ohtani's jacket

I also went with 8/5/82. Criticism of the series is old. It's like flogging a dead horse.

Atlantis is a tricky one. I've seen a lot of bad Atlantis performances that make me want to say he wasn't on the level of Santo, Lizmark, Solar or Villano III as far as masked tecnicos go but there's so much more footage available of Atlantis and it's not as though those workers never had mediocre performances. I would like to see more of Atlantis' work from 1988 since his work from '89-91 is excellent, and I believe that 1988 was when he started coming into his own as a worker. I thought he was quite good during the '96-00 CMLL period but you rarely get to see him display the full range of his talents. Often he's just running through his signature spots in trios matches which can get a bit tiresome after a while. The fact that he's managed to stay relevant in CMLL for so many years means he's never really worked the maestro circuit properly which is good for him but bad for us. I would have really liked to have seen what he was capable of against Negro Navarro, for example. I dunno, somebody about him doesn't scream "legend." Respected, long time star yes. But he doesn't quite have that aura that Santo had or even Villano III. He is almost at that Blue Panther type level.

This was largely forgettable. The rudos weren't charismatic enough and the tecnicos weren't spectacular enough. The guy playing Fuerza's mini had no business being Fuerza's mini.

So Ciclon Ramirez is officially a rudo now? I loved how Ciclon and Felino reprised their feud seven years on. Never forget, never forgive. There was a lot of other good stuff in this too. Kato Kung Lee was surprisingly spritely. In fact, it's the peppiest I can remember seeing him after he loses his mask. I really enjoyed the exchanges he had with Hijo del Gladiator. It was a blast watching two older unmasked guys do their shit. The falls were short and sweet here and none of the pairings overstayed their welcome. All in all, I thought it was a pretty tidy bout.

Good God, the work in this was awesome. It was everything you hope a Villanos vs. Infernales trio will be and for a short time it made you forget that it was just the final of a lucha tournament and not some amazing apuesta match. Then the bullshit kicked in and it was back to reality. But even the hatchet job in the editing suite managed to capture the awesome Villano III celebration afterward. What a year he's having in terms of pure emotion and adulation. There may be superstars in other promotions but has anyone connected with the crowd to the same degree as Villano III? He really is riding a wave of goodwill after his unmasking. The post-match scenes were tremendous but even they couldn't compare to Satanico and Villano V's brawling. That was damn near the da Vinci of lucha brawling. I can't believe CMLL went on a hiatus after this. I mean the Sydney Olympics were a big deal and important but we missed out on the Negro Casas vs. Dr. Wagner feud and their two singles matches at Arena Mexico. Lost 80s footage is one thing but lost 2000 footage? Gutted.

This was a hot mess but all's well that ends well. At least the finish was satisfying. They were kind of in a bind because they wanted to do something special but were fourth from the top and weren't given a lot of time. If not for the Whisper in the Wind spot this could have been a regular TV bout but booking saved the day. The combination of Lita's spot and the con-chair-to finish made sure this ended on a high even if all it did was paper over the cracks from a structural point of view. But hey, it's the midcard. How much can you do?

This was a sprinted bout. It was a bit shallow with the no-selling and the repeated DVDVRs but you expect that sort of thing from Super Heel. Devil was always good at working against smaller or younger girls and that shone through here even this late in her career. Meiko didn't really bring her A game but it was still a quick seven minutes and a fun watch.

This was a decent match although there was a lot of downtime for such a short bout. I've probably said this a dozen times but I'm astounded that Kanemoto has become a must-watch worker in 2000. He really is one of the better workers in Japan at this point in time. I'm not entirely sure why that is. Perhaps it was because the juniors style had shifted toward a style more in keeping with his shoot style leanings, or perhaps it was because he had simply matured into more of a veteran role, but whatever the case, I'm buying into it.

This was a solid match marred by the usual boring Samurai TV commentary. Man, do they ever drone on. I ended up having to turn the sound off to appreciate the action more. We know Hyuga and Bolshoi are good workers but the one that impressed me most was Bennett. That girl could work. Really great agility for a woman her size. She looked in control the whole time and came across as highly talented. Kana wasnt bad either but Reggie was the standout.

