ohtani's jacket

This was really good up until the bullshit finishing stretch that reduced it to "just another match." I loved how they built the match from the crowd up, and worked at a slow, methodical pace, instead of giving the crowd the video game wrestling it wanted. There was a real old-school build to this that was comforting for an old fuck like me. When they did hit their signature stuff, they got nice pops. Then the malarkey began. The first part was "Cheat to Win" Latino Heat stuff, which is okay I guess. At least they went a beat or two beyond Eddie simply winning by hitting Benoit with the belt. It seemed like we might get a decent finish after all and then Rhino showed up and turned on Benoit. Not only is the wrestling like a video game, but the booking too. I swear it's like season mode on WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain. If there's a reason why they don't talk about this one, it's probably because of the crap at the end. The one positive from the match is that Eddie continued to look strong.

This had a hot finishing stretch, including an incredible nearfall where the crowd thought for all money that Mysterio and Kidman had won the tag titles. It also had the heels winning cleanly with an excellent maneuver. The body of the match wasn't anything special. It was better when Mysterio was in. Kidman has zero identity in the WWE. They should have let him keep the wifebeater and jean shorts. Generic guy in tights was a one way ticket to Palookaville. If I'd been a mate of Paul London's, I would have been like, "Bro, look what they'd done to Billy Kidman. You don't wanna go there." The hot finish made this seem like a much better bout than it really was, but kudos to them for pulling off that stunning nearfall.

Something positive about Dos Caras.. His All Japan match against Dr. Wagner is one of the best exhibitions of pure lucha libre that I've ever seen. UWA television was dire? I love that stuff.

This was okay. Kind of a hard sell convincing anybody that London was gonna win the title on his way out. I haven't been on the Paul London train in ROH, but he seemed like a good dude. Man, Joe has some vicious looking short arm stuff. That was my biggest takeaway from the bout.

Pretty decent return match. Probably deserved to be on a pay-per-view instead of some random RAW where JR wasn't calling the match because Kane set him on fire. Instead, we get Coach calling the match, which gets annoying, quickly. I'm not a huge fan of this style of wrestling. I especially dislike some of the Steamboat/Savage pin attempts they do, which isn't a knock on Savage and Steamboat per se, but on workers who crib those spots. I like Jericho better against different opponents, but I totally get the dynamic they were going for, and why it might appeal to a large segment of the fanbase.

How about Jake Roberts?

This was a pretty decent trios considering they cobbled it together for Shocker/Vampiro undercard. Much better than the Atlantis vs. Wagner matches from the past few weeks. Never underestimate how good Ultimo Guerrero and Rey Bucanero are at delivering rudo beatdowns. When was the last time Lizmark Jr was this interesting? Has he ever been this interesting? I'm starting to think Rey Bucanero is some kind of genius. First Vampiro, now Lizmark Jr. Of course, Lizmark almost ruins it when he makes his comeback, but the seeds for another miracle job are there. They tease Atlantis vs. Ultimo here but don't deliver. That's cruel. A large part of the focus is on Niebla vs. Universo. Niebla is an interesting dude. At one point, he seemed inextricably linked to Shocker, but at this stage, their career trajectories couldn't be further apart. When he's on, he can be pretty entertaining and adds some much needed starch to the tecnico side, but you have to think that given his size, it's a disappointment to the promoters that he isn't a bigger deal. Match ends abruptly when Atlantis pulls off Universo's mask. That was deflating. I was enjoying the bout, and was in no mood for it to end so suddenly. It wasn't until the replays that I realized Universo pulled off Niebla's mask first. Still, a crappy finish. Fortunately, it looks like we have a return match leading to a Niebla/Universo title match. I can never understand why they do mask pulling/ripping in the lead up to a title match, but such are the vagaries of lucha libre.

Very good match. Surprisingly grounded, presumably because of their knee problems. I would have rated it even higher if not for some goofy selling from Mutoh. Was this supposed to set up Kawada vs Hashimoto? I would have been gutted when that was cancelled. I have to say that 2003 has been a much better year for Japanese men's wrestling than 2000-2002. It's the first year since the NOAH split where things are back on an even keel. Is it just me or does Mutoh's All Japan work hold up a lot better than you'd expect?

I finished reading All-Star Superman. Personally, I thought it was kind of weird. I've read a lot of weird Grant Morrison stories, so you'd think that wouldn't be a problem, but I read that Morrison wanted to create a timeless Superman story and to me it kind of came across as a weird European arthouse take on Superman. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I was familiar with the Silver Age stories that Morrison drew inspiration from, but I kind of felt like Alan Moore wrote better Silver Age homage stories prior to Crisis, and possibly later on with those Image characters (I haven't read that stuff yet.) I did like the overall portrayal of Superman. He was extremely likeable. I didn't care for the portrayal of Lois or Jimmy, though, and I didn't like how Quitely drew them either. I suppose I'm not a big enough Superman fan to truly love a series like this, but it show plenty of heart despite how strange it was at times.

