Found Footage Friday: WWE IN AUSTRALIA~! BABE FACE~! FANTASMA~! SUPER ASTRO~! SCORPIO~! SATANICO~! EMILIO~!

Super Astro/Fantasma vs. Babe Face/Scorpio WWA Olympic Auditorium 09/12/87

MD: This has been sitting in plain sight for a few years but was thankfully was brought to light by the Wrestling Playlists newsletter recently. It hits so many of the marks you'd want with four very talented wrestlers doing their thing in a slightly alien place for slightly alien promotion. Super Astro is this tightly contained ball of energy, a little shorter than his peers, a little stockier than you'd expect, but it's almost like there's a wick counting down on him and he's always ready to explode. It gives his roles and vaults and stylized tricks an extra bit of oomph. They're things that would be impressive regardless but with him it's all somehow supercharged, and Scorpio, bald and wide and spry took it all so well. He shoved Fantasma before the bell and Fantasma bounced back off the ropes and shoved him back, causing him to bump huge. That's just the sort of guy Scorpio was.

I wouldn't say this had a rudo ref so much as the rudo was holding the tecnicos to far higher standards. That meant they withheld tags in a way that you don't usually see in lucha (though the out of the ring rule was definitely in play) and it allowed the rudos to stay in charge in the primera. That built the pressure for the comeback, even through the end of the fall and a nice double takover onto Fantasma and subsequent submission. You can tell the pressure was up beacuse there was an upset Granny at ringside. 

It was interesting because they used the ref taking back/not allowing tags to build heat but the moment of comeback was wholly within the ring on a bit of rudo miscommunication. From there things went even with it looking like the tecnicos might get swept under again only to outquick and outslick the rudos, all building to Astro knocking Scorpio out and landing on him with a senton through the ropes to the floor. Brutal stuff and Scorpio either bladed or got bust open. Either way, he was a bloody mess. That was the equalizer as simultaneously Fantasma was doing a ridiculous submission in Tombstone position on Babe Face (who I have less to say about here but he was perfectly fine in his role).

The tercera was full of the sort of great exchanges you'd expect until Scorpio was able to go behind on Fantasma off the ropes, using his momentum to push him through the ropes and right into a waiting chairshot from Babe Face. From there it was an academic 2-on-1 with them picking up Astro repeatedly after having him beat. That sort of hubris didn't lead to comeuppance though as they finished him off after one of Babe Face's great off-center running sentons and a nasty legdrop from Scorpio. I'm sure this led to some phenomenal return match we don't have, but at least we have this.

ER: You show up for a match like this to see what Super Astro might do, but then you leave getting to see  stocky rudo toughness from Babe Face and Scorpio. Super Astro is must watch in any setting. You're always going to get something worth writing about. Imagine seeing this stocky little guy in LA doing a slingshot senton to the floor in 1987. It's great. But this is a match that makes you want to watch more Babe Face and Scorpio. Scorpio Sr.! I have not seen much Scorpio Sr. He is as ugly as his son in a completely different way, more hideous monster way. He also looks like the perfect wrestler. Wide, round, ugly, bald, cocky. He's got a fat buff guy or buff fat guy body squeezed into a red King Kong Bundy double strap that you wish could be pulled off as well in modern wrestling but everyone is shaped wrong. Babe Face, it turns out, also has a perfect pro wrestling physique. He is stocky and muscular and compact and powerful. He's Bill Dundee with 20 pounds of thick bulk. He is one of three of the smallest most powerful men, wrestling inside of the largest ring in wrestling history. You fill not believe how long it takes Super Astro to run ropes in this ring. It's incredible. 

We all love Super Astro and we love the way he is in a competition with himself to take higher back body drops. But this hits peaks whenever Babe Face or Scorpio are throwing punches and chops and headbutts. Babe Face headbutts Super Astro in the eye socket to force a tag out and I thought we were going to get a bloody mask hole Super Astro match. He is stocky rudo cocktease, pouncing Astro to the floor to interrupt a dive, cameras catching a great close up of Scorpio's mug before he overhand chops Astro out of his boots. Things build throughout to big Babe Face/Fantasma showdowns, until Babe Face fucking BRAINS Fantasma with an open folding chair to the top of the head while Fantasma was draped over the ropes. The announcers say something about Intrepidos Punks, so either they're describing these two stocky men of differing beauty, or they're advertising the late 80s movie of the same name and either way makes this great. Los Intrepidos Punks lay a fucking beating on Astro while Fantasma's corpse is under the ropes, slapping him back and forth, Babe Face hitting full weight sentons, kneeling on his chest and groin while Scorpio holds a legdrop like the most smug sideburn asshole.  

I liked Fantasma's aggressively pistoning 69 bearhug. 

Emilio Charles vs. Satanico [hair vs hair] CMLL 3/20/98? 

MD: Pretty unique hair match here though one that hits a lot of the right notes despite that and despite some goofiness. As best as I can tell, this is rudo vs. rudo though Charles is the clear crowd favorite. Satanico gets an early ambush and starts dismantling Charles like only he can. No one is better in the history of wrestling at orchestrating violence, including his own. The bump Charles takes into the third row, head over heels, is excellent. Charles starts to mount some comebacks (including one really nice Fujiwara armbar reversal out of a grounded abdominal stretch that's lucha loose but symbolically perfect) but the ref (who apparently he hit the week before?) seems to get in his way each time and Satanico finally gets the caida on a backslide with a fast count.

That causes Charles to start complaining to the commission. Rey Mendoza is out there and says that Charles has a stipulation in his contract that he can call for a change in ref so Babe Richard comes out to take over. Meanwhile, Charles is unloading on Satanico, including tossing him into the crowd. Satanico is able to sneak in a foul though and locks in the Satan's Knot. That seems like the end and the end to Charles' hair, but he gets lost in the moment and refuses to let go and the ref awards the caida to Charles. So it's a bit of an odd dynamic with the ref switch and Satanico basically winning the second fall only to have it overturned. It all gets paid off in the tercera with Charles getting a foul in of his own and everything building to another Satan's Knot only for Charles to fight his way out of it and lock in this great Gory Special (where he has to slowly bring his hands together) before dropping down with it into a pin. I wouldn't call this the most primal match or the quickest path between two points but these guys were so good and they made this work so well for what it was.

ER: The ugliest default babyface fighting dirty through getting punched in the forehead and thrown into the third row by the devil. Satan himself throwing short punches aimed to open up an ugly man's forehead and biting him. I love situations where Charles became the tecnico. He is good at working through tecnico stages of a three fall match, peaking the reactions in the tercera and getting bigger reactions with consecutive quebradoras while the crowd loudly hates Satanico for breaking holds with biting at men's thighs. The devil fights dirty when the devil's beautiful head of hair is at stake. Satanico is a great rudo because he also wrestlers through submissions like the tecnico, pulling each limb with celebratory swipes like he's an Olympic runner raising both arms through the finish line. It makes Charles' win, through a biased ref and the persistent devil himself, even more of an ugly man tecnico triumph. I thought the execution on Charles' tercera-winning Gory Special was so good for this specific match. A fought for Gary, Charles' hands clasped, drawing out the inescapable backslide. 

