ohtani's jacket

This is a solid match for the most part. It’s no secret that I’m not the biggest fan of Jun Akiyama, and I’d honestly rather watch Kobashi defend the title against lowered ranked opponents, but I acknowledge the fact that Kobashi needed to have a rival that was on his level, and that Akiyama was the clear and obvious choice. For most folks, there is such a huge match up that the bout will deliver pretty much everything they want out if a NOAH main event, and I will say, that even though I have been slow to come around to NOAH, and still struggle to get up for NOAH marches for the most part, they at least made an effort in the early years to fly the banner for Japanese pro-wrestling with Budokan shoes and this Dome show.

This was a decent match but needed a stronger finishing stretch. I have a hard time getting into Chavo as a singles worker. He’s a total pro, and completely proficient, I just don’t see anything special in him. Definitely a guy I like better in tag matches. Rey is good in this, but you can definitely see how some people find his WWE work rote or formulaic. Having said that, you need to work to the house style in the WWE otherwise you’ll be out on the street. I feel like I’ve seen more exciting Rey matches than this, though. The finish, in particular, was pretty flat. Not sure the commentators or anyone in the crowd saw that coming, which suggests to me that it was the wrong beat to end on. This show seems polarizing. I’m not sure why it generated such strong reactions. It’s fairly middle of the road, if you ask me. I like the bull rope match more than some folks do, others like this match more than me, but I don’t see anything to get your panties in a twist over.

I’m sure the fans were just dying to see another Shawn Michaels vs Triple H March in 2004. This is billed as the match that will end their rivalry once and for all. JR and the King completely oversell how dangerous the match is. JR goes on a five minute monologue about how satanic the cafe is. There’s a lot of exclaiming about careers being ended and Hell in the Cell participants never being the same afterwards. I kind of hate that Triple H has adopted Hell in the Cell as his own personal gimmick match. If HITC was associated with anyone at this point it ought to be Mick Foley or the Undertaker. Anyway, instead of taking bumps off t(e top of the cage, they break the record for the longest Hell in a Cell match, clocking in at a whopping 47 minutes. If that sounds like literally hell in a cell, it’s not that bad. Triple H spends a lot of time working over Michaels’ surgically repaired back. Shawn introduces a ladder to the match just like he introduced the ladder match to the WWE according to Ross Somewhere Bret is mumbling something about lumberjacks and coal miners. Both men bleed like stuck pigs I’m keeping with 2004 trends There are countless my gods and for the love of such and suchs. Again, it’s not bad. I find it ridiculous that Michaels’ super kick is treated like such a death blow. it’s such a shitty looking move and the tune up is ridiculous looking..The match ends up delivering, it’s just a question of do you actually want to see it

I haven’t really liked the Samoa Joe title defenses I’ve watched, and I don’t think much of Punk as a worker, so I wasn’t terribly excited to watch this again. The match is an unquestionable success — these were the last two guys you’d expect to pull off a one hour draw — but I can’t, in good conscience, rate it above matchups I enjoy more from 2004 like Eddie vs. JBL or Kobashi vs. Takayama. There were a couple of big turnoffs for me. One of them was how telegraphed they commentary was. Nulty was annoying enough aping the Dean Gordon Solie and constantly disagreeing with the regular ROH commentator, but the pair of them went of their way to continually spell out that this was going long. I’m presuming they dubbed the commentary in afterwards and had already seen the match, but in any case it was amateurish. The other thing I disliked was this idea that Punk was more of a wrestler, and was employing this amazing psychology by forcing Joe to wrestle for longer than was typical for a Samoa Joe title defense. First of all, CM Punk couldn’t wrestle his way out of a paper bag. Secondly, it’s boring, standard wrestling 101. To their credit, they kept it interesting throughout even if they did take regular breathers. I just wasn’t feeling it as a classic match.

Hector Garza returns to CMLL with little to no fanfare. It’s interesting seeing his rudo moustache and awkward brawling style, and he still risks breaking his neck with some of the shit he tries, but overall he’s just another plug-in for the never ending parade of half assed trios matches. The only real positive to this bout is that Perro and Casas aren’t getting along, and Casas making sad faces is by far the best acting he’s done in forever. Now if only it would ignite into something that’s legitimately good.

Typical Lucha cage match. There’s a certain novelty in seeing these guys inside a cage, but as with most American adopted ideas, they don’t fully commit to it. The only time I can remember seeing a proper cage match in lucha was the classic Infernales Infierno en el Ring match, which is the closest Mexico has come to producing its own equivalent of a Hell in the Cell match. I’m not sure why luchadores struggle with the gimmick so much given the country’s storied tradition of bloody brawls, but they do. Of course, it doesn’t help when the booker gets cute with the eliminations. I won’t spoil the result, but the match basically replaces violence with cheap heat. This is the match where they start turning Perro rudo. If you ask me, they did it too soon. They could have gotten far more mileage out of his tecno run than they did. I can’t be bothered looking up whether business was down at this point. Perro may not have been moving the needle as a baby face, or perhaps they felt like they needed a stronger draw on the rudo side. I still think they could have gotten some big singles matches out of him as a tecnico.