There's something so 'meh' about NOAH. I think I'll be taking it off my viewing list unless Chad rates something particularly high. It doesn't help that I was never a big fan of Kobashi or Akiyama. Their work here didn't interest me which is a shame because I was hoping to follow their narrative through the coming months but I had an inkling that I'd feel this way heading into the bout. There were some okay moments between Takayama and Kikuchi, and the crowd got into the match when Kikuchi made his run, but for the most part, this was plodding heavyweight action.

Ha, go Fuchi! He was like a man possessed in the early going. Chono looked stupid wrestling in a black shirt and pants but his cheap tricks fired up Wada and the crowd. The match started off fun but it went on for too long and Fuchi's comeback lacked the bite that his early work had. I really wanted to see him get one big nearfall before Chono put him away but it didn't happen.

The All Japan split has made what would have been a pretty average year for Kawada a heck of a lot more interesting. The irony of it being Kawada who's left to pick up the broken pieces of Baba's dream certainly isn't lost on the viewer. Unfortunately. he gives a fairly listless performance here. He had this amazing dynamic with Tenryu served up for him on a platter but he couldn't generate the type of heat you'd expect from such a key match-up. Tenryu tried a few tricks but Kawada wasn't up for it. Hansen was slow and plodding and looked gassed most of the time. Williams spent most of the time close to the mat in an effort to avoid doing any real work. You wished those two would just disappear and let us have Tenryu vs. Kawada. This should have been electric but it ended up being pretty disappointing. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Kawada's artistry in the past but I really expected more from him. He's got some work to do in the next couple of months if he's going to leave a positive impression on his calendary year.

This was a nice exhibition match. It had a snappy beat to it and the pace never slackened. I liked the personal duel between Mochizuki and CIMA. It didn't have the depth of that really hot Korakuen Hall match they had but that's difficult to achieve on the undercard of another promotion's show. Clean shaven Fuji was a shock. Looks like it cost him his magic powers too. The pendulum sure has swung when it comes to Crazy Max dominating everyone.

This was pretty average compared to a lot of the juniors action we've seen. Cool crowd, though. Liger doesn't add much to his matches in 2000 and is having a pretty bad year for a worker of his stature. Kashin is about as good as Lizmark Jr so that didn't help matters either. Match needed Ohtani.

This started off as another juniors stiffest but it ended up being a bit too cute with all the nearfalls and saves. And I couldn't quite figure out why Liger didn't make an effort to storm the ring at the end and at least try to get to Makabe. But it's another match that shows how good Kanemoto is in 2000 at least in tag matches.

This was tremendous. I've been waiting for something to light a fire under Ishikawa and Murakami is just the punk to do it. Normally, I'd hate a shoot style match where there's crowd brawling but this was sweet. Hey, like Ishikawa said afterward, Murakami is a "fucking crazy fighter." Carl Malenko and Taira pretty much have a match on their own but their work is equally sweet. I love how Malenko doesn't have a clue what's going on between Ishikawa and Murakami but keeps doing the only thing he knows how and that's fight. Great show from BattlARTs. Topped anything they'd done since the 1999 Ishikawa vs. Ikeda fight.

Otsuka deserves a ton of credit for this match. It's not an easy task to make Mohammed Yone seem interesting and especially not for a good 10-12 minutes, but Otsuka managed to do it through a combination of active matwork, tremendous selling, and terrific counters. Yone was Yone throughout but Otsuka was compelling the entire way. I think you can make an argument for this being the best night of his career to this point. Great performance from him.

God, I hate the Samurai TV commentators. Otsuka and Nagai are having a gutsy mat exchange and they're having a conversation about Okinawa. I liked this a lot. The beginning was loose but then they tightened it up and build the bout from the mat up, which to me is a lot more satisfying than a stand-up contest. Nagai's big kick and Otsuka's improbable victory made this pretty memorable for a 10 minute bout. But I would have liked to have seen more of the yusho celebration instead of seeing dates for the Road Warriors 2000 tour of Japan.

This was all right. They tried to make it special and the crowd were into it but I don't think Nanae had the tools to carry a match like this. Miho worked mostly from the bottom which meant that Nanae had to carry most of the offense. She ran the same few spots over and over again until she'd run them into the ground. The body checks were the worst. A girl like her should be doing stiff arm lariats, not soft body checks. Miho is kind of an awkward worker too which didn't help things. Arguably, the best spot of the match was the botched Frankensteiner because of the great cover job the commentator did by putting over Nanae's strength. But there's no denying that they worked hard and tried to live up to a title match billing. To that end they should be praised for their efforts.

