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Garden variety Memphis but a match I enjoyed for the five minutes it took place. Rico looked good and the next babyface in line to be the centerpiece of PPW until he got the big call up. He hits some impressive power moves and looks crisp. The interference from Cornette was predictable but they added in some wrinkles like the kickout from the powerbomb and the referee being laid out by Rico after he was blinded to add some variety. In the end, Bradley is able to capture the prestigious belt. **1/4

This is mostly an opportunity to hear these guys on the mic. TPT and Dinsmore steal the show and Bull has a pretty rigid delivery that was surprising considering how soon he got the call up. He is also still sporting the long hair coming out of one spot of skull. The match starts proper and the action is basic until the Bad Blondes come out to interrupt things bringing out Mr. Black and Russ McCollough who they were pushing huge at the time but he never amounted to anything. *1/4

Quack and a bunch of other guys I don't know here. Harvey Whippleman is out before hand and demands a pushup contest. The gear of the referee is the most indy shit I have ever seen. It took me looking them up on wikipedia to tell Noxious and Anthony apart. After the pushup contest, we get a sit up competition. This is some classic stall techniques but I will say the crowd is still with them a good bit heat wise and really heckling the heels. Noxious and Anthony start out attacking when Quack and Graham leave themselves vulnerable. The heel tandem is perfectly functional here and getting heat, cutting the ring off and constructing the basics of a match. Johnny Graham was pretty weak overall and didn't bring much to the proceedings from a selling standpoint. Quack does a real good tope con hilo to enter the match into the final stages. Quack will be a real interesting worker to follow through the 2000's. One of those guys that probably would have been given a cleaner look and repackaged with the 205 crew if he came along today. Finish is contrived with Quack getting a visual pin but the referee being distracted. Graham and Obnoxious then have a rough sequence where they clearly don't have anything pegged. Quack gets a tag and does a nice diving headbutt. Finish comes with Quack hitting a powerbomb on Obnoxious. The match went a little long but this was essentially a way to look at early Quackenbush. Not an awful look. **1/2

An old school tecnico team here. First fall follows suit with the rudos dominating. Shocker was a big deal around this time with his Guapo gimmick becoming a thing. Scorpio and Bestia are good seconds to have as they display the viciousness needed to succeed. Old guys mount a comeback and the crowd fires up some more. Emilio is the main foil for Shocker and it is a trip to see this scuzzy guy get cheered. Lizmark and Bestia have a good exchange on the outside with some nice chops from Lizmark. Second fall begins and the rudos are getting ridiculed pretty loudly by the crowd. Tinieblas has some size on him and displays some decent agility in the fall here with a leapfrog. Bestia gets caught giving a foul to Lizmark and that is that. Shocker is someone that had never impressed me and this didn't change things here as him and Emilio weren't able to have the real heated exchange needed to make the match successful overall. **1/4

I just looked at my 2016 resolutions and it was a wild ride that I was unable to acomplish hardly none of. Here is my 2017 offering: 1. Finish the year 2000 of viewing by end of 2017 2. Do 10 episodes of WTBBP 3. Watch the highly pimped stuff of 2017 that gets around ****+ from people I respect. This is the toughest one as I feel it is a real elitist approach but with me wanting to really commit to PWO2K, this is a casualty that has to be made where *** matches are no longer "good enough" 4. Don't let wrestling consume me to where I place it above my family and career.

Always a fun topic, post them here.

Echoed most of my thoughts before when rewatching but did up the rating to **** based mainly on the back of the leg work CIMA did and how he rolled through the finishing sequence with a ton of confidence.

Learned today there are two black wrestlers going by Rukkus around this time. I know this seems like an odd point considering we are cherry picking what to watch from 2000 but I did think watching this how now we are entering an era seemingly where less full shows are being watched. I think that has to do with the ease of availability. As a result, workers like the ones displayed here may never get seen or discussed under that measure. None of these guys looked like stars but more your typical utility players to fill out a card. Q-Sic actually impressed me the most here based on size and charisma. The finish was pretty rushed and results in a singles match between Rukkus and Toad in the upcoming show. **

Something homely feeling about Bill Behrens and Jeff G Bailey on commentary talking about AJ Styles. We have seen some guys in 2000 already that are still active and in big positions but it is amazing to think about how accomplished AJ is right now as they are talking about him here as the ace of the promotion and he is the hottest act in the biggest company in the world 17 years later. This match was fun for what it was. Estrada hit a good dropkick and took Krush's offense well even though his strikes were suspect. Krush showed some charisma and flash that I agree with Loss that it seemed natural for WWF to give him a chance. Commentary was strong and had a real territory vibe of Bailey being the ultimate heel. **

I thought Genki looked good here hitting his special moves and breaking up pins. He is a guy in Dragon Gate that relies a ton of charisma and timing and it seems that he had those fundamentals down at an early stage. Arai is someone that is tough for me to get a read on and I look forward to seeing if there is a prospect there before he becomes the lower card fodder that I am most familiar with. Dragon Kid was made to look like the star here with the moniker, flash and pinfall. Unfortunate he has an awful night botching a ton of stuff and whiffing on almost all of his kicks. Santo and Panther are kind of working a one off of their long standing feud and don't really interact much with the other competitors. This felt really thrown together and suffered as a match overall because of that. **

I short changed this match when I watched it before. I still don't like it as much as Loss but the leg selling was much more consistent now in that I saw Hotta working a game plan and a long con of sorts for her to return to it in the third act of the match. The flaws that now hold this match from being great in my eyes is I continue to think Toyota took too much of the middle portion allowing the ending to not feel as triumphant as they were going for. ***1/2

