July 2002

This was Benoit's first match back from his neck injury. It's impossible to overstate the impact that Benoit and Kobashi's injuries had on the wrestling landscape during the time that they were sidelined. They were two of the most important clogs in wrestling before before getting hurt. You don't get a feel for that here because they slot Benoit into a midcard program, but he shows plenty of intensity, particularly in the way he dismantles the Dudleys after the bell. He'd go on to do more important stuff before the year was out. Eddie still looked awkward here. It's amazing how long it took for him to be a confident WWE performer. it's easy to blame that sort of thing on …

"CLIMB THE LADDER, KID! MAKE YOURSELF FAMOUS!" I woke up last night and couldn't fall back to sleep immediately, so I ended up watching this match. Taker does a terrific job putting over the young guy while not looking remotely weak. And it seems to me maybe it's a face turn at the end for him? Everyone wins, and JR's commentary was fantastic. My one complaint is the segment where Taker is almost all the way up the ladder. Jeff's still "passed out" on the floor. Taker comes down and starts beating him some more. Kayfabe, shouldn't he have claimed the title? Then if he wanted to keep beating on Jeff, do so? It's not the story they were telling, and the result …

This was a really good match. In fact, I thought it was something of a statement match from GdI. We've seen them have great matches with Santo & Casas, but not with anybody of the calibre of Damian and Halloween. Damian & Halloween are hardly slouches. Their double teams rock in this match, and Halloween busts ass to keep up with GdI, but you get the point. This is pretty much non-stop action. I don't know if it's edited, but it doesn't need to be because the teams keep hitting that sweet spot where each spot is more interesting than the last .Even though it's a quick match, they do a really good job of taking a fall a piece and setting up a tercera that goes back…

This is face vs face going in, and played up as a dream tag match, between The New Breed – who were the No. 1 tag team in the company at this point (albeit the FWA’s tag division was never one of it’s strong points, mainly due to the shallowness of the UK scene at this time with anyone with ability being needed as a singles wrestler) while Jody and Jonny were of course the two up and coming top stars. There’s a handshake at the start, but the New Breed then jump Fleisch and Storm immediately after the bell to set themselves up as the heels in the match. The opening exchanges are very early 2000s indy stuff, looking very choreographed, but the dive sequence we get fr…

This was Manami Toyota's final match in AJW. It's fitting that it was against Ito as she was Toyota's last major rival. It's not the best or most exciting match the two had, but it more less delivered down the stretch. The match layout was a bit funny with Ito dominating the majority of the bout and Toyota trying to work heel against a crowd that was clearly in her corner. Since she was leaving, it might have been better for her to drop the heel façade and embrace the crowd reaction more. Ito had this really ugly colour scheme going on, which I personally found off-putting, and basically large chunks of the match felt awkward until they hit the stretch run. After the matc…

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Naoya Ogawa vs The Predator - Zero-One 7/7/02 Steel Cage Match To me based on the PPV cards the climax of Z-1 vs the UPW boys. This card drew 2000 more people to the Sumo Hall compared to the last show so it was a marquee match. Predator must have been thinking his trajectory was the big time. He is still doing the Brody gimmick. I think this delivers but doesn’t overdeliver. It is a very solid cage match between two monsters. I enjoyed it but wasn’t an all time, Predator threw Ogawa into the cage a bunch, hit some Brody signature spots and used the chain to attach and choke Ogawa. Ogawa used his Judo takedowns and the steel cage to regain control. Not one Not T…

Wrestling in Japan in 2002 would have been much better off if Togo had stayed in Osaka Pro, but I guess I'll take Togo and Takaiwa beating on each other in a half-decent juniors fight over no Togo at all.

Always love Hashimoto destroying a martial artist. Despite the massive size difference, Hashimoto was able to make Ogasawara look threatening... well till he just started chopping his head off. Hashimotos dropkick was for the ages. Also, watching him pull Ogasawara into DDTs repeatedly made me think his opponent doesn't even need to know how to bump to take that move... Hash just drills you and it'll look good regardless.

This wasn't the follow up match you'd hope for after last week's title match, but Halloween and Damian deserved another main event. Halloween was really entertaining, grabbing the mic from the ring announcer and doing his trio's own intros, eating a nasty super kick from Lizmark, and taking a bump into the open arms of a ringside fan. It was a pretty shitty tecnico team, but the rudos made the most of it, and I enjoyed the one-on-one confrontations in the tercera. Vampiro was awful, of course. He came to the ring dressed like Biker Taker and looked spaced out. He's all over the match listings for the rest of the year. I'm not gonna jump the gun yet because of how quick I'…

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AJPW World Tag Team Champions Keiji Mutoh & Taiyo Kea vs KroniK - AJPW 7/17/02 Yes because I’m a total weirdo I’m watching Kronik in 2002 All Japan. Crazy fun fact this the 5th to last match for both Adams and Clark period. I figured Adams would stop soon because he you know died and all but I wouldn’t have been surprised if Clark was wrestling to this day. I plan on reviewing both for their final matches together. Much to my surprise, this is did not suck. It was NOT 6/9/95 but it did not suck. I would say it was distinctively average. It was a lot of spots some of them high some of them just strikes but they always kept it moving. There was no narrati…

