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I have no idea who Kevin Quinn is, but apparently he was a Windy City Wrestling dude who ended up doing spots in Mexico for...who knows what reason. He acquits himself fine here even though he has about 60 seconds of ring time. He's clearly the least of the guys in the match but that's because everyone else looks so good. This builds and builds from a slow start to a blitzing finish, much like a traditional match, as Childs alludes to. Fiera may have been my favorite guy in the match--I dig how he still carries himself as a cocky rudo but just happens to be on the technico side at this stage. And of course it wouldn't be a Fiera match without a loony back body drop bump, and we get one here. Casas and Santo further their rivalry, with the crowd seemingly on Santo's side judging by the crowd chants. Both gets get disqualified as their fight gets out of control, as has happened in so many Survivor Series matches. Eventually this comes down to Felino, a rudo, overcoming 5-on-1 odds to win the whole thing, which may have been a *little* over the top, but if they're going somewhere with it, then okay. Still, Felino's big victory doesn't seem to come off as monumental as I think they were hoping for, and that will hold this back from being a true MOTYC to being "just" a fringe top-10/top-15 contender.

Did it ever mean anything to begin with?

Maybe a low-level MOTYC, and that's saying something considering shoot-style time limit draws are usually something that send me running to hide. This is as stiff and intense as a mat-based match gets, and always verges on the edge of teetering out of control with both guys breaking the rules to subtle degrees--from the foot-biting to kicking while down to being late to break holds--but it never quite gets there over the course of its 30 minutes. Parity is the name of the game here, despite the two different approaches in style, and is a draw that actually works in making you want to see these two go at it again.

The match is whatever but not bad or anything. As soon as Lex begins his comeback he's swarmed by the NWO, as is DDP when he attempts a save. Giant is hesitant to get in with the NWO numbers and Nash holding a lead pipe, but Sting makes his way to the ring with bats for everyone. Nash, to his credit, is the one to get beat up by Sting and the NWO bails. Another strong closing segment making you want to see more. Giant vs. Nash is really a match that should have been built to from the start of the angle, and was something put on hold with Giant's ill-fated turn.

Greene is now buds with Flair despite still having issues with McMichael. Whatever. Piper makes a Congo reference, which is refreshingly hip and modern by his standards. Then we go to Right Said Fred and PeeWee Herman and homophobia and The Godfather and a bunch of other shit. Oh, and Piper is continuing to focus on Hogan even though he's not in the upcoming PPV main event. Greene's promo isn't bad for what it is, even if the talk about entitled NFL rookies is a little whiny. All in all, this really is a mess of a segment, even if there are isolated good parts. Flair and Piper come off as the old-timers that Bruce Springsteen was singing about in "Glory Days"--you can still sympathize them in the face of the NWO, but it's getting more and more difficult.

Still not as hot as either Sunny or Marlena. I remember the Slammy bikini contest mostly for Pettingill saying, as he stood between the Funkettes, "I feel like an Oreo cookie" and Vince absolutely freaking out.

In fairness, this was a time when wrestling was at its most meritocratic--both companies *had* to go with what worked, politics be damned. The WWF would stay that way all the way through the WCW buyout, more or less. WCW would be getting away from that soon enough. Sid has no-showed something or other and is out of the IYH PPV, with the scheduled Bret vs. Sid bout turning into Bret vs. Austin. A hot semi-main event, but one probably made too late in the game to affect buys that much, especially considering no one actually saw this announcement judging by the ratings.

Pretty horrible action to finish off the 3-way, with the crowd deflated after Stevie's elimination. Then, even though Funk is a bloody mess (and for God's sake, did anyone REALLY buy that they were going to do a blood stoppage finish here?) and out of it, Raven feels the need to have his Nest continue to run interference and to beat up ring doctors and referees. Reggie Bennett (??!!) randomly runs in and is presumably never seen in ECW again. Big Dick Dudley, out of jail, attacks Tommy Dreamer at the commentary booth, then flings himself off the eagle's nest with Dreamer sort of holding onto him. Dreamer then lays out Raven and Funk gets a hot near-fall, the effect of which is ruined because the timekeeper jumps the gun and rings the bell. Funk then gets a small package for the title to a monster pop, and Styles actually does a good job of selling the moment on commentary. The payoff is nice but what a fucking mess leading up to it.

