ohtani's jacket

I don't think this match delivers on its amazing buildup. I wish they hadn't gone the PRIDE route and instead had a classic BattlARTS match. The outside brawling was weaker than in any of the tags prior and felt out of place in the style of match they were going for. It's strange to me that there was more memorable snoot style stuff in Osaka Pro than there was in BattlARTs in 2000.

Worked my way through the available footage from 1930. Most of it is newsreel clips of the finish. The standard finish to a bout in 1930 was guys throwing each other, and knocking each other off their feet as many times as they could, to ear their man down for the body press. Some of the finishes were wilder and rougher than others but that was the general gist. The finish could come after an hour or more of wrestling, though, so the real gems from the 1930 footage are the longer clips of Gus Sonnenberg vs. Count Zarynoff and Shikat vs. Londos which show you what the body of the bout looked like. There wasn't a lot of matwork shown presumably because the men filming the bouts wanted to save their film for the standup portions which promised to be more exciting. There was a strong emphasis on the tie-up in 1930. We're used to seeing a tie-up or a lock-up to stand a bout but they constantly returned to it in the early 30s as a means of throwing their opponent and further weakening him. There were a lot of cool escapes to avoid being thrown and a lot of cool work leading to the tie-up especially in Londos/Shikat where they kept giving each other shots to the face and head before the tie-up. I also noticed quite a lot of European flair from workers like Count Zarynoff which was cool to see. Also, I must add that Paul Boesch commentating over home videos of himself wrestling in the 30s is one of the treats in the 1930 collection.

Watched a couple of matches of the amazing hypnotist and wrestler, Dr. Lee Grable. The first match was a short match against JTTB and journeyman, Ivan the Terrible, which didn't tell us a heck of a lot about Grable. The second was a long main event tag match with Grable and Sandor Szabo vs. John Tolos and Hans Schnabel. On paper, it looked like it might be a bit vanilla but it ended up being fairly solid. Grable was the smallest man in the match but worked with a ton of fire and had some great forearm smash spots and energetic work off the ropes. The bout was a good chance to check out a young and handsome John Tolos years before the Blassie feud and a pretty decent look at Szabo too, whose suplex hold was heavily featured. I appreciated the steady commentary of Bill Welsh, who took the time to explain between falls the mechanics of the suplex, Szabo's background in wrestling and how the Szabo/Grable team came to be. There were some neat post-match interviews too where Schnabel (who sounded more like a longshoreman than a German heel) slyly explained that the suplex is, in fact, a chokehold or stranglehold, and another from the babyface team where Szabo expounded on some wrestling philosophy explaining the differences between tag wrestling and singles matches. I can't remember being overly sold on Szabo before but listening to him speak I began to like the idea of a Hungarian Greco-Roman wrestler coming to the States to work the catch-as-can style and his suplex was nice, especially the one on the larger Schnabel. Tolos was good in his role as a young heel and Schnabel was solid as the wise old head in the corner giving him instructions. Pretty decent look at everybody and a good match to boot.

This was a decent match but there weren't any standout moments worth getting excited about. It was nice that Liger got a decent amount of offense before the inevitable tap out.

Well, this wasn't awful. It was perfectly acceptable meathead power wrestling. The match sagged in the middle as matches often do when there's a hot beginning and a hot finish but No Fear beating the crap out of each other was worth taking a look at. Then they staged another angle. I guess they are going for a 1980s All Japan feel with these chaotic finishes. Taue taking his shirt off has to be the least intimidating enforcer moment in the history of professional wrestling. And the backstage segment was weak. Taue threw the vending machine trash box at Omori and all these cans spilled on the floor. Listening to people step on them was grating and the entire thing was poorly filmed and poorly staged. It's not like they've had a lot of experience doing this sort of stuff so I can forgive that but there's no way that these are hot angles. Necessary perhaps (in terms of a different direction) but not great by WWF or CMLL standards for 2000 era booking.

Someone needs to repost that video about what they don't teach you in wrestling school about how to get over with a modern audience. it's buried in a thread somewhere and I can't find it.

