Loss

I don't completely disagree with the Mauro point, as I'm not a fan either for similar reasons. However, I was under the impression that more happened that we don't know yet that is far worse. Dave even admitted both of them -- JBL and Mauro -- will probably look awful in the end.

This is a tremendous segment, and my take on it has always been not so much that it was a triumph as a match, although it's definitely a good match. The bigger triumph is that matches like this can only happen when a wrestling company has earned lots of good will with its audience. This could not be replicated in a time where people think the top stars can never lose to nearly the same level of success. A lot was made of HHH's decline when he returned after his quad tear. To me, he was still pretty much the same HHH as a worker, but the difference was that the company had lost some of the good will by that time. So HHH vs Taka is a match you can pull off during a good period because while HHH was very strong at this point, he wasn't really portrayed as anything close to invincible. It was conceivable for HHH to lose in a way that mattered. That wasn't the case as much by 2002, so getting the crowd to bite hard on one nearfall, which was how this match was structured, was going to be much more of an uphill battle. So yes, good match, but more than that, a credit to the faith the viewing audience had in the WWF at the time. You may not get it when you want it, but in the end, the guy climbing the ladder made it to the top. The guy trying to win the title against all odds became champion. The good guys won. Somewhere along the way, that unspoken bond with the audience was broken, which makes this match clicking something that is very uniquely 2000 WWF. ***

Absolutely beautiful wrestling match, and probably the best pure title match-style lucha libre I've seen since the early 90s. Panther has always been talked up as a brilliant mat worker, and while I have seen him in some great matches for sure, this is the first time that I think his work actually matched his reputation. I don't mean that from a quality standpoint as much as a style standpoint, since I'm used to seeing Panther in trios matches where he doesn't get the chance to work the mat really. There is some amazing *wrestling* in this match, and a classic face-heel dynamic to drive it forward. Hard to ask for much more out of wrestling than this match provides. ****1/2

Very good final. I was a bit disappointed in the match, not because it wasn't good, but just because it would have been great to see a bonafide classic since this is the last singles match they have until 2007. As it stands, I don't like CIMA as a underdog babyface nearly as much I like him as an overconfident heel who wrestles wise beyond his years, and I think a final should get way more time than this got. The two do have great chemistry though, and the implication of how the match is worked is that it's not a matter of if CIMA will be the king junior, but a matter of when. (I have to also mention that I popped for hearing 90210 in the background when Liger was being interviewed in the locker room.) ***1/2

Fun for the crowd briefly thinking Hamada might have one more rodeo in him, but he didn't quite get there. Liger had to take a different approach than usual when he faced wrestlers who were more experienced and overwhelm Hamada with offense.

Lots of nuance in the way this was worked, which was appreciated. They have the youngster vs vet thing going, but CIMA dominates most of it. The interesting thing about it is that even though he is on offense most of the time, he is also selling most of the time, because Sano can do a lot less to accomplish a lot more and quickly even the odds. Sano's Boston Crab and the accompanying drama over reaching the ropes was outstanding, maybe the highlight of the match. I also like the unspoken booking of this looking like we could get a Liger-Sano final, picking up their rivalry 10 years later, but CIMA pulls off what I wouldn't quite refer to as an upset, but what I would call a hard-earned victory. He started off 2000 great, but he seems to be improving with each outing all the same. ****

One of the better sub-10 minute matches you'll ever see. Yagi's ability to apply cross armbreakers from virtually any position is just amazing, and Asari continues to impress in a way that I hope we see a lot more of her in the years ahead. I don't recall her being an enormous standout in the 90s, but she has a real confidence here, and her high-flying offense is as good as just about anyone's in wrestling. ****

This was a terrific match. It was my first chance to see young Makabe, who I assumed probably wasn't very good just because I never heard anything about him until New Japan's renaissance. In actuality, he's very good. But yeah, no one in this can hold a candle to Ricky Marvin, even though everyone is having a good night. He now very much has my attention as we move forward with the decade. ***1/2

Fun match. LOL at Teoh getting the big head and thinking he's been blessed with Misawa's elbows. I appreciate how in both matches thus far, Liger has sold quite a bit to get over his vulnerability, which was probably the right call after running roughshod over everyone for months.

