ohtani's jacket

Sometimes folks lobby Dave to put a name on the ballot. At other times Dave does it on a whim. I'm 99% sure that Fujiwara is on the ballot simply because Dave wanted to confirm his own inkling that Japanese-based voters wouldn't vote for him.

JAPANESE MEN'S WRESTLING WRESTLER OF THE YEAR 1. Kenta Kobashi 2. Toshiaki Kawada 3. Yuki Ishikawa 4. Super Delfin 5. Dick Togo I went back and forth on #1. Up until the All Japan split, Kobashi was the best heavyweight in the world while Kawada's year had been nothing special. After the split happened, Kobashi began working a new style that I didn't enjoy and which seemed to make his health problems more pronounced than they had been in All Japan. The split lit a fire under Kawada's ass and he was by far the better of the two during the second half of the year. He delivered a number of high-quality performances and seemed reinvigorated by working against new opponents such as Tenryu, Sasaki and Nagata. The matches may not have been comparable to the work Kawada did in his prime but relative to 2000 standards they were excellent. However, when I sat down and thought about, it dawned on me that Kawada didn't have a single performance all year that was as masterful as Kobashi's performance against Takayama and that was what inspired my choice. Ishikawa was the best mat worker in Japan in 2000 which means a lot to me. He had a hell of a feud with Murakami though I didn't like the singles match as much as everyone else. It was still a killer feud, though. Super Delfin was the best juniors worker in Japan in 2000. He reached a level where you could honestly claim that he was a master of his craft. Up until this project I had no idea how good he could be on the mat. That was the biggest revelation about Delfin. I get the impression that he sort of disappears after 2000 but talk about saving your best for last. Togo was a great foil as the veteran Osaka Pro heel and an outstanding worker all year long. Honorable mentions go to Ohtani and Kanemoto, who propped up the NJPW juniors division all year long and made it much more violent and interesting than I expected, Sasaki for his great run as the NJPW ace, and Murahama for his sensational rookie year. MATCH OF THE YEAR 1. Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, AJPW 5/26/00 2. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Genichiro Tenryu, AJPW 10/28/00 3. Super Delfin vs. Takehiro Murahama, Osaka Pro 5/7/00 4. Super Delfin vs. Takehiro Murahama, Osaka Pro 6/18/00 5. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kensuke Sasaki, NJPW 10/9/00 These picks may seem strange but I wasn't that high on a lot of the more renowned matches from 2000. Kawada vs. Sasaki is the only conventional pick, I suppose, but the other matches reflect match-ups that stood out to me. They were all fantastic contests. Kobashi vs. Takayama is fresh in my mind because of its tremendous focus on submissions and striking and the wonderful selling that Kobashi did. Kawada vs. Tenryu is simply a dream match-up for fans of those two wrestlers. Delfin vs. Murahama was almost comparable to Liger vs. Sano in the impact that it had on me as a juniors match-up. And Kawada vs. Sasaki was your summer popcorn flick/Hollywood blockbuster choice. Y'know, the smart action flick that people love to trumpet. Honorable mentions could have gone to a host of Osaka Pro matches, some BattlARTS tags and a few other matches here and there. It wasn't a great year for Japanese men's wrestling but as a niche project it threw up some cool stuff.

I'm not a fan of Rude's WWF work in the slightest. He had one really amazing match with the Warrior and spent the rest of the time in rest holds. I'd rather watch him tag with Manny than sit through any of his WWF matches. The Piper cage match gets mentioned at times but it's not a match I'd bat for. There was one Rude vs. Dustin match from 1993 that I adored but the rest of the series was a letdown. I remember really enjoying the match where the Bossman made his debut. But Rude was a disappointment on PPV that year. It would have been interesting to see how his 1994 would have panned out. Vader vs. Rude would have been intriguing.

