CIMA vs. Masato Yoshino

[6.0] "A step-down from Cima's defence against Doi the prior month, and ultimately still not what I hope to see from a PPV main-event for a company's top title, but this still managed to be quite good. I was initially really interested in the match since the early section saw a dual targeting story as Yoshino went after Cima's arm and Cima went after Yoshino's back/mid-section. They both utilised some really complex lucha-based holds, also setting them in pretty creative ways, and both sold well for the other. Sadly, this would be essentially completely no-sold as the rest of the match went on, with both men running and flying around as if their injured body part was suddenly completely back to normal. I at least thought that those no-sell segments had some enjoyably fast-paced 50/50 exchanges, but it was all pretty mindless action without any real story or structure to it, and every time I saw either guy working at seemingly 100% condition I was immediately reminded of how annoying it was to see them no-selling their far more interesting earlier work. Their individual big-bomb trades were good, but there wasn't an appropriate level of drama built-up for them by the time they came out, mostly because their whole match structure didn't allow for any of their extended segments to flow naturally into each other; instead, they just did a distinct body part targeting segment then ended it, then a 50/50 rapid exchanges segment then ended it, then a series of big individual bombs traded back and forth until the finish. It thus felt more like they were going through the structural motions of what they thought a "big match" should have, without any of those segments connecting to each other. There weren't too many twists with how the finish came about either, with Cima simply countering Yoshino's top-rope Lightning Spiral into a top-rope Schwein and then following up with a Meteora for the win. Yoshino got some hope spots prior to that with his Sol Naciente and his attempted top-rope Lightning Spiral, but they were never properly teased as actual match-enders (which was in part caused by the fact that DG never did a very good job protecting their wrestlers' finishers in the first place). There were definitely some cool moments throughout this match, but honestly the more exciting stuff for me was seeing them pull out all their deliberately placed holds in the first 1/3rd, since it was all so flawlessly executed and quite creative. Their more action-packed exchanges and spots were still pretty fun, but definitely something I've seen both guys do many times before, so that charm wasn't as strong as it used to be. ***1/4"

[8.0] "CIMA and Masato Yoshino have very different styles, but in this match, they played off each other quite well, with CIMA working to slow down Yoshino's speed game. Both of them showed the offensive creativity they are known for, and it made for a great title match."

[9.0] "Clearly one of CIMA's best defenses in his ridiculously long reign, and of course it's against his best opponent. Structurally similar to the defense involving the other half of Speed Muscle at points, but this match still came together as it's own with great chemistry shown between these two."