PeteF3

Well-done, low-key TV match, the kind that's sort of going extinct in '97. Eaton's junked a lot of the high flying but otherwise hasn't looked like he's aged a day in these 7 years of watching.

There was one near-KO, which was the best(?) part of the match, but chalk me up as someone who couldn't tell either way whether it was worked. It was either a shoot or designed to look even more like a shoot than usual, from the cautiousness shown in the stand-up portions to the wonky ending. If it was a fight, it was an enjoyable one. If it was a work, it was downright brilliant.

Yeah, that was probably Waltman's best promo, too. Nash calls out Piper for being scatterbrained and then calls out Flair for stripmining the business for himself and the pushes of various sons instead of everyone else. The hypocrisy-in-hindsight is pretty hilarious and this is a total babyface promo, but I like the fire and seriousness that Nash is bringing for once.

Robert Vaughn is the most surreal celebrity wrestling appearance since Gloria Steinem cutting a promo on Roddy Piper at the War to Settle the Score.

A very good TV match with Misterio's comeback being particularly breathtaking, especially the somersault plancha that looked like it killed Syxx. I always liked how the usually morose-at-this-time Brain would perk up for Syxx matches, profusely complimenting him even though he was an NWO guy. Nash lays out Rey with an awesome Jackknife to set up Syxx's win. JJ Dillon, newly ordained WCW chairman, comes out and ineffectively wags his finger after the fact. It may have had more impact if he'd at least reversed the decision and ordered a rematch as soon as Rey was recovered.

Patrick was one of the best promos in wrestling in this time period. Crowd isn't really buying it, but this is a good segment.

Yeah, if anything, the problem with this is that ultimately they didn't commit to it enough, just sort of shunting it off into a sideshow into making it into yet another attraction to go along with the cruiserweights. The crowd is actually really hot for this, and reacting in all the right ways too. Of course Nitro crowds were hot in general, but I think this segment shows the idea had some legs to it. And yes, having the same random jobber show up every week with a different-colored ninja costume pretending to be a different character would have some brilliant icing on the cake.

Austin cuts a pretty heelish promo, dumping on the fans who cheer for him but didn't actually do anything to help him, then cuts a heel promo on Undertaker. Good move on his part--then we take a very eerily prescient turn as Austin discusses what kind of role model he would(n't) be as WWF Champion, directed straight toward Vince. He doesn't get a chance to wrap up as Owen and the Bulldog attack him, but Shawn saves again. Right as things are about to wind down, BRIAN PILLMAN re-emerges from the audience and gets in some licks himself with a chair. He's about to Pillmanize Austin but Shawn makes the save again (and man was I getting sick of seeing him). A legendary show, as we begin a period where Monday at around 11pm was the worst possible time of the week, every week--the longest possible period before more wrestling.

I feel like I'm saying this with practically every new episode, but we have a new best segment in Raw history--maybe THE best to this day--I certainly can't think of another contender until the Tyson and McMahon stuff starts in '98. The street fight itself is an awesome intense spectacle, with Austin going nuts with a chair on Bret's knee and wrist, both of which had needed surgery which is what set this angle up. Then the WWF does what it's done a great job of the past few months--booking a hot angle and not resting on their laurels, but going, "Okay, now what can we do to add to this?" In this case, it's Austin being thrown out of the building by Monsoon in one of his last moments of relevance, only to hijack the ambulance and attack Bret again.

Vader is still in Kuwait after threatening the host of a morning talk show over the dreaded "fake" question. A concerned Lawler has a drawing of Vader shoveling camel dung. Yeah, this pretty much sinks Vader as any kind of main event threat. Shamrock cuts a promo, hyping a no-holds-barred match with Vader at Cold Day in Hell, then issues a challenge to Mike Tyson. Yeah, I don't think there was ever anything to this. Ken is starting to get better as a talker.

Of course these two are gold together. Austin wants Bret in a street fight, but after teasing a no-show, Bret accepts but only when he's good and ready. Bret complains about Austin getting a title shot at the Undertaker and promises to send Austin to hell tonight. "If I'm goin' to hell, I'm damn sure takin' you with me!" Bret's cool-as-a-cucumber reaction to Austin psychotically trying to break down his locker room door is tremendous. "Can I have a little bit of respect here?"

This will never really get a lot of attention in the face of Survivor Series and WM13, but this holds up very well in the face of both of those matches. All 3 matches have felt "different." This had a lot of brawling that would draw a DQ in a more routine match, but they change the spots up and emphasize the body part work and down-and-dirtiness of it, rather than going for an "epic." There are still some fantastic dramatic moments here--Austin using his discarded knee brace as a weapon to block the Sharpshooter was a markout moment for me. Ditto with blocking the attempted post-match bell shot with a chair to Bret's leg. Austin goes to town on the knee during and after the match, I think to cover for legitimate surgery and of course setting the stage for Bret's Ironside-like role for the next month or so. As the crowd reaction shows, Austin still wasn't Austin yet--he couldn't spellbind an audience just by his presence, as the last-minute nature of this match set-up hurts it in terms of heat. But it's still a worthy addition to the rivalry in every other way.

Pretty good closing stretch, with Mankind losing his mask for the first time and taking an absolutely insane bump headfirst through an announce table. The post-match is kind of a mess--Bearer is so hideously fat that he can't even do a proper chase, and then the disaster with the non-lighting fireball. Undertaker manages to cover this as well as he can and we eventually do get the payoff, but man oh man was that painful. Plus with him having to do it himself, he comes off as almost heelish. The original booking at least gave him an "out" and made Bearer the heel for blaming him anyway.

