ohtani's jacket

Wrestling Aja can seem like an exercise in futility at times, but she did try to show some vulnerability here. There was never any doubt over how the match would end, but Nagashima scrambled well and was able to damage Aja's arm. I thought they would give Nagashima a shot at submitting Aja and that Aja would fight through the pain to hit the back fist, but they went a different route. Even though Nagashima didn't get as far as Satomura or Hamada, she still came out of the bout with her credibility intact and that mattered to me since she was one of the top 5 young stars in Joshi and it would have sucked if she'd be gobbled up in a bout she didn't need to be booked in. So that was a relief.

This was a fun handheld with the heel/face reversal. I think I prefer Jericho as a heel at least when it comes to his promos.

Rock Bottom! Rock Bottom! Rock Bottom! Anytime JR loses his voice on a broadcast it must be a pretty good episode of RAeW. There are a few too many allusions to Montreal in this booking but I guess only a few years had passed. The Rock and Benoit have good chemistry in the ring but this match was never about the Rock and Benoit. There's some other kind of match coming up with some sort of special guest referee. I didn't quite catch it This was another strong go-home segment making me wonder if that was the WWF's forte in 2000.

This was a pretty decent RAW. I'm glad I went back and watched some of this TV. I didn't really mean to. I kind of stumbled into it. It's had an interesting effect, though. Jericho is a guy who isn't that great on the mic, has lousy catchphrases, and doesn't have any signature spots that electrify the crowd, but I'm able to accept him as a player in the main event scene thanks to episodes like this. This was a big night for Jericho wrestling three times in one evening and being the focal point of the McMahon-Helmsley ire. He did a good job carrying his end and the WWF machine did the rest.

Another hard-hitting bout between these two with Benoit busting open the nose that he originally injured at Backlash. I do question why they had Jericho win the belt on Smackdown when he could have just as easily won it at Backlash but the main focus here is the continued intensity in this rivalry.

I must be the only Dean Malenko fan I know. I could watch him gobble up folks on the mat all day long. This match had people fantasy booking a whole new era of WCW style Cruiserweight classics in the WWF. That never happened but it was worth dreaming about as this match represented something rare in the WWF -- a solid undercard bout. Things were changing with the talent acquisitions from WCW, but if you grew up watching the WWF you'll know that the majority of the time they put all their eggs in the main event basket. This type of undercard bout was exactly what smart WWF fans wanted at the time. In some cases because they were just getting into tape trading but were still fans of the WWF or because they wanted the WWF to completely overtake WCW by replicating its undercard, which was generally considered to be one of the few advantages that WCW had over the WWF and something which stuck in the craw of WWF diehards. In the end, I guess it ended up being Dean Malenko's only Light Heavyweight match of any great significance. I wonder what would have happened to Malenko if he'd made it to the Smackdown Six era. Personally, I would have loved to have seen him take on all those guys. But I think my ultimate dream would have been for Malenko to end up in Japan working BattlARTS dates with Yuki Ishikawa and Carl Malenko. Like I said, I'm the only Dean Malenko fan I know.

Did JR say this was going to be a restaurant quality match? Good match but it seemed like they were put off by the lack of crowd heat and had to generate their own momentum instead of feeding off the crowd. The crowd woke up for the finishing stretch and were treated to some bullshit with Tim White. And it wasn't restaurant quality bullshit either. JR was confused about the finish and then Jericho snapped and put White in the Walls of Jericho. He suddenly grew wild-eyed and looked a bit like Emilio Charles Jr. Now I remember why this feud was such a disappointment to me at a time where I mostly watched WWF from PPV to PPV. The detail work was good but the overall arc was poor. PPV matches should be better than TV matches but this wasn't half as exciting as the tag match on RAW. That's a fail in my book, but I don't think it was the workers' fault. The booking swung from WWF at its best on RAW to lazy as fuck PPV payoff. If you want to keep the feud going find a more creative way to do it.

More of the same. The only difference this week is that Eddy is supposedly as horny as Lawler.

This was weak. Eddy had such an outstanding heel persona in WCW that I'm not sure why he had to "build" one in the WWF. And a goofy one at that. These two didn't mesh anywhere near as well as Benoit and Jericho have been, and I blame that mostly on Eddy's lack of confidence. It took a while for him to find his feet in the WWF. When he finally did, he had arguably one of the greatest runs in company history but he was a long way from that level in 2000. In fact, I think you can draw a parallel to Negro Casas. People are always saying that Casas has been one of the best workers in the world for every year of his professional career, and they've said similar things about Eddy Guerrero. But here they are having down years. It just goes to show that most wrestlers have peaks and valleys depending on who they're working with and how they're being booked.

There was some fantastic action in this that paid off the long buildup to the match and set the tone for Sunday. WWF booking at its best really.

Crazy short. I would have preferred a longer match between the two especially since RIkishi did all his signature stuff after the bout was over.

Man, this was dead.

The only thing that interested me about this bout was seeing more Rock vs. Benoit. But too many outside distractions made this pretty much worthless as a Rock vs. Benoit bout.

Y'know, I always thought Benoit and Jericho were a poor match-up but that's not true at all. That surprises me as I was not happy with this feud at all when Benoit debut in the WWF. I had a real 4 stars or bust mentality at the time and was bitterly disappointed with their PPV matches. I guess I didn't appreciate the intensity with which they worked and was looking for something different at the time. Jericho has looked great every time he's been in the ring with Benoit and he's not a guy who I'd immediately associate with intense physicality. Angle was a huge distraction on commentary here but the work convinced me that I should give the Benoit vs. Jericho matches another shot.

