January 2004

This culminates a series of matches between these two revolving around the Cruiserweight Title that started the previous fall. What ensues is a very good match and an excellent showcase of both Rey and Tajiri in their primes. Everything flowed well and looked good. At under 12 minutes (counting entrances, and minus the early portion of the match we don’t see due to the commercial break), this is a brisk, action=packed match with real stakes and a satisfying conclusion. You can read my full review of the match as part (the first part, in fact) of the 365 Wrestling project.

This was an entertaining bout. Perro Sr had a long history with the Capos, so it makes sense that Perro Jr would get involved with them. He especially had a hard on for Universo 2000 after the things Universo did to his padre, and this led to some decent brawling. Far between than Satanico vs. Averno, though not at the level of L.A. Park vs. Super Parka. It was a short bout, but gave you plenty of bang for your buck. The Guapos were excellent in their secondary role, and while MA2k will probably never make a list of the top rudos, he was a consummate pro who knew how to bump and stooge, and work rudo. This felt like a proper trios match even if it was less than 10 minutes…

Naoya Ogawa vs Bill Goldberg - HUSTLE 1/4/04 I don’t know how they got Goldberg as he was in the middle of his WWE run. Goldberg is perfect for Japan. Honestly he should have just worked Japan post-WCW (I know he worked some All Japan for Mutoh) but Goldberg in Inokiist New Japan would have been money. While this didn’t meet my lofty expectations I still thought it was very entertaining. These are two monsters who are very interesting in matches when conventional pro wrestlers have to get creative and figure them out. Here it is King Kong vs Godzilla which is fun but not as fun as when a mortal is involved. Oh Goldberg is aligned with Boss Takada who is in …

Toshiaki Kawada vs Mark Coleman - HUSTLE 1 1/4/04 HUSTLE 1 debuted directly opposite New Japan’s annual January 4th Tokyo Dome show. Pretty ballsy by Takada. Looks like Hashimoto, Ogawa and Kawada were the native talent and this basically became Ogawa’s home promotion until IGF. Kawada is the Triple Crown champion but it is not on the line. Alright match, I always get Coleman confused with Mark Kerr. He was pretty good. Trade good strikes early. Kawada doesn’t really connect with his front kicks and Coleman takes him down at Will. Kawada gets a Triangle then Cross Armbreaker out of defense. Reset. Coleman throws fucking bombs. Great Kawada sell. He comes back wi…

This is a fun matchup even though it's rather obvious from the start that it would be better off in a smaller setting than the Tokyo Dome. Suzuki pretty much dominates the matchup from the early going as he has a creative shoot-style counter to all of Nishimura's old-school spots. Eventually catching Nishimura in a cross-armbreaker then focusing his attack on the arm. Just when it looks like Nishimura has no answer for Suzuki's attack he gets a backslide out of nowhere for the win. This was fun but it comes off as a teaser to watch this to could do if you gave them 20+ mins at Korakuen.

IWGP Champion Shinsuke Nakamura vs NWF Heavyweight Champion Yoshihiro Takayama - NJPW Tokyo Dome 1/4/04 I could’ve sworn I’d seen this match before but no review and I didn’t have any recollection of it while I was watching. Takayama was used a lot in big shows from 2002 up until time period. Even though, Takayama won the IWGP Championship from Nagata he was able to lose it to Tenzan without dropping NWF title. I don’t know how that was possible but this match is for the Unification of the two titles. Right away you see Nakamura’s right eye is all fucked up and he came into the match that way. Don’t know what happened, but it is all black and kinda red and…

Yuji Nagata vs Kensuke Sasaki - NJPW 01/04/04 Up until the finish, I thought this was a classic, bloody, Dome brawl. I was perplexed why no one talked about this match until that finish, which takes it down quite a bit. Sasaki returns, but not to a hero's welcome. No, he must have been portrayed as a turncoat for leaving Inoki's New Japan to join a short-lived Choshu's promotion that would focus more on pro wrestling. Sasaki fit the 90s New Japan Strong Style well, but Sasaki stuck out like a sore thumb in Inoki's MMA-influenced New Japan of the early 2000s, but he comes back here to challenge Inoki's boy, Yuji Nagata at the Dome. Without the title on the line…

