August 2000

This was a heavyweight title shot for Porky. Prior to the bout there was a vignette of him at Super Astro's restaurant ordering one of those giant tortas. If you've ever seen a Porky apuestas match, or a Porky singles match for that matter, you'll know what to expect from this. Watch it purely for the novelty and nothing else.

What an awesome rudo team. The tecnicos didn't stand a chance. I feel like Televisa needs to air more Mr. Mexico and Valentin Mayo matches, don't you?

Not the best Infernales match though it did have a nice tecnico comeback. It wasn't really earned, though, which summed up how much these guys were on autopilot.

It is still nice to see Matthews & York in a tag setting but this match really reminds you that there is still a lot of late 90's indie holdovers. No one besides York and Matthews showed any potential to me here and all and the match is full of just generic gimmicks and sub par action. This shows how far we have come even in replacement level indie action. York and Matthews don't even pick up the win which is atrocious. *3/4

Stevie is on commentary here. Prime Time Player Elix Skipper is making his gimmick debut here. 120 second match but Skipper runs through a lot of cool offense and hits most of it cleanly. He also bumps well off of the Kidman offense. Franchise and Torrie come out for a closer look. Reno comes into the ring and hits the Last Rites but Franchise sends him out which didn’t make much sense. Prime Time picks up the big upset. *

Storm comes out and renames the Crusierweight Title to reflect the metric system. That is funny. It is easy to see in the sea of bad gimmicks, how Storm would come out looking like a highlight around this time. Cat comes out and sets up three matches for Lance tonight. The first is the cruiser title vs. Juvi. Lance busts out his rulebook banning the Animals from ringside. Again, why is Juvi all of a sudden a face here? To keep the theme alive tonight, this was a fun short match that was given around four minutes so it had a bit to develop. If I hear this commentary team say book or booker one more time. Fuck, you might as well have a camera backstage showing us the real t…

We learn that the Canadian rulebook shows that no outside weapons can be used and the match can only end in a submission. Vito is appalled on commentary. Stevie brings up Norman being the champion in mexico and Vito of all people busts out EMLL as the name of the promotion. These two again with 15 minutes in a straight wrestling match would be fun. The finish here was clever with the referee being distracted for a bit with a shot to the eye, Storm using the American flag on Norman’s leg and then locking on the Maple Leaf to escape. Vito makes the save. *

Lance’s final test is vs the Cat. Cat’s gear is awful and looks like women’s pajamas. Cat’s offense looks pretty putrid and this isn’t much of a match. Another referee bump and out comes Muto to attack Cat. I guess they thought they could have a vicious martial arts match. Muto Dragon Screws Cat and that of course leads to the Maple Leaf allowing Lance to leave Thunder with all three titles. ½*

Oh man, time for Fat Chick Thriller Mike Awesome and hes ready to give you a dose of Vitamin P….. passion. Awesome says if you are fat, you are just busting at the seems with love. Holy shit this is awful. Kanyon comes out and suddenly his DDP cosplay gimmick looks genius in comparison. Stevie on commentary talks about all the bookers he has been through. The action is fine but its so much to overcome with these gimmicks and again were only given about 2.5 minutes. Kanyon hits that wheelbarrow powerbomb which looks impressive given Awesome’s size. Kanyon also gives a Kanyon Cutter from the top rope of a seated Awesome. Kanyon gets frustrated at not getting the pin and hit…

A really strong IWRG mid cardish type match. The face team was one I wasn’t expecting a whole lot from but they delivered a good performance. However, Blue Panther continues to be a shining star as he sequences in particular with Safari were the highlight of the match. I also enjoyed seeing Pimpenela in a rudo role and trying to use her advances and sexuality to gain an advantage. The rudos end up justifiably taking this one given their star power. All of the falls had time to develop and the IWRG building and atmosphere lend itself to strong matches overall. ***1/2 (7.1)

The HHH/Steph/Angle stuff continues to be excellent and we get a series of vignettes from Steph arriving needing space, to Angle saying he is there for her as a friend. We then see HHH/Steph meeting with Foley and we learn that Kurt and Steph are more than friends…they are tag partners. Shane gives a rally talk saying that HHH/Kurt need to be on the same page for the sake of Steph’s health. I do think HHH’s acting is strong here as we get little character beats like Steph blitzing past him in their entrance and his budding frustration. This was another good match and overall this was a strong SmackDown. This was given enough time and I still appreciate how much of a threa…

Something about this match coming off the heels of Thunder really projected the difference between WWF and WCW at the moment. We have seen these kind of goal post moments in the deterioration of WCW. The Lance Storm stuff is universally praised from this dreadful period and it was fine and enjoyable but then on SmackDown you have kind of a throwaway match between two characters like Edge and Matt Hardy and it just feels like it has so much more juice just from a presentation standpoint. This match was also short but I liked the angle that played into it with Jeff Hardy being pleaded with to stay in the back due to his concussion. Matt is in trouble in the latter stages o…

Rock gives a pretty funny promo with Kevin Kelly where he blackens one his tooth to make it look like the gap that Benoit has. They have continued to do a good job bridging the feud between Benoit and Rock and to when he will move onto Angle/HHH for the SummerSlam main event. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this match. Benoit/Big Show make a fun makeshift team, Kane showed more fire here than usual with a great brawl at the start and FIP sequence and the Rock is officially now a good wrestler in his own right and even the Sharpshooter that looks dreadful later on in his career is applied tightly and smoothly. The finish worked with Rock going for a People’s Elbow and …

