ohtani's jacket

I finished Sex Criminals. In the end, it went in a direction that I didn't particularly care for, and I could have absolutely done without the coda which did nothing for me. It was a fun ride, even if it did feel like they were changing things as they went along, but fell short of being one of the best series of the Eisners era. Some nice character moments, but I gotta have that tightly woven plot.

This was really good. It felt similar to Foley's matches with Sting and Orndorff in WCW except in a WWE environment, and a tad more violent with the ECW/Death match influences. Foley was noticeably trimmer than his final active years and moved pretty well. Credit to Orton for taking that back bump into the thumbtacks. Wasn't expecting him to do anything that nasty. He took a big bump off the stage as well. Mick kept coming up with fun hardcore spots. I usually hate low blows, but that barbed wire spot between the legs was something. Match deserves it's rep.

Tenryu vs Suzuki looks amazing on paper, as does Tenryu vs Takayama, but they never really get into it in the way that you'd like. Instead, Suzuki is an absolute dick towards Nakanishi, Match is on the short side, and once you realize it's a title defense, it doesn't feel like it was substantial enough.

Meltzer was relatively high on this, so I thought I'd give it a watch even though I have zero expectations for Liger at this point. But y'know what, I kind of liked it. It was solid, hard-hitting action. Hashi is a great no-frills worker. I like how NOAH shows close-ups of other wrestlers watching the bouts. Makes the title bouts very important. I got behind Hashi here and wanted to see him win. He got a huge nearfall before the finish that was super. The botched Liger Bomb attempt was really unfortunate and nothing Liger did after that could make up for it. If not for that mishap, I may have been even higher on this.

Cookie cutter main event. This was only 11 minutes long and they still found ways to edit it. I can't understand why CMLL don't let their wrestlers work slower paced main events like they do in Monterrey. You can't tell me that a pair of veterans like Cien Caras and Mascara Ano 2000 aren't capable of working more interesting beatdown sections. You've got a captive audience, let your guys work. The tecnico comeback is the highlight here, as it is with most CMLL matches of late. Terrible has definitely improved. Kind of impressive that he was trusted enough to be Perro's partner here. There's a bunch of shenanigans as there always is with these apuesta matches. Apuesta matches may not be as good as they used to be, but one thing remains the same, the post matches are always interesting.

Perro Jr vs Universo 2000 is just about the best thing going in CMLL. Not that it's particularly great, but at least there's some passion behind it. Perro Sr looks feeble when he gets involved, but the tecnico comebacks are exciting and adding Dantes and Black Warrior to the mix helped elevate things a bit. Weak praise, but I'm trying.

I finished up Julie Doucet's Dirty Plotte. Wonderful stuff. Honest, surreal, funny. I wish she'd stayed in comics longer, but what a brilliant legacy to leave behind. Of all the great early 90s alternative comics, Dirty Plotte was the most fun to read.

You've given us so many wonderful things like pavlova, Crowded House and Phar Lap.

On behalf of the Black Caps, you're welcome. Beat Aussie.

This was by far the most pure lucha match of the month. Just a series of classic lucha exchanges without the hurried pace of Arena Mexico matches. Plus, it's a chance to see my boy Charlie Lucero work long mat exchanges.,

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.

CMLL has been extremely frustrating in 2004 thus far. This was JIP so they could run some shitty vignette beforehand, and the entire match was shot from ringside with a handheld camera. There were a ton of match ups I was interested in yet there was more focus on KeMonito than Shocker vs. Ultimo or Atlantis vs Wagner. CMLL is a peaks and valleys promotion by nature, but this is probably the weakest its been all decade.

Super fun debut match on RAW for Shelton Benjamin. Not only does he show more personal charisma than he did during his entire Smackdown run, but he instantly becomes JR's wet dream. Gotta give Triple H his props here. This is a superbly worked television match and another high profile job on the back of his WrestleMania loss. Lawler was in full heel commentary mode, but I actually found it kind of endearing. His mocking of JR was on point and far better than Michael Cole and Taz's squabbling.

Excellent world title match between Guerrero and Mysterio Jr that is notable for being non-formulaic. Eddie is on a roll at the moment. This is his second great match of the year and he's going from strength to strength as a performer. He's steadily getting over a new version of his character, and instead of pandering to the crowd with video game wrestling, he's incorporating all sorts of new moves and new sequences into his matches. He's neck and neck for best in the world alongside Meiko Satomura. Michael Cole and Taz keep squabbling throughout the bout, to the point where it's hard to tell whether it's scripted or legit heat. Either way, it's annoying. Heyman cuts a promo at the end about the upcoming draft and Undertaker shows up and tombstones him.

