ohtani's jacket

Just to make matters more confusing, Nicho decides to show up for this show. Halloween, during his Road Dogg style introduction of La Familia de Tijuana, introduces Nicho as Psicosis. I have no idea how far off script any of this is, but there's no denying that the Familia are much better with Nicho involved. This was easily the best of the matches so far simply because LFdT worked as more of a unit, and the Infernales were able to stage an inspired comeback. Halloween and Damian are very good as the pieces surrounding Nicho, and Halloween does an excellent job as the emotional leader of the Familia, but the trio works much better with Nicho as the No.1 guy. Whatever heat Nicho had with CMLL wasn't enough to stop the production people from replaying his spectacular dives. Towards the end, this looked like it might be the long-awaited coming out party for Averno, but the Familia used a kendo stick to rob him of the victory. The commissioner wasn't happy, however, and ruled the match a no contest. The titles were held up, and we're headed for another rematch that Nicho will no show.

Boy did it take some digging to find this match. So many mislabeled matches. One of their matches was uploaded three times with three different dates. Anyway, it turns out that people had their 5/30 and 6/6 matches confused. I can see why people would get confused since their matches are so generic. It's not that they aren't trying hard. It's similar to the Smackdown workers, who are trying hard to have good matches each week and good pay-per-view matches, but also deliver a generic product. A lot of the match is action for action's sake. I would rather see an electric exchange between Halloween and Averno, or Satanico and Damian, than crisp action. The Famila are handicapped by whatever problems Nicho was having with CMLL, and Halloween is trying his damnedest to hold everything together, but the feud either needed to be Averno's coming out party as the lead guy or a Satanic special. Unfortunately, it's neither.

Many of the international stars were legit. Some were gimmicks. A lot of the African and West Indian gimmicks were bullshit, as were the Russian gimmicks or anyone from the Communist Bloc. Some of the talent were naturalized British citizens. Others were born in the UK but billed from overseas. The Wrestling Heritage A-Z website is the best resource for finding out more information about the workers. Wrestling was a product for the working class, and the UK working class included a melting pot of immigrants from Europe and the Commonwealth. In the 60s and early 70s, it was common to see European workers on TV. That tapers off as the European wrestling scene dries up. There wasn't a ton of money to be made in Britain, which is why you rarely see American or Japanese stars, and why a lot of the British workers are often away working the European tournaments or touring other countries. IIRC, wrestling was initially shown at 4pm in the standalone spot, but gradually they started programming it earlier in the day. Eventually, it was on at lunchtime, which killed it off completely. I'm not entirely sure about why Big Daddy used "We Shall Not be Moved" other than the obvious imagery that Daddy was tough to move. The Seekers were hugely popular in the UK in the mid-60s, and it was their version that they originally used until Daddy recorded his own version. I guess the song was popular with the grannies.

This was a decent match that was part of the build for their mask match. It ends up being screwy because it's a Tijuana match, and that's what happens in Tijuana matches, but my immediate impression was a distinct reminder of what a great brawler Santo is, especially for a tecnico. He's one tecnico who doesn't mind getting his hands dirty, or bloodied, as the case may be. Super Parka isn't super, but we know this. It's still interesting seeing what Santo can do with him, and frankly this is an era of wrestling that could do with a little Santo on television. If they'd cut the shenanigans and had a more epic finish, this probably would have been a hidden gem. Instead, it's a footnote, but a footnote worth watching if you're skimming 2003.

This planted the seeds for their famous trilogy of matches by showing that Punk could be competitive with Joe. I don't have a lot of time for Punk's straight edge gimmick, and I see him as a loose and scrappy worker, but he has good ring sense. He's a much better matchup with Joe than you'd expect. That's largely because of how inventive he is. I haven't really enjoyed Joe steamrolling over folks even if they try to make the matches seem competitive, and I'm looking forward to seeing someone step up as the Sting to his Vader. I'm not sure what state Joe was in physically, but I kind of feel like an epic world title fight is something from ROH at this point in time. I haven't followed the promotion all that closely, but the general impression I get is one of second year growing pains. US wrestling in general seems to be down from 2002 while Japanese wrestling is up.

This match almost has me believing the hype surrounding Akiyama. I like Tenzan more in theory than reality. There's definitely a place for bruisers in wrestling, and Japan produces its fair share of meatheads. He's just not a very interesting meathead. Still, every dog has its day, and the G-1 Climax was Tenzan's time to shine. Akiyama was excellent in his role as the outsider, and Tenzan was convincing enough as a worker grappling with his destiny and the ultimate prize of being a G-1 winner. I absolutely love the reaction of Tenzan's father, who stands there almost in disbelief, with his hands in his pockets, as the crowd goes apeshit for his boy.

