Loss

The implication is that managers only exist for people who can't do anything on their own, which isn't a very babyface quality.

There is inexplicable clown mayhem before the match proper because why not. Blink and you'll miss the first two falls, but the third fall is pretty awesome, filled with blood and great nearfalls. I suspect they were trying to copy the feel of Atlantis-Villano III, and I'm left wondering how long we're going to see that in all lucha libre promotions. It's not a bad match to copy, even if obviously it's not something that just anyone can do. Anyway, back to this match. The slight dose of heel ref stuff was pointless and annoyed me, especially since the technico was going over anyway, but it was only a couple of spots, so it wasn't completely awful. Easily the best AAA match so far, and a combination of really good matches. AAA I expect to be mostly trash with good pockets here and there that we should appreciate while we have them. So I have no expectations this will last, but I'll just say I'm enjoying AAA just fine right now. ****

I really liked this too. Good batch of ECW matches. Kash looks awesome and Corino is in many ways the perfect opponent for him, not just as a great heel who is good at riling up the crowd, but even as a base who can eat his moves really well. I liked Corino's stalling at the beginning too just because it's not often you see that in an ECW match, and kudos to Jack Victory for Big Sal-ing himself and taking so many bumps for Kash at ringside without even really seeking anything in return. Very fun TV wrestling. ***1/4

Cyrus is a great talker, loathsome and witty to boot, so I can't figure out why he doesn't work as a manager. Maybe it's because the whole thing seems really insincere because everyone knows this Network thing is just a gimmick? The match itself is really good, primarily because the size and style difference between them gives them an obvious path to work a match and build sympathy on Crazy. I love how the mutants rally for his comeback. In terms of psychology, this is one of the better ECW matches I can recall, in that it worked because of Crazy's selling and Rhino really working as a strong monster heel, and the crowd buying into an old school story and not realizing it because it was garnished with a couple of table spots. Sandman laid out yet again when he tries to make save after the match. I guess my concerns about Corino not getting enough heat put on him were for naught. ***1/2

Really good TV match, even only clocking in at six minutes. It was mostly a showcase of Tajiri's terrific offense, but Guido is such a fluid wrestler and is so good at making others look great that he really is the type of guy who should be on every roster. You have five guys as good as him in every company, and those like Roman Reigns achieve the desired reaction. I liked the use of the tables here, along with the pacing. All of this worked. ***

They cut quite the hellacious pace in this one. I can think of a few matches of theirs I liked less than this one for sure. At this point, there wasn't much left to add to the rivalry, and I respect that the match was worked as an acknowledgment of that, not even pretending the opposite. They just went balls to the wall for 15 minutes and let that be that, and it worked. Hot nearfalls five minutes into a Misawa-Kawada match are in their own way a special accomplishment considering how people were trained to expect draws from these two in Carnivals. I don't think the Flair-Steamboat at Spring Stampede '94 comparison works because they were out to party like it was 1989. This wasn't aiming to be 6-3-94, and it was too smart to try to do such a foolish thing, which was what makes it great. The most blunt match of their series. ****1/4

Zayn and Owens have always gone out of their way to not talk about their friendship publicly, even though they are friends and everyone knows it. Little things, like when they both visited Enzo in the hospital after Enzo took that nasty bump on PPV, but made sure there were no social media photos of them visiting at the same time, and Zayn going on Talk is Jericho and shooting on every other topic (except acknowledging that he was El Generico) but kayfabing his Owens relationship.

Low Ki is doing a completely different gimmick in his intro. Not sure what that's about. This has some good athletic spots and even some clever comedy, but it falls prey to all the same things to which three-ways typically succumb as far as having an odd man out. Good juniors action, but nothing you haven't seen before.

