KB8

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.

Yeah, I listened on a bit and you guys mentioned that Virgil was the Kamala replacement. Who replaced Bastion Booger? He was another guy that seemed to be scheduled to show up and never did so. I started watching all the '94 RAWs a few years back and Bastion did guest commentary on one episode where all he did was make bad food puns. I think it was Holly's TV debut that episode and Booger said he should start wearing a helmet because people were sick of him already. Oh, Bastion. How right you were.

"Height of my I.R.S. fandom." I love the idea of Parv running around telling his classmates to ditch the Pogs and put down the Pokemon for ten minutes to watch the taxman win the IC belt. Ludgiv Borga was a total enigma for me as seven year old. He was scheduled to appear so often and he always seemed to be replaced by someone. Wasn't he replaced in the '94 Rumble by Virgil or Bob Holly or something? Rubbish.

Tamura/Yamamoto from '99 is probably the most acclaimed (among this circle of fans, anyway) match to ever happen that I still haven't seen. It's one of those matches that I kind of want to save for a special occasion before watching, which probably sounds dumb, but whatever. Right now I'm looking at getting hold of every RINGS show from of the 90s so I'll probably get to it in about six years. Big fan of that #1 pick. I haven't seen it in about a decade and even then it was the clipped version that was floating about back then, but I love that I went through the top 50 and the closer it got to the end the more hypothetical #1s were falling until I had no idea what match would finish top. I should probably watch the newest version already.

I was hoping this would be fun and I was not disappointed. Young and eager Tamura with a point to prove is the best. Maybe somebody in his life told him he wouldn't amount to much and this is him out to prove that that person was a fucking idiot. Maybe it was Nakano who told him because Tamura is even more hot-headed than normal. Usually he has a chip on his shoulder, but this time he had the whole bag of McCoy's. He refuses to shake Nakano's hand at the start and once again comes out with the double quick matwork, everything carrying a real sense of urgency. Nakano can't hang on the mat like that, but I thought it was pretty cool for the NARRATIVE~ how he just used his size advantage to wear Tamura down. At times it amounted to him rolling on top of Tamura and slowly working for position - which wasn't all that interesting, it must be said - but it worked for him because he started to open up a points lead. It also pissed off Tamura and young, pissed off Tamura is a blast. The more he struggles with Nakano's little medicine ball body the harder he works, and that leads to an awesome spot where he shoots in for a takedown and gets absolutely wiped with a knee to the face. Tamura's KO sell was wonderful, as was Nakano casually walking away like it wasn't even a thing. This of course only extends the points gap - Nakano hasn't dropped a single point yet while Tamura has lost half a dozen - and it makes Tamura even MORE annoyed. He starts shit talking and slapping Nakano and they both throw nasty little pot shots, because Nakano won't take that guff from anyone. At some point Nakano's nose starts bleeding (I mean, of course it does) and Tamura slaps him across the face, so Nakano throws a kind of downward palm thrust like he's trying to mash Tamura's head into the canvas. His flurry of palms strikes that dropped Tamura a second time was another really great spot. This all builds to the finish where Tamura basically shit talks Nakano into throwing one too many high kicks and Tamura catches him with an ankle lock. I liked this a bunch.

I'm shocked he had Hansen/Kobashi in the 60s as well. IIRC it was his MOTY after going through the '93 yearbook the first time (revised thoughts on that are probably on the board somewhere and I've just missed them).

Total RnR formula match, but I love RnR formula and this was a really nifty iteration of it. All of the early shine was good and we got to see Dan Kroffat bump and stooge in ways we never did in All Japan. He still has the cool offence too, like a big giant swing and a weird Doomsday Device thing that was basically just a lariat off the second turnbuckle. Jaggers has some nice bumps off of back body drops and it felt like we got a better handle of how good he was in this than the Youngbloods strap match. He runs distractions and knows how to work a crowd, cuts off Morton, stooges and was generally pretty fun. Morton juicing gave his heat segment a little extra bite as well, because you had Jaggers and Kroffat punching him in the cut and ramming him into the post. I liked this a bunch, but then you could stick pretty much any two wrestlers in there with Morton and Gibson and I'd likely enjoy it.

