May 2001

Clipping hurt the flow of this, but there was enough shown to get general idea. The best pairing was Virus vs. Marvin. If you're a lucha fan, you'll know that a lot of the time you watch matches like these to see one particular pairing. Virus and Marvin weren't otherworldly here, but they were good enough that I'm gladly watch anything they did together. The other workers were serviceable. Solar wasn't at his best, but I was happy enough with what Virus and Marvin gave me.

The new Light Heavyweight champion gets the opportunity to defend it on one of the ‘A’ shows for the first time, although typical for the way they treat that belt his opponent, Grandmaster Sexay, doesn’t get an introduction and is already in the ring. Tazz talks about knowing Lynn well from their time in ECW together but is kinda shocked the way he hooked Crash by the trunks to win the title. Lynn gets not much in the way of a reaction from the crowd and continues to show these slight heelish tendencies that Tazz alluded to, attacking the challenger both from behind and before the bell. Michael Cole wonders if maybe it’s frustration on his part for it taking him so lon…

We get a recap from Raw where Chris Benoit stole Kurt Angle’s Olympic gold medals. Hardcore Bob is drinking from a glass of milk as he makes his entrance. He questions if Kurt’s “Got medals?” which might not be the wisest of things to say going by Angle’s current mood. Nice early powerslam by Holly. Butterfly suplex. Angle reverses the Irish whip, keeps hold of the arm and hotshots Bob across the top rope. As he stomps him down, Chris Benoit’s music plays, ‘the Crippler’ appearing at the top of the entrance way holding Kurt’s medals. That distracts Angle, who looks like his face is about to pop with how red it’s turning. His focus completely gone, Holly dropkicks …

They’re still calling Jeff’s victory over Triple H a couple of week’s back when he won the Intercontinental title as the biggest upset in the history of Smackdown. After HHH is introduced out comes Steve Austin who joins Michael Cole and Tazz at the announcer’s desk. Stephanie, Jeff and Lita are all at ringside. ‘Stone Cold’ says how he is still getting people coming up to him at airports asking “Why ‘Stone Cold’ why?” admitting that he sold his soul to be the World Wrestling Federation champion but is happier now than he’s ever been in his life. He can’t wait until Judgment Day and the Undertaker needs to worry about his own business rather than his. Jeff with a run…

I hadn't watched this match in nearly 20 years. At the time, we thought All Japan Women's was having a renaissance and would go on to survive in the same way that modern New Japan has. Little did we know that All Japan would fold within a few years and that Momoe would retire young and start a family. Watching this 20 years on, there's nothing here that would bother a Joshi fan. For every criticism you could make, the reply would be "that's Joshi." They don't do anything that wasn't already well established in the genre. You can criticize this type of match until the cows come home, but it will never change anything. There are Joshi matches where the selling is better, th…

Awful then, and awful now. I'd love to say this was an epic war, but it was so far removed from anything that I like in Joshi that I honestly thought it was stupid. I'm not against brawling as an alternative to the go-go-go style of Joshi, but 50 minutes of early 00s garbage brawling is not my idea of a great Joshi brawl.

I took a long break from this stuff so I need to relearn the lay of the land. This is rudos contra rudos. Satanico hates Ultimo Guerrero. Ultimo Guerrero hates Satanico. Shocker hates Bestia Salvaje and Emilio Charles Jr. Bestia Salvaje & Emilio Charles Jr hate Shocker. And Black Warrior's the guy wondering "why can't we all be friends?" This had some decent moments, but it was hardly red hot considering Satanico and Ultimo were about to have a singles match. Ultimo Guerrero fouled Satanico with a foreign object, which I guess is a step up from a low blow, but doesn't bode well for their mano a mano.

I found a few reviews I never got around to posting when tidying up some files. There was one previous retirement from the project when I thought it was dead, this time I really am done. There’s a slight bit of hesitancy before Hotstuff hiptosses Rudy. He clotheslines him to the outside and then launches himself at him with an over-the-top rope tope that had some serious hang time. Rudy gets the jump when he’s thrown back inside and from there works Hotstuff over. Wow, I was not expecting a Tarantula out of him that’s for sure! Hotstuff fires back with some knife edge chops and a low dropkick takes Rudy down. One handed slam. He drops an elbow but it looks lik…

This was fun. Watching Ebessan try to work shoot style with Murahama was a hoot.

Talk about it here.

Riki Choshu & Manabu Nakanishi vs Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami - NJPW 5/5/01 Fukuoka Dome Weird match both in execution and booking. Looking at everyone’s cagematch history match seems really random. The show drew 25000, Don Frye, Yasuda and Nagata are on the card but they are each wrestling people you’d expect them to beat. There’s an All Japan vs New Japan match but All Japan is represented by Mutoh & Hase and it is against Chono & his gang so not really a new permutation. Ogawa vs Choshu sounds like a draw but a pretty big number. It seems like Choshu was out by 2002 and starting his new promotion in 2002. Perhaps this was the only person Hashi…

Nice to see a longer Regal match. If you squint, you can almost see him wrestling Robbie Brookside. Both guys added their usual touches, but it was clear they were trying to work the house style. That's not such a bad thing since it's a pretty good house style, IMO, but they were times when it felt like they were trying extra hard to hard their "marks," so to speak. I always forget that Regal was a legit heavyweight until I see a match like this where he has to hunch over the entire time. Decent match, but somebody wasn't convinced as they didn't run it at Judgment Day.