Okay-ish match, with Manny busting out some new surprises despite being near 300 pounds. Couldn't believe he did a twisting somersault off the turnbuckle. This is the very first true '00s-style Smark Crowd on a Yearbook--somehow I don't think even the ECW Arena would be chanting "this is not the '80s" and all that other shit. Maxx Justice runs in and they DDT Thompson off the turnbuckle through a table, before Mike Modest makes the save because he hates foreign objects, or something. Thompson was raw, Manny held it together, but overall not bad.

My favorite Taz promo yet--he loves that Sabu has now given him more fuel to hate him more, threatens his puppet RVD (interestingly the "Monday night" talk centers around the fact that RVD going to WCW seemed to be all but a done deal at this point), and Fonzie. Taz ain't no hokey babyface beggin' for support.

More good stuff from the Funker, who's been the unquestioned highlight of ECW for the first part of the year.

I liked this match more than anyone here, though all the criticisms of it is stuff that I can't argue with. I think the overall "atmosphere" and larger booking is a bigger issue than the work itself, which was really strong and really worked to undo all of the misgivings I had about the matwork in the first match. The arm work is really, really good and heated here, paying off what happened in the first match. In a vacuum, this is a very strong match. In a larger sense, I think AJPW's bubble-riffic style has never been more of a liability than it is here. These Yearbooks make it apparent why New Japan was generally ahead of AJPW business-wise: New Japan cards took the 3-ring circus approach that would give you a little bit of everything. If you think flippy junior wrestling is overrated, here's a crazy brawl. If you don't like blood and guts, here's a shootstyle match. Here's two hosses beating the shit out of each other, etc. All-Japan has made token attempts to get out of its shell, but the matches like the Albright/Takayama tag simply weren't that well-received by the fanbase at the time (even if I've personally liked them) because stuff like matwork and cross armbreakers and submissions in general and brawling had been so de-emphasized.

I really liked the pre-match bit with the drawing of letters and the explanation by the announcers, especially the crowd reactions. I don't know if this was "news" to them or not, but it felt like it. You know it's a good talking segment when it transcends the language barrier. So happy to see Loss compare Misawa vs. Kobashi to a WrestleMania main event--that's EXACTLY how it came off to me down the stretch. Bomb, sell, bomb, sell, repeat. It was really good, but it didn't really feel substantial the way the 1/97 match did. Kobashi's arm injury was really well-sold but it didn't feel like the real game-changer that it was in the January match either--it came off more as something else to get in each guy's way so they could fill 30 minutes. I actually liked the matwork at the beginning, but I agree that it didn't really engage the crowd. Misawa's facelock sometimes draws a pop and sometimes gets no reaction at all, and here it was the latter. And dittos again on the Kawada match. It made perfect sense psychologically, but Kawada's first singles win still comes off as a total anticlimax.

I don't know why they felt the need to clip this, but this was another smartly worked death match with two ladies in their element and good build to the big confrontations with barbed wire, particularly the beds on the floor. Even with all of the weaponry surrounding them, they take a less-is-more approach to both the big bumps and the match layout itself--it's simple, right down to the finisher-trading at the ending, but simpliicty works. Toyoda and now Kudo retiring definitely leaves FMW with a major void.

Funny, the match I wanted to see the most coming out of that 6-man was Abby vs. Tiger Mask.

Going back to that Baba quote, it was something Hisa posted on WrestlingClassics way back. I don't have a more concrete source than that.

The thing is: every single thing you're listing, from the lack of legally-available tapes to the lack of foreign wrestling on television to the language barrier to being in a bubble: all that stuff applies just as well to American wrestlers watching Japanese stuff. Yet clearly they managed to do exactly that, a lot. "Watching Japanese tapes" was the most popular thing for young wrestlers in the late 90s to do together. Why would it work so differently in the other direction? Aside from available pipelines drying up, one of the reasons Baba stopped sending young boys over on learning excursions is (and this is an almost-exact quote) "there's nothing more that can be learned in the US." Think about it. And we've rattled off HOW many U.S. stars who didn't know what was going on in Japan? Flair probably doesn't know anybody in the post-Jumbo era in AJPW. Bret Hart in his own book seemed completely unaware that the poor Tiger Mask imitator he dumped on would go on to become a legend. Jim Cornette used to dismiss the Thrillseekers trying to incorporate "Japanese shit" into their SMW matches. Who is "they" in "they managed to do exactly that"? Obviously it was some people, but it sure wasn't everyone. Who was the Japanese equivalent to Dave Meltzer or even Herb Kunze, relentlessly reviewing and pimping American matches to Japanese fans?

I can't believe this is even a debate. I'd be far more stunned that Jaguar would know who Sandman was than I am that Sandman was a Jaguar fan. Jaguar was wrestling, running a business, and training wrestlers. In a pre-digital, pre-Youtube environment she wasn't trading American wrestling tapes.

This is strictly in hindsight, but Baba deciding to pull the trigger and give Misawa the win over Jumbo in 1990.

What would the '90s Japanese equivalent of Sandman be? Would even an American wrestler who's a tape studier be familiar with, say, the Winger if he came up to them?