February 2004

Another super fun locals match. This time you get the added bonus of the both the Orientales and the Rockeros squaring off against each other, which is cool.

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Often when I see Low Ki in the match listings, I have no idea what to expect from his opponent. I'm sure most folks reading this are familiar with Matt Striker, but this was my first time watching the dude. It looked like he was hitting Low Ki pretty hard in the thumbnail, so I thought I'd give this a shot. Striker worked an extremely old-school US style. I'm not sure who he was a disciple of, but you could have transported him to the late 80s/early 90s and no-one would have noticed that he was out of place. He didn't really know how to sell for Low Ki's offense, and he was one of those wrestlers who make strong noises in the ring, but I've seen worse style clashes.

This is the only other piece of February CMLL footage I can find. I can live with it being a Perro Jr vs. Capos match. The Capos aren't for everyone but I enjoy their old-school style. This is an energetic brawl that gets totally out of hand when Universo starts trying to tombstone pile drive everyone. Mascara Magica is stretchered away, but Perro Sr makes the save before Universo can piledrive Jr. The match is a write-off, but the Aguayos continue to fire up the crowd. Pretty decent TV.

AJ Styles had taken Jimmy Rave under his wing & he had been trying to motivate him to find that killer instinct within him to succeed. Styles actually requested for Rave to be his opponent here. The match plays out excellently into that storyline between 'em, with it having a lovely little young boy dynamic; Styles is pretty dominant throughout with his viciously excellent looking offense, but Rave gets some very nice chains of offense in himself, and in the end he finds that killer instinct by going after the knee AJ seemingly hurt. I really, really enjoyed this one. Clocking in at under 8 minutes I thought they told their charming story very well bell-to-bell. ***1/…

Jimmy Rave assaulted AJ's knee at the closing minutes of their tournament match earlier on in the night, and it didn't take long for that same knee to become the main target of Matt Stryker's onslaught in this bout. I thought that Stryker did a really good job being the aggressor here; his work on that said knee was focused n' vicious, and when he wasn't attacking it, he was doing other awesome stuff like smashing AJ's head into the barricade on the outside. AJ sold really well throughout too, even if his match-finishing springboard maneuver was maybe a bit too clean given the amount of pain he was supposed to be in, but it still worked, as it felt like everything kinda j…

Whitmer & Maff are of course stablemates in The Prophecy, so they really are teaming up throughout this 4-way dance, which causes Joe & Ki to form kind of an alliance to combat against that. It's good stuff; BJ's & Maff's heat seg on Joe towards the end was really good I thought, but the ultimate highlights of this one, unsurprisingly, are the exchanges between Joe & Ki -- the one true sequence they had very late in the match where they just slap, knee & kick the shit out of one another was pure joy. ***1/2

This is just really good wrestling throughout, with things kicking up a notch once Punk goes after Doug's knee. He's like a shark smelling blood attacking it, and that finish where it came to play was SO awesome. Seriously love, love, LOVE the crap out of that finish - everything leading up to it was already awesome, but that is the cherry on top of the cake. ***1/2

This was another fun Monterrey match. It was nowhere near as compelling as the Satanico match, but it was nice to see a slow paced trios match where the workers were given the time to work through the different parts of the match and not rush anything. I was hoping for a bit more from Panther, but that would have been a bonus. As always, it's fun to watch the locals mixing it up with the Mexico City guys.

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WWE Champion Brock Lesnar vs Eddie Guerrero - No Way Out 2004 The ultimate feel good moment in WWE History. I am so glad I was able to watch this live thanks to my Dad's cable box scrambler. Eddie Guerrero will always be one of my favorites. We all know the story, people like Eddie dont win the big one. He is just too small, but goddamn his personality is larger than life. His energy is infectious. His smile can light up an arena of 20,000 people. He is what a pro wrestler should be. Then on the other side of the ring, you got the Man! I love Brock! I am such a Brock mark. Shoot credentials, powerhouse with explosive quickness. It was all on display here. Two of the …

