June 2006

This was Kurt Angle's farewell match on Smackdown before jumping to ECW. It was the millionth match he'd had with Mysterio Jr, but at the same time it was a fitting sendoff given their five year history. They kept pushing Angle as having his competitiveness renewed by his jump to ECW, which was stupid given that Angle was always pushed as being highly competitive. He had a mouthpiece that spelt out the word "machine," which was supposed to mean wrestling machine but could have easily meant roid machine. They didn't break any new ground with this bout, but there were some exciting moments down the stretch. They managed to give Angle the win without making Rey look stupid, …

Part of Ibushi's trial series, which also included matches against Ikuto Hidaka, TAKA Michinoku and camo Daisuke Ikeda. The other matches (TAKA and Ikeda) that I saw from this series were by and large squashes, with Ibushi getting almost no offense outside very brief hope spots and losing fairly quickly. This is better than the previous ones because I like Milano's weird offense so much and partly because the hope spots are better. Ibushi stops selling the leg which Milano had worked over early on halfway through, which he always does but it bothers me enough to point it out. The way Milano sells one of Ibushi's high kicks was dope. The best part of the match was Milano m…

KENTA vs. Sugiura - June 4, 2006 Another excellent match, a fitting finale to KENTA's tremendous reign as the GHC Jr. Champ. He never truly got what I would consider to be a genuine advantage in this, even with Sugiura occasionally selling at points. KENTA just found himself constantly getting thrown away with all kinds of overhead suplexes throughout the match. Of note is that Sugiura worked on KENTA's left knee early, softening it up for the ankle lock. A pity Kurt Angle likely never watched this and of course that he will likely never face KENTA. KENTA found himself Yakuza kicked off the apron and flying back-first into the steel guardrail, allowing Sugiura to domina…

Kind of surreal seeing the WWE produce an authentic looking ECW show. Kudos to Rey for working Sabu's style even if it was a slightly watered down version. We never did get to see Rey work in many apuestas matches, but he had some brawling chops to him. It's amusing how much they overstate the importance of Rey's early ECW appearances while completing ignoring his WCW run. The finish was a copout, but if you're gonna cop out then I guess a springboard DDT through a table is the way to do it.

This is the One Night Stand match where a bunch of rabid ECW fans paid WWE a lot of money to hate on Cena. Classic excellent pro wrestling booking. As far as the match itself goes, I don't have a whole lot to say. They knew exactly what to do and did a really effective job essentially working a high end houseshow match that still had a good big time feel. As usual there was some fun stuff around Cena's role with him doing subtle heel stuff and busting out a clumsy looking axe handle off the top (to no love whatsoever). The match was basically back and forth with RVD hitting his spots and Cena's 5 moves of doom combo drawing nearer until the ECWesque booked finish. Nothing…

This was originally meant to be just a 2 on 2 with the men, but after Beulah calls Lita a slut, she challenges Lita to make this a 3 on 3 match. Neat. The women don't really add much aside from Edge being able to score maximum sleaze points by pinning Beulah in a sexually suggestive pinning combination. They're mostly here to play off the ECW fan's misogyny and do the dreaded catfight spot. Mick Foley was on fire in 2006, and his pre-match promo shitting on ECW was brilliant. 61 year old Terry Funk can still go, he gets wrapped up in barbed wire, takes a fall of a ladder and even does a callback to his legendary empty arena fight with Jerry Lawler 25 years prior by sellin…

Very hard hitting, intense three way dance. Starts off in super explosive fashion, it gets derailed & loses it's steam a bit after KENTA gets legitimately knocked out after receiving the mother of all slaps from Joe, but they get back into things quickly & the match remains awesome till the end. ****

Shibata's interactions in the early stages w/ Marufuji & especially Morishima are all kinds of awesome. His stuff w/ Maru has some really great back & forth exchanges, and his stuff w/ Morishima, my goodness. Really made me bummed out that we never got a singles match between them during this time period, as they were involved in 2 excellent tag classics on the opposing teams. Ibushi is very much treated as an afterthought by Maru & Mori, as he had only been in the business for about 2 years around the time this happened. Love when Shibata & Mori are trading blows, and Ibushi tries to join in by striking Morishima from the back, Morishima just completely i…

It was interesting to see Ishikawa in a FMW-esque tag with him and Ito bleeding all over the place. Ishikawa and Ito laid in some nice shots as you'd expect while the Mad Dogs were a mixed bag. Post-match is pretty neat as they just inexplicably cut to them smashing each other's faces into walls. ***

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Slammiversary 2006 - NWA World Tag Team Champions America's Most Wanted vs AJ Styles/Christopher Daniels NOW, this match is the perfect melding of X-Division with Southern tag team wrestling in a way that satiated my inner mark. AMW's channel MX hard by doing some funny comedy spots at the beginning of the match: Storm's head ending up repeatedly in Harris's crotch and Storm unknowingly headscissoring Harris over the top rope on a skin the cat. I liked this babyface shine better than the last one. The heels smartly get the faces outside where Gail Kim helped them gain the advantage and Storm took out Styles' legs while on the guardrail. The theme of these matches is defin…

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I know this is a stipulation that usually gets frowned upon as they lack psychology a lot of the time and are harder to put together, but this is one of the best three way matches ever and it also benefits from being an elimination match as you can get a proper 1-on-1 match after an initial elimination. Worth mentioning the booking leading to this match is fantastic with Whitmer and Jacobs being in a hot Jimmy loves Lacey angle and both men trying to kill each other with some dangerous powerbombs off the top rope through the ring apron or the crowd. They start with a standard three way and they work portions of it as handicap, Whitmer and Jacobs vs. Danielson and then Dan…

This was wonderful. Just two great hard hitting wrestlers putting on a great hard hitting match. They slugged it out & threw bombs at each other. One of the best moments of the match was Roddy blocking KENTA's attempt to go for the top rope Falcon Arrow w/ a forearm to the face. Lovely stuff. ****1/2

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KENTA had a classic vs. Austin Aries' tag partner Roderick Strong the night before & here he went and delivered another classic. The strikes were great, the flow was great, this was just great. I loved how Aries in the beginning tried to keep things on mat so KENTA couldn't deliver those well established deadly strikes of his - and when KENTA eventually did blast Aries with those kicks, my goodness. This had it all - great transitions, great strikes, great sense of urgency, amazing crowd heat & no dull moments. ****1/2

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