Loss

What? I LOVED this match. This is one of the better Kawada performances I've ever seen, and that's no small statement. He is pretty relentless in how he takes it to Vader in the opening minutes -- just a nonstop barrage of offense. When he takes him off his feet and starts punching him in the face, it starts to feel like he's taking out his aggression over his losing streak more than he is trying to win the title. There's also so many cool details here, like how he has so many of Vader's signature moves well scouted. So many of the counters I've never seen, like running to the middle rope and holding on to his leg so he can't do the splash from the middle rope and ducking to avoid his full body splash. Kawada wrestles like a guy that has done his homework and has a strategy to just keep striking and kicking as rapidly and frequently as possible. Unfortunately, five strikes for Kawada is the equivalent of one for Vader, so he can counter pretty effectively with far less output, and he's able to fight back. I love the spot where Kawada gets Vader out on his feet into the ropes with all the rapid fire kicks, but he exhausts himself so much from doing it that he can't capitalize. Kawada's downtrodden streak continues for now, as does Vader's Triple Crown reign, but I thought this was a pretty great match, to the point I'm shocked people were low on it. ****1/4

I remember Luger's first line in this promo causing some controversy ("It's good to finally see a star standing before you, isn't it?") since the show had been filled with midcarders up to this point and it was clear what he was saying. Luger doesn't talk long before he introduces Ric Flair, but which is a good move considering how Luger sounds on this promo. Flair can still cut a strong heel promo, even while not really having anything to say. I crack up that the chicken ranch promo from Flair was like three weeks before this match, Flair only used the line once and Funk is still holding on to it and mentioning it in every promo. Funk gets a good reaction since they are in Philly and they set up the main event to start off the show in this segment. Not much heat when the match proper gets underway for any of the spots these guys do that usually get a good reaction, even though the actual work is pretty decent. Watching Flair-Funk stuff really makes me wish both guys were either in Japan or on the indy scene at this point because I suspect they'd be having great double juice brawls pretty regularly. Flair gets the finish on Dustin after Elizabeth sneaks in a baseball shot. All this sort of makes WCW seem like they are in a time warp. There was a role for Flair in WCW as long as he wanted one, but being the top main event heel wasn't it, even if he was still very good in the ring.

This is a crowd that completely checked out after Flair-Hogan. I have to hand it to Sid -- he was working hard in this run. Jarrett is so much more tolerable when he's just working matches because he's really good in the ring. It's the promos and persona and guitar smashing I can't stand. This wasn't bad, and Jarrett did a good job leading this. Nothing special, but pretty decent.

Flair cuts a great fired up promo before the match. This match is red hot, which is both good and bad. It's good because red hot matches are exceedingly rare for WCW, especially involving major stars where the crowd reacts in the intended way to everything. However, Dave has talked about this match many times, and it's right -- it completely sent the wrong message to WCW brass about where the company needed to go. These guys can work a crowd better than anyone, and both guys, especially Hulk, get a thunderous reaction at Nassau Coliseum. But they couldn't build around Hogan and Flair anymore. They still had value for sure, but they needed to build up some other guys and they just weren't. A lot of the obvious choices that were around six months earlier were gone, and the most obvious choice, Goldberg, was sidelined with an injury. But focusing on the match, both Flair and Hogan still look like the same Flair and Hogan they always did -- same guys, just older. It's amazing how much Flair aged in the 2000s, because he doesn't look bad at all here. A little older, sure, but still doing most of the stuff he's known for, even a perfectly executed Flair Flip, which he couldn't do two years prior. Hogan was still as over as ever, still hitting his spots and looked fine. The match was an abbreviated version of their usual match and there's nothing here you haven't seen in other Flair-Hogan matches, but it's probably the last absolutely electric match WCW ever had. It's so obvious from these crowds that people who attended shows at this point were not people who followed the weekly TV, but instead were people who just saw the names that were in town and decided to go to the show. So selling storylines was pretty much impossible because the TV was so bad and they were competing with a Monday night show that was clicking on all cylinders with younger, better talent. I really enjoyed the match. I'm not sure the match happening was a good thing, though. ***1/4

Thanks for listening and for the suggestion! We do plan on going through HWA TV and in fact, I have the whole run of TV from when they were a developmental territory. We're looking forward to it.

