ohtani's jacket

This was a fun fight. Ohtani, to me, was still one of the best workers in Japan in 2000. This was a bit like watching him work an ill-advised PRIDE fight. You knew he was going to job but it was fun watching him get his flurries in. If Ohtani had followed Sano's career path into shoot style, I imagine it would look something like this.

So, the only AJW match we get from this month is this clipped six-man. Looks like they showed the second half of the match. It was difficult to get a feel for the rhythm but the match didn't have any huge consequences. The main chunk of the roster is divided into warring factions and pretty much all the eggs are in one basket. I can't say I'm looking forward to Hotta/Ito but it's on the horizon.

Kawada has had an underwhelming start to the year so far but this was a real gem. I love watching Kawada against shoot style guys. He doesn't have the technique to compete with them in shoot style but what he does have his brutal pro-wrestling offense. His kicks, strikes, the stretch plum, and a half crab are enough to create the illusion that he can compete with these dudes, and his grit and toughness lend extra credibility. This was stiff. It was also beautiful. I wish we had seen Kawada vs. all of the high profile shoot style guys.

This was slower than I expected but still had plenty of intensity. The highlight was Hashimoto railing on his opponents. Just as it was heating up, there was a cheap finish that led to a pull-apart brawl with Ogawa getting his ugly mug involved. It kind of looked like a Vegas boxing fight with all the photographers crowding the ring. This was overrated due to star power. It wasn't as good as your average WAR vs. New Japan match, and it was marred by terrible production values. There were all sorts of weird, slanted camera angles and the shots didn't match. It looked like a college student shot it. I'm not exaggerating. I really wanted to come on here and say this was the best men's match of 2001 so far, but this was just as anticlimactic as Kawada/Sasaki or Kawada/Sasaki vs. Tenryu/Hase.

This was just as good as I remembered. There was as much action on the outside of the ring as there was inside the ring with the poor commissioner trying to deal with Mascara Ano 2000 constantly interfering. But all that noise added to the theatre. The ringwork was simple yet effective. It reminded me of the big theatrical apuesta matches Perro had in the early 90s except Universo did more of the heavy lifting. Above all, it was gripping. Regardless of how many tricks they used to get Perro through the match, the drama never abated. The really interesting thing about the match was the finish. That finish could have ruined everything but somehow they pulled it off. Once again, CMLL delivered an excellent March PPV. This wasn't Villano vs. Atlantis, obviously, but it was the best damn Perro match it could be. I don't have access to the undercard matches right now, but based on the top three matches alone, this was easily the best show of 2001 to date. And CMLL was once again the best company in the world from Jan through March. We'll see if they can maintain that momentum better than they did in 2000. Because right now, the only company that's close to them is IWRG.

These guys saved the best for last. It wasn't like the bloody brawls that rudos used to have with each other in the good old days, but it was an excellent match. The focus was on getting the win, not maiming each other. Shocker and Back Warrior delivered big-time performances. These were the big guns that Satanico brought in to help him deal with the Infernales and they repaid his confidence in them. But for all the great action, fittingly it came down to Satanico vs Tarzan Boy in a mano a mano standoff, and Satanico proved once again that there's nobody better in a mano a mano contest. After the bout, Shocker gave Satanico his proper due as the number one rudo while the former Infernales demanded a Super Libre rematch. Skip the build and just watch this.

This was a nice bout while it lasted. Casas is kind of invisible in CMLL at the moment (and wearing white tights, which is off-putting), but any time you get to see him square off with Shocker it's a match-up worth watching. The big story coming out of this, however, was Ringo Mendoza getting pissed at Emilio Charles Jr and demanding a hair vs. hair match. Ringo was pissed. Shit just got real.

