ohtani's jacket

Just checking in on what Villano III was up to in the new year. This didn't have much bite to it but it did have Satanico vs Villano IV exchanges, which is a match-up made in heaven.

Well, I guess Blue Panther vs. Olimpico is officially a thing again. I can get behind that. This was a decent shakedown. Nothing spectacular but Fuerza had his working boots on for a change and I'm enjoying this unexpected Signo run. Signo is one of my favorite luchadors of all-time and I didn't know he had these booking dates in 2001. Not a huge amount of edge to Panther vs. Olimpico at this stage -- not like the first time around -- but it's something to keep an eye on.

I love stripped back Kawada matches with their focus on gritty matwork and hard strikes. This was a simple and relatively straightforward struggle, but thanks to Kawada's selling, it was damn near Herculean at times. Of all the All Japan guys, only Kawada had the arsenal to pull off a match like this. I kind of wish we'd seen more of this. Can you imagine Kawada vs. Sakuraba? Tamura? Sano? Anjoh? Yamazaki? Hell, even Takada. I never really had any faith in the other All Japan guys to make those match-ups work but their fights with Kawada would have been something to behold.

The height of my comic fandom was in the 1980s. For my money, New Teen Titans and Legion of Superheroes were every bit as good as their Marvel counterparts. I adored Justice League International as well. Still one of my all-time favorite comic series. Suicide Squad is also excellent. Green Arrow and The Question were also good. And of course, the pre-Vertigo stuff -- Swamp Thing, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, Hellblazer.

It goes without saying that Satanico vs the Infernales is going to be a fun feud, but I didn't expect it to be this good. Satanico was amazing in this. He was punked from the outset by Tarzan Boy and proceeded to bleed for his sins while the rudos maimed Black Warrior's leg, We all know Satanico is one of the great sellers and the great performers. Watching him take his beating here, I kept wondering why I hadn't dived into this run sooner. It really was a sublime performance for a Coliseo bout. The Infernales were disqualified for excessive violence and the tide turned. Satanico led a ferocious comeback the likes of which only Satanico can do, and Black Warrior got his revenge with a sensational tope. A lot of trios matches splutter and stall but this kept building and building. Satanico and Guerrero squared off for a mano a mano confrontation and the match was electric. Then all of a sudden they pulled the plug. The cheap finish spoiled things slightly but I should have seen it coming. You can already guess what type of finish it was. Still, the hype is real. This promises to be as good a feud as we'll see all year.

I have no idea why Ultimo Guerrero and Satanico were on the same side here. Contract obligations? In any event, their allegiance didn't last long and again the tecnicos took advantage of what's turning into a pretty bad year for rudos.

This match was fun for reasons you wouldn't expect like reuniting old rivals El Signo and Brazo de Oro and sparking the flames of the forgotten Olimpico vs. Panther feud. Again, the tecnicos came on strong but that's been a theme of the first month of the year. At least we got to see Signo and Brazo stretch their legs, which was cool.

Tarzan Boy was wearing Infernales tights in this match. Hopefully, this angle is heading full steam ahead. Some great match-ups here: Tarzan Boy vs. Juventud Guerrera, Atlantis vs. Bucanero (always underrated) and Ultimo vs. Casas. The action was excellent in this bout but with Atlantis getting involved so much it was hard to fathom a tecnico lose. That said, at least it was clean and there was no Satanico run-in. CMLL continues to pump out great TV.

Here we see Los Guapos with their preferred partner of choice, Emilio Charles Jr. For some reason, Villano IV is in on the tecnico side, which is good news since he works the lion's share of the clips, reprising his IWRG feud with Scorpio and being generally awesome. Shocker does a run-in at the end in street clothes and it looks like the Los Guapos break up is a done deal. Another trio gone too soon.

Nooo, Los Guapos! Don't break up just yet. You're far too guapo for that. This was a great match considering that Juventud didn't really enter CMLL with a huge amount of fanfare and Lizmark Jr is Lizmark Jr. We know what Casas can do against each of the Guapos members but Shocker was on top of his game against Juventud and Lizmark didn't get in the way of a pulsating storyline.

