KB8

Watching this live I thought it was a blast, too. I thought their Summerslam match got a bit long in the tooth, but they never really bothered with any feeling out process here and went into the bomb-throwing early, and they cut a pretty hot pace until the last few minutes when they started to slow it down some. At points it felt like I was watching them work a joshi bombfest sprint, which ordinarily is not my bag at all, but I liked it a bunch here (everybody in the place going apeshit probably helped, tbf). For all of that, though, Cena punctuating the bomb-trading by throwing some plain old huge clotheslines to the face were maybe my favourite moments. Styles is really great right as well, from the offence to the bumping. I really ought to check out those matches with Reigns from last year. I've watched all of about eight matches from 2017, but this is pretty handily my favourite so far.

I already mentioned in another thread that it was around this point that I got back into following WWF after checking out for most of '99, and I remember being pretty stunned at how over Rikishi was - and to a lesser extent how Too Cool were as well - when I started paying attention again. I took to Rikishi almost right off the bat, though, and I was gutted when Helmsley managed to slink away with the belt after the DQ. I don't really remember him going very deep into the year with the same kind of momentum he had here, but for the first couple months of 2000 Rikishi was as over as anyone in the company not named The Rock. Loss touched on it in this thread already, and he's brought it up on twitter as well, but it's super refreshing to see crowds legitimately biting on HHH nearfalls in sub-ten minute TV matches. I thought the booking of this was really strong overall. And I'm a bit less down on Stephanie doing commentary than our PWO2K founders. She wasn't amazing or anything, but I didn't think she was outright awful, either. She definitely improved a good bit as a character over the course of the year, though. Watch her during Helmsley's Last Man Standing match with Jericho at Fully Loaded. So, so hateable.

Yeah, this is a really fun TV segment all round. Rock dropping his catchphrases, Angle picking up some nice heat, Rock dropping more catchphrases - with the crowd eating up all of it with the biggest possible spoon - and a short and sweet match. Angle celebrating the dodgy DQ victory like he'd won a world title was amusing, and of course Rock came back again to give the people what they wanted. I also had no recollection of Angle and Stephanie having any interaction so early in the year. That's some pretty exceptional long term booking if they were planting seeds for that way back here.

This was ugly and nasty in the best way possible. I've always loved the highs of this anyway, but on re-watch it had less downtime than I remembered as well. There was the headlock segment early doors, but that's really the only point I can think of where they weren't at least smacking each other in the mouth. Old man Tenryu being a bastard to people is the guy I'd pick if I could only watch one wrestler for the rest of my life, so obviously I loved him chopping Sasaki in the throat and punching him in the jaw, but Sasaki being as much of a bastard right back was equally great. He was laying in some of those shots even harder than Tenryu was, and it led to that great moment where Tenryu just sits on the bottom rope, half in a daze, with this amazing "fuck my life already" look on his face. On top of it all you had the meaty lariats, the one or two bombs being used to full effect, and the sub-15 minute length so as to prevent much fat. This is pretty much shorthand for Tokyo Dome main event to me and I don't think I'll ever not love it (and it isn't even the best match on the card).

As far as bombfest sprints go, that was pretty dang great. Cena's lariats when he tries to rip a guy's face off are just the best.

Charlotte gets more and more fun every time I see her. I thought she was fucking awesome in that.

I fucking love Estrada/Cruz. Like, truly love it. Estrada being so minced he falls face-first into the ring post because he can't properly walk along the ring apron >>>>

I'm a fan of what Mutoh's done with his hair here. He looks like the little monk from the first season of Vikings. His gear is of course very cool. It took me a bit to get into this, with the first ten minutes or so not being all that engaging, but I thought it picked up when Chono started going after the neck. A couple of those piledrivers looked pretty ugly. I kind of struggle with these two in general, but I did at least like the story they went for in the last two thirds, and I do agree with Loss' point that Mutoh sticking to the dragon screw actively added to it, even if it wasn't necessarily the most dynamic way of dishing out offence. I haven't watched the '91 Climax final in about a decade, so I have no idea what I'd think of it now, but other than that (I mean, I guess) this might actually be my favourite Mutoh v Chono match.

Tanaka and Kashin having the cross-armbreaker as their answer to everything was cool, especially with how they were able to grab it from almost anywhere, but my favourite parts of this were the bits where Tanaka or Kashin would get fed up being treated like scrubs and just smack someone. Tanaka's flurry of kicks that ended with Takaiwa selling almost being KO'd was a great response to that monster lariat. Ohtani doing the facewash bit only for Kashin to grab his leg and chuck him dismissively across the ring was cool, too. I wasn't super high on this as a whole, but I did like some of what they were doing and if nothing else they certainly laid into each other.

I went Martel, but I really only looked at this from an in-ring standpoint. The more of him I watch, the more he feels like one of the very best babyfaces ever (I haven't watched heel Martel in years, but I don't imagine he sucked in the role).