This was more like the Dutch you want. In the Gran Guera matches he sort of hung back and stayed out the way, but he was obviously a central focus in this. Abby jumps him at the bell and slams him on the table, then the fork comes out and Dutch is cut open a few minutes in. Abby chucks him out the ring and Dutch happens to land beside the guy who's holding Shoo Baby, so of course Dutch gets back in and lets loose with the whip. DQ finish probably isn't surprising (Hugo on commentary suggests it won't be surprising to Abby either, but he's never cared about such things anyway), but I love Chicky passing Abby a coat-hanger and Abby using it to try and strangle Mantell. I was hoping for a short, fun brawl out of these two and that's what I got.

JT is by far the worst of the Americans Takada has brought in. It's difficult to bullshit your way through shoot style because if you can't do it properly then it's glaringly obvious, and it's already likely the hardest style in all of wrestling to work, so he really had no chance. At times Yamazaki looks disinterested because he knows he's saddled with an unenviable task and it's pointless to even try and make this compelling. Once or twice it looked like he might've considered taking liberties and just wasting JT, but then he'd reel back. Southern can't really do anything on the mat and his stand up is basically putting a shoddy guard up. Finish was kind of hokey. Maybe the ref' decided to be merciful.

Well this was tremendous. It's a total "underdog trying to step up to the plate" story and Tamura has the biggest chip on his shoulder the whole way through. Right at the start you see it when he dumps Anjoh a couple times and tells him to bring it. Anjoh will sometimes do something dickheaded and it just annoys Tamura and makes him even more desperate to prove himself at Anjoh's expense. He throws some slaps and you can tell it gets to Anjoh, because he responds by throwing brutal knees to the body in explosive flurries of annoyance at what this kid is doing. When he gets REALLY annoyed he pushes the envelope a bit and drops some super nasty knees across Tamura's head, and that leads to an awesome moment where Tamura repays the favour and Anjoh looks at him almost in disbelief. The nerve of this kid, who does he think he is? Anjoh grabs hold of Tamura's hair to prevent him from putting on a half crab, so Tamura drops the hold and just slaps him across the face. He knows how Anjoh is and he knows the last thing you can do is let him take liberties. It was a great dynamic and it ran through the whole match. Defensively this was a spectacular performance from Tamura. The speed on some of the ground exchanges was astonishing and Tamura would constantly roll out of or reverse situations that looked dangerous. When people talk about defensive wrestlers, at least in a shoot style context, the guy I think of as the bar setter is Fujiwara. I'm not saying Tamura is better, but at this point I think he's right on that same level, albeit in a different sort of way. Defensively Fujiwara was wily. He used all of his smarts along with the stellar ground game. He'd sometimes sucker guys in, and when he looked most vulnerable he'd completely flip the script and submit them, or at least use their fervor to finish the match against them in some way. With Tamura, it's his athleticism that's remarkable. His speed on counters, how he can wriggle free and instantly turn a position where he's almost caught in an armbar into a position that's advantageous. There were plenty examples in this, but the best might've been his escape from a front facelock straight into a go-behind. That probably doesn't seem terribly special just from reading about it, but it was breathtaking in execution and judging by the crowd response I wasn't the only one who was taken aback by it. Towards the end you could see him starting to tire, Anjoh's strikes to the body starting to wear him down more and more. He keeps on coming because he refuses to be denied and the crowd stay firmly behind him, but he was already fighting an uphill battle on the feet and it's tough to keep going on the mat when you've been kicked and kneed in the guts for fifteen minutes. You can have the strongest engine in the game, but that takes its toll. After the match Anjoh hangs around for a little while, because even a shithead like Anjoh can appreciate Tamura's effort. Real recognise real. Tamura had less than ten matches in his career at this point, btw. That's David Robinson averaging 24 and 12 in his rookie season level.