This was an awesome rudo vs rudo contest with Guerrero & Bucanero attacking Satanico before the bell, a hellacious Satanico comeback and a banger of a tercera caida. Edited, spliced together, and served up by Televisa for your lucha enjoyment. No company in the world was delivering TV this good in early '01. It was masterful stuff from Satanico, who still dominated center stage but the electricity in the Infernales feud was palpable and everyone fed off it.

Continuing with Chicago: Angelo Poffo vs. Bobby Managoff was a decent watch. It was full of generic 50s holds, niggle from Poffo, and the crowd taking delight in Managoff retaliating, but it was well done and Poffo & Managoff were a good match-up for each other. Poffo was clearly a good worker and drew heat but he lacked that extra something to catapult him to the heights of professional wrestling. Dick the Bruiser vs. Chest Bernard was a decent strength vs. strength bout. Bruiser's early stuff where he's trying to overpower opponents with brute strength is better than his brawling shtick. From the same card was Rudy Kay vs. Jack Bauer. Regardless of what you might think of older journeymen like Kay, the crowd loved him and kept cracking jokes at his expense. He isn't the charismatic journeyman type that you see in lucha or WoS, but he had the same effect on the crowd, and the commentator considering he's one of Pappy Davis' favourites. Lastly, Bozo Brown vs. Johnny Balbo was a showcase for fat boy wrestler Brown. Entertaining bout in the grand tradition of fat boy wrestling.

Giant Baba vs. Gene Kiniski (12/18/70) This had a real corporate feel to it with all the Mitsubishi suits at ringside. A decent return match. Kiniski was a pedestrian heel but he had at least one woman at ringside riled up. Some nice legwork as you'd expect from a Baba title match (a sensible strategy, I suppose, when you're taking on a giant.) Baba had to work for his victory. Both falls were hard earned. The title victory felt like an achievement and often that's the thing you're looking for -- something with a bit of meaning to it. It was fairly reserved compared to the emotional title matches you'd see later on in All Japan but a rock-solid part of Baba's resume. Giant Baba vs. Dory Funk Jr. (12/3/69) This didn't disappoint. It's been a long time since I watched the Dory vs. Inoki matches so I won't make any comparisons between the two, but I was super impressed with Dory. He looked good on the mat early on but it was his selling that bowled me over. He was channeling his father with his punch drunk selling and did a wonderful job putting over Baba's strikes. He ramped up the heel work in the second fall and pulled off a convincing Texas wildman performance as time ran out. He even threw a table in the ring! For a guy not known for his range, he put on a tour de force in this bout. Baba was good but it was Dory's performance that stood out. To some extent that it's because of how theatrical and over-the-top the touring champ's actions are when they go the spectacle route but honestly you don't expect Dory to be this good at being a Funk.

This was a decent cookie-cutter match. If you ignore the fact that all four men have been in some of the greatest matches ever and concentrate on some fun meathead stuff, you can't go wrong. Would have been a fun match to watch live.

Beautiful undercard match. One of the best I've seen in a long time. Primarily the Mike Segura show but everyone had their working boots on and just about every exchange is gorgeous for one reason or another. You live for this sort of undercard action when you're scouring the tapes. The fact it was on the Felino vs. Cerebro undercard makes this IWRG card one of the better shows of the month.

This was a decent match but when the most exciting part is a catfight between Trish Stratus and Steph, you know something's not clicking. They didn't seem to have faith in the wrestlers to deliver a dramatic WWF PPV bout. Instead, the heat was on all of the outside BS. Even the finish, which saw Austin get revenge on Triple H for interfering in his RAW title shot, took the heat away from the wrestlers and put it squarely on the outside shit. That sort of booking doesn't surprise me but they usually deliver a better match. Quite a step down from the previous year's Rumble if you look at it from that perspective. I think what surprised me the most is that while he worked a decent match, there wasn't that big star-making moment where Angle ascends to the next level. He still looks like a midcarder trying to get the big boys' attention while they continue with their feud. I wouldn't call this match a misfire, but it's not as good as the Austin TV match.