I thought this was very good at times, but it didn't really deliver on its promise. It is definitely a match that requires patience, as more than the first half of this is just about building a foundation, and they take their time and you start to wonder why they are doing such a lethargic match. Sasuke and Sano have good will with me, so I bit, and while the match wasn't bad, it was very disappointing. I get that the goal was to really make Sano's victory seem hard fought since it was an upset, and I thought they accomplished that with all of the selling, whereas if they had just done a typical juniors match, I don't know that a Sano upset carries the same weight. It felt like a match that knew its finish sucked (why not put Sano over more convincingly to make a moment?) and tried to overcome the booking through the work in the ring. This never quite got where it was trying to go, but it was still an interesting watch.

Dave said on The Board he received so much feedback within WWE after writing the JBL piece that he is doing a story that could take a few weeks or a few months to put together, but he's not going to rush it because he wants to get it right. But that he basically had 15 Justin Robertses contact him with their own stories. He said it's so much information that it will take him a while to verify it all and make sense of it.

They don't even try anymore. How do you do an angle like that and then just move on to the next segment business as usual with everyone doing their normal entrances and the announcers not doing Owen voices for the rest of the show?

Isn't Rusev out for a while?

I can't imagine Mauro doing all of those things in his announcer voice.

Reigns could win the SD title and they could have a unification match. But Dave has said he's staying put, for whatever that's worth.

1. The measure of a story's importance is not how surprising or already known/unknown it is. 2. Dave said some in the company didn't like certain things about him, but most liked him. He was commenting on what he's told less than he was providing his personal opinion.

Good for you.

I'm not offended. I just think there's always this implication like, "Oh, I've noticed that this guy watches another man do (x) thing if you know what I mean" and then implying there's a gay undercurrent to it ... that's jumping to conclusions anyway, but okay, so what if it's true? Russo is weaponizing it, and that's the annoying part. It would be like if I said that I wanted to imply that wrestling fans sure like sandwiches and point out how passionate they sure seem to be about bread. I'm making the benign somehow sound shameful. It's dumb.

This is my board and I'm gay. What's your point?

Fun start to this. Onryo is way too much of a gimmick to have a super match from what I've picked up so far, but I think given the time and that gimmick, this was about as good as it could possibly be.

Pearce with flowing long brown hair was definitely odd. I thought parts of this were good heavyweight action, and I appreciated how hard they were both trying to both involve the crowd and keep everything interesting. Both guys obviously go on to do far more impressive things, but while I didn't think this was a good match, I do think it's the type I could watch and see potential in both once they got some seasoning. Some garbage tendencies I could have done without for sure, though.

Or vice versa People outside wrestling have often seemed bewildered by the idea that someone can hate wrestling and not follow it and not care about its history or customs, yet want a job in it?

There are absolutely those who are huge fans, seek out everything and will watch wrestling in their downtime. There are also those who look at it as a job. Every single wrestler isn't in one category or the other. What always amuses me is when people who talk about the WON as much as Flair and Cornette aren't aware of things that have been talked about for a long time in said WON.

Yes, the story there was that years earlier, Vince told Jim Ross to play hardball on a pay-per-view payoff with HHH. HHH wasn't happy with it and contested it, and JR stood firm. Then HHH went to Vince about it, and Vince said, "Of course you can have a higher payoff, you should have come to me!" HHH never knew that part and decided the Jim Ross match was his chance to get even. HHH has the Del Rio thing. There was talk that DeMott was following orders from HHH in NXT. Not really a ribber and definitely not Vince, but no saint either.

Two very green guys showing it. Bonus points for false accusations of hair pulling though. This felt like backyard wrestling that happened to be indoors.