January 2000

I have had enough of Chavo but we do get a look at Kid Romeo here. Romeo has a big time 2000 gimmick with the rave thing he is doing. Chain wrestling to start here was actually pretty impressive. Chavo’s strikes look better today too. An awkward moment does occur when he tries to place Romeo on the ropes. After being worked over for a bit, Romeo makes his comeback with a good looking splash. A leg drop gets another two. Sloppy counter from Romeo from a neckbreaker attempt. Chavo hits the tornado DDT and puts him away. Romeo looked out of position here a good bit and while the dive did get good air, if that is your one moment of flash in a match, something better and more …

Tracy pulling a Rick Rude and being on WCWSN and MPPW on the same day is great stuff. Even better is him coming out here as Mr. fiery babyface. Barbarian has a relaxed look with his hair all over the place and a leather jacket. Tracy is able to rally the crowd a bit here and immediately gets thrown around like a rag doll. Big headbutt and barrage of strikes in the corner for Barb. Smothers gets a two count with a dropkick and forearm. Tracy does a single leg cradle again. The urgency of Tracy is really being displayed here. Nasty overhead suplex by Barb that is followed up with a side slam. Smothers gets another hope spot with a back heel kick. Tracy hits an elbow on the…

Candy always fascinates me a bit as a worker because she was in there with the new crop of AJW talent during the tail end of the heyday and then retired. Then she pops back up in ARSION for a little while and retires for good. Kong has had a rough month with the GAEA stuff so I was happy to see her in a more compelling singles match here. More clipping which I will continue to rail against. I guess with the tv format of the territories I can accept clipping even though it can be a nuisance. At this point in Japan, units like FMW were doing their DirectTV PPV’s and other groups like even Toryumon were giving us full matches monthly on their digest edition. It feels weak th…

This had some clipping issues like the previous match but was at least cohesive enough that I feel I can piece together how the entire match went. Ayako will be a prominent member of joshi throughout our quest in the 2000’s and still is relevant today in WAVE. I discovered that Futagami is now going by GAMI and mostly working the prelims in WAVE. Akino also has been around a good bit in the 2000’s and we may see her coming up. The match had a good pace but also some good double teams from each duo and Hamada really showcased her athleticism with her graceful springboard moonsaults. Gami makes the mistake of lifting Ayako up on a pinfall attempt which is never smart. La Ma…

LCO collide. Some weird clipping as we go from Mita getting beat down to Omukai and Shimoda mixing it up. The fleeting moments of LCO going against each other are interesting. The clipping kind of kills this match for me though as we see less than half of it and the clips are so random and violent in how they are done mid transition move, that I feel some context is really lost. The action looked good but I am unsure if a cohesive story was told or not as the match ends in a draw. NR

I was interested to see Ikeda work with a lower ranked opponent and the match starts perfectly with Nagai getting a big spin kick in the opening seconds and then dominating the early portion. The work on the leg was strong and focused and he mixed that with strikes and highspots. This really had a vibe of a one touchdown underdog team getting out to a really fast start and creating some turnovers to be 21-0. Even when Ikeda would have certain openings like the dragon screw, Nagai was able to come right back with a submission to neutralize him. The leg cranking submission that Nagai puts on next is unique and looks totally brutal. Ikeda has to fight to make the ropes there…

Talk about it here.

Another busy day for Korakuen. Can someone clarify who this was that comes out before hand? I want to say young Fedor but I don’t want to embarrass myself if I was wrong. Yone in this setting continues to amuse me given his huge afro and overall character later. Ishikawa and Otsuka start things off which is ok with me always. Ishikawa gains the advantages and we get the big running knee from the entranceway from Yone. Ishikawa can make the most basic moves like a half crab look painful as fuck. I love Otsuka grabbing the ankle pick from the crab position to gain the advantage. Ishikawa puts Greco in a bow and arrow and Otsuka comes in and casually kicks him right in the b…

