ohtani's jacket

This has been such a disappointing series. One of the lowlights of the year for sure. Lumberjack matches tend to be pretty shitty by their nature, but this was worse than usual. Apparently, the lumberjacks were a bunch of wrestling school students. You probably could have gotten a better bunch of lumberjacks if you'd chosen a couple of dozen fans out of the crowd. It was amateur hour until Joe came to ringside. He ensured that the finishing stretch was the best part of the bout, but imagine how could it would have been if he'd been there from the beginning. Joe and Smokes as seconds would have trumped this amateur shit.

This was another pale imitation of a 1990s inter-promotional match. The drawing card here was seeing Kobashi and Tenryu square off, but it was honestly one of the least engaging Tenryu matchups you could imagine. It almost bordered on a parody of a Kobashi vs Tenryu match. The chopfests were ridiculous, and Tenryu blading his chest was stupid. This wasn't a patch on a random WAR vs. NJPW match.

I could only find highlights of this, which is annoying, but it looked pretty good. I liked that they followed up on the Mania match.

This was okay, but I still think going with Aries as a champ was a strange move. I guess it's all sandwiching between the Joe reign and the Danielson reign, but it's not clear to me what they saw in Aries. Did they think his ceiling was higher? I wasn't always high on the matches Joe had during his championship run, but there's no denying that he carried the belt the way you'd expect a champion to. Aries has this heel act, but it's a midcard act. Gibson is a midcard challenger. I don't really buy either guy being a top 5 indie wrestler. I'm cherry picking this stuff two decades later so what do I know, but personally I feel that Punk ought to be ROH champ.

This was Meltzer's second highest rated match from WrestleMania. Not surprising since Dave always did like a ladder match and there were a number of huge spots. I'd probably take Orton vs. Undertaker over this, but I will say that this was an entertaining bout that breezed by. It was one of those WWE matches where there's a lot of crowd manipulation but it's engaging because of the presentation. I didn't expect Kane to take so many big bumps. You'd think he'd be the weak link in a match like this, but he put in a huge shift. Benjamin got to shine with two crazy spots. The finish paid off the early foreshadowing of Benoit's facial injury. From a long term storytelling perspective, the result tied into everything Edge had been on about since turning heel. A tidy piece of business all round. Impressive considering it's supposed to be the annual train wreck match.

This was an excellent match, and one of the best Danielson performances I've seen in a while. Usually, I'd roll my eyes at a match where a guy dominated for the majority of the bout only for it to be even stevens at the end, but I bought into this hook, line and sinker. If a cynic like me can get worked, you know it must be good.

This was an interesting matchup on paper. I believe it was the only time these two had a singles match unless cagematch is telling me lies. Unfortunately, they worked this like a Super Dragon vs. AJ Styles match that you could see on any indie card in America instead of a bona fide title match. I wanted to see Dragon assert some control as champion, but the impression that I came away with was that he was outclassed by that wrestler from the television.

Maestros Blue Panther, Negro Navarro, Dr. Cerebro, Virus Brilliant rudo technicians whose ability is the main feature of their character. These guys can wrestle typical matches, but they clearly work differently from your standard rudo. Longevity is not so much a tendency of this type of wrestler as it is a prerequisite. This is an interesting category to me. First of all, I've never associated a maestro as being a rudo. To me, a maestro is a wrestler who shows mastery over lucha holds whether they're a tecnico or a rudo. Blue Panther, for example, was a maestro whether he worked tecnico or rudo. It later became a loan word in English to describe older luchadores who worked the traditional style on the indy circuit, but originally I believe it was a word to describe workers with superior technique. Over time, there was an element of age involved. I never considered Cerebro or Virus to be maestros in real time. Navarrro in his prime wasn't what I would consider a maestro. That was a gimmick he fashioned for himself in his old age. Panther and Satanico in their primes I would consider maestros. Charles Lucero is a good example of a guy who became a maestro because he worked for so long.

GAEA was closing so why not put on one final rendition of the feud that defined the promotion for so many fans? It's been an age since I've watched either of these women wrestle, and even longer since I've seen them square off against each other. I'm sure the law of diminishing returns applies if you watch their matches back-to-back-to back, but I was excited for one last hurrah. I recommend watching the full length version of the match instead of the GAORA cut even if the full match has poor sound quality and no commentary. The match has a weird dynamic in that Aja is the challenger for a belt that's future seems uncertain. The bout is OK, but the decision to put Aja over Satomura is baffling considering that Satomura is supposed to be Chigusa's protégé. The championship is deactivated on the final GAEA show, so perhaps they were trying to bring things full circle, but this wasn't a patch on their earlier matches.

Gibson becoming a fixture on the indy scene is an interesting development. This was too slow and methodical for the crowd's tastes, but it wasn't a bad bout. It was marred by that stupid airplane spin spot that Danielson was so fond of at the time. I guess he thought it was a crowd pleasing comedy spot, but it played directly into the finish which was lame.

This was one of the earliest Styles vs. Joe bouts and a precursor to the battles they'd have in the future. It was a hard-hitting affair, as you can imagine, but didn't really build to much. There was no commentary and the crowd couldn't provide much atmosphere. Styles botched a couple of spots, including a regrettable stumble off the top turnbuckle. Still, the potential was there and it's no surprise that they went on to have classic matches.