This was 10 minutes of a Santo vs. Park match that aired on Samurai TV of all places. Looked like a decent brawl and Park showed more charisma and character than he has in any of his CMLL matches so far,.

I have zero interest in this feud. It reminds me of the awful Raven vs. CM Punk feud. Eddie vs. Angle is the kind of matchup that sounds awesome on paper but ends up being awkward. The early matwork is decent, but not what the crowd wants to see. I can see the argument about how Smackdown video game style wrestling ruined WWE crowd heat. The crowd comes alive for the big spots, but this suffers in comparison to the Lesnar/Eddy match, and I didn't love the finish. The finish justified Angle's criticisms of Eddie as a champion and a person whereas I thought they should have put the WWE champ over cleanly. Not a bad match, but not particularly memorable.

CMLL continues to be a bit average. Business has not picked up with Park's arrival. I think it's because he's not doing any of his character stuff. Instead, he's just another guy doing spots. This was entertaining when the tecnicos were on offense, but nothing we haven't seen a million times before. In fact, the most interesting part was GdI and Shocker & Park continuing to brawl after the match was over. On the positive side, Terrible has figured out his role in these matches pretty well and no longer looks out of place.

This was a great match. Just relentless, hard-hitting action that never faltered. I love these Joshi workers taking the fight to Meiko, and Meiko hitting back with everything she's got. Satomura has laid down a marker as the best women's worker in 2004. Hamada showed up at the end to hype their title match the following month (a match I saw live, fwiw), but I think I'd rather see more Meiko vs. Genki.

This was a decent match as far as triple threat matches go. It was fairly scripted, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. The New York smark crowd was fully behind Benoit and booed Michaels and Triple H any time they caught a sniff of a near fall, but they were a bit of a lazy crowd and sat on their hands until the finishers came into play. Michaels sure did like to blade during his comeback, and Triple H also hit a gusher. I was divorced from, the WWE by this time, but I can imagine being on the edge of my seat if I'd been a fan. They teased the "will he or won't he?" aspect of Triple H losing extremely well, and the final tap out was an incredible visual that would be a hell of a lot more iconic today if not for the horrors that followed. The Benoit/Guerrero stuff at the end is what it is. I prefer to view it in the moment rather than pick it apart retrospectively. It does feel a little strange that so little of their journey happened in the WWE yet that's where their dreams culminated. Kind of weird seeing all these happy endings to title matches given the current matches with Reigns on top.

This didn't quite click in the beginning. Parka looked slightly labored in his exchanges with Ultimo & Rey. I'm starting to wonder if it was a cardio thing. I'm not quite sure if he was up to working at the pace that the Arena Mexico exchanges demanded. Things picked up when Parka singlehandedly beat both of them in the segunda, and the tercera was an exciting fall that saw Rey Bucanero injured when his leg was caught between the chairs at ringside and Shocker working a heated mano a mano fight with Ultimo. Shocker and Park didn't have the same chemistry as some of the GdI's other opponents, but it was a decent spectacle nonetheless.

This was Sugar Sato's return after nine months on the shelf with a knee injury. I always liked the Sato/Nagashima tag team dynamic with the power wrestler and the high flyer. The early portions of the match featured some uninspired brawling, but once they settled into the body of the match it wasn't bad. It was weird seeing Ran Yu Yu go from having overly long JWP house show matches to being a midcard act in GAEA, but there have been worse uses of a worker.

I'm not gonna lie, I expected Kansai to be awful in this match but she wasn't. She wasn't prime Dynamite Kansai, but she shouldn't be expected to be as good as she was in the 80s and 90s. She could still kick hard and still had an aura of toughness. Ayako, on the other hand, was terrible. I was so behind her rise in ARSION and her emergence as one of the bright young stars of Joshi Puroresu, but just about everything she did in this match annoyed me to the extent that I was hoping Kansai would win. It's been a while since I've seen a match where a worker did some much damage to their rep. So disappointing.

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.

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, but I'm sure it was a mix of excitement/trepidation about Benoit being included in the main event and love/distain for the continued Michaels comeback. I suppose there may have been some hatred towards the Triple H title reign and annoyance at the General Manager crap. My memories from this time period are that everyone hated RAW and that Triple H vs Shawn had sucked the life out of the title picture Correct me if I'm wrong.

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.