When do you think Raven should or could have been pushed as a top guy in the WWE? This whole thing sounds like Raven thinks he could've headlined a Wrestlemania. I feel as I'm putting more thought into this than Raven did. Are you asking us who we thought never had their best match, or for other examples of guys who might feel that way?

I will try to watch Tito/Bockwinkel over the weekend.

Yeah, Owen had the Bret match, but if he'd been a more ambitious worker, I doubt he would have felt it was *his* match, or the best he could do. It's possible that Arn could have had that sort of match, but so could everyone theoretically. If you look at Arn's career, I think it's pretty clear that it was unlikely to happen.

I don't think we were meant to do much against England were we? It's not really the same side that won the Test championship. We had a couple of good sessions. England played a lot of positive cricket thanks to their New Zealand coach and captain Anyway, you lot get a turn now.

Id like to know what Raven envisions as his best match, as I fail to see how he didn’t get the opportunities in ECW or ROH. I can only imagine his ideal is either something more than a brawl or an impossibly high standard. Does Raven have a self-depreciating view of his own work, or does he have an over-inflated opinion of himself as a worker? "I never had my best match" could mean a lot of things. It’s hard for me to imagine Regal having better matches than he did. I wonder how exactly they were supposed to be better. Seems like wishful thinking.

Did he explain why he never had his best match? Perhaps he simply wasn't capable of it. He certainly had the opportunities. There are a lot of great workers that come to mind (Owen Hart, Steve Regal, Arn Anderson), who I don't believe were capable of more. Would I be surprised to discover a great match of theirs I haven't seen? No. Would I be surprised to discover their best match ever? You betcha. It's easy to imagine a mindblowing Tito Santana classic, but anybody can have mindblowing classics in your imagination. The reality is that they weren't having mindblowing classics and weren't likely to ever have them. Maybe if some promoter somewhere booked them as the centerpiece of the promotion, or they wrestled in a magical void where there were no limits to what they could accomplish, but a lot of great workers that are technically great can't work big enough to have the great of heralded matches we're talking about. I'm not sure you'd even want them do. Regal working a small match against another great worker or working a big match against Shawn Michaels? Which would you prefer to see?

I finished Martin Wagner's Hepcats. Ed Piskor unfairly shat on this series when Cartoonist Kayfabe were going through Palmer's Picks in an old Wizard mag. Wagner was a friend of Dave Sim's, and part of that small wave of self-publishers that grew up around Sim and clashed with Gary Groth all the time. Hepcats started off as a story about anthropomorphic college buddies and grew into a more ambitious story when one of their girlfriends tried to commit suicide and we slowly discovered the harrowing details about her past. On the surface, it was "famous" for showing nudity and having anthropomorphic characters have sex, but there was more to it than that. Unfortunately, like most self-published titles it was beset by poor sales and production delays and only lasted 12 issues. I actually read the reprint series, which contained new material and was supposed to restart the series with issue 13, but issue 13 never happened, and Wagner left the comics industry instead. Kind of a shame as I thought Hepcats had the potential to go down as one of the seminal books of the 90s instead of a footnote. There's an argument to be made that the writing was shallow. I wouldn't go that far, but I do think Wagner was still finding his voice. He only made 12 issues. Can you imagine how well regarded Cerebus would be today if it only lasted 12 issues? I couldn't find a lot of fault with the art. Wagner used a lot of cross hatching and screentone, and never short changed the reader on background details. In fact, he probably would have been a lot faster if like Sim, he had someone else doing the backgrounds. I'm not a huge fan of the way Wagner's anthropomorphic characters look, but then again, I'm not a fan of how Sim's humans look, so I can live with that. There's not a whole lot to recommend as Wagner never finished the series, but if you're interested in the early 90s period of creator-owned comics (Bone, Cerebus, A Distant Soil, Strangers in Paradise, etc.), it's worth checking out.

