The Kento Miyahara vs Yuma Anzai match from 12.31 was the best AJPW match I've seen in years. Amazing closing sequence over Kento trying to lock in the shutdown German suplex finish. Kento is just the best, I hope he wrestles these kind of matches forever.

Tremendous 2025 for Mercedes Mone, who did nothing except have high quality work and elevate the women she has worked with all over the world. Probably the best in-ring year of any American woman ever.

Long time coming for Willow, who has been one of the most consistently over wrestlers in AEW for a while. Great performer, and also the kind of person WWE would never push in a prominent way. Great way to close 2025 for AEW.

I love Dave Meltzer and his star ratings have been a great guide for my wrestling fandom. However, I found out that Dave has rated 40(!) matches this year at 5 stars are better. In the entire history of AJPW, he has given out 37 5+ star matches. In the entire decade of the 2000s, he gave out 7

Excellent writing from @jessecollings.bsky.social here. www.voicesofwrestling.com/2025/12/30/w...

These are my Top 50 Wrestlers of 2025--based on in-ring only and obviously only rating wrestlers I feel like I saw enough of to accurately place them in my rankings

CMLL sold 64,000 tickets to their shows this week, let's see how many people talk about that.

I wrote about why people focus on wrestling moves being more dangerous than ever while ignoring all the things that have changed in the industry that have made it safer.

The big takeaway for me is the evidence that shows Vince coming back into power to "sell" the company was prearranged between Vince and Endeavor, and that Emmanuel and Endeavor were willing to deal with Vince due to the need to shovel off debt away from Endeavor and into TKO.

Tremendous reporting here by Brandon--great and thorough breakdown of what was discovered, supplemented by a great use of breaker heads, screenshotted evidence, and everything put in context of why this is so important.

I'm relatively ambivalent on MJF winning the world title again--but the real concern is just how damaging him as champion is to any and all AEW discourse I'm engaged in. It makes the whole thing way less fun.

Catching up on AEW and watching Dynamite and Collision back-to-back was interesting seeing the Perry vs PAC and Perry vs Fletcher matches. The heel turn didn't work but there is this thought out there that Perry is a useless asset in AEW and that simply is not true.

Seth's response isn't really much of a defense (its basically him saying American money is blood money too) but I imagine he does not even fully comprehend the purpose of the KSA shows in the first place.

Always loved this match in a sneaky "Actually the best ladder match of 2000 was..." kind of way. Young guys busting their asses in a company where all the big stars had completely given up.

Something Bryan should really learn soon is that "wrestling sickos" are the people subscribing (or more accurately, used to be subscribing) to F4WON and he should avoid discussing them in a derogatory manner.

A Moment™ that went absolutely nowhere, an all-time bungle of lazy, overly cautious booking and performance. So yeah, truly represents their company in 2025. Good choice!

This video is offensive to everyone

This is a great breakdown, and Cubs comments on Pete Dunne are brutal

How else could you present a compilation of Battle Royal matches?

I am accepting commissions for wrestling match reviews for the first time ever! For the month of December, anybody that subscribes to the @tnahistorypod.bsky.social Patreon at the $10 tier can also commission one match review from me! So go crazy! www.patreon.com/posts/decemb...

More content from me--new pod with Kevin Hare where we discuss the fans that go to live events in 2025, how they are different than they were 10+ years ago, WWE pricing out families and the death of house shows. redcircle.com/shows/a5213c...

Him jabbering with the fans during the post show is so, so good too. This is the guy that tucked tail and ran from the state-controlled press conferences because he turned into a puddle whenever someone asked him a question of any substance.

I cannot stress enough how funny it is that Levesque loves inserting himself into things in WWE to let everyone know he is in charge...so the fans knew EXACTLY who to boo when the Cena match was finished.

I wrote about how Cena's last match and the crowd reaction to it put an exclamation point on a year that saw Paul Levesque fall from WWE fans' good graces

Extremely funny that everywhere I looked on social media people were dragging the Cena retirement match, and there are clips of the crowd screaming at Levesque for fucking it up...and then I go on Cagematch and see it rated 8.5!

