April 2005

While Black Tiger/Rocky Romero had to honestly fight though some of the hardest opponents in the Tournament (Shelley and Danielson respectfully) Kashin has had easy pickings and cheated, so he's in far better condition at this point. He's also changed into conventional Kashin gear, thus proving that this whole "Dragon Soldier" shtick and name change was just that, shtick: all done by Kashin to sneak him into this seemingly American-only Tournament. Now that he's in the gear we do get more work out of him as he pulls out the old Kashin dirtbag specials to try to nap the win. The extra long obnoxious rolling cradle at the start shows that at this point Kashin is taking the …

I was really impressed with the performance Atlantis and Panther gave here. They were able to work a modern style lucha match while still grounding it in the traditions of lucha title match wrestling, and their opponents reaped the benefits. It would have been incredibly easy to work a quick match with a bunch of dives. Instead, they worked a changing of the guard style match with Averno and Mephisto not only winning the tag belts but beating two masters of the form. The Infernales had finally arrived and Atlantis and Panther made sure they looked legit.

Gibson becoming a fixture on the indy scene is an interesting development. This was too slow and methodical for the crowd's tastes, but it wasn't a bad bout. It was marred by that stupid airplane spin spot that Danielson was so fond of at the time. I guess he thought it was a crowd pleasing comedy spot, but it played directly into the finish which was lame.

This was an interesting matchup on paper. I believe it was the only time these two had a singles match unless cagematch is telling me lies. Unfortunately, they worked this like a Super Dragon vs. AJ Styles match that you could see on any indie card in America instead of a bona fide title match. I wanted to see Dragon assert some control as champion, but the impression that I came away with was that he was outclassed by that wrestler from the television.

Since I like the Christopher Daniels vs. AJ Styles match so much, I figured I should probably watch Christopher Daniels more often. He worked the same basic style here as he does against Styles. It's very "counter-rific" for want of a better term. Not annoyingly so, but he definitely loves to pepper a match with counters and reversals. I did his flashy technical wrestler shtick, though. Hero works hard to keep up but seems slightly outmatched.

I liked this a lot as I tend to prefer work rate Homicide to any other version. Everything was humming along nicely. The commentators did a good job of spelling out how long Homicide had waited to have an ROH title shot. Of course, they oversold how good the matches had been since every match that takes place in ROH has to be an instant classic, but they gave you a peek into Homicide's mindset during the match. The match would have been perfect if Aries had won with his first 450 splash. The crowd was in synch and ready to explode... 1..2... Julius Smokes with the save. This led to Bryan Danielson attacking Smokes, a decent nearfall from a Homicide lariat and then Aries d…

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GAEA was closing so why not put on one final rendition of the feud that defined the promotion for so many fans? It's been an age since I've watched either of these women wrestle, and even longer since I've seen them square off against each other. I'm sure the law of diminishing returns applies if you watch their matches back-to-back-to back, but I was excited for one last hurrah. I recommend watching the full length version of the match instead of the GAORA cut even if the full match has poor sound quality and no commentary. The match has a weird dynamic in that Aja is the challenger for a belt that's future seems uncertain. The bout is OK, but the decision to put Aja ove…

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Why the fuck did this match even take place? The sight of Big Show and Akebono of bare ass cheeks sticking out of their fundoshis was ghastly and no-one gained anything out of this. The audience looked confused and bewildered. Akebono wins after a few minutes of grappling. Big Show loses to a guy who was virtually unknown to the US fans and would never make another apperance on WWE TV. A waste of everyone's time. DUD

We've reached the era of Triple H having the longest match on the card. Batista is still green and looks awkward a lot of the time. This was largely uninteresting until Trips gets colour. To his credit, he bleeds a gusher and sells it well. The finishing stretch saves this one from being one of the least exciting Wrestlemania main event, with the last five minutes featuring a lot of stuff that I like. Flair's interreference was tasteful and didn't feel excessive. Batista powering out of a Pedigree and countering with an Air Raid Siren caught me completely off guard. Triple H does the job to his mate and puts him over pretty well all things considered, but you can't help t…

I do really like ladder matches, but the issue with multi-man or MITB is they are just straight spotfests, and don't really engage with a story or have that epic feel that the best ladder matches do. A lot of these spots have been seen plenty of times since, so lose some of their novelty. But it was still a very fun match, and the crowd was super involved, cheering face attempts to grab the briefcase and booing the heels efforts. Benoit was noticeably quiet in this match. Except for one spot, where he does a diving headbutt off the top of the ladder onto Kane, and busts open the stitches on his head. "Fuck's sake" was the only appropriate reaction I could have to that…

