January 2002

This was a solid midcard match that continued to stoke the fire between Pierroth and Gran Markus Jr. Los Boricuas were such a fun unit. These aren't my favorite tecnicos, but they had enough flash and enough highspots to make for entertaining foils. The sequences between Blue Demon Jr and Gran Markus were surprisingly good, and Violencia did a great job as the glue man.

Run of the mill stuff. There were a lot of talented guys involved but nobody brought their A game. I expected more from Shocker and Bestia.

Adding the Villanos into the mix with the Boricuas was a nice idea, but this match is really just an excuse for Pierroth to finally signal a beatdown of Gran Markus Jr, which he does with a great punch to the face. The Boricuas beat Gran Markus Jr like a dog, and Pierroth cuts a promo.

Tons of fast-paced exchanges and they make the most of the 5-6 minutes that they're allotted. RVD's ribs are loosely focused on, but otherwise this is go-go-go. Seems like some timing cues were missed in the finish, but nothing that egregiously takes away from the match. **3/4

This was a decent match. Plenty of Felino and Fuerza took a lead role, which was nice. There was carnage in the third fall when the middle rope broke, and the rudos used it to choke Felino. The doctor called for a stretcher, but the rudos used that as a weapon as well. They finally carried the poor bugger out, only for the rudos to beat on him some more. Atlantis lost his mask, and Casas got a working over as well. Not content with leaving the tecnico team in tatters, Black Tiger wanted to dish out some more hurt after the bout. There's always that little piece of you that hopes this goes somewhere, but I've learned not to get my hopes up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_dNKxcKmeM This goes to an uneventful time limit draw (twice), and it's essentially a podunk house show match with a strong secondary focus on Sunny's theatrics. **1/2

They could've shaved a few minutes off of this and given it to the Ishikawa/Murakami vs. Tanahashi/Suzuki match, because they overextend themselves here going 20, but what we got is what we got. TEAM2000's heat segment drags, but TM4 performs well enough underneath to keep my attention, and a frenetic finishing run gets everyone some shine. This was worth watching for Sasuke's maniacal bumping alone. ***

I wish MUGA had been a full time promotion at this time. This was mostly on the mat, which is where everyone here looks good. This was certainly a good use of Hase whose amateur style stuff still looks very powerful. He and Nishimura with his awesome briding where the standouts here early on. Mutoh just did his usual spiel for the finish, altough Fujinami hitting a flying knee on him was really fun and Nishimuras selling made it look better than usual.

I've seen a lot of Inokiism stuff, some of it it good, some of it is weird, inexplicable and beyond ratings, I fully expected this to be chaotic and unconventional but the match ended up being absolutely amazing as well. The first thing that came to mind with the length is the Ikeda-Ono match, but this one is just better and I don't think it's close even. Saying this would be hailed as a MOTYC by the crew that pimps Futen and Battlarts if it had happened that would almost be instinctive but also undermine everything this match was. It was more than that. It was a pastiche of the Futen violence, the morality, stable wars and art of the no finish (best showcased in the 80s …

This match severely lacks stakes for what's supposed to be their biggest match on their biggest show of the year. From what I understand, it's last minute booking due to Kazuyuki Fujita injuring himself and vacating the IWGP championship, leaving Nagata with no opponent. NOAH steps in to bail them out, but they're not sending Akiyama, their GHC champion, to the Dome to lose. There's some genuinely exciting moments in this one (Emerald Flowsion, hello?), but the odd pacing choices here hurt the escalation leading up to many of those offensive exchanges, and the dual neck selling segments wasn't exactly the most compelling match structure. A more compact, shorter bombf…

Murakami and his BattlARTS pal shake things up in New Japan. Tanahashi & Kenzo actually step up here, working shootstyle and look good. Tanahashi's matwork is especially way better than pretty much anything he did from 2006 onward. Kenzo throwing big crowbar suplexes is certainly way better than whatever he did later also. This was basically an Ishikawa section followed by a Murakami section with both guys bringing their signature stuff. Ishikawa doing cool matwork and Murakami punching dudes in the face. Good shit but you come out of this match wanting to see a singles match.

#wrestling365 Smark Mark Video conveniently put this up on youtube today. Sunny does Candido's intro and Smothers says he doesn't want to babyface himself, but it's great to be in Charleston. Brings up the old SMW feud, but wants a great athletic contest today. Another awesome touch is someone in the audience yelling welcome back to Candido, who replies with "I've never been here before". They have a pretty fun match here. Smothers weird strikes always give me joy. Candido was doing well with a plancha too. Very old school with spots like Candido claiming his hair was pulled and stuff. It all comes down Sunny and powder and a miscue.

This was JIP, but it was a chance to see one of the best workers in the world practicing her craft. Rie Tamada was a tough lady, but she was basically putty in Yoshida's hands. It's a damn shame that Yoshida was practicing a dying craft at this stage, but she spent some time on the mat. The Joshi style stuff wasn't bad either, to be fair, and I dug Yoshida's punches, but you really want 1999 Yoshida to continue forever. It doesn't, and the scene is shittier for it. I wish Yoshida had worked some JWP dates instead of floundering about in ARSION. That would have been the perfect promotion for her in 2002. There's no way Yoshida vs. Ran Yu Yu wouldn't have ruled in 2002. I s…

After watching this I am pretty sure Sean McCully would be Top 30-20 in the world in 2018. His crowbar spin kicks and knees ruled and he was always grappling, keeping this moving. Takaiwa can handle himself in this kind of trainwreck, muscling up a clueless McCully for Powerbombs and Death Valley Bombs. At one point he just leapt forward and forearmed McCully in the throat. Only about 7 of 10 minutes are shown but this will give you everything you want in spades.

