June 2005

This is the debut of AAA wrestler, Groon XXX, in Arena Mexico. Groon has to be seen to be believed. He's this jacked luchador with a custom painted Batman mask and Dracula teeth, who paints his body red and sells himself as some kind of demonic gargoyle. The match is pretty shit by these guys' standards, but Groon XXX is one of the highlights of the year.

Another exciting Spanky match. Perhaps he's the guy I should have been watching all along. I've got to give credit to Aries, though. As much as I've questioned the decision to give him the bout, and as unconvincing as his fighting champ gimmick has been, he's basically busting his tail so that he's banged up for the Punk title change. You can't deny how hard he worked while carrying the belt.

Talk about it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMxgLPPJakI&feature=youtu.be

If you can ignore the angle between Kurt Angle and Booker T's wife, this was another *** match between Angle and Booker. Disturbingly, this angle didn't even finish in the top 5 for the Most Disgusting Promotional Tactic in the WON awards. I have no doubt in my mind that Angle was one of the top tier workers of 2005. Hopefully, this angle is finished with and he can move on to better things.

Based Izumida is under fire here as he fights for the love of Mima Shimoda, who's in the crowd for the show. Trying to court a LCO member is definitely....a choice, but hey you can't knock the guy for trying. This is predictively a fairly low-workrate match as a result as it mostly revolves around Izu doing Izu things, like hitting people hard with his hands and head as per standard. Go gets some nasty chops and forearms done to him as punishment for his terrible budget-Kobashi impressions and the world is right once again. Rikio is pretty sturdy here with some impressive power spots alongside stealing the Nishimura Surfboard spot, which the crowd enjoy. Middle is mostly …

This match is known for a few things. One, Necro has shoes!! Motherfucker. And two, it was done just hours after the classic Joe vs Necro match in the same arena for IWA Mid-South. The match were Necro face-planted off a scoop slam, and here he is ucking it up in CZW having yet another wild brawl. Legend. Toby Kelin running out without Necro and getting assaulted 2 on 1 was great and got the crowd to go mental for Necro’s arrival even more son. Klein getting split open so early ruled also. The crowd brawling that went backstage was phenomenal. The crowd either scattered or run towards the action. This is where the bumps got insane. Necro being thrown into the steel shutte…

Talk about it here.

This was a pretty good match from these two, as you can imagine. It's a far more grounded match than you'd expect from PWG. James Gibson is making the most of his time in the indies and definitely climbing the worker rankings for '05.

It's been forever since I've watched match from my boy, Low Ki. Unfortunately, he's second fiddle here and the match is more about the build to Punk vs. Aries. Ki has his moments, but the storyline is about how hard Aries has been pushing himself as champ and how even ROH officials are warning him to slow down. There's a couple of cool spots from Low Ki, but he basically could have been anybody.

The James Gibson indy tour continues. These two match up together well size wise. We get a bit of wrestling to start with before the Rottweilers bullshit takes over. Gibson shows his frustration as the match wears on and even pushes the official. Shitty post-match angle. ROH is bush league at that type of stuff.

This was another meaningless Groond bout. I thought the work was better than his debut, but I can see the argument that it was a worse showcase. Whether it was intentional or not, they more or less ignored Groond and concentrated on the guys who can work. I'm not sure how I feel about Olimpico as a member of GdI. He doesn't have a ton of charisma as a rudo and has big shoes to fill in the form of Tarzan Boy.

This is a decent cage match by lucha standards. It helped that Perro Jr vs. Mistico is a hot feud. Mistico does some cool spots off the cage and the top rope, though he bails on the big spot off the top of the cage at the end that I'm sure a US worker would have done in a US cage match. The booking is confusing at times and some of the escapes are weak. It all boils down to Damian vs. Mascara Magica in a quick apuestas match. I like both guys, but they didn't wring out the drama and it wasn't clear whether Magica was teasing a rudo turn or his timing was off. Not terrible, but not noteworthy either.

Raven vs Monty Brown vs Abyss vs AJ Styles vs Sean Waltman (King of the Mountain match) It's official, the King of the Mountain match is my favourite overthought gimmick match. It should not work. But it's the second one I see, and it's even better than the first. It's both insanely convoluted yet makes perfect sense in execution. And it's *fun* because you can actually tell stories amidst the crazy spots. The fact people get send in the cage allows startegies to take place. The cage + ladder makes setups for crazy shit, and does it deliver. Amazingly, Jeff Jarrett gets "arrested" before the show, so he doesn't get to do the job in his own gimmick match. What a great …

Talk about it here.

Magica was a rudo here as he blamed Mistico for walking out on him during the cage match. He harasses Mistico in the early going, but it doesn't become a big thing and Magica ends up with Wagner during the tercera. This ends up being a bit of a flex by the tecnicos. I thought Ultimo might struggle, but he delivered his greatest hits. No dives, though.

World Heavyweight Champion Batista vs Triple H - WWE Vengeance 2005 Hell In A Cell I'll be honest I was very skeptical about this match being good let alone great. On paper, this is a very uninspiring matchup especially given HHH's clunkers from 2003-2005 in gimmick matches. Yes, HHH can have great matches see Foley, Street Fight and Bryan, Mania match. He usually is not the better wrestler in the match. I am sure there are people that would argue Batista is better than HHH, I could see that, but to me HHH is the better wrestler. There is no main event wrestler that has inspired more apathy from me than Batista. Even Edge can be funny at times and I enjoyed the Edge &…

This was a bog standard WWE triple threat match. it was competently worked and competently laid out, but there was nothing special about it whatsoever. It could just have easily been a triple threat match for the Intercontinental Championship or some other lower tier title. It certainly wasn't a match worthy of the WWE Championship, and for Cena's first title defence on the RAW brand, t was pretty weak compared to the JBL feud.

Talk about it here.

This was a fun match. That's not a surprise since Flair had been doing some pretty good stuff in Evolution tag matches, but it was still a decent length singles match. The one thing I've learnt to do with these Ric Flair bouts is to not compare him to whatever idealized image I have of Flair, but rather to think if this was the only footage we had of Flair, what would I make of it? Would I want to see more? Would I speculate on how good he could have been when he was younger? To me, the answer is yes. I probably wouldn't have been able to guess that he was some great champion in the Buddy Rogers mode from watching this bout, but like watching the Ray Stevens footage we ha…