Chris Benoit has gone from feuding with A-Train to being in the world title picture on RAW. On paper, this seems like a dream match, but ham actor Michaels is more suited to working with guys like Chris Jericho at this point in his comeback than Chris Benoit. That said, I can imagine Benoit looking for ways to improve on this the next time they lock up similar to how he solved the Angle puzzle. For some reason, they don't play up the Bret vs. Shawn history. You can bet that would be a talking point in modern day WWE. Instead, there's a bunch of bullshit with Triple H, Bischoff and Austin that I could give two shits about. I can't remember how this was received at the time…

This had some shitty crowd brawling, but when it settled down it was pretty good, especially the parts that involved Satomura against either Ran or Toshie. If they'd just worked a straight up match instead of tearing around Korakuen like screaming harpies, it would have been a better match, but I guess they needed a bit of smoke and mirrors to convince folks that the midcarders had much of a chance against the team of Satomura and Nagashima.

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How can you resist watching Tenryu and Fuchi beat the shit out of each other? Well, mostly Tenryu beating the shit out of Fuchi, but you catch my drift. There were some shenanigans with Akira Hokuto, which were presumably related to the promotion she started with hubby around this time, but ignoring that, Tenryu did what Tenryu does and a good time was had by all.

It's a surprise to me that this is on my radar. Call it the Kojima effect. Taiyo Kea has changed his look since the last time I watched him wrestle, which is probably the series of matches he had with Tenryu. It's not the greatest makeover you'll see in wrestling, but it's 2004, we're in Japan, and beggars can't be choosers. The match is okay. It's asking a lot of Kojima to carry Kea to the level that Tenryu did, but considering how thin the All Japan roster was at the time, at least these were two guys the fans could get behind. Kojima earned brownie points with me for continuing to work hard.

This is some of the only available footage I have from February CMLL and it cuts straight to the end where Vampiro and Shocker have a confrontation. Given my irrational love for Vampiro, I dug it, but I can imagine it being a drag if you waited all week to see it. Vampiro was sporting a mohawk and ridiculous looking face paint just because he can. They showed some highlights of the match at the end. Park continued to look a bit awkward working with the CMLL guys.

A very good match. The first half is worked pretty much all on the mat, and Quance actually got most of it - he looked good. They told a good story of Dragon getting frustrated by Quance's technical skills matching him, so the 2nd half wasn't as mat-heavy as the first one - it very much was about them trying to find the one move, the one hold to put each other away. ***1/2

AJ Styles vs Abyss - TNA 02/25/04 Double table match. With Abyss. And yet, AJ Styles manages to have a really fun gimmick match, with some brillant moments like him kicking a table away while he's in a chokeslam position. Abyss is clearly a guy who can have some special matches with because of his physical abilities and will to work hard, but he's such a stupid worker too. One thing he does all the time after taking huge bumps is *adjusting his shirt to hide his belly*. Ok, Choshu and Misawa were doing the same thing, kind of, with their tights, but it looked like a reflex move. Abyss looks like a trucker adjusting his cosplay costume. Anyway, lots of teases and escap…

This was much better than I thought it was going to be. It was a no frills match where Ozaki threw as much as she possibly could at Satomura without giving too shits about build or storytelling. I can't tell you how much better that was than Ozaki's bag of cheap tricks. If you're on a hiding to nothing, go out in a blaze of flames. This might be a disappointment to some fans if you consider it's the Genius Formerly Known As Mayumi Ozaki, but I thought it was going to be trash and it was actually pretty enjoyable.

I had my hopes up for this one and it didn't disappoint. It wasn't a great match or anything, but it delivered exactly what I wanted to see, which was Averno and Mephisto taking their time beating up Satanico and Satanico having a few badass moments. Footage of Averno and Mephisto falling out with Satanico has been spotty and CMLL TV is clipped to shit anyway. This was a better look at the feud than you were bound to get on Televisa. Satanico is clearly entering the "maestro" phase of his career here and isn't the worker he once was, and Averno and Mephisto are cast as rudo thugs instead of skilled workers, but it was a ton of fun, and we even got a glimpse of what Satani…