Chris Sabin vs Micheal Shane vs Low-ki vs Chris Daniels - TNA 01/07/04 Second Ultimate X match. New rule point : you can't use a ladder. The announcers insist on that point early on. So, of course, after a while, these guys bring a ladder, and the announcers are confused as hell, and the match, which started really well, turns into a mediocre ladder match (the whole gimmick is so tired anyway), killing the whole point of the match. Then, a ref comes from the back, takes away the ladder and the announcers go "Well, we knew you couldn't use a ladder." No idea if all was planned or if it was just improvised, but it was quite the fuck up to me. The match had less insanity…

Averno and Mephisto had split from Satanico at this point, so much of the focus here was on Satanico vs his former partners. To be honest, it wasn't all that great. Certainly not on the level of some of the work Satanico was capable of as late as 2002. Averno and Mephisto hadn't found a new identity for themselves now that they were no longer Infernales and wore generic outfits. Super Crazy has been less than impressive in his CMLL run, and I can't see him going anywhere as a rudo. Casas and Felino didn't add anything either. The match was butchered in the edit, which isn't a new thing for CMLL but was particularly bad on Coliseo shows. Skippable.

Talk about it here. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x81ey5_teddy-hart-vs-bryan-danielson_sport

I love me some Low Ki vs. Homicide, You can keep your Bryan Danielsons, I'll take Low Ki and Homicide stiffing the crap out of each other thanks. This was going along swimmingly until it turned into an angle where Gary Hart, of all people, ordered Homicide and Low Ki to attack the MLW owner, Court Bauer. I can't stand screeching indy commentators, but I dug Julius Smokes bringing up the Great Kabuki nearly blinding the Junkyard Dog with green mist, and the other dude squealing about Gary Hart trying to kill Ric Flair with a plastic bag.

This was mostly Steve Corino wrapping Terry Funk in barbed wire and screaming at him to quit. If I were Steve Corino, I'd be stoked at getting the chance to recreate Funk vs. Lawler and Funk/Flair. Half the fun is listening to Funk's replies. Terry, God bless him, couldn't really do much at this stage, but he could still cut a promo and sell his ass off, and he does a pretty good job of coughing and spluttering while choking on barbed wire. Gary Hart shows up again and lays into Funk on the mic. He blames him for quitting against Flair and destroying J-Tex. Y'know, I kind of like that MLW is playing off past history and continuing old NWA feuds. The commentator needs to c…

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

This is on par with Joe's match alongside AJ Styles against The Briscoes. The thing rules, to put it simply. Bryan & Joe are all kinds of awesome when they're working over the Briscoe Bros, wrenching their arms, stretching them boys out & blasting them with vicious strikes. Briscoes are great as well with especially their heat segment on Bryan being absolutely lovely. ***3/4

This was a good match. It was a Styles match, so it was work rate driven, but that's okay because I like work rate Homicide. It wasn't a huge, epic match. Instead, it was a smarter, tightly contained bout that played to the strengths of both men. There were a lot of counters and reversals, but also some cool punches and forearm strikes. Homicide took himself out with a tope con hilo into the crowd, but continued with the match. I'm not sure if he was legit hurt, or it was just a way to make him look strong in defeat, but either way he was too shook to beat Styles. We've gotta talk about Homicide's tope con hilo, though. It may have been a little self-hazardous, but what a…

I'm not gonna lie, I expected Kansai to be awful in this match but she wasn't. She wasn't prime Dynamite Kansai, but she shouldn't be expected to be as good as she was in the 80s and 90s. She could still kick hard and still had an aura of toughness. Ayako, on the other hand, was terrible. I was so behind her rise in ARSION and her emergence as one of the bright young stars of Joshi Puroresu, but just about everything she did in this match annoyed me to the extent that I was hoping Kansai would win. It's been a while since I've seen a match where a worker did some much damage to their rep. So disappointing.