I forgot to mention--I really do love the way Sabu builds around and up to the table-bridging-the-apron-and-guardrail spot. He always sets it up the same way, but the way he and his opponents actually pay off the breaking of the table always seems to be a surprise. Sometimes the opponent blocks it and drives Sabu through it, as Taz does here. Sometimes the opponent cuts it off but Sabu cuts off the cut-off. Sometimes they abandon it, only for someone to get knocked off the turnbuckle through the table later on--this delayed gratification is probably my favorite variation of the sequence. Sabu's no ring psychologist but that's the strongest part of the psychology game for him.

It's a pretty good match in a vacuum, but on the whole after two years of build-up this segment falls flat. I doubt they could put any match together to live up to the hype, but the crowd just isn't as heated as you would expect and the post-match angle is really poorly executed on all levels, and I'm not sure a double-turn was even a good idea to start with. Kind of reeks of copycatting WM13, among other problems. That said, the matwork here is actually pretty good and some of the reversals are well-done, and there some attempts at psychology here, with Sabu having ways to get out of the Tazmission until he injures his neck. It's becoming a recurring theme on these two discs, but this was much better when they were in the ring rather than brawling through the crowd. Also, Styles has been absolutely horrible on this show, after a year or so of slowly climbing into my good graces. Your first-ever PPV MAY be an event where you have a new audience, but Joey doesn't bother to provide a single goddamn bit of backstory or context to all this. This is a match two years in the making and the only thing Styles can do is recite what moves are being done, even during the post-match beatdown. There has to be a happy medium between Vince's WHATTAMANEUVER shtick and what Styles does here.

Good match--some ugly spots like that triple power bomb attempt. Plus Sasuke was working with a broken orbital bone and it showed, as he was really working at half-speed until the very end stretch. This doesn't quite have as good of a build to the big nutso final run as the best MPro matches, but there are some tremendous spots as you'd expect and it's fun to see these guys in a different setting. Kind of criminal what the WWF ended up doing with them. I continue to be higher than most on virtually everything ECW is putting out so far this year.

Between the new ring, new lighting, and perfect digital format, this hardly looks like the ECW Arena at all. I dunno--when the spots hit, like they do here, I find it hard to complain too much. The finish actually took me by surprise because this was a total Eliminators beatdown, with no Dudleys comeback and no artificial "hot" finish. I find that kind of refreshing.

For a grunge rocker Raven sure loved him some Fleetwood Mac. Generally I approve of wrestlers incorporating song lyrics into promos, but Raven isn't as good at it as guys like Jake the Snake. He does manage to turn it around and cut a different sort of promo by the end, actually grinning and changing up his catchphrase. B for effort. Cut to Terry Funk in the Texas panhandle, the site of his father's grave. Thanks to not having to do this every month, Barely Legal has been the best-built-to PPV of the past 12 months, and will probably keep that title until Starrcade '97.

The hard sell for Barely Legal continues.

Bubba Ray is still affecting a southern accent, but has otherwise found his voice.

Bull Buchanan looks like a promising athlete here but there wasn't a whole lot else to this. Interrogator is green as grass but doesn't fuck anything up.

Yep, reading along in the Observers, the Shamrock War in early '97 is kind of fascinating. NJPW actually reached the point of holding a press conference announcing the match, and that it would be for the IWGP title. Then Shamrock ended up signing with the WWF and New Japan was left with a dodo-sized egg on their face. (It's not even that the WWF wasn't open to the idea of Shamrock working the match, but at some point, if not in April, Ken was going to have to do a job and that probably wasn't going to fly.) As it is, this is pretty heated and dramatic, and I'm not sure any other wrestler in the world besides Hash--with his timing, presence, ring smarts, and straightforward style--could have gotten a match this good out of Ogawa, who was an imposing physical specimen with great credentials but was also in his first pro match. Hash gets Ogawa on the ropes but gets caught in the STO (named as such already) and then put out with a sleeper as the Dome crowd loses it. Hash and Kensuke Sasaki protest the stoppage but Tiger Hattori responds with the highlight of the event, doing a backwards fainting pratfall to signify Hashimoto's passing out. I know this feud completely goes off the rails eventually, but in an odd way I'm sort of fascinated to watch all this for the first time.

