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I used to really like this match too, no idea why now. Maybe I hadn't been exposed to any out of control brawling besides the Cactus stuff so this still felt different. Anyway, now this was tepid and mundane affair overall that creeped to the finish even in the JIP format we get it at here. Luger's character work is the most redeeming quality going on.

I will be surprised if any match beats this in my ***3/4 ranking for the year. In fact this may be my highest ranked ***3/4 match in history. Some absolutely brutal stuff and shots and bending of limbs for nearly twenty minutes to a crowd that didn't know what to think. The Tupelo crowd responded by being quiet which was a detriment to the action. Kudos to the announce team really putting this over as they did a great job at building these guys up. ***3/4

Another really good Otani performance and match overall. This was worked more underneath but I thought it saw some great growth from Otani with him capitalizing on a brilliant move with the springboard DDT instead of trying for too much and ending up making a mistake. Very good match that wouldn't look out of place at all on my top 100 at the end of the year. ***1/2

Agree with PeteF here. This was well on its way to being great with the opening mat work but the final 10-12 minutes took me completely out of the match. Shame Hasegawa is gone as she was a welcome addition to my screen whenever she appeared and helped give the joshi cards depth during the glory days. ***1/4

Even though we didn't get a lot of storyline development in this edition, there was a good amount of fun bits especially with the JT Smith stuff. I am continually surprised at how Missy Hyatt looks unawful in 1996.

After a decent satire act last week, we are back to miserable, hateful stuff this week that I despise.

Cool visual no doubt as I thought it was just a great wax look alike. The build for Mania's top stuff has been solid across the boards as the top of the card was becoming intriguing after the lull of 1995 WWF.

This was so much better than the last week by toning down some of Bret's generalities and having him contrast the character of Michaels overall. Tremendous stuff and it got me excited for the match at Mania.

A tale of two matches. The brawling and stops/starts with Diesel and UT were great. The laying around on the mat and nothing but headlocks by SHawn and Bret was lifeless and awful. We do get Diesel's big heel turn officially here and a great fan cam. I can't believe this received ****1/2 as at its best, it was a disjointed match with lulls in the action. **1/2

I thought this was great stuff and really am starting to gain momentum behind Otani becoming the best wrestler in the world in 1996 so far. His frustration here still feels fresh and the way the match progressed set that up wonderfully. The opening matwork was gritty and executed well. I may be waning of Otani "blowing" it later on in the decade, but for right now, this works well as a vehicle of someone on the rise and someone who could have been poised to take over the junior division as Liger was being phased down. Bitchin few days of wrestling overall as 1996 has picked up steam big time. ****

Mankind the Mutilator is name dropped and we get a cool bridge moment between the ECW depature for Mick and his earnest debut on WWF.

Much improved over their January effort but I'm still not getting the Psicosis WOTY vibe. He is tremendously entertaining and I appreciate that he goes for the "brass ring" but his execution and building to the finish have left me cold. While I enjoyed the excess of run-ins in the last match, I thought this really subtracted from the overall match here and only served to make Konnan look stronger overall. Ultraman continues to be pretty poor overall. ***

I don't think Heenan was any great shakes in WCW, either. Heenan is another one who had a limited amount of tired jokes and would go to them time after time. The difference is, I always got the feeling that in the WWF he cared about what he was doing and he sounded engaged. I think he was at his best when he was in the WWF with Gorilla Monsoon, but honestly I have never really liked Heenan as anything other than a manager at ringside. (I think he excelled in that role, mind you.) I hated when the nWo angle started and even Heenan (who was a heel announcer of course) started defending WCW and bitching about the nWo. It sold the invasion aspect of the angle but it made commentary pretty much unbearable with Schiavone and Heenan whinging about how unfair the nWo was etc. etc. etc. As time went by, you could tell Schiavone and Heenan both didn't give a shit, and you could also tell they didn't like each other. I could never understand Schiavone phoning it in like that, especially since he was doing it when WCW was the #1 promotion at the time, and drawing record ratings. You know who is similar? Jerry Lawler. Here's a guy who is one of the most clever and witty heel play-by-play guys out there, hands down. His insults and put-downs of the babyfaces were hysterical, (yet critical and cutting) during the Manhattan Center years of RAW. Yet during the Attitude Era, he pretty much pulls a Schiavone, stops trying, and resorts to shrieking "Puppies Puppies Puppies." That's why Heyman was such a breath of fresh air when he came in and worked with Ross. Heyman could talk about something other than tits. There is absolutely positively no way whatsoever you can compare Ed Whalen and Jim Ross. In fact, they are pretty much polar opposites. The bottom line is, like him or not, Jim Ross loves Professional Wrestling, and calling Pro Wrestling matches was his passion and his life's work. Ed Whalen was a sports reporter, columnist and hockey broadcaster who called wrestling matches for money. Whalen had no respect for Pro Wrestling and it showed in his work...hell he pretty much said as much in interviews. There's being a shill and then there is being an assking jerk. Look at his famous "butts in seats" comment he made about Foley, at the apparent order of Bischoff. Foley called him on it - literally, and Schiavone apologized and said he ordered to do it, but I'm sorry. He could have said no, and not taken the shot at Foley, but he did it. He embraced his shill role with gusto. I don't respect him "preserving his job." We have no way of knowing this for sure, but do you think he would have been fired if he'd refused to take the shot at Foley? Maybe the Foley call wasn't worth it to Schiavone. Maybe he thought about it and figured it wasn't a hill worth dying on...why risk your job for refusing to insult a guy who doesn't even work there anymore? But that's the thing, it obviously DID bother him if he went to all the trouble to call Foley and apologize, and even worse it's a symptom of a larger issue. Tony Schiavone would say and do whatever he was told when he was the #1 play-by-play guy in WCW. Look back at some of the ridiculous and incredibly outlandish things he said over those years. He became a joke. In my opinion, the difference between Schiavone and Ross is this...with Schiavone it was always him pimping the company, and the show. WCW is great. THIS IS THE GREATEST NIGHT IN THE HISTORY OF OUR SPORT! Nitro is where the big boys play, blah blah blah. When Ross went overboard, which he frequently did...it was about the product or a particular wrestler (STONE COLD STONE COLD STONE COLD BAH GAWD) it wasn't just indiscriminent company shilling. If you listen to Tony Schiavone during the nWo era, and then Jim Ross during the Attitude Era and you honestly think Schiavone was better than Ross, then I don't know what to tell you. If Foley didn't write a book that virtually everyone here has read and has pertinent knowledge of, that "butts in seats" comment wouldn't be remembered very much at all. Was it low class and Tony should have pushed back, sure, but only revision in history and the notoriety that comment garnered by Foley feeling wrong by Tony (which is a separate issue altogether as I feel Foley was insanely tough on Tony's commentary in that book) drove it into the forefront. All I can say is that again, I am into 1999 of my watching and seen highlights of both. I rewatched the entire 1997 and 1998 Nitros around five years ago and thought Tony was great in 1997 and serviceable in 1998. The highlights of 1998 on the yearbook showed Tony could still be mostly good as he talked about things he was passionate about (Jericho, Flair, etc). Jim Ross can been seen as a positive for calling Oddities stuff bowling shoe ugly or saying Good Lord at something Russo created, but I give more credit to Tony for trying to make sense of that situation and portray the storyline that creative is wanted to get across, no wonder how warped that perception is.