It didn't get as violent as I expected it would, for a match I knew nothing about. When you start with Satanico biting and punching at a cut you expect escalation and that violent escalation never comes. We also don't get the actual haircutting. Satanico knew that he looked like a totally different badass when he had his head shaved and I wanted to see what that looked like at 50.  

Batista/Chris Jericho/Chris Benoit vs. Triple H/Ric Flair/Edge WWE 4/8/05

MD: New Richard Land Handheld from Australia right after Wrestlemania 21. Some of those names should worry you for a 50 minute clip, maybe, but this is house show bullshit and that's the best bullshit there is. Plus it's about ten minutes of entrances and pre-match talking and ten minutes of them breaking down the ring. I thought I was going to be taking one for the team here but I had fun with this. The pre-match yapping was ridiculous with Triple H going on about how terrible Australia was and how in America they had an army that could kick their asses, the Salvation Army. Basically the most definitional Triple H stuff imaginable. Batista's retort was short and sweet (he had just won the title), and the crowd was hot for all of this really.

All of the early exchanges were fun. Benoit and Edge started. Benoit chopped Edge out of the corner. Edge went for a tag. Both Triple H and Flair dropped down to avoid it. Jericho came in and Batista and Benoit cheerlead the crowd in a Y2J chant. Flair came in, had a chop off with Jericho so the fans could chant woo and then walked into the babyface corner to eat a bunch of punches and take the first flop (of many) of the night. Jericho grabbed a sign and paraded around with it. Batista came in. Flair eyepoked him and chopped him. Batista no sold it. Flair begged off. Batista waggled his finger. Flair took his second back body drop. Triple H came in. The crowd went up for the idea of them going at it. Flair wooed at Batista from the corner repeatedly. Batista posed and the crowd went nuts. Triple H won on a shoulder block exchange and posed. They milked a test of strength for a while before doing it. Triple H kicked Batista, drove him down. Batista fought back up and clotheslined Triple H over the top and the crowd loved every second of all of this. Truly entertaining house show BS, what much, much more of wrestling should be and what a lot of the times it isn't in a world where these barely exist anymore.

Again, this had a ton of time and they worked double heat on it. Jericho was drawn into the heel corner and when he came back and made a hot tag, Benoit came in hot for a bit only to miss the diving headbutt. Eventually, Triple H had Benoit down in the corner but got distracted by Batista and leaped right into a foot, wherein he spent an entire minute (not a second less) standing there looking at the lights dazed before flopping. Only on a house show. I'm actually not sure that spot hit as well as it could have but points for committing to the bit certainly. That let Batista make it in finally, let everything break down, and let Edge eat the power bomb (thumbs down beforehand) to end the match. I don't know if I would have seen this same match around the loop but to see it one time was honestly a lot of fun. Just a totally different world that barely exists anymore. And we're talking 2005, not 1985 here.

ER: We've been doing - and Matt's been running entirely - Found Footage Friday for over a decade now. It's probably the most valuable thing we've done because it preserves at least 1-3 different takes on footage that none of us as fans had ever seen before. In many cases, we've written about matches that can get newly added into a Greatest Matches discussion, 40 years later. New narratives, new looks, new opportunities to have views changed. It's an incredible resource, constantly growing. This week alone we have a new apuestas match, new Babe Face...and now a new 30 minute match with SC stalwarts like HHH and Edge and Chris Benoit. 

People love our HHH writing, and this is the match for those people. This is an essential HHH match for HHH fans, because not only did all 30 minutes feel completely laid out by HHH, but all six men wrestle like HHH from different eras of his career. This is a match agented, produced, and then wrestled by six HHHs. Jericho wrestles like Terra Ryzing, Batista wrestles like HHH did when he came back gassed up after the quad tear, Benoit sells like HHH in a way that you know it won't lead anywhere, Flair is slowed down so he wrestles like HHH during that long era of bloated HHH aping Flair spots, Edge wrestles like the worst version of 1998 bad Opponents' Momentum offense HHH, and HHH wrestles like some unholy house show HHH amalgam that includes a long comedy spot that he doesn't know how to make resonate but he 100% would have gotten anyone else fired over.

This was a HHH match in every way, and it was good. There is so much wrestling I've never watched and so much wrestling I never will watch but I love Matt, and Matt got me to watch a 30 minute HHH/HHH/HHH vs. HHH/HHH/HHH in Australia, because HHH - with his meaty nose and heavy brow beadying his eyes - is like Bruno at MSG to Australians.  

Seeing Flair work the brunt of a long house show match was surprisingly fun. HHH could never connect his in-ring comedy to a crowd like this, and we get a literal example of that during what should have been the crowd noise peak. Flair's punches looked fantastic throughout, and even though he enters the match in control he's soon taking a back body drop and it leads to a fantastic Flair spot, where he rolls up in the babyface corner, eats a headbutt from Benoit and a punch from Batista, hops around like he's getting back into the fight, then flops. Flair takes another back body drop when Batista tags in, classically begging off before poking him in the eyes, but none of his chops have any affect and he's soon flopping and back dropping and leaving down the aisle. It's the kind of ass showing that HHH admires about Flair, but could never bring himself to actually look weak enough for the extended periods that make the stooging work, meaning it always came off like Stooging While Still in Control and never worked. After Benoit gets his hand smashed with a chair (nasty business smashing it against a ringpost) and gets cut off, the long heat segment builds to Benoit's hot tag, but the entire tag is iced out by HHH doing a full minute of Working On Material that sounds great on paper but gets no reaction live. 

HHH leaps off the middle buckle into Benoit's up-stretched boot and stands there on his feet, selling and swaying, for exactly one minute. You can picture Larry Sweeney doing this spot and burning the house down, knowing the exact moment to grind an entire match to a halt for one self-aggrandizing spot, and how much HHH would fucking BURY anyone else who did that spot, regardless of how well it got over. To see HHH pull out a 2006 Chikara spot on a house show and get no reaction for it is the wrestling equivalent to a gay bashing Republican getting caught in a rest stop bathroom, all secret unfulfilled urges and embarrassing missteps. It's as clear as day that HHH would brand anyone else who tried this much of a comedy overreach a mark who isn't serious about the business that he's devoted his life to. Six different HHHs in one match, and the real HHH is the one desperate to show his chops as a comedy worker that didn't understand punchlines

Great match. The kind of match you can put on after a Gene Snitsky/Shelton Benjamin title match.

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Found Footage Friday: FANCAM TAKADA~! STEVE WRIGHT~! TOMMY RICH~! STORM~! BABY CHILD KILLER~!