Despite dwarfing him in track record, crowd reaction, charisma and in-ring ability, WCW saw La Parka as someone with less star potential than Buff Bagwell because it was a company run by racists and fools. That aside, the pre-match angle is laugh out loud funny, with La Parka doing his normal promo where someone else is talking for him and saying all kinds of trash about Bagwell while La Parka holds up signs that say "I'm not really saying this" and "Sorry" and acts scared to death. Match is ok, but pre-match stuff from La Parka is gold, and totally the highlight of this.

More Bischoff and Russo talk from the announcers! To this point, Vince Russo had never, ever been a television character, at least not using his real name. The average fan DOES NOT KNOW WHO HE IS AND DOES NOT CARE. What is wrong with this company? Using his name to hype WCW as changing for the better means nothing, and using heel Eric Bischoff's name definitely doesn't. He was around for the rise, but he was also very much around for the fall. Tenay brings up the illustrious and nameless and faceless and elusive and mysterious and convenient and non-existent EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE that sometimes morphed into a CHAMPIONSHIP COMMITTEE. One of my favorite asinine WCW things. The Harris Brothers can't even do a proper run-in. These two do work decently well together, but they have yet to have a match given much time. Overbooked for no apparent reason. This wasn't bad for putting Booker over, but why not just give him the pin? It's about now that I remember just how bad WCW got around this time and how much I'll be rooting for its demise by this time in 2001, even if it was ultimately a devastating thing to happen to pro wrestling.

From that RAW main event stuff to this. Hulk Hogan vs The Wall. What a massive buzzkill. The announcers are already yammering on about the "new Nitro" coming with Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo. Shoot me. The politics behind this match were interesting, as Hogan had a ton of heat on him for his comments on WCW Live about how Billy Kidman couldn't headline a flea market, so to show he was a team player, he changed the planned finish of him pinning Wall to a DQ finish. This is a guy that knows where the power lies at the very least. Match is nothing special, and Hogan should never swing a chair. Wall just stands up after Hogan's Hulk-up and legdrop, which would be a great way to get someone over in a company that wasn't just in a holding pattern until the new regime comes in. The inexplicable Vampiro push continues. I guess I shouldn't complain about that one. They needed to push more guys to the top and they had almost no choices.

It says it all that Jim Ross starts the show by hyping that "all four McMahons are here!" and Lawler calls them "the most dysfunctional family on TV". I don't know if this was for sure the earliest sign of the McMahons being on TV to get themselves over instead of to get talent over, but it's definitely an early sign of a lot of the problems that still plague them today. Linda McMahon having an instrumental version of the mid-90s Wrestlemania theme as entrance music will never not be hilarious to me. We get lotttttssss of McMahon family drama when that was still relatively novel. The heat for Foley and especially Rock running in toward the end of the segment is out of this world. For the match, HHH is the outside referee and Foley is an inside referee. Shane bronco busters his dad in a pretty funny heel spot. Sports entertainment galore with family feuding, an insane crowd at a level I can't even describe and an amazing finishing sequence. We get some extra footage after the show goes off the air, which is ALWAYS fun, of Vince, Rock and Foley all doing people's elbows on Shane! Rock cuts a promo and we're about. What a once in a generation star. **1/2 for the match but an extra 1/2* for the heat puts it at ***.

I'm very interested in other thoughts on this one. Very unique match. It started off on the slow side, but picked up immediately when Tracy Smothers and Balls Mahoney interfered and started gouging Kuroda in the forehead until he was bleeding heavily. They rolled him back into the ring where Fuyuki was waiting, and now the match took on a very different tone, with Fuyuki dominating a bloody Kuroda, a layout that plays far better to what Fuyuki did well at this stage. They do a good job building heat here, specifically with Fuyuki taking a few big bumps on the chairs his ECW friends threw in the ring. Kuroda has a few goofy selling moments (to say the least), but I was into this and didn't really care. This ended in a schmozz (IN JAPAN IN 2000) with everyone brawling to set up an elimination match in a week that looks completely insane on paper that we'll cover when we get there. Masato Tanaka shows up in a post-match angle and lays out both Fuyuki and Hayabusa, then leaves with the ECW guys. Good stuff, even if it is a bit sports entertainment all things considered. ***1/2

Not bad, just boring, which is even worse. Nothing to say about this, but it did feel like it went about three hours. The action was fine but completely not noteworthy in every way I can possibly convey.

