Robert S

I did not realize at the time how well put together the Crazy Max team was. You have SUWA the heat machine, Fuji who wrestles big, CIMA who can do fast complicated sequences with the best of them and at the same time have the aura of a star, plus there was, well, TARU, who looks cool wearing shades carying a baseball bat.

Bix is doing impersonations? ;-)

Kris doing impersonations reminds me a bit of Andy Kaufman's foreign man. Everybody (well, except Corey Maclin) sounds the same.

That botch looked like it could have (or almost should have) put Low Ki into a wheelchair and there still were some assholes chanting "you fucked up". I suppose at that point you would even find people who would have shouted "you fucked up" at Owen Hart at Over the Edge 99.

Hoshikawa suffered a severe brain injury in a cage match against Takaiwa in Zero-One. According to Wikipedia the injury was a sum of the cage match and multiple untreated concussions. I have never heard of this match before. It is not surprising that it is very good considering Murahama was hyped as a super-rookie back then and Hoshikawa was a hugely underrated guy, but the extend of how much this ruled still surprised me. Though reading about the concussions makes me feel a bit bad considering how hard Murahama was laying it in here at the finish.

Plus other fun things on a pole like a leather jacket, a piñata or Judy Bagwell. How about that strange Texas death match version the WWF did at Wrestlemania X (Savage vs. Crush)?

You've got that Foreman-Schulz story a bit wrong: the fight actually took place in Las Vegas. The rematch should have happened in Germany though. After Foreman refused the rematch Schulz was scheduled to fight Francis Botha. That fight ended in another debacle as Botha won a (controversial) split decision that was later overturned after Botha tested positive for steroids. After the decision was announced some fans began throwing champagne glasses and even bottles into the ring. A couple of fans in the first few rows were injured.

It was five years (not that this makes the rest of the statement wrong incorrect).

I think Steve Carell would do pretty well in the VKM role (if he roids up, that is).

Fun action tag team match. The handcam that was too close to the ring made the thing a bit hard to follow from time to time when the action was too fast. Strange that most of the bigger APW names of this era, even though they were among the early internet indy darlings, did not much of notice in their careers. Except of those four guys Tony Jones (of Beyond the Mat fame) comes to mind as well. And after breaking with APW even Modest and Morgan only had (except from a couple of ROH appearances) their NOAH gig. Frantz is the only guy among all those people who did PWG, and even he only had three matches (according to cagematch, not sure how complete their results regarding PWG are).

I am not the biggest fan of Edge in-ring but I would rather watch a Best of Adam Copeland 30 DVDs (4 h per disc) set before watching another Randy Orton match where the main purpose is for the announcers to shout "RKO OUT OF NOWHERE" and use the terms "Apex Predator" and "The Viper" 20000 times. Randy Orton might really have been a good talent at a point where I was watching barely any WWE (basically from 2001 to about 2008). I remember 10-12 years (or so) ago reading that WWE told Orton to heavily study Jake Roberts, as a result he turned into a bad parody of Roberts.

The number of hours of TV per week is a huge part, as is being forced of having to have all stars on TV almost every week and having hardly any squash matches, plus 15 or however many "PPV" special events per year. It's pretty hard to do a slow and long burn under this circumstances. I haven't watched NXT television in more than a year, but there you could see big differences: 1 hour per week, maybe 4-5 specials a year, not every star is on every episode. That's why they got away with putting Asuka vs. Ember Moon off for six months or so, even so it was obvious to anyone that this was Asuka's next stop after Bayley was gone.

That could be/probably is a relic resulting from the fact that the show was prepared and archived during the name dispute, then not redone afterwards.I doubt the blurred version is the master copy. WWE would have been very stupid to alter the master copy. They don't care enough (and shouldn't, it's really not worth the time) to go back to the master, ie the original videotape, to create a new digital version now that the issue is resolved. Actually I would be surprised if they did not create an unedited version when they digitized the thing in the first place.

This is the best of the TWA stuff until now and Spanky looks really good here. For a non-English native speaker Spankaholics and Spankamaniacs sounds pretty lewd.

Was that the A show in the late 80ies or was it Superstars?

My memory might be wrong (after all the thing was 17 years ago), but I think Fukuda had an undiagnosed brain tumor which ruptured after the elbow drop causing the bleeding.

If he wants he will definitely get his chance. He will face an uphill battle though: he is already 30 and after that many years playing professional American football his body probably is pretty shot.

I think Akiyama was better than all of the four corners when wrestling against a guy who is pushed two or more levels below him. Akiyama here is wrestling like a 20 year veteran fighting against a rookie. Funny to consider that Shiga only has 18 months or so less experience.

Hughes looked pretty small here. I didn't see his short run with Jericho in WWF in 99. Was he that small then as well or were people just losing weight in Memphis? (him and Meanie) That "sunglasses blocking powder" spot was really nice.

A five minute Regal TV match is a very welcome change after watching Wrestlemania weekend where almost every match had people doing countless spots and kicking out from finishers. The only negative thing here were the bad punches of Meanie in the corner.

A count-out in a triple threat match, what the hell? I would like to see a triple threat match where not at least for 50% of the match one of the participants is selling outside of the ring (i.e. should be counted out). Even here you had Triple H spending considerable time lying on the mat outside after a big bump. The match ended (according to the ring announcer) with a loser and no winner. What a god-awful finish.

Dave Brown interfering into the match is something I did not see coming. Was this a one-time-only thing or did he get involved more often?