Steve Wright vs. Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 10/11/83

MD: I'm glad to see a new Takada handheld. I'm actively excited to see a new Steve Wright match. This was the first eight minutes of a really good French Catch match but I was missing the next twenty-five. It had all of the chain wrestling you'd want along those lines, including up and overs and complex twists into mares and headstands out of holds, just a bit more measured and a bit slower. It never escalated to the point of fisticuffs though. Takada had to fight for every tiny advantage he got and Wright just breezed through whatever he could throw his way with skill and aplomb. It made for a compelling exhibition, though you knew deep down that every minuscule victory Takada achieved, no matter how hard he fought for it, would be snatched away a few seconds later. While things didn't boil over, we got a few seconds of rope running at the end, and even a Takada armdrag. Unfortunately, it wasn't the start of anything but instead the end of everything, as Wright deftly floated through right into a pin. I wish we had gotten twenty Wright matches in the French collection

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Dynamite Chris NJPW 11/16/1987

MD: This is probably a me thing, but I had a hard time taking this one seriously, especially coming off the Wright match. Chris was very, very intense. Very intense. It wafted off him as he charged in to attack and threw his arms around in strikes, and tossed a headbutt. Takada would lock him in a hold. Chris would get out. More intensity would follow. There wasn't really any rhyme or reason to it, certainly no build. There was never a sense that it was doing any particular sort of damage or might lead him to a victory. He wasn't making a statement or a point. It felt like a simulation where Benoit's slider was set to high. I'd rather not extrapolate that. I don't really blame Takada for this one. What are you even going to do with this kid, right? I mean, I know what Steve Wright would have done...

Tommy Rich vs. James Storm USA Championship Wrestling 6/2/01

MD: There are a lot of similarities between 00s Tracy Smothers and Tommy Rich: both were best off when they started a match by getting heat on the mic. Both could lean on someone meanly and credibly after using a dirty tactic to take over. Both could throw their head back wildly as they were taking a babyface comeback. Rich maybe had a bit more weight behind his stuff because he had a bit more weight in general, but other than that, Smothers had quite a bit more fuel left in the tank. He was a few years younger and his hard living must not have been quite as hard as Tommy Rich's hard living. There was also a spark and a twinkle to him that Tommy couldn't quite match in his mid-40s. That doesn't mean that Tommy isn't entertaining here; he is, starting on the mic and running down the crowd, letting himself get outwrestled and eat early crow, sneaking in just a beautiful low blow headbutt with a bit of ref distraction to take over, beating Storm all over the ring, and then feeding with dramatic mannerisms in the place of motion. It's all good stuff. It's just not a whole lot of any of it. Still, you add it all up and you get a fun ten minutes from a guy who absolutely knew what he was doing and a young guy who was willing to be led. It's just that it would have been better if it was Tracy instead.

ER: I'm not so certain this would have been better had it been Smothers instead of Rich, even though the format is exactly the same. I thought this was a really impressive Tommy Rich performance, especially considering he wasn't working that often in his mid-40s. If I went to the Nashville Fairgrounds in 2001 and saw Tommy Rich was on the card, I don't think I ever would have guessed he would work a match as actively as he worked this one. I would have expected him getting on the mic to tell people to shut up, and beyond that I might not have expected a whole lot. And what he gave was a WHOLE lot more than that. Even if he hadn't, the mic work had a moment so great that it would have made this worth watching had Wildfire not gone in and worked like he was 10 years younger, and that was a woman in the front row with a toddler standing up and screaming and pointing at Rich with one arm, while holding this rigid and confused SMALL toddler under her other arm like she was holding a violin case. This tiny boy's body was straight and the woman was just holding him like a teen would tuck their skateboard under their arm, all because Tommy Rich was being an obnoxious fat guy in a leather vest. So, already a full rec. 

But the match was an awesome Tommy performance. I expected him to control the match and build to a Storm comeback, but I didn't expect him to take some big bumps to start the match, then control ACTIVELY for as long as he did. After going over big for some armdrags and a hiptoss, look at how excellently Tommy sold his arm after headbutting Storm in the balls. He has that left arm dead at his side, flexing that bicep (which has an extra great layer of cool heel bullshit since he's a guy who clearly does not lift), rolling his shoulder like a pitcher after an offday bullpen session. Tommy takes over for most of the rest of the match, and he doesn't do an ounce of resting. He's incredibly active, dropping knees into Storm, throwing suplexes (he does a cool deadlift back suplex and follows it up with a rolling kneedrop), and keeps fighting back against Storm's very green urge to bump every move earlier than he should have (buddy, just go with the flow on those DDTs and neckbreakers, just wait for your cue), really getting to show off a 45 year old fat man's offense toolbag. And in between it all he had this great fat body flex, purposely squishing up his torso and flexing with no effort, so that no single muscle accidentally showed through the flab. When Storm finally makes his comeback, Rich takes a big bump off some punches, then gets backed into the ropes for an Irish whip and simply yanks Storm over the top instead, drawing the DQ and not caring a lick. 

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WCW Nitro 12/30/96

1. The Amazing French Canadians vs. Public Enemy

ER: This had some odd uses of time, with the Canadians giving us the whole interrupted off-time National Anthem bit, and Public Enemy taking forever to get into the ring, really hitting every side of the ring to see how many people in Knoxville are waving their hands in the air. When they're wrestling, it's an amusing match. There are fun sloppy punch outs and an old lady in the front row giving advice and encouragement to PE. Both Canadians take nice backdrops (Carl went higher) after a fun punch out, but then get kept on the floor for while PE block the ropes for nearly a third of the match. Rougeau is great at getting himself on a table for PE, something hardly anyone does well. Jacques moves so Rocco Rock puts Grunge through a table with a Drive-By, and then the Canadians win in-ring with their own top rope assisted senton. I don't know what they call drive-bys in Canada, but it's probably got something to do with kicking at someone while riding a black horse. 

2. Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Ultimo Dragon

ER: These two were the big cruiserweight winners at Starrcade the night before, each getting a long time in their matches to build whatever they wanted. Here they didn't even get a third of the time they got at Starrcade, and the match felt disjointed and incomplete because of it. Dragon's strikes all looked very light, and his timing was off on his tilt-a-whirls. Liger had a lot of crisp stuff, like a nice cartwheel tope en reversa and follow up rolling senton, and a hard powerbomb (that was far more respectful than any of his powerbombs to Rey the night before). Dragon can be really lazy about how he sells opponent offense and sets up his own offense, like when he hits a light body slam and nothing else to set up a big missed top rope splash (a move I've never seen him do unless he catches boots on the landing). I did like Dragon using Liger as a jungle gym, scrambling all over him in the corner to hit a nice frankensteiner, and the tiger suplex follow up looked painful while also surprising for the finish. It seems crazy to me to have Liger win a long dominant match against Rey, only to turn around and have Ultimo Dragon take some offense until it was his turn. Things feel wrapped up too neatly and too feebly. 