Fun mini epic which was pretty much built around showcasing Phantom Funakoshi. Phantom is an SGP guy who wrestles kind of like a junior version of Osamu Nishimura. He throws a great dropkick and always forces guys to do some matwork and I really dug him here, grounding MIKAMI with judo sweeps and attacking his arm and shoulder. MIKAMI was kind of the ace of DDT at this point - squashing other low ranked guys within minutes - so I thought the match had an intelligent layout initially allowing Funakoshi to dominate with his technical skill and then forcing Mikami to take an unexpectedly big bump before he could get the advantage using his athleticism. Mikamis brief bursts …

This had some shady guys typical of DDT at the time. Masahiko Orihara is a Masao Orihara clone in a goofy mask, and kind of wrestles like a poor mans Masao Orihara, while Neo Iceman looks like a guy who forgot his wrestling gear so he enters the ring in street clothes and a random mask they had lying around. Both guys were okay though, aside from one funny moment where Orihara went for an RVD move and fell on his head. Takai was in the rookie underdog role and kind of rough, he blew his clothesline and dropkick, how the hell can you not hit your clothesline and dropkick when you’re a japanese rookie? That said Toba had an awesome moment where he came in and worked over Ne…

Fun CAPTURE-esque spectacle. All the strikes were just brutal and the shootstyle floor brawling a suitably crazy moment. I wasn't sure how Toba would work in this kind of main event singles match but the whole thing comes out fine. He certainly knows how to throw that spinning backfist as an exclamation point. Sasaki muscling Toba around to drop him on his head was suitably gritty. Stiff as fuck brawl, DDT should go back to this stuff.

I kind of keep justifying myself from not calling these Toryumon multi man matches as great because I don’t want to be seen as just blindly loving everything they are throwing out there but it hasn’t happened yet. I was weary of the face side of things here with Tiger Mask and Magnum but they turned in some of the best respective performances of themselves I can recall seeing. Magnum had a lot of energy and didn’t botch much of anything of note. He was paired off with CIMA for the bulk of the match and held his own. The other big thread throughout this match centered around Mochizuki and Fujii and this was great stuff. Fujii is already showing that amazing charisma that h…

Shown in full. A fun six-man that helps to establish the big players as of now, as well as some of the up and coming. Crowd are mixed going in as Omori and Akiyama have a amateur wrestling stand-off before Kobashi gets in and gets a sneaky elbow smash after Omori doesn't clean break, leading to him staggering and knocking down the big man. Hansen is really good for 51 here, even if it's mostly because he's in with guys like Kobashi who he can just feed off for days, the lads have a great strike exchange. Also appreciate that Kobashi is so above him here that Hansen needs to cheat with eye rakes and illegal headlock punches to get the advantage: he can't just power through…

A lot to unpack here with this special Baba memorial six man. Taue comes out wearing a Baba esque robe, Omori gets a big marquee spot, we get a rare appearance of Hansen at this point, and Misawa is teaming with Burning! After a little table setting with Omori in there, he tags out to Hansen and Hansen and Kobashi going after each other and it is great. Kobashi isn’t really the young punk that Hansen loved bullying around for so long so it was refreshing to see this strike exchange with Kobashi now being easily higher on the overall hierarchy in the promotion. Omori continues to be the person that is toughest to figure out in the promotion. They clearly have big plans for…

Gotta love the old school cameras that were used in 2000. NAO run through their routine to big pops. Head Cheese is already being teased. Al Snow comes out and here are the Radicalz in a pretty awesome moment although it kind of feels like the crowd didn’t really see or realize what was happening as it isn’t like they erupt. Ross mentions that they are negotiating with ECW and the Japanese promotions. Billy Gunn and Snow actually have a good little sequence together with each other here and Road Dogg’s signature spots are still over. Ross does really good commentary here putting over how shocked he is at the Radicalz sitting in the front row. I liked how Road Dogg snuck i…

Some more good commentary by Ross mentioning they met a few weeks ago and Angle’s undefeated streak could still be in tact due to Tazz maybe utilizing an illegal choke. I really liked Angle cutting a promo mid match that he is a hometown guy. Rock informs Kurt it doesn’t matter where he was born to a big pop. Low blows were really popular in WWF at the time as Angle throws one out here. These two show again in a tv environment that they have good chemistry with each other and that Angle really doesn’t get dwarfed being in there with one of the biggest stars in history. Angle tries to retreat but Tazz comes down the ramp and throws him back in. Spinebuster and People’s Elb…