This was a disappointment. I tried to curb my expectations since it was just a Super Libre mano a mano and not an apuesta match but it was still frustrating. I don't think Parka had fully developed as a brawler at this stage and while Shocker has taken 2000 by storm it's not really clear how good a brawler and/or apuesta worker he is. We weren't given much of a clue since this bout revolved around outside interference and a steady dose of Monterrey bullshit. I guess Parka starts coming into his own as a brawler in 2001 since that's when his first classics appear. Shocker may not have been the right opponent for the type of match I was hoping for but this fizzled a bit like Dandy vs. Antifaz. I still think Shocker is in the run for WOTY but this didn't help his case.

This was the most fun Monterrey's been in a while. It was a classic Monterrey undercard bout with Los Orientales being a trio gimmick that reminded you of the Ninja Turtles and Thundercats and all of the other cartoon themed trios teams of the territory's heyday. The workers flubbed a lot of spots but that added to the charm. It was simply fly by the seat of your pants undercard lucha. At the heart of it was a right scrap between Sangre Azteca and Ricky Marvin. They went at each other hard and a lot of their work looked super modern compared to most of the lucha from 2000. Their standoff at the end wouldn't look out of place in a 2018 bout if you ask me. This was a great match to watch if you're a Ricky Marvin fan as he wrestled with an intensity that's impossible to summon in his overseas bouts. In fact, this may have been the best undercard match of the year when you consider that none of the others had a pairing as strong as Azteca vs. Marvin. I really enjoyed this and would shortlist it on a matches worth watching list for 2000 lucha.

For the record, there is a 1992 trios match on tape that is the oldest Lucero match out there.

Oh yeah, Charlie Lucero... This was a classic example of how one matchup can make the most inconsequential of matches worth watching. Charlie did some lovely stuff with Silver Star to lead things off (years before their maestro matches), and later on, they came back and had a phenomenal brawling sequence that was straight out of Satanico's playbook and left me clamouring for a singles match from this era. The rest of the bout was largely crap, especially the shit with the pool cue and Damian's balls but those Lucero vs. Silver Star exchanges are something I won't forget when I look back on the year.

Waste of talent, really. Santo held it together and made it fun by being Santo, basically, but if you've seen a Santo match before that's not going to wow you. The Tarzan Boy angle is starting to get irritating but I did like how pissed Porky was at the end.

Charlie Lucero is one of my favorite maestro workers so I was looking forward to this. I'm used to seeing him work as a tecnico so I was surprised he was on the rudo side here. He's not the most fiercely charismatic wrestler but he gave it a go. He had a neat exchange with Emilio to start things off. Emilio has been struggling physically in 2000 but he's still chugging away. The rest of the bout was built around the tecnicos' contempt for Pimpi. Niebla was a bit too spiteful for my liking but there were some quality Pimpi spots and I liked the dynamic between Pimpi and Brazo de Oro. I'm sure you've all seen the George Kidd spot where Johnny Saint and Steve Grey roll themselves into a ball. At one point, Pimpi did perhaps the most disturbing ball in wrestling history. Then he proceeded to sit in the lap of one of the local men which didn't please the old guy sitting next to them. The match wasn't really heading anywhere but I still hated the finish. Tecnicos faking a foul is one of the worst finishes possible and made Niebla seem like even more of a dickhead. Oh well, at least I got to see Charlie.

Shocker burns Parka's mask at the start but Parka doesn't care and dances with some chicks in the crowd. Shocker vs. Parka is a good thing but this was a boring bout. They went through the motions of a rudo beatdown and a tecnico comeback but there was no edge to it. These matches work best when the other wrestlers hate each other too but we didn't get that level of intensity here. Casas tried hard to be a traditional foil for this sort of match but the rudos were on autopilot. Parka's humiliation wasn't quite severe enough and his comeback wasn't inspiring. They progressed the feud from the week before but I've seen tons of lead-in matches that were better than this.

It's hard to judge from short clips, but judging by the footage we have, Gus Sonnenberg doesn't strike me as anything special.

I keep waiting for a match where Fuerza takes over and delivers a performance of old but it never happens. This was probably his best performance all year which isn't saying much. I don't know what happened to post-96 Fuerza but his charisma took a nose dive. It's weird because he still looks like he has the physical tools. Some decent stuff from Pimpi as usual but Felino was more interested in doing his pissing pose than tearing it up on the mat with Fuerza and the others were window dressing. Monterrey really is like diggin' in the crates compared to IWRG and CMLL. Hopefully, we can unearth some hidden gems in time.

