April 2003

This was a pretty decent trios considering they cobbled it together for Shocker/Vampiro undercard. Much better than the Atlantis vs. Wagner matches from the past few weeks. Never underestimate how good Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero are at delivering rudo beatdowns. When was the last time Lizmark Jr was this interesting? Has he ever been this interesting? I'm starting to think Rey Bucanero is some kind of genius. First Vampiro, now Lizmark Jr. Of course, Lizmark almost ruins it when he makes his comeback, but the seeds for another miracle job are there. They tease Atlantis vs. Ultimo here but don't deliver. That's cruel. A large part of the focus is on Niebla vs. Univer…

Haven't seen much of the lead-up to this. Not sure if that's because US tape traders had a hard time getting the shows from Mexico or because folks aren't interested in uploading 2003 CMLL. It doesn't really make much difference. Shocker is the rudo, Vampiro is the tecnico, and that's about all you need to know. Amazing atmosphere for this match. Makes you think they should have waited until the Anniversary Show to run this. Then again, CMLL don't always save their best match for the Anniversary Show, and it has been known to peak during the first quarter of the season, as was the case with Atlantis/Villano in 2000. Vampiro wore a gi to the fight. Did he think this w…

Manami Toyota defends the AAAW Title Wow, this was really good. I thought Manami Toyota was washed up in GAEA, but nuh-uh. This was a really aggressive match with an element of spitefulness to it. To be fair, a lot of the credit should go to Satomura as that felt like more of a Meiko influence. Toyota vs. Toyota-clone matches generally aren't known for their aggression, though Toyota had ramped up her bitchiness and worked on her heel act over the years. I really liked Toyota's performance in this match. When she first started acting like a bitch in matches, it often felt like she was copying Mima Shimoda and Takako Inoue. Here, she was far more ruthless. Satomura's …

A terrific little match-up, with Mishima showing off his quasi-capoeira style and judo takedowns against Tamura's slick-as-catshit counter and matwork. Mishima manages some hard slams and I really liked his takedown into the headscissors, transitioning into the jujigatame. Of course, Tamura's great here as the experienced veteran, tip-toeing out of trap attempts and scoring takedowns>submission holds. The struggle on the ground was conveyed well, although Tamura's king and at times, he looks bored at Mishima smothering his leg. Heading into the finish, Mishima comes at him with a palm thrust but Tamura is able to take him down into a necklock, flipping him over into th…

Going through the WWE Matches of the Year for 2003 pack and this really caught my eye as its midcard heel Cena vs. Biker Taker and gets 15 minutes. The commentary note that Taker has an injured arm that he's delaying surgery for, and that he's here to put Cena in his place after being disrespected backstage. Cena looks like a little punk here in the opening minutes. Can't seem to really hurt Taker at all, the one time he lands a good kick just seems to really piss Taker off and he gets a chokeslam for his trouble. Taker unloads a flurry of strikes in the corner only for Cena to clock his skull with a steel chain, the same way he took out Brock Lesnar 9 years later in…

So yeah this is from Carl Greco's random AJPW Jr heavyweight run as apart of the Junior Champion Carnival, which (spoilers for a 20 year old event!) Carl will win, because he kicks ass. This is more of a novelty match, because Yang/Greco is such a random pairing that you've never thought about before somehow also really want to see, somehow? That was the case for me, anyway. Shame the matches he had with Hamada/Naniwa weren't aired because those were also interesting matches on paper. Anyway, this was a sprint: Greco works some hard kicks and knees to start off, hurling around Yang both in and outside the ring as they hit a big clothesline dive to the outside before…

This was your classic "week after" trios where the guy who lost the apuesta gets a sliver of revenge over the winner. It was also the debut of the new look Los Guapos with 2003 Guapos University winner, El Terrible, teaming with Shocker and Magica for the first time. Guapos U was a spoof of WWE's Tough Enough show with Shocker and Mascara Magica bringing in luchadores from outside Mexico City to compete for a spot in the Guapos. Personally, I would have preferred that Zumbido got the third spot, but he was tossed from Guapos U for poor behavior and for feuding with Ricky Martin, which led to them having a hair match. In true CMLL fashion, the Guapos U angle was mishandled…

Revenge match. Cuts straight to the end of the first fall and takes a while to get into a groove. Atlantis takes on Ultimo and Rey by himself, which reminds me that Atlantis is one of the all-time greats at taking on multiple rudos at the same time. Which may not sound like much, but it's the kind of swashbuckling action that lucha was built on. Niebla and Universo have a decent tussle as well. We don't get as much GdI as the week before. No miracle carry jobs of Lizmark Jr. We'll see what sort of match Niebla and Universo can deliver. Looks like clipping has reared its ugly head, though. Not cool.

