September 2001

Talk about it here.

This was a fun sprint with a babyfaced Sekimoto and blonde Ohtani being stiff and surly. Loved the buckwild opening with Sekimoto going after Ohtani, spearing him on the facewash attempt and dumping him with a release German. Ohtani biting the thumb to escape a chinlock is a nice transition into him being real mean with his baseball dropkicks and slaps, busting open Sekimoto's mouth. Sekimoto's chops are loud and proud and he gets a couple of two counts off lariats but this is Ohtani's show. Swan-dive dropkick, dragon suplex, powerbomb, and finishing him off with his King Cobra Clutch.

is there a better bomb throwin', no sellin' little shitkicker than Takaiwa? This was a pretty decent match with Hoshikawa trying the more technical approach and Takaiwa obviously going the rough-and-tumble route. Hoshikawa will come at him with hard kicks, Takaiwa will no sell them in order to slap him the face and chop him down. Takaiwa throws really hard chops. He lariats him over the barricade, powerbombs him on the floor, hits a superplex. Hoshikawa keeps coming back with kicks and makes the mistake of trying to contain Takaiwa with a butterfly lock (Takaiwa obviously counters out with a Death Valley Bomb). He finally takes down Hoshikawa after three consecutive laria…

Another great Tamon Honda underdog tale. I’d previously only seen the last seven minutes of this match before but seeing it in its entirety really fleshes it out. Here, Honda’s the dopey but mat dangerous Deputy Dawg. They work the opening few minutes to a stalemate, before Akiyama DDTs Honda on the rampway and continues working the neck, using his knees, legscissors, and at one point, slapping on a rear headlock and cranking Honda around into a modified front facelock. Akiyama is able to keep cutting off Honda's momentum – hitting an Exploder in response to Honda’s backdrop and then putting him in a crossface hold – but eventually, Honda breaks out, delivering a couple …

This starts with Shocker trying to woo some woman who's been in the front row for Emilio Charles' matches in recent weeks. I have no idea who she was, and I'm too lazy to look it up. I'll assume she was a soap opera star. Excellent TV match, as you'd expect from the talent involved. My favorite match up was Black Warrior vs. Casas. That's not a match up I can remember seeing a lot of in the past, but I thought they were excellent. For some reason, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on dangerous moves in CMLL. I'm not sure if they're trying to get over how high risk some of these new moves are, or if they're still trying to put over the finish to Universo vs. Aguayo,…

You may remember Big Hail from WCW where he wrestled a few matches under his real name, Emory Hale, wrestled DDP on an episode of Thunder as the masked ‘Machine’ and showed up towards the end run of Saturday Night in 2000 as Hail. If you’ve not seen him before he’s a big jacked up dude. Meltzer wrote that Hulk Hogan ended up having him under contract, basically in that if he ever got his own promotion off the ground, he was going to be his big rival. I think he does turn up in the XWF later in the year. Abby is carrying some gold over his shoulder, well it’s hardly fitting around his waist is it? Hail’s punches look terrible and he’s pulling them badly. Jimmy Hart, …

The action is joined in progress with both wrestlers, as well as the referee, down. As the bloodied Invader gets to his feet, Fantasy, Sierra’s valet, lightly taps him in the head with a chair. He kicks out of the cover and while I’m reluctant to use the words “sympathetic babyface” about Invader I, that’s pretty much what he is here, bloodied, beaten, but not giving up and constantly trying to fight back. Sierra’s punches fire him up, only for his jumping headbutt to take more out of him than it does his opponent. With Fantasy distracting the official Sierra grabs his Cuban flag and cracks it over the Invader for a near fall. After ducking under a clothesline, a hear…

Wow! A WWC match not actually joined in progress, Konnan cutting a pre-match promo and running off his catchphrase. He slides into the ring and the Barbarian is instantly on him, Barb showing some unexpected aggression. K-Dawg reverses the Irish whip and the ring is just about big enough for him to execute his forward roll into a clothesline. After a facebuster the Barbarian takes to the grass, pulling Konnan out with him. They fight over to a staged area, Barbarian slamming K-Dawg on the wood. He picks up what looks like the lid of a cooler, but Konnan dropkicks that into his face. The make their way back to the ring where Barb slaps on a nerve hold. Konnan fires…