I don't know really what these fans expect from WWE. They get what they deserve for their unwavering loyalty to a brand that has had abject apathy towards them for 25+ years.

In today's Boston conversation, my mom told me that she went to THREE different Dunkin Donuts because they were all so busy (mind you, there are three within one mile of each other) and they still got her coffee wrong. "Jesse, they forgot to add the cahmel swirl!"

God what an incredible sign

Nigel vs Lee Moriarty from ROH Final Battle with Moxley on commentary was wrestling perfection. Such great, original work without relying on overdone tropes. "Everyone walking around here with their weak ass necks--that is a championship neck!"

Trish from @trishandsarahpod.bsky.social joins @jessecollings.bsky.social on a new Gentlemen's Wrestling Podcast to talk about the biggest stories in wrestling from 2025. www.voicesofwrestling.com/2025/12/05/g...

It's really striking to me how few people notice that John Cena's POV is never Vince McMahon being falsely accused. It's always vague double talk around the idea that what Vince stands accused of somehow isn't bad enough to push him out over. But nobody ever pushes back on it.

John does a great job recapping this pod and adding the necessary context and analysis

So good!

I really enjoyed listening to Trish and Jesse talk about interesting topics in wrestling this last year.

I joined Jesse to talk about some of the biggest news stories of 2025 and, naturally, we fell into talking about football as well.

New [email protected] from Trish and Sarah joins the show to talk WWE debuting on Netflix, TNA's new TV deal, retirement tours, the decline of the Wrestling Observer, and all the biggest wrestling stories from 2025 redcircle.com/shows/a5213c...

Really enjoyed the interaction between Hangman and The Dark Order last night, because it showed the audience the difference between Hanger now, and Hanger from a view years ago.

Love how that crowd would just lose their minds when they saw cool shit

After going off on one during this show about modern wrestling, I decided to be a bit positive for the festive season and write a bit about some wrestler who I think are doing the things that Case and I begged for here. www.pwtorch.com/site/2025/12...

I've seen her live a few times, doing a Goldberg type gimmick. From Rhode Island, I believe

So many of these "newsbreakers" LIVE on social media, yet none of them have the time to check any other live report of Collision, especially given the very surprising news that Takeshita lost to Strong? If the original report was that Tony Khan announced AEW was closing, they'd post that too.

So it looks like one person posted incorrect spoilers from Collision--with them stating Roderick Strong upset Takeshita in the C2. Turns out that result was wrong, but because wrestling media stinks, they all just copy and pasted the WRONG reported results, instead of verifying them with anyone.

The aggregators basically ignoring Vince Russo for years and now suddenly tripping over themselves to report the same nonsense he has been saying for 25+ years, all because he is doing creative work for an irrelevant promotion, is bizarre.

I have enormous sympathy for any young writer trying to break into the sports writing industry, which is filled with a bunch of people that think they are experts, and a corporate structure that rewards playing to the lowest common denominator

The stretch from the gauntlet match where Mark Davis came out and dropped like, four people on their heads, was awesome.

I mean, I think an AI that learns wrestling from Vinceisms likely has a hand in pitching ideas.

Overall I think its good AEW shot a major, surprising angle that has the fanbase engaged. If the follow-up stinks then its a different story, but its good to have a wrestling promotion where different things happen!

I also think it's not that big of a deal that Hook was the guy who turned. Hook is there to be a guy vaporized by Hangman's fury, its all good.

I have not seen Full Gear yet, but I do want to point out that pretty much every great babyce (Hogan, Austin, Rock, Dusty, Cena) had moments where they were screwed out of the title and then the story was their vengeance. Hangman is going to be just fine.

I feel the same way about Marina. Her presentation is so good that you kind of regularly are tricked into thinking she is good, and then she has a match and you remember she just doesn't have it as a standard worker.