As someone who has liked both guys at different stages of their careers (and Funk most of the time), this wasn't a match I was looking forward to all that much. Sometimes, you just see a match on paper and it just doesn't seem like the wrestlers will gel and this really seemed like one of those cases. Two very different wrestlers. Funk was a madman past his prime, which is fine because he could still be entertaining, but Luger was pretty broken down and hadn't had a good match in years. I have to say while I'm not generally a fan, I laughed at Mark Madden calling Hulk Hogan an actor who dabbles in wrestling. The press slam spot through the table was well done but I'm so sick of table spots, and it's only February 2000. Funk is selling the back in a big way and all of Luger's offense targets Funk's back. The match ends in a DQ when Elizabeth pushes a chair in the ring when Funk attempts a moonsault, only for Funk to land on the chair. Seeing a moonsault in a Lex Luger match is just too weird. And yeah, a DQ for that, but not for going through a table?

I don't know what to think of this as a match, but as an angle, it was highly effective. Kane had to beat HHH and Big Show to get X-Pac in a match at No Way Out and the deck was stacked against him in a big way. Rock tried to make the save and was chokeslammed immediately (rough night for him) and Cactus Jack came out to an enormous pop and cleared the ring. He and HHH really went at it. Great stuff. Anyway, Rock rebounded and hit Show with a chair, which allowed Kane to chokeslam and pin him. Huge heat for all of this as the babyfaces triumphantly clear the ring. The WWF seems to have a lot of top talent now between everyone involved in this, Rikishi and the incoming Benoit and they are doing a great job not making anything seem less important than anything else.

Well, this was quite effective in continuing to establish Benoit as a real player. The heat isn't quite there at the beginning but the crowd gets into the match after a couple of minutes of skepticism, which is always fun to see. Eddy is great as an antagonizing second, which builds up to him getting his just desserts by taking one bump for Rock's punch effectively. I really like that they found a way to keep him involved during his injury. Big Show interferes to help Benoit win with a German suplex in a major upset. When Rock tries to get his revenge after the match, Benoit stops him and they end up back in the ring where Benoit gets him with a diving headbutt and that's the segment. Yeah, no ifs, ands or buts here, no letting Rock get his heat back or anything like that. He took most of the match, he got the win, and then he laid out Rock in the post-match angle. How about that. ***

Corino calling Dusty 162 years old cracked me up. A step below the big house show match, but a fun TV affair. Call it the radio edit to the fancam's album version, cleaned up with better production. The match isn't quite as good or satisfying, but had I not seen that, I probably would have enjoyed this way more. Without the point of comparison, this is fun stuff. I do like how they are building up Rhino. He would have been ideal to build up as the first major opponent once they paid off the RVD title chase if they hadn't already run that match. Sandman makes the save to a huge pop, but I really wish they would have found a way to move on from him and Dreamer by this time.

This was pretty good. I thought it lacked the excitement BattlARTS usually holds for me, even though it was much better than the previous match. Ishikawa and Ikeda always have good interactions, and they do here too as well, and I like how they built to their interactions here. I also continue to be impressed by Nagai. It's really early to say this, but so far, they just seem to have gone from a company in 1999 that was a smorgasbord of so many wrestling styles to second-rate shoot style. So I do like the match, quite a bit in fact, but I was hoping for more. ***1/2

This was well-worked technically, but had nothing engaging or special about it at all. No struggle or intensity to go with the technique. I have also figured out now based on Kotsubo and thinking about Yone and others before this that crazy hair in BattlARTS usually means disappointing worker. Completely soulless match that just feels like it's checking off boxes.

