ohtani's jacket

This wasn't a great match, but it was fun and more entertaining than a lot of the men's matches from 2001.

Weak mano a mano bout with a schmoz finish. This was an excuse for Satanico to even up the playing field by having Mephisto attack at the end.

Could this have been any more boring if they'd tried? This was the Best of the Super Juniors yusho between the reigning IWGP Junior Heavyweight champion and the Juniors legend who had skipped the previous year's tournament and was undefeated in his return tournament. It should have been off the charts. Instead, it was a borefest. And I'm not just talking about the part they'd usually clip. The entire thing was boring. This has to go down as one of the biggest disappointments of 2001 thus far.

Lou Thesz vs. Cyclone Anaya (3/31/50) This is a new piece of footage from Chicago, although it appears to be from a Japanese source and not the Chicago Film Archives. It's a good, clean 2/3 falls contest with no heel work from Thesz. The emphasis was on both men's speed so it's quite a fast paced match for the era. The speed of the film seems a little off, but even accounting for that, the falls are short and full of action.

I also went on a 70s kick a few years back. Tomb of Dracula, Master of Kung Fu, Defenders, Conan, etc. I will cross post what I wrote on DVDVR lately:

Steve Austin defends the WWF World Heavyweight Title Triple threat matches aren't my thing, but I felt like I had to see this one through to the end. There was a weird angle heading into the match with Austin growing increasingly paranoid. Vince was starting to get creeped out and gave him an ultimatum that he had to retain the title at KOTR or their partnership was through. There was no real payoff to the angle since Vince never showed up at the pay-per-view. Instead, this was a messy transition from the Austin heel turn, and the Two Man Power Trip, into the Invasion storyline. The match didn't matter much and wasn't very interesting. After praising the WWF TV, and how well they presented the Austin vs. Benoit and Benoit vs. Angle matches, this was pretty average. Benoit fucked up his neck and had to take a year off. I guess it's downhill from here.

Robert Duranton vs. Pierre Boss (aired 5/2/58) This wasn't as exciting as recent weeks' offerings, but it was much better than later Duranton. He was trying to be a wrestler here instead of a character. With a name like Boss, you'd expect a guy who's in charge, but his opponent was a bit of veteran roadkill who got some shabby treatment at the end. You can see how Duranton morphed into the character he became as the crowd got a kick out of his comedy spots.

In case you were wondering what happened to the Breaks case: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8449239/Former-ITV-wrestling-star-Jim-Breaks-ruled-unfit-stand-trial-death-ex-girlfriend.html

Tiger cuts a promo where he looks like Super Tiger doing a UWF workout. Pretty cool. This is the end of the trilogy. Why they couldn't keep this feud going is beyond me. I guess these guys had too many commitments in Japan. This was another hot trios match. You know you're onto a winning formula when you can plug El Hijo del Rayo de Jalisco Jr AND Hijo del Lizmark into the match and it's still rockin'.

This picked up where they left off the week before. Wagner and Tiger have different partners but the action is the same. Sadly, I don't think leads anywhere except for a few weeks of hot trios matches, but at least it breathed some fresh air into the CMLL footage.

It didn't take Silver King long to be repackaged as Black Tiger. I thought he was going to be a Guapo when he made his debut. Now he's wearing lipstick and a mask and pretending to be a Japanese wrestler who can't speak Spanish well. Vampiro was wearing a corset. It was weird. The match was hot. It was no-nonsense, all-action stuff. No slow, meandering rudo falls. They went straight at it, and Black Tiger vs. Wagner emerged as something I definitely need to keep track of. Atlantis gets absolutely drilled by Wagner's Michinoku Driver and has been stretchered out.

This was a fun match. It would have been better in IWRG, but I liked the throwback ending with Villano throwing a row of chairs at Signo and the match being thrown out. That could have been the ending to any Arena Mexico mano a mano contest from 1980-89.

Cheri Bibi vs. Jacky Corn (aired 12/12/62) When I saw this pop up on the match listings, I thought if Corn could get a good match out of Bibi then he'd be one of the greats. After it was done, you could have scrapped my jaw off the floor. It wasn't just good. It was jaw dropping. Bibi looked like the baddest mother on the planet in this match. And when Corn took over on offense, he wasn't far behind. I often wonder what the other wrestlers thought of Corn. Did they respect him as a wrestler or hate him because he was the promoter's son? Did Bibi work harder here because of Corn's old man? I guarantee you won't see another Bibi match where he pays this much attention to detail. He's like a super worker with every hold. If this was the first Bibi match you saw, you'd want to seek out everything he did. Which begs the question, why couldn't Bibi work like this all the time? The match was amazing, and the finish left me shocked. Corn is an all-timer in my books.