Probably because of the ban on women's wrestling. She did appear on WoS as a manger in a Big Daddy match. Other than that, I think the only footage of her is from Reslo and that French Catch Eurosport show. You're not missing much.

The honorable mentions section is random. I haven't updated this in a decade and would probably change some of the rankings if I did it again -- It doesn't feature any French workers since we barely had any footage at the time.

This is such a beautiful match. I was 100% with Nishimura all the way. With matches like this, Taue vs. Nagata and Hashimoto vs. Kojima, Japanese men's wrestling is on the rise in 2003. Definitely the best year for Japanese men's wrestling since the turn of the decade.

Chain Match: Finlay vs. Schuhmann (CWA WIEN'97) I felt like watching some Finlay after listening to Regal's podcast. This was from right near the end of Finlay's time in the CWA. He had shaved off his moustache and was letting his grey hair show. He lost some of his aura when he shaved the mo. He looked like such an asshole with that stache. Schuhmann looks unrecognizable without his mullet. The match is okay. They couldn't go the whole hog with the chain presumably because of the cameras.

Fancy entrance for the champs. They're decked out in full Aztec warrior headdresses. Vampiro and Lizmark make a regular entrance. The Mega Powers combine! There was a time when you wouldn't have been able to pay me to watch this match; now, I'm eagerly anticipating it. The first fall is rubbish. The second fall is a quick equalizer. The third fall is where the action is. They do a good job of making this seem like an important title fight. For all its flaws, the modern lucha style is still good at delivering a dramatic third fall. The match swings back and forth, and there are some exciting nearfalls. Arena Mexico is rocking as it usually does for Vampiro fights. There's a guy in a huge bear costume. It's amazing how Lizmark can disappear in a match. It happens all the time in trios matches. There will be these long stretches during a trios match where he's off camera. It's almost like he's hiding from the camera. It's not that he doesn't do anything. He hits some big moves. He just has the magnetism and charisma of a replacement level player. The match comes down to Vampiro vs. Ultimo, which is fitting, and the matchup everyone wants to see. Vampiro is sucking in the big ones, and I don't think it's because he's a great seller. I was unashamedly into this. I thought for all money that Ultimo was gonna cheat, but the bugger went over clean. Vampiro did a nice job of selling it afterward. The match ended up being pretty good. On paper, it looked like it needed to be an all-time great carry job to be anything special, but Rey and Ultimo didn't need to go the extra distance. It all kind of fell into place with the booking, and the fans were happy to get the Ultimo vs. Vampiro showdown. Good stuff.

I was surprised when Last couldn't recall any history between Yokozuna and the Hart Foundation.

Bert Royal has passed away. https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2022/08/20/british-star-bert-royal-dies/

Quiet Japanese crowds are real. Rowdy Japanese crowds are real too.

I'm not sure if the crowds were different for tapings vs house shows. I imagine the tapings must have drawn people who didn't routinely go to the house shows, but I can't say for sure. At its peak, Joint Promotions ran around 40 shows per week. I'm not sure how the TV was scheduled. It's never been clear to me whether it was scheduled from ITV's end or from Joint Promotion's end. They filmed matches from around the country. Mostly, they were Dale Martin shows, but occasionally, they'd show matches from the other promoters as well. There's almost no continuity to the television. You occasionally see a rematch from a few weeks before, and every now and again there's a match that's announced in advance, but it's nothing like American wrestling television. The halls were a bit different. They'd set up return matches for the following week much like the US territories did, and would add stips to matches. From memory, the wrestlers received their schedules from the Joint offices, which included TV dates. I'm not sure how the wrestlers got booked on TV. I'm not sure if you made TV because the taping date matched your travel itinerary, or because you were popular and in demand. Basically, the cards would have around 6 matches and they'd tape the entire show and split it into two broadcasts. They didn't show every match (and the matches were generally clipped), but the full shows exist in the ITV archives. There is some debate about how much footage survives, as some people claim some of the footage was destroyed in some sort of accident. I know for a fact that late 60s footage survives. There's also more 70s and 80s footage in the archives that wasn't shown on The Wrestling Channel. The hope is that someday the footage becomes cheaper and more accessible.