This started on the best possible note by having El Dandy square off with Casas. Remember their classic from '92? Well, they had the same chemistry eight years later. Their exchanges weren't blow away great but they were creative and original and the kind of exchanges you only see when two masters of their craft square off with each other. There was a noticeable difference to how Dandy approached the Casas exchanges compared to his work with everyone else and it was one of the few times all year that he's looked like the Dandy of old. Following on the heels of Casas and Dandy were Zumbido and Antifaz and Panther and Tarzan Boy. Something appears to be stewing between Zumbido and Antifaz as they were paired together a lot during the bout. Their work was okay but not as engaging as the others. Tarzan Boy earns my vote for Most Improved Worker. If you'd told me at the beginning of the year that he'd be holding his own in technical exchanges I would have never believed it. Least of all with Panther. He was doing his Arena Mexico shtick of wanting to roll with the rudos which overshadowed his contribution to the match but he had one other polished exchange with Dandy that supported my claims. The last pairing was the main course, Shocker vs. Parka. It was strictly comedy but the good kind that cracks you up. I loved the stooge spots especially the face plant on the apron. After a long primera caida where everyone worked respect pairings the match ran out of steam. It was too long and the heat segment meandered with the rudos strolling about while the crowd waited for a tecnico flourish that never really came. I liked the opening fall but the match died on the vine when the rudos took control. That's too bad given the talent involved but there are no guarantees when you watch a lucha trios. None whatsoever. You can have a great match between unknown workers or a mediocre one between star talent. You never know. Still, it's worth watching the first fall here if you're a guy or a gal who likes a lucha exchange. Or if you wanna see a wee bit more Casas vs. Dandy and even a bit of Casas vs. Panther. If you're a lucha fan you take that kind of stuff whenever you can get it. So I wouldn't say this was a total loss. Just a missed opportunity to have the best trios match of the year, potentially. For the record, I would say that bout where Pierroth electrocuted Villano III would probably win my vote for trios MOTY.

This was worth watching just to see Cerebro doing his thing. You can pretty much just track him the entire time and he's always doing something of interest. He had worked a title match with Fantasy a few weeks prior after Fantasy beat him in a mano a mano but there didn't seem to be any meat to their feud. Instead, Cerebro worked mostly with Mike Segura and Star Boy. The two pairings couldn't have been any further apart as Segura was a talented guy who matched up well with Cerebro while Star Boy was awkward as fuck and constantly off with his timing. Cerebro shined in both pairings but the Segura exchanges were obviously the highlight (that dive, my God, and Cerebro's sell!) The Megas were no mugs either and brought their working shoes like always. Another solid IWRG midcard bout.

This was a fun atomics match. It had all the hallmarks of undercard lucha -- some fun gimmicks and neat workers and a mix of traditional lucha exchanges and exciting dives. On the rudo side we got to see two members of the very first incarnation of Los Oficiales which was cool. They were more of your classic journeyman team that the fluid and dynamic trios unit we'd see later on but I liked the original Oficial. He could've been mistaken for just about any corrupt police captain in Mexico. Hijo del Gladiador continued to engage his role as the midcard veteran and Bombero is always busy doing his thing. On the tecnico side there was a nice mix of masked guys. Olimpico didn't shine as much as I was hoping and seems to have gone backward throughout the year. I liked Mascara Magica the most. he wasn't flashy but I thought he showed solid fundamentals. IWRG is very good at keeping these undercard matches short and snappy. None of the matches outstay their welcome and the guys entertain you while they're out there. Solid bout.

