ohtani's jacket

Murahama has been the biggest discovery of 2000 for me and I agree with the WOTY talk. This was a great match. It continues to surprise me that the best shoot-style matches, or hybrid shoot-style matches, in 2000 are in Osaka Pro-Wrestling. This got a bit silly toward the end but for the most part was an absolute treat.

This was another Joshi match where the girls went at each other with brute force. Ito was a mess after taking a few chair shots and a DVDVR on the outside and bled profusely. The crowd got right behind her when she started fighting back and willed her toward the yusho. I will never get tired of Ito's diving foot stomp. She nailed Mita with it over and over again until no rib was left unbroken. The dive from the balcony was particularly nasty. Ito kicks out of a couple of DVDVRs and stomps her way to bloodshed glory. Hell of a way to win the tourney.

This was an interesting match. Instead of drawing things out and trying to create an epic they went hard and fast. I was impressed with Aja's early matwork, which traditionally isn't a strength of hers. From there it was punch-counter punch with Ayako not letting up. The transitions could have been better but Ayako rolled the dice here and went all-in. She almost pulled it off and you could feel her frustration at the end. She definitely made a statement here which was positive but Aja remained insurmountable.

This was the fun match you'd expect from these two workers. Lots of creative submission work. Nothing surprising if you're familiar with these workers but there was still a lot to appreciate especially the tug of war submission finish.

This was a brutal, hard-hitting 10-minute match with a nasty head drop thrown into the mix. These two were being positioned to have a Lioness Asuka vs.Chigusa style feud for the 00s but Kato's injuries laid waste to that. This was a taste of how hard fought it would have been.

This was a nice little match. Yone is a guy I've never cared for but he was able to kick and stomp away to his heart's delight while Ishikawa did some nice stuff with Hijikata. Hijikata impressed me with his all-round game. This may have been an outlier but he was busy here. Some nice flurries toward the end capped off a strong tag that was short and sweet and kept a steady beat.

This was a solid match. I didn't mind the comedy too much as this was a house show for these guys and they were taking it easy. Dandy vs. Antifaz provided some decent narrative thrust although Dandy somehow managed to be the least charismatic of the rudos. It was obvious during the comedy spots that he wasn't as flamboyant or outgoing as the other rudos. What helped this bout was having a stronger tecnico unit than usual, I also loved that spot where the ref did a tope and the old guy with the potbelly and the cowboy hat who had to get out of the way of the dive train. This is the type of match that would disappoint if you were scrolling through match lists and found all these names together in the same match but from a house show point of view it was reasonably entertaining.

Pimpi has been awesome in Monterrey. She's probably been my favourite all-round performer for the month of July. This was scrappy but I liked how all the different parts worked in tandem. There's something appealing about seeing a group of misfits work a regular trios match on a card like this. I liked that song at the beginning as well.

Awesome rudo team. I liked this even if it did veer toward comedy and the usual BS. Anytime you have Emilio Charles Jr exchanging strikes with Fuerza Guerrera and Wagner, and Pierroth and Parka trading chops, you're bound to have something worth watching.

This was a fun house show style match. Nothing that anybody should take too seriously. Pimpi looked sensational. If she had a regular spot somewhere she would be knocking on the door of the ten best workers in Mexico she was that good. It was fun watching Damian 666 work with what was in front of him and Arandu still had great hair in 2000. Everyone worked at a decent clip and even Gran Markus added to the melting pot of available talent.

This was a pretty good trios match all things considered. Dandy vs. Shu was fun and Silver King was busy working a lot of neat lucha exchanges. Black Dragon added an impressive dive and I liked the light-hearted beef that Dandy started with Hijo del Diablo. Nothing spectacular happened but it was still an example of guys working their craft.

I often criticise Blue Panther for his rudo performances but I thought he singlehandedly raised the level of this bout compared to the past few IWRG matches. He's clearly having a great year and looks to me to be one of the top 10 workers in Mexico at this point. I'm not a fan of mask ripping in lucha but I have to admit it was pretty cool how Panther had Parka in a hold while he did it. We got glimpses of Dandy vs. Panther, which isn't a matchup you see a lot of, but the real triumph here was that Panther got me interested in seeing a match with Parka. The last time I remember that happening was when he Volador and feuding with Fuerza. If you(re a Panther fan check this out.

This wasn't super-heated but it did give me more of what I wanted which was Super Crazy vs. El Dandy. Plus it had ageless maestro Shu el Guerrero and longtime Dandy partner, Silver King, so it wasn't too bad. They just failed to really ignite anything but you get that sometimes with trios matches.

IWRG continue to tease me with a blowoff to the Cerebro vs. Ciclon feud that I don't think we're going to get. At least we get to see them go at it again here. Cerebro is having a stellar year. I don't think he's as good a worker as Wagner but he sure is doing more relevant things in Mexico if you compare the two doctors. The great thing about this trios (aside from the fact that it was unedited) was that he also had a thing going with Mike Segura. You know you're good when you have two rifts going at the same time. The other workers were good and had fun indy gimmicks but this Cerebro's party and he'll beat the shot out of a tecnico if he wants to. I kind of wish he had hung onto his mask for longer.