Talk about a war. Holy hell. Much like a Baptist church, the few people there are sitting toward the back, so the heat is lacking. But this is maybe the only match I can recall where there being nearly non-existent heat helped it a lot. This may have been a tough match to enjoy live considering the lack of atmosphere and the distant vantage point, but wow is it a classic on tape. These guys beat the everloving crap out of each other and keep it almost entirely in the ring. I sound like a broken record saying that when I point it out about matches that make a point to do it, but it really is appreciated. They bring only a few weapons in, and even then, they are there to get the wrestling over instead of the other way around. I've always enjoyed the contrast of the guy covered in blood dominating the guy not bleeding, and we got that here with Kobayashi on offense for a while. This is definitely a match made for video, not consciously in the WWE way, but something that just translates better as a viewing experience this way I have to believe. So much brutality and psychology, so much great selling and in some ways (some ways), the garbage wrestling version of Tamura-Yamamoto: stylistically peerless 20-minute draw between two wrestlers who were very much on the same page and knew exactly what they wanted to convey. A whopper of a match. ****1/2

One of those matches that checked off every theoretical box on paper, but just never seemed to excite me for whatever reason, other than one absolutely incredible nearfall, that seriously may have been the very best one of 2000 not in a match featuring Atlantis or Villano III. I like both guys and thought they both gave good performances, but this was just missing something to put it over the top.

This was an excellent, hard-fought 10-minute match with stiff shots, blood from Kasai and a little weaponry, but not much, and built to well when it is done. Most of the focus here is on the wrestling. This is the second Honma match I've seen this year that is worlds better than the Yamakawa match in January. It starts off with Kasai trying to wrestle and Honma trying to brawl before both flip roles and then the match breaks down. Would make my imaginary comp. ***3/4

No problem with Corino being involved here, but he's involved to the point that this is ostensibly a handicap match. This has its moments, but I'd be disappointed if I saw it live for that reason. We get the requisite post-match Sandman save after Rhino and Victory come out, and as always, it takes forever, but he eventually gets there.

Very much a pro-Rhino crowd at first, but Kash gets them on his side through his work in the ring. Short match, but I like both guys and they made the most of the time.

I wouldn't call this a great cage match, but it was very good, mainly because it was a lot of fun watching idealistic young wrestlers go all out in an attempt to have a great match. Danielson did an incredibly risky dive to the floor from the top of the cage that seemed to ring his bell, even guys catching him. I think he also bladed for the first time here and might have oversliced himself. He told the story in his book. In spite of all that, he and Spanky are a fun tag team and the match had the crowd hyped and got over the hatred and stakes of the feud really well. I think they had the best match they were capable of having at this point in their careers, and one that they should be proud of. The most entertaining thing by far in this match was Shawn Michaels shooting on WWF cage matches repeatedly on commentary, saying this isn't one of those wimpy WWF cage matches where all you have to do to win is leave. ***1/2

Anytime you see an AJ Styles match from Wildside, you can assume it was added because Styles was in the match and we wanted to track him and be right more than you're wrong. That was the case here, but Onyx was maybe the more impressive of the two in this match as an aggressive heel. This is the second match between these two but both have been short, and I'd love to see them get more time. It's interesting how you can really see the improvement in these guys in matches just a few weeks or months apart, actually tracking their rapid improvement. With Bailey trying to cost Styles the match by grabbing his foot to do the Rude-Warrior WMV finish and almost succeeding, only to be run off when babyfaces clear the locker room, clearing the way for Styles to come back and get the win, I realize that Wildside is better at being OVW than OVW is at being OVW.