Haven't seen much of the lead-up to this. Not sure if that's because US tape traders had a hard time getting the shows from Mexico or because folks aren't interested in uploading 2003 CMLL. It doesn't really make much difference. Shocker is the rudo, Vampiro is the tecnico, and that's about all you need to know. Amazing atmosphere for this match. Makes you think they should have waited until the Anniversary Show to run this. Then again, CMLL don't always save their best match for the Anniversary Show, and it has been known to peak during the first quarter of the season, as was the case with Atlantis/Villano in 2000. Vampiro wore a gi to the fight. Did he think this was a MMA fight? Maybe I'm missing something and he was working out at a MMA gym at the time. He did try to incorporate a few MMA spots into the bout. Maybe he was doing the while Undertaker "MMA fan" shtick. Come to think of it, there's quite a few parallels between Vampiro and Undertaker. It makes you wonder whether Vampiro was trying to mimic Undertaker's career. Remember when Undertaker began having so many good good matches that people thought, "Hey, wait a second, maybe Undertaker is actually a good worker?" Could the same thing be happening with Vampiro? Shitting on Vampiro used to be a thing, but I don't see how anyone could watch this match and not come to the conclusion that Vampiro has improved. Compare it to Vampiro vs. Pirata from '92 and tell me Vampiro isn't a better worker in '03. The match was largely a hybrid between lucha apuesta brawling and American indy wrestling. It was very move heavy for a lucha match, and Shocker did a lot of things that you wouldn't see a luchador ordinarily do. I mean all of this in the best possible way. Shocker was fantastic throughout, and I thought his second fall comeback was brilliant, especially the punch to the face that cut Vampiro off on the apron. This may have been Shocker at the height of his powers. From the moment he hit the ring, he was intensity personified. I'm not sure why Shocker left CMLL when he did, and can't be bothered digging for the answer right now, but watching this match, you think you'd be looking at a guy who's going to headline Arena Mexico for at least another decade. Two things stood out about the match to me -- first was the length and second was how dramatic it was. We see a lot of luchadores work half-assed, generic mano a mano or apuesta matches in the 2000s, and we're quick to chalk it up as "the modern style," but here Vampiro and Shocker worked a very modern apuesta match that the crowd fully dug. So perhaps the veterans are being lazy and failing to adapt, or perhaps the promotion isn't fully behind some of the other matches. In any event, Shocker and Vampiro showed you can still have a great apuesta match if the promotion's prepared to give you the time, and you're prepared to put in the work. This is going to take some beating for Lucha MOTY, and has to rank among the best matches of the year. Certainly, one of the best big matches. The match was so good that the crowd kind of forgot that Shocker was a rudo and cheered for him like a national hero, and that's against a tecnico who's insanely over in Arena Mexico. That's how good the bout was.

Man, Mysterio's son was 6 years old here. That'll make you feel old. Mysterio was a great television match worker. One of the best ever. But this was an extremely generic television match. In fact, the only reason it's remotely memorable is that Mysterio pulls off the victory and beats Matt Hardy for the Cruiserweight championship despite a dodgy groin and some outside interference from some shmucks. Matt Hardy was a boring worker who tried hard to be a clever and cerebral worker. He had no business being a cruiserweight and was taking up someone else's spot in the division. That said, you've got wrestle whomever they put you up against. It can't be Rey vs. Eddie every week. From that perspective, both guys were pros. I just didn't care for how generic it was. Especially for a title match where Mysterio was supposed to get the big hometown pop.

This was underwhelming. If the old adage that styles make fights is true, then these two are too similar to have a great fight. The stalemate stuff in the beginning was boring, and then they cranked it up without taking me along for the ride. Crappy finish too. I like AJ Styles a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would, but this was not a great AJ Styles match by my reckoning.

Holy shit, what an awesome match. This had the best start to a match I've seen in ages. The crowd was absolutely brilliant in the way they willed Taue on. To the seasoned viewer, it was obvious that Nagata was going to weather the storm and work his way back into the match, but it's been a long time since I've seen a heat segment like that. It had the same kind of heat that you'd find in a finishing stretch. Nagata's comeback wasn't spectacular, but it was well-built, and Taue sold his demise like an absolute champ. That was his All Japan pedigree rising to the top. I didn't know I love the Nagata locks so much. Maybe I don't. Maybe it was Taue's selling, but those were fantastic looking spots and Taue sold them beautifully. Taue worked so hard in this match only for it to all slip away, but what a cracking bout. One of the best Japanese matches of the decade thus far.