Long atomicos match that featured a few match-ups I'd pay to see more of. Namely, Dandy vs. Super Crazy, Dandy vs. Dr. Cerebro and Cerebro vs. Ciclon Ramirez. Dandy may be a bit portly here but I thought he looked more like himself than in previous matches. It's clear to me now how he worked his way back into form for the Navarro feud in 2001. This is the sort of match where the workers improvise like free-form jazz. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't but it was entertaining as a whole. The pay off of fouls and mic work was predictable but at least IWRG appears to do some booking instead of throwing random matches out there. Worth watching to see Super Crazy in Mexico as well.

This was a solid title match. The surprising thing about it continues to be that Scorpio is capable of such performances although I think it's time to acknowledge that Scorpio has been pretty much excellent the entire year and is not, in fact, a Mexican version of Billy Gunn. It's hard to produce a big title match feel in Arena Naucalpan but it's nice to see some long-form lucha libre as an alternative to CMLL.

A quiet month for CMLL ends with a snappy trios match between these teams. Shocker looked fantastic in this. He really has blossomed into a world-class talent. There seems to be a lot of parallels between Shocker and CIMA as far as the year 2000 is concerned. Just like his Monterrey work with Tarzan Boy, he manages to make Niebla look ten times better than usual. The other exciting thing about this was the fire it lit under Casas. You'd think after all those years of Casas feuding with Bestia and Scorpio that the last thing you'd want is more of the same but their ugly mugs bring out a passion and intensity that's been missing from most of Casas' performances to date. There's nothing quite like pissed off Casas and to top it all off we get a fired up Emilio as well. That's hard to beat.

The violence continues. Villano and Perro got stuck into Pierroth who took another hellacious beating. This feud has not been good for Pierroth's health. Pierroth ends up crashing through the CMLL sign on the stage and Villano and Perro use the broken pieces to inflict some further punishment. I'm looking forward to seeing Stone Cold Arturo Mendoza open a can of whoopass on Pierroth in their apuesta match.

This served its purpose in showcasing the trio of Felino, Antifaz, and Safari as well as the camera man's infatuation with that woman. CMLL needs some strong tecnico teams so I think this is a step in the right direction. There were some nice dives in the third caida and it was cool seeing Felino back in his classic costume and seeming relevant again. It's a shame we don't get to see more of Fuerza in Monterrey where he'd get to do more. He seems to be on the periphery a lot but then I suppose Blue Panther and Emilio Charles are as well to name two of his great contemporaries.

Man, the Villanos brutalized Pierroth here. They were just savage. It's nice to see some continuity in CMLL with the Villanos out for revenge after the electrocution. V3 vs. Pierroth is the best thing going in CMLL right now and this was a hell of a set-up for a potential hair match. And after all that violence the director cuts to a baby sleeping in its mother's arms.

CMLL matches continue to be butchered in the edit. This was another Infernales showcase with a heavy focus on the younger pair's bumping. My favorite part was the vaudeville-style bumping for the tecnico comeback. Some nice dives in the third fall but the edits make it hard to get a feel for the rhythm. Satanico vs. Felino seemed like it would be a fun showdown at the end but the double pin didn't serve any purpose. CMLL is lacking a hot summer feud, which isn't that surprising if you've been acquainted with CMLL for a while but frustrating nonetheless.

Fairly standard action between these two teams with the rudos working holds, to begin with before showing their true colours. As usual, there are some awkward jump cuts with the editing but nothing much happens anyway as the match stalls after Lizmark's injury.

This was a fun undercard match. In a sense, it was lucha in its purest sense. Six misfits doing a bit of everything to entertain the crowd -- comedy, brawling, high flying, double teaming and triple teaming. I love the other-the-top theatrics of Valentin Mayo. It's a blast watching him go out there and warm up the crowd. Virus and Marvin looked good in their limited minutes.

Pierroth! Is there a better rudo in all of Mexico now that Satanico doesn't have a regular program? This was pure, unadulterated BS, but it was fun. Not the most sophisticated lucha match you'll see but the rudos did a good job of stacking the odds against Parka and pissing off the crowd. That fan took his life into his own hands when he shoved Wagner and props to the fan who hit the ref with a bottle towards the end. Somewhere in all that was a bloody bladejob from Parka but unlike some of his other bloodstained epics, the wackiness continued to the end. The comedy finish was house show gold and Parka's against-the-odds win got a nice reaction from the crowd.

This was a fun match. I loved how indignant Tenryu was when Hayabusa kicked him in the chest as though Hayabusa didn't deserve a single lick of offense. I didn't really get the hype surrounding Tenryu until I did a deep dive on him during the GWE project and now my appreciation for him grows with every passing match. He's such a great seller and always adds tiny details to his bouts liking shaking out the cobwebs after kicking out of one of Hayabusa(s top rope moves. He was a bit lazy with his transitions in this bout but it was more of an exhibition than anything else and those WAR fans sure knew how to enjoy themselves. I loved that guy clapping after Tenryu(s old man dive. Worth watching simply because it's Tenryu.