US WRESTLING WRESTLER OF THE YEAR 1. Chris Benoit 2. Triple H 3. The Rock 4. Low Ki 5. Homicide Benoit matched up well with just about everyone he faced and quickly adapted to the WWF in-ring style. Obviously, you don't want to praise the guy too much but I think he was the best wrestler in the US during 2000. Triple H ran him a close second but Benoit was the better technical wrestler. Triple H's 2000 run has had its fair share of critics over the years but I thought it held up. It's not an all-time great run but it features a lot of strong character work, good selling, and decent execution. Above all, I felt that he mastered the WWF main event style. The WWF style is so heavily choreographed that it can be difficult to make it appear natural but for the most part that's what Triple H did. Like the company itself, the first half of 2000 was better than the latter half but I don't think it took the shine off his year. The Rock wasn't the most gifted in-ring technician but there's no denying his charisma and presence. He knew his way around the ring well enough and did a good job with scripted bouts. He also exuded plenty of chemistry with his fellow main eventers which is what drove the WWF's creative success prior to Austin's return. Low Ki and Homicide produced some of the most intense wrestling I saw all year long and that's why they get the nod here. Low Ki had wee little kinks in his game mostly involving excessive offense but I think he pulled off the martial arts influence well which isn't easy to do in the US. Homicide surprised me with his wrestling ability. He had an aggressive persona and cut strong promos and backed it up in the ring in a really physical, intense way. If we're talking honorable mentions, Jericho enhanced his reputation in my eyes. He was much better than I remembered him being. I would have liked to have seen a little more consistency outside of his key feuds with Triple H and Benoit but they stuck him in some pretty awful programs. Tajiri was pretty good as was Little Guido. Corino probably deserves a mention too even though I'm not very fond of ECW. MATCH OF THE YEAR 1. Cactus Jack vs. Triple H, 1/23/00 2. Low Ki vs. Homicide, 8/19/00 3. Super Crazy vs. Tajiri, 1/21/00 4. Low Ki vs. Homicide, 5/27/00 5. Chris Benoit vs. Triple H, 10/22/00 The Cactus Jack/Triple H Street FIght was hands down the best US match of the year and the only one I could really see competing for the overall MOTY. It was simply the complete package in terms of delivering on the buildup and pre-match promos. I loved the intense grappling in the Low Ki/Homicide bouts and Tajiri vs. Super Crazy gave me a finer appreciation for garbage wrestling. Benoit had a few PPV matches that I liked. In the end, I went with the Triple H one since I felt they were the two best wrestlers squaring off against each other. I'd be lying if I said it was the best year for US wrestling matches but you can see a clear pattern from my choices with the various rivalries being represented. The total number of great matches was down on years prior but there were still a lot of workers who had strong chemistry together. The year simply lacked depth in large part to the massive decline in WCW match quality.

BIGGEST SURPRISES 1. CMLL's WWF-inspired Crash TV format proves to be entertaining 2. Osaka Pro is one of the best promotions in wrestling 3. Joshi veterans aren't as bad as expected 4. New Japan shows brights spots amid Inokism 5. There was so much garbage wrestling that I finally learned to appreciate a good ol' Death Match I guess you could call me a traditionalist when it comes to lucha libre. I don't like anything that deviates from the way lucha was in the 80s and 90s. But I did find myself enjoying CMLL's television booking for the simple fact that traditionally there wasn't a hell of a lot of continuity to CMLL TV. They would simply film Arena Mexico and Arena Coliseo shows and if you were lucky there was an apuesta feud going on to provide some sort of weekly serialization. The TV booking in 2000 didn't produce a ton of great matches but it was refreshing to see them try their hand at compelling weekly TV with the advent of PPV broadcasts. The high point was definitely Pierroth electrocuting Villano which I thought was a tremendous angle. Osaka Pro went from a promotion that I thought was better than Toryumon and BattlARTS to one of the best promotions in wrestling. I love it when small promotions have strong runs so the success of Osaka Pro was right up my alley. With a limited roster, the promotion produced an eclectic mix of shoot style, WWF action, lucha libre, and traditional Japanese juniors wrestling. One of the true bright spots in 2000 wrestling. I was expecting the Joshi veterans to be pitiful but they really weren't that bad. The match choices were cherry-picked, of course, but all these years removed it's possible to look at this phase in a Devil Masami or a Dynamite Kansai's career and not be despondent about the physical state of the workers and how much they'd declined but enjoy some of their in-ring smarts and the Showa vs. Heisei current than ran through 2000 Joshi. I particularly enjoyed the Showa heel faction in GAEA and loved the work of Hokuto and Ozaki as a tag team. The final choice is a bit of a personal one but I don't think I would have been able to enjoy some of the Death Matches from 2000 if garbage wrestling hadn't been so prevalent around the world. I'm not a fan of garbage wrestling or arena brawling but it was inescapable in 2000 and you really had to live with it otherwise there wasn't much left to enjoy. BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENTS 1. Shinya Hashimoto has an awful year 2. The All Japan split and NOAH's new direction 3. Televisa editing CMLL matches and CMLL being pre-empted for the Olympics 4. Steve Austin's return to the WWF 5. The Tarzan Boy rudo turn is drawn out for an eternity I know people enjoyed the matches in the Ogawa feud, but to me one of the great aces and great champions of Japanese pro-wrestling had an entire year of his prime ruined by shitty booking and petty politics. The only good thing about the All Japan split was that it lit a fire under Kawada's ass. Apart from that, All Japan was a better product in the first half of the year than either post-split All Japan or NOAH. The former was at least bolstered by the return of Tenryu and the interpromotional matches with New Japan but I did not like the direction of NOAH whatsoever. I understand that Misawa wanted to break away from the stereotype of All Japan being old professional wrestling and present a more modern angle & story-driven product but the presentation was garbage and the wrestlers weren't used to putting over stories or angles. Televisa's editing made sense in terms of the weekly digest format it was trying to present but it was noticeable how harmful the clipping was when compared the full-length FOX Sports matches. As far as the Olympics go, it's unclear how much of the Anniversary Show build-up and event we would have seen but missing out on Wager vs. Casas was a huge disappointment. Austin's return to the WWF should have been huge but instead it signaled the end of the WWF's strong 2000 run. The WWF was simply more creative with Austin out having been forced to position wrestlers like Benoit, Jericho and Angle in the main event scene along with The Rock and Triple H. Austin returned with an atrocious angle where he basically came across as a homicidal maniac. His PPV matches were average at best and featured backstage films that weren't much better than WCW Monster Truck angles. And he had ring rust on top of everything. The Tarzan Boy rudo turn was teased just as he was improving as a tecnico worker but it was still an interesting idea given that the Arena Mexico crowd never took to him and often booed him. But for some god unknown reason, they elected to draw out the rudo turn over several months and several different promotions. One of the worst and most excruciating rudo turns of all-time almost killed the goodwill that Tarzan Boy had engendered by improving in the ring. More to come when this post gets approved.