The board swallowed my last post, so let's try this again... Barry Windham vs. Jake Roberts (1982) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- Windham has his nose taped like Virgil in this one. It was pretty good while it lasted, but I wanted Jake to work over Windham's nose a bit more. I would have loved to have seen Jake DDT Windham on his nose, but I don't think Jake was doing the DDT at this point. His big move was a knee lift, which he used to collect the bounty on Windham in the last match I saw. Decent footage. Shades of Pillman/Windham. Cowboy Ron Bass vs. Jake Roberts (1983) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- hey look, it's Outlaw Ron Bass, the man who got me hooked on professional wrestling when he raked Beefcake's face with his spur. Considering the importance the man had in my life, I've seen precious little footage of him. I'm not sure where he ranks in the pantheon of cowboy wrestlers, but he seemed like a decent hoss to me. Jake was strangely subdued in this and was mostly there to get his ass kicked. OK footage. Kevin Sullivan & Jake Roberts vs.Terry Allen & Scott McGhee (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- I didn't know that Jake was one of Sullivan's men in Florida. This was a decent competitive squash with Allen and McGhee getting a few licks in before doing the job. Decent footage. Barry Windham Promo On Kevin Sullivan & Jake Roberts (1982) -- Windham struggles through a promo with Dusty right by his side. I dunno what Dusty was thinking, but he placed a hand on WIndham's shoulder for support. Fans like us kind of take promos for granted, but man, awkward pure babyface promos are a nightmare if you lack confidence on the mic. Especially when you're trying to double down and act dead serious. Nothing special. Barry Windham vs Jake Roberts (Kevin Sullivan & Angelo Mosca Attack Windham!) (1983) (CWF) -- this had some decent brawling before the interference. I wish we could get a proper length Windham/Roberts match in full. Sullivan looked like an idiot with his pink and blue hair. I thought he was supposed to be the creepy leader of a Satanic cult. Go tattoo your forehead or something. OK footage. Brian Blair vs. Jake 'The Snake' Roberts (1982) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- Roberts and Blair went toe to toe in this one. Blair was clearly the better wrestler, but Roberts knew a few holds of his own and had plenty of ring smarts. They were given plenty of time here and had a strong showing. Blair is such an underrated worker. I guess he lacked the charisma to go far beyond the tag ranks, but it's not that difficult to imagine an alternate universe where territory wrestling doesn't die out and you still have Florida in the late 80s and early 90s with Blair as your heavyweight champion. Good footage.

This was OK. The first two falls were generic, modern style mano a mano wrestling, and were a bit disappointing given the level that these two can work at. The third fall was a lot better. It was one of those tercera caidas where one of the guys is going over clean so the loser puts a ton of effort into the fall. They started digging deeper into their offensive bags, and there was a lot more selling than they bothered to do in the first two falls. There are times when you're watching mano a manos where you have to remind yourself that it's only a mano a mano and you shouldn't expect too much, but the tercera here was pretty close to an apuestas level tercera. There were a very sloppy, awkward moments, but some great near falls as well. At the end of the day, the match was completely unnecessary, and I'm not sure why they even ran it, but I'd have to say that it overdelivered on the build while falling well short of their previous singles matches.

This was pretty good. It was really slow going in the beginning, then got super hot in the third fall before falling apart down the stretch. The problem I have with these early Danielson matches is that it always seems like he's trying too hard. Here it felt like he was trying too hard to have an old-school 2/3 falls match like Steamboat/Flair. Then I get into this conundrum where I start questioning myself about why I'm faulting him for trying to be a great worker, and just when I start thinking that maybe I'm judging him unfairly or reacting to things other people say about him, he does something that's way too "on the nose" like he's clearly trying to show everyone that he's a great pro-wrestler. What generally ends up happening is that there are moments of inspired character work and genuinely good ring-work and moments where I feel like I'm watching some sort of message board inspired pro-wrestling. It would help if the ROH commentators didn't bludgeon me to death with how great everything is, but basically a lot of the moments that people say are great character or heel work don't resonate for me. I did love that period after the second fall where they ratcheted up the intensity. That was some great pro-wrestling. I kind of wish that more of the bout had been worked in that vein.

Finally, a kickass Hashimoto match from the 2000s! And it only took three years. We'll overlook the fact that it's basically two New Japan guys having a New Japan match in an All Japan ring since All Japan didn't mean much at this point. What a great match. Vintage Hashimoto. I would put it on par with just about any match he had in New Japan. Man, if you had told me that Satoshi Kojima would emerge as a key guy in early 00s wrestling, I would have clicked x on the browser as fast as my chubby little fingers can carry me. But the dude has emerged. A lot of guys ride high on the wave when business is good, but to flourish in a crappy puro scene like this takes a special type of commitment. I don't know how long this run of his lasts, but my opinion of him has skyrocketed. This might actually be one of my favorite matches of the decade thus far simply because it delivered the type of performance I've been looking for from Hashimoto ever since the Ogawa debacle. The fact that he hasn't been having these types of matches in Zero-1 tells me Kojima played a big part in igniting a performance like this from Hashimoto. And that's left me feeling like one happy camper.

Tenryu's wife has passed away after a battle with lung cancer.