This could have been better. You had two really good workers squaring off against each other with one of them having the potential to be a generational maineventer, and instead of having a short, intense bout, we get a bunch of bullshit with run-ins and continuing storylines. CMLL has flirted with American style booking throughout the early 00s, but they can never seem to commit to it, and as a result, their attempts at booking their TV like this week’s RAW come across as half-arsed and ham fisted. Frustrating.

Some of these shoot style guys have enough matches to rank them, IMO. Granted, I don't need a huge sample size to decide whether I think someone is a great worker or not, but I would be dumbstruck if people thought we didn't have enough footage to rank a guy like Carl Greco, for example.

This was mostly an angle to draw more heat for Vampiro. I kind of dig that he's turned rudo. The opening fall is quite good but goes long, so you know there's something fishy going on. Casas warms his way into the match, but man, if you didn't know who Casas was you would not think he was some kind of legendary worker watching this match. Shocker was decent, but it hasn't been a great 2004. Not sure if that's because of the booking or because he's starting to stagnate. The match gets thrown out when Vampiro catches Casas doing his Perro Aguayo spot off the apron and drives his crotch into the ring post. He then takes his frustrations out on KeMonito, kicking him in the face and giving him a tombstone piledriver. KeMonito is stretchered away by two officials, which had to be least taxing stretcher job in CMLL history. If the piledriver doesn't get Vampiro heat, I don't know what will.

This was a decent match for these guys' skill level. I like the fact that the Intercontinental Championship is being taken seriously. This was the first time for me to see Orton take on someone who wasn't a seasoned vet, and he did a fairly good job during his control segments. Benjamin was clearly a hard working dude but his movements were still telegraphed. It must be hard transitioning from tag wrestling to singles matches, so I'll cut him some slack. The finish was convoluted, but I guess they wanted both guys to keep their heat. Not a bad match.

Eddie Guerrero defends the WWE Heavyweight Title I'm surprised that this doesn't have a thread yet. Great match, and a great feud. Easily the best feud of the year to date. It's mindboggling that this feud didn't crack the top 10 for the Observer Awards. I guess the Observer voters had a hard time accepting JBL in his new role despite the fact that he's amazing at it. Perhaps there was some resentment toward Eddie dropping the belt to Bradshaw. Whatever the case, this has stood the test of time as one of the great feuds in WWE history. The bullrope match isn't exponentially better than the Judgement Day bout. They work better as a one two punch than viewing one as better than the other. Judgement Day is more of a straight brawl whereas the bullrope match is built around the gimmick. The highlights are JBL's bladejob and Eddie's table bumps. Eddie continues to prove that he's arrived in the WWE after those difficult early years, and manages to sell a pretty convoluted finish like he blew it. I'd hate the finish under most circumstances, but Eddie's acting was top notch. Should have been feud of the year.

Today sucks already.

I finished Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise (and amazingly managed to do spoiler free.) Despite the fact that I hated a lot of the prose text and song lyrics, completely skipped the Molly and Poo stuff, disliked many of the plot turns, and even some of the characters, and wasn't 100% satisfied with the final issue, it was still a hell of a journey with two incredible central characters. There was one issue during the final stretch that was so amazingly well told that it had me in tears. Moore poured 14 years of his life into SIP, which is impressive given how so many creator owned series wind up abandoned and left to collect dust. Thanks for the ride, Terry!

So, we've seen Eddie vs JBL, and Benoit vs Kane, and now we get KENTA vs Takayama. Unlike American wrestling, the Japanese are under no illusion that the smaller guy is going to beat the bigger guy. What matters here is how much KENTA can withstand and how much heart and fighting spirit he shows. That means more to the crowd than the result. The fact that we get to see some awesome strikes along the way is gravy. Those knee lifts at the end were brutal. It wasn't as great as the JBL vs Eddie theatrics, but they were going for something a little more standard and as a random match-up it was more than solid.

Chris Benoit defends the WWE World Heavyweight Title So after a couple of months of Benoit vs. Evolution, and Benoit vs. Michaels, we get Kane as the number one contender. Still, if Eddie can turn his matchup with JBL into one of the feuds of the year then surely Benoit can do something with Kane. There's a surprisingly strong wrestling focus to this match. Instead of brawling like Eddie and JBL did, the match is built around the fact that Kane had powered out of the Crippler Crossface on RAW and that he was too strong for Benoit to submit. Benoit channeled his performance against Sid in WCW, and classic Bret Hart performances against big men. He tried to take Kane's legs from under him to set up the Sharpshooter, and so on and so forth. Kane used his strength to focus on Benoit's surgically repaired neck. It was decent stuff, but they couldn't quite put it over like Eddie and JBL, who managed to produce magic. The commentary was decent, and I enjoyed a few of the digs Lawler took at JR,. Lawler was trying to sell some kind of promo Kane had cut about wanting to step out of the shadows and have his moment in the sun. I don't know who booked the finish, but it was straight out of Bret Hart's playbook. Kane had a weird reaction where he cried. The match was devoid of dramatic nearfalls, and needed extra intensity and better selling from both men, but it was better than a Benoit vs. Kane match sounds in theory. It just wasn't great.