Visit Luchablog.

This was another solid match between these two, but the highlight of the bout was Austin on commentary (and that's saying something considering Angle misses a moonsault from the top and Benoit hits a diving headbutt.) I thought Austin and JR were going to crack up at first when they started throwing barbs at each other. Austin picking on JR is mean, but funny. JR gets in a few licks and Austin's retorts are brilliant. Austin gets involved in the finish, as expected, but I loved the execution and the overall booking. When the WWF is on point, there's not much that can touch it in these years.

It was fun watching these guys have the type of match they couldn't really have in Mexico due to the stylistic differences. It's been a while since we've seen Shocker really bust loose as he's mostly been embroiled in his feud with the Guapos. What a talent he was. Probably the biggest discovery I've had revisiting this 2000-01 stuff is how good Shocker was. I usually prefer watching guys in their natural setting, but props to Shocker for being able to adapt to the New Japan juniors scene. Another feather in the cap of one of the new millennium's best wrestlers.

This was a textbook example of Liger giving the rub to a lesser opponent. He made Inoue look like a threat, and made it seem like he belonged in the tournament. With Inoue's black hair and trunks, and exasperated selling style, it was almost like watching Liger take on a young Ohtani.

Nice to see a longer Regal match. If you squint, you can almost see him wrestling Robbie Brookside. Both guys added their usual touches, but it was clear they were trying to work the house style. That's not such a bad thing since it's a pretty good house style, IMO, but they were times when it felt like they were trying extra hard to hard their "marks," so to speak. I always forget that Regal was a legit heavyweight until I see a match like this where he has to hunch over the entire time. Decent match, but somebody wasn't convinced as they didn't run it at Judgment Day.

This was every bit as dramatic and emotional as I remembered. A great performance from Hokuto and a tremendous swan song. The decision to not have her make the count from her own move was unorthodox, but memorable. This time round, her costume reminded me of Rose of Versailles, and there was definitely an element of Oscar's death to the whole thing. Ozaki was great with the anguished pleas, and Hokuto's selling was sublime. Satomura flailed about too much in a bid to show her intensity, but apart from the silly wind up charge of hers it wasn't too distracting. This was Hokuto's masterpiece. Satomura was there for the ride. Even though she got a rub from this, it could have been any opponent and Hokuto would have been just as transcendent. To that extent, Aja vs. Satomura is a better feud, but what a performance from Hokuto.

This was enjoyable. I guess you'd call it a house show version of Benoit vs. Angle, or perhaps a warm up for their Judgement Day match. I liked the fact that it was a straight match with no bullshit. It gave you a chance to focus on their wrestling, which is the best part of the feud.

This was worked like a RAW main event. The lay out was simple but the execution was good. I'm guessing it wasn't the follow up people wanted to see after Austin's heel turn, but it wasn't bad.

I thought this was better than their Wrestlemania match. I was surprised that they stuck to the submission stip for the entire bout. I thought for sure they'd run out of steam and start doing some Attitude Era style brawling around the ringside era and on the announcer's table. I feel like these two have a perfect match in them. They didn't nail it here, but were getting closer.

The first fall was a flash pin. The second fall was a competitive and enjoyable submission match. The third fall was a ladder match. Now I'm not a fan of ladder matches, but I was prepared to accept the stip for what it was. Those were the rules they agreed to before the bout and that was how the match was billed heading into the pay-per-view. I had no problem with any of that. But the finish... that was the softest finish they could possibly book. To me, it eradicated any enjoyment I had from the bout (which was basically the second fall), and made the 30 minutes I invested in it seem like a a waste of time. I don't care that it was screwy. I am accustomed to screwy WWF finishes. If you're going to end it with a run in, at least lay the guy out. Make it devastating, not chicken shit. This Benoit vs. Angle stuff is better than I remember wrestling wise, but whoever the road agent or booker was didn't put in their finest work

This is a revancha from the previous week. Mascara Magica comes to the ring wearing Road Warrior shoulder pads. Is he getting a bit cocky? The beating he takes would suggest so. Again, this felt like Averno and Magica added a new element to a bit of a tired feud. I was surprised when the bout came down to Satanico vs. Ultimo, mano a mano, and I popped for the finish. The feud hasn't made me excited in a while. The injection of two new players seems to have helped.

Okay, so I think Satanico has officially renamed Rencor Latino as Averno in one of those cheesy vignettes, while Ultimo Guerrero has recruited Mascara Magica to sub for the injured Tarzan Boy. The additions of Averno and Magica seem to light a fire under this feud. The action is more intense than in recent weeks, and we finally get back to something resembling the feud at its best.