Good match--not as "epic" as the previous bout despite my misgivings about its atmosphere and vibe--but pretty similar in structure and layout. Hokuto's the big dog, Kaoru's the young challenger. Kaoru's a little bolder and friskier than Fukuoka was, but Hokuto ends up asserting herself only to get laid out by Oz Academy afterward. Any match with a prolonged segment of one participant fighting in their entrance gear is generally going to be better than any match where that doesn't happen.

Really good, simple, and well-laid-out big vs. little, champ vs. underdog match--another Joshi for People Who Hate Joshi special, as they work a meat-and-potatoes match based all around simple spots, Kansai being a dominant aggressor, and Fukuoka trying to play hit and run to avoid Kansai's kicks. And after so many teases with lower-ranked wrestlers taking the champ/ace to the limit, it was refreshing to see the challenger come through for once. That said, the atmosphere admittedly does hurt this, as this is a big title match and worked like one, but comes off as very mid-card in terms of crowd reaction and overall setting.

Hase's case was almost all work, too, and in fact he probably has less going for him draw-wise than Benoit and certainly less than Bryan.

Hogan declaring that he's going to take care of DDP himself feels like a huge leap forward for Page. Sting drops down to cut him off and has an extra bat for Page, as Schiavone hypes up how two loners have joined together. We end with the two factions facing off, back when that was still kind of new--it's amazing how molten these segments of people looking at each other can be. Both companies are doing a strong job of that.

Savage on crutches--I forgot to mention but DDP bungled an inverted atomic drop something awful at Spring Stampede, which he noticeably had to cover for and seemed to slow Savage down considerably for the rest of that match. Hogan calls out Nash for his comments the previous week, ripping Hogan for being at the Double Team premiere the previous week instead of Nitro. Hulk declares that he's bringing in elite athletes like Rodman to watch their back, and Nash delivers a pretty strongly-worded non-apology apology. Then Hogan calls out Nash about the whereabouts of Scott Hall. Nash responds that Hall is NWO 4 life without really addressing his current status (understandably). Big tease of a Hogan-Nash fight, to a huge reaction. Savage and Eric do the same, putting themselves on "probation" with each other. Good teaser of what's to come--Savage with the NWO seems like it should be like the Giant's run--a disaster waiting to happen. The NWO settles their differences but it's made perfectly clear that they've only put a Band Aid on the problem instead of solving it.

Hogan has a black woman on his arm. Rodman looks like Goldust (no, I didn't mistake the woman for Rodman). Larry: "There's Mrs. Rodman, where's Dennis?" Strong little segment, back when Van Damme was still something vaguely approaching an A-lister.

Note how the favorable crowd reaction starts dissipating towards indifference, even hostility, when Shawn brings up irrelevant bullshit like Bret putting his family on TV. Then he just shits on kayfabe entirely, talking about how he "supported" Bret Hart while he was #2 in holding the Intercontinental title. You were FEUDING with him then, remember, Shawn? That shit about Bret not returning the favor is whinier than anything Bret has said in the past 6 months. Shawn drops the bombshell that Bret USED WCW FOR HIS OWN FINANCIAL GAIN, which doesn't deserve anything more than a shrug of the shoulders. This goes on and on and on without actually selling us on anything. Owen and Bulldog attempt an attack, but Shawn holds them off with a chair. Of note only because right as we cut to break, Shawn offers a proto-crotch chop in their direction.

Sort of like the DDP-Savage bout: pretty good, not great, better after the opening out-of-the-ring brawl. Shark does her best to drag this down but she's the only real stain on the match. Eagle provides some really fun big fatty offense and Miss Mongol does her gimmick with panache, at least. Kandori is awesome as ever, a great brawler who still has as many ways to put you in a Fujiwara armbar as DDP does to Diamond Cut you. The ladies I'd never heard of or seen were the biggest surprises, naturally--I don't know if they were youngsters or just undercarders but they carried themselves like experience joshi pros. Ending was kind of blah but there were some neat double-teams and spots leading up to it.