Even though it's built up around a Playboy shoot, it's good to see that the feud for the Women's title actually get some time to develop. Lita being in Hemme's corner to couch her was a nice touch. Trish is a heel and she's great in her role, but even she can't get something worthwhile out of an extremely green and clumsy Christy Hemme. With this being her second non-T&A match, Hemme was not ready for this spot and it shows big time. Hemme puts Trish in a pinning clutch and isn't able to release Trish in time, so the referee has to awkwardly stop counting. Trish lands a Chick Kick to retain, but both her and Lita looked shoot-annoyed once this one wrapped up. ½★

I've started appreciate Bradshaw more as a worker in the last few years. He was great when he was fired up Texan hoss when he was in the APA, and he was completely despicable as JBL. He throws some stiff shots and bullies Cena around, but he's mostly boring when working on top. Cena shows great fire even if his hokey facials need work and leave a lot to be desired. Not a whole lot of interest happens here and the finish comes out of nowhere. The crowd were burnt out, but they came alive for the finish. ★★

Undertaker is back to being the Deadman, but he's no longer the slow and lumbering Phenom of old. He's on Smackdown, surrounded by much more physical wrestlers than the ones he was fighting a decade previously, so he has to show that he can still hang with the new kids. You can tell just by way he circles Orton and runs the ropes that he's upping his game. Orton's still growing and not that engaging when he's controlling the match, but he makes up for this with his youthful speed and that Chokeslam to RKO counter was seriously smooth. All the near-falls had the crowd on edge and you can tell that people are finally buying into the Streak. ★★★★¼

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This is a decent introduction for the feud’s first match. This is still a battle between two friends, two WWE Tag Team champions in fact. After Chavo Guerrero planted some resentment in the mind of Eddie towards Rey Mysterio, as well as some miscommunication leading to Eddie lose against Doug Basham or Rey to take victories away from Eddie inadvertently in tag matches, they are full force into the feud. They started the match like you'd expect these two to start. Mysterio trying to move fast and hit an aerial move with Eddie keeping Rey close via a knuckle lock or taking him to the ground. Both Guerrero and Mysterio took big bumps early on, Rey landing big on the back bod…

Odd to see a post-Mania crowd act...normal. This was a very smart, very snug match. Benoit, with an injured arm and stitched up eye, gets taken apart by Edge. As soon as he notices Benoit is really selling his arm, he focuses on the body part throughout almost the entire match, never really deviating. Benoit can't put the crossface on properly because of it, and his repeated attempts to put it on play into the match. Benoit's chops really aren't that good, which is a shame because that's some of the only offense he can convincingly do in this match. It would have made more sense for Edge to win given his MITB win and his cerebral character, rather than a Benoit roll-up, b…

This is the main event of the 49th Arena Mexico Anniversary Show. That's a pretty cool tecnico lineup and I'm down with rudo trio of Pierroth and La Familia de Tijuana. There's a lot of slapping the shit out of each other in this match. Wagner vs. Pierroth is pretty great, and I enjoyed watching Casas taking on Halloween and Damian. Mistico has to take his lumps before he can do his big dive in the tercera. The finish sets up the Friday main events for the month of April. Decent TV bout.

I couldn't resist watching this. Ian Rotten is another of those guys I should be following. This was fun while it lasted, but the finish was soft. It was supposed to set up a rematch somewhere down the line, but I don't think it ever happened. Still, an interesting one off that would make a great compilation stuffer.

I like this, but also understand that this comes from a place of hubris as a match. Hear me out. They pace this out smartly, going from a heated and fast-paced (ish) beginning with Muto firing off Dragon Screws and Figure-Fours, while Dangerous K lands a early Gamengiri to get Muto away to recover. Sadly we don't get more of that and then quickly drift into the abyss of "let's do weird half-MMA half-whatever mat-work" as the two stick on lots of holds for a long time to try to pad this one out a bit more. I say weird half-MMA because they do stuff like the importance of mount positions, like the two will take back or side mount and there's a clear importance about positio…

This is the last show of GAEA Japan with two big retirements happening. Chigusa Nagayo and Sakura Hirota. What a way to end. And Hirota goes out the only way she can. Sakura Hirota doing a Tiger Mask cosplay is the funniest thing you'll ever see. All the Tiger Mask routines are done in hilarious fashion, in addition to some dancing but honestly, Ozaki's reaction is what kills me. She is so bemused at Hirota and struggling not to laugh half of the time. The bit with Ozaki-Gun and the GAEA roster tripping both up when they ran the ropes was a super fun spot that plays on the usual antics of Ozaki-Gun. Great pay off too with Yumi Ohka (???) getting confused and tripping up O…

This was the final GAEA match on the final GAEA show. It's clipped because it aired on GAORA, but it doesn't really matter as this was a short match on a low key Korakuen Hall show. Chigusa proves that she can still work the shooter style that she established 20 years prior but everybody knows that this is an exhibition match. Chigusa puts Satomura over, which clearly means a lot to Meiko. She's pretty emotional, as you can imagine. And with that there is no more GAEA.