ohtani's jacket

This was a better showing from the Guapos, though they still don't have a lot of chemistry as a trio. The rudos and tecnicos joined together at the beginning to pay their respects to Ray Mendoza, who had passed away a few days earlier. Then they started the match on the mat where the great man had been so proficient. There was a lot to like about this match. I really liked Atlantis vs. Magica, and Casas finally woke up and did something in 2003. They gave us a smidgeon of Casas vs. Shocker. Can you imagine how good that match could have been if they'd worked it like Shocker vs. Ultimo or Shocker/Vampiro? More impressive, though, was how good Shocker made Lizmark look. I actually found myself enjoying a Lizmark Jr performance for the first time. You can officially put Shocker in the same category as Rey Bucanero, i.e. guys who made both Vampiro and Lizmark look good. I guess this means Shocker is better as a rudo. He's certainly making the most out of the circumstances.

This was your classic "week after" trios where the guy who lost the apuesta gets a sliver of revenge over the winner. It was also the debut of the new look Los Guapos with 2003 Guapos University winner, El Terrible, teaming with Shocker and Magica for the first time. Guapos U was a spoof of WWE's Tough Enough show with Shocker and Mascara Magica bringing in luchadores from outside Mexico City to compete for a spot in the Guapos. Personally, I would have preferred that Zumbido got the third spot, but he was tossed from Guapos U for poor behavior and for feuding with Ricky Martin, which led to them having a hair match. In true CMLL fashion, the Guapos U angle was mishandled and pushed aside, but eventually El Terrible won a makeshift final. Unfortunately, the Guapos debut was less than stellar. It was one of those trios matches where the workers don't seem to do anything. Vampiro vs. Shocker wasn't satisfying, and Casas did absolutely nothing. Bit of a comedown from the excellent apuestas match, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Meh, I have no interest in watching a wrestling feud about drugs and alcohol. These guys tried to work a decent dog collar match, but this is no Valentine vs. Piper. Raven was uninspiring. The ECW stuff didn't hit a sweet spot for me since I was never an ECW fan. I can totally see other people enjoying these things, but not for me.

Brock Lesnar defends the WWE Heavyweight Title in a No DQ Triple Threat Match The WWE was generally pretty good at booking these three way matches with Rock vs Angle and Undertaker from Vengeance 2002 being particularly memorable for me. This wasn't nearly as good as that match, but you could still see the road agent's fingerprints all over it. The road agents were really good at creating a wave, and delivering enough high points that you're left thinking you saw a pretty good match. There were enough holy shit moments in this to satisfy the video game crowd, and the finish pushed the Angle/Lesnar storyline forward. I'm not really into Lesnar vs. Angle as much as I would have hoped heading into the 2003 footage, but this capped off a fairly successful debut PPV for Smackdown.

This was a match that Cena was supposed to win, but Vince changed the plan on the day of the show. The match is okay. Taker was a fairly decent brawler at this point.. He gets a bloodied mouth and Cole keeps on harping on about Taker having internal bleeding. Junior Cena isn't the greatest worker, and I can't stand his J-Roc gimmick, but he was working hard at getting himself over. He could have used the rub from Undertaker here. I can understand Vince getting cold feet over jobbing Undertaker, but in the long run, who's going to remember Undertaker losing on a July PPV? Taker didn't gain anything from beating Cena. Apparently, people weren't happy about the decision internally. The finish is pretty weak. Cena doesn't even get some rub from it. I guess people were pissed at Vince for being a wet blanket.

I was viewing it more along the lines of worker who never had the best match they possibly could, as opposed to wrestlers who never had a great match. I guess it's possible that Jake vs. Sawyer is the best match Jake could have possibly had. It's a bit of a futile exercise since it's left to the viewer's imagination.

Revenge match. Cuts straight to the end of the first fall and takes a while to get into a groove. Atlantis takes on Ultimo and Rey by himself, which reminds me that Atlantis is one of the all-time greats at taking on multiple rudos at the same time. Which may not sound like much, but it's the kind of swashbuckling action that lucha was built on. Niebla and Universo have a decent tussle as well. We don't get as much GdI as the week before. No miracle carry jobs of Lizmark Jr. We'll see what sort of match Niebla and Universo can deliver. Looks like clipping has reared its ugly head, though. Not cool.