Maekawa is still pretty dreadful in this match on 2nd watch but I excused her inefficiencies and focused more on how well Toyota and Miho worked as a team. As a result, I liked the match more this time around even though it could have used some editing. ***1/2

What a beatdown still, enjoyable to watch. I agree with Loss that not every match should be like this but LCO looked like the biggest bully heels in pro wrestling on 1/3. ***1/2

Still dug this on rewatch and will stick to my **** rating. I do still think this kind of aspired to be more than it was in execution but I still get the dramatic plight of Honma winning. ****

This was really dry on rewatch. Kakihara doesn't provide much interesting work and he really does carry the lion's share for his team. Misawa was fine, everyone else was below average IMO. **

Rewatched this since we are ramping up the series now and short changed this the first time around. AJPW really did a good job of building up No Fear as a credible unit against anybody in 1999 and that is displayed here. I really think Takayama would have a great chance of placing on my GWE after I am done watching all of this footage. ***1/2

I may be a mark for pirates but I really want Rey Bucanero to be great in rewatching this stuff. In where my fandom was around the time of his peak, I was looking for more flash and high flying style and would have neglected him. I have appreciated his 2016 work but readily understand that he is getting by on almost exclusively charisma these days. Here he ambushed Tarzan Boy right from the start and TB is bleeding 30 seconds in. The first caida is classic apuestas lucha brawling template of the rudo dominating fully. Satanico is an amazing second at ringside getting cheapshots in and salivating as Bucanero kicks and rakes at Tarzan Boy. Satanico looks like a patron watching a chef prepare his favorite meal that he is about to dig in on. The second fall has Tarzan Boy winning with a roll up and gaining the advantage but he still hasn't shown much fire on made his big comeback. That comes in between the falls as he slams Bucanero on the chair face first and Bucanero is a bloody mess. His selling here from the lost of blood was really excellent staggering around the ring and unable to fully gain his equilibrium back. Tarzan Boy makes some critical mistakes in the third fall by playing to the crowd too much and being too flashy but Bucanero returns the favor by relying on Satanico once too often. Satanico gets wiped out from the legs of Bucanero and TB follows up with a beautiful dive. He puts Bucanero away for a triumphant victory with himself gaining some toughness. TB has the Chapulin Colorado symbol on his tights. Does anyone know the significance or tie in? This really got me excited about the future of CMLL as the first part of 2000 seemed to be all about Villano III and Atlantis working towards their classic match. This showed there was another great feud simmering within the promotion. ****

So we begin. I will be using most of these early matches to give insight to my perspective coming into this project, but lucha is really hazy overall and probably the one area I see where a framework will really have to be worked on with me watching this stuff. As of now, when I think of 2000's lucha, I mainly think of the rise of Mistico and the Apache feud. This match gives a template of what we can look forward to beyond that spectrum without it being a spectacular match by any means. This does feel like baseline lucha but there does seem to be positives or negatives to extract from most of the workers here. Zumbido is someone I have always enjoyed based on his scuzzy look and rudo tendencies. He really impressed here and him vs. Solar was obviously the showcase pairing. Solar is another person I am really looking forward to see more of as I mainly think of him as maestro worker and the El Mariachi match with Blue Panther. He has a great classic look and this match allowed him to have some fire that isn't normally seen in his later years. Violencia was the other standout and was someone I am unfamiliar with completely. I did a quick look at our master spreadsheet and I see a lot more upcoming from him which made me excited. Pantera was inoffensive and didn't add much to the preceding. I thought Antifaz and Mr. Mexico was negatives especially Mr. Mexico who was out of position, had weak strikes, and blew his dive in spectacular fashion. The falls here were quick and frantic and it was satisfactory to see Zumbido get the clean fall in the Tercera. Away we go with 2000. **1/2

Took two watches for me to appreciate it but I still see it in the great match range unlike lupus vs trauma which is a top 100 match of all time for me.

This is a bummer. Probably one of the true guys of the 80's sets I havent seen or thought of at all that really impressed me coming out of it.

Excited for that. SEAdLINNING has been my favorite promotion to watch compared to Oz Academy and Sendai Girls (havent checked out Stardom World in 2016 yet), Wave wasn't really my thing before they went to a pay service.

The 7/30 Sendai Girls tag match is good and showed her with some fired up sequences against Kong. I would also recommend the November Cassandra Miyagi match. Miyagi tries really hard and has some promise herself and a cool looking character, but most of the polish in the match comes from Chihiro. Not a great match or anything but they got the main event slot on a pretty big Korakuen show for Sendai Girls and the moment didn't feel too big for Hashimoto.

Agree with this and would tack on at least Ben-K who I truly feel can break some of the Dragon Gate apprehension based on his look and working style as well as Chihiro Hashimoto who has wrestled a total of 52 matches so far according to cagematch and seems really poised for that many matches under her belt.

2016 will be a pivotal year for me. It was a year that started out with me in the doldrums about modern wrestling and ended with me consuming and enjoying more wrestling throughout the year that I truly believe 2016 will be remembered as one of those golden years from a quality standpoint. So much amazing content readily available online and the increase in the streaming services and google drive documents have made the consumption even easier.

So you are a big fan of Dragon Gate then? Numbers 1-4 are unequivocally prominent in Dragon Gate even among smart fans in as much that the most notorious English speaking Dragon Gate fan in Jae doesn't legitimately like the lead hero currently in Shingo. I see you ignored #5. No, I don't care for Dragon Gate. I see you ignored #1-4 as being really close to Dragon Gate. I also would certainly put the selling in Dragon Gate up there with the spot fest oriented Lucha. Is selling so powerful that it trumps all of your other parameters.