Y'know, for a guy who we all thought was pretty good back in the day, Brazo de Oro sure has slipped the furthest of all the top-ranked workers. He still has his accumulated knowledge of holds but the speed and the execution aren't there anymore. This was weaker than the previous undercard match despite having some decent talent. I'm not sure what has happened to Zumbido. For a guy who seemed on the rise in 2000, he sure is being under-utilized of late. His shoulder was heavily taped so he may have been dealing with an injury. But he's nowhere to be found in the major feuds.

Solid undercard action. Not as charming as some of the other undercard stuff we've seen but a fun mix of personalities and some decent lucha action.

Once again, this wasn't as heated as I would have liked. I keep waiting for a frenzied Satanico be unleashed but he hasn't brought the same intensity to this month's matches. There's been a bit too much showboating and not enough violence. The crowd doesn't seem that into it either, possibly because it's rudos vs rudos. The "injured" Bucanero makes a run-in at the end to make matters worse. I really thought I would be all over the build-up to their PPV match but it's been a series of misfires this month.

This match saw Villano III and Atlantis team up as partners almost a year after their historic mask match. Atlantis looked good here albeit in a limited role. I liked his exchanges with Mascara Ano 2k. Mascara wasn't an all-time great but he was a seasoned pro and knew his way around the ring. The match ended with the Dinamitas ripping off Atlantis' mask and stomping the shit out of him until they disqualified. I guess they were sending a message to Perro with the PPV just ten days away.

Bit of a random tecnico lineup here, and not much of a match. Universo's ribs were heavily taped but he guided his team to victory in straight falls.

CMLL is WAR! It's been a while since we've seen one of these WWF style main events in CMLL. The Guapos did a great job of stooging for the old guys. Bestia was superb at putting over Perro as an ass kicker. It was the best Perro had looked in ages. He injured Bestia's ribs on a foot stomp from the top rope and threatened to do it again before they coaxed him down. The Dinamitas hit the ring but even they couldn't stop Stone Cold Perro Aguayo, who ripped off Univero's wrestling singlet and attacked his injured ribs with another foot stop. I can't remember when Universo picked up the injury but Perro showed no mercy whatsoever. Perro kicked some ass in this. Bring on the pay-per-view.

Not as heated or as violent as you'd expect. At least not until after the bell where Satanico & Co. kicked the shit out of the Infernales. But it featured some decent stuff. Black Warrior got stuck into Ultimo Guerrero, Shocker mugged for the audience as much as he possibly could, and there was a bizarre cameo by Cien Caras, who ended up turning on his partners. There was one part where Caras had Satanico in the ropes and he was questioning to the audience whether he should hit Satanico or not, and I swear you forget how big Caras was compared to a guy like Satanico. It looked like a giant choking a midget. His hands were huge. I keep waiting for Satanico to erupt but the match never boiled over. The focus was on getting a win and getting those bragging rights. I don't think the build-up to the PPV match has been as compelling in March as it was in February. Nice vignette beforehand, though, with Satanico summoning Black Warrior and Shocker to his lair with his magical lighting bolt powers. Looked like a 50s Mexican horror film.

It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since Owen died. 20 years.

This was the pay-per-view match. Y'know, I'm not sure why this isn't talked about more. This was a really good trios match. Easily among the top handful of trios matches that CMLL produced in 2000-01. I can't tell you how happy I am to see Signo and Fuerza showcased this way, especially Fuerza. It's clear from watching this that Fuerza was just as good as he was in the 90s. He'd just been lost in the CMLL wastelands for far too long. That happens to guys especially in a company with a large, revolving roster, and of course, Fuerza was one of the guys who jumped to AAA with Pena so you never know what his relationship with the front office was like. But finally, they gave him something to do and he took his opportunity and ran with it. Signo also looks super motivated to have landed this gig since we all know the Misioneros post-peak career wasn't exactly draped in glory. Here he is back on the big stage, and I'm telling you, he can still go. Hell, this feud even lit a fire under Niebla and that's not easy to do. There was an old-school feel to the opening caida with the old heads like Signo making sure this felt like a championship match and not the crash TV that was in vogue at the time. I impressed with the way they worked the finish to each fall. There were no generic finishes where guys walk into pinfalls or submissions. Each finish was laid out in a decisive manner. The first fall was an elaborate momentum reversal, the second fall was a stand and deliver fall, and the third fall was a big-time play. This was an action-packed trios match with a solid foundation. Never a dull moment, tremendous chemistry between the captains (I want a Panther/Niebla singles match), and a memorable finish/result. I hope the Panther/Fuerza/Signo band doesn't break up but I have a sneaking suspicion they stick Wagner in Signo's place. Let's see.

