cactus

Although they would end up perfecting these kinds of stunt show matches, this clearly laid out the blueprint and got the audience to care about these four. This might be lacking a traditional face/heel dynamic, but they build up to the big spots well and they keep the selling consistent. The finish was pulled off exceptionally well, given how little room for error they had. Well worth a watch if you can stomach these kind of daredevil matches and it's probably the best match you're going to find in 1999 WWF. ★★★★

Man, it's so tragic selling Bulldog in this state. He looks unwell and bloated, and he brings absolutely nothing to this match. He was a megastar in the UK earlier in the decade, but this Cleveland crowd give him crickets when he comes out. The Rock saves this one from being anything too offensive. He's well on his way of being the top star of the company. The match here is very basic, with it being downright mediocre when Bulldog is on offensive. Just a whole lot of rest holds by him as it looks like he gets gassed five minutes in. The Rock scores the win after countering a Powerslam and landing a Rock Bottom and a People's Elbow, putting a full stop on Bulldog's brief flirtation with the 1999 main event scene. ★¾

Chyna is incredibly over and her influence on intergender wrestling can't be denied, but let's face it, she couldn't work a lick. Thankfully Jarrett carries her to a surprisingly fun hardcore match. Jarrett spends most of this eating shots from household items, which is a satisfying watch given how well he pulled his misogynist gimmick off the last few months leading into this. Jarrett takes control after Chyna misses a dive and lands on a table set up at ringside. Jarrett initially wins after levelling Chyna with his belt, but the match is restarted once Teddy Long sees the replay and decides that a championship belt isn't a household object. Chyna lands a guitar shot and becomes the first and only woman to hold the Intercontinental strap. Off all the blatant misogyny that can be found in the Attitude Era, this at least had a extremely satisfying conclusion and it boosted Chyna's star power in the process. This was WWF Hardcore title style mixed with the aforementioned Memphis wrestling- flavoured bullshit. Yeah, I don't hate this. ★★¾

They give this a fair bit of time for an undercard match of this era and the Holly cousins work a lengthy FIP segment over Road Dogg. I've forgotten how much of a hidden gem Crash Holly could be. On top of his brilliantly goofy '6'6, 400lbs little man who's always arguing with his straight laced cousin' gimmick, his selling from strikes are both stoogey and comedic. Billy Gunn eventually gets the hot tag and cleans house to a big pop from the crowd. Crash decides to try and level Gunn with a chair when the referee isn't looking, but Crash instead ends up landing on the steel inside. The ref sees this and DQs the Outlaws instead. The finish had the potential to suck, but I thought they pulled this off fairly well. Good tag team psychology, but the action itself wasn't anything to write home about. ★★

At least we don't have to sit through an Evening Gown match. Instead we have to see Ivory struggling to get a match out of a 76 year old woman. Props to Moolah and Mae though, as they actually take a few bumps. Mae even gets dropkicked off the ring apron! The match itself is predictably garbage. With Mae getting involved right in front the referee and neither Ivory or Moolah do anything of note, on top of the utterly crap wrestling. Ivory (the face) attempts to level her pensioner opponent with her title belt, but Mae distracts her and allows Moolah to sneak a win. Her victory gets a huge pop. I'll spare this a DUD rating because of the bumps from Mae and Moolah and the crowd reaction to the surprise win. ¼★

Godfather and his Hos are super over as a character, but not enough to keep the crowd invested for any match that goes over a few minutes. The audience starts to amuse themselves by chanting for puppies once Mideon takes control. Speaking of Mideon, he really is the drizzling shits and he doesn't even have a good gimmick to lean back on. Viscera is in the corner of Mideon and he continously distracts Godfather by approaching his group of Hos and attacking Godfather when the referee is distracted. Viscera attempts to attack Godfather on the outside, but eats ring post instead. Godfather quickly enters the ring and hits the Ho Train for the victory. We didn't even get treated to a Pimp Drop. This was standard Attitude Era punch/kick action. Nothing fancy to be found here, but it was thankfully kept relatively short. ★½

This is slightly clipped, but nowhere near to the extent of most of the other matches on this show. This goes 22 minutes and I think we are missing around five or so minutes. This is the final to the B Cup 1998 tournament and both men had wrestled earlier in the evening in the semi-finals. Backlund flexs his cardio by running all over the place as the match starts to put over how much he's still got left in the tank. You can tell Ishikawa is having the time of his life wrestling Backlund as he has a big grin plastered across his face as they start grappling. This match is all holds and not much else. Granted, the holds look decent and there's always a sense of a struggle, but I need more than that to rate a match higher than decent. Backlund is charismatic as hell and watching him deadlift Ishikawa with one arm was genuinely impressive and it might be my favourite moment of this match. ★★¾

With this match and a Great Sasuke vs Bob Backlund happening earlier in the night (the later match was sadly clipped to pieces though), this entire show feels like a massive fever dream. Otsuka and Yone are billed as the 'Love Warriors' for some reason. Yone comes out to Antonio Inoki's theme music and Otsuka comes out as some random guy singing his entrance music from the cheap seats. Bizarre scenes. The Road Warriors are massively washed up by 1998, and Hawk couldn't even be arsed to shave his hair into the famous double mohawk. Despite all this, they still feel like megastars as they powerwalk their way into the Ryogoku Sumo Hall, as Iron Man blares over the speakers. With this only clocking in at 4:33, there isn't much to review. Otsuka nearly kills himself when he goes for a big somersault dive over the turnbuckle to the outside. Yone does a fantastic job at bumping around for the big powerhouses and they wrap this one up before either Road Warrior has the chance to get blown up. The crowd remain hot throughout the entire match and this felt like a big spectacle. I'm sure the inclusion of the Road Warriors shifted a few tickets and the match was a fun squash, so I can't complain at what I got here. ★★¾