3. Strap Match: Konnan vs. Michael Wallstreet

ER: This was supposed to be Konnan vs. Big Bubba, which sounds better on paper than Konnan vs. Wallstreet. Wallstreet issues a threat on Bubba's behalf before cheapshotting Konnan with a strap. Believe it or not WCW didn't run many strap matches in their existence, only a dozen or so (and half of those were Sting/Vader). But somehow one of the strap matches they chose to run was a Michael Wallstreet match, all 2.5 minutes of it. Wallstreet whips Konnan, takes a long journey to climb the ropes only to jump off into Konnan's boot, and then Konnan whips Wallstreet. Even with this match being under 3 minutes, they still managed to give us the most common strap match finish, taking up a huge portion of the match with it, and the second any viewer saw Konnan tag the turnbuckle immediately after Wallstreet tagged his first buckle they should have know where this was heading. 

4. Hugh Morrus vs. Kensuke Sasaki

ER: At minimum, this was a couple of guys who had no problem hitting hard and not backing down. They didn't take that as far as they could have, and the finish was as weak as can be, but it's fun to see Kensuke Sasaki hit Hugh Morrus as hard as he can while Morrus acts like none of it phases him. There are hard hitting shoulderblocks, lots of kicks to the stomach, and fast clubs to the back. Sasaki throws whistling chops, Morrus rakes the eyes and throws mediocre punches, makes hard impact on his clotheslines and hits a pretty unforgiving avalanche. Sasaki hits how own just-as-hard lariat, a big powerslam, and his over the shoulder rolling arm drag. The finish is incredibly lazy and one that WCW went to a lot, where someone with a top rope finisher would just take a lot of offense, then hit one singular bodyslam and hit their finisher. The No Laughing Matter hits, and the ref has to slow down his count because Sonny Onoo is late breaking up the pin. This was just two guys filling time until an uninspiring finish, even playing as background to Eric Bischoff confiscating a VHS tape of Hogan losing to Piper, but they hit each other hard and that's enough to make it the best match of the first hour of this Nitro. 

5. Harlem Heat vs. Faces of Fear

ER: This had some timing mistakes and a messy finish, and is really only saved by Faces of Fear's willingness to lean into Harlem Heat's kicks. Harlem Heat really don't show a lot of team chemistry (although to be fair, a lot of that is Stevie Ray being where he doesn't belong), and a lot of their simplest strikes show a lot of light. There are a few big moments in the match, like Barbarian taking a stiff Booker axe kick and not going down, only to get leveled right after by a Harlem sidekick. Barbarian also hit an insane top rope belly to belly on Booker that really threw him to the opposite corner, and to put over how dangerous that landing could have been, Col. Parker came out in his French Legionnaire get-up and whipped Sherri's ass with his riding crop. French Canadians interfere, Harlem Heat get the win even though the interference was aimed at them, and this should have ended with Faces of Fear massacring everyone instead of just rolling away. 

6. Disco Inferno vs. Glacier

ER: This was great, loved every second of it. Glacier was still pretty new, only a few months in, and I'm not sure there was a person on the WCW roster who could stooge better for Glacier's offense at this point. He's great at setting up his own ass kicking, too, taunting Glacier on the mic after Glacier's long entrance. "Look Glacier, you're career is just starting." Telling Glacier that if he knew what was best for him he'd leave, before Disco embarrassed him. I love that stuff. When Glacier finally just grabs him with a top wristlock throw, Disco holds onto the mic the entire time and yells into it in pain through the whole bump. Not all of Glacier's kicks and palm thrusts look great, but Disco makes every single legsweep and leaping kick and palm strike look as great as they will look. Disco pinballed and did pratfalls and made a ton of great OFF noises every time he caught heel (palm or foot) to the breadbox. 

There's a great transition to Disco's control, when he tries to use referee Scott Dickinson as a human shield, distracting Glacier enough to plaster him with a great western lariat. All of Disco's offense looked great, like his snapped off swinging neckbreaker or his elbowdrop straight down onto Glacier's throat. But what looks even better is Disco posing for far too long on the turnbuckles as Glacier does a kip up to a big reaction (obviously, because kip ups are cool) in the background, then hits a flat out gorgeous highlight reel Cryonic Kick as Disco turns around and jumps right into it. You could make an effective Glacier video package using shots of this kick a few times. His form is excellent, the arc on the kick is impressively vertical, and it looks straight out of a John Woo movie. This is the finisher of a guy who is justifying his push. Loved this. 

7. Chris Benoit vs. Chris Jericho

ER: A great example of the 4 minute Nitro workrate match. It's a fairly breathless 4 minute sprint, exactly what fans of these two would enjoy seeing. Tenay refers to him as "Mr. Intensity" Christ Benoit, but that nickname doesn't really fit (and I don't think ever caught on). Benoit isn't really intense here, so much as he has a real vicious dead-eyed performance. Both guys are showcased and get big spots, and things ramp up quick with a great Jericho springboard dropkick that sends Benoit sprawling off the apron, and follows it up with a missile dropkick to the floor! Benoit's offense is delivered really violently; he catches Jericho with a hotshot, throws hard stomps to the back of the head, blistering chops, and a hard landing fast elbowdrop. Jericho refuses to get run over and slams into Benoit with a stiff falling lariat to give the match a good breath. Benoit wins fairly easily with a big back suplex off the top, but this was an action-packed 4 minutes. 

A super entertaining promo happens in the entrance way after the match, with Flair strutting around in a college pullover, Woman looking drop dead gorgeous, Mongo wearing a chambray shirt the same color as his jeans, and another great Debra McMichael promo. Debra is an extremely underappreciated character in wrestling. A condescending Texas Christian who slurs her words and insults you to your face with a "bless your heart" smile just begging to be slapped. Debra does Dynasty party talk better than Dynasty did party talk. When Woman leaves after getting into it with Debra, Debra tells Gene "she's got all these built up hostilities because of her weight gain over the holidays". It's so cutting. Mongo has incredible denim meathead energy, yelling at Woman "That'll be the day, when a skirt like you tells Mongo what to do!" The McMichaels are amazing. 

8. Mascarita Sagrada/Octagoncito vs. Jerrito Estrada/Piratita Morgan

ER: I had no memory of WCW attempting a minis division, and it's pretty wild to just throw out 4 minis unannounced to the Knoxville crowd in the third hour of Nitro and give them 2 minutes to get over. I'm not sure why you even bother sending guys out to that kind of fate. Still, they work a lot of cool spots into less than 2.5 minutes and the fans do start reacting to it. WCW only used these guys for two matches, and this reaction was probably at least as good as any of the reactions they got in front of cold disinterested WWF shows from 97-99. Jerrito bumps appropriately big for a mini version of Jerry Estrada, doing strong base work for all of Sagrada's headscissors and monkey flips. Piratita takes a couple of really big bumps for a big boy, including a great somersault bump past the ringpost to the floor, and there was a fun extended sequence where the rudos kept being lured into doing chain offense to each other. I am not sure why this happened, but it was an enjoyable blink. 