60s: Gilbert Cesca & Ben Chemoil v Anton Tejero & Inca Peruano (French Catch, 3/12/65) 70s: Bob Backlund v Greg Valentine (WWF, 2/19/79) 80s: Jerry Lawler v Bill Dundee (Memphis, 12/30/85) 90s: Damiancito el Guerrero v Cicloncito Ramirez (CMLL, 1/7/97) 00s: Daisuke Ikeda v Yuki Ishikawa (FUTEN, 4/24/05) 10s: LA Park v El Mesias (AAA, 6/18/11)

I remember watching this for the first time about thirteen years ago, at a point when I was super high on the junior heavyweights, and my take on it was basically, "well, that wasn't what I wanted at all." I wasn't following Japanese wrestling in 2000, but reading about that period I think the prevailing take on Liger was that he spent most of the year in no-sell mode, with this being the match that kicked it off. Should be interesting to see if that's how it comes off while revisiting it (or most of it, anyway).

Yeah, Benoit was really swinging for the fences with those knife edges. We can probably put Tenzan in with Finlay, Regal and Daniel Puder as the guys that got absolutely shredded with Benoit chops. This was a perfectly solid ten minutes. I've never cared much about Tenzan, but he gave Benoit a decent amount and the crowd at least responded for his stuff, especially the Mongolian chops. Crowd reaction for the triple Germans suggests this was aruond the time Benoit started using it. From memory it feels like he has a pretty big year ahead of him, and this was a fine way to start it.

This was alright, and Show was bumping pretty big, but I was also kind of surprised at how heatless it was. Had no recollection of it not being the main event, either. I always get super nostalgic about this time period of WWF. It was the point where I really started getting back into it again after checking out for most of 1999 (we got rid of Sky in our house around then). I think this was the only RAW of the year I didn't tape, and it was actually while watching the following episode of Heat that I found out Helmsley had won the belt. By the time it got to the Royal Rumble I was all in again. Should be fun revisiting a lot of this stuff for the first time since I was a 14 year old.

Went Colon/Hansen. Piper/Valentine and Sting/Vader are all-timers as well, but I'd been holding off on watching Colon/Hansen for about three years until the Puerto Rico set dropped, and I'd built it up so much in my head that there was almost no way it was going to live up to the hype. Except it did and it was pretty much everything I hoped it'd be. I thought the Eddie/JBL bullrope match from the Great American Bash '04 was really, really good the last time I watched it. Not necessarily up there with the best of the best, but I'd put it in the next tier down. There was a Sawyer/Reed dog collar match on the Mid-South set that I loved as well.

Yeah, this was really good. It's easy to praise (rightly) Bucanero for being a super fun lunatic, with the forehead biting, cheapshots and so on, but I really liked TB's selling in the primera. He was staggering around like he barely knew where he was, and his bumping had a bit of a ragdoll feel to it. With Satanico being who he is on the outside there was always the sense TB was up against it, even if he could manage to come back from the first caida beatdown. Satanico going apeshit post-match might've been my highlight of the whole thing, which speaks to how great Satanico is even when playing cornerman. I'm pretty hyped for the CMLL stuff in 2000 and this didn't disappoint.

This was fairly by-the-numbers, but it had its moments and the third caida was pretty frantic. I don't know if I've ever seen Mr. Mexico before, but he wasn't great in this and I'm not in a hurry to do a deep dive on him. That botched dive was sort of spectacular, though. Violencia's bumping was really fun. He had a knack for waiting until the very last second before rotating all the way over, so there were a couple points where it looked like he was about to land right on his neck. Antifaz had a cracking mask and his dive was nice, but otherwise he was just kind of there. I'll echo the Zumbido praise as well; I dug him quite a bit.

I haven't watched this in a few years, but I also love it and it's probably my US MOTY for 2000. Tajiri's performance is honestly one of my all time favourites. The chair-skimming, shoving the wrench into Crazy's mouth like he's trying to yank out teeth, spitting on fans, just conveying the whole sense of chaos through his actions -- he's a phenomenal little psychopath in this match. I remember thinking Super Crazy maybe was a little too "fresh" during his initial comeback, but it isn't a huge deal. Tajiri was something else in 2000. So much fun.

It's probably been recommended already and I've just missed it, but Shibata/Tanahashi from 7/26/14 is worth Parv's time. I'm not a Tanahashi fan, but I thought he was perfectly good in that match and him having light-ish offence added to the story, with Shibata trying to slaughter him and Tanahashi having to try and combat it with much-weaker-in-comparison strikes. It also features one of the most brutal wrinkles on a rote forearm exchange you'll see. Even the ref' about shit himself.

I actually strongly considered getting this comp as well (mostly for the Yoshida stuff after watching some matches in the home stretch of the GWE project). At this point in my life as a wrestling fan I never thought I'd ever be interested in doing another deep dive on a joshi promotion, but I probably will pick this up pretty soon.

Eddie's character work from this through to the Smackdown match then onto the Great American Bash is some of my favourite character work of anyone ever. He was already pretty nuts at this point, but by the GAB he is a full on headcase. Sometimes it was subtle things, like how his eye would twitch or something, but in the Bash match you believed he was capable of anything.

I remember Polo now, actually. Yeah, he was always pretty fun. Oh yeah, that's right.

I got up to Wrestlemania with the RAWs and they hadn't settled on anyone by that point. They had Whippleman, Savage, IRS, Booger, one time they had Ross. I think they had DiBiase once as well.