Man, I fucking loved this. I wouldn't really think of shoot style as being the environment most conducive to big spectacles, but UWFi always did things a little differently and this had just the right amount of pro style to make it a heck of a fun spectacle. This is one of the better Albright performances I've seen. He came across as a total monster, just destroying guys with suplexes and clubbing them about the head. Whenever Yamazaki or Anjoh landed a strike of any sort it felt like an accomplishment because Gary was able to either block or catch most of them. Even something like a Yamazaki high kick that would go over Gary's head had people stirring, just because the shot actually got close. The first exchange with Anjoh was awesome because Anjoh is so totally out of his depth with the size difference and he knows it. Albright just walked through Anjoh's kicks, grabbed hold of him and tossed him. There was one bit later where Albright got in close and Anjoh had to resort to dropping to his knees to avoid being suplexed, but Albright just grabbed him anyway and Anjoh had this amazing "oh I am fucked" expression as he got launched with a deadlift German. The Albright/Yamazaki exchanges were great as well; maybe even better than Albright/Anjoh. Yamazaki has a longer reach on his kicks and the first one that truly landed got a huge pop, then later when Yamazaki manages to suplex him the crowd responds with a big Yamazaki chant. Boss isn't great, but all he has to do as Albright's partner is not lose. His kicks were super light and he never had much to offer on the ground, but he was vocal with his selling and took a Yamazaki roundhouse kick square in the face. So fair play to him, I guess. Last stretch had some nice drama with Albright chucking Anjoh around, and there were a couple women in the crowd who looked terrified for him. Anjoh straight dives at Albright and catches him with a knee and the two women start to believe, but then Gary clubs him and grabs him around the waist and the women literally cover their eyes because they know what's coming. Anjoh makes it up to his feet after the first German (which was fucking disgusting) and sort of staggers towards his corner. He doesn't really know where he is, but he's close enough where he could probably tag out. Albright realises and charges him again, going in for the kill, and this time Anjoh doesn't get back up.

Is that the one where Hayes cuts the promo before it talking about his Farrah Fawcett hair? Maybe that just happened to be the promo before this match on Will's Gordy set, which is where I first saw the match. And yeah, if it's the same one, it's great.

Is Brody heel at this point or is throwing chairs at kids a babyface thing in Puerto Rico? I don't like either of these guys, but strangely enough my favourite singles match from both is probably against each other. And hey, I thought this had some good stuff! Dory channels his brother and throws a chair in the ring, so Brody grabs it and smashes it to pieces on the ring post. In an awesome touch, Dory takes a piece of the broken chair, hides it in the trunks and uses it to jab Brody in the head the first chance he gets. He then drags him outside and chucks him into the crowd and starts hitting him with another chair, and I'm not used to Dory getting wild like that. Eventually Brody comes back and fucking wellies Dory in the head with a revenge chair shot...but then it settles down a bit and they work a pretty mediocre brawl. Nobody bled buckets, no riots were nearly started. It was short, though. I actually thought the first half of this was shockingly fun and the second half was passable enough, and it's not like it stuck around forever. I think I feel comfortable saying these two are an okay match-up for each other. Minus that absolute stinker they had in All Japan. We'll forget that one ever happened.

This is one of those matches where Invader, even in the mask, bleeds and sells the blood loss like he is who he is, but you still wish he was mask-less so you get the facial expressions to go with the body language and punch-drunk stumbling around. Muta controls most of this and Invader gets his ass beat, but every time it looks like Muta might escape Invader grabs a leg to prevent it. When you think it's just a matter of time, Invader produces the almighty equaliser and punts Muta in the balls. Muta blades and about two seconds later his face is entirely red. Sick, sick blade job. He also gets crotched up top and that looked fucking nasty as well. Cool finish, too.