This match completely blew me away. The battle royal was fun and quick but then we get to the meat which is the Cibernetico. I love Ciberneticos in general and this was one of the best I have ever seen. Solar and Panther start immediately with a jaw dropping sequence straight out of their classic 1994 match. The rest of the pairings are also effective. I enjoyed the delight each competitor had when they secured a victory and knew their mask was safe. The first half of the match really is built around Panther and it is fabulous as he gains an arm submission but the referee says no. This frustrates him to no end and he ends up getting pinned based on that frustration. Final…

It looks like Satanico has freshly lost a apuestas match and had his hair shaved again. Wagner and Casas really go after each other in the first fall and it ends with Wagner giving Casas the Splash Mountain for the pin. The crowd is rapid for Porky on the inside with huge chants for him. The tecnico comeback in the second fall is predictably excellent with Casas going nuts on Wagner and Porky repeatedly banging Bestia’s head into the turnbuckle. Satanico tries to go for his fake foul spot but no one is buying that this time. Porky gets his huge splash to a gigantic pop to end the second fall. Awesome. A nice long shot of Arena Mexico before the third fall shows how packed…

Fun opener from the minis. The tecnicos' dives at the end were spectacular. Makes you wish that the minis aired more often.

I guess Emilio is injured as this was supposed to be a trios. He has quite the limp when he appears before the crowd. The first fall is all rudo as is traditionally the case. Bucanero and Guerrero have some awesome double team moves including the finishing run where they flip Niebla around finishing into a half crab. The second fall is more of the same but I loved the transition into the face comecback of them having Villano slumped over the top rope and Ultimo flying into the corner. Niebla and Villano then go nuts on the rudos including Ultimo getting posted right in the face. I enjoyed how the match flowed from the comeback where the finish of the segunda caida didn’t …

An old man brawl in the cage with punches, blood, ball shots and intensity. This match is long and there is a lot of punching and kicking but it was done in an intense level and the hook of Villano being in the match and selling his injured arm and having to face another failure in getting his hair shaved raised the match overall. Los Capos beating up both Perro and Pierroth when they get eliminated was a good jump start for the future. The final moments between Ano and Villano had a real Thrilla in Manilla feel with both guys winded but the submission victory for Villano was extremely satisfying and capped an incredible show overall with Ano receiving his haircut. ****1/…

Whipwreck's gear is awful but he is still really competent in the ring and this is a strong workman's style match for seven minutes. Guido is a pro like always and willing to be in the right position to make his opponent look good. I continue to enjoy Sal running interference more than the likes of Victory. The finish here foreshadowed the future with Tajiri coming out and making teh save forming the unholy alliance with Whipwreck and Sinister Minister. Again, Tajiri in a tag seems beneath him but they do feel like one of the more fresh things within the promotion. **1/2

This was a really fun start for a 3 way with everyone being involved. The Lynn dive to the outside looked good. Tajiri busts out the mist around 3 minutes in and that isn’t a good omen for him. Sure enough, Lynn locks on the Cradle Piledriver a second later to eliminate him. They really love getting Tajiri, the most over guy, out of the way in these 3 ways first. The segment between Lynn and Corino isn’t bad but too much interference from Victory hindered things. Scotty Anton comes in to interfere and Corino is able to pick up the win. **3/4 As the beatdown continues, we roll right into Anton vs Dreamer. This was a pretty generic ECW style brawl that winds itself arou…

B-Boy is so skinny here and Romero looks really young. Reyes is with him here at ringside and does a fine job as a second, eventually running in to cause a DQ. B-Boy had a nice presence here and laid it in pretty well but kind of took a while to set up a clunky spinning reverse suplex. Romero has never been my guy but he looked pretty solid here and seemed to direct the match pretty well. Nothing special but an interesting glimpse at these two. **

This is apparently the main event of this show. There are some tentative moments in here but Reyes looks pretty good taking Sun Warrior's stuff. Sun Warrior is kind of gangly and not very graceful flying around so it's nice that Reyes keeps this pretty coherent. Reyes doesn't really show a ton and doesn't have a very compelling offensive arsenal here but this was okay. **

This is the last match Cagematch has listed for Dirtbike Kid so if anyone else can add some commentary to his career, that would be appreciated. It is nice to see Europe get on the scene in the 2000’s with FWA and it does have a different atmosphere already. The European table that gets set up looks really bizarre and flimsy as it collapses when Sabu just gets placed on it. Sabu overall in 2000 has been inconsistent at best but I thought this was his best effort as the action here was relentless and transitioned from spot to spot keeping the pace going. Sabu signature spots like the triple jump moonsault were hit well. A photographer at ringside is wearing a WOW magazine …

It is now pouring down rain which adds to the atmosphere. I can see some people hating it as it does fall into the IWA trap of going too long but I appreciated the fact that it didn't involve any crowd brawling and it was filled with some nasty punches and throws into the chairs. The fact that they are wrestling in a field also adds to the pain when Mitch does his somersault splash onto Bull. Bull gets into it with a couple of fans and gives them a good shove. The finish was pretty dumb where IWA adds in the Memphis style elements of Bull getting brass knucks from Blaze and using it to score the pin. Mitch sells the punch off the knucks well but after light tubes and ever…

This is really the beginning of Punk's career in a way as he makes his IWA debut. They are still running in the middle of the field and we get a nice view of some of the driving choices of the IWA faithful. This match continued their development over the year as we have seen. This was the third match in the third promotion we have seen between the two and the work is crisper at most points here than in MAW in January with the exception of Punk being sloppy on a couple of spots including a monkey flip. Punk is able to get good support from the crowd although I think Hero looked more polished and resonated more in their respective debuts. The difference in their looks and g…