Robert S

On paper this seemed like a complete style clash but somehow it worked out great. CIMA beating Sano is a huge win for sure. When I was watching a bit of Toryumon back in 2000 I did not think much of CIMA and thought that there were at least a couple of better guys in Toryumon but so far he is the clear star of the bunch fully justifying his push.

The match itself was entertaining, but yes, Quack was completely outclassed here. Santo goes mostly through his routine, though I am a bit surprised he took the spinning sitdown powerbomb, not the kind of move I would expect him to take on a random indy date against a random indy worker. And I liked Montoya on commentary as well quite a lot.

Pretty sloppy match here. I remember hearing Punk saying in an interview how hard everything came to him compared to Cabana as he is just not in the same class as an athlete so showings like this as this point of his career should not come as a surprise. Though in working the crowd he is actually far above the above mentioned Low Ki, Danielson and Styles.

In the 3 way part the experience deficit of Low Ki and Reil was clearly visible. There were several parts where one of them was just staying around for a second or two until really doing something, which you normally don't see from a seasoned pro. The Low Ki did not show such things in the single match part, so maybe it was just the lack of multi-men match experience.

I think I have to quit one match in as the commentary is that bad. This makes me start believing Bix' claims about JR's sobriety (or rather lack of) while working. Either that or he does not give the slightest shit about that show. And Lita would be fine in the Percy Watson "1 sentence every 3 minutes" role.

Lowlife Louie Ramos is an awesome wrestling name, sadly he seems to be a very not-awesome wrestler. Nothing he does here, except bleeding, looks remotely decent.

Cruise's commentary here is ... something else. I am not sure if I should laugh or be offended hearing him say "finally we have some colour in this match" after Onyx entered the ring. The other guy was heavily channeling mid 90ies Vince McMahon. The match itself was actually quite decent. There were some sloppy spots but both worked fine over them.

The first half of this match reminded me of a 4-men-WWE-style version of Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher.

This isn't much. Lawler did not give K-Krush very much here and when K-Krush got offense he did not really look too good. The commentary is also something between bad and cringeworthy, I want Lance back.

That promo after the match was strange. That is the kind of thing you would expect after a indy show main event, not on a weekly Memphis TV show.

I am sure that Ophelia here wasn't Molly Holly, (1) Cagematch has her wrestling for WCW until mid may and (2) that girl here looks much taller than Greewald (even considering the high heels that girl here was wearing).

From the first 160 shows (82 to early 85) they have 145 shows up. From 82 there are 8 shows missing, from 83 there are 3 shows missing and from 84 there are 4 shows missing. By missing I mean holes in numbering used by the Network.

The helmets look way too much like the Shockmaster helmet.

I hate that Mauro gives away every nearfall like the kick-out of the Eclipse by Asuka by shouting stuff like "we have a new champion" before or during the pinfall attempt. Though that is less his fault and more the general way how WWE announcing is done.

When I am listening to BTS at this time of the year I usually do during hiking, i.e. I quite often listen to the whole podcast in one go. The problem with this is that I forget 99% of all comments I want to make. One thing I do remember is that Bix's German pronounciation is quite decent. And yes: New Jack looks quite "Young" in this picture.

I just read that they are dumping the whole thing in two stages (the first on Monday, 28th, the second the week after). Doing it that way is a not a good way to build momentum. It's almost as if they are not happy with the taped stuff so far.

In wrestling there are worse things than a 30-year-old having sex with 16-year-olds. Did any wrestler ever refuse to work with Jimmy Snuka? How many people went back to Puerto Rico after the Brody thing?

It's the same thing as 10-15 years ago everybody was saying "we have to get into China". Shane McMahon founded a business on that premiss (which probably has failed, as he came crawling back).

Start a thermonuclear war; that is if at that point there still would be somebody around to kick him out of the HOF. But this kind of discussion should be moved to "Pro Wrestling Mostly".

Teioh has some real cool stuff here, especially the running manjigatame which I am sure I have never seen before. From what I have seen from him Teioh might be the most underrated guy of the Kaientai guys. At least in the mid 2000s he is at least as good as peak TAKA, better than Hayashi ever was and I am not sure if peak Togo is much better.

On the plus side this has a zombie wrestling. On the minus side this has a zombie selling a low blow and using a Tiger Driver 91 that was kicked out about halfway into the match (a 1/4 final at that).

The Over the Edge comparison was the thing I was thinking about as well when watching this match. Usually I hate these overbooked clusterfucks but this one of the rare cases where it absolutely works. Of course from a logic point-of-view you could bring up loads of problems with this one (e.g. a real heel ref. would work like the "fake" Hebner in Hogan vs. Andre - just count to three no matter if the shoulders are on the mat or not; why do Austin or Linda not come out earlier etc.), but a match like this is not supposed to make absolute sense.