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I am excited every Thursday to watch AEW Dynamite, which is the best wrestling TV storytelling I've ever seen. However my favourite wrestling watching experiences are the truly great matches I've watched. Think Ciampa vs Gargano 1 or Omega vs Okada 4. I have struggled to find wrestling recently that has filled this need, old stuff aside.
I watched Omega/Okada 1 again recently and it blew everything I've seen produced this year out of the water... That was until I watched Mayu Iwatani vs Takumi Iroha a couple days ago! Which has led to me checking out the 5 Star Grand Prix, this morning and this utterly exquisite match!
Iwatani sold for Giulia throughout this match, giving her opponent 16% more of the offence.
Giulia led in all types of offence except grapples.
It may be that Iwatani was rattled by her opponent and was eager to finish the match, 7-4 in terms of pin fall attemots.
34% of Giulia's strikes were those headbutts on top of the turnbuckle!
This match had 2 notable strike battles, the one where they exchanged kicks in the latter stages of the 5-10 period and the other which was a more common forearm battle in the latter stages of the 10-15m period.
Despite losing the total offence battle, Iwatani achieved the largest offence spike out with the finishing sequence, with 3 grapples and a dive really challenging Giulia's resilience.
Giulia won the match with an offensive sequence comprising of 3 grapples, a 32 second submission attempt, a failed pin attempt, a reversal of an attempted reversal from Iwanati and her finisher.
As you can see Giulia was in control of the match with a steady use of offence throughout.
Iwatani was more sporadic, rising and falling getting her stuff in where her opponent left gaps.
However, Iwatani did get more offence in in 2 out of 3 of the full 5 minute periods. Giulia completely swept the last 2 minutes and 28 seconds of the match.