This was really good up until the bullshit finishing stretch that reduced it to "just another match." I loved how they built the match from the crowd up, and worked at a slow, methodical pace, instead of giving the crowd the video game wrestling it wanted. There was a real old-school build to this that was comforting for an old fuck like me. When they did hit their signature stuff, they got nice pops. Then the malarkey began. The first part was "Cheat to Win" Latino Heat stuff, which is okay I guess. At least they went a beat or two beyond Eddie simply winning by hitting Benoit with the belt. It seemed like we might get a decent finish after all and then Rhino showed up and turned on Benoit. Not only is the wrestling like a video game, but the booking too. I swear it's like season mode on WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain. If there's a reason why they don't talk about this one, it's probably because of the crap at the end. The one positive from the match is that Eddie continued to look strong.

This had a hot finishing stretch, including an incredible nearfall where the crowd thought for all money that Mysterio and Kidman had won the tag titles. It also had the heels winning cleanly with an excellent maneuver. The body of the match wasn't anything special. It was better when Mysterio was in. Kidman has zero identity in the WWE. They should have let him keep the wifebeater and jean shorts. Generic guy in tights was a one way ticket to Palookaville. If I'd been a mate of Paul London's, I would have been like, "Bro, look what they'd done to Billy Kidman. You don't wanna go there." The hot finish made this seem like a much better bout than it really was, but kudos to them for pulling off that stunning nearfall.

Something positive about Dos Caras.. His All Japan match against Dr. Wagner is one of the best exhibitions of pure lucha libre that I've ever seen. UWA television was dire? I love that stuff.

This was okay. Kind of a hard sell convincing anybody that London was gonna win the title on his way out. I haven't been on the Paul London train in ROH, but he seemed like a good dude. Man, Joe has some vicious looking short arm stuff. That was my biggest takeaway from the bout.

Pretty decent return match. Probably deserved to be on a pay-per-view instead of some random RAW where JR wasn't calling the match because Kane set him on fire. Instead, we get Coach calling the match, which gets annoying, quickly. I'm not a huge fan of this style of wrestling. I especially dislike some of the Steamboat/Savage pin attempts they do, which isn't a knock on Savage and Steamboat per se, but on workers who crib those spots. I like Jericho better against different opponents, but I totally get the dynamic they were going for, and why it might appeal to a large segment of the fanbase.

How about Jake Roberts?

This was a pretty decent trios considering they cobbled it together for Shocker/Vampiro undercard. Much better than the Atlantis vs. Wagner matches from the past few weeks. Never underestimate how good Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero are at delivering rudo beatdowns. When was the last time Lizmark Jr was this interesting? Has he ever been this interesting? I'm starting to think Rey Bucanero is some kind of genius. First Vampiro, now Lizmark Jr. Of course, Lizmark almost ruins it when he makes his comeback, but the seeds for another miracle job are there. They tease Atlantis vs. Ultimo here but don't deliver. That's cruel. A large part of the focus is on Niebla vs. Universo. Niebla is an interesting dude. At one point, he seemed inextricably linked to Shocker, but at this stage, their career trajectories couldn't be further apart. When he's on, he can be pretty entertaining and adds some much needed starch to the tecnico side, but you have to think that given his size, it's a disappointment to the promoters that he isn't a bigger deal. Match ends abruptly when Atlantis pulls off Universo's mask. That was deflating. I was enjoying the bout, and was in no mood for it to end so suddenly. It wasn't until the replays that I realized Universo pulled off Niebla's mask first. Still, a crappy finish. Fortunately, it looks like we have a return match leading to a Niebla/Universo title match. I can never understand why they do mask pulling/ripping in the lead up to a title match, but such are the vagaries of lucha libre.

Very good match. Surprisingly grounded, presumably because of their knee problems. I would have rated it even higher if not for some goofy selling from Mutoh. Was this supposed to set up Kawada vs Hashimoto? I would have been gutted when that was cancelled. I have to say that 2003 has been a much better year for Japanese men's wrestling than 2000-2002. It's the first year since the NOAH split where things are back on an even keel. Is it just me or does Mutoh's All Japan work hold up a lot better than you'd expect?