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X Division Champion AJ Styles vs Low-Ki NWA TNA 7/17/02 These two can not have a bad match together. Not quite as good as the others I have seen but still the intensity and energy was there. Just from the opening grappling, you can feel the tenacity and will to win. I loved AJ hitting a nice dropkick Ki when he goes for the cartwheel karate kick early. It shows that you can only hit those show off moves later in the match or if the opponent does not know you well. Very nice. Liked Ki controlling the wrist on an Irish Whip and him getting a Kappo Kick. Loved the Dragon Sleeper in the ropes. They were just laying everything in. This felt like a very good Nitro match, bu…

This was the go home show before the Angle vs. Rock vs. Undertaker Triple Threat match at Vengeance, and as you can imagine it was a well produced piece of TV from the WWE. Taker was looking on at ringside and predictably he got involved, but it's all part of the hype. The crowd was dead for the heat segment where Angle picked The Rock apart, but I think that was mainly because they wanted to see the returning Rock kick some ass. They put Angle over strong with this segment, and at this stage he had made pretty much every big star tap to the Angle Lock. Ross mentions that Angle could go on to the greatest superstar in WWE history. You have to wonder how high Angle's ceili…

Okay, so GdI vs. Shocker & Casas is everything you want from CMLL in 2002 and features some great punch exchanges, but Vampiro drags things down with his dogshit performance. I swear there are times when he looks untrained. He made the flawlessly polished GdI look like shit because of his poor timing. They had no idea what to expect and were scrambling to be in the right spots. Rey Bucanero is usually a soldier and he looked completely out of sorts because of Vampiro's loose shit. There was enough good stuff to see this through to the end, but it would have been so much better if Vampiro hadn't been involved.

At this point Fujinami was mostly relegated to tag work. Now he takes on Inokis project Yasuda. Before the match starts Yasuda insists Fujinami puts on MMA gloves, so when Fujinami does so Yasuda rushes him. One punch exchange later and Fujinamis nose is gushing blood. This really feels like a fight to the death with Yasuda trying to choke out Fujinami, but the old guy can always hit a surprise move. Only 5 minutes but a surprisingly good match.

It's so weird seeing Vader as a babyface, the crowd is eating out of the palm of his hand, it's quite weird to see them copying his wacky mannerisms and him giving fans high fives. The match is quite brief, as Yone attacks Vader at the bell with some strikes that remind you why he was only the fifteenth best wrestler in Battlarts, they tease Vader cutting him off but Yone evades and hits a Spinning Heel Kick! (a transition you'll often see in WWE which really helps make the rope running segments work) and then Vader quickly cuts him off and puts him away with a giant Chokeslam, and I liked how he followed it up with an elbow drop and a top wristlock pin. Nice little squas…

The Great Muta vs The Great Koji (Satoshi Kojima) - AJPW 07/20/02 Budokan I wish I knew the backstory to this one. Mutoh has been doing a lot of losing recently. He dropped the Triple Crown to Kawada in February only to turn around and lose to Tenryu in April for the vacant Triple Crown after Kawada was forced to vacate. Kea & Mutoh successfully defended their tag team titles in January against Barton/Steele but dropped them three days prior to this match to fucking Kronik. I am morbidly curious about Kronik in All Japan. Kojima had been featured on pretty much every major All Japan show of 2002 to this point, two good losses to Tenryu with the July match probabl…

Genichiro Tenryu vs Taiyo Kea - AJPW 7/20/02 Budokan Tenryu is Triple Crown Champion having defended the title three days prior in an epic match against Kojima. Here he takes on All Japan’s other next generation prospect the little talked about Taiyo Kea. I dont know why this is not a title match besides the fact Kea wins and I guess they didn’t want him to be champ but they Never follow it up with a rematch. Weird booking aside this match was really damn good and I had no idea what to expect. I think the only Kea match I watched besides this was first post-split Budokan main event. The first strike against Kea is he doesn’t really look interesting or have a ho…

This was a good match with some great moments. Kind of a weird nothing start until Nagata throws him with the overhead suplex. I loved Nagata coming in from the floor and immediately getting kicked in the head, with Bas relishing the moment in the corner like a real rassler. The transition and high-angle execution of Nagata's wrist-clutch Exploder was pretty sweet, and his final crosshead hold looked gnarly. Rutten's selling is a little silly at times but he gets it.

The advent of the Triple Threat match has got to be one my least favorite things in wrestling history. but I have to admit that the combination of WWF main event booking and JR on commentary won me over here. If there was one thing that the WWE did well at this time it was the booking of their main events. They're incredibly well produced. I don't know who was responsible for blocking out this match, but they did an outstanding job considering how contrived the gimmick is. You've got to hand it to the performers as well. They may have had the match laid out for them, but they still had to execute. This was a polished performance from all three men, and a strong call from …

About as perfect a 7 minute opener as you can ask for. This was Reds TNA debut and they work a slightly more traditional style (if you can talk traditional when you have crazy moves dished out by the minute) with some arm drags and Ki beating him down good with his awesome neck headbutts etc. They pull out some of their spectacular kung fu sequences later for great effect. Amazing how these two always managed to mix up their stuff.

The set-up for this involved some bad acting and shitty backstage vignettes, but the match itself was pretty much a PPV level match. It was a lot better than it looked on paper. I know Jericho's matches and feuds from this era weren't always winners, but Jericho comes across as a valuable player. It seems his best matches in 2002 were on television and not PPV, which doesn't leave as much of an impression, but if you want to see a guy make something out of crappy scripted WWE TV, you can do a lot worse than Chris Jericho. EDIT: This was taped on 7/23.