Kevin Ridge

Raven calls Funk washed up. He has anger towards Terry because he reminds him of his father. Raven pines for going to baseball games with his dad. Him going on and on weakened overall promo.

Lawler with a quick piledriver as Christopher distracts the referee. Christopher with a wheel barrow suplex! Nice to hear Dutch again. Not great but a nice studio TV match. One of those guys in the ring looked like a skinny Rhyno.

Slow at the beginning but Rey picks up the win in the first fall. Did not like Santo winning the second fall so quickly after. I did like the finish with Santo blocking a springboard dive with the knees. He rolls it over into the Camel Clutch for the win. Disappointing with the guys involved though.

I haven't been over at DVDVR so the Sept. 15th deadline came out of nowhere for me. I have a very, very loose ballot in place from months ago. I think I'll try to rewatch some the high end stuff in the next few days to try finalize the top of ballot at least. Probably give this podcast a listen too to help me get motivated to put whole thing together.

She gave birth to a hand. Mae pulled that one off with a bit more class.

Octagon loses a shoe. If only Mike Milbury showed up and beat him with it. These would be the AAA guys showing up on WWF TV. What a quick finish with Garza hitting a moonsault. Everyone starts laying down like they are Jeff Jarrett. Nothing special.

Might have been me fella

Not sure why Sting didn't confront Hogan during this but it was effective in building to the rest of the year. They were wrapping up Hogan by playing his music.

Too bad Clint Eastwood didn't dig himself through the wall of Piper's cell.

This feels incredibly dangerous with them doing these stunts while driving. Not the smartest idea for NWO to be taping themselves being involved in this incident.

I can't find if there is a thread but we see Vincent laid out in the parking lot with the NWO looking around. Tenay talks about how someone has sent a message on taking out Vincent. Okay. Tenay puts over the creditials of Randy Anderson. The Anderson chant by the crowd is nice. Anderson has a loaded object in his fist and immediately knocks out Nick Patrick. That was so much fun. Miles better than Hebner/Patrick. Randy wasn't quick enough to hide the object though as Bischoff storms down to the ring to dispute the finish. They could have made Anderson a top face if he had knocked out Bischoff too.

This was such a bizarre title change to me back in the day. I didn't pick up the Rocky Maivia copycat angle. The Rock had big potential. I wouldn't say the same about Iaukea. Crap loss for Regal.

Ross talks about his 25 years in the wrestling business. That does not seem right. I thought this was wonderfully edited on the Hart Foundation set with all the multiple attempts to start match. Bret does his offense on taller guys. Sid was such a yo-yo as being face/heel during this time period. Austin nails Bret when he has the Sharpshooter on Sid. Powerbomb! Sid wins the title and becomes first guy to win title on Raw. Undertaker makes an appearance and we have our WrestleMania main event.

Paul Heyman will be there next week on RAW with some of his ECW wrestlers. Lawler name drops Blue Meanie and Sandman. Jerry runs down ECW and makes a bingo hall reference. I'm thinking "Bruce from Connecticut" that took place on Livewire probably ain't making the set. Clarence Mason and Owen have issues. Bulldog roughs up Mason a bit. I thought Mason was with NOD at this point.

Austin attacks Bret backstage before Title match. Monsoon gives Bret more time to be ready for match. We will have this match tonight on show. Gorilla talks about they will deliver match unlike other wrestling groups. Monsoon being the voice of authority does seem out of place and he is struggling at being the best president since Noriega.

We are in full Jesse James singing mode. Someone I don't know sings National Anthem. Ross mentions Marlena getting attacked by fan at PPV. Mr. Hughes didn't last long. Stills of show make it look like Rocky hit a German Suplex on HHH. Marlena is here to let the fans know Goldust is not gay. Okay. The crowd actually boos this. So maybe wrestling fans weren't so homophobic and don't appreciate Goldust having to be "all man" to be a face! Triple H attacks Goldust. I didn't like this feud. Lawler on Chyna, "that's a woman?". Lawler also makes a comment towards ECW fans bringing their signs. Oh, I hope his promo is on the set.

