October 2001

Don't let Samoa Joe's crap gear fool you, he was still brilliant even in his early years. He's ruthless and it's clear that he was studying his Battlarts tapes. Poor Frankie Kazarian doesn't stand much of a chance against Joe, so he tries to outclass him with his high-flying. I'm impressed how all the mat-wrestling on this show so far looks. It feels more authentic than what we have seen in a lot of indy shows from the past decade. More traditional, but never to the point of slow. Overall, a fast match that made Joe look like an unstoppable monster and a potential King of the Indies winner. ★★¾

Scoot Andrews is a name I haven't heard in years. He was hyped up as a big deal around this time, but he never made it to the big time, most likely due to his size. Donovan Morgan is similar to Doug Williams in that he's a good technical wrestler, but with little charisma, which is funny because he's wearing the exact same trunks that Dean Malenko wore during his WWE run. This was a mostly mediocre affair with a few decent spots here and there. These two didn't appear to have the greatest chemistry together and there were times when you could tell that their timings were off. This is the first match of the night to go over ten minutes, but it feels much longer. …

Tony Jones is working a shooter gimmick and looks the part. He's tall, muscular and looks like he could legitimately take down anyone on this card with little effort. It's a shame that he never made anything of himself in the wrestling business outside of a few tours of Battlarts and a handful of jobber matches for WWE. The match starts with them grappling like two grizzly bears and suddenly Jones hits an overhead suplex out of nowhere. The first of many of Bison Smith. This match is mainly enjoyable just watching Jones throw big Bison Smith around like he's a cruiserweight. ★★½

This was from a weird venue. It was an outdoor amphitheater at some Seaside Park in Okinawa. Ishikawa got his win back from earlier in the year, but I'm not sure how much it mattered in the grand scheme of things. Short fight, but one of the better BattlARTS matches of the year. As far as I can tell, this was their last show until the following year. Another reason to dislike 2001.

This had a lot going for it. Felino was being given a singles push again, Black Warrior and Black Tiger had a burgeoning feud, and there was some awesome brawling between Satanico and Mascara Magica. It's always great watching guys face off again after an apuestas, so it was cool that we got this match up. I was really into this and then they did a bullshit finish. I could have cried. Where's the Commission?! Why don't they do something about these bullshit finishes, huh? Tarzan Boy is so annoying. Hey, you worked me, but you ruined the match jackass! I really liked what they had going here.

This was so much fun. The Villanos were on point in this match and the crowd was hot. Pierroth continues to be one of the best performers in the company.

Full disclosure, I first saw this match in 2001 and voted it #2 MOTY in the 2001 WON Year End Awards. That tape is long since lost and I assumed I'd probably never see the match again because I don't recall anyone ever talking about it at the time. Well goodness gracious I found a copy of it on buried on a list somewhere and this afternoon it showed up at my apartment. This is the stream consciousness word vomit salad review of my first time rewatching the match in 15 years. La Parka/Halloween/Rey Misterio Sr vs Rey Mysterio Jr/Damian/Vampiro 10/26/01 Tijuana The version I saw back in 2001 was a BB handheld shot at ringside. This version is a handheld from the cro…

My expectations going into this were extremely low, knowing that both are well past their primes and how these two can tend to phone it in, but I completely dug what they were going for here. It's a match that takes into account their physical limitations and builds off of their collective charisma to make all the sparks and quick bursts (particularly from Mutoh) hold much more significance than usual. The matwork and limb targeting early on is kept to a minimum and that's for the best: Mutoh's a great face when his sporadic choices in pacing and offense come off like a necessary reaction to his opponents. Chono can't work like Vader in 1991, but somewhere along the lines…

Morgan shows some charisma for the first time when he spits at Dragon. After each of them gets in a few eye pokes at each other, they work in some nice classic British style grappling, before Morgan gains control and whips Dragon into the barriers separating the crowd from the ring. The finish comes out of nowhere when Morgan accidentally gets pinned when attempting a rolling clutch pin. This was fine. Nothing amazing, but it never dragged or anything. ★★½

As one can expect, this is a very technical bout. Williams tries to size up and intimidate Danielson, but gets a dragon screw for his troubles. Aside from small moments like the previously mentioned, this is nearly all wrestling, little character work. They do a neat spot with dueling heel hooks and Danielson's counter to the Chaos Theory was one of my favorite moments from this match. These guy move around so smoothly and it's clear there's great chemistry on display. ★★★½

