Loss

While it would definitely be cool if someone did this for Jeff Lynch's list, PDFing Friedlander's list alone, much less making it searchable, would be huge.

So this is the big match that launched the NWO. This was really booked well. Taking out Luger made it seem like he might be a suspect, Sting 'accidentally' taking out Luger made it look like he might be a suspect, and they have a below average match, but the heat is through the roof, and the surprise definitely delivered on the hype. Looking forward to seeing all the week-to-week Hollywood Hogan stuff again. This remains the most famous last five minutes on a show in PPV history.

Poor Flair. Konnan looks so awkward doing everything, and Flair tries, but can't carry him. Also, poor Flair, because you can really see him taking on a lesser role from where he was a few months earlier, as him coming out with Woman and Liz seemed really fresh a few months prior and now seems like yesterday's news, even though he did win the U.S. title, which is a dubious honor for someone at Flair's level anyway. This is also a terribly awkward finish, with Woman getting on the apron way too early and leading to a far too long ref distraction. Terrible match, glad it's just the last few minutes.

Not really a great match, but I really like this for Disco Inferno looking more like a pro wrestler than I think he ever has, and the announcers pushing the serious side of him at the booth. The momentum shifts are really good here, because Dean just dominates the early minutes before Dean gets in a shot, and then he shows some surprising aggression. It feels like the start of a "serious wrestler" push, which WCW had done for Badd at one point a few years earlier, but I guess they forgot to follow up.

So early on, I'm wondering why this match always had the rep of being this balls out spotfest and I'm not really getting it at all, because they're wrestling on the mat most of the time. Then, things pick up and it turns into a very good match. I think this match is a little overhyped, and I've seen both guys have many matches in '96 that I've liked better, but this was a good early Rey match to establish him. I do prefer the Malenko match though. I suspect I'm the only one.

Imagine if someone did it for Friedlander's list!

Someone should just re-type them all verbatim.

Raven bores me to tears doing one of his meandering promos about his childhood and Tyler Fullington shows up at the end.

Hall and Nash interrupt a Rey video and come through the crowd holding a mic. Nash says "LOOK AT THE CLOWNS! LOOK AT THE CLOWNS!" when Sting, Luger and Savage come out to face off, as they were all wearing Sting face paint at this point. They get handcuffed and thrown of the building as Nash screams "Attica! Attica! Attica!" The aspect of interrupting the video added a lot to this scene. There was a lot of great attention to detail in these early angles.

Marty Jannetty was waaaaaaay too good to have the career he had. These two are always a good match for each other, and this is no exception. Probably my second favorite match they've had against each other. I love all the familiarity spots and because they wrestle such a similar style, you don't see them having to call spots very often. Nice match.

What a great angle. Sunny does such a great job as a loathsome bitch, trying to humiliate Phineas one last time before Phineas drops pig slop on her. This is a replay of the angle from Raw, and one of the best parts is the repeated slo-mo replays from all camera angles, and Vince saying "Sunny has been slopped" in his most wrestling voice possible.

Heavyweights who aren't headliners are incapable of being good.

He was a movie buff who in wrestling gear looked like an Academy Award.