Thread killer: why give Hennan a pass while downgrading Tony. I'm entering 1999 and only in 1998 did I feel Ross gained momentum over Tony. Even still, I think Tony gets way too much shit for being a shill. Your argument against Whalen spoke about him going into business for himself, how did Ross not do the same at times by being in on it with the fans at home. Tony was a shill and toed the company line which got progressively worse as the company floundered and he became more burnt out, but I do respect at points his loyalty to the company and preserving his job.

Those are glorious.

Another really good match although I also liked the ECW affair a tad better. This one has a much more rudimentary start before going into chaos in third caida. I actually thought for once the run-ins were a welcome addition and made the finish much more frantic overall. Rey having better performances has coincided with the yearbook picking up. ***3/4

This was awesome too and up there with the 2/94 six man as my current favorite M-Pro match. This showed a lot of the mat work facets that will play heavily into M-Pro future as we get later into the decade. Of course, the ending is spectacular with moves galore and a dive train that was exhilarating. Tiger Mask being this young looked like he had a lot of momentum going toward him and hit mostly everything with grace. Him getting the pin was a triumphant moment. ****1/4

So I had shared my thoughts with PeteF and Loss privately about how 1996 was sort of paling in comparison with me compared to 1993 and 1999 and I had felt underwhelmed with stuff so far. That changed with this match. Absolutely great pairings and performances from everyone. This was an all star lineup and they didn't disappoint in crafting a great match mixing in all of the best elements of lucha libre. I especially liked the Santo elimination that PeteF mentions above as being a clever way to eliminate an big gun in a elimination style affair. ****1/4

As someone not exactly fond with either of these teams, I was lower on it than most of the other comments. The opening with the Steiners coming out on Harley's was cool and they did some good power moves but parts of the match felt like these four guys doing their version of a legend match which made me have a disconnect with the match as a whole overall. Nothing terrible, but nothing very good either and mainly here for nostalgia and name purposes. **1/2

I loved this show. Marty sounding like the voice of God with the echo. Some good backstory history. Marty getting quizzed. IRS shitting. Top notch stuff all around.

OJ, interested in your ranking of Perro Aguayo. Ranking him in the strong hand category is certainly nothing damning, but I was surprised to see him lumped with some people like Angel Azteca and El Fararon where Perro has seemed much more consistent in the 80's - early 90's footage I have seen. Do you downgrade Perro based on his later years or his overall brawling tendencies?

He is not over though to that extent. If all you do is have legend vs. legend matches in marquee positions with everyone underneath that, how can they ever be elevated. Will everyone wake up one day and suddenly believe that the underneath stars are now legends? Wrestling has been a time honored position where older stars had to be phased out and newer stars pushed into their position. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't but this has been the cycle of what has been successful for over a hundred years.

I really enjoyed the match but certainly see those criticisms. I will need to rewatch without a live setting as I was really amazed at how invested I was in the match overall knowing Honma had a less than 5% chance of winning. I think overall between heavy New Japan fans, you are starting to see some fatigue on the style overall between the Ishii stuff and the IWGP junior tag. I am still amazed the triple threat tag from Osaka isn't getting more play as for a spotfest, high octane match, I thought it was pretty awesome with everything hit cleanly. Most of the reviews however, had it as another entry.

Naito getting boo'd is a holdover from his 2013 G-1 win and run that resulted in the crowd turning on him and bumping up Nakamura vs. Tanahashi as the main event of WrestleKingdom based off of fan vote. Osaka is the most vocal crowd against him.

Rush for sure is the closest. He was the one guy when people were discussing Nakamura as the runaway Observer charismatic winner that I would have put in the same league. He has a great ability to illicit a response and really knows how to utilize his move set to match his reactions.