Greco's been put over massively by defeating numerous Jr wrestlers and winning that year's Carnival for the title shot over Kashin, meaning we get a epic encounter between two grapple-heavy dudes. As such, the sequences on the mat and the technical work are great between the two, with lots of sprawling and submission trading very early. There's no sitting in holds or careful applying of wear-down shit, this is all just right away into the armbreakers and instant death submissions that could very easily end the match if applied by either man, no messing around in that regard and right into the eye of the storm. Greco has some very smart counters to Kashin's tricks but…

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

This was pretty average. I was skeptical of the Japanese guys when they showed up in CMLL but ended up enjoying their matches, so I'll withhold judgement until I see the hair match. There was one cool dive train from the Infernales here, but otherwise this did very little for me. It wasn't clear watching this how much Satanico has in the tank but that's hard to gauge from weekly trios matches.

This was a better showing from the Guapos, though they still don't have a lot of chemistry as a trio. The rudos and tecnicos joined together at the beginning to pay their respects to Ray Mendoza, who had passed away a few days earlier. Then they started the match on the mat where the great man had been so proficient. There was a lot to like about this match. I really liked Atlantis vs. Magica, and Casas finally woke up and did something in 2003. They gave us a smidgeon of Casas vs. Shocker. Can you imagine how good that match could have been if they'd worked it like Shocker vs. Ultimo or Shocker/Vampiro? More impressive, though, was how good Shocker made Lizmark look. I a…

This was surprisingly decent given my low expectations for title matches at Arena Mexico. It was shorter than you'd like, but that was partially due to clipping, and there was some sloppiness as times, but they can be forgiven due to them being heavyweights. Mr. Niebla is clearly not the second coming of anybody, however credit to Universo 2000, who always seems to turn up for these big matches (or medium-sized in this case.) Must be his Dinamita DNA. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about him being added to the Wagner/Black Tiger trio, even though I knew what he was capable of against Perro Aguayo, but he made a strong case here as a guy worth using. This match won…

This match is from the FWA’s British Breakout Tour, which was part of the company’s desire to become a more national promotion, branching out of the South coast and London area which was its base. We are in the glamorous setting of Cleethorpes on one of the nights of the tour in the North of England at the Winter Gardens, which was one of your classic British seaside music hall venues. This is very much a ‘house show’/B show type card, compared to the bigger standalone shows the FWA was putting on in and around the London area. Doug is a month on from defeating Christopher Daniels for the FWA Title at ROH Night of the Champions to begin his second reign. Worth notin…

This was the finals of a tournament as far as I can tell. CIMA's back & neck are taped, apparently that helps besides telling the world that hurts already. Horiguchi gets an early rush in and both look to be going for the finish off the bat. CIMA works a leg for a good amount of time. I am absolutely not a fan of juniors guys working a leg if the guy taking it is going to ignore it to do junior-y things later and guess what happens. CMAX is not the asshole heel stable here, Do-Fixer is and they interfere some. At least it's just some and CMAX kind of evens things up when they need to. CIMA does a great job selling the neck even when it's not being worked on. H…

IWGP Champion Yuji Nagata vs Tadao Yasuda - NJPW 4/23/03 I had no clue what to expect out of this match because I have never seen a Yasuda match in my life. Besides seeing his name crop up on the list of IWGP Champions, I have never heard much about him, but I knew he was an ex-Sumo, shooter. I feel like if Nagata was the #3-#4 guy in New Japan with two all-timers in at the Ace and #2 positions he would be highly regarded. He just doesnt have the charisma to be the Ace, but he is a really solid wrestler and I have grown to like him more and more. Do not let the pedestrian start this match has a raging crescendo! There is a lot of hype for the upcoming Dome matc…

