May 2002

Incidental blood is simply the best blood. Sai elevates himself, and the match, to another level after he gets his nose busted by Ishikawa. Some real "you just made me bleed my own blood" type energy from this dude.

Incredible match that kickstarts into a high gear immediately from the outset when Hidaka disrespects the shit out of Hoshikawa. From there, they wrestle each other with the type of urgency that makes your heart pound, and the momentum shifts heavily towards Hidaka's favor when Hoshikawa recklessly kicks the ringpost, damaging his leg. He loses the match not too long after as he's kick-based striker, and Hidaka opportunistically uses that to his advantage to set-up the Shawn Capture. ****1/4

Stiff, uncooperative shootstyle pro wrestling. Apparently this was Yokois first match ever and he looked good right from the get go. Whenever Sato & Sai got too uppity he would start throwing punches. I also loved how he kept blocking Sais irish whip attempts and, once he had Sai prone, ran the ropes himself and blasted him with a huge dropkick. Sakata is at his best when he acts like a dick and there was plenty of that here. I also liked how he acted like he was a class above all these greenhorns. There were some brutal saves in this match aswell. Sai took a big beating, getting bloodied by a Sakata spin kick and punched in the face by Yokoi. Sato & Sai were effe…

Hernandez is next on the list of Big Massive Gaijins for Hashimoto to destroy. Hernandez didn't do any of the cool amateur moves that he did when he fought Koichiru Kimura 2 years before this. This had one or two neat moments and of course Hashimoto annihilating a fool but was basically just a sub 5 minute squash. Altough it was decidedly cool to see Hashimoto not play nice guy trying to carry some dullard for once and just taking it home.

Another good match between these two. Man the folks going to this garage got to see a lot of great wrestling. This had a bit more traditional layout with Quance dominating early on the mat and hitting armdrags before Dragon takes out his legs with nasty dropkicks to the knee. Quance looked good again working snug nelson holds and leg trips on the ground. His limping leg selling was also pretty good. Super Dragon did a nice job saving 1 or 2 sloppy moments of his technico opponent, smacked him around while applying leglocks and hit a brutal double stomp to the leg. This did not have as many nearfalls as their other matches which is probably a good thing. Instead of your-tu…

This was joined in progress, but it looked like another fun chapter in one of the best women's pairings of the early 00s. I say this in every Ito match, but my god, the foot stomps. I am pretty sure that Kaoru Ito's double foot stomp is my favorite move of all-time. Ito is such a weird worker for me. She doesn't really fit the mold of what I think a great pro-wrestler should be, but every time I watch her matches I get drawn into the action. Ito pummels Momoe, as you'd imagine. Momoe takes some big bumps, including a fun one where she bounces off the top rope to the outside. And there is an endless series of crushing blows to the rib cage that never, ever gets old. I didn…

I really dug this. They kept this super tight and fought over every hold. I really like Steve Corino. He doesn't have the athleticism that Low Ki has, or the arsenal of moves, but he's dogged. And he keeps fighting the entire match. Again, this was the perfect tonic for all of those Low Ki spotfests. I wasn't sure how Corino would match up with Low Ki since Corino seems like a guy Low Ki could murder with his kicking game, but Corino was tough as nails. Great scrap.

There's something to be said about these early junior NOAH matches, they were all into building toward a hot finishing stretch as opposed to just do a zillion spots like today's stuff. ANd it's really refreshing to have the guys take in down slow at first. Kanemaru is a dick and when he tales control, he bodyslams KENTA outside and shit's on. Nice dynamic actually, with KENTA being bullied around until he finally makes a comeback then it's bomb throwing times. Very-good/Excellent match with the trademark delayed selling on a killer spot exchange, leading to one of them taking advantage. Kanemaru is slept on, he wasn't flashy but he was super solid and had the dickish atti…

Osaka Pro is alive and well. This was a standard Japanese tag match, but I was happy to see that Osaka Pro is still the most genki promotion in Japan. Daio QUALLT is Osaka Pro's Big Red Machine and his partner here was clearly meant to be the Undertaker to Daio's Kane, so you can imagine how this played out. We didn't get to see the full repertoire from the little maestro, Delfin, as he was mainly doing tag spots, and his partner Demekin was getting most of the shine, but Delfin still looked like one of the best workers in Japan. Exciting finish and a nice payoff. Osaka Pro knew how to book for its audience. I wonder if any of @gordi's buddies were there.