Revising this to include June: #1 - Megumi Kudo vs Combat Toyota (FMW 05/05/96) #2 - El Hijo del Santo & Atlantis & El Dandy & Lizmark vs Blue Panther & Felino & Dr Wagner Jr & Negro Casas (CMLL 03/15/96) #3 - Shinjiro Otani vs El Samurai (NJPW 01/21/96) #4 - Wild Pegasus vs Black Tiger (NJPW 06/11/96) #5 - Rey Misterio Jr & Ultimo Dragon vs Heavy Metal & Psicosis (World Wrestling Peace Festival 06/01/96) #6 - Dynamite Kansai & Kanako Motoya vs Mayumi Ozaki & Reiko Amano (JWP 06/16/96) #7 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Steve Williams & Johnny Ace (AJPW 06/07/96) #8 - Mayumi Ozaki vs Takako Inoue (JWP 05/18/96) #9 - Steve Williams vs Akira Taue (AJPW 04/20/96) #10 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (AJPW 05/23/96) #11 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue (AJPW 03/31/96) #12 - Nobuhiko Takada & Masahito Kakihara vs Tatsumi Fujinami & Yoshiaki Fujiwara (UWFI 06/26/96) #13 - El Hijo del Santo & El Dandy & Dos Caras vs Blue Panther & Apolo Dantes & Emilio Charles Jr (CMLL 02/16/96) #14 - Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Johnny Ace & Gary Albright (AJPW 04/20/96) #15 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 03/31/96) #16 - Great Sasuke & Tiger Mask IV & Shiryu vs Taka Michinoku & Super Delphin & Gran Naniwa (Michinoku Pro 03/16/96) #17 - Toshiaki Kawada vs Kenta Kobashi (AJPW 05/24/96) #18 - Dynamite Kansai & Takako Inoue vs Mayumi Ozaki & Kyoko Inoue (JWP 04/20/96) #19 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Dean Malenko (WCW Great American Bash 06/16/96) #20 - Black Tiger & El Samurai & Gran Hamada vs Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto & Dean Malenko (NJPW 02/25/96) #21 - Shane Douglas vs 2 Cold Scorpio (ECW Matter of Respect 05/11/96) #22 - Yoshihisa Yamamoto vs Buzariashville Ramazi (RINGS 05/25/96) #23 - Manami Toyota vs Sakie Hasegawa (AJW 03/20/96) #24 - Nobuhiko Takada vs Shiro Koshinaka (NJPW 03/01/96) #25 - Psicosis vs Ultraman (AAA 03/16/96) #26 - Bret Hart vs Shawn Michaels (WWF Wrestlemania XII 03/31/96) #27 - Jushin Liger vs Shinjiro Otani (NJPW 03/17/96) #28 - Shinya Hashimoto & Junji Hirata vs Kazuo Yamazaki & Takashi Iizuka (NJPW 06/12/96) #29 - Taka Michinoku vs Super Delphin (NJPW Skydiving J 06/17/96) #30 - Mitsuharu Misawa vs Akira Taue (AJPW 05/24/96) #31 - Shinya Hashimoto & Junji Hirata vs Yoshihiro Takayama & Yoji Anjo (NJPW 02/25/96) #32 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Juventud Guerrera (AAA 03/16/96) #33 - Shawn Michaels vs Owen Hart (WWF In Your House VI 02/18/96) #34 - Vader vs Antonio Inoki (NJPW 01/04/96) #35 - Jushin Liger & Black Tiger vs Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto (NJPW 02/15/96) #36 - Shawn Michaels vs Diesel (WWF Good Friends Better Enemies 04/28/96) #37 - Steven Regal vs Fit Finlay (WCW Uncensored 03/24/96) #38 - PG-13 vs Tracy Smothers & Jesse James Armstrong (USWA TV 02/17/96) #39 - Jushin Liger vs Dick Togo (NJPW Skydiving J 06/17/96) #40 - El Dandy & El Hijo del Santo & Silver King vs Negro Casas & Apolo Dantes & El Satanico (CMLL 02/10/96) #41 - Hayabusa & Masato Tanaka & Koji Nakagawa vs W*ING Kanemura & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga & Hidoh (FMW 01/10/96) #42 - Steve Austin vs Marc Mero (WWF King of the Ring 06/23/96) #43 - Jushin Liger vs Great Sasuke (World Wrestling Peace Festival 06/01/96) #44 - Jerry Lawler vs Jeff Jarrett (USWA TV 04/20/96) #45 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Juventud Guerrera (ECW Big Ass Extreme Bash 03/09/96) #46 - Ric Flair vs Eddy Guerrero (WCW Monday Nitro 05/20/96) #47 - Cactus Jack vs Mikey Whipwreck (ECW Big Ass Extreme Bash 03/09/96) #48 - Sabu vs 2 Cold Scorpio (ECW 04/19/96) #49 - Shawn Michaels vs Davey Boy Smith (WWF King of the Ring 06/23/96) #50 - Manami Toyota vs Yumiko Hotta (AJW 01/22/96) #51 - Black Tiger vs Shinjiro Otani (NJPW 06/05/96) #52 - Manami Toyota vs Kyoko Inoue (AJW 03/31/96) #53 - Psicosis vs Ultraman (AAA 01/18/96) #54 - 2 Cold Scorpio vs Sabu (ECW Cyberslam 02/17/96) #55 - Rey Misterio Jr & Perro Aguayo vs La Parka & Ultimo Dragon vs Cibernetico & Pierroth Jr vs Heavy Metal & Psicosis (AAA 06/02/96) #56 - Jushin Liger vs Koji Kanemoto (NJPW 01/04/96) #57 - PG-13 vs Tracy Smothers & Jesse James Armstrong (USWA TV 01/20/96) #58 - Manami Toyota & Mariko Yoshida & Kaoru Ito & Yumi Fukawa vs Takako Inoue & Kyoko Inoue & Chapparita Asari & Tomoko Watanabe (AJW 02/12/96) #59 - 1-2-3 Kid vs Hakushi (WWF Monday Night RAW 02/05/96) #60 - El Dandy & Silver King & Lizmark vs Negro Casas & El Felino & El Satanico (CMLL 06/28/96) #61 - Jushin Liger vs El Samurai (NJPW 06/11/96) #62 - Genichiro Tenryu vs Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW Battle Formation 04/29/96) #63 - Jushin Liger & El Samurai & Gran Hamada vs Shinjiro Otani & Koji Kanemoto & Taka Michinoku (NJPW 04/05/96) #64 - Steve Austin vs Savio Vega (WWF Beware of Dog 05/28/96) #65 - Rey Misterio Jr vs Juventud Guerrera (AAA 01/31/96) #66 - Wild Pegasus vs Shinjiro Otani (NJPW 03/20/96) #67 - Chris Jericho vs Pit Bull #2 (ECW Hardcore Heaven 06/22/96) #68 - Shinya Hashimoto vs Kazuo Yamazaki (NJPW 01/04/96) #69 - Shawn Michaels vs Davey Boy Smith (WWF Beware of Dog 05/26/96) #70 - El Dandy & Atlantis & Hector Garza vs Apolo Dantes & Dr Wagner Jr & El Felino (CMLL June 1996) #71 - Ric Flair vs The Giant (WCW Monday Nitro 03/25/96) #72 - Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Dick Murdoch (PWFG 05/23/96) #73 - Ric Flair vs Randy Savage (WCW SuperBrawl VI 02/11/96) #74 - Mitsuhiro Matsunaga & W*ING Kanemura & Hido vs Masato Tanaka & Ricky Fuji & Tetsuhiro Kuroda (FMW 02/23/96) #75 - Nobuhiko Takada vs Shinya Hashimoto (NJPW Battle Formation 04/29/96) #76 - Aja Kong vs Combat Toyota (FMW 01/10/96) #77 - Shawn Michaels vs 1-2-3 Kid (WWF Monday Night RAW 03/04/96) #78 - Steven Regal vs Fit Finlay (WCW Saturday Night 04/27/96) #79 - Atlantis & Lizmark & El Hijo del Santo vs El Felino & Bestia Salvaje & El Satanico (CMLL 40th Anniversary Show 04/19/96) #80 - Jushin Liger vs Black Tiger (NJPW 02/03/96) #81 - Shawn Michaels vs Hunter Hearst Helmsley (WWF Monday Night RAW 05/13/96) #82 - Road Warriors vs Rick & Scott Steiner (WCW Monday Nitro 03/11/96) #83 - Juventud Guerrera & Psicosis vs Volador & El Mexicano (AAA 01/12/96) #84 - Jushin Liger vs Dean Malenko (WCW Monday Nitro 05/06/96) #85 - Shawn Michaels vs Leif Cassidy (WWF Monday Night RAW 03/25/96) #86 - Ric Flair vs Randy Savage (WCW Monday Nitro 02/19/96) #87 - Sting vs Scott Steiner (WCW Monday Nitro 05/27/96)