Decent long form trios sums this up pretty nicely. None of the participants delivered a standout performance but the Crazy Max machine hummed along nicely and all the mechanics of a solid trios match were present and accounted for. Toryumon has been treading water slightly since that big show they had at Korakuen Hall but the action here was solid especially from the babyfaces who seem to have grown an extra leg when they take on Crazy Max.

This was run of the mill undercard stuff. It wasn't bad but it didn't help that Pimpi was the only decent rudo. You could probably make a case that Pimpi's act isn't strong enough to carrry about like this but I think we're fortunate to have a large sample of his work on tape so I won't quibble. Intead, I look at a guy like Arandu. You'd never guess that he was once a hugely charismatic guy who had wild hair vs. hair bouts in Monterrey. He hasn't had an exngaging exchange the entire year, not even a simple piece of shtick to remind folks of his former life. At least Pimpi got a win here. Against Niebla too, who has been a dick in Monterrey. Can't call this one of the worst lucha matches of the year for that reason alone. But it as definitely middling.

I've enjoyed the tag team of Ozaki and Hokuto in 2000. I wasn't sure they'd be able to co-exist but somehow they managed. To be fair, their personalities seemed dialed back compared to their 90s pomp but nonetheless, they found a way to complement each other instead of stepping on one another's toes. It's kind of weird how Ozaki is the only one who looks like the old version of herself but if there's one thing I've learned about 2000 Joshi it's that the broken down 90s stars weren't as bad as we made out at the time. Kansai did a number of cool spots in this including one awesome move where she broke up a pinfall or submission attempt by hurling Hokuto into Ozaki. She was fired up at the end as well despite the women being part of the same faction. I got a lot more out of watching this than I did other reinventions in 2000.

Aside from her MOYTC with Aja, Satomura has had a pretty quiet year for one of the young standouts in the Joshi scene. You'd have to say that Hamada has been the leading young star in the Joshi world with Satomura being a distant second. I still don't agree with the decision to partner Meiko with Chigusa. Chigusa may have been the banged-up, battle-worn veteran and Satomura the young gun about to enter her prime, but so long as Chigusa remained the figurehead of the promotion, Satomura and other young workers would continue to live in her shadow. I suppose Kato was injured by this point which robbed Satomura of a Crush Girls style partner. The highlight of the match was Devil's selling. You don't see Devil pinned that often and she made it clear it was gonna take a hell of a lot to do it. I loved the look on her face the final time she stood up. She knew her legs were gone but she gave Chigusa a delirious grin, challenging her one last time. Vintage Devil.

This was all right. I'd love to recommend it on the basis of it being a Brazo de Oro bout but the truth is he wasn't that good anymore. Silver King was busy throughout working the best exchanges you're going to see from Brazo de Oro and bickering with Pimpi the entire match. That's a match-up I'd like to see but it's a bit unfortunate when rudos bickering is the most interesting part of a match.

Rock does some goofy, exaggerated selling of his chest but it's all right since it's the Rock and Lawler are there to drive it home on commentary. The match is okay but it's not a huge step up over a TV bout and the Benoit bout was miles better.

More Rock vs. Benoit goodness. What a great match to lead us into the PPV. It was so well-executed that I felt compelled to watch the Rock vs. Rikishi match. If that's not doing your job on a go-home show then I don't know what is. No prizes for guessing what I'm watching next.

This was a Trios Championship match. Villano V was injured so Rayo took his place. Judging this was tricky. It was long and given plenty of time on Televisa but it wasn't worked in the traditional title match style. It was worked in more of an all-action style that Los Laguneros, as much as any other trio, were responsible for pioneering. You could see Wagner's fingerprints all over it since he was regularly touring Japan and bringing back all sort of ideas about how to modernize lucha. I wouldn't say it was a full-on juniors match as it still retained elements specific to lucha but it forgoes mat work and submissions and Championship-level wrestling which obviously I'm a big fan of. I encourage everyone to watch it, however, as it was a long title bout and featured some traditional lucha guys exploring a new style and a new direction. Just don't expect any masterful exchanges or high-end lucha mat work. Judging by match reviews at the time, that was the case too when VIllano V returned and Los Laguneros and the Villanos had their series of matches. Sign of the times, I guess.

This was more along the lines of the earlier comedy bouts involving Silva but with an extra edge: Silva didn't like the way the rudos picked on his friends Atlantis and Porky and got angry. I love how the rudos sacrifice Apolo Dantes in these matches. it's been a running joke all series especially when he doesn't because to the same faction as the other rudos. Silva cut a promo afterward and the interviewer encouraged him to turn rudo but no, senor, Silva wants to be a tecnico. Somewhere in all this is a tragic story of the lonely outsider who wants to be accepted by others. I hope he turns rudo and rips people's heads off.

I liked this. It wasn't the best that these guys can do but for house show lucha it was high quality. They mixed things up a lot. We got match-ups we haven't seen in a while, match-ups that have been great all year long, classic match-ups, and intriguing new match-ups. Dandy continued his resurgence as a world-class worker. He's had one of the strongest finishes to the year of any worker in the world. The over-arching story was the set up for Parka vs. Wagner but it was the individual match-ups that excited. You could literally pick any match-up in this trios match and be entertained. For those of you who watch lucha on that level -- i.e. individual match-ups ahead of overall match quality -- this was a match to savour. I've long given up on the notion of a trios match looking like a MOTYC or being able to predict which match will be good. You can't tell what you're getting till you sit down and watch it. This was breezy and fun and showed a lightness of touch that is as much of a skill as bloody brawling and dramatic three counts. Too bad that Wagner vs. Parka was blah but the buildup was fun.

Typical Monterrey fluff. A ton of talent in the ring and they work a comedy house show bout. One for the fans, not us guys.