Robert S

The face-in-peril stuff was a bit on the long side and I also did not like that they did the "hot tag behind the refs back" spot twice but otherwise this was a perfectly fine tag team match. My least favorite thing here was the opening angle with Lawler, Dundee and Bitty as this was shot the "WWF-attitude-way", i.e. no interviewer there, just the guys talking in front of a camera (which has no purpose being there) completely ignoring it (set aside the borderline racist remark by Lawler).

After watching Memphis Heat I was wondering how much about Sputnik Monroe's story was folklore and how much was fact as the story just sounded too good to be completely true. He sounds definitely like a guy WWE should want to have in their hall of fame (I mean the story is a PR/PC wet dream).

People often complain about WWE not doing "old school" gimmick matches or change the rules of them but in the case of Texas death matches the last man standing rules are a clear improvement. The match here was fine for a 5 minute Texas death match but it really shows how low the talent level of MPPW was compared to MCW, for example (not to talk about CWA/USWA), even though it was the show that looked and felt much more like the "old" Memphis wrestling.

I was watching Ohno vs. Itami yesterday. Hero never was super slim, but man, his legs now look as if he had Samoan genes.

Nigel calling Kendrick "the Bobby Fischer of sports entertainment" is either a too big compliment or a too big insult, depending on how he meant it.

The saying is that you have to be a great singer to sing bad on purpose. I wonder how true that is for wrestling. For the psychology part it is definitely true. I would wager that guys like Ichikawa and Ebessan could wrestle a serious match without looking bad at all, so I assume there is some truth also in the mechanical part (that somersault senton to the outside from Ichikawa looked pretty sweet at least).

Yeah, other than bringing Bryan back (which they're (probably correctly) dead-set on not doing) there's no one other than Angle who would fit the bill if Roman can't go. It would be cool if they threw Itami or Hero in, but it wouldn't make the same impact for the regular fan I guess. Hero would be funny considering that CM Punk (according to his interview with Cabana) initially suggested Ambrose, Rollins and Hero when he (again, according to himself) came up with The Shield.

So are Kojima and Tenzan as a tag team. For both the best claim for the hall of fame are their single runs in AJ and NJ respectively in the mid 2000s, not their tag team run. (even though I would vote for neither)

Naito and Ibushi are already eligible? It's getting more ridiculous every year.

That Yakuza kick into the Argentine Backbreaker counter was one of the worst looking transitions I have ever seen on a such a high level. Nakanishi had size and charisma, so it is easy to see why he got the push he did, but at least at this point he does not have it in-ring.

Just a general comment about WON online: when I initially subscribed a couple of years ago (I don't remember exactly when, might have been 2010 +/- a year) they regularly had interviews with big names in the industry (Austin, Foley, JR, Bruno are the first names coming to mind), when I stopped subscribing some years later those interviews became far less, at least you still had indy guys doing appearences hyping shows (e.g. for ROH or Chikara PPVs). Whenever I go to f4wonline.com nowadays to check some news I don't see any interviews at all. I understand that the main draw for subscriptions is the WON itself, but for me the interviews were a close second, so having none of those anymore is a clear loss of value.

This really was too easy for Sasaki. This was not even a title match. Typical Choshu booking. I was also surprised that Liger (apart from the opening dive) did not rely on junior heavyweight offense at all, which should have been the story of this match.

Strange that nobody mentioned Eddie Graham, considering how influential he was in the 1960ier and 70ies. Or is that a case that people consider him more as a promoter than a booker (even though according to Kevin Sullivan Graham was pretty hands on with the booking until the end)?

So I assume WWE's version of Game of Thrones would feature Vince McMahon as Aegon the Conquerer, Steph as Queen Cersei, Triple H as King Robert and Shane O'Mac as either Stannis or Renly Baratheon?

You have to be the special kind of crazy to brawl through the bleachers in Puerto Rico.

After the Youngblood and Borne stuff was a bit hard to get through the disc ends on a high note with a very heated match. Having Thesz referee here seemed a bit random though. You would expect that he would be used like a special enforcer and not like any other referee. Having Sandy Barr as the referee instead would not have changed the match or the reaction (or I assume the gate) one iota.

I suppose Champinger was Motegi (at least that's what his robe and Cagematch are telling me, though Cagematch spells that name "Chabinger")? He completely stunk in this match, stumbling around like the worst rookie. Marvin already was pretty good here, though not as good as he would become 5 years or so later. Might also be that at that point he was more used to work with Japanese guys.

This would have worked much better for a match in an earlier round but for a semi-finale this is a bit underwhelming, not the least as there was no chance in hell for Hamada going over here. There were two people in the whole tournament who I would have believed Liger doing a job for (Sasuke and Sano) and Hamada was just not on that list and I would bet the same was true for 90% of the fans in the arena. From that point-of-view they should have switched the semi finals. I am sure that Hamada vs. CIMA would have been a match almost on the same level as Sano vs. CIMA, though CIMA beating Sano was of course a much bigger win than him beating Hamada would have been.

On paper this seemed like a complete style clash but somehow it worked out great. CIMA beating Sano is a huge win for sure. When I was watching a bit of Toryumon back in 2000 I did not think much of CIMA and thought that there were at least a couple of better guys in Toryumon but so far he is the clear star of the bunch fully justifying his push.

The match itself was entertaining, but yes, Quack was completely outclassed here. Santo goes mostly through his routine, though I am a bit surprised he took the spinning sitdown powerbomb, not the kind of move I would expect him to take on a random indy date against a random indy worker. And I liked Montoya on commentary as well quite a lot.

Pretty sloppy match here. I remember hearing Punk saying in an interview how hard everything came to him compared to Cabana as he is just not in the same class as an athlete so showings like this as this point of his career should not come as a surprise. Though in working the crowd he is actually far above the above mentioned Low Ki, Danielson and Styles.

In the 3 way part the experience deficit of Low Ki and Reil was clearly visible. There were several parts where one of them was just staying around for a second or two until really doing something, which you normally don't see from a seasoned pro. The Low Ki did not show such things in the single match part, so maybe it was just the lack of multi-men match experience.

I think I have to quit one match in as the commentary is that bad. This makes me start believing Bix' claims about JR's sobriety (or rather lack of) while working. Either that or he does not give the slightest shit about that show. And Lita would be fine in the Percy Watson "1 sentence every 3 minutes" role.