Another great match between these two. This was slower and grittier than the April match. Tempers flared throughout especially when they had each other locked in submission holds. There was a lot of bullshit involved but if you're going to do a story-driven match this is how to do it right. I liked the work Porky did as Santo's second. He was like an expectant father the way he paced about. I've always thought of this as a bout that goes hand-in-hand with the April classic. I don't think it's a classic in and of itself but I think it's cool that they worked a different sort of match, giving us that nice contrast to the April match.

A more complete version of Thesz vs. Rocca from Buffalo surfaced on YouTube not so long ago. Still missing the third fall but 30 minutes long. Thesz was 46 years old at the time but still an excellent worker and still World champ. Watching the match alongside the old newsreel footage of Thesz vs. Rocca from MSG it's clear that even a guy as technically proficient as Thesz had the same spots he liked to do, but hey, I've got no problem with him repeating masterful holds. I really like the way Lou does his heel champ shtick. He does these dirty moves that seem beneath him at first until you realize he does them in every single match because he's such a prickly character. Rocca's not my favorite performer from this era but the match was serious stuff and he brought his A-game. Nice to see something decent from Buffalo as well. If we had the third fall it would be one of the better matches available from the 60s, which is pretty barren when it comes to footage.

This was all right. There's a pretty clear and simple psychology involved when you take on Andre the Giant but it was interesting to see that interwoven with the NWA touring champ formula. Race isn't the greatest performer I've seen in a wrestling ring but he's a bit underrated when it comes to selling. He could do the big theatrical selling where you flop all over the place but he was also capable of selling pain in an understated way. What you might call a "wrestler's sell" where you sell a hold the way it should be sold (exactly where the pain is located.) Admittedly, his strength was immediate selling. He wasn't the best at long-term selling even in matches where it's clear that the action is heading somewhere and there's an overarching narrative to the bout. He also wasn't the best touring champ when it came to heel charisma, though he was clearly unpopular with some of the ringsiders who wanted Andre to break his arm. The bout is worth watching to see Andre challenge for the NWA belt if nothing else since challenger is a weird position for Andre to be in but it didn't surprise me much as a wrestling match.

Not something I expected to wake up and hear. I've spent a large part of the last 18 months revisiting his 2000 year so this comes as a shock. Sadly, there have been too many deaths from Villano's era in recent years.