El Dandy is in most of the match here and looks great. This is also Hector Garza's debut on this set, who Vince Russo was apparently a fan of. I don't want to say this drags, because the pace is pretty fast, but there are points where it seems like nothing of any consequence is going on and it's just guys trading moves. It's entertaining, but there is much better with pretty much everyone here.

I'm curious if the movie quotes thing at the beginning of his promos was something he found himself, or something someone in production gave him every time out. Because I always thought that was the best part. The idea of making a wrestler look like an awards statue is just so ridiculous that it's genius. The vignettes introducing him were very non-descript. They didn't show him at all. From the initial run, there seem to be a few phases: * Intro through In Your House in December - During this little window, he was just pushed as "bizarre". * In Your House sending Razor Ramon flowers through Sable obsession - They never said it, and they did play up the "mind games" thing, but they clearly wanted you think he was gay. Early in this angle, Marlena is clearly the one interested in Sable, but they made changes to it. I've always heard it was because Bret Hart complained about it (along with Cloudy and a few other things they were doing at the time), but I'm not sure if that's true. * Sable obsession through Lawler interview - Kind of floundering and not really doing anything important. Goldust in 2002 is one of my favorite runs, mainly because it came out of nowhere. Early in the year, they brought back Venis, Godfather, Perfect and Goldust, and most seemed to be excited about the prospects of another Hennig run on top more than anything else. Hennig was gone within a few months and Goldust was pretty over and was one of the best parts of the show. I love the run teaming with Booker T, and the two of them reviewing The Scorpion King remains one of the greatest comedy segments in RAW history. The matches against Jericho and Christian were all really good, to a point where I prefer them to the Smackdown Six stuff.