9. Dean Malenko vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

ER: Matches like these are why a lot of us were switching over to Nitro in 96/97, but a lot of them are weird time capsules now. The moves look good, there's often little story behind them aside from "get up and do more" and the crowds react with most arms folded silence until the matches end in confusion. Here a 9 minute match gets the 10 minute time limit draw treatment, a bell just ringing in the middle of an exchange like the recess bell sounding during a game of capture the flag. The fans weren't reacting to any of the several ungiving back bumps that Rey took, and suddenly ending a match in a draw wasn't going to help. Malenko and Misterio work well together, that's no secret, because Rey can get his head powerbombed into the mat several times a match and Dean is great at catching complicated headscissors and ranas. Early on Malenko works over Rey's back in painful ways, getting him vertical with a single leg crab while digging his knee in, throwing him way up into the air for an awesome flapjack, his great press slam gutbuster, bouncing Misterio with a Last Ride style powerbomb, all punishing stuff. The problem is that for Rey to get in any offense, he has to ignore that he just got his cerebellum smashed into the mat at concussion speed and bounce back to his feet to sprint around. Rey has some crazy moments, like an unhinged butt splash senton from the top rope over the ringpost to the floor, and a cool rana to the floor where he Fuerza bumps his way into getting his legs around Malenko's neck. There were a couple of cool reversals that played off early spots, like Dean catching a headscissors and sitting down into a sideslam, or Rey flying over Dean's head and turning a pop-up powerbomb into a Manami Roll. It all looked cool, but it didn't really play as a full match, and when they just went into a few rapid fire pinfall exchanges they felt like they came from a different match. It's a recommendable match because it's 10 minutes of cool stuff, but every move feels like it happens in its own vacuum.

10. Lex Luger vs. Greg Valentine

ER: Greg Valentine is in his mid-40s here, but when your wrestling style revolves around dropping heavy elbows, throwing stiff chops, and leaning into strikes, well then that's a style that is going to age well. He does feel like an anachronism in this era, but this was a fun short match made up almost entirely of punches, elbows, and clotheslines. When two guys are good at throwing punches and elbows you really don't need much more than that to fill a fun 3 minutes. Valentine really roughs up Luger, and when it's his time to sell he does some great tip toes selling for Luger's punches, and goes down with a thud for Luger's clotheslines. Luger drags Valentine over the ropes from the apron to Rack him, which is a cool babyface visual. 

The show ends on a great segment, with Hogan and the FULL cast and crew of the nWo surrounding Piper and giving him a stiff beatdown. They bash his surgically repaired hip with a chair, Scott Norton really puts the boots to him, Hall/Nash/Hogan do an ill-advised three man press slam and throw spike Piper chest first across Norton's knee, just a total beatdown. Piper gets stretchered out, the garbage rains onto the ring and the nWo (Scott Hall ignoring a full box of popcorn hitting his back, Bischoff never flinching at soda cups. It all leads to the Giant standing up to Hogan and choking him, then fighting off a ton of nWo flunkies. Giant looked like a real monster, and there was a cool visual of Hogan directing the full nWo roster to surround the ring. Bagwell attacks first, leaping off the top rope onto Giant's back and getting flung across the ring. Vincent runs directly into Giant's hand, and Giant palms his head like a basketball while wasting him with a chokeslam. nWo Sting takes another great chokeslam, before the big guys get involved and they swarm the Giant. This is part of what made the nWo great. It was a common talking point at the time that allowing a ton of "lesser" workers into the nWo weakened the entire operation, made it into a club with no kind of exclusivity. But you NEED members to strengthen your gang. You NEED bodies. You need cannon fodder. Vincent is a great guy to get pushed by Hogan into a chokeslam. It's great to have a fake Sting who gets his ass kicked. Even Michael Wallstreet, in his mullet and sleeveless nWo shirt, actually looked cool for the first time in who knows when. He looked like a guy who would get his ass beat in a Bronson movie, and the nWo needed guys like that. Bray Wyatt only recruited like one guy into his cult. How stupid is that?? You recruit EVERYBODY YOU CAN. 

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WCW Starrcade 12/29/96

1. Ultimo Dragon vs. Dean Malenko

ER: It's a bold move to start your Nashville PPV with a AAA minis dark tag and a 20 minute cruiserweight match. This is the first 12 minutes of a strong cruiserweight match, with a lot of mid 90s juniors matwork to start, and quick exchanges that don't really go anywhere but give us something to build off. They build to some quick rope running exchanges and some snap suplexes, and it plays like a very crisp New Japan juniors match. The Nashville crowd isn't really on board with it until Ultimo starts working a little more than just de facto heel. He had been the automatic heel by virtue of being Japanese in Nashville, but they wake up a bit when Dragon starts landing nice looking kicks to the grounded Malenko's ribs and a little toe kick to Malenko's temple. Once Ultimo is actually working with mild disrespect the crowd picks up on it immediately. It peaks with a great spot where Dragon feints a dive with Malenko on the floor, landing on his feet in ring with a quebrada and turns that into a flat footed tope with emphasis on making it look like a flying headbutt. Dragon even started selling like a heel, taking a couple of nasty Malenko back suplexes on his shoulders and acting like a heel getting punished. 

It's a match that is building to something strong, but Malenko makes the decision to throw some ice on things by grabbing a kneebar for a couple long minutes, really getting things silent in the arena. It threw off their vibe as Ultimo HAD been working as a luchador working as southern heel, and then in a couple minutes Malenko started working heel legwork while Ultimo valiantly kept having to struggle to the ropes and work a knee injury. It went instinctively against the fans' instincts to cheer the legwork the way it was being worked, as Ultimo was clearly face in these exchanges. A couple of awkward cross ups when they came out the other side of the legwork only extended the weird vibes. Malenko hits a body press with Ultimo leaning in the ropes, but Dragon stays put on his feet while Malenko tumbles to the floor, with Ultimo feebly rolling out after. Crowd is getting silent by the second and suddenly snaps awake in unison when Malenko looks like he has the match suddenly won after a nasty tombstone. The entire Nashville Municipal Auditorium thought they were seeing a Malenko win. With the crowd now suddenly heavily invested in a Malenko win, it really added to the closing stretch. I think they went with a couple too many nearfalls and the Onoo interference to break up Malenko's center of the ring cloverleaf weakened things, but there were some good nearfalls that the fans bit at. A Malenko release sitout Tiger suplex got a huge reaction, he plants Dragon with a disgusting brainbuster for another, and there was a great match-winning go behind waistlock battle that ended with a fantastic Tiger suplex for Dragon. This was the kind of PPV opener that a lot of WCW fans came to expect, with a lot of big moves and nearfalls. There were some stretches that didn't work and felt out of place, and they didn't really explore the stories they set up, but a lot of the action looked really good.

2. Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

ER: This was not the match the crowd wanted to see. The crowd was far less familiar with Hokuto than they were with Ultimo Dragon, but even a Japanese competitor against a white woman wearing a sequined stars and stripes aerobics thong couldn't inspire them to get involved. Hokuto works holds with a short match they probably would have had a better chance going straight to fireworks. By the time they build to some big German suplexes and a couple hard missile dropkicks I was expecting them to react but it was still real light. The best reactions came from two pieces of Sonny Onoo interference, yanking Madusa's ankle from ringside to allow Hokuto to take over, and coming in later with to smack Madusa in the back of the head with a full American flag on a pole. This was laid out pretty heavily for Hokuto, never really feeling like Madusa was going to win, and Madusa's big moments on offense came off flat when a tornado DDT didn't really get pulled off. Hokuto wins with a nasty northern lights bomb, and it come off like an easier victory than the crowd was expecting. This was not the show to have Akira Hokuto win the inaugural WCW Women's Title Tournament, and an omen for how the Women's division would eventually wind up in the coming months. 

Roddy Piper does an interview with Mean Gene, and well, Piper's interviews in 1996 were really bad. He had taken coked up 1986 Hot Rod promos and now it felt more like a man performing comedic impressions of Cocaine Rod. He makes weird references to Strangler Lewis and Sky Low Low, says that he and Hogan ("can I call him Hogan?") are the only two icons, makes a joke about Roseanne Barr that barely felt like a reference (let alone a joke), and hops out on one leg when asked about his hip injury. This was like a hopped up Roger Rabbit promo that made the heavily promoted "Match of the Century" feel like it was about to be a tremendous disaster. 

3. Jushin Liger vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

ER: This match was a major deal among tape traders, a first time (and last time, it turns out) singles match between two of the very best. So, of course this match starts with an enthusiastic USA chant, which Misterio happily accepts as his, and that's just fine. It also becomes apparent pretty early into this match that this crowd is tired of seeing a Japanese wrestler against a WCW regular. The commentary has some real wild tone shifts too, as Tenay starts the match talking about Liger's brain tumor surgery, and within minutes we take a weird sidetrack. Dusty ends up going on for far too long about Liger "looking heavier" than the last time he saw him, and none of the four man announce crew picks him up. He keeps trying to get anyone else to chime in, repeatedly asking whether or not he's crazy for thinking Liger is heavier. The crowd pays about as much attention to the match as commentary does, but it is surprising that people don't react louder for the beating that Misterio takes. Liger is very punishing, hitting an in-ring powerbomb about as hard as you can powerbomb someone, hits a crazy vertical suplex to the floor (and Rey really splats on that floor), then hits a powerbomb ON THE FLOOR! The actual wrestling in the match is great, it's nothing but offense, but it doesn't draw the crowd in like it should. They occasionally get them to notice, but they don't keep them hooked. 

Liger is super dominant here, brushing aside a missile dropkick and locking in a stretching surfboard, a release German suplex that folds Rey, a kappo kick in the corner, a dragon screw that would snap the surgically repaired knee of 2021 Rey Mysterio, and a really sunk in half crab. Rey had some comebacks, some flash to counter Liger's dominance, but Liger keeps effectively cutting him off. When Rey goes on a big tear with a headscissors and beautiful Asai moonsault, I foolishly thought that all of Rey's offense got backloaded into the match. But Liger immediately blocks a top rope Frankensteiner by hopping down to the mat, nails a kappo kick, and then drills Rey's head into the mat with a definitive Liger Bomb for the win. So far this PPV has had three Japanese wrestlers win the first three matches, and it is clearly not what anyone in attendance expected or wanted. This match was as good as could be expected with no fan involvement, and a suitably entertaining Dream Match with Liger really assaulting Rey and Misterio flying and splatting in cool Misterio ways. But, this also seemed like a match where Rey was to be the OBVIOUS winner, and even the finish looked like he kicked out before 3, which didn't help the reaction. Liger wasn't around in any way in 1997 WCW, so letting him destroy Misterio like this on WCW's biggest PPV of the year was a really strange decision. 

4. Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett

ER: This was kind of a peculiar match, as it was billed as No DQ but was not worked in any way as a No DQ match. The match didn't need the stip to work, as we find out that they really only made this No DQ to allow for a rush of outside interference right at the end. The match started like a strong Benoit/Jarrett match, both working some nice mat exchanges and Jarrett getting lit up by chops, but there's a weird tone as both men are clearly working as heels. Benoit rubs Jarrett's face in the mat and grinds his boot into the back of Jarrett's head after getting the best of a mat exchange, and later when Jarrett does the same he runs up the length of Benoit's back and then struts around the ring. Jarrett is the Nashville boy but isn't rallying the crowd behind him, and every single thing Benoit does is delivered as a heel. So the crowd doesn't get into this match the way they could have. They both work the match with a lot of aggression, and the pace feels really good, even if Benoit has a lot of strikes that show noticeable light. Benoit's stomps in the corner all whiff by 6" or more, and it's odd that the guy known for working stiff appears to be pulling his shots so much. Woman interferes from the floor, except her and Benoit continue to act like they don't realize the match is No DQ, as she sneaks in her interference behind Brian Hildebrand's back, and later on Benoit does the whole feet on the ropes bit with Hildebrand just missing his cheating each time. 

This is a match where Benoit could have just choked Jarrett with a chair, so holding a grounded headlock with his feet on the ropes behind the ref's back made zero sense. At a certain point Benoit didn't even have his arm wrapped around Jarrett's neck, looking more like he was just pinning him across the shoulders. Jarrett's comeback doesn't get a reaction, since he didn't decide to show the fans of Nashville that he was their guy, but he looked good. I liked his clothesline and super high belly to back suplex, but that's when everything goes to hell. Woman gets on the apron, Arn comes out, Hugh Morrus and Konnan attack Woman, she kicks Morrus in the balls while Konnan holds her in a snug headlock, Kevin Sullivan breaks a wooden chair over Benoit, Arn DDTs Jarrett, and somehow through it all Jarrett just gets rolled back inside and pins Benoit. So we had a No DQ match where it seemed like neither guy realized that was the case, all the DQ worthy events were caused by guys that came out at the very end of the match, and even after the match the crowd had no clue which one of them to cheer for. This felt like nobody knew what role they were actually playing and the match fell apart because of it. 

Arn Anderson and Jeff Jarrett blow off Mean Gene's interview requests after the match, but Steve and Debra McMichael have no problems repping the Horsemen on the mic. McMichael says Benoit is getting too distracted by Woman, and Debra says that Woman is looking rode hard and put up wet (to which Gene covers the microphone) and then calls her plump. I really wish we had been given a Woman reaction to being called "plump" by Debra McMichaels' perfectly slurred judgmental Alabama Christian voice. 

