Robert S

I am currently watching Wrestlemania XV which I have not seen since 1999. I have three more matches to go but so far it is everything everyone says about it and worse. - On commentary you have 99 Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler. Anybody who complains about today's announcing has to listen to this. I think I would prefer Byron Saxton, David Otunga and Tom Phillips to that atrocity. - The opener hardcore title match (Billy Gunn vs. Hardcore Holly vs. Al Snow) is a fine 7 minute WWF-garbage match, nothing wrong with it. - The tag team title match (Owen Hart & Jeff Jarrett vs. Test & D-Lo Brown) is a complete nothing match. The only reason for it being on the card is presumably for Debra to be on the show and appear almost naked. In addition there is a stupid partners-that-hate-each-other Russo thing going on on the challenger side. - Butterbean vs. Bart Gunn was fun for what it was. - Mankind vs. Big Show is another nothing match, with a blown screwjob finish followed by the first of many Big Show turns. - The IC title match (Road Dogg vs. Val Venis vs. Ken Shamrock vs. Goldust) is a 10 minute match that feels like a 60 minute broadway. In theory you have enough talent here for a decent match, in praxis this sucked pretty bad. Plus there is some stupid thing going on with Ryan Shamrock deciding the match. I don't even want to know the specifics why she is with Goldust and Meanie here. - Kane vs. Triple H is what you expect from a Kane vs. 99 face Triple H match. Nothing offensive, but nothing really positive either. Another screwjob with Chyna running in and turning babyface at the end. - Sable vs. Tori is a 99 divas match. Things would get even worse in the early post-Stratus era, but not by far. Match ends with another female interference (this time by the recently deceased Nicole Bass). The whole psychology of this seems strange. The story of this (Tori being Sable's stalker) seems to indicate that Sable is the face and Tori the heel, but (a) the crowd is doing reverse reactions (okay, it's Philly, Hat Guy is even sitting the in the second row) and ( Tori gets screwed by a run-in.

They were on the way to have a pretty good match until Bayley took over offense and blew everything (or maybe Charlotte was out of position half of the time, I don't know). That thing that Bayley wanted to do while Charlotte was in the tree-of-woe looked especially horrible. First Bayley stopped the spot, I guess as Charlotte was not in position. And then she did it anyway and only caught Charlotte's hand for a spot that was clearly meant to hit the head or the body. Booking-wise Charlotte's taking her first PPV loss a month before Wrestlemania seems worse than Owens jobbing to Goldberg after a 5-minute-Larry-Z-special. The was a classic case where they booked themselves into a corner. There was no good way to book this match. The best of the bad choices might have been a non-match after Lesnar attacks Goldberg at the bell.

I firmly believe that wrestlers and fighters have roughly the same goals when it comes to the categories they're voted on together: best on interviews, biggest draw, most charismatic. There are separate awards for Fighter/Wrestler of the year, most outstanding and best match because when they step into the ring/cage they have totally different jobs. The job they have outside of that are largely very similar. Would a fighter really play a character in the middle of a fight? Have you ever seen the Stalker Ichikawa MMA fight?

The last missing episode was uploaded today.

I guess it was another year full of UFC dominating pro wrestling categories?

Brian Christopher was fired in 2001 for being caught smuggling drugs across the US-Canadian border, Rikishi was fired in 2004 for being too fat (not losing weight; according to Wikipedia) and Taylor stayed until 2007.

My favorite thing was how Malenko nailed Taylor when he went for the worm as the camera completely focused on Scotty and did not show Malenko entering the ring, so as a TV viewer you are completely unaware about what is going to happen until it is happening. They used to do this with blind tags as well in the 90ies sometimes. This makes such spots feel much more organic if the action is so fast that even the cameraman / director has problems keeping up the pace. The heat segment was pretty nice (though Taylor did not make a very good face-in-peril), after the hot tag the match fell apart a bit. Scotty 2 Hotty going blow for blow with Benoit looks so wrong.

This is really a three-act-piece. The whole thing would not have worked without the opening angle (as Low Ki took much of the much this was the heat segment) and it would have left the crowd really flat at the end without the killing of that kid. My favorite thing was The Hit Squad stiring things like some schoolboys yelling while another kid beats up the class-nerd.

I suppose that might have to do with what you can get away in Pennsylvania compared to Connecticut. I vaguely remember that the backstory of this match was that they wanted to bring in Onita for this gimmick which somehow fell through. Then CZW announced their exploding something match and to be first ECW did this match here on a short notice. Though looking at cagematch CZW did their exploding cage match only in June.

I agree that Ogawa and Ikeda don't match up too well. The match was fine but Ogawa needs bigger opponents and Ikeda needs more ass-kickers as opponents. Regarding Ikeda in NOAH: the best match he had from my memory was a WLW title match against Morishima that was worked pretty un-NOAH-ish. It was worked as a complete sprint and had table spots.

This might not be a typical big man vs. little man match but Benoit was actually really good working against bigger men, even though I don't remember him doing it quite often. Apart from Rikishi I can only remember him working Kane after WM XX (and having the best match of Kane's career) and the Sid match in January. Though I am sure that in his WWF/WWE run he had numerous TV and PPV matches against guys like Albert or the Big Show.