VAST ENERGY. This match was a total freakshow, but had far too many great moments not to love it. After working a lithany of martial artists in the 90s and being the king of the Tokyo Dome, Hashimoto has retired to his own remote island to live out his vision of what pro wrestling is supposed to be – some weird combination of Memphis and RINGS. Broken down 2000s Hashimoto is still a seriously great pro wrestler, and him destroying this freak of nature here was damn impressive. Jones really laid into Hashimoto who sold the beating huge. This also included Jones working an iron claw that Hashimoto sold like his skull was about to get crushed, Hashimoto and Jones working 70s…

After a couple of high risk moves that end up outside the ring, they settle into an extended sequence where Kikuchi sits on the mat like Baby Huey. Hashikawa throws kick after kick, which K completely no-sells with a "ho hum bored now" look on his face. It goes from awesome to amusing to when-will-this-end. Then you come back full circle and start to wonder if Hashikawa can actually come up with a strike that will work. Sadly, nothing comes of it. Eventually, Kikuchi gets bored and stands up. He no-sells a few more strikes, and then they move into a plodding your turn-my turn rest of the match. I found most of this one to be a bit of a snoozer. The out-of-nowhere kimu…

Short match by their standards. Pretty well worked. The transitions were less than ideal, but hey, it's a Joshi sprint not a work of art. I'll say this for Hyuga -- for a girl from the Fukuoka style of Joshi, she sure developed some nasty looking knee strikes to go with the flashy moves. Ran is awesome as always. One of the few bright spots on the Japanese scene.

I don't remember Yuki Miyazaki being a comedy worker, but that's how she presented herself here. In between the comedy, they went at each other pretty hard, and there were a few times where Miyazaki had to desperately avoid getting her arm torn off. Not bad for what it was.

Hey, this gets ten minutes! Another fun, fast Smackdown tag match as we continue to see Jericho's stock as champion plummet when he taps clean in the ring to The Rock. RVD's a competent face-in-peril so long as his limbs aren't targeted, which they aren't, and Rocky is simply the hottest of hot tags. ***

These two have phenomenal chemistry, AND this match gets 11 minutes, so this is obviously a hoot, but the non-finish with Kane diminishes this. ***

This was a rare instance of them showing a match in full. It was shot kind of strangely for an Arena Coliseo match and almost felt like a house show match. The first two falls were fairly standard. Antifaz and Zumbido carried over some of their work from Monterrey, and everybody else was solid. The standout was Fiera, who gave an inspired old man performance. If you're a Fiera fan, you should check this out, as he rarely looked this good in the 00s. The match built to an exciting finish with a couple of dives into oblivion. (Safari's one will make you wince.) The finish was the usual BS, but it happened in rhythm, so it wasn't the buzz kill that it would have ordinarily b…

So Shocker is either a tecnico now or on his way to becoming one. (I can never keep up with how this sort of thing works.) This starts off as a holdover from the Porky vs. Tarzan Boy feud, then transitions into Shocker vs. Tarzan Boy. It will be interesting to see how good Shocker is as a tecnico. I thought he was easily one of the top five rudos in Mexico and arguably the most exciting given how fresh he was. I liked the match Shocker and Tarzan Boy had when Tarzan Boy was still finding his way as tecnico, and I liked their work in this match as well. Barring any bullshit, they could conceivably have a very good match. This was a fairly standard match, but it had several…

Taped 1/7/02 from Madison Square Garden, New York Random YouTube find, this was a nice surprise and a really good squash. Christian is European champ and has his awesome operatic post-break up music. Low Ki is one month away from winning the 1st RoH main event. This Metal also had Crash Holly vs. Prince Nana and Saturn vs. Xavier so it's total WWF vs. 2002 RoH inter promotional war (held in MSG!). Those squashes are nothing special; Nana blows up big time against Crash and shows why he moved into managing and the Saturn/Xavier match is too long and doesn't really have a flow (although Xavier looks fine and Saturn doesn't eat him up). This match is on anothe…

This is the 10th Anniversary match for Omukai, who started in wrestling in 1992 when she was 16 years old. I’d never seen either of these wrestlers before so I came into this with no expectations but was pleasantly surprised with what they did in 15 minutes of work. The escalating of violence and intensity grabbed my interest. The draw finish and their willingness to keep fighting left me wanting to see more. Check out my full review of the match, from my 365 Wrestling project.

Brutal match in which Kawada basically tries to send Hase to the retirement home of comedy undercard tags for good. Aside from the opening matwork I thought Hase didn't really hold up his end, he looked like he was getting token bits of offense before Kawada went back to kicking the shit out of him. Pretty inspired Kawada performance although some of those sorry back and forth strike exchagnes were starting to creep in. Still, plenty of great spots mostly involving Kawada kicking Hase really hard in interesting ways.