ohtani's jacket

I don't think this flowed very well. The men didn't seem comfortable working with the women. When they made a save they would break the girls up like they were children fighting and every time they did intergender stuff the women got all the offense. Surely, they could have done some exhibition-y stuff where it didn't matter too much that the women were bumping for an arm drag or something similar. I'm pretty sure the Apaches vs. Hamadas was less stunted than this. Yagi was fun to watch but that's a given on most nights. She got way too much offense against Sasuke but that was due to the strange nature of the match. The finishing stretch wasn't bad but the match would have been better if they'd done more double teaming to make it a more competitive bout.

This was pretty good. I'm sure there have been dozens of matches in the record books of similar quality to this so I would call this standard quality for a mask match. The elimination period was a bit too long but once the final pair were decided this was old-school mask vs. mask wrestling with plenty of great visuals and some nice dramatic moments. There was a time when Fishman's mask was one of the most valued in all of lucha. He probably waited a bit too long to drop it but those are the choices people make in life. I was surprised by how bald he was, to be honest. He looked like he could have snuck down to the local supermarket without anyone guessing he was a famous luchador. A really "quiet" unmasking compared to VIllano III given that they were contemporaries in the UWA but at least the action was worthy of a mask vs. mask match and carried the tradition into the new century.

And then there was this... This was some Escape From New York shit right here. I don't know if it was any good but this is what wrestling will look like if a world leader ever pulls the trigger.

This was cool. Death matches aren't my thing. You know I'd rather watch Lou Thesz work a headlock for an hour than watch a death match, but I thought this was a cool title match. Sure, the crowd brawling was shitty, but it was 2000... everybody was doing shitty crowd brawling in 2000. You need to write that shit off and not let it bug you so much. I liked these guys and liked the effort they put in. Maybe I'm in a good mood because I think it's great that Yamakawa uses Journey as his entrance music but nothing about the bout felt convoluted. It flowed pretty well and the setup to the board spots was okay. There was a bit of wrestling here and there and some decent selling. Other people may have been expecting a classic but for a guy like me who is predisposed toward disliking this type of match, it wasn't bad. Not bad at all.

Men's Teioh had an interesting career. People always talk about Sano's career but Men's career is just as interesting. This was a solid juniors tag. I reminded me of those New Japan tags with Makabe and Tanahashi. What is with these young lions being so jacked? I guess the young guys were more interested in bodybuilding than their seniors. I loved it when Journey started blaring after Yamakawa won. I may not be able to watch another Big Japan match without listening to Separate Ways.

This was okay. I'm not familiar with these workers so I wasn't surprised one way or the other. I thought it was a bit move heavy for a Southern Style tag. Where was the heat? And the selling and the FIP in stuff? There was a lot of double teaming and innovative tag wrestling but it didn't seem to matter that Thompson was worked over. The commentators were trying to add a bunch of psychology to the match but it didn't mesh with the in-ring action. I'm sure Southern style tag with an indy twist has been done better n other matches. This imitated a Southern tag but I don't think it got the details right. But I guess what Chad is saying is that it was miles better than what they usually did.

This was pretty good. I liked how it was worked as an apuesta match in the beginning and not some watered down shit but I did have a few complaints. First of all, it should have been a 2/3 falls match. That would have eliminated the need to have a restart. SUWA could have simply won the first fall and Dragon Kid could have battled his way back. Secondly, in this sort of match Dragon Kid needs to be pinpoint accurate with his offense. And he wasn't. Not by a longshot. Thirdly, there was no need for Crazy Max to interfere. SUWA was kicking ass and looked like The Man. He didn't need anyone interfering. Lastly, when it was all said and done did Black Dragon (or whoever it was) need to attack Dragon Kid? That was pretty stupid especially since GAORA cut to Dragon Kid cuting SUWA's hair as though nothing had happened. The GAORA commentary was terrible but at least SUWA pulled a Fuerza Guerrera-level cheapshot at the end. That was class personified. SUWA was great in this but it was poorly booked compared to the Arai bout.