A battle royal containing the losing first round tournament wrestlers and a mix of other APW talent. This is just here to give the audience a break from the tournament, but it's rather dull. Spanky puts in a decent babyface performance here and gets the crowd behind him. He even pays tribute to his trainer, by doing the skinning the cat spot. The final two wrestlers are Vincenzo Massaro and Robert Thompson. Thompson puts Massaro away after coming off the top rope. ★

We start of day 2 with a match that doesn't even reach the 90 second mark. Bison Smith comes down with his leg heavily taped up. They lock up and start a slow chain wrestling segment, but it's clear that Bison's injury is bothering him. Morgan doesn't ever attempt to attack the leg, so I'm assuming the injury is legit and he quickly rolls him up for the win. Yeah, they would of fared better if they just announced that Morgan had advanced due to Bison being unable to compete, as Morgan looks like a clown for not attacking the clearly injured leg of his opponent. DUD

A much better showing from Daniels when compared to the lackluster match he had with Super Dragon the night before. This goes just shy of 15 minutes and they cram everything they possibly can into this. Much like the Dragon/Spanky match, it's clear that these two have had a lot of experience wrestling each other as they move so seamlessly and smooth when going from move to move. Styles does trip over the top rope as he's going for a dive, but he thankfully saves himself from any real damage. Seeing the first few rows come unglued from their seats after Daniels catches Styles with a German was magical. This is not without flaws, mind you. They do venture into overkill…

Talk about it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJVIjUWTdd8

They start off with a lot of stalling by Daniels, which eventually leads to some uninteresting and slow chain wrestling. Ki hits his Tidal Crush cartwheel kick and lands the Phoenix Splash, but is unable to go for the pin right away because of his damaged ribs. After getting worked on some more, Ki fights back with a fiery comeback. Daniels is finished off by a Ki Krusher (which gets a huge pop from the crowd) and is submitted via Dragon Sleeper. Although the first ten minutes dragged, they make the last five count with an explosive finishing stretch. ★★★

This is exactly what you would expect and it's brilliant. A hard hitting match with a strong shoot style influence. Joe gets the better of most exchanges, but all it takes is one big strike landing and Ki has control. They even do the spot where they take turns selling strikes and it doesn't look hokey, unlike the number of times ROH has attempted to replicate that same moment throughout the years. Both guys look strong from these, even with the submission ending. ★★★½

Van Hammer’s unlikely tour of Big Japan continues with another televised bout. The light tube and barbed wire covered boards are already in the ring, one positioned upright in each unoccupied corner. Zandig presses Beater over his head, which brings in Pondo with his Stop sign to make the save, however before he can do so, Hammer, who is moving in slow motion, is in and boots the sign into his face. Hammer gets in on the Hardcore action, stapling a dollar bill to Pondo’s cheek and then another onto Wifebeater. Ah, okay, this is clipped, the next thing we see being Beater getting powerbombed through the light tube covered board. Zandig and Hammer double press slam Pon…

A bizarre and awesome match, probably the closest we ever got to Tanahashi doing shoot style. You'd get tricked into thinking he is a good wrestler by watching this, he put his amateur wrestling skills to use and did some really nice takedowns and matwork. Eventually he tries to trade strikes with Murakami and dies via face punching. Super fun match, I doubt anything from this year's G1 will endear itself to me as much as this little bout did. Inoki come back. ***-***1/4

Cool 7 minute match built around swank technical stuff. If Dragon Gate still has matches like these I'd really like to know about them. Kondo does some surprisingly nifty submission stuff and SAITO has some impressive swanky headstand moves. Some moves were a little slow, altough in their defense they were doing pretty intricate stuff and things didn't get exhibition-y.

The graphic on screen reads ‘Halloween Spectacular’ so that gives us a rough idea of the date and when this took place as that can be an issue with some of these WWC matches. A rematch from last month then and again Invader I is bleeding just like at the Anniversario show. This is nothing but a fairly half-hearted brawl on the floor from what we see, both get their heads rammed into the ring post, both use the wooden ring steps as a weapon. Sierra is in control of things when he heads off to collect a metal chair which he jabs into the Invader. He then opens the chair out, places it over his upper body and sits on it, trapping him underneath. The Cuban was busted ope…