The Outsiders vs. The Faces of Fear

ER: This was heading towards being a truly great big man tag match, but a slow third act that dropped all the big man clubbering left us with a kind of unsatisfying finish. These guys all have great chemistry and have no problem hitting hard, and the match forgoes a lot of structure and instead mostly just exists as four tough guys hitting each other hard. You don't really need to cut off the ring with guys this large, as it's incredibly satisfying to have them constantly cutting each other off, able to turn any tide at any time with a hard clothesline or harder headbutt. It's hard not to get excited for a tag match made up wholly of big guys hitting each other hard, and commentary gets into it as much as the crowd does. The action is steady and nobody remains in control long. Nash really punishes Barbarian in the corner with kneelifts and heavy back elbows, hits a lariat to the side of Barbarian's neck when Nick Patrick steps in. Meng and Nash come off like superstars, with Meng having no trouble standing up to either Outsider and Nash getting roars whenever he gets into the ring. 

Meng's chops look like something that Hall and Nash legitimately hate taking, and you get some cool bigger spots like a Hall second rope bulldog on Meng, a great missed middle rope elbowdrop from Barbarian, Meng fighting to get Hall up for a piledriver before finally spiking him, and not long after that a big Barbarian powerbomb on Hall. The match also has a bunch of cool clotheslines and lariats from everyone, like Hall running the length of the apron to nail Barbarian in the corner, or Hall whipping Barbarian into a Nash apron lariat and then hitting one of the hardest possible diving lariats as Barbarian is reeling. Everyone in the match is showing stiff shots from the apron whenever an opponent gets anywhere near, and I love tag team fights like that. Things do take a bit too much of a cool down when Barbarian locks in a LONG nerve hold on Hall that the match didn't really need. 

The only formula the match had settled into by then was four guys kicking ass, with Hall and Barbarian each being briefly separated from their partners. But this late in the match you don't need a long nervehold to build to a Nash hot tag, as the crowd was hot every time Nash had been in and the hold went on so long that the hot tag was literally Nash's quietest part of the match. The hold cooled things down too much and took the energy away, and then for whatever reason Barbarian didn't make his own hot tag out when Nash made his big tag in. Hall and Barbarian had clearly been building a long sequence that was supposed to build to Meng and Nash absolutely wailing on each other, and instead Barbarian just stays in the ring. It's a bit anticlimactic as Nash tags in and Hall immediately drags Meng to the floor, and Nash fairly easily beats Barbarian with a jackknife. The match deserved a finish that was a bit more thought out than that, but the bulk of this was hard hitting heavyweight wrestling that I loved. 

Hogan cuts a truly unhinged promo backstage with Dibiase and Vincent laughing along with him. If you show this promo back to back with Piper's promo earlier you get 10 minutes of what feels like it is going to be the craziest match you've ever seen. He keeps building towards a big ending but keeps getting derailed, until he's just shouting out the names of celebrities and calling Piper a woman. This kind of manic old man insanity is making this match come off far more exciting than I've been lead to believe.

Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddie Guerrero

ER: This was the finals of the WCW US Title tournament, a very fun match that is perhaps too long, but finishes strong. It's always best when a match goes out on a high note, and the finishing stretch makes this worth seeing. This is cool because Page fights Eddie as an equal and makes it work, going toe to toe with both throwing elbows and chops as heavyweights (even though Eddie is much smaller than DDP here). DDP is great at doing fast armdrag and leapfrog exchanges, and both know how to salvage minor miscommunications by taking big bumps. DDP takes an awesome backwards bump through the ropes off a dropkick, both good at working a back and forth match without it ever feeling like they're just trading moves. It's really hard hitting, with Eddie getting harder than expected impact an avalanche, pescado, and big back suplex. Page has a bunch of cool offense - a couple of unique gutbusters, nice right arm clothesline immediately following a missed left arm one, and a nasty kneeling piledriver - so it's a little disappointing when he locks in a too long abdominal stretch. 

The match had kind of been babyface/babyface and DDP wasn't working heel enough to build to a big Eddie comeback. But things really do come alive for the push to the finish, when DDP starts really throwing himself back into offense. He hits a hard shoulderblock in the corner and then misses another into the turnbuckles just as hard. Eddie sweeps DDP's legs and DDP takes it on the back of his head like Psychosis, Eddie lifts him in the air with a European uppercut (that makes Dusty lose his mind),and then drops DDP with a brainbuster. We get a crazy run of bigger and bigger spots, like Eddie catching DDP in an atomic drop off the top rope, and DDP hitting a bananas spinning powerbomb. There were several great nearfalls off of Eddie backslides (set up nicely by DDP's missed spinning clothesline or Diamondcutter attempts). The finish itself is a bit of a stretch, as the ref had to be distracted for far too long so that Scott Hall had time to run in and hit DDP with an Outsider's Edge (for turning down the nWo's invite), and then Eddie hits the frog splash for the title. This match could have gone 12 instead of 15, as trimming out the bullshit would have easily made this the tightest and best match on the card. As is it was strong, and the peaks lift it higher than its valleys lower it. 

The Giant vs. Lex Luger

ER: This was great, the best Giant singles match and performance so far (easily), and an excellent Luger performance that completely rewards the loud crowd. The Nashville crowd were cheering louder for Luger before the first lock-up, than any other babyface so far this PPV (Nash got the loudest cheers, but that's just because people are going to cheer the coolest guy in any room). Giant had a year of ring work at this point and was improving, but having a guy like Luger in there to guide the match really elevated this. Luger knew exactly what to do and the fans were behind him doing just that. I loved Luger's lock-up to start, getting a low base, taking big super ball bumps when Giant would throw him away. Every time Luger got thrown off, he would come back in with left and right elbows, and then began measuring Giant with right hands. Luger would rear back and throw one big right, send the Giant rocking and wobbling in the corner, then throw another. It was a great way to start the match and they used the ring incredibly well to make this feel like a big fight. Luger would get bumped to the opposite corner, and the camera would pull back and show the distance between the men, making Luger look like even more of a walking tall babyface every time he would stomp back across the ring to punch Giant. Both were good at selling the early fatigue, and I liked how Giant shut things down by just charging out of the corner with a straight arm clothesline to the chest. 