Quite the brutal bloodbath. Obviously, Aja was pretty established at this point and Kaoru had been in the mechanic role seemingly forever, but I still think the way this was worked showed a new dimension for both of them. I'm not usually a fan of matches with so many table spots, but this was primarily about the brutality with the tables as garnish instead of being the main course. I loved how Aja bled from her hand and couldn't really use the uraken to full effect, having to fight through the pain to hit it at the end. Kaoru obviously showed a lot here in what I'm assuming was her highest profile singles match to this point. This was a hell of a show, with two strong MOTYCs both wrestled in very different ways that were very distinct from each other. and I think this match did more to get over the top title than any match I've seen so far in any company this year. ****1/2

This match was certifiable. It was 20 minutes and it was all finishing stretch. Seriously, they just went right into it and never stopped. I have never seen spots timed with quite this much rhythm, where you see one and the next happens in perfect harmony with the next, and with the next and so on. It's hard to describe, but it was also like music in how it kept its time. Pretty amazing. I'd call this match organized chaos. When Sugar Sato slipped off the ropes, it didn't phase me one bit because it made sense within the context of the match, they weren't phased and they quickly moved on. But when Sonoko Kato couldn't take the dynamic bomb bump because she fell backwards and landed on her head, that was a pretty scary moment. That was the only time the momentum really broke, and is honestly the only thing that kept this from reaching ***** for me. This was pretty aspirational stuff that I think would be a complete disaster if emulated, but as a one-of-a-kind match, it's a classic. ****1/2

A Kid Rock gimmick is at the very least topical in 2000, I'll say that. I think Kash gels even better with Guido than Crazy or Tajiri do. This was a super 6-7 minute match. I was impressed that they put in so much effort in what, like soup said, was pretty obviously a barn. Kash was still establishing himself, so Guido won but Kash gained something from it because he made a strong showing and the match was so good. Impressive. ***

A pretty solid tag, especially considering the experience level of everyone involved. I watch this and wonder if the path for Jindrak to be someone was as a blowjob babyface who they presented as tough when it counted instead of as a heel that was just another face in a stable. Good stuff, and that springboard lariat for the finish was one for the highlight reel.

Yeah, those pre-match promos are almost a 2000 indy version of the SNME opening. I love it too. Spanky doing his normal dancing to "Born in the U.S.A." is pretty funny. This starts off as not a good match at all, with Danielson having an off night and Spanky trying to fix it. Dragon rebounds well and looks good when the match gets going, but wow does he have a rough start, to the point the announcer says, "Is this match going to break down already?" After that, it's pretty good, with Dragon as FIP and Buster Time as an awesome powerhouse just decimating him. The size difference makes that work really well. Dragon and Spanky get a nice win and earn a tag title match against the Board of Education.

We start with clips of Dinsmore vs Conway from a house show. Good action and Dinsmore still strikes me as the brightest prospect in OVW. He would have fit right in with the increased emphasis on in-ring that was happening at the time. Then we go to the Nick Dinsmore vs BJ Payne match back in the studio. Dinsmore is now using Orgy's "Blue Monday" as his entrance music. All of this -- the house show clip, the scheduled match with Payne and the impromptu match with Damaja -- really represents Dinsmore well, and the reason to watch this is to get a good showcase of the guy. Side note: One thing I really hate about OVW is that nothing has time to breathe. After a ref bump, the run-ins commence in a nanosecond, the referee counts the fall the moment they are out of the ring and the show then immediately goes off the air. I swear there are times because he knows what's about to happen that Cornette gets a little ahead of himself and calls things a split second before he sees them.

I crack up that I understand every third word or so that Robert Gibson says. I do have to agree with his point that Dave Brown sort of stirred this up, though. It's funny that you can have a singles match to figure out the best tag team. I love The Fantastics, but Tommy Rogers should be told that sometimes when he wasn't looking, Bobby Fulton would team with his brother and pretend Tommy Rogers didn't exist. Gibson doesn't look terribly older than he did 10 years before this. Tommy Rogers wins after hooking the tights after they were hinting at a Gibson heel turn. Well, I hope everyone watched this match before submitting their tag team ballot last year because that result objectively proves The Fantastics were better.