This was a decent debut match for a rookie. Hayashi was billed at 168cm and 75kg, which is quite big by Joshi standards, and Satomura allowed her to show off her strength and power by repeatedly knocking Meiko off her feet. Given that she was a rookie, she didn't have a lot to follow up with once she knocked Meiko down, but it was still an impressive feat for a new girl. In the end, Meiko was able to win comfortably, but in a way that was respectful of the rookie. Hayashi received a taste of what it was like and gained some motivation for future bouts. She didn't last the year, but it wasn't because her debut was poor. There's been some holes in my viewing when it comes t…

This was Sugar Sato's return after nine months on the shelf with a knee injury. I always liked the Sato/Nagashima tag team dynamic with the power wrestler and the high flyer. The early portions of the match featured some uninspired brawling, but once they settled into the body of the match it wasn't bad. It was weird seeing Ran Yu Yu go from having overly long JWP house show matches to being a midcard act in GAEA, but there have been worse uses of a worker.

This was disappointing given the talent involved. I mean look at that tecnico lineup -- they should have kicked some serious ass. The match was clipped and severely disjointed, and it looked as though the workers didn't have a lot of experience working with Parka. It wasn't really clear who the top dog was meant to be, and they never really settled into roles. None of the wrestlers paired off, and there was no through line. I wasn't a huge fan of Parka getting his masked ripped so badly in a regular trios match, as it ruins the imagery of the skeleton mask and the overall impact of Parka being in CMLL, but that's a personal quibble. It seemed as though they were setting u…

Most overlooked match between two big names in japanese wrestling history? I never even knew this one happened. It was a pretty fun match, altough far in the shadow of their 2000 encounter. You get those two smacking and punching eachother a lot, so that is really fun of course, and also some of Crazy Tenryu with him throwing chairs and making use of the Spider Suplex etc. Unfortunately Lazy Kawada was in effect here with him ignoring some fun legwork Tenryu was doing and no selling his way back on offense later, he also seemed to have a lot of light on his enzuigiris. On the other hand, him coughing after getting chopped in the throat was a nice touch. Perfectly good mat…

This was by far the most pure lucha match of the month. Just a series of classic lucha exchanges without the hurried pace of Arena Mexico matches. Plus, it's a chance to see my boy Charlie Lucero work long mat exchanges.,

More Parka on Parka violence. This feud is better than expected, largely because Super Parka is having a better run than a lot of well known luchadores. I complain about Monterrey bullshit a lot, but if there was ever a match where it had its charms, this is it. Park was on form here -- celebrating between falls by gyrating against the ring post, running around with a white garden chair above his head just like his Chairman days, and even picking up a kid from the audience to use for a double team move. The match breaks down when Parka accidently hits a tope on his partner, then there's a run in from Texano of all people. If there's gonna be a run in during a match, it mi…

This was during a weird period where Dory was facing guys like Sabu, Samoa Joe, Kenso Suzuki: just a wild selection of talent all in all. Many of those aforementioned matches are lost to time sadly but this one during Jarrett's Reign of Terror over the NWA/TNA belt is intact, amazingly. I will say that Jarrett is a GREAT heel here as soon as he walks through the curtain him asking the crowd to stand up for him and he jawjacks with the crowd for the first few minutes. It's obviously stalling but it's pretty good stalling all things considered and Dory plays with it well as he almost at once gets in Jarrett's space and makes him uncomfortable. Dory gets Jarrett in a near fa…

AMW vs Redshirts - TNA 01/21/04 The little moment of glory for the Redshirts, Legend & Northcutt, with that awesome security guys gimmick... At some point Northcutt throws James Storm around and he falls straight on his shoulder, badly injuring it. Then Storm keeps on working, old-school style, milking the (legit) injury and having his best babyface performance to that point. Not exactly a MX vs R'n'R match in term of execution, but the Redshorts beating on Storm was quite brutal, Steiners on Nasties style. Chris Harris looked like such a star back then, and his spear is the best in the post-Goldy era.