This was the exhibition match that I expected the CMLL Japan Panther/Santo match to be. It was basically Panther and Santo doing their trios match exchanges in a Dome Show setting while Mil ran through his signature spots to the older fans' delight. The Panther/Santo stuff didn't translate that well to the setting, and really the best things about the bout were Mil's "Sky High" entrance and his impromptu celebration with The Destroyer at the end.

This had the potential to be something special but it was surprisingly flat. The work was arguably better than that Hashimoto vs. Misawa tag but there wasn't a fraction of the heat and no-one could seem to get anything going. A strangely subdued performance from Tenryu and Kawada in particular. Missed chance to prove that All Japan still had the goods in a main event bout.

Another decent ARSION match. Hyuga hadn't really come into her own yet but she was working hard and trying to make each bout she was a part of memorable in some way. And really that's the goal when you're trying to find your way as a worker. This had a 15-minute time limit which didn't give them time to lay out a classic. They weren't good enough workers with a hot enough crowd to accomplish anything special in the time they were given, but I did like the way they worked toward their end goal, which was that both of them would have convincing nearfalls before the time expired. To that end, it was a competitive bout even if it was a stalemate. There were some nice contrasts between the luchadora and the Joshi worker as well.

What a great match. Calling it an exhibition doesn't do it justice. Sure, it isn't worked like it would be in Mexico, and they do modify some stuff for the Japanese audience, but what a battle. I wasn't expecting this to be so good. I figured it would be a softer version of their AAA trios work, but is there a better post-Monterrey Santo vs. Panther match on tape? I don't remember their England matches being anywhere near this good, though I may have had a bug in my ass about them not being "lucha" enough when I watched them. Usually, I'd complain about the audience reaction and how you could hear a pin drop, but I actually found it captivating how you could hear every grunt and groan and Santo and Panther speaking Spanish the way Japanese wrestlers always talk to each other in Japanese. I'm not really sure what Jetlag was referring to about the transitions since they were miles better than your average lucha bout let alone a fish out of water bout like this. That was one area that kept impressing me as they moved from hold to hold and crowd brawling to in-ring submissions. There were a lot of stiff shots used to set up moves and it really felt like an extension of the Japanese influence on lucha in the late 90s. The bar for lucha in Japan is pretty low, but has there ever been a better lucha match than this on Japanese soil? Maybe Wagner vs. Caras? It was also one of the better matches of January 2001. I would put it in the same ballpark as Wagner vs. Atlantis and Felino vs. Cerebro. Surprisingly great match.

This was a decent match but a bit heatless and too short to leave its mark in the annals of pro-wrestling history. Ayako had spent her entire 2000 year chasing glory and now she was in the position of having to defend what she'd won, and as we all know it can be a difficult transition from the underdog role to the champion's mentality. A transition which is full of growing pains. Ayako was okay in this but not a dominant force. In fairness to her, it was too short for her to have to dig deep and show her mettle. The match and her opponent never pushed her to any of those places. That said, she didn't really show an edge in any of the little things she did either. I guess not every match can make a statement even if we'd like them to. There were some decent passages of action and never boring.

I'll ask around.

Really good BattlARTS match. Otsuka vs. Creco was the highlight for sure, but I thought Tiger Mask and Hidaka might drag this down and they never did. If you know me then you know I'm a massive Creco fanboy. I LOVED the match-up with Otsuka here even though I'm not an Alexander fanboy. The match was worked in the hybrid style but there was enough grappling to satisfy a barnacle like me.

This was another Ishikawa vs. Murakami tag. If you like that match-up then it should get the juices flowing, but personally, I thought it was a bunch of posturing without any serious wrestling. Great dynamic but it added nothing to their feud. The finish was kind of awful too.

I don't have the personal affiliation with these workers that Gordi does but I thought this was a decent bout with a fun Pavillon Azteca feel to it.