soup23

One minor step below their January classic but majestic stuff overall to me. This was the least familiar of their big matches to me so I was interested to rewatch. MJH hit on most of my points but the mirroring of the spots and the even-ness of everything was really refreshing. This had moments that could had teetered on being overblown (Misawa kickout of the moonsault, Kobashi hulking up after the suplex) but they just skirted the line where I was ok with it. I especially loved the early progression of Misawa being worked over and having to use his elbow as the neutralizer and then he goes on a early offensive flurry and tries to put away Kobashi. On the first move, he gets a one count, on the next he gets a two count. Its beautiful progression. Misawa makes his great comeback at the end stage of the match like always but Kobashi this time is up to the challenge with chops and it takes the Tiger Driver 91 to put Kobashi away. Fantastic stuff all around.

Perplexing, plodding match. I understood the sentiment of the pray/ stalking method they were going for with Takayama after Kawada but everything felt disjointed and with no flow. At 18 minutes, this dragged a long way. A perhaps good concept on paper that didn't translate well when performed.

Great read dawho5. You blew through this quickly and it was fun to read.

I love matches like this with two guys overcoming the crowd apprehensions and putting together a great match. The ending sequence was especially good from the Ace moonsault on. Taue being able to hit the nodawa and follow up with the dynamic bomb had everyone look strong coming out.

The cage lowering with Sting from the rafters was an iconic moment. Felt like they were building to a Wargames in a way but damn it was a cool moment.

They used this segment to hype up the Eddy/Rey match in a very effective job. The highlights of Rey make him look so amazing.

Raven is in the playground. This does have a better production edge to it than the nursery one but I cant say I am still very interested.

Really action packed match that made Eddy look really good going into Havoc. They had the crowd going nuts and I loved Eddy making Mickey Jay count the fall.

We open in a panic as the NWO has been attacked again. The main eventers arrive and lose their shit. They storm to the ring wanting questions. Amazing that even though Raw was live this week (I believe) we still had this attack look kind of similar to the Nation locker room angle.

I am starting to wane over these in week three. Starts to feel pretty samey especially since he goes after Phil again.

Action looked fun and it is interesting to see Owen in a babyface role. Tempers flare up and Shawn ends up getting blasted by Bret in a cool moment.

Following Jarrett through the yearbooks has been something else with his constant back and forth and reboots character wise. This is interesting to watch but Jarrett doesn't seem to have the edge to be the one doing all of this straight talking on the mic. We do get a good lord from JR on commetnary when JJ drops the drug addict line.

Faroqq is at least being featured pretty well again as I don't remember him being mixed up so prominently in all of this. He demands Bret to get his pale ass out here. DX is doing good at trolling everyone. Chaos ensues and again SCSA looks like a complete star. I liked Bret still getting the pinfall.

Really good video mixing in some newer clips and newer names likes Justin Credible and Bigelow tossing out Spike. I really liked this video from ECW.

This was bizarre as we get clips of Pillman in ECW but no sound. Just an overdub of white noise.

Setup to the end angle felt dumb. No reason for security to be doing everything in their power to prevent Flair from getting in the ring and the whole NWO just comes out after the break to beat up Piper and DDp. I did like DDp getting some kicks in on Hogan and they missed a singles match between those two at perhaps Slamboree. Bischoff comes down gloating and we get a cool angle with Savage hitting the elbow ( with Tony doubting that his neck is still hurt). Stings start emerging and I liked that the real one got in and hit Bagwell before bailing. Starrcade as Hogan vs. Sting. Flair/DDP/Piper/Benoit vs. Nash/Syxx/Savage/Hennig and Larry vs. Hall sounds like a good trio to blow off the entire feud.

Pipers logic for letting the Larry Z tag title decision stand made a lot of sense. We have Bischoff and Savage out and it ends with a beatdown of Piper with Hogan dressed as Sting. Sting real or fake hasnt came around for a long time. At least with the Sting they showed here on the entrance it was only for a brief second so the announcers could be confused. Good hype for Havoc.

This tried a little too hard. Page tries to present himself as still being hungry but the different cuts and closeup made it too produced for my liking.

Cool moment on a MOnday night with two world tag title changes. Crowd pop for Steiners win was nuts.

This was ok but just ages bad in retrospect as Raven acts entitled but has no drive currently to do something about it.

This series continues to be a fun look back. This one was a little more brief than I would have liked but did feature some nice comments from Santo and Eddy challenging him to a apuestas match.

Really liked how cohesive Macho and Hogan have been and miss that. Feels like they should have been the two vs. the Wolfpack in 1998 if they were going to do a split. This is a good promo to give a hook for the rest of the show that an attack on Piper and DDP will occur.

Fun finish using a variety of tricks to build to crescendo. Cletus gets his exit from the Godwins. Nice moment for LOD.

Cornette corners in on Phil Muschnick. This may have some Vince influence but it sounds like a typical Cornette rant which was fresh at this time before being done to death.

LOD talks about the MSG win. I like how they are weaving in this story throughout the show. Sweet segment with Austin and Vince. Vince putting on the glasses and Lawler and the crowd picking up on how out of touch he looks was a great moment. The roars for Austin are out of control. Austin ends the segment by stunning Rock. So much stuff in this segment for the future.