Benoit not only got the three count here but basically a visual ten count or whatever. Apart from some of the usual slopiness by the Rock early on this was a strong 7 minute (or whatever) match. Eddie's bump on the injured elbow on the ring apron is insane.

Considering that Hennig (and Rheingans) trained Frye (according to Wikipedia quoting Meltzer) this would make sense. This match was not what I expected. I expected much more of a "Different Style" (or however the term was) match and this was way more classical pro-wrestling than that. Did Frye always work like that? He seems to be one of those MMA guys who immediately "got it", i.e. without having many matches under his belt looking like he has done it for half of his life. Bas Rutten was another one of those guys.

There is one thing about the opening promo which seemed odd. The exchange went about like this: HHH: "You will get one last title shot. Choose any gimmick you want, just no ultraviolence." Cactus: "Okay, I choose HIAC." HHH: "Fine by me, but you have to put your career on the line." Cactus: "Sure." He already got the title shot, why not choosing another stip instead of putting his career on the line? Cactus tried to save it by saying "If I cannot beat you a in HIAC I don't deserve to continue wrestling." but still. I liked however HHH pointing out that he meant Foley's career, not just Cactus Jack's career. By the way: it's funny hearing Lawler doing heel commentary rooting for the heels while his son (whose gimmick in 97 and 98 basically was that he is Lawler's son) is in the ring wrestling as a face.

I really dug the two heat segments, as they were very competently worked. The final fall was also done pretty good, the beginning of the match not so much. They wanted to do too much there and the timing for the more complex stuff was often off. I could have also lived without the horrible catfight. The crowd was very ECW-ish, there were chants like "she's a crack-whore", "you fucked up", "J-A-P".

So did they change the finish of this match after Eddie's injury? It's hard to believe that putting the WWF champion relatively cleanly over the WCW champion in his first match after "winning the title" was NOT plan A.

What was wrong with the ropes here? They were so loose that Ohtani screwed up two springboard moves. Pretty good match overall, I would say. Though watching Takaiwa there is no wonder that he seriously hurt a guy not so much later in his career. That "powerslam" was just reckless.

I skipped the Rock's promo before the match but considering the standing of the wrestlers at the time this seems to be weird match-up. If they really wanted to do anything serious with Tazz they probably should have fed lower card guys or even jobbers to him for a couple of months, but that's not how WWF 2000 was working. Even later they did this for very few any usually huge guys. Anyway Tazz throwing guys around in a five minute match is always fine by me, finish aside.

Yeah, this was all about Hashimoto entering and kicking some serious 3rd generation ass. Of course Hashimoto kicking ass is always fine by me... And man did I forget the jungle-warrior-style hair (or however you want to call that) of Nakanishi in this time period. I suppose Choshu wanted him to be the "3rd generation Choshu" (with Sasaki being the 2nd generation edition).

Igor Vovchanchyn. Otsuka had just battled him in PRIDE. How many times can you run a permutation of the same match and get something good? Well, I'd assume many many times, as long as you stick to what works for you, but that wasn't the case here. Yone took up a portion of the match, and that guy is so hit and miss. He can be pretty enjoyable when he sticks to reckless kicks and lariats, but his other signature moves kind of stink and he also likes to do irritating no selling. There was also barely any matwork, so Greco didn't really get to do what he does best. There was some stiffness and clubbering, but the match had that weird semi-comedic feel undercard BattlARTS matches sometimes have. Geco even did a Fargo Strut at one point. You had the stiffness and clubbering and neck-crushing suplex moves aswell as a particularily twisty submission to keep you entertained throughout, but I was hoping for a few more "pure" bits. Thanks Jetlag, that explains him and Otsuka giving each other the staredown. I just looked up his record and him and Otsuka had the PRIDE match this same day???? That is nuts. Are you sure that 1/30 is not just the airdate of this show? Vovchanchyn's appearance looked like a hype-up for the PRIDE fight to me. Anyway: what is Sasuke doing there doing ring-boy duties? Or is that Sasuke the Great (Orihara)?

From today's perspective it is to strange seeing E&C as faces and (to a lesser degree) the Dudleys as heels.

It's the Last Rites. Wasn't Capri injured for a long time during the early indy-boom or am I mixing him up with someone else?

I can't remember the last time I laughed as much during a WWE show. Some was intentional: - Jack Galagher's umbrella stick - Graves exploding with joy once Enzo's music hit - "It's 8. No, wait, I held the paper the wrong way around... it's 8." other stuff was not: - Cena's HGH-ad look (I legitimately spent the first ten minutes of the match laughing) - realizing how horrible the Rumble will end after Taker was eliminated - Orton winning the Rumble in 20 f'n 17

JR used the term "radical" in the span of five minutes more often than he probably does in a normal calender year.

I thought this was the best of the TWA matches so far. Rudy Boy controlled the match really well and as a result this had the best structure of the TWA matches.