Great match! Loved this. Really great mix of submission wrestling and striking. Funk was in amazing shape. He had a physique to rival even Nick Bockwinkel. The matwork was a step down from previous generations but it was tough, gritty and uncompromising and matched the personalities of the wrestlers involved. The strikes were fantastic as was Funk's selling. Those two things gave the match an edge. There was no doubt in the viewer's mind that Terry Funk was hellbent on winning the title back and would go to any lengths to do so. The blood stoppage was a cool way to end the bout and set-up a rematch. It was such a clever idea that it wouldn't surprise me if Funk thought of it himself. Race was just sort of "there." That's unfair to stay in a match that was hard fought, but Race is a guy who people want to like more than they do. The problem here was his lack of personality and lack of expression. At no point did you stop and think "that's why this guy's the champ" or "man, Race wants it just as much as Funk." I didn't have a problem with his selling -- his selling of Funk's strikes was solid and understated and I couldn't give a toss about long-term arm selling -- he simply lacked the fire that Funk had. I actually think he got better at that type of stuff as he got older and became the gruff, surly Harley with the beer gut and the huge afro. That said, even if Race couldn't match the intensity of Funk it didn't detract from Funk's performance and the greatness of the bout. This was Funk at the height of his powers. There's a high possibility that any wrestler would have played second fiddle to Funk on a night like this. I just felt that if Race had gotten angry during the bout the way that Thesz used to do that the match would have been even better and that Race repeatedly punching Funk above the eye would have been even cooler. Still, great match! First Terry Funk match I've seen in a while where he lived up to the GOAT hype.

Originally, I didn't intend to re-watch this as it was already cemented in my mind as an all-time lucha classic. But since I've watched so much footage from the year I thought I would cap things off with the two Monterrey matches. What a beautiful wrestling match. This is exactly the type of match that folks should watch when they're first getting into lucha. For longtime fans, it's a gem. A payoff to all those tag matches and trios matches where Panther and Santo squared off and showed us just how beautiful lucha libre can be. In the past, people found it unfortunate that the match ends cheaply but by Monterrey standards it was clean. If not for Villano and Atlantis, this would have been the lucha MOTY for sure.

This was pretty average. The exchanges between Super Crazy and Tajiri were good but the rest of the match was weak. ECW did such a poor job with its presentation. The commentary is ratshit. I would rather watch a legit indy from 2000 than a wannabe national promotion. At least the indy will have some charm.

Nothing like a death match in the morning to get your day started right. Actually, this wasn't much of a death match. There were tables and chairs but that could describe a regular match in 2000. It was a lot of fun, though. It could have been a sprawling mess but they kept things surprisingly tight. Both guys are charismatic which helps. I love Kanemura. He looks like the type of Japanese comedian who'd advertise plus-sized clothing stores but instead of making people laugh his calling in life is to brawl like a motherfucker. Another cool BJW match. I've now successfully cherrypicked BJW for the year. I enjoyed the highs that the promotion had. I've probably watched more garbage wrestling from 2000 than I have from any other year in wrestling history. I won't be jumping through barbed wire anytime soon but I do feel enlightened. Thanks for taking me on the journey (pun intended.)

If you like the NOAH cast you'll like this. Personally, I think Kobashi has taken a step back in NOAH from the best wrestler in the world to an also-ran. and I don't think that Akiyama has really found himself as a heel yet. If you look at guys like Jumbo, Tenryu, and Kawada, they were all heels but all different in their own way. Akiyama pinches most of his heel spots from Kawada but can't summon the same sort of attitude. He doesn't have the rage that fueled Kawada. He's still the same punk ass kid that he ever was. And for that reason, I'm not feeling Kobashi vs. Akiyama. It should be an intense, personal rivalry but it doesn't come across that way. Tenryu vs. Kawada blows it away, if you ask me. This match did have a fabulous finish, however, centered around Shiga vs. Kikuchi. They produced exciting action all match long and it culminated in a cracking finishing stretch that was probably the most fun I've had watching NOAH thus far.

This had a pretty intense opening. Williams appeared hellbent on proving he had something left. Unfortunately, the match lost steam as it went along and turned into a regular-sort of tag match instead of something special.

This was cool. Tokyo has a lot of live event spaces like this and it was surreal to see one of them being used for a barbed wire match. The shitty cover of Wild Thing that Onita uses reminds me of that old Swamp Thing cartoon. I don't find Onita as charismatic as others do but I have to admit that his entrance was pretty cool here and if you can pull that off in a club with 200 people as easily as you do a baseball stadium then you must have a fair amount of charisma. I like his look at this time as well. He reminds me a bit of veteran rocker, Eikichi Yazawa. I LOVED how this was worked on the mat. It probably went on for too long, and Onita is another of those Japanese workers who make strange breathing noises to keep from running out of breath, but I was frankly surprised that Onita could work the mat so well. I guess he hadn't forgotten his All Japan training after all. That was actually the catalyst for them to ditch the matwork as Onita started tossing some verbal grenades about it being a stalemate due to his All Japan background. They finished things off with a series of nearfalls that were fitting for the locale and the fans got right behind Takagi. Y'know when I'm looking off the match listings and Chad's star ratings, this is the kind of match I would scoff at and think "I can give that a miss" but it ended up being one of, I dunno, the 50 best matches in Japan in 2000. A large part of that was how unique and interesting it was but they really worked an excellent match in such a tiny crawl space and I liked it a hell of a lot.