There were rules about what they were allowed to show on TV. In the halls, they often had blood and gimmick matches, but they weren't allowed to show these things on ITV. This type of wrestling had been prevalent before they introduced the Mountevans Rules in the late 40s/early 50s. They call it the "all in" style. Rival promoters Paul Lincoln and Brian Dixon often booked "all in" matches, billing it as the wrestling you couldn't see on television. The US worker Chris Colt had a match with Mick McMichael that they wouldn't air on ITV because it was deemed too violent, and once Dixon got his hands on Colt, he began promoting him as the man they wouldn't let you see on TV. What we consider classic WoS from the 70s was actually a down period for British wrestling. It had a brief shot in the arm from Daddy's popularity, but the early 70s stuff is a down period. The crowds vary from region to region, but they were always more interested in seeing the entertainers than the pure grapplers. Walton often puts over the grappling matches as matches for the purists, but if you listen carefully to Walton you can tell when he's frustrated by a wrestler's performance or a bad match. He had a subtle way of burying wrestlers when he wasn't impressed. The crowds are generally loud for the Big Daddy stuff, and for the loud mouth American heels like John Quinn. What's interesting about 1960s wrestling is that the crowd wear formal evening clothes. You get the impression that wrestling was so big in the 60s that it was like going to an evening show. The 70s crowds are much more casual. The uncut ITV vault footage often starts rolling the cameras pre-match and you get banter from Walton where he discusses the evening's crowd. There's one match where he talks shit about some eccentric woman who has brought some homemade gift she made for Wayne Bridges.

So, apparently Nicho no-showed this match and decided to take a Tijuana booking instead. CMLL decided to replace Nicho with Violencia from Los Boricuas. As you can imagine, the match was pretty flat without Nicho. Satanico is one of my all-time favorite workers, but he's not carrying a feud at this point simply because he's Satanico. I mean, he still has an incessant hatred for Damian 666, but it's not the burning hatred that he felt for Tarzan Boy or GdI. Perhaps a bigger problem is that we haven't really seen any chemistry develop between the Infernales. You cannot compare this incarnation of the Infernales to Satanico's pairing with Rey and Ultimo. There's nothing really exciting about Averno and Mephisto. That's kind of surprising given that Averno becomes one of Mistico's main rivals, but he's barely receiving a push here. Averno and Mephisto are almost on a hiding to nothing considering that Satanico had just won a hair match with Negro Casas as his partner. If they can't help Satanico take the trios titles from LFdT, they're gonna look pretty bad. No pressure, then.

Now that Satanico's dealt with those mouthy Japanese, he has a bone to pick with La Familia de Tijuana. He's got a memory like an elephant that Satanico. This match was an elaborate set up for an Infernales vs. La Familia de Tijuana feud. I'm not sure why Casas and Porky were even involved, but we did get to see Casas vs. Nicho, and who doesn't want to see Casas vs. Psicosis? Nicho works a different style from prime Psicosis, but it's still pretty cool. The match is mostly a slow burn. There are a lot of false starts in terms of the action. Casas appears to fake a hamstring injury, which I guess was meant to write him out of the feud. LFdT do a bunch of DX schtick before beating Satanico up three-on-one. Averno and Mephisto make the save, and we have a new storyline to sink our teeth into. Unfortunately, Nicho wound up no showing the following week's Arena Mexico show, which threw a spanner in the works. I was kind of hoping for one great Satanico vs. Nicho showdown. He does end up returning, so we'll see how it all plays out. Not a hot start, and far less polished than I'm use to from LFdT.

This was a fun piece of business. It was actually a return match from the week before (a match we didn't get to see.) It wasn't clear at first why Vampiro had a bug up his ass about Ultimo, but a replay from the week cleared things up. Ultimo had pinned Vampiro with his feet on the ropes ala Ric Flair. Vampiro was pissed and slapped Ultimo about, ripping his mask open. Lizmark scrapped with Bucanero, and Atlantis put up his dukes against Tarzan Boy. It was pretty fun. I thought Vampiro was feuding with Tarzan Boy, but I guess he has a beef with all three Guerreros. Looks like we're getting a tag title match, and look who Vampiro's partner is... freakin' Lizmark! The Mega Powers! Holee crap. Are you excited?

I'm not sure we needed to see this match up again, but both guys put in a decent shift. It was worked in a super simple style, but they ripped each other's masked open and made a go of it. I can't really complain too much about a throwaway Arena Coliseo match between heavyweights. There were certainly worse affronts in CMLL. There was a time when I probably would have expected more from Mr. Niebla, but it is what it is with Niebla.

