Loss

I would argue Tamura and some of his peers, although they may not be quite as tested, as being in the same league or possibly superior to Flair and Steamboat in cardio, just because they worked an even more physically grueling style. Tamura in particular has the greatest cardiovascular conditioning of any wrestler I have ever seen.

I think it's more in how we define athleticism. Most wrestling fans would probably say Kofi Kingston is a better athlete than Mark Henry, for example, which is completely, absolutely bonkers. I think most people say athleticism when they mean aerial ability.

I think Stephanie might be a better pick than Shane to induct Angle. I think their storyline connection is a bit more memorable. Funny Kurt who was full of delusions was the guy that became the star more so than Serious Kurt who was full of delusions.

It's weird that of all the big spots, what I remember most is the SCM counter to the lariat, just because that spot looked so great.

Angle and Rock have such good chemistry, both in the ring and as characters. Angle does finally get pinned for the first time, but I don't really have a problem with that. I love Angle grabbing the house mic to complain about being booed and Rock cutting him off when saying he was born at Mercy Hospital. Tazz sure got off to a strong start, accidentally hitting Rock in a post-match angle to set up a Smackdown match with the top guy in the company. Good segment.

"OH YOU DIDN'T KNOW?" "YOU ARE HEELS!" GREAT signs in the front row directed at Road Dogg doing his whole spiel designed to get the crowd singing along. This match is really a backdrop for the debut of Benoit, Eddy, Malenko and Saturn in the company, showing up at ringside and finally getting in a brawl with Road Dogg when he picks a fight after bumping into them. They hit the ring and attack him and Billy Gunn. This was a shift in a lot of ways. I wouldn't go as far as to call it the end of Attitude, but I would call the arrival of guys like Benoit, Jericho and Eddy in the company the beginning of guys like Godfather, Val Venis, X-Pac and the NAO taking on much smaller roles. Bigger crowd pop than I remembered for sure. Interesting that it's Eddy getting a chant by name right away, but it's Benoit whose appearance in the ring gets the biggest reaction.

Kind of the perfect tribute show main event. Not aiming to be great, but super fun with everyone getting a chance to come in and do their thing and a really pumped up crowd. Hansen and Kobashi definitely looks different than it did in '93, but I continue to be surprised by how good Hansen looks so late, just as I was in 1996. And 1998. And 1999. Omori has also surprised me here by how much he's improved even since 1999. I thought it was cool at the finish that he got a nice kickout off the half nelson suplex before being put away for good, so he was protected in losing. I'm not sure what has happened, but he is wrestling with more confidence. He's not there with the other guys and it shows, but he has the enthusiasm for sure. Pretty awesome seeing old man Hansen fight so desperately against both Misawa and Kobashi at the same time until the numbers just catch up to him. Something also stuck with me about Taue's character in how much he showed his true friendship and loyalty for Kawada in that No Fear tag, so it made me feel all warm and fuzzy when the crowd popped so huge when he came into this match. Not a great match and not something I'll ever watch again, but I'm glad I saw this, because it's an interesting glimpse at everyone, and it's definitely the feel-good match of the winter. ***

I thought this was a great match. All I could think watching this was how if WCW wanted to evolve its international approach, these are the guys that should have followed the AAA and New Japan imports, because they are working a very accessible style with plenty of familiar American tropes, but doing lots of impressive athletic things as well. I liked the Southern tag elements of this and I especially love how much CIMA's team is willing to cheat and do all the old school heel stuff. There are occasionally times when you can tell these guys are still inexperienced, but they are both rare and completely forgivable. Stuff like, "Oh, I wish they'd done one less nearfall there" or "Oh, I wish they hadn't done interference there". In spite of those tiny things, they are still wise and talented well beyond their years, delivering matches that would make anyone at any experience level pretty damn proud. ****

After two matches in a row that had me thinking BattlARTS was losing what made it special, my faith is restored. This was very much a submission vs striker match. I really liked how they used the teased 10 counts as false finishes. Nagai was elevated in a huge way in losing the match, and actually looks like a player in doing so, since he was so far ahead on points when he lost by KO. Great wrestling and booking makes a great match. Awesome. After a brief detour, I'm back on the BattlARTS train! ****

This was a tough match to watch. It was something worse than bad: it was boring. Way too long for the style in which it was worked and not really true enough to the house style for my tastes. Again, this feels way more New Japan than BattlARTS, and I really hope this and the match that preceded it are outliers instead of the beginning of a trend. This is solid technical wrestling I guess, but it's not overly focused or exciting and there's no overarching hook to keep things interesting. You could almost be tricked into thinking this was a great match based on the admirable job they do in building drama in the last few minutes, but this isn't a match that aired clipped down on New Japan TV, yet it seems like it was worked to be.

I think it's impossible to have Ishikawa, Greco and Otsuka in the same match and not have something good, but this was disappointing considering the calibre of guys in the match. It wasn't really distinctly BattlARTS either. I felt like this could have just as easily happened in New Japan. I did enjoy Greco's leg selling and thought that was going somewhere, then it was kind of abandoned by everyone. It's a weird contrast to see guys brawling outside the ring and knocking over chairs while the guys inside are rolling around on the mat working to a submission finish. For matches from January 30 that we don't have complete that involve lots of matwork, the LCO vs LCO tag in ARSION blows this away.

If true, a win over Undertaker at Wrestlemania should do a great job getting the people to finally accept Reigns. Edit: Kidding aside, if they did want to finally give in, that's the perfect time to do a real heel turn and it would probably be a big deal. One of the few times with WWE that I think "wait and see" would actually have merit.