I finished reading All-Star Superman. Personally, I thought it was kind of weird. I've read a lot of weird Grant Morrison stories, so you'd think that wouldn't be a problem, but I read that Morrison wanted to create a timeless Superman story and to me it kind of came across as a weird European arthouse take on Superman. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I was familiar with the Silver Age stories that Morrison drew inspiration from, but I kind of felt like Alan Moore wrote better Silver Age homage stories prior to Crisis, and possibly later on with those Image characters (I haven't read that stuff yet.) I did like the overall portrayal of Superman. He was extremely likeable. I didn't care for the portrayal of Lois or Jimmy, though, and I didn't like how Quitely drew them either. I suppose I'm not a big enough Superman fan to truly love a series like this, but it show plenty of heart despite how strange it was at times.

When do you think Raven should or could have been pushed as a top guy in the WWE? This whole thing sounds like Raven thinks he could've headlined a Wrestlemania. I feel as I'm putting more thought into this than Raven did. Are you asking us who we thought never had their best match, or for other examples of guys who might feel that way?

I will try to watch Tito/Bockwinkel over the weekend.

Yeah, Owen had the Bret match, but if he'd been a more ambitious worker, I doubt he would have felt it was *his* match, or the best he could do. It's possible that Arn could have had that sort of match, but so could everyone theoretically. If you look at Arn's career, I think it's pretty clear that it was unlikely to happen.

I don't think we were meant to do much against England were we? It's not really the same side that won the Test championship. We had a couple of good sessions. England played a lot of positive cricket thanks to their New Zealand coach and captain Anyway, you lot get a turn now.

Id like to know what Raven envisions as his best match, as I fail to see how he didn’t get the opportunities in ECW or ROH. I can only imagine his ideal is either something more than a brawl or an impossibly high standard. Does Raven have a self-depreciating view of his own work, or does he have an over-inflated opinion of himself as a worker? "I never had my best match" could mean a lot of things. It’s hard for me to imagine Regal having better matches than he did. I wonder how exactly they were supposed to be better. Seems like wishful thinking.

Did he explain why he never had his best match? Perhaps he simply wasn't capable of it. He certainly had the opportunities. There are a lot of great workers that come to mind (Owen Hart, Steve Regal, Arn Anderson), who I don't believe were capable of more. Would I be surprised to discover a great match of theirs I haven't seen? No. Would I be surprised to discover their best match ever? You betcha. It's easy to imagine a mindblowing Tito Santana classic, but anybody can have mindblowing classics in your imagination. The reality is that they weren't having mindblowing classics and weren't likely to ever have them. Maybe if some promoter somewhere booked them as the centerpiece of the promotion, or they wrestled in a magical void where there were no limits to what they could accomplish, but a lot of great workers that are technically great can't work big enough to have the great of heralded matches we're talking about. I'm not sure you'd even want them do. Regal working a small match against another great worker or working a big match against Shawn Michaels? Which would you prefer to see?

I finished Martin Wagner's Hepcats. Ed Piskor unfairly shat on this series when Cartoonist Kayfabe were going through Palmer's Picks in an old Wizard mag. Wagner was a friend of Dave Sim's, and part of that small wave of self-publishers that grew up around Sim and clashed with Gary Groth all the time. Hepcats started off as a story about anthropomorphic college buddies and grew into a more ambitious story when one of their girlfriends tried to commit suicide and we slowly discovered the harrowing details about her past. On the surface, it was "famous" for showing nudity and having anthropomorphic characters have sex, but there was more to it than that. Unfortunately, like most self-published titles it was beset by poor sales and production delays and only lasted 12 issues. I actually read the reprint series, which contained new material and was supposed to restart the series with issue 13, but issue 13 never happened, and Wagner left the comics industry instead. Kind of a shame as I thought Hepcats had the potential to go down as one of the seminal books of the 90s instead of a footnote. There's an argument to be made that the writing was shallow. I wouldn't go that far, but I do think Wagner was still finding his voice. He only made 12 issues. Can you imagine how well regarded Cerebus would be today if it only lasted 12 issues? I couldn't find a lot of fault with the art. Wagner used a lot of cross hatching and screentone, and never short changed the reader on background details. In fact, he probably would have been a lot faster if like Sim, he had someone else doing the backgrounds. I'm not a huge fan of the way Wagner's anthropomorphic characters look, but then again, I'm not a fan of how Sim's humans look, so I can live with that. There's not a whole lot to recommend as Wagner never finished the series, but if you're interested in the early 90s period of creator-owned comics (Bone, Cerebus, A Distant Soil, Strangers in Paradise, etc.), it's worth checking out.