These are the matches that makes the year worth it. 2001 has had some good stuff lately but it feels like the narratives have already been established and were waiting on something like Kobashi coming back or ROH starting to change directions. This was easily one of the top 100 matches of the year. It feels like a match that may have been viewed by double digit people. It’s a one camera show with no commentary. It feels akin to taking a long road trip and finding that great BBQ place on the side of the road that delivers. They start friendly enough although Yu Yu declines the opening handshake. Amano throughout the match goes time and time to the armbar and it looks nasty…

This followed a simple formula: Niebla, Olimpico & Safari have the National trios titles and Los Boricuas want them. Pierroth was sitting at ringside with a cigar. I've missed that crazy bastard.

Negro Casas and Juventud aren't getting along. This was a decent trios, but it was mostly about the dissent between the tecnicos. Black Warrior was the most game of the rudos and continued to impress me with his form. Tarzan Boy looks like he's taken a few steps back from his peak 2000 work. I wasn't impressed with him in this match at all. There's no real developments with the Casas/Juventud beef. The match ends with everybody thinking Juvie's a dick, rudo and tecnico alike.

This started off with the big contract signing between the two Infernales groups. Then there were some promos and shit, and finally we got into the match. Definitely a wilder and more intense brawl than in recent months. They turned it up a notch with the Anniversary Show right around the corner. Big melee at the end with Tarzan Boy rushing the ring and Shocker and Apolo Dantes evening up the numbers.

Talk about it here.

Add another WWF developmental territory to Steve Bradley’s resume with the HWA. The WCW vs WWF feud has morphed its way across to developmental, although Jim Cornette points out that Bradley is his own man who calls his own shots and makes his own decisions. Jindrak rolls out the way of the moonsault and lands a butterfly suplex. Some great looking lefts to the jaw. He telegraphs the backdrop but Bradley can’t capitalise and Jindrak takes his head off with a clothesline. It’s his turn to miss the target after heading upstairs, Bradley avoiding a ropey looking twisting splash. Swinging neckbreaker by Bradley, however Jamie Noble is out and distracts the referee from …

JD STAR KILL EM ALL!!!! I had stupidly high expectations because it's BIG MATCH HIROMI YAGI!!!! and naturally as such this was underwhelming. I'll put the blame on Sakai as she seemed to be kind of going through the motions. There were still a few cool little moments mostly thanks to Yagi who had developed a cool veteran aura. Some nice matwork, neat armbar work, getting a cheap takedown from the ropes etc. Sakai, on the other hand, looked kind of poor. I guess she just didn't feel like it that night, because, you know she had very good matches with Yabushita, a judo girl with an armbar-centric moveset, what's stopping her from matching up well with Yagi? But it just didn…

A pretty good but disappointing tag match considering the names involved. There were definitely some cool moments with Fujiwara being the standout of the match. I liked his early lock ups with Ikeda and them throwing stuff like Fujiwara's big slap in the corner and Ikeda's crumpling head kick. Sugiura was the clunky, hothead amateur in there against Hashimoto but worked really well against Fujiwara. Loved Fujiwara's boot scrape to the face to counter the triangle into a leglock and Sugiura throwing Fujiwara with a couple of overhead suplexes. The outside stuff was whatever, Sugiura's selling wasn't very good, and there wasn't enough Ikeda/Hashimoto interactions. Sugiura's…

This took a little while to get going with the ZERO1 boys beating on the NOAH juniors but it heats up a bit when Hoshikawa and Kanemaru start taking it to each other. Hoshikawa plays a good sympathetic babyface, Takaiwa the asskicker. Kanemaru heels it up later in the match with the wrist tape chokes and lowblows and Shiga is awkward and not great but he has some good fire throughout. I love Takaiwa's dirty single leg crab. Team NOAH isolates Hoshikawa for awhile before Takaiwa gets the hot tag and tries to finish off Kanemaru. Really fun finishing stretch with both Shiga and Takaiwa making some big saves. Kanemaru's school boy nearfall was awesome and Hoshikawa's snap No…