This is a rematch of their earlier Arena Mexico match. Despite the shorter running time, it was much more intense. The rudos were more aggressive and the tecnico comeback was edgier. They did a good job of blowing this up into a feud worthy of pay-per-view, which was still a new concept in Mexico. The tecnico trio is kind of the newest version of your whitebread tecnico trios team like we saw in 2000 with Felino, Safari and Antifaz, but at least it gives them something to do.

All right, I get the deal with the trios titles now. They were the Mexican National Trios tiles, not the CMLL versions. For some reason, those titles were resurrected for this feud.

This is another tremendous Atlantis vs. Wagner match. Now, I'm not going to say that these Atlantis/Wagner matches are Lucha Libre classics but I will say this -- they're extremely satisfying Wagner vs. Atlantis matches, they're brilliant mano a mano matches, and they're forgotten Atlantis singles matches. When people try to dissect Atlantis' career and start asking questions like "well, what has he really done?" to me these matches are better than a lot of his other singles matches. They're much better than the Mano Negra feud, for example, and Mano Negra is a guy who I love and whose post unmaking work I thought was a blast. Atlantis and Wagner simply had this chemistry the same way that Atlantis and Panther had chemistry. There is no doubt in my mind that if the stars had aligned and these two had faced off in a mask vs. mask match that it would be one of the classics of Lucha Libre. That never happened but they did provide us with some of the best stuff from the early part of 2001. And as a small side note, Wagner's mask came off twice during this match, exposing his face to the crowd. It's strange to think about it now after his actual unmasking but the resemblance between Wagner and Silver King was striking during this time and that's obviously a little bit more poignant with what happened this month.

This was clipped for television, which made it feel more truncated than it would have at the arena, but even with the shredding it still delivered a number of things that I personally wanted to see. Firstly, it was an Arena Mexico showcase for two of my favorite workers, Fuerza Guerrera and El Signo. Secondly, it continued the beefs that Panther had with Olimpico, and to a lesser extent, Niebla. And thirdly, Good Light/Bad Night Niebla was Good Light Niebla here and had a fun stretch run with Fuerza after Panther took the high-risk option with a plancha. There was some weird situation going on with the trios titles at this time and they ended up being vacated. I would have been more than happy if they'd continued with this team of Panther, Fuerza and Signo. And if this Niebla would show up each week that would be a positive as well.

I'm looking forward to getting weekly installments of this feud. This wasn't the smoothest, most well-polished trios you'll see but it had just enough Satanico vs. Ultimo Guerrero to keep you happy and there were some nice dives toward the end.