I never saw this until picking up Will's Hart Foundation set. Even now watching it, I thought it was a much longer match. Yearbooks have not been kind to Vader's eyes. While I think he does a good job selling the injury here I thought his timing was off a few times in some other action. There was some awkward mid move stalls. Though the over the top rope elimination rule is in effect they don't do a whole lot of teases with it. Pinfalls/submissions are also in play but they are never really considered. Austin gets eliminated first which is surprising since it leaves two faces against one heel. And then Vader gets thrown out by Undertaker to a big bop. Crowd was behind Taker being champion again. The finish just seems off with Austin being involved and Taker walking right past Bret so he can take a shot at Austin on the apron. Bret ends up eliminating Undertaker from behind. In his book, Bret thought pretty low of this title reign since it didn't last long.

I haven't seen a single thing from August 2013 but my complete initial reaction to the thread title would be "better than April 94"? You're setting the bar high for me. Just imagining when the 2013 yearbook is released 20 years from now if we are clamoring about August 2013 being the best.

Turn! Turn! Turn! The complete anthology of all the Lex Luger and The Giant/Big Show heel and face turns. (10 Discs)

Tenryu vs Sasaki, New Japan January 4th, 2000 Big venues aren’t always the best for audio but the Dome seems so perfectly mic’d for guys chopping the hell out of each other. I like these guys punching each other in the face much more than what folks were trying to do in earlier tag match. The strikes are more convincing. The crowd is much quieter than the tag though which makes me weep for NJPW for the rest of the decade. I had totally forgotten about Tenryu’s wonderful Spider Suplex thingy! Tenryu has the balls to try a super hurricarana. And here is Sasaki doing the same but he connects! That was fun. Sasaki blocks and sumo rush multiple times. Don’t think it was necessary for Sasaki to do two Northern Light Bombs since he didn’t even attempt to pin Tenryu after the first one. Minor issue though and while they didn’t have the fans with them like the tag match, I enjoyed this much more.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-leag...-171757576.html Probably the highlight of the Miami Marlins season.

Kobashi vs Kawada from 1/17/00 fades out after 11:30. Is this right? *Edit* Second time around, I noticed the clock time was over 20 minutes. Kept freezing on me so I'll come back to it. The joys of watching stuff over the internet:

Hashimoto & Iizuka vs Ogawa & Murakami, New Japan January 4th, 2000 Wanted to see Iizuka here so as to compare to December match. Ogawa/Hash is interesting also as haven’t seen any of their singles matches. From what I read, the results were very one sided. Murakami goes all Lawler/Gilbert and gets on the mic to stall time. Hash beats up Murakami in return and then all the seconds run in and the bell rings. That can’t be it? Inoki with his spear to the rescue as match restarts. There’s the fake shoot stuff that I just don’t like in pro wrestling matches. Iizuka is pulling his punches. Murakami gets the full mount and fires of aimless punches at Iizuka’s head who has both hands up to block. How about a body shot? Hash hits a well timed headbutt in Ogawa’s face. But then because of the clumsy big gloves he is wearing his over hand strikes don’t look as good. Ha, just as I say that he yanks off one of the gloves. Ogawa owns everyone with STO’s but Iizuka out of nowhere with a big dropkick. Well, I did enjoy the finish with Iizuka picking up the win on choking out Murakami, who was very unlikable in this match. Yay, the wrestling guys win. Depending on how many of these matches I watch, this will struggle to make my top 100.

I think someone in these parts listed Moolah in their top 10 wrestlers (including males) of all time. Though they were referring to mostly WWF. But sharpen that ban hammer in case they show up in this thread.

New to this wrestling internet watching business and couldn't watch these AVI wrestling matches. Got Windows Media Player, restarted computer and appear to be good now. Nice. I watched a lot of 2001-2002 Japan and most of the big NOAH shows up to early 2007. Happy to revisit some of this stuff. Question, do the Kanemaru versus Liger and KENTA dome show matches not rate highly?