ohtani's jacket

This was a great match. Just relentless, hard-hitting action that never faltered. I love these Joshi workers taking the fight to Meiko, and Meiko hitting back with everything she's got. Satomura has laid down a marker as the best women's worker in 2004. Hamada showed up at the end to hype their title match the following month (a match I saw live, fwiw), but I think I'd rather see more Meiko vs. Genki.

This was a decent match as far as triple threat matches go. It was fairly scripted, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. The New York smark crowd was fully behind Benoit and booed Michaels and Triple H any time they caught a sniff of a near fall, but they were a bit of a lazy crowd and sat on their hands until the finishers came into play. Michaels sure did like to blade during his comeback, and Triple H also hit a gusher. I was divorced from, the WWE by this time, but I can imagine being on the edge of my seat if I'd been a fan. They teased the "will he or won't he?" aspect of Triple H losing extremely well, and the final tap out was an incredible visual that would be a hell of a lot more iconic today if not for the horrors that followed. The Benoit/Guerrero stuff at the end is what it is. I prefer to view it in the moment rather than pick it apart retrospectively. It does feel a little strange that so little of their journey happened in the WWE yet that's where their dreams culminated. Kind of weird seeing all these happy endings to title matches given the current matches with Reigns on top.

This didn't quite click in the beginning. Parka looked slightly labored in his exchanges with Ultimo & Rey. I'm starting to wonder if it was a cardio thing. I'm not quite sure if he was up to working at the pace that the Arena Mexico exchanges demanded. Things picked up when Parka singlehandedly beat both of them in the segunda, and the tercera was an exciting fall that saw Rey Bucanero injured when his leg was caught between the chairs at ringside and Shocker working a heated mano a mano fight with Ultimo. Shocker and Park didn't have the same chemistry as some of the GdI's other opponents, but it was a decent spectacle nonetheless.

This was Sugar Sato's return after nine months on the shelf with a knee injury. I always liked the Sato/Nagashima tag team dynamic with the power wrestler and the high flyer. The early portions of the match featured some uninspired brawling, but once they settled into the body of the match it wasn't bad. It was weird seeing Ran Yu Yu go from having overly long JWP house show matches to being a midcard act in GAEA, but there have been worse uses of a worker.

I'm not gonna lie, I expected Kansai to be awful in this match but she wasn't. She wasn't prime Dynamite Kansai, but she shouldn't be expected to be as good as she was in the 80s and 90s. She could still kick hard and still had an aura of toughness. Ayako, on the other hand, was terrible. I was so behind her rise in ARSION and her emergence as one of the bright young stars of Joshi Puroresu, but just about everything she did in this match annoyed me to the extent that I was hoping Kansai would win. It's been a while since I've seen a match where a worker did some much damage to their rep. So disappointing.

This is the only other piece of February CMLL footage I can find. I can live with it being a Perro Jr vs. Capos match. The Capos aren't for everyone but I enjoy their old-school style. This is an energetic brawl that gets totally out of hand when Universo starts trying to tombstone pile drive everyone. Mascara Magica is stretchered away, but Perro Sr makes the save before Universo can piledrive Jr. The match is a write-off, but the Aguayos continue to fire up the crowd. Pretty decent TV.

Chris Benoit has gone from feuding with A-Train to being in the world title picture on RAW. On paper, this seems like a dream match, but ham actor Michaels is more suited to working with guys like Chris Jericho at this point in his comeback than Chris Benoit. That said, I can imagine Benoit looking for ways to improve on this the next time they lock up similar to how he solved the Angle puzzle. For some reason, they don't play up the Bret vs. Shawn history. You can bet that would be a talking point in modern day WWE. Instead, there's a bunch of bullshit with Triple H, Bischoff and Austin that I could give two shits about. I can't remember how this was received at the time, but I'm sure it was a mix of excitement/trepidation about Benoit being included in the main event and love/distain for the continued Michaels comeback. I suppose there may have been some hatred towards the Triple H title reign and annoyance at the General Manager crap. My memories from this time period are that everyone hated RAW and that Triple H vs Shawn had sucked the life out of the title picture Correct me if I'm wrong.

