January 2000

Nice big man vs little man match. Danielson looks good here ... you can sort of see him making mild improvements by the week as he gains confidence.

Spanky looks great here. It would be interesting to see who would be more over between him and Will Ospreay if he came along today, because Ospreay is the better athlete, but Spanky is no slouch there and is so much more charismatic. Rudy Boy is a very good local veteran who plays a good base for Spanky's more daredevil offense. Only a Shawn Michaels fed would have such a glowing opinion of cocaine on commentary. Rudy Boy works over Spanky's back and the lead announcer puts it over as an attempt to neutralize his aerial offense. Shawn impresses me by saying he'd hate to make anyone think that's all Spanky has in his arsenal, but admits that would hurt his ability to win t…

Well in the race of better second generations stars, It is easy to see just in this match who has that covered. David Flair is a real mess in the ring here being out of position and stumbling around. Pg-13 is really spirited as a team still and it is kind of a shame that the availability of indies wasn’t around in 2000 as I could see PG-13 going through multiple promotions for short runs with their top tags. We get a hubcap vs. crowbar battle and Wolfie D comes out on the losing end. Funny moment where JC Ice misses the finish and celebrates way after the fact. *

Scott Armstrong in rare action. Of all the Armstrong boys, I am least familiar with Scott besides his officiating tenure. Chavo is out with his briefcase. We get the announcement that either Nash or Sid is going to be the champion on Monday Night. Chavo is playing face here but I really don’t know if he was face or heel overall as I can’t keep track of turns in WCW 2000 and he certainly was being heelish last week on WCWSN. IN addition to the world title, now Tenay and Hudson are talking about Oklahoma not being the cruiserweight champion. Way to call the match guys. Chavo dropkicks Scott to the outside and follows after him allowing Scott to rush back in and gain advanta…

Back to WCWSN. Chuck Palumbo has raided Cheetah Kid’s gear bag. Rick Cornell is someone I am pretty unfamiliar with besides the Reno stint. Once again due to the sweetening it sounds like Center Stage is going crazy but yet all we see is empty seats. Nice dropkick by Palumbo. Rough dropkick by Cornell. Tenay and Hudson keep talking about Bobby no showing the taping here. I guess you have to fill the time somehow. Palumbo looks great hitting a springboard dropkick sending Cornell to the outside. It is kind of weird that Palumbo was already 28 years old here showing he started pretty late. I legit groan every time the Old Aged Outlaws are mentioned. This match goes through …

A weird start here where it looks like Doc is going to shoot in on Misawa. Every one clears out and away we go. I liked Doc taking a cheap shot at Ogawa on the apron. Scorpio and Misawa have a pretty basic wrestling sequence. Doc is really the spark here being a complete dick to Ogawa on the outside. It is nice to see Doc this motivated in 2000 as he does an impressive press slam to Ogawa lifting him up multiple times. It is really neat to see sleazy Ogawa at this point in time as sympathetic FIP. Scorpio’s flashy moves are also working in this environment against Misawa. Misawa ends up getting worked over a good bit here and we have a double heat sequence in this tag. Sc…

This starts big with Taue giving a big throw to Takayama and overall showing more fire than he does at any other point in January. The crowd is really hot as all four of these men stare off at each other. No Fear takes over and this is a great showcase of them being the biggest bullies in the yard brutalizing the previous biggest bullies in the yard. After Kawada gets beat down including the big knee from Omori on the top, Taue has had enough of this shit and comes in with a house of fire. It isn’t enough though as No Fear gives him a double clothesline to send him to the outside. This awakes Kawada and he shows some fire kicking complete ass for a few seconds. Takayama g…

Holy cow, this was great. And not just great by 2000 Vader standards, either. I thought this was legitimately on par with his WCW classics. Vader is just as brutal as you want him to be (the chokeslam onto the table and the powerbomb onto the floor is quite the 1-2 punch), but he also bumps and sells huge to make Akiyama look like a legitimate threat. And there's no sluggish moments, unlike most post-WCW Vader matches. Some spotty selling takes it down a bit, but this is still well worth going out of your way to see.

