16 Carat Gold Tournament 2007

[5.0] "Maybe this was about the best you could expect from the European indies in 2007, who knows, but from today's lens this tournament REALLY doesn't hold up. The MOTT was a split between Shiozaki vs Richards, Generico vs Pac, Murat vs Shiozaki, and the final of Hero vs Ares. While a 4-way split for MOTT on paper perhaps implies a strong tournament, it's actually the result of a really low ceiling, since all 4 of those matches were ***1/4. Yep, not a single match even sniffed **** or even ***3/4 for me, which made those 3 days of tape quite a grind to sit through. I guess the tournament MVP was Shiozaki, given he featured in 2 of the top 4 matches, plus he generally gave strong performances each time (including in the non-tournament matches on these tournament shows), but it's not like we got 2019 Shiozaki here, so him being MVP is more an indictment of the low overall quality of this tournament's entrants rather than a sign of exceptional individual achievement from Shiozaki himself. The majority of the tournament matches were just 'fine' or 'alright', and only a couple were outright bad, but when you're committing yourself to about half a day's time of watching a tournament, you should expect FAR higher quality. Hero getting the win here made sense, given he was one of the OG 'indie darlings' around this time, but I can't say I enjoyed it. Hero around this period was definitely capable of great matches, but his insistence on I guess trying to recreate his World of Sports and 80s NJPW heroes' grappling work -- without any of the intensity, 'grit', or genuine creativity that made that grappling so engaging and exciting -- has often left me pretty bored, so while he didn't have any outright bad matches in this tournament (on account of not facing CM Punk in any of them), he still never at all resembled a star who deserved to win what would eventually become such a reputable tournament. The best match on these shows themselves was actually the non-tournament Pac-vs-Davey match, and that's the only match in any of the 3 shows I'd give a slight recommendation for. Unless you have a strong affinity for the majority of the tournament entrants, or you are just a big fan of the wXw style of pacing, structure, and atmosphere, I don't think this is really worth going out of your way to watch. Pick and choose the higher-rated matches to watch if you *must* watch it, at least."