This was much better than I thought it was going to be. It was a no frills match where Ozaki threw as much as she possibly could at Satomura without giving too shits about build or storytelling. I can't tell you how much better that was than Ozaki's bag of cheap tricks. If you're on a hiding to nothing, go out in a blaze of flames. This might be a disappointment to some fans if you consider it's the Genius Formerly Known As Mayumi Ozaki, but I thought it was going to be trash and it was actually pretty enjoyable.

It's a surprise to me that this is on my radar. Call it the Kojima effect. Taiyo Kea has changed his look since the last time I watched him wrestle, which is probably the series of matches he had with Tenryu. It's not the greatest makeover you'll see in wrestling, but it's 2004, we're in Japan, and beggars can't be choosers. The match is okay. It's asking a lot of Kojima to carry Kea to the level that Tenryu did, but considering how thin the All Japan roster was at the time, at least these were two guys the fans could get behind. Kojima earned brownie points with me for continuing to work hard.

How can you resist watching Tenryu and Fuchi beat the shit out of each other? Well, mostly Tenryu beating the shit out of Fuchi, but you catch my drift. There were some shenanigans with Akira Hokuto, which were presumably related to the promotion she started with hubby around this time, but ignoring that, Tenryu did what Tenryu does and a good time was had by all.

This was another fun Monterrey match. It was nowhere near as compelling as the Satanico match, but it was nice to see a slow paced trios match where the workers were given the time to work through the different parts of the match and not rush anything. I was hoping for a bit more from Panther, but that would have been a bonus. As always, it's fun to watch the locals mixing it up with the Mexico City guys.

Often when I see Low Ki in the match listings, I have no idea what to expect from his opponent. I'm sure most folks reading this are familiar with Matt Striker, but this was my first time watching the dude. It looked like he was hitting Low Ki pretty hard in the thumbnail, so I thought I'd give this a shot. Striker worked an extremely old-school US style. I'm not sure who he was a disciple of, but you could have transported him to the late 80s/early 90s and no-one would have noticed that he was out of place. He didn't really know how to sell for Low Ki's offense, and he was one of those wrestlers who make strong noises in the ring, but I've seen worse style clashes.

This had some shitty crowd brawling, but when it settled down it was pretty good, especially the parts that involved Satomura against either Ran or Toshie. If they'd just worked a straight up match instead of tearing around Korakuen like screaming harpies, it would have been a better match, but I guess they needed a bit of smoke and mirrors to convince folks that the midcarders had much of a chance against the team of Satomura and Nagashima.

This is some of the only available footage I have from February CMLL and it cuts straight to the end where Vampiro and Shocker have a confrontation. Given my irrational love for Vampiro, I dug it, but I can imagine it being a drag if you waited all week to see it. Vampiro was sporting a mohawk and ridiculous looking face paint just because he can. They showed some highlights of the match at the end. Park continued to look a bit awkward working with the CMLL guys.

This wasn't a patch on their RINGS match, but it was a cool match in the context of 90s stars having a good match in the 00s and Tamura trying to keep shoot style alive in the face of the MMA monster. Ultimately, he failed, but so too did Japanese MMA. I'm not a huge fan of milking the scoring for dramatic effect but whatever. This is pretty much a bonus if you're looking at it from the point of view of both men's career output.

I had my hopes up for this one and it didn't disappoint. It wasn't a great match or anything, but it delivered exactly what I wanted to see, which was Averno and Mephisto taking their time beating up Satanico and Satanico having a few badass moments. Footage of Averno and Mephisto falling out with Satanico has been spotty and CMLL TV is clipped to shit anyway. This was a better look at the feud than you were bound to get on Televisa. Satanico is clearly entering the "maestro" phase of his career here and isn't the worker he once was, and Averno and Mephisto are cast as rudo thugs instead of skilled workers, but it was a ton of fun, and we even got a glimpse of what Satanico vs. Super Parka would have looked like. During the early going, you're left wondering why Satanico brought the two tecnicos to the fight, but once they're on offense they're pretty spectacular. Gitano del Norte is a goofy looking bugger, but he has an awesome exchange with Mephisto where he pulls out all the tecnico stops. Super Parka ends up squaring off with his boy and his reluctance to wrestle his son leads to friction with Averno and Mephisto. Eventually, they square off, but it's too clean for the rudo pair. I assume this was the beginning of a Super Parka tecnico turn. I am absolutely loving Super Parka atm. He's been the single biggest revelation of the Monterrey footage to date. He's a guy I never thought much of before, but now I find myself loving everything about him from his ring attire to his classic long hair and moustache. I guess it was always the plan to turn him technico after he unmasked, but it's awesome that we get to actually follow it. I've bitched and moaned about Monterrey in the past, but watching this, it struck me that it's awesome old-school territory lucha. This was a lot of fun and the best Satanico match in a while.