This essentially couldn’t be as bad as the previous GAEA tag but wasn’t that good either. I don’t know what it is and maybe some context is lost but these matches just seem like these chaotic out of control matches with nothing really feeling urgent or that important. This did have a neat moment where Hokuto bridged up from a Boston Crab attempt to slap Lioness which showed incredible strength. The constant interference just makes me want to handwave the entire promotion. In a project like this where natural cherry picking will occur, it is integral for us as the viewer to at least have some belief of what was going on based on the snippets we see or the match that is bei…

They should bring back this Jericholics T-shirt. The dual champion angle going on right now was pretty dumb. The action here starts good with Jericho especially looking good. Him and Holly have a good sequence together. Chyna times her clothesline interference well and I think we may be in for a hidden gem. The action goes on the outside and gets progressively worse and then the timing on some Chyna and Jericho stereo dives looks very off. Action regains itself a bit with Holly and Jericho getting crotched and Jericho hitting a good doomsday crossbody. For someone who wasn’t the most graceful worker himself around this time, Jericho is holding things together well here an…

Dudley Boyz vs Hardy Boyz - WWF Royal Rumble 2000 Tables Match Holy shit, this was even better than I remembered! Super tight, exciting car crash spotfest of a match. I think I might prefer this over both the TLCs. I really liked how every single moment was motivated by putting someone through a table. They were indulging the crowd by trying to win the match and thats exactly how it should be. You win the match by putting people through tables so they were constantly setting themselves up for that. Really well done. I think a lot of car crash matches that this inspired just do crazy spots for the sake of crazy spots, but this match is better than those because all th…

WWF World Heavyweight Champion Triple H vs Cactus Jack - Royal Rumble 2000 Street Fight Is there anyone better at selling Mick Foley's transformation into Cactus Jack than HHH? He knocked it outta the park in 1997 and again in 2000. I had never seen the video package before the match and it really shows how well the WWF was clicking at the time. It can be stated enough how important Mick Foley was to that roster. He was just so damn loveable in a way that Austin and Rock could never be. He was the underdog that everyone could rally around. He was also sadistic enough to be used to cement championship reigns (Taker 1997, Austin 1998, Rock 1999 and HHH 2000). Undoubtedl…

A fairly replacement level Rumble. It has some neat highlights like Too Cool and Rikishi being over as all hell, a deep 20 minute Boss Man run, Bob Backlund with the surprise entry to a huge pop, and Rock winning. Beyond that though, there is a lot of dead weight here and it really showed the absence of Austin and Taker as it felt like an easy formality that Rock was winning or at worst Big Show if they wanted a big surprise. Anyone else wouldn't have made any sense at all. ***

Angle starts out raging on the Knicks and New York in general. The guy has it on the mic. Tazz music fires up and the crowd erupts. It is amazing that this is honestly the only time Tazz really felt this big during his WWF tenure. Angle takes a huge back drop bump to the outside to start things off as an ECW chant fires off. Angle gets a suplex on Tazz in the entry way which allows him to go on offense for a bit. I remember loving this Royal Rumble set at the time and it holds up as being one of my personal favorite in company history. Angle hits a really good belly to belly suplex and Angle actually has gotten more offense in than I remembered. Angle takes too long to cl…

I'm suddenly wondering if Hack Myers was always awesome and it just somehow eluded me and just about everyone else because he looks pretty great here while this lasts. These two worked a sprint with Myers doing an amazing Northern Lights suplex and showing some really great fundamentals. I've liked Scoot, and he held his own, but he was pretty much along for the ride here. There's little I hate more in wrestling than someone getting a monster push coming in and destroying both guys having a match, and in this case, Dan Severn, gets to do that, cutting short what was developing into something really good.

I have no clue who any of these guys are. My main takeaway was that maybe that bizarro tag from the previous week wasn't canned heat after all, because this was just faint noise, which between that and Chris Cruise announcing made it feel like a random episode of WCW Pro. Perfectly fine representation of the tag formula, but nothing special. Another testament to how effectively that formula can help matches along. Weird post-match angle I don't care about enough to recap. Skippable.