If I'm ever going to get into FMW it has to be with a multiple-man match, right? Right? I liked how this bout provided everyone with short bursts of action that masked whatever flaws they might have in singles matches. And the injury to Oya gave them a focal point during the tricky middle period where the heat had worn off, and while the Shinzaki turn didn't make much sense to the casual observer at least it was a guy trying to aid the face side instead of his rudo partners turning on him. Entertaining bout.

This was a nice match. For a guy who is supposed to be the enforcer for Crazy Max, I was impressed with how well SUWA called this. Arai seemed a bit weedy at first but he had incredibly plucky offense and I loved that unique diving headbutt of his. I also loved how it seemed SUWA would put Arai away to send a message to Dragon Kid until Arai upset the apple cart. I also think more Japanese wrestlers should celebrate with sake. They usually have a cup backstage but Arai spraying sake everywhere was awesome. This was a well-booked, well put together bout.

I had no idea what the story was here and couldn't be arsed reading up on it. The beginning to this match was as heatless and rudderless as you could possibly imagine. I actually thought it was pretty terrible pro-wrestling. Then Tanaka woke me from my apathy by absolutely abusing Hayabusa and after that they threw some decent bombs. The match as a whole felt like a failure, though. I don't know what it is with Hayabusa. He aims for the sky with every single match and always falls to the ground.

I've always been fascinated with Mr. Gannosuke. I've read guys like Loss, Chad and Jerome talk about him but never taken the plunge. I'm guessing a match against Sabu isn't the best gateway to more Gannosuke since it was pretty generic and didn't give him much chance to show off his offense or character. But we'll see what other stuff he does in the early 00s.

For the database purposes, Khaos should be Kahoz. This was supremely weak. I would have LOVED a great minis match but all we got was some sloppy action followed by an angle where Kahoz and Espectro Jr turned on their Abismo forcing their regular-sized counterparts to get involved. Sagrada botching two spots in a row to end the primera caida killed this for me.

I saw most of the build to this so it's only right that I watch the match. I knew there was a chance that it would be bad. There's no guarantee that Perro vs. Caras would have been good in 1991 let alone 2000. I tried to concentrate on it being Perro Aguayo vs. Cien Caras instead of worrying about the match quality. That worked for a while, but goddamn was this match short. I think it may have been a single fall. The crowd was ecstatic when Perro got a cheap win, but it had to be one of the least earned apuesta victories in Perro's storied career. Afterward, Perro and Aguayo brawled in front of Caras while Cien was getting his head shaved. Then Pierroth showed up in a wheelchair, which finally explains what happened to him in the latter half of the season. Pretty shitty main event. I'm beginning to doubt whether the Universo/Perro match is as good as I remember it being.

Fun match. It was only a couple of minutes long but the crowd was hot and it was fun watching Regal sell for Austin. The finish saw Austin accidentally DQ'ed which he didn't take kindly to. He gave the ref a stunner and let Regal know he wasn't finished with him. The look on Regal's face at the end was priceless. He got some beer on his face but reacted as though he'd tasted his own blood. Similar to the Austin/Benoit match it was a bout that promised more in the future but it was cool to see two guys who'd gone up and down the road together in WCW having a match together on RAW.

Well, it all boiled down to this. I suppose the WWF deserves some credit for tying all of its main event storylines into a single match like this. If you enjoy WWF "Over the Edge" style booking then you'll enjoy this as it featured the usual twists and turns. Vince brought a truck to ringside to tear down the cage and managed to rip the door off before Commissioner Foley stopped him. The match sprawled out of the cage and for a while it was Hell on the Cars as they brawled on the PPV set. Eventually, they ended up on the roof of the cage. With Michaels and Foley setting the precedent that someone should fall off the cage or through the cage there was an expectation that something nuts would happen but none of the workers seemed like the type to take a crazy bump. Sure enough, they did a gimmicked fall where Rikishi fell onto the truck that Vince had commandeered. Austin's reaction was the best thing about it. After that, the guys left standing hit their finishers on each other and Angle fluked a win that let all of the heat out of the building. They were ready to explode if Austin or the Rock won the belt but instead the finish went down like a lead balloon. The bout was overbooked for my liking but the WWF had little choice in that regard if they were going to deliver on their own promises and the fans' expectations. Austin and Triple H deserve credit for working hard the entire bout and having a wilder brawl than any other pair. Their work here was better than their Survivor Series bout and it was a decent bookend to Triple H's PPV performances. Interesting too that Benoit and Jericho weren't involved. Instead, they were stuck in a pair of rubbish feuds. It feels like it would have been a more accurate coda to the 2000 WWF main event scene if Benoit and Jericho had been involved.

