lively during this and his exchanges with Akiyama are great as they both dish it out on each other with some quality strikes and some big throws. His exchanges with him bullying Kanemaru are quality too. Unfortunately the exchanges with Saito are way too short. That finishing stretch, namely the stuff with Kanemaru and Asako I thought was really great.

This is sooooo much fun. Modest is a guy I didn't think much of before re-watching/watching a lot of these Noah matches, but he puts on a show here. Ever since his breakout singles match performance against Ogawa, back in July, Modest has really grown onto the local fans and he's made a name for himself. Here he does a great job at working over Ogawa's arm briefly with some nasty stuff that could easily dislocate someones shoulder. Unfortunately this doesn't go on for long given the match setting. They also pop the Michinoku Pro/Osaka Pro/Toryumon JAPAN wrestler on the ring apron is given opponents arm to pull and opponent reverses it and the guy on the ring apron ends up yanking his own tag partners arm which gets a big pop from the crowd. Everyone else looks good without taking the shine away from Modest. The finishing stretch is pretty neat as it's kept short and neat  enough to not overstay it's welcome or head into overkill territory.

Another pretty fun Noah tag match. This is mostly based around Misawa and Otani and the crowd for some reason is fully behind Otani. I thought Ogawa and Omori were OK here and Misawa and Otani just outshined them with their interactions. Despite how fun those exchanges were, I felt this was a bit long and it dragged at times, but when they toned it up it was good fun.

Nifty little big man tag team battle in which everyone looks good in. We get some crowd brawling and big dudes whaling at each other. Fools engaging in slap battles with Rikio is one of my favorite things of 2001.