Nash gets a Hall fears Oduls sign on the way out. Also, a lass in the crowd is a big fan of Big Sexy. Nash bans the powerbomb pre match. Sid gets a good reaction coming out. Nash takes over and doesn’t do a lot on top to make the match interesting. It tells me something I am such a mark for title lineages and have no idea who ends up winning this match. Robinson gets bumped and Sid gets the visual pin. That is a popular trope in 2000 US Wrestling. Sid calls for the crowd support and they cheer a good bit and here comes Jarrett. Sid grabs his guitar and then fakes being hit by the guitar when Robinson recovers. Shockingly smart move. After 30 seconds, Sid covers Nash and w…

Some pretty generic hardcore action here. Bigelow looks like a bruiser to a degree and its crazy seeing old Terry bump but that was about the highlights. Knobbs and Fit as a tag team in matching outfits made me sad. Someone has a sign to bring back Owen. Classy. *1/2

Why Jack isn’t there but HHH is wrestling makes no sense after Jack beat him down at the end of the Rumble match. Also odd to see HHH and Show teaming less than a month after HHH won the title from him but here we go. Rikishi comes out to tag with the Rock which is a good bit of helping his momentum build from the Rumble. Show and HHH work together well as a team and the face side is hugely over of course making this an action packed Raw finale. The NAO come out and attack Rikishi setting up the DQ. HHH goes for a chair shot on the Rock and here comes Cactus with his 2X4 which does make up for the fact he wasn’t there earlier. They clean house as we fade to black. WWE mai…

A nice singles lucha match for us. I don’t really have a lot to say about this one as it never really grabbed me. I thought the first fall was way too inconsequential. The second fall had Tigre really working over the leg but it doesn’t have a pay off as he still gets caught in a Northern Lights Suplex and pinned. Third fall is where things predictably open up and Tigre takes the attack again and then hits a huge tope. Arkangel could certainly be selling the effects more and he ends up winning with a big powerbomb. I have been really loving all the CMLL output so far so it was due for something disappointing and unfortunately this match was it. **1/4

This is a good house show in displaying what were the main matches ECW was running at the time. Hot start that kind of derails when Awesome does his tope over the top and comes crashing down right on top of his head. A really good pace to this even though psychology can be essentially thrown out the window. Today, people discuss that as the big lads division but where a match like this does have an edge is that the strikes and spots do look brutal from these big guys throwing them. Tanaka hits a tornado DDT from the apron through a table and then a running chair shot from the entrance. Inside Tanaka hits another tornado DDT on a chair for a nearfall. Awesome is able to re…

This has a much more wrestling base start to it that I thoroughly enjoyed. I have always found Sabu's fundamentals to be sound when he shows glimpses of that. Sabu is the one that makes this a street fight which makes sense from a kayfabe perspective. He throws some hard shots at Spike and sends him to the outside. Spike gives Sabu a really flush forearm on the inside. As Sabu retreats, Spike comes off the top rope with a big elbow drop. With the table now on the inside, Spike goes for the Acid Drop but Sabu is able to throw him on top of the table. The table is propped in the corner and an Arabian Facebuster is utilized against Spike. The table doesn't break again. The t…

The main focal points of ECW so far and the stars of the show. I will give ECW this in that they booked some cool looking venues. This was a "fall out of bed" enjoyable match for these three but was entirely effective in what they were trying to set up. Have an all action 8 minute fest to get the crowd into things. Sal got tossed around and none of the spots felt too contrived. I can't ask for much more. ***

These teams are not really known for solid basic tags, but this fit the bill nicely. I thought this was really good, with Christian as a particularly good FIP and Edge as a strong hot tag. It only went about six minutes, but it had a fully fleshed out beginning with brawling, middle with the FIP, and end with the hot tag and finishing stretch. The post-match angle was the cherry on top, with the Dudleys putting both guys through tables, and Edge bleeding from the mouth to really put it over. (That may have been legit, I am not sure.) Good stuff all around. The WWF did a great job getting all three teams over in very distinct ways. ***1/4

These two were forced into this match against each other by HHH and Stephanie. I hate matches as punishment like this, because Rikishi is a star on the rise, and no one is going to cheer him over The Rock, yet no one really wants to boo him either, so matches like this make him seem less over than he really is. The action is good, but it's not really a good spot for Rikishi to be in when he's on a hot streak. And if they were going to do it, I sort of wish Rock had worked subtle heel so Rikishi could work from underneath and build to comebacks. You give Bret Hart this exact same booking and I suspect that's how he works the match. I always love when Rikishi no-sells anyth…