Entertaining video package before the bout. Not only are these guys from drastically different walks of life, they throw some Austin vs. McMahon elements into the build. It's too bad that none of that is paid off in the match. I dunno who laid this out but they did a piss poor job. I don't have a problem with Bradshaw on offense. I think his stuff looks pretty good. However, it's clear that the crowd is waiting for Cena to hit some moves, so why not give him some shine in the beginning or tease a few comebacks? Cena finally gets on offense and boom the match is over. Cena's celebration is awkward but the bigger problem is that the win didn't feel earned. It's interesting that neither of the world title matches were well received on this show. It's a complete 180 from the year before. The WWE must have been aware since both matchups had much stronger return bouts.

This was a decent opener but far from their best match in the WWE. They played off the fact that Eddie had fallen pretty far down the ladder since the last WrestleMania while planting the seeds for their feud. Definitely agree that it was TV quality, but that also says something for the improvement in the TV match quality.

It boggles my mind that anybody thinks this is a bad match. That's anti-Shawn Michaels/Kurt Angle rhetoric at its worst. This is the most interesting version of a Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle match you could hope to see in your life. There are so many worse variations on a Shawn Michaels/Kurt Angle match that they could have worked that it surprises me that anybody listened to the contrarians. I don't understand people. I don't understand how anyone can watch a Kurt Angle match and not think he's a great technical wrestler. I can understand wishing that the entire bout was on the mat, but it's the WWE. I didn't love the immediate period after the big table spot, but it was fairly harmless in the long run. I also thought Angle rose from the dead too quickly on the double count to apply the ankle lock, but that's straight quibbling. Michaels trying to break the hold was epic. Michaels can be hammy but that was a perfect storm. I don't care what anyone says. Honestly, what is wrong with some people? This could have been a contender for the worst big match of all-time but it was thoroughly engrossing.

Is it just me or do Motorhead sound pretty shit playing Triple H's theme? This isn't that bad. It's a typical slow, methodical Hunter bout. Does Batista appear limited? Sure, but that's because he was limited. If you can't plug and play him into a Hunter match then perhaps he wasn't ready for the push. To be honest, I can't really see the match being worked any differently at this point. It was pretty much what I would expect from a Triple H/Batista match except that it happened to headline WrestleMania.

The video package at the start brings me up to speed with the angle. It's a fairly simple premise but it did give birth to the streak. I'm still unsure whether turning Orton heel was the best choice, but I did love Cowboy's involvement in the angle. He showed that he still had the business in his veins. The match itself is very much the Undertaker segment at WrestleMania. It's not as well laid out as some of Orton's other singles matches (most notably the match against Foley), but it's better than the average Undertaker match at WrestleMania.

It may be from pollen allergy, but there's still a lot of COVID and influenza going around. Personally, I don't wear a mask unless a family member is sick. Masks are mostly a courtesy to prevent others from getting ill.

Maybe it's the fact that ROH made such a big deal of the CM Punk vs. Joe series, but I wasn't particularly impressed by them having a short match in a tiny ring after their long broadway matches. Perhaps others will enjoy this highlight reel version of a typical Punk/Joe match, but to me this felt like the Clash of the Champions version of a PPV Punk/Joe bout.

You look at a match listing like this and you hope for an extended sequence between Blue Panther and Black Tiger. That's something you instinctively learn to do as a lucha fan. Unlike other styles of wrestling where your forefathers have already critiqued every match under the sun, lucha remains this Wild West where a random IWRG match could have ammo to add to your case for such and such a wrestler being the greatest of all time or a complete dud. It's fun, but it can also be infuriating. Here, I didn't get anything close to the performance I wanted to see from Panther, but I did see him work fairly effectively as the lead face-in-peril for the tecnico side, which isn't something I'd regard as a strength of Blue Panther, but he was trying to turn this into something more than the sum of its parts. So he gets brownie points for this if I can remember to give them to him.

I was hoping to see more of a long form trios match here. We got that, but it was lazy trios match wrestling. I can't really blame them for taking a night off, but there were too many spots based around Tarzan Boy and Heavy Metal flashing their asses for my liking. I was hoping for more from Casas, but this wasn't the environment for it.

This picks up where they left off the week before in terms of energy but it's ridiculously short for a match of this magnitude. In fact, it's so short that reviewers at the time were wondering if the workers finished too early. The post-match is the usual hot air, but I do wonder what a Wagner vs. Ultimo apuestas match would have looked like.

Greg Valentine vs. Chief Jay Strongbow (WWF, 8/18/79) They can't recapture the magic of the July match, but this is still a really good bout that descends into a bloody brawl where both men are throwing chairs at each other outside of the ring. A few things ran through my mind watching this. The first was that it was amusing to me that it was a poor man's Wahoo McDaniel vs. Greg. The second was that I wish Kal Rudman was calling the bout as Vince was shit in this. The third was that as a kid I mostly knew of Valentine as the guy who feuded with the ref Ronnie Garvin and then was tag partners with the Honky Tonk Man. Little did I know that he was the fucking man a decade earlier.

Greg Valentine vs. Chief Jay Strongbow (WWF, 7/21/79) I can't find the DeNucci match online as it's too much of a deep cut for the internet. Instead, I went with one of my all-time favorite Valentine performances. It's one thing to have great matches against Bob Backlund or Tito Santana, but to have a feud this good against Chief Jay Strongbow? I'm sorry, you're somebody special. In theory, every feud should be this good, but somehow they aren't. It's not that workers don't try, I guess it's that the planets have to align somehow and you need a Philly crowd like this that is amped for the Chief to tear Valentine's head off. God bless old-school professional wrestling.

I haven't seen that much dislike for Navarro in a while. I'm glad you bring up releasing the holds, though, as it was definitely a thing.

He seems super broken down as an unmasked guy.