I thought you weren't that high on some of Terry's Cerebros stuff. I didn't mean to be accusatory or anything. I enjoy reading your takes on lucha.

I thought you didn't really like Satanico, or Black Terry for that matter?

The Fabulous Moolah & Patti Neilson vs. Barbara Owens & Rita Boucher I was all ready to shit on Moolah for setting back the cause of women's wrestling 20 years, but she was actually pretty good in this. Decent brawling, solid heel work, lots of energy. She took the head scissors' bumps well, and the match picked up every time she was in the ring. The other girls weren't that talented, which may have been a factor in Moolah standing out, but this was also before she became a big name and she appeared to have a lot of vigor. I guess it's like they say, just about everybody was good at some point or another.

This was a heck of a lot more entertaining than Hashimoto vs. Kawada. Tenryu was channeling his hero Terry Funk while working over Tenzan's cut, and Tenzan made a bunch of fiery comebacks. Folks are selling Tenzan short here. It was a good performance from him. Honestly, early 00s Tenzan and Kojima have done better in singles performances than I ever would have given them credit for in the past. I'm not gonna go out and watch every Tenzan performance I can get my hands on, but I'm not gonna ignore his name anymore when it comes up in match listings.

That was amazing.

Poffo Mania is such a blast.

This was such an incredibly smart match. It's hard to believe it took place inside a WWE ring. I'd love to know who was responsible for laying it out. Cole and Taz didn't do the match justice with their call, but even their inane comments couldn't ruin the incredible storytelling. I was hugely impressed by the way Eddie was able to claw his way back into the match. Instead of getting lucky, hitting a few moves and scoring the flash pin, he fights Brock every step of the way and pours his heart out in the ring. There's the usual WWE BS with the ref bump and the run in, but even those distractions can't ruin Eddie's moment. Even with Brock laid out, the hook is still the same -- can Eddie actually do this? Eddie times the finish perfectly. Nine times out of ten the frog splash would have led to a near fall and the heel would find some way to escape with the belt. Wrestling fans are so conditioned to those finishes that you have to wonder how many people in the audience thought Eddie would actually win, especially when the WWE regularly ended shows with the heel winning. Eddie's victory, and the amazing post-match celebration with its outpouring of genuine emotion, has to rank as one of the greatest moments in WWE history. It's a shame it didn't happen at WrestleMania, where it would have gone down in WWE lore, but a career defining performance from Eddie, an early 2004 MOTYC,, and one of the best matches of the decade. Brock gave arguably his best performance, so I'm sorry if all the focus is on Eddie, but I've run out of words. Just a special moment for wrestling fans.

Dream match that was a complete disappointment. It's just so "small", and not in a cool minimalist way. I actually would have dug it if it was pared back and attritional. Instead, it lacked ambition. There were some decent ideas scattered here and there, but they never went anyway. It should come as no surprise, I guess, since outside of a handful of performances, Hashimoto and Kawada have been pretty lackluster in the 00s. That said, I was genuinely excited for this after Hashimoto vs. Kojima, and it's a shame they couldn't deliver. Plus, only 19 minutes long? What a gyp.

The reason K-pop is more successful internationally than J-pop is because traditionally K-pop had to struggle to market its product to other countries while J-pop was only concerned with its domestic market. It also took a long time. It's something that's happened over decades not just the past year or two.