This was an exciting shot of adrenaline. It was careening to a DQ finish where Tarzan Boy injured Perro Jr, but there was a lot to enjoy in the time they were given. Shocker reignited his rivalries with both Tarzan Boy and Vampiro and finally looked like his old self, and the Casas vs Pierroth strike exchanges ruled and made me wish those two had some kind of minimalistic house show match somewhere where they just continuously slapped each other. It was over too quickly, but fun while it lasted.

Because you wanted to see it again, it's Canek vs Wagner. It's actually kind of cool. I know Canek doesn't have a great reputation, but I dug his rough and tumble style here, and it was freaky seeing how much bigger he was than all of these middleweights. Satanico vs. the Infernales has revived my interest in Satanico, and who better to bring to this sort of fight than a fired up Atlantis? I was settling in for a fun one when it ended. Okay. Thanks.

It's so weird to me that Dr. Wagner and Canek are having a match against each other in CMLL in 2004. I can't be bothered looking up the ins and outs of it, so I'll just say it's weird and leave it at that. I can't imagine that there's anyone, anywhere on the internet, who's interested in watching Wagner wrestle Canek in 2004, but I'll give you a short write up. It's a typically short, mano-a-mano match from this era that would have been better in the 80s but is truncated in the 00s. Wagner has the potential to be one of the best wrestlers in the world in the early 00s, but rarely delivers. I really dug the second fall, especially the way Canek put Wagner away, and I was into the tercera as well until they ran a WWE finish where Dr. Wagner Sr hobbled to the ring with a cane and distracted Canek so that Wagner could shatter a glass plaque over Canek's head. Sports entertainment lucha isn't really my bag, and to make matters worse, Canek had no idea how to time the spot. Can't say I blame him really since it was never really a thing in his day. Canek was stretchered off, which I guess is the lucha solution for everything. My main takeaway from this was how good Canek's deadlift spots looked.

Thanks, guys!

Anybody got match recommendations (with dates)? I've been thoroughly digging the Bruno and Dusty matches.

You'd struggle to make a shortlist of people who've had a better career match than Thesz vs Gagne, and we don't even know if that was Thesz' best match., It's simply the best match we have on tape.

All of the momentum is with RAW, and then we get this match for the ages. I've got to give Bradshaw a ton of credit here. The whole J.R. Ewing, Million Dollar Man gimmick could have fallen flat on its face, and completely derailed Eddie's title run, but Bradshaw made the entire thing work. In fact, he was such a good talker than this feud went from "WTF, Eddie is feuding with Bradshaw?" to a legit feud of the year contender. It wasn't just his Trump-like promos about Mexicans, either. I really liked the way he kayfabed the gimmick change )and heel turn, presumably.) Great promo package. Herlinda's heart attack was a little dicey, but hell, the entire feud was about as anti-PC as it got in 2004. The best thing about the match, aside from the fact that it's an amazing brawl, is that the payoff to the promo package. The WWE is at its best when they deliver a payoff. Bradshaw backed it up in the ring too. It's no surprise that Vince, and/or his leeches, wanted to see Eddie wrestle a big man. This was some great big man/small man stuff amongst the blood and carnage, and while I'm sure the road agent played a large part in laying out the match, JBL was old-school enough to make it work. Eddie was phenomenal. His selling was incredible, and his gusher reminded me of Hokuto in the Dreamslam match. I don't know what made Vince change his mind about blood, but the workers are blading like there's no tomorrow. I guess they figure he's likely to change his mind at any moment. Somehow we get a payoff to the pre-match hype and a screwy finish that allows the feud to continue and nobody feels short changed. This was extremely well-booked. Eddie inches ahead in the race for WOTY.

Best tweener -- either Bret Hart or Liger

I'm only up to May in my 2004 viewing, but Kobashi, Eddie and Meiko are the workers on my radar. Benoit and Styles round out my top five. The best worker in Mexico is probably Ultimo Guerrero, though Santo and Blue Panther are looming on the horizon.

Excellent midcard action. This wound up being a very good show by CMLL. Easily the best show they've ran in 2004 so far. Forget about the rabid wolverine, Violencia is sporting the best Wolverine outfit possible in this bout (though I was never a big fan of the yellow outfit having growing up on the brown one), and his facial hair is phenomenal. In my ignorance, I didn't even know he'd unmasked. In my defense, they lost me with that endless Boricuas feud. But that's besides the point. This is what happens when you give six good workers a decent amount of time and you don't edit the match. Now, if I can only find the main event.