I don't think this flowed very well. The men didn't seem comfortable working with the women. When they made a save they would break the girls up like they were children fighting and every time they did intergender stuff the women got all the offense. Surely, they could have done some exhibition-y stuff where it didn't matter too much that the women were bumping for an arm drag or something similar. I'm pretty sure the Apaches vs. Hamadas was less stunted than this. Yagi was fun to watch but that's a given on most nights. She got way too much offense against Sasuke but that was due to the strange nature of the match. The finishing stretch wasn't bad but the match would have been better if they'd done more double teaming to make it a more competitive bout.

This was pretty good. I'm sure there have been dozens of matches in the record books of similar quality to this so I would call this standard quality for a mask match. The elimination period was a bit too long but once the final pair were decided this was old-school mask vs. mask wrestling with plenty of great visuals and some nice dramatic moments. There was a time when Fishman's mask was one of the most valued in all of lucha. He probably waited a bit too long to drop it but those are the choices people make in life. I was surprised by how bald he was, to be honest. He looked like he could have snuck down to the local supermarket without anyone guessing he was a famous luchador. A really "quiet" unmasking compared to VIllano III given that they were contemporaries in the UWA but at least the action was worthy of a mask vs. mask match and carried the tradition into the new century.

And then there was this... This was some Escape From New York shit right here. I don't know if it was any good but this is what wrestling will look like if a world leader ever pulls the trigger.

This was cool. Death matches aren't my thing. You know I'd rather watch Lou Thesz work a headlock for an hour than watch a death match, but I thought this was a cool title match. Sure, the crowd brawling was shitty, but it was 2000... everybody was doing shitty crowd brawling in 2000. You need to write that shit off and not let it bug you so much. I liked these guys and liked the effort they put in. Maybe I'm in a good mood because I think it's great that Yamakawa uses Journey as his entrance music but nothing about the bout felt convoluted. It flowed pretty well and the setup to the board spots was okay. There was a bit of wrestling here and there and some decent selling. Other people may have been expecting a classic but for a guy like me who is predisposed toward disliking this type of match, it wasn't bad. Not bad at all.

Men's Teioh had an interesting career. People always talk about Sano's career but Men's career is just as interesting. This was a solid juniors tag. I reminded me of those New Japan tags with Makabe and Tanahashi. What is with these young lions being so jacked? I guess the young guys were more interested in bodybuilding than their seniors. I loved it when Journey started blaring after Yamakawa won. I may not be able to watch another Big Japan match without listening to Separate Ways.

This was okay. I'm not familiar with these workers so I wasn't surprised one way or the other. I thought it was a bit move heavy for a Southern Style tag. Where was the heat? And the selling and the FIP in stuff? There was a lot of double teaming and innovative tag wrestling but it didn't seem to matter that Thompson was worked over. The commentators were trying to add a bunch of psychology to the match but it didn't mesh with the in-ring action. I'm sure Southern style tag with an indy twist has been done better n other matches. This imitated a Southern tag but I don't think it got the details right. But I guess what Chad is saying is that it was miles better than what they usually did.

This was pretty good. I liked how it was worked as an apuesta match in the beginning and not some watered down shit but I did have a few complaints. First of all, it should have been a 2/3 falls match. That would have eliminated the need to have a restart. SUWA could have simply won the first fall and Dragon Kid could have battled his way back. Secondly, in this sort of match Dragon Kid needs to be pinpoint accurate with his offense. And he wasn't. Not by a longshot. Thirdly, there was no need for Crazy Max to interfere. SUWA was kicking ass and looked like The Man. He didn't need anyone interfering. Lastly, when it was all said and done did Black Dragon (or whoever it was) need to attack Dragon Kid? That was pretty stupid especially since GAORA cut to Dragon Kid cuting SUWA's hair as though nothing had happened. The GAORA commentary was terrible but at least SUWA pulled a Fuerza Guerrera-level cheapshot at the end. That was class personified. SUWA was great in this but it was poorly booked compared to the Arai bout.

If I'm ever going to get into FMW it has to be with a multiple-man match, right? Right? I liked how this bout provided everyone with short bursts of action that masked whatever flaws they might have in singles matches. And the injury to Oya gave them a focal point during the tricky middle period where the heat had worn off, and while the Shinzaki turn didn't make much sense to the casual observer at least it was a guy trying to aid the face side instead of his rudo partners turning on him. Entertaining bout.