Shotaro Ashino vs. Manabu Soya (W1, 3/14/18)

Now, I'm not a big fan of Wrestle-1, which is to say, I don't go out of my way to watch it: however, the reign of Shotaro Ashino has been an interesting thread to follow. Ashino is a guy who looks like a million bucks but he often came off as cosplaying a "technical wrestler" and lacked the edge that fit his throwback aesthetic. While I enjoyed his match against Manabu Soya from last year, his performance didn't quite connect with me on the level I was expecting. That being said, his rematch with Soya from last month checked most of my pro-wrestling boxes. Here, Ashino played the self-assured badass champ, and Soya the loveable Manabu Nakanishi underdog. They opened in standard fashion with Soya showing off his strength and Ashino his technique. But the match really shifted into gear with Ashino's aggressive armwork, trying to neutralize Soya's lariat while still teasing his signature ankle lock, which he's used to win all of his previous matches. Soya's selling was really good, even when mounting a comeback on offense, throwing Ashino with a big German suplex. He blasts Ashino with a gnarly headbutt but when he thinks he can finish him off with the lariat, Ashino bitchslaps the attempt away in an awesome moment and drops Soya with his own WWE German.

Ashino works the ankle lock for awhile, which results in him maneuvering the mat in order to maintain control, but the next turning point in the match was Soya's awesome superplex, which felt like the biggest move of the match (and was sold brilliantly by Ashino), despite Soya later hitting Ashino with a Death Valley Bomb and package piledriver. He's able to deliver a lariat to the back of Ashino's head but when he tries again to finish him off, Ashino catches him in a Fujiwara armbar, working that a bit, before he proceeds to remove the tape and destroy the arm with a fall-a-way armbreaker. Then he smartly traps the arm and re-applies the ankle hold. Soya's able to powerbomb his way out of an arm triangle and when Ashino catches the arm again, Soya tries to lariat him with the opposite arm. Ashino's able to duck it but Soya knees him in the gut and short-arm lariats him down for a convincing nearfall, finally turning him inside out with that brutal lariat for the win. Despite having his arm worked on through much of the match, Soya was determined to finish Ashino off with that lariat but he had to really fight for it, and you got that sense of pain and struggle from his performance. Probably my favorite match from W1 from recent memory and easily Ashino's best overall performance.