Robert S

I thought the most funny thing was that in the gif Trump is beating up the husband of one of his cabinet members or alternatively that he is beating up his number two donor.

That was Otto himself as I don't think I have seen an episode with Michael announcing and I very much remember the "Big Otto" (though I think he only used that term for any kind of splash, charge or senton). Anyway when watching NJPW on Eurosport I somehow got the idea that Liger was the Japanese Hogan as every episode I watched ended with Liger winning in a decisive manner (plus he had the superstar presentation and aura).

The psychology / story behind this was a bit strange. What were the heels trying to achieve here? The finish was "let's help guy A win the match" - guy A kicks out / pinfall is interrupted by the heels - "let's help guy B win the match" - guy B kicks out / pinfall is interrupted by the heels - repeat. I noticed here that Jericho has some cool offense that I don't think anyone is doing anymore. Especially the Tito Santana style flying foreman is a move that some today's babyface should really kick up. Maybe Kofi Kingston as it's a real cool move to lead to a hot tag.

How old is Breaks? The linked article says both 80 and 88. His Cagematch profile only has the year of his in-ring debut (1954).

As bad as this looks on paper this was even worse in execution. It's so funny that while the show ends "We're Not Gonna Take It" is playing in the background. I would guess there were loads of WCW fans back in 2000 who thought exactly that after the segment (and the show) was finished.

As great as the angle way there is the giant logic-hole why the APA and Jericho did nothing while Hebner was terrorized and beaten up. (okay, considering their gimmick you could say that the APA was backstage getting drunk, playing cards and not care about anything going on in the ring)

You would assume so. By the way: I loved that the siblings of a native American are played by a Puerto Rican and a Caucassian. There is nothing more pro wrestling than that.

Any show that allows you to shout "Iran number one" at the TV as a response to a question asked is a win in my book.

True, from that point of view is better than 50% of the WWE announcers. On one NXT show I was starting timing the duration between Watson saying anything during matches. I think the average was something like 2 minutes (and when he was saying something he was just stating the obvious).

He will replace Phillips, I would assume. (a) it does not make sense to have two PBP guys on the team and ( Watson is the token black guy on the crew (I know that reads racist, but that is exactly why he is on the team).

According to cagematch the Destroyer here is the Cuban Assassin.

Regarding the Austria deal: there are people who are much more qualified to comment on this (Indikator who posts semi-regularly on this board for example) but here is my interpretation of the thing: (1) From my understanding CWA ran mostly middle/eastern Austria (Vienna and Graz were the most regular stops with long "tournaments", additionally spot shows in smaller towns happened - though "spot show" meant 2 or 3 shows on successive days at the same place instead of 10-30) while Innsbruck is in western Austria. (on cagematch I found results from a CWA show in Innsbruck in 1991, though I would assume this was at most a once a year deal) (2) The shows targeted a completely different audience: US wrestling was starting to get big in Germany and Austria in 93 (mostly among kids), so the WWS tour was a try to make money from that. The CWA targeted a more adult crowd. (3) CWA did not have television to promote their shows so their shows usually targeted local crowds. Cagematch lists the promoters of the WWS as Alex Valdez, Bob Yorey and Peter Hirschler. I have to admit I have never heard or read a single of these three names before, though at least for the last name I found a funny 14 year old post on a German message board (Hirschler sold wrestling shows to local promoters for good money; the deal always included Hirschler's band to play at the event).

Fun match, though not worked the way I hoped it would be (champion working a guy several levels in ranking below him), at least in the second half of the match. It turned a bit too much in HHH vs. the world (Kaientai, APA, Hebner) for my taste. By the way: what was going on with Hebner doing a David Manning tribute peformance here?

Eddie is looking outstanding here, the best I have seen from him in his couple of WWF appearances to this point. Strange that they decided to do almost the same finish as the week before (ref bump, Chyna low-blows and DDTs Jericho, Jericho sells it forever).

The finish made Jericho look very dumb and weak. First he accepted a fast-count from a non-referee as the end of the match and then he had to sell a low-blow and a DDT from Chyna like death.

I have just realized that Jarret and Hall had 9 ladder matches on house shows against each other within 3 weeks or so. You don't really consider ladder matches as a house show gimmick. From what I have seen on History of WWE the only comparable thing is the HBK vs. Hall houseshow run in December 93 / January 94 (they had 8 ladder matches within a months; plus there were two Hall vs. IRS ladder matches, on in Dec. 93 and one in Feb. 94).

I have seen to many ladder matches in my life to get excited about this. The match was solid and except the spot where the table did not break they did not do anything stupid, which I suppose is a plus for an indy TV ladder match. The "RKO OUT OF NOWHERE" spot made me laugh (though I suppose DDP did this version of the diamond cutter before).

Matches like these are the best prove that Liger is one the best of all time and very likely the best Japanese junior heavyweight wrestler of all time. He made Tiger Mask, a decent but not exceptionally good wrestler, look like a million bucks here. Liger not squashing his opponent here to me is more of a story of being a different character in this multi-promotional tournament setting (the character of the junior heavyweight ace to beat by the younger guys, but still a guy who can be seriously challenged - similar as in the first two J-Cups: in 94 had a match with a similar story against Hayabusa and in 95 against Naniwa) compared to the character he portrayed in New Japan at that time (the junior heavyweight ace who wants to prove that fighting all these other guys is below him and that he rather should face heavyweights).

This turned out being much weaker than it looked on paper. SUWA as a heel here did not work half as good as he does in Toryumon and some of the stuff the two here did together did not look all that sharp.

It's easy to see who Hayashi's favorite wrestler was. He should have called himself Pegasus Kaz. Funny that Michinoku Pro did not acknowledge that Hayashi was the former Shiryu. At least they did not show any old clips from him for the introduction and I could not hear the announcers use the name Shiryu.

The guys in the main event have some bad nicknames going on: "The Kingslayer" (I suppose because he beat "The King of Kings"?), "The Architect" (this one I don't get at all), "Seth freakin' Rollins", "The New Face of Fear", "The Roman Empire"

"Any wres... eh... superstar (...)" - Kurt Angle 2017 EDIT: He really seems to have problems with the WWE terminology, he also had problems remembering that the next Raw PPV is called Great Balls of Fire.

I very much like this kind of match that is so typical for "King's Road" booking, that you would not see in many promotions in the world (at least it would not be the main story of the match): 1+4 vs. 2+3. This is so easy to do and is almost everytime entertaining.

I'm with Loss here in that I really liked this match. Montoya is really great here and I wonder if he wouldn't have been a good replacement for Xavier as early ROH heel champion. Quack was fine in the opening slow-motion chain-wrestling, but his finishing stretch offense looked pretty shitty.

Morgan was pretty bland here while Modest definitely was not. I wonder if this match could have been better with reversed roles - i.e. Morgan the guy playing heel incorporating shtick. Modest is a guy who should have had a much better career. He probably burned too many bridges in the early 2000s. That clotheline that Morgan took looked pretty scary. Didn't Oro die doing that spot? (though in this case the landing definitely was not planned) Typical Attitude era crowd here: "we want puppies", "catfight" etc.