Yeah, the Shawn-Razor matches were more influential on 90s indy wrestling than something like TLC, I think. Guys like Sabu, Candido, Snow and others started doing ladder matches on the indy scene and it sort of became the hottest gimmick match out there. There is influence on TLC for sure, but I don't think that's the primary legacy of those matches, or at the very least, it's not a straight line. The Hardys evolved from being backyarders, which had more in common with Foley's type of crazy bumping than Shawn's type of crazy bumping. Probably a bigger conversation than this thread and I still need to sort out what I'd say about it, but an interesting topic.

Some good stuff here, but again, because of the clipping, hard to say much about it. If we were going to just get 8 minutes, I wish we could have just had the last 8 minutes unedited, because that would at least be a stretch of the match we could see instead of just repeated highlights.

Good match. Lots of key players in the decade to come here, as soup touched on above. You can see the difference in experience level between those in this match and the previous match. Everyone in this match is very good at what they do, but there was a precision and purpose behind everything in the LCO match that is just missing here, even if I do believe everyone involved in this will eventually have it. I look forward to watching Ayako Hamada's climb to the top.

The action here is amazing and I suspect if we saw the full thing that we could be looking at something incredible in the ****+ range, but it's impossible to say for sure because of the clipping issues. Lots of really fast-paced matwork and stiff strikes at a frenetic pace, and I loved the really hard open-handed slaps as big strikes. Fukawa sort of looks like the third unofficial member of the LCO in her mean streak and ability to be insane. Also nice to see a match involving Mita and Shimoda with no weapons or brawling outside the ring. Maybe the secret is just to keep them on opposite sides. About 7:30 of a 20 minute draw.

The cover is by Sporty Thieves and was a spoof called "No Pigeons" and I loved it at the time. It's hard for me to hate on a wrestler using it as entrance music, that's for sure. And he probably would have won me over anyway, because Billy Reil is an awesomely obnoxious heel. He has all the smarminess of Kevin Steen while working a snobby guido gimmick and constantly setting himself up to be shown up while also maintaining some cred. He's a good worker and this was a good match. I'd be interested in tracking him as long as that's a possibility, just as we obviously will Low Ki. There were a couple of moments where there was a very brief hesitation -- like it was a clear a guy went to a place to set up a spot and he was waiting on the other guy to do something. It was a split second each time, but the seasoned workers are usually able to make those things nearly invisible and neither guy was quite there yet. That aside, I really liked what they put together here and felt the match rose well above that one tiny flaw. Low Ki still looks like a superstar on the rise, and much like Ric Blade did in the 1/8 match, if I was watching this at the time, Reil would have too. ***1/2

Lash Leroux! There's someone I haven't thought about in forever. This was yet another solid TV match from WCW. The main thing I remembered watching this was how Dave said the difference in ECW and WCW booking could best be summed up in how over Kaz Hayashi was compared to how over Tajiri was, since he saw Hayashi as the better worker, but said Tajiri was simply booked so much better. I don't really know if that's the case, but I do agree Hayashi had more to contribute, but to WCW's credit, they did figure that out within a few months, at least to an extent. Lash is kinda goofy, but that's part of his charm. He's what I think WWE wishes ZZ would have been from the last season of Tough Enough, but wasn't.

Setting aside that Parka wasn't tagged in as the legal man when he got the cover at the end, this was the best B-show match we've gotten so far. La Parka has easily been the most visibly over guy, meaning that people are actually standing up and cheering for his offensive moves instead of just sitting on their hands. When people talked about how he used to be over with WCW crowds, I always thought they meant ironically, but no. Not the case. Fun match with four pros who were in a spot beneath them but had a solid match anyway.

I now know I can never trust Tony Schiavone again when he says here "I like Regal", considering that shot at him on the final Nitro. There's always stuff in a Regal match worth seeing and this is no exception. I even love watching the way he pins guys. The chicken wing into the hangman is awesome. I know absolutely nothing about Rob Williams.

I agree that Rogers would have been a great veteran in the coming indy boom. I really liked him a little older and with a bit of an edge here. Kid Romeo looks better here than he did against Chavo, but still messes up some stuff and looks nervous as hell. Rogers I do think had the "one last run" in him headlining super indies for sure.

Their thought is that Undertaker-Cena does nothing to build the future and has no benefit beyond one show. While the new mentality that Wrestlemania should build the future is really great, I'm not sure why it has happened now all of the sudden.

Yeah, wasn't a title change or even a title match, but was a pivotal match and yes, should be listed.

The Destroyer match from '63 that drew the massive rating that is escaping my memory right now The Destroyer vs Toyonobori - JWA 02/26/65 Ric Flair vs Sting - Clash I (More for the enormous television rating, that it destroyed Wrestlemania IV and that it set in motion a series of events that destroyed JCP than that it "made Sting a superstar in one night") Inoki vs Ali (Not sure if that would be considered wrestling or MMA, technically) The Choshu shoot kick match Hulk Hogan vs iron Sheik - WWF 1/23/84 Lou Thesz vs Buddy Rogers - 6/30/61 Larry Zbyszko vs Bruno Sammartino at Shea - 8/9/80 Bruno vs Koloff title change Undertaker vs Lesnar WM30

It shows how far off the tracks WCW has gotten when fans no longer respond to good wrestling featuring people they may not know well. That was always a WCW staple, even during bad times, and it's no longer a guarantee. Still, this is a very short, but very fun match where they cut a super fast pace. Two true pros. Barbarian gets a nasty kick at the end after Tracy has the briefest of moments of hope.