Owen in general was surprisingly good at the announce booth on the whole show. Owen has always been a lackluster promo so you wouldn't expect him to do well in that role, but he's actually very good.

It makes sense, and I like the idea. I've created a new folder with what have generally been the most popular threads at PWO. They aren't closed or read-only, they're just in a smaller subforum where they are easier to locate.

While the style is different, CMLL is so similar to Houston wrestling in terms of atmosphere -- the ring and acoustics are similar to matches from the Sam Houston Coliseum, and so is the camerawork. I think one of my favorite things about watching CMLL in this time period is that it's not over-produced, but it's not shoddy either. It feels how wrestling should feel in terms of presentation, or at the very least it fits my tastes well. Well, all these guys rock. Some of these pairings and teams are starting to feel familiar, which is nice. Casas and Dandy, Lizmark and Casas, Felino and Dandy, King and Casas ... these guys have all been on opposite sides in quite a few matches on this set all year. And while we're on the subject of Houston Wrestling, Negro Casas would have made a great Southern heel. He could have worked six-mans with the Guerreros in Mid South and they would have been awesome. I felt more like making random observations about the people in the match than talking about the match itself, which is very good. Not at the level of other stuff that I've seen in the year, but a nice cross-section of wrestlers who are familiar at this point of the yearbook working together in a way where you start to get a feel for what their standard spots are with each other. The dive train is out of control at the end, with El Dandy specifically doing a hands-free dive over the top rope to the floor that looks beautiful.

Weird that UWFI ran tag matches and people still thought they were a shoot. I love this match! Truth be told, I haven't watched a ton of UWFI, but this is really accessible and the style is kinda flashy and high impact, so it's very easy to follow. Part of that may be that Fujinami and Fujiwara are great wrestlers outside of this style, so they bring that sort of thing to this setting. But whatever the reason, it works well.

Last few minutes. Hall and Nash come through the crowd and have baseball bats. A half dozen cops swarm the ring with their guns along with a few other wrestlers. Harlem Heat win the tag titles in the middle of all this. Great chaotic scene.

Luger and Savage are wearing Sting face paint, which sets up some funny Nash stuff the following week that we'll get into later. Luger makes sure we know that WWWCW stands tall.

The announcers put over Eddy's tour of New Japan quite a bit. This is a really fun power/speed match that's really fast-paced. A little sloppy in spots, but the match still worked. The highlight is Barbarian's crazy top rope overhead throw, which Eddy bumps huge off of, all the way to the floor. The finish is also well done, with Barbarian trying a top rope superplex and Eddy countering to a pinfall. In the post-match when Gene interviews Eddy, he is wearing a navy/white striped blazer and a red tie with white polkadots!

The first of quite a few Warrior ads around this time. In this one, a guy is working out while the announcer talks about unleashing the warrior inside of you, while a guy in a wheelchair works out. You don't realize he's in a wheelchair until the end of the commercial.

Switching Mr. Perfect to the role of outside-the-ring ref right before the match really felt in some ways like a bait and switch, because they heavily teased some type of angle going into this show that never came. In retrospect, this match is a little overbooked. There are too many people involved in this match -- Cornette, Perfect, Owen and Diana. It's nothing like Over The Edge '98 as a match, but it feels like a skeleton for it in some ways because of the stack-the-deck booking of it. Shawn is really on here and seems motivated to give a better match than the one at Beware of Dog. There are a few moments where Davey Boy's timing is off and Shawn does a good job covering for him. Shawn is also clearly the one calling this match. I like the opening headlock/armbar stuff. Really basic, but well-executed, and Shawn does a lot of Steamboat-like stuff: the skin the cat spot, the deep armdrags, and some of the armwork is very Steamboat-like. This is maybe the match where he wrestled the most like a world champion so far. It's a shame Davey Boy is having an off night. He tries, but at one point, he climbs to the top and slips off and Vince and Jim Ross are kind of in disbelief over it. There are a few awkward moments like this that hurt the heat. Also, as well as Shawn does some things, there is some sloppiness here when he does some of the high-flying stuff like the headscissors on the floor that kinda has to be mentioned. Still, great world title match atmosphere, great nearfalls and heat, and maybe the best traditional title defense-style match of Shawn's run. Awesome post-match overall. Owen doing the missed enzuigiri and the leg lariat in the post-match while wearing a tuxedo is awesome.