Momoe gets the title shot she earned by winning the Japan Grand Prix. The most notable thing about this all these years later is how good her selling is. She does some amazing rag doll selling, really throwing her body about. Not only that, but she manages to make Joshi restholds look like the most excruciating pain ever. Realistically, she doesn't have much in her arsenal that can put Ito away, so she's pretty much relying on a flash pin. And boy does she sell each pin attempt like there's no tomorrow. I don't think I've seen another wrestler try as hard to hold someone down as Momoe does here. But she can't hold Ito down and eventually falls victim to the footstomps. Th…

Things that are weird: 1)a midcarder getting a bigger pop than probably anyone on WWE television in the last five months 2)Raw using Thorn In Your Eye and RAW IS WAR in 2001 when the show feels completely different than in 1998/1999. This is a really cool read: http://www.fightingspiritmagazine.co.uk/art/interviews/499/training-ground-with-ricky-steamboat-fsm-122-aug-2015 The "sell during shine so you don't have to rebuild heat" bit stands out, and that's exactly what Jeff did here. Ok chain wrestling to start things off with Storm grabbing the hair to control the match. I liked all of Jeff's dropkick variations (the corner one in particular was so great but his Bas…

Satanico has been slicking his hair back in recent weeks. It looks so smooth. What is Blue Demon Jr doing in CMLL? Riding on Santo's coat-tails, I presume. You'd think a week out from the Anniversary Show they'd have a big brawl between the Infernales teams, but we get a lot of Satanico vs. Atlantis here, so I'm happy. In fact, I genuinely think his work against Atlantis is better than anything he's done all year. Casas vs. Averno was also really good. Casas has been on a tear of late against the likes of Black Warrior and Averno. Things are shaping up nicely when suddenly the Infernales attack. You didn't think we'd have a go-home show with the Infernales fighting, did …

The story here was that Fuerza didn't want to wrestle his boy. Juventud has been teasing a rudo turn in recent weeks, so when they finally squared off it was no surprise that they did a Hulk Hogan Finger Poke of Doom. Santo demanded that they fight each other, which led to a big beatdown of Santo. While Santo took a beating, Juventud stood around doing nothing. The tecnicos finally mounted a comeback, and just as Santo as about to inflict some justice on Fuerza, Juventud intervened and turned rudo. As far as I'm aware, Juventud didn't last very long in CMLL, but at least this angle thrust Fuerza into the spotlight for a change.

Los Boricuas still want the belts. Pierroth really wants the belts. Uh oh, there's some dissension between Pierroth and the Boricuas, but it's all good, they win the third fall and the match. Pierroth is happy. Los Boricuas are coming for the belts next Friday.

AJPW Triple Crown Champion Keiji Muto vs Scott Hall - NJPW 9/23/01 Man if you ever wanted to show someone the most bare bones, stripped down pro wrestling match this might be the one. They just sleepwalk through this match. All of Hall’s punches and work are tight but he is putting in minimal effort. Muto is in 2001 cruise control mode. He found a formula that is bulletproof in 2001. Muto with the Triple Crown is still a mind fuck. Weird fun fact that Hall challenged for Triple Crown. I think there’s some lingering NWO civil war shit here. Hall is with Chono and Muto is with TenKoji. The first five minutes they work a headlock, Muto hits his power elbow. Hall hi…

What an awkward match. This starts off as a piss poor indy match and turns into a ladder match. There were so many better indy matches than this in 2001, so there's really no reason to watch Jericho and Van Dam fail at a WWF version.

So the follow up to the super classic at SummerSlam isn't quite on the same level. The heat isn't quite there and the hate isn't as palpable as it was in the previous match and both of those things hurt this match a bit. Angle is the aggressive challenger who knows he had Austin beat last time and goes all out early on, throwing Austin off the stage and smashing his head into the post like Austin did to Angle at SummerSlam. Angle exposes the concrete so he can piledrive Austin but it never happens. He and Austin take a couple of bumps onto the concrete that largely don't mean anything in the grand scheme of the match, they're kind of just there. The finisher stealing remi…