This was a slow-burning trios that ended up with a double bladejob. Any trios match that brings Villano IV to the fore is a welcome addition to the footage as he's not the type of worker who gets showcased a lot. He's extremely capable of playing the lead role in a trios match and carrying his end of a singles feud but he tends to always be in a secondary role supporting his brother or some other central player. Thankfully, IWRG had strong UWA roots and this 2000 run of theirs harkens back to the early 90s UWA where Villano IV was as much a singles player as a trios wrestler. The brawling here was good. The mask ripping and the blading was done right, which isn't always the case in trios matches. They gave you just enough of a tease that you want to see another trios match between them the following week and then a singles match if the powers that be allow it. Plus there was some good stuff between Panther and Felino to back it up. In thise case, they worked rapid fire lucha exchanges that served to contrast the breakdown in sportsmanship between Villano and Scorpio while at the same time matching their intensity. Felino still has a massive engine judging by this footage and Panther is simply one of the best workers in the world at this point (no hyperbole.) Lots to enjoy here.

When you think about it, rudo contra rudo title matches are pretty rare. For the most part, this was worked as a clean fight. It was chippy at times and there was some controversy over a possible foul by Silver King but mostly it was hard fought title-match wrestling. Scorpio, in particular, worked like a defacto tecnico champ. He's taken a lot of pride in the heavyweight title so that doesn't come as much surprise but it was still a side of him that you don't regularly see in other settings. Silver King put up a strong challenge. He brought his A-game in terms of athleticism and agility and came pretty close to scoring an upset in the tercera caida. But Scorpio in this setting is a bit like a Mexican Triple H. He's the Game and once again used his smarts to seal the win. Good, competitive match. Some nice matwork in the primera caida and some good back and forth stuff in the falls that followed. I liked Scorpio's suplex work and the power he got on his lift. The nearfalls were well done and the submission holds were sold well. The only thing holding it back from a MOTYC level was that it was more compact than epic but it was a tight bout without much fat and worth comparing to the Villano IV title defense to see which is better.

Prior to this we get an undercard bout with Alan Stone, Black Dragon and Moto Cross vs. El Hijo del Gladiador, Mega and Super Mega. A short match but the action is quick. I was impressed with El Hijo del Gladiador as the glue holding the rudo side together. I didn't think he'd be that good in a match where the pace was quicker. The bout listed here was moderately entertaining. It showed promise in the beginning with Villano V doing a real fun Mendoza-family style opening exchange. The rudos looked fun and it was a chance to catch up with Felino who we haven't seen in a while and for some reason isn't being featured in the top of the card CMLL stuff. And his new trios team hasn't been showcased in a while either. But it ate up a good 15 minutes without ever hitting its stride and there wasn't a heck of a lot to get excited over. Personally, I liked the first match more.

This had some nice continuity from the week before with Super Parka looking to get stuck into Silver King. There was more teamwork between the rudos this week, and even though the main storyline was the tension between Silver King and Scorpio the rudo work was more fluid than in the previous week's match. The pace could have been a step or two quickly but IWRG trios matches often move at a slower pace. Sometimes I suspect it's because the workers don't feel it's worth busting their asses in front of a tiny crowd in a lower paying gig but it may also be because there simply isn't enough crowd heat to spur them on. I really dug the Dandy vs. Villano III exchanges in the mid of all the Silver King vs. Scorpio stuff and for a second or two I imagined a singles feud between the two. That would have been cool. As it is, we're headed for rudo contra rudo which is a lot more interesting than Silver King vs. Super Parka so if anything this match steered things in a better direction. Hopefully, Silver King brings his A game because he's a guy whose output varies.

This had some fun stuff with Shocker and Porky battling over who is more guapo but there wasn't a whole lot else to it. I can take or leave Porky's comedy at this stage. He has a habit of overshadowing every bout that he's in because of his routine. It was fun here because Shocker was the foil but it would have been a bore otherwise. Dandy worked the mat with Fantasma in the beginning and it was kind of sad to see just how slow Dandy has become. The Dandy of old would have torn it up in that segment. Silver King tried to start something with Super Parka but the care factor wasn't there for me. Shocker looked good against all three opponents and was head and shoulders above everybody else. I'd recommend skipping this one unless you want further proof that Shocker is a special talent.

I've been married for 11 years and have a 7 year old daughter. I've taught English in Japan for 12 years and am currently working with pre-schoolers. I used to be a heavy smoker (30+ a day) but I quit when my wife was pregnant. Haven't smoked a cigarette for 8 years. I drink too much, though, and always seem to have some drink or sweet I need to buy on a daily basis. I've gone through phases of being addicted to Coke. The cola stuff not the white stuff.