Usuda has insane cardio and spends 90% of the match working on offence. He totally schools Ikeda with a wide variety of strikes, gaining multiple knockdowns. Perhaps with a stroke of luck, Ikeda is able to land a series of brutally stiff lariats and is able to take back control. Ikeda is charismatic as hell and his selling of his beating put him over as huge fan favourite. This exactly what a BattlARTs match in front of big crowd should look like. ★★★

Taka and Funaki are on loan from the WWF and are brilliant as ever being cocky comedy heels. Hidaka and Fujita are a solid enough team of babyfaces, but I felt the match lost momentum once they had a lengthy work over on Funaki in the middle of the match. There's no point for a heel team to working up for a hot tag after all. The finishing stretch is fast paced and action packed. Anytime I get to see Taka bust out his insane Spaceman Plancha, I'm instantly a fan. Fun lucharesu bout to start things off. ★★★

Just finished watching this and I think it might of been the worst show I've seen this year. Baker/Swole was a waste of time. Swole can't act to save her life. Can't wait to hear Cornette rip this to shreds on his podcast. The Young Bucks match was like every other Young Bucks match that they've had in AEW. Lots of big moves that mean very little. Luchasaurus looks awkward as hell trying to keep up with the pace of the three smaller guys he was working with. The Casino Battle Royale was a clusterfuck. That Darby Allin body bag spot was needlessly dangerous. Matt Sydal making his surprise debut only to fall on his arse after attempting a Shooting Star Press was a debut that was Shockmaster levels of bad. I'm disgusting with AEW letting Matt Hardy carry on after that sickening botch. The Women's title match was worked well enough, but never had any heat going for it. The eight man tag match told a decent story and Dustin Rhodes looked good. I wasn't paying much attention during the Page/Omega vs FTR match, but it didn't look like I missed much. The post match was at least decent. The pre-match stuff for the Mimosa Mayhem match was great and got the silly stipulation over as a match suited for a blood feud. The match itself was solid enough and Jericho made Cassidy look like a star. This was match of the night for me, although it's not a MOTYC by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a big fan of the psychology in the MJF/Moxley match where MJF forces Moxley to wrestle his style of match. The action wasn't as good as the psychology behind it, but MJF looked great and he's a future star for sure.

Being a career midcarder at this point, Tamon Honda puts in a career performance as a plucky underdog as he tries to dethrone the GHC champion and close friend Kenta Kobashi. Honda has to mat-wrestle Kobashi if he wants to stand a chance as it's the only area he surpasses Kobashi in. Honda was a beat on the mat and you actually believe that he might actually get lucky and score a lucky win. Kobashi's ground game isn't exactly to the level of Kiyoshi Tamura, but he's able to use his power to not look foolish on the mat. Kobashi puts Honda in the tightest headlock ever and it looks like he wants to remove Honda's head from his body. Honda goes to take out Kobashi's chopping arm and I'm pleased the limbwork played into the finishing stretch. This wasn't quite the MOTDC that I thought it was when I first watched it, but it's still well worth your time just to see what an underrated talent Tamon Honda was. ★★★★¼

Underwhelming match, but I'm very happy with the result. Reigns is the most interesting character in all of WWE at the moment. Average show. Women's tag match and Orton vs Lee were the only matches I'd recommend checking out.

Eh the ring collapsing spot is so old now.

I have no idea where they are going with this. I hate that campy mallet with a passion.

Solid enough match, but a few steps below the SummerSlam match. Main event time.

Damn, wasn't expecting Lee to get such an easy and clean win over Orton. Decent match, Orton is pretty good when he wants to be.

Yeah, not liking Lee's new gear since he's gone to the main roster. Hoping they don't screw him up.

Really fun match with a quick pace and a brilliant finish. Some cool ideas there and both teams worked well together.

Shayna's make up looks like she wanted to go full Aja Kong, but gave up half way.

Working a real life rape allegation into the Riddle/Corbin feud is so tasteless. Also this match sucks so far. Corbin hasn't a match that I cared about, but he's always been good at coming across unlikeable.

I expected a bit more from them given the talent involved, but that was solid. I dug the leg work and it's good to see Big E finally getting a singles push.

WWE usually hit it out of the park with video packages, but that intro was cringe worthy. Lashley vs Crews to open the show. At least we can get the least interesting match out of the way first.

I didn't think much of this. The majority of this match was spent on the mat and I didn't find it engaging at all. There was little to no bumping and you can count the amount of strikes on one hand. I've always admired Thatcher's ability to bring intensity to the smallest of actions. The last few minutes of submission trading was cool at least. ★★½

Looking forward to seeing Le Gros Chein finally getting his title back. Hope he changes his gear and music. I still think having two PPVs a week apart is dumb, but there's a lot on the card to get excited for. Big E vs Sheamus should be a fun hoss fight and I'm looking forward to seeing the eventual Banks/Bayley turn.