And here we go, the match everybody's been waiting for. I liked the entrances for this. It was nothing like a traditional apuestas match. In fact, it was pretty much worked like a regular tag match. Still, there was a lot to like. The crowd was super into it because it was Mexico vs Japon. The fans in the tecnico section kept holding up their babies for everyone to see. I dunno if exposing your infant to that sort of noise is the wisest choice, but God bless 'em. It wasn't a vintage performance from either Satanico or Casas, and not something you'd use as evidence that Satanico was still a smart worker in '03 or that Casas was on fire for this little mini feud. But, if you were going to choose two dudes to represent Mexico then you could do a lot worse than Satanico and Casas. I liked that the continued the heat between Casas and Masada, and I also liked that there was a callback to Nosawa tying Satanico's leg to the ropes, which was what started this blood feud in the first place. It would have been nice if they'd been given more time, though it's always hard to tell how much gets cut in the edit. The work was tight, and I didn't have any complaints about it. Masada fouled the barber, which I don't think I've seen before. Casas wound up cutting his hair and screaming in his face. Chalk up another one for the good guys.

Phil Schneider mentioned the other day that he prefers Homicide to work bloody brawls, and can take or leave workrate Homicide. I haven't watched nearly as much Homicide as Phil or others, but personally, I was introduced to Homicide through his JAPW matches against Low Ki, and I kinda prefer East Coast representing, indy invader, Homicide to brawling Homicide. Ian Rotten refers to Homicide's work as "strong style," which may grate on people's nerves, but let's accept it for what it is -- hard hitting, stiff wrestling. Chris Hero is a cool dude, and a fine professional wrestler, but it felt like he was trying to wear too many hats at the same time by incorporating so many of his influences into his matches. He was this dude with an early Barry Windham build who was trying to copy all this cool stuff he'd seen on tape whereas Homicide felt like the finished article. Everything about Homicide, from his move set to the way he moved in the ring, matched his in-ring persona and the identity he'd cultivated for himself. That said, this was still a really good match even if Chris Hero was a bit over-exuberant about his stylistic influences. If it had one flaw, it was probably Hero's resurrection after Homicide killed him, but that's a hard thing to pull off unless you're a wrestling Jesus. Aside from the miraculous comeback, this was solid.

Eddie Guerrero defends the WWE United States Heavyweight Title I used to hate it when they'd announce a Triple Threat or Fatal Fourway match for a PPV, and I think it's worse when midcarders are involved. Call me old-fashioned, but shouldn't PPV matches be better than the matches you see on television? I know folks in 2003 weren't waiting three months to see these guys square off, but give us SOMETHING to distinguish it from a Smackdown match. Eddie's performance was disappointing. The Latino Heat stuff really undercuts his ringwork at times. Benoit worked his tail off. As usual, no-one bothered to tell him the match he was in was fucking useless and that he shouldn't work so hard. I would have preferred any variation of a singles match to this overbooked mess, but the match up that caught my eye was Benoit vs. Tajiri. It's a shame those two only ever met in a short RAW match. Eddie vs. Tajiri would have made sense too. That was a house show match up at the time, but of course they had to add all the bells and whistles for the cameras.

According to this article, Hall had some dirt on LeBell -- https://www.covertbookreport.com/judo-gene-lebell-was-once-charged-with-murder-intrigue/

I Quit Match: Barry Windham vs. Dick Slater (July 8th, 1984) @Eddie Graham Sports Stadium -- Windham was still a shitty talker here, but he had improved tremendously in the ring. This was closer to the '86-87 Windham I'm familiar with than the skinny ass version from the early 80s. Interesting booking too, as the face broke the heel's arm and put him out of wrestling temporarily. Good stuff. Barry Windham vs. Harley Race (Windham Pins Race!) (1983) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- this is a fairly well known match. Just the mention of it alone immediately makes me think of John McAdam's tapes page. It's a brilliant studio match. From Race's promo at the beginning through to the ending where he takes out Windham and Rhodes, it's as good a television segment as anything Flair ever did. The match is fantastic. Both guys blade. Great finish. Tremendous post-match. This is one of the highlights of the Florida footage. All-time great stuff. Barry Windham vs. Yoshi Yatsu (Harley Race Blows His Top) (Championship Wrestling From Florida 1983) -- Man, Yatsu is raw here, but full of energy. This was after Windham had pinned Race. Race spends the entire bout putting Windham over, then loses his shit when Windham approaches him after the bout. I haven't heard a commentator lose it that bad since Kent Walton got fired up at the Fleet Street magazines. Good stuff. Ric Flair: "I'm The Best Wrestler Alive Today!" (1985) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- Flair cuts a brilliant promo on Luger. “I’ve walked over better men at a bar to get to the restroom!” Ric Flair vs. Lex Luger (June 9th, 1986) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- I love me some Flair vs Luger, but this was a pretty wild angle where Luger pinned Flair to win the first fall and was beaten up by a bunch of heels during the rest period. Windham came to ringside on crutches to help Luger, but was attacked by Outlaw Ron Bass. Luger couldn't continue the match, which would have pissed me off to no end had I been in attendance. Flair cuts a promo in the locker room afterward. OK footage.