Loss

Kid Romeo is pretty green here. Mike Tenay volunteering WCW to send talent to New Japan's juniors tournament and namedropping Otani is the type of thing that would cause Vince McMahon to faint. Other than the opening chain wrestling and the dive, not much to this, and there's little I hate more in terms of gimmicks than Chavo selling Amway. But like Scott Hudson said, at least Oklahoma isn't cruiserweight champ, right?

Not a good match, but pretty significant, as ECW's plans for the year sort of blew up in their face, as RVD broke his leg and ended up sidelined for most of the rest of ECW's existence. He had one more match, probably because he was unaware of the severity of the break, and then he's out for several months. Not a good match, but quite the fly in ECW's ointment.

Again, not the best opponent for CW Anderson, who I do like. We will avoid this matchup in the future. Not a lot new to say about this one, except that Sabu matches in January have started with some actual wrestling each time, and we have fallen for it each time.

I always like the booking of a champion that takes on heels and babyfaces, since I do think champions really should take on all comers. These guys try to wrestle a little, but the crowd will have none of it and start chanting for tables. Wrestling wasn't irrevocably broken or anything, but signs of problems were definitely there. Amazing table spots got as over as they did when they broke so easily on light impact. Two ways to look at this match, I guess: kind of a waste of Guido, but also an effective match to put over the champ.

I loved Corino's promo before the match, and loved even more that it was a setup for Tajiri to attack Dreamer from behind and dominate him for most of the match. I agree with the criticisms about the booking of this one, as Dreamer was pretty stale and Tajiri was a rising star, not to mention that Corino kept coming up on the losing end of just about everything and needed something to fall in his favor. Okay match, but nothing special and kind of counterproductive.

Shawn Michaels makes a surprise match for the champs, which Spanky and Dragon win, but the referee disallows the title change since the bell never rang and the champs were never told it was a title match. Shawn restarts the match as a title match at that point. Within a minute or so, a group of heels led by Venom run in to attack both teams and end the match in a DQ. This is a lot of booking for an 8-minute segment, but it was fun.

Pretty nothing match but entertaining crap, and good mic work from Bailey for sure.

Pretty good match, and nice surprise for the live crowd. Pretty impressive that Kid Kash supposedly broke his jaw at the ECW TV taping at Center Stage and still wrestled here with his jaw wired shut. They mostly took care of him and he wasn't in that much. Basic tag match but well done. Familiar staples like Lynn as FIP with the heels clapping their hands after ref distractions in lieu of making actual tags. The titles were at stake after some pre-match persuasion from the ECW guys, but the match ended in a countout, which I can understand, but which the crowd saw through as the booking copout it was and didn't like at all. Still, the match was solid, and David Young in particular looked good. ***

Matches in street clothes are all the rage this weekend on Memphis television. This time, it's Tracy Smothers. In terms of promos, carrying guys and getting over as a heel, based on this and previous match, Tracy Smothers is still one of the best guys in the country and should be on a bigger stage. Sure, maybe he didn't fit the bill for being a headliner in this era, but there's no reason he couldn't have worked programs to get lower card guys over in WCW. It's hard to keep track of Brandon Baxter from segment to segment, but it sort of makes sense and the announcers fill in the blanks. I loved Dave Brown cutting off Tracy going into his T-H-U-G routine once again.

This was a pretty awesome 3-minute match before the run-ins commenced, with Dundee throwing some punches and really stretching Todd Morton (not to be confused with wrestling and MMA writer Todd Martin ) with Todd's only recourse being to counter with cheating. It's also really good to hear Lance Russell's voice again, something I didn't expect in the 2000s. The KAW leftover crew led by Bull Pain come in to attack Dundee until the Gangster BIG makes the save. Really great TV segment and the short match we got was terrific.

Was CMLL going for the jugular on this show or what? Great booking and wrestling, working to get people pissed off and fired up. This was another great match. As a wrestling match, this was more fully fleshed out than its predecessor. It was a little more restrained, but pretty chaotic by just about any other standard. I really enjoyed the Negro-Fuerza chemistry and I agree that match would be great to see again. The Villano brothers showing up in street clothes and putting the boots to Atlantis on the outside just before Villano III gets a camel clutch victory was a great finish to build heat on the feud. This is easily the best wrestling company in the world at this point in time. ****

This was a fantastic piece of wrestling cinema. A short match, but so much chaos as the feud of the year thus far continues between El Satanico and Tarzan Boy. Tarzan seems to have finally learned his lesson from being bushwhacked so many times and rushes the ring, going after Satanico before he can even take his ring jacket off, but that's just about the last moment of hope he has, as Los Infernales immediately overwhelm him and proceed to slaughter him and his partners. Olimpico takes a completely frightening skull first into a ringside seat while Tarzan is beaten up inside the ring while completely tied up in a rope. After losing a fall by DQ, Satanico decides to put the cherry on top and breaks a glass bottle over Tarzan's head, which loses them another fall. Tarzan does a stretcher job to sell this. How awesome. My version of a Schneider comp would totally have this match. I wish I could go higher, but with such a short match that was mostly angle driven, I didn't think I could justify higher than this. Still, it's great. Go out of your way to watch! ****

Not a bad match, but these two just didn't fully click on this particular night. I like Mikey and RVD has his moments, but this was off. Too bad that, as soup said, a fun batch of matches ended with a thud. RVD was a little overly occupied with pointing to himself for the crowd and just getting his shit in. I guess he always is to an extent, but it was more so than usual here.