This was enjoyable. I guess you'd call it a house show version of Benoit vs. Angle, or perhaps a warm up for their Judgement Day match. I liked the fact that it was a straight match with no bullshit. It gave you a chance to focus on their wrestling, which is the best part of the feud.

While he did face off against Grandmaster Sexay on Smackdown, the night after winning the Light Heavyweight title, Jerry Lynn was nowhere to be seen on Raw, instead being relegated to the Metal portion of the taping. We get some backstage words from the new champion who says that when he got the opportunity to be in the World Wrestling Federation he made a promise to himself to make an impact. Last week on Heat he did just that by capturing the Light Heavyweight title and now he’s going to take the belt to new levels Kevin Kruger was an early 90s WWF job guy so it’s a bit of a surprise to still see him wrestling in the same role a decade later. This is a title mat…

Awkward undercard Monterrey wrestling is interesting, I guess? I was hoping this would have a bit more of a punk rock, DIY feel, but it didn't.

This was a typical Monterrey bout. A lot of comedy, ref spots and dick jokes. Fun for the whole family. The fans got into it with the wrestlers a bit and were treated to the usual shit finish. There were a few good exchanges and some killer dives at the end, but probably too much Porky and La Parka for my liking. Zumbido was awesome. I wonder why he hasn't been appearing on the main shows. They were about to make him a Guapo at one point. Was he injured? (Looks like he got hurt in August.) I imagine if you were a Monterrey fan it was fun seeing the CMLL guys in person, but when they were leaving at the end, I kept wondering if they were really happy with that shit finish.…

On first glance maybe not the sort of match I would choose to check out (i.e. something involving Billy Gunn), but this is the WWF TV debut of Randy Orton. I’m not sure if this ever aired in the U.S. as the versions on YouTube have it as a ‘Dark’ match, and there is no commentary track, although it definitely aired on Heat here in the U.K. and there is a version online from the German broadcast. Orton gets some entrance music and even cuts a promo to dissimilate him from your regular jobber, which the crowd most likely, having never seen him before, view him as. His promo was just the running down of a local sports team to garner some cheap and easy heat. Young Randal…

A pretty sizeable ovation for Tajiri in this dark match, getting both “E-C-W” and “Tajiri” chants. Funaki has Taka Michinoku with him and they do the dubbed interview with some lame comedy about how Tajiri is not Japanese and is in fact from New Jersey, because if he was Japanese he would be like Kaientai and would be “evil”. Funaki gets backdropped out onto the apron where Tajiri kills him with this awesome kick, Taka selling that too by holding his face. Nice spinning heel kick followed by a standing moonsault. The crowd are “Ooh-ing” after everything Tajiri does at the moment. Funaki catches him with a pretty shoddy looking reverse crossbody off the middle. Tajir…

I think the only people missing are Dean Malenko and Essa Rios, which goes to show how little depth there is to the WWF’s Light Heavyweight division that when you have a Fatal Four-Way match it features two-thirds of said division. At least everyone was afforded an introduction here, unlike on Smackdown. What they weren’t afforded though was much time. All action for the couple of minutes it lasts, although that action primarily consisted of one man going for a pin and then another man breaking it up at two. After Lynn backdrops the Grandmaster over the top rope to the outside onto Taka he’s left all alone with Crash and immediately hits a high impact DDT for the win.…

Bit of a lightweight match but it sets up a mano a mano the following week between Wagner and Lizmark.

This was a decent match but unconvincing. Am I really supposed to believe that Shinjiro Ohtani can beat Otsuka with BattlARTS rules? While he was still a junior in 2000, I thought Ohtani remained one of the better workers in Japan, but shoot style was never one of his strengths. This should have been a mismatch, but Otsuka is so often the job boy in these situations. I hated the use of pro-style moves. It's a pet peeve of mine in shoot style. That was the kiss of death as far as me recommending this.

This was good, but I wanted it to be life-changing. These guys were awesome against each other in tag matches, but their singles matches don't use the same elements as the tag bouts. They try too hard to have quasi fights when they should be out and out brawling. Their styles don't really mesh well as MMA, and I hate the way that Ishikawa always jobs. I know people love this feud, but their singles bouts leave me cold.

This took forever to start with both Shocker and Silver King cutting promos, and Mr. Niebla coming out to replace SK for reasons I wasn't following. Once it started, the action was pretty good. Casas has nothing to do at this point, but we get to see him work with Zumbido here, which is nice. Your mileage may vary on how much you care about him working with Bestia for the millionth time, but it's a pairing that I always enjoy. I forget how good even a washed up La Fiera is. This was a nice, tidy win for the tecnicos, and the bout was clean, which was a blessing.

This coulda had class. It coulda been a contender. I like how CMLL brought back rudos contra rudos at this time, and reinstated the importance of mano a mano bouts. Two perfectly good throwback moves. I also like the storm they created between Satanico and Ultimo Guerrero. This could have been intense, short and indecisive and it wouldn't have mattered so long as it kicked ass. But this didn't kick ass. Instead, it danced around it. It pushed the storyline further, but not in a way that kept me begging for more.

This is shot fan came style, which can make it hard to follow, but at least there's no annoying CZW announcers. For a match with Triple Asai moonsaults thirty seconds in, they actually do get into a bit of a structure here with heat segments by the SAT and Red (although only after a matrix sequence between Jose and Blade that is, uh, not good). There was a lot to dislike here, but also a lot of effort and things to enjoy. Yes, there's an insanely long missed move train and a convoluted tiered superplex that they can't even get right, but they are also working real hard (getting a "Fuck the Hardys!" chant). I'm not sure I'd recommend this without reservations, but it'…