This felt more choreographed than your typical WWF main event. They all feel choreographed to some extent or another since presumably the road agent, or whoever was in charge at the time, maps out the bout with the workers beforehand to ensure its a match worth laying down your bucks for. Perhaps the Rock had a little bit of leeway the same way they allowed him creative license with his promos but he's a worker who excelled within the WWF formula so I can't imagine him deviating too much what Patterson or another production guy had to say. Angle clearly needed the safety net of a WWF match layout and it was mostly for his benefit that the match felt like color by numbers. The booking continues to be stale but I guess that's what happens when you don't have an offseason. I was surprised that Angle went over here. Even if it was mostly for storyline purposes he was still green and didn't look ready for the big time yet. They didn't exactly stick a rocket on him but he's come a hell of a long way in the six months since Wrestlemania.

Man, I have zero memory of the feuds that Jericho had in 2000 after Benoit and Triple H. Why are Jericho and X-Pac feuding? Why are they having a cage match? There can't have been much to this feud since JR was pretty tame on commentary. Decent midcard bout but it made zero sense to me why it should be inside a cage. Cages are meant to be used for blood feuds or feuds where there's been too much outside interference. This felt like they tacked on the cage match stip because they hotshot the match-up. The match was okay but despite their efforts, you'd be hard pressed to call it memorable.

Decent follow-up to the Austin/Benoit match on RAW but they don't escalate the feud any further.

The quality of the go-home shows in the WWF is declining along with the booking and matchmaking. Previously, they'd serve up a red-hot match before the go-home match, not some match that was cold before it reached the table. The angle at the end did lead to a great Smackdown main event but the show as a whole left me with zero interest in seeing Austin vs. HHH.

Some nice chemistry between these two but if it was meant to be the blowoff to their feud then it was pretty rubbish.

Austin cuts an edgy promo in Stephanie's face but the angle is still trash. Benoit does a decent job of delivering his lines and we have ourselves a match. Austin tries to outwrestle Benoit in the early going but he's a bit slow. I don't know if it was ring rust or the fact that it had been a while since he'd worked some of these holds. He was beginning to settle into a groove when Benoit took over and from there it was a regular TV bout without much focus on technical wrestling. There wasn't the same chemistry as Benoit's bouts with Rock, Triple H, and Jericho but it definitely had potential as a program. Too bad they ran with it. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that Austin went over clean without any interference from the Radicalz.

This was meathead wrestling even with the little guys involved. Not bad if you like that sort of thing but no different from the New Japan heavies. They try to work in a bit of heelwork but Kikuchi being beaten up in 2000 is hardly cutting edge and Akiyama pinches most of his heel spots from Kawada. Still waiting for NOAH to blaze its way through the Japanese wrestling world.

Why were these two fighting in Puerto Rico? When did Bruce Prichard turn into a heel ref all of a sudden? Match didn't have the same vibe with the Puerto Rico commentators discussing JWA angles over the top of it.

Austin's back but I'm not sure he's been missed, It doesn't help that he's back with an absolute turd of an angle and having four-way promos that end with stunners. Rock vs. Benoit was good but the run-ins sucked. The set-up for Benoit vs. HHH was about as innocuous as it gets. The WWF feels like it's cooling off (product wise) and the monthly PPV grind is definitely a factor. I wonder how much better the WWF would have been if they'd cut out some of the bullshit B level PPVs that replaced In Your House. The last quarter of the year feels like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel for match-ups. The booking has also become stale. I guess they were coasting until the Royal Rumble build but the energy isn't the same as the first half of the year.