Fun six man action. If you want to see good trios wrestling outside of Mexico, it doesn't get much better than Osaka Pro. Really polished, smooth, six-man action. It appears that Murahama was working more like a junior after his killer rookie year, which is a shame, but I suppose it helped him get bookings in other places. Black Buffalo is as solid as ever. What a great hand he was. A true professional. Everyone else chips in with nice spots. Refreshing match.

Crazy, PPV quality ladder match on free TV. This ain't the WWE I grew up watching. Eddie takes a while to introduce the ladder, and you can hear JR and the King getting fidgety on commentary, but once the ladder gets involved, Eddie takes some crazy ass bumps. I always fear a bit for Eddie with that smaller frame of his taking vicious bumps. The ladder portion of the match is better than the Edge No DQ match, but unfortunately Van Dam blows his big ladder spot at the end, and Eddie has to call a a finish on the fly. Then, after all the punishment they took, the match was overshadowed by an Austin run-in and Benoit turning heel. Not sure why they turned Benoit heel in Edmo…

DAMN I kinda loved Yatsu in this and while I'm a huge Yatsu fan I didn't expect that at all. Yatsu is 46 years old here but still really spry and fun, and Nakanishi doesn't hold back. This is really the Yatsu show as he busts out all kinds of fun punches and submissions and still hits the great bulldog and powerslam. Nakanishi was largely your regular Nakanishi but he does hit a really nice shotai combo and as a said he really pastes Yatsu with chops and lariats. If this went like 3 and a half minutes less it would be about the greatest WCWSN match in japanese history.

Orton's first meaningful match of his career. It's short, but he gets a ton of shine. His boilerplate whitemeat babyface act is hilarious to watch, but everyone has to start somewhere.

This was a good TV match that got better as it went along. Angle was doing the old Buddy Rose trick of wearing a wig after having his head shaved, and was using Rick Steiner style headgear to hold it down. Every time he'd get tossed around the ring, it looked like his hair was standing on end. He won the match halfway through after a hellacious angle slam from the top rope only for Hogan to appear and throw him back in the cage. Such a Hogan thing to do. This had everything you'd expect from a TV cage match -- blood, bodies lying everywhere, big spots off the top rope. Entertaining stuff pretty early on after the collapse of the Invasion angle.

This ruled. How often does CMLL have two MOTYCs on the same show? And it wasn't even a PPV. This started off with a bunch of Mexico vs Japon cosplay with the entrances and turned into a high octane brawl. It was a mix of old school apuesta match brawling mixed with the more modern move oriented style. I was over the moon when Shocker bladed. I didn't think that was possible anymore in this era of CMLL, and I loved how committed everyone was to seeing things through to the end. The match never lost steam and Magica ended up having a star turn. I'll never doubt the Japanese guys on excursion again.

This was a hell of a match. Easily the best wrestling I've seen in the 2002 CMLL season aside from the Wagner vs. Shocker singles match. In fact, it was some of the best tag wrestling in lucha history at least in the televised era. In many ways, it was less about rudos vs. tecnicos and more about rising stars vs. lucha legends. It was wrestled clean with none of the bullshit that usually accompanies a GdI match. The momentum shifts were earned and the match was hard fought. The focal point was the excellent Santo vs. Guerrero match-up, but the heart and soul of the match were the emotional reactions from Casas and Bucanero. Santo was great in this. Guerrero was arguably b…