Chaotic and energetic brawl to start with on par with anything LLPW did during the '93-94 inter-promotional era. Then it gets a tad predictable down the stretch as Noumi is thrown to the wolves. The nearfalls didn't have the punch that you want from a stretch run and you could see the finish coming a mile away, but this was still pretty good for a match that involved some fairly average workers. Momoe was a spark plug as usual.

This was an excellent title match and one of the best Joshi matches of the year. In fact, it may be the best Joshi match of the year given the history behind it with Ito's rise through the ranks after the talent exodus and her growth from her Peter Pan days to this her third title shot. Aja and Meiko had amazing chemistry but this felt like a changing of the guard considering Toyota was Ito's senior. At least it should have been a changing of the guard if the company hadn't been in such a perilous state. Ito's main weapon is her double foot stomp and it's a move she uses a lot. If it were any other move it might get irritating but thanks to her build it looks brutal every time she makes contact. It's such a simple and direct move but so painful looking and debilitating for her opponent that it may be one of the most perfect moves in all of wrestling. Without that diving foot stomp, it's questionable how interesting she would be as she doesn't have the star quality of other Joshi aces. Toyota puts in a really solid performance. She really has to fight through the pain and she goes down swinging trying to give herself one last puncher's chance. This match isn't as poetic as Misawa beating Jumbo or matches of that caliber, but it is very similar. It's a great match if you know the history and you love foot stomps, that's for sure.

This was a blast. I'm not sure they could have done a better midcard mentor vs. student bout without it taking up a whole lot more time on the card. If you know the girls and you know their roles then this is about as satisfactory as you can imagine. As an Oz fan, I'm glad I watched it because it was another little feather in her cap as a worker. And as a Nagashima fan, it was a fun coming-of-age bout to see her get one up on her mentor. From a work standpoint, I really liked how they covered for Nagashima's blown Liger bomb spot at the end and still managed to steer the bout towards the upset finish. That was clever ad-libbing and capped off a frantic, emotion-packed bout. I'm glad I watched this chapter in the OZ Academy story.

I saw the 00s incarnation of the Crush Girls live which was a fun live wrestling experience. I imagine this match was also fun. Watching a match live you can enjoy the crowd response and get suckered into the near falls whereas on tape the action tends to come across as a movie and it's easy to slip into a more analytical way of thinkng about the match. From a critic's point of view, I thought this was a high energy sprint with some cool shit in it. The thing that stood out most was Kansai's work. In years gone by I would have watched this match and lamented the fact that Kansai wasn't as good as her JWP heyday. But watching this 2000 footage I've accepted the fact that she's past her prime and now I'm looking at her work from a different perspective. Her work wasn't as good as the other women in the match but it was next stage Dynamite Kansai and that's something I haven't really appreciated before. I thought Chigusa looked good and I liked Aja's personal battle with Lioness Asuka. The uraken spots were cool and Aja eating the pinfall at the end was wild. Main events should be spectacles and there was a pretty good one.

Devil was well past her prime here but still had amazing facials and the aura of a veteran worker who ate girls like Satomura live. She was doing her Super Heel schtick which was never that popular with Western Joshi fans but years later I think you can look back on this stuff and appreciate that she's pretty good as far as her character work goes. This isn't a great match but it is a pretty great match-up. Things get electric toward the end when Devil is kicking out of Death Valley Drivers and the commentators are calling her a monster. When Meiko wins at the end, they really play up the fact that she conquered a demon. Meiko was good but not outstanding. She brought a lot of passion but that's a given. Matches like this are always going to seem like a poor woman's version of Aja vs. Meiko but at least it's interesting to see her vanquish other vets. Devil got her heat back, for sure, but Meiko still felt like she was on the way up. This achieved what it set out to accomplish.

Matches like this never work that well in Japan but the heat wasn't bad and was comparable to other Japanese indy shows. The priceless thing about this was that we got to see Virus in his physical prime. It's a shame we don't have more footage of him from this period as he is clearly a premier talent. Marvin had a pretty poor bout truth be told, but Virus was mesmerizing. It's a wonder and a miracle that he got that showcase title match run a decade later.