I thought Giant looked good in control, and Luger looked great bumping for him. They worked a long control section and the Giant has a lot of ideas on how to fill time, and Luger's selling keeps the crowd interested. The Giant gets insane air on an elbowdrop, throws a stiff kick to Luger's ribs (that Luger bumps through the ropes to the floor) and brings him back in with a big delayed vertical suplex. The Luger comeback teases are good, like a quick bodyslam attempt that ends with the Giant flattening him and then hitting another elbowdrop. We're over a year into the Giant, and he's still trying weird  things and I love it. He weirdly does the Shawn Michaels "draped over the corner ropes" spot after missing an avalanche, struggling to get his legs into position but even getting turned over by kicks the way Michaels would. I don't think I've ever seen a 400 lb. guy do that spot - probably because it looked pretty stupid - but I am all for wrestlers taking a risk of looking stupid. Even better, is how Giant sets up Luger's comeback by missing a running dropkick in the ropes when Luger moves out of the way. Giant really just ran and threw a dropkick into the ropes like he was a luchador, top foot nearly getting tangled on the top rope and sending him to the mat head first. Giant was lucky the landing was better than it could have been, but a giant doing crazy spots is impossible to hate. 

Luger starts punching the reeling Giant and really knows how to milk the reaction, the crowd getting louder and louder whenever it looked like Giant might fall over, and when Giant is reeling back far enough Luger gets the loudest reaction of the night by taking Giant down with a Rude Awakening style neckbreaker. It's a great nearfall, fans literally jumping up and down in their seats after seeing a neckbreaker. It's beautiful. Luger gets pressed onto Mark Curtis during the kickout, and this allows all the bullshit to start, and I loved all the bullshit. Luger finally has the advantage over Giant, but with no ref we get Nick Patrick finally showing up (with Syxx), and I love it when Nick Patrick shows up. I'm someone who is sick to death of rudo lucha refs, and yet I love Nick Patrick's stooging and idiocy. Luger bodyslams Giant and gets him up in the Rack (an awesome feat) and Patrick actually kicks Luger in the back of the knee! Patrick gets thrown across the ring and Luger Racks the Giant again, this time eating a spinkick from Syxx and unceremoniously dropping Giant again. To add to the great bullshit, Sting comes through the crowd, a man who looks like Jimmy Del Ray but with the flat out craziest eyes actually bumps faces with him before being pulled away by security, man looking like he actually wanted to fight or assassinate Sting. There's a great moment where Sting gets in the ring and shoves his bat into Patrick's chest, throws Patrick again to get him out of there, and Patrick punches a still ailing Mark Curtis in the face on his way out! 

The bullshit leads to a really great finish with some great theater, when Sting whispers separately to both Luger and Giant and leaves his bat in the middle of the ring. Commentary was strong this entire match, putting over and questioning everyone's motivations and getting fired up for Luger and Giant, making it really feel like a clash of the titans. They nail all of the visuals, with Luger reaching the bat but Giant getting there right after and standing on it. The crowd really seemed frozen in excitement waiting to see what was about to happen, and finally Luger just punches Giant in the balls and then beats him in the legs and body with that baseball bat. Mark Curtis dramatically drags himself over and counts the pin, and the fans rightly lost their minds for all of this. Luger cannot be denied. 

Hollywood Hogan vs. Roddy Piper

ER: Commentary calls this the biggest match of our lifetimes, and Michael Buffer manages to top that by calling it the Match of the Century. It's ridiculous, sure, and got mocked by smart fans at the time, but over 9,000 people in Nashville all bought into it to some extent. Buffer's intro is one of his best, genuinely adding to the match hype. Hogan looks like he's having a blast as a heel, with his broad MJF-esque "I'M a HEEL" shtick playing out like Hogan had been dying to do house show heel routines for a decade. It's a really great Hogan performance and it really felt like both men were playing up to their current abilities. Piper moves older than his actual age (and it's crazy that Hogan and Piper were only 43 and 42 here, respectively) and so Hogan really carries this by having a super active performance. Piper was limited but spirited, and he's good enough to make that work, but Hogan was the one working to make this big. Hogan stalls and stooges and tries to avoid Piper, slaps him on breaks and bails to the floor each time. Piper is mostly limited to punches and clotheslines and can't move quick, so Hogan avoiding him works and it makes it better when Piper finally tees off. Piper used a few different eye pokes and I love how Hogan sold each one. 

Piper is not going to be above fighting dirty and the crowd was fully behind Piper fighting dirty to combat Hogan's dirty fighting, and Piper moves stiffly enough that he draws a lot of sympathy, and he's able to pull off the performance of an old dog dragged back to another fight. Things get great when Piper gets knocked to the floor, tumbling hard, but fights back against Hogan and Dibiase. Piper gets his belt and whips Hogan around ringside like in a great LA Park match. All the belt shots looked really nasty, Piper not holding back and Hogan leaning into all of them. The whole match was an escalation of dirty fighting, and it peaked when Hogan started kicking at Piper's long visible hip surgery scar, even locking in an abdominal stretch while hammering on that scar. They don't quite know how to transition into the finishing stretch but there are some big moments, like Piper pulling off a vertical suplex while Schiavone wondered if his legs would hold, and a big missed Hogan legdrop. Schiavone was great at covering for things while keeping the excitement live, and his excitement really added to the chaotic ending. 

The Giant comes out and lifts Piper for a chokeslam, but a fan also charges the ring and grabs Hogan's legs, so the Giant has to keep Piper in the air while security roughs up the fan. It throws off the timing but still plays huge when Piper bites Giant in the face and dumps him to the floor, then somehow beats Hogan with a sleeper, with Randy Anderson delivering a great shocked face when Hogan's arm drops a third time. I was really into this match and thought it was far better than most thought at the time. The moment was hurt by being non-title. I'm not actually sure they ever said it was non-title, they just never announced it was FOR the title and didn't talk about it during the match, like they were intentionally avoiding it. Dusty even calls Piper the champ after the win, with some immediate awkward silence as Dusty clearly gets corrected off-mic. 

This was not the great workrate PPV that it has the reputation for being, a rep that it mostly got by having two long singles matches early in the card between cruiserweight legends. This was still a good in-ring show, but not to the level it has been written about being. The two cruiserweight matches have flaws that weren't as glaring in 1996, but even though they aren't the MOTYC that people wanted them to be in 1996 doesn't mean they aren't still entertaining as hell. The Hogan/Piper match doesn't deserve the bile that it got at the time as I thought it was an excellent Hogan performance, working around a guy who hadn't wrestled an actual match in 10 months. It was a top to bottom mix of styles and matches, and that gives a show a high floor. 

Best Matches:

1. Lex Luger vs. The Giant

2. Outsiders vs. Faces of Fear

3. DDP vs. Eddie Guerrero

4. Jushin Liger vs. Rey Misterio Jr. 

Weakest Matches:

1. Akira Hokuto vs. Madusa

2. Chris Benoit vs. Jeff Jarrett

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WCW Bash at the Beach 7/13/97

I can't believe they had under 8,000 fans in attendance for this show. I thought the build was great and the lineup on-paper is really strong. This really feels like the kind of show that should have drawn 20,000+, but a hot smaller crowd could be a great thing. 

1. Wrath/Mortis vs. Glacier/Ernest Miller (9:47)

If you found out that WCW was going to essentially have a karate division, with nothing but arcade fighting game characters, this is the best possible version of the kind of matