Stiva

Jesus Christ, Cornette, take a breath. A very solid segment that works in getting Dinsmore over and showcases just about every facet of his game. He bumps well, has some good offense and even cuts a pair of decent enough promos. He comes across as the most polished developmental guy we've seen yet so it's pretty strange that it took them 4 years after this to call him up. The booking is just self-parody at this point; two back-to-back ref bumps while motor mouth Cornette screeches over the top of everything. You can't have every match end clean since you need to build heat but there's no invention or creativity with this stuff, just endless run-ins and ref bumps.

Man, Guido is/was so underrated. I like Kid Kash but here, he's pretty generic and it's all on Guido to keep things interesting. He manages to find great counters to all of Kash's spots, makes his own stuff look great and tops it off with some great mouthing off to the crowd. A simple match but one that was worked at a good pace with enough to keep it interesting.

Speaking of Paige, PWInsider says that WWE are refusing to clear her after her latest neck injury so it seems like she may be done at 25.

The Lanny Poffo entry is awesome.

A pretty dry tag all in all, even if the individual work was good. Hansen was limited as hell by this point but he still knew exactly when to interject himself, time his spots and inject them all with enough energy to spark things into life briefly. Kobashi put in a pretty subdued performance so the bulk likes on Smith and Akiyama. I'll always enjoy just about everything Akiyama does but this really felt like a showcase for Smith who was given a lot of offence, chances to bump and sell and some near-falls toward the end. Despite all that, I'm not sure he ever rose above "decent" in those departments and I actually enjoyed him a lot more down the stretch where he was striking and working at a quicker pace. Though, I guess you need the matwork and build to make those moments count. Maybe it's a better match than my initial thoughts but I'm not sure it warranted 20 minutes.

Cena/Taker at Mania should have happened years ago, when the streak meant something. Running it as a quasi-nostalgia/WRESTLEMANIA MOMENT! match, in 2018, is more proof that Mania may as well take place out of main continuity. EDIT: Turns out I said something like this before, oh well.

Man, what an angle that I totally forgot about. The Dudleys are great as total bastards and the dynamic of Bubba being the deranged asshole and D-Von being the more put-together asshole is a nice touch. The match was a really fun sprint with Christian in bump machine mode once more, a spirited hot tag from Edge and a crowd that is slowly and surely anointing these guys as the new faces of the tag division. But really, this is all about the angle which, in any other era, would be a recipe for nuclear heat. Instead, I believe Edge and Christian were heels a month or so later and the Dudleys were the faces, powerbombing Mae Young through tables. What a strange old world it was.

I want everything that doesn't make me dig through various external hard drives so if they flesh out 90s WCW up until Nitro, I'll send a hamper full of fine cheeses.

Some great, intense wrestling, even with the caveat of the clipping. I LOVED the camera angle on Olimpico's opening tope with the inadvertent birdseye view as he just disappeared off screen like a missile. This is definitely what you'd want; great mask ripping, fantastic rudo work from Panther where he's just sitting Olimpico down in front of his fans and just beating the shit out of him and a heated comeback. I really liked the finish with Olimpico stooping to Panther's level and grabbing the rope for leverage. A shame we don't have the full monty but CMLL continues to deliver the goods. Easily the best promotion in the world after a month of 2000.

God damn, look at Perry Saturn's shirt! I think that was louder than the crowd heat. More great promo work from HHH and Cactus and you almost forget how well built their program was and it's no surprise that the booking, combined with strong HHH performances like this, were the things that finally got him hot. The match is just fantastic; if there's a better Raw main event in 2000, I certainly can't remember it. A great showcase for every single guy, the Radicals get to look strong and debuting them alongside the hottest stars in the company was a masterstroke at establishing all 4 of them off the belt. The Rock and Foley are just next level over, Rikishi and Benoit seem like total break-out stars and you even have guys like Christopher and X-Pac, who have been around forever, looking as hot and relevant as ever in their segments. Yeah, the ending is botched slightly but it's quickly forgotten about as Kane's return is one of the best of this era at a time where he wasn't incredibly stale. The work itself may not be mind-blowing but it's one of those matches where the heat, the pace and the overall excitement of the promotion's new direction helps elevate it to another level. Transcendent pro wrestling.

Yeah, it seems like Christian was a great worker right out of the gate and I really have no recollection of the Hardys, Dudleys and E+C interacting with each other this early before the Mania build-up but it seems like all of the seeds were planted early. This was a fun little tag match and probably the best I've seen the Outlaws look for a long time since they both worked hard, even if Road Dogg's offense never changed from face to heel. The Dudleys were great on commentary but helpfully aided by JR going with them and giving some great back and forth, something that would never happen in the buzzword-driven style of today's WWE.

Cornette's booking is killing me, god damn. Between that and his inability to stop screaming on commentary, he's a lock for "Most Obnoxious" so far this year. I mean, where do you even start? It was a perfectly fine little TV match until all the nonsense started. You've got a heel ref, refs making the saves on other refs and a guy who isn't even in the match getting the pin. Total dross. Also, Rico's look and offense here is embarrassingly outdated. He looks like he would be getting squashed by Jake Roberts on Superstars and the whole "dropkick and pump fists" routine is the kind of thing that The Rockers were doing 10 years before this. Even by 2000, wrestling had well and truly passed Cornette by.