I think it's fine if people like the matches. To me, the booking had begun to stagnate and the match-ups had become stale. All Japan had found success with Misawa as the champion ace and Kawada and Kobashi as challengers but they didn't know where they should go next. In retrospect, I think it was a mistake to have so many irons in the fire. As fans, we wanted to see the blowoff to the Misawa vs. Kawada rivalry but it doesn't seem as though Baba had much faith in Kawada as the ace of his promotion. It would have made more sense for Kobashi to emerge as Misawa's successor and then, later on, have Akiyama challenge Kobashi for that position. That's more or less what happened but it was messy and I think the 1998 booking reflects that. The great thing about All Japan was that you got singles matches all the time. In other promotions, big singles matches are rare but in All Japan they were a regular fixture. Unfortunately, no matter how good the workers are, it was difficult to keep those match-ups fresh. Since Baba didn't want to co-promote and cash in on dream matches (and I can't say I blame him given what happened to his competitor's business after the sheen came off interpromotional feuds), it was left to Misawa & Co. to figure out a way to make each match better than the one before. And I guess the natural thing to do is to make the matches longer and more dangerous. For a lot of us, the individual match-ups in 90s All Japan peak with a certain match (and the matches either side of that) and then they escalate to something beyond our interest. But that's perfectly natural. The same thing will happen with modern-day New Japan. It is hard to keep any kind of style or genre progressing. Styles die out and new movements take their place. It wasn't like All Japan was suddenly going to adopt shoot style or anything like that. The real issue is that they didn't have a lot of young talent coming through to carry the torch. If you look back on it now, it's clear that New Japan was still the best recruiter of young talent at the time even if no-one could foresee what their early 00s rookies would achieve in the future. A lot of people have written about this topic in much more depth than me, but there are also younger fans who maintained their interest in the All Japan workers through the NOAH years so nothing is ever cut and dry. If you like the matches that's a win for you.

Hadn't seen this in years. A good match -- a great match even - but it didn't have the emotional resonance for me that it may have for big time All Japan fans. I couldn't shake the fact that it was 1998, the promotion as a whole wasn't doing well, and here's Kobashi vs. Kawada for the gazillionth time with Kobashi going over in questionable fashion. Even if the match was good it felt like things were going wrong. This was very good. I don't think I'll ever get used to Nakamura's bizarre antics (and I'm someone who likes flamboyant showmen), but apart from his weird charisma, this was a well-orchestrated bout. I don't think there were any false notes in terms of it being overloaded or too move heavy. It was an interesting styles clash and an engrossing contest. This was a great match. I have no idea why this isn't spoken about alongside the other great All Japan tag matches. I loved the ending stretch with Jumbo beating the crap out of Tenryu and Hansen beating the crap out of Yatsu. Quite possibly one of the most underrated matches of all-time. To me, it was a Hansen match more than anything else. Just red hot and relentless. But it reiterated how great Jumbo vs. Tenryu was. One of the best feuds ever in my mind and this was another chapter. Great match. This may be blasphemous but I've enjoyed this modern day New Japan matches far more than the classic All Japan matches. Perhaps that's because the New Japan matches are fresher, I dunno. I thought this was dang near perfect. I mean, if you took Shibata and Okada before the bout and blocked out the best match they could possibly have given their respective talents, this was as close to the perfect match as you could possibly imagine. There were a few iffy parts (mostly involving strike exchanges) but nothing terribly upsetting. The question this raised for me was how good is Okada? I always thought he was a Rock level worker but he's been in an awfully high number of good matches. Is he a generational talent or not? Terrible promos at the start, shitty commentary, on-the-nose presentation, over-emoting, very good match. A bit cutesy during the finishing stretch but a very good match.

Decent trios match that is mostly built around Villano IV vs Silver King, which is the best match-up we could have gotten out of the bout. It's not a transcendently great match-up. It won't have you dreaming of those lost Villano/Silver King classics or anything like that. But it's a perfectly solid throughline. The rest of the match is scrappy and the finish is terrible but it's Monterrey. I liked the tempo. It was brisk despite the monkey business.

Time to check in on Low Ki again. I've been trying to find recommended Low Ki matches in these folders but it seems like he hasn't done anything to match the Homicide feud in a while. These two are obviously going to be important players throughout the rest of the decade so it's an interesting match to watch. Nothing revolutionary but they match up fairly well. Early Danielson reminds me a bit of early Owen Hart. A ton of athleticism but the character work isn't there yet. Low Ki wasn't as agro in this as he has been in other matches but I guess this was less spiteful and more about indy work rate.