Haven't seen much of the lead-up to this. Not sure if that's because US tape traders had a hard time getting the shows from Mexico or because folks aren't interested in uploading 2003 CMLL. It doesn't really make much difference. Shocker is the rudo, Vampiro is the tecnico, and that's about all you need to know. Amazing atmosphere for this match. Makes you think they should have waited until the Anniversary Show to run this. Then again, CMLL don't always save their best match for the Anniversary Show, and it has been known to peak during the first quarter of the season, as was the case with Atlantis/Villano in 2000. Vampiro wore a gi to the fight. Did he think this was a MMA fight? Maybe I'm missing something and he was working out at a MMA gym at the time. He did try to incorporate a few MMA spots into the bout. Maybe he was doing the while Undertaker "MMA fan" shtick. Come to think of it, there's quite a few parallels between Vampiro and Undertaker. It makes you wonder whether Vampiro was trying to mimic Undertaker's career. Remember when Undertaker began having so many good good matches that people thought, "Hey, wait a second, maybe Undertaker is actually a good worker?" Could the same thing be happening with Vampiro? Shitting on Vampiro used to be a thing, but I don't see how anyone could watch this match and not come to the conclusion that Vampiro has improved. Compare it to Vampiro vs. Pirata from '92 and tell me Vampiro isn't a better worker in '03. The match was largely a hybrid between lucha apuesta brawling and American indy wrestling. It was very move heavy for a lucha match, and Shocker did a lot of things that you wouldn't see a luchador ordinarily do. I mean all of this in the best possible way. Shocker was fantastic throughout, and I thought his second fall comeback was brilliant, especially the punch to the face that cut Vampiro off on the apron. This may have been Shocker at the height of his powers. From the moment he hit the ring, he was intensity personified. I'm not sure why Shocker left CMLL when he did, and can't be bothered digging for the answer right now, but watching this match, you think you'd be looking at a guy who's going to headline Arena Mexico for at least another decade. Two things stood out about the match to me -- first was the length and second was how dramatic it was. We see a lot of luchadores work half-assed, generic mano a mano or apuesta matches in the 2000s, and we're quick to chalk it up as "the modern style," but here Vampiro and Shocker worked a very modern apuesta match that the crowd fully dug. So perhaps the veterans are being lazy and failing to adapt, or perhaps the promotion isn't fully behind some of the other matches. In any event, Shocker and Vampiro showed you can still have a great apuesta match if the promotion's prepared to give you the time, and you're prepared to put in the work. This is going to take some beating for Lucha MOTY, and has to rank among the best matches of the year. Certainly, one of the best big matches. The match was so good that the crowd kind of forgot that Shocker was a rudo and cheered for him like a national hero, and that's against a tecnico who's insanely over in Arena Mexico. That's how good the bout was.

Man, Mysterio's son was 6 years old here. That'll make you feel old. Mysterio was a great television match worker. One of the best ever. But this was an extremely generic television match. In fact, the only reason it's remotely memorable is that Mysterio pulls off the victory and beats Matt Hardy for the Cruiserweight championship despite a dodgy groin and some outside interference from some shmucks. Matt Hardy was a boring worker who tried hard to be a clever and cerebral worker. He had no business being a cruiserweight and was taking up someone else's spot in the division. That said, you've got wrestle whomever they put you up against. It can't be Rey vs. Eddie every week. From that perspective, both guys were pros. I just didn't care for how generic it was. Especially for a title match where Mysterio was supposed to get the big hometown pop.