Derrick King with an effective pre-match promo that hints at a turn. I do like the idea of a Young Guns title if it's treated as important. You can tell Power Pro has really ramped up the match quality since they are in a ratings war with MCW because this is a great workrate sprint you wouldn't really have seen in the past on Memphis television. Derrick King really looks terrific. He actually reminds me in some ways of a young Sean Waltman in terms of having both the old school territory style and the newer more flashy style and mixing them really well. For those who followed our comments in 1990-1991, you know that is no small compliment. One of my favorite things on MPPW TV so far. Chris Michaels and Alan Steel looked good too, but King was far and away the standout here. I hope he gets a match opportunity deserving of his talent at some point this decade. ***

Jeff G. Bailey goes scorched Earth on AJ Styles after he wins the Rookie of the Year award before the match starts. However, within all of that, this was far and away the highlight of this for me. Ring announcer: "I was reading WOW Magazine the other day ..." Fan: "I'm sorry" I won't touch Bailey's comments on Styles hustling at downtown gloryholes to raise enough money to pay for his AZT prescription. A Mega Rumble is basically contested under Royal Rumble rules. I liked the spot when Rukkus entered the ring with a chair and Southside Trash got so scared they accidentally eliminated themselves. Skinny Kenny's Buddy Rose tribute gimmick is pretty funny, and the announcers do a good job putting it over. Lots of lumbering big guys, but the action picks up some when Onyx enters the ring. Should a wrestler really be able to call himself Terry Lawler? I'm assuming he came from one of those outlaw indies that tries to trick people into thinking people are on the show that aren't. I didn't see much here in the way of guys that impressed me that weren't already on my radar, which I hoped a battle royal would be able to provide. But I did get to see bookended Jeff G. Bailey promos, so there's that.

I liked this more for giving us an idea of what a Hansen vs Kobashi singles match would have been like in 2000 (pretty good, actually) than as a match on its own. Johnny Smith doesn't do much of anything for me even though he's fine as a worker, and Akiyama looked good (as he has all month), but this never seemed to all come together as a match. I think it's because there's nothing interesting about Johnny Smith other than that he is a competent (and even good at times) wrestler. Imagine an even more watered down Lance Storm. I'm probably being a little tough on this match, as it's pretty decent and Hansen-Akiyama is a fresh matchup that I don't think All Japan ever really ran that much. But it did nothing to excite me at all, which is a tough sell when a match goes 20+ minutes. I still like Kobashi, and I don't even blame him for this considering the number he'd done on his body by this time, but it's clear by this time that he had become a bit ... establishment ... in his thinking about how hard he should work on smaller shows. I don't think his body could support being a night after night guy anymore, so he had to pick his spots. But more than that, the mentality of trying to make even rudimentary matches feel special, which wasn't always a daredevil physical approach, wasn't there in quite the same way anymore. In picking his spots, he probably prolonged his career a few years though, so good for him.

I think people in wrestling, and not just in WWE, have almost always had the belief that if it worked once, then it will work twice. Sometimes, that's true, but it often isn't.

I think this was my favorite Toryumon match so far. It started out the most all-action of any of the matches we've seen from Toryumon before spilling outside the ring with everyone brawling into the crowd. Finally, the match settled back into the ring with SAITO as FIP while Crazy Max just destroyed him before the finishing stretch. This is a match where they really stylistically ran the gamut in terms of high flying, brawling and working a Southern tag where in previous matches they have been more likely to make one choice and stick to it. So in that sense, it was pretty cool. CM continues their heel antics after the match and while I'm really enjoying them, I am also thinking it's about time to start seeing some payback. ****1/4

What a fun match! I agree that Mil looked really good. There were a couple of moments where he and Caras showed their age just slightly, but they were working opposite Violencia, who is kind of the perfect guy to take on the road for matches like this. He can shine up just about anything based on what we've seen from him so far. I was shocked to see Otsuka can work a high flying style. He was excellent at it, but I'm not sure I like that. This was also maybe the first time I've seen Apolo Dantes front and center in a match, even though I've seen quite a few matches of which he has been a part. As a match itself, not so hot in terms of layout or drama and the rudos team got almost no offense, but for high quality exchanges and trivia, this was as good as it gets. ***1/2

I think they were trying to showcase as much of Tazz's offense as possible while also keeping the match short to show that he could put away someone quickly. So they tried to balance the two goals and this is where they ended up.