I really liked how they built this match around Dusty and let him really be the star of this, not that the fans would have given him much choice. But they aren't really doing a typical ECW match so much as a typical Dusty match. I loved the stereo figure fours at the beginning. At first, I hated Francine figure-fouring Corino, but then I realized it would be a major stretch for her to do that to Jack Victory. Give them credit for protecting Rhino in how this was put together too. The ten punches in the corner, stalling at the beginning, triple stereo figure fours and the match being structured in a way to make the people happy makes this a real winner. Really good. ***

Could Cesaro be used how Chris Jericho was used in the first half of the 2000s? Occasional flirtations with the main event, but mostly the guy at the top of the bottom who went where he was needed.

When new technology comes along, wrestling's typical approach to it is to ride it into the ground until it's no longer viable. So I don't expect to see the end of this anytime soon. I do think consolidation for a lot of the non-WWE companies would ultimately be a good thing when they start to see big signs of decline, even if it means they see a smaller piece of the pie. But we aren't there yet.

I used to love this matchup and now I almost hate it. ECW ran the match into the ground, but more than that, these two didn't have enough variety in how they worked their matches. It's not that they don't have more than one good one, but if you've seen one in their series, you've seen most in their series. This was a step below the usual -- felt like a lower-energy version of their usual match. Even they are tired of it, I guess.

I've grown to appreciate these fancams more than the TV when possible because we know they'll always be complete and we don't have to listen to Joey Styles. Win-win. I love how awesome we can see various combinations of these three go at it in a single month where it doesn't get stale because they keep changing how they work the match. Here, we see them start with a more methodical pace (by their standards) and they do even more character work than usual -- so we get the usual great action sprinkled with comedy (the Tajiri-Guido stuff ROCKS) and a surprise early elimination. I guess it's not that much of a surprise since we got Tajiri going first earlier in the month too, but he's the star, so it still is. And wow, Big Sal is finally semi-useful for once, running in to attack Super Crazy after Guido distracts the ref. For just action, the Guido-Crazy stretch is the best part of the match. Both guys look awesome, and I love Guido countering the triple moonsault because Crazy stops and showboats. This was tremendous. ***3/4 (I think this aired on the 3/3 TNN show. Wow, long gap!)

I've seen these names a lot but have never actually seen a match from either of them. Solid stuff. Adam Flash has good offense and wrestles with conviction. Perfectly watchable wrestler. Danny Rose is a little harder to figure out because he is mostly just getting beat up, but he's fine at that. I wasn't a fan of the Bad Crew run-in when they were babyfaces and did a stretcher job earlier in the show and here they are running in to help the heel and suddenly they are dastardly heels. The run-in wasn't very well-executed either, and it kind of exposes just how much they were carried in that tag match. Still, EWF has made an impression on me and we admittedly watch this stuff in a fragmented way, so it's possible something happened in between that made it all make sense.

I love everything about the Backseat Boyz gimmick -- an R-rated version of 3 Count and Donnie B's amazing clothing choices and good mic work to heat up the crowd, what's not to love? This was a very good match, mostly thanks to the very talented Trent Acid, who seems to be really good at everything involved in pro wrestling. I agree with soup that this is the best traditional tag we've had so far, which I didn't expect at all. Bad Crew are the local babyfaces and get a clean win, but get attacked after the match and put through a table before getting carted out on a stretcher. Finally, someone SELLS a table spot! This is a feud we'll be following throughout the year, and I am looking forward to the series for sure. This match was strong, but they left themselves plenty of room to grow. ***1/2

This is the most subdued match I've seen from Onita Pro, which is not usually something I'd say about a match with guys shredding each other with barbed wire, hitting each other with boards and throwing fireballs. Rather than being fucking nuts, it's simply nuts. Onita still has unrivaled charisma and quite possibly the best babyface psychology in wrestling. Say what you want about the style of wrestling in which he made his name, but few guys are better at knowing when to take a beating and when to fight back, and how to get the most out of the least. I enjoyed this quite a bit, which doesn't surprise me one bit, and I love that this seemed like a regular day at the office for Onita Pro. This casual barbarism. ***1/2

Watching a guy who years later killed himself while suffering from depression likely related to multiple concussions get a "You fucked up!" chant when he gets a little overzealous on a hands-free plancha is the very worst of pro wrestling. People are booing that they are actually teasing the table spot (smartly, at least in theory) before delivering it. These fans are subhuman. On a wrestling match level, this is good stuff, and we are watching skeevy pro wrestling, so I guess I should put all of that aside, because it's not going to get better anytime soon. But it's tougher than usual in this case. Some impressive highspots here, but by far the most impressive move was the finish, as Awesome gets Tanaka with an Awesome Bomb from up top. Solid match with no wasted time or contrived setup, and in that sense a major success, just not anything I want to watch again. ***

Nice big man vs little man match. Danielson looks good here ... you can sort of see him making mild improvements by the week as he gains confidence.

Probably the best of the TWA matches we have watched so far. Danielson looks green, mainly because he hasn't gained confidence yet, but even green Danielson is hardly a bad wrestler. It's just clear he's inexperienced. He and Spanky do a pair of great planchas in the highlight of this match while being carried to a solid traditional tag by unflashy but rock solid old school heels Rudy Boy Gonzales and Bonecrusher. ***1/4

Followed to its logical conclusion, this argument seems to indicate criticism should never happen. If you don't watch something you can't comment on it, right? And if you don't like something, you shouldn't watch it. So the only people who are allowed to say something are the people who have something nice to say, because if they don't have something nice to say, why are they even watching? I'm thankful for the complainers that watch and stick with it. It shows they care. It shows they believe it can be better and that it could happen any week. They haven't lost hope. That was me until like 2005. More power to the fans that are still out there like that. I don't care if points are generally positive. I care more that points are generally valid, whether I agree or not.