You can see modern New Japan style in this. It's in their strike exchange that consists of striking more and more instead of stopping and selling a blow, it's in the way Tanahashi milks his arm injury, it's in the count-out tease and it's in it the finish that consists of them trading big moves and, specifically, how they do it (lots of counters and pop-ups). I did enjoy the match-the beginning had a lot of matwork that way tighter than you see these days with a much wider array of holds, I mean it's understandable after years of work guys get lazy but it's much more interesting to see them work armdrags, kneebars, headscissors etc. than just grab a hold until it's time f…

This was a decent bit of weekly TV. If you were hoping to see plenty of Atlantis vs. Wagner, you got your money's worth. I actually thought it was the best Wagner/Atlantis stuff we've seen in a while. There was some showboating from Wagner, but it was mostly good old-fashioned action. Quemonito made the mistake of getting involved here when he did an apron dive onto a prone Warrior. The rudos paid him back by beating the shit out of him with Warrior holding him upside down by the ankle and making suggestive poses. I'm not sure if it was the first time rudos had beaten Quemonito up, but it's the first time I can remember seeing it. Lizmark even gave him a little bit of CP…

This was better than I expected. It wasn't great or anything, but I was expecting it to be terrible and it clearly wasn't. It was essentially an angle where the Japanese heels taped Satanico's leg to the ring post with duct tape and worked him over until Casas made the save (in an atrocious ring tights and tennis shoes combo), setting up the hair match in May. Prior to that we got some spirited brawling from Satanico, and some okay work from Nosawa. He's kind of a freaky looking dude, but he leans too heavily toward posing after every move, which is a mistake a lot of foreigners make in Mexico. I guess they see a lot of the stars doing it and think it's something they sho…

We are on night 6 of the British Breakout Tour, which I’ve described in more detail here. Earlier on the tour, Hamrick had defeated the Zebra Kid for the FWA All England Title, so this is title vs title, with Jonny’s ‘prestigious’ XPW European Title also on the line. In storyline terms, Jonny was fresh off turning heel on Jody Fleisch, but given this isn’t your usual hardcore FWA crowd and probably only a tiny fraction of the crowd probably would’ve been up-to-date with all the company’s angles, Storm wrestles 100% babyface here. Hamrick tries the same stooging as in his match with Doug Williams earlier on the tour, but it works better here, matching up with Jonny’s…

Holy hell what a gem. They pack so much compelling, excellent wrestling into the 12-minutes or so that they go. Williams' focus on Joe's arm was really fantastic; he was like a snake with the ways he targeted that bodypart, always going after it any & every chance he got. Joe sold being in trouble brilliantly throughout, as any time he was on the offense himself busting out some sweet stuff, he never forgot to sell the damage Williams had done to his arm. And talking bout that sweet stuff, the finish w/ him countering Doug's Chaos Theory attempt into some GENERAL SAMOA JOE BADASSERY was aaaawesome & a truly superb way to cap off a great match. Everything about thi…

This match is for the FWA All England Title (the FWA’s IC equivalent belt). Zebra Kid had started the Tour as champion, had lost the belt to Chris Hamrick as part of the tour, who had in turn lost it to Jonny Storm, also as part of the tour. So Zebra Kid is coming in as the challenger here. The British Breakout Tour had been designed to help expand the FWA out of its regular markets, with the multiple title changes a tactic of drawing up local interest in other parts of the county. That could also be seen by the fact the FWA Tag Titles also changed hands on this show and then changed back again the next night on the last leg of the tour. Spoiler alert: with the title endi…

Really good sprint. Typical awesome performance by Mysterio, but Big Show was great in this as well. Mysterio utilizes a hit-and-move strategy and tries to chop down the giant while Big Show does a great job showing ass and selling frustration and rage. When Show is finally able to get his hands on Rey, the latter mounts one of the most creative comebacks with multiple 619's to the lower body. But in the end, the giant is just too strong. Awesome, sub-five minute match.

WWE Champion Brock Lesnar vs John Cena - Backlash 2003 You know how weird it is to listen to a crowd chant "Lets Go Cena" without the accompanying "Cena Sucks!". This takes place in Worcester so Cena is actually worried about being cheered so he wears a Roger Clemens Yankees jersey to the ring yep that will definitely do the trick. If he did that in October/November of 2003 in Mass he may have actually been killed. Let me get my one major complaint out of the way. It is so painfully clear that these two are miscast. Cena sells like such a sympathetic babyface and Brock Lesnar is just a total monster. The monster face can work but you need that sniveling heel that …