Man, I'm with Loss; I thought this was a fantastic little chunk of wrestling. It's pretty much exactly what I like out of my TV wrestling. A hard-hitting, energetic match with hard work and strong performances. I loved just about everything Iizuka gave out here as he just steamrolled around the place, choking guys and getting them in holds. It was a little thing but him pulling Chono's arm back and forth during the armbar was a little touch that made a basic move look so much more violent. I could watch Hash attack dudes all day but his sequence with Chono at the start was a really well put together one. Once more, NJPW are finding the balance of shoot style and their own in which both are aiding each other.

I really enjoyed this, which surprised me. I agree that it was pretty immaculately laid out, from the opening exchanges to Frye's dominance to the great Sasaki comeback, all aided by two good performances. Frye had some nice moments peppered through (the headbutts in the corner were choice) but his general role as badass holds expert was done to perfection with some real torque and he bumped nicely when he had to. Still though, this was Sasaki's match; he sold perfectly, bumped well, had some real snap and whip on his own holds at the start and his comeback was timed, and executed, perfectly. I've never been Sasaki's biggest fan but I think it's probably time I used this project to reappraise him.

Enjoyable enough but it's starting to feel like these ECW fancam matches are loaded with plunder out of obligation, rather than anything else. So, it becomes less about the impact of the weapons and more about how the workers build to using each of them. And Crazy, after his series with Tajiri, should know this better than anyone and he stops this from being too meandering with some good energy. I winced and had to look away when he landed right on the table leg at the end and thank God, he didn't hurt him himself because man, that looked nasty. Still, I'd have much rather watched a straight-up match between the two but I understand that wasn't going to happen in front of this crowd at this point but I'm really becoming burned out on table spots. So, I'm happy I have the entire WWF Tag Division to watch this summer.

I've complained about them running Money in the Bank matches at Mania in the past but this year seems like it would be the perfect avenue to run that match and give Rusev a run to the title. So, I'm assuming he'll be squandered on the pre-show

Ah, the genuine reaction of pumping your arms up and down in the air and chanting "Yes!"

Yeah, they're actually undermining a lot of good they're doing by constantly slapping themselves on the back for pushing women. Still, a women's Rumble is a nice little surprise. I'm assuming the two Rumbles bookend the show. Have they confirmed how many workers are in the women's match?

This is a great point and surely, the more savvy board members of WWE will be resistant to it? I know for a fact that a Mr. Levesque will see a massive opportunity stemming from this, if everything pans out how people are expecting.

I love the idea of Trump calling Vince to do a run-in on the NFL but am incredibly saddened that the world has become so crazy that it's a viable thought to have.

Yeah, I think this falls short of last month's but agree that this was helped by Crazy really bringing it. I like the idea that Tajiri dragged him down to his level since every time he was on offense, there was fantastic urgency and I thought the leg drop through the table outside being slightly overshot was perfect, like he's not really trying to aim, he's just so pissed off that he's driving him through the table with any part of his body he can muster. Tajiri continues to be WOTY, well, my own personal WOTY anyway since he continues to find new ways to be an unholy bastard. Rubbing Crazy's bloodied face on the ref's shirt and then spitting the same blood into the crowd and I even liked the finish, even if the chairs on top of Crazy were a slight bit of overkill. Still, these two have great chemistry and are able to pull off a great heated brawl. In a company where table spots are passe, these matches really do have an extra dimension.

Evil Liger is a total revelation at this point since I don't believe I've ever seen it before. Kendo and Samurai were having a decent little back and forth - with a great corner bump by Samurai - but Liger comes in and everything escalates. I LOVE how it seems that he's not coming off as sadistic or evil but rather pissed off that Tanaka has had the gall to attack him first. The stomps and slaps all come across as Liger thinking "OK, I'm going to put this little asshole in his place" Tanaka brought what he had to in a fun fired up babyface performance; Liger was snapping extra hard on his stuff but Tanaka was ricocheting and selling them perfectly. I'd prefer to see the opening minutes to see more Liger in the early stages but what we got was another continuation of what is some fascinating work from him.

You get a ton of press releases from major companies that sound like that so I can't blame them too much. Check out any EA press release that manages to stretch 3 sentences into 10 through overly convoluted marketing spiel and their attempts to get across their "brand values". I don't think their silly way of saying "We want to diversify to maximise our profit streams" necessarily crosses over into "WWE Universe" since it's something all companies do in press releases like this. The fact that Vince thinks this way of speaking translates into actual dialogue that human beings speak reflects badly on him rather than something that was probably drafted by some office worker somewhere. I imagine Facebook's press release for this is just as cringe-inducing.

20 minute episodes don't fill me with much confidence of some good matches coming from this. Unless it's one 10 minute match a show and then whatever social bullshit they frame it with taking up the other 10? I'm all for a Braun/Asuka team running through everyone in a series of 4 minute sprints though.

Woke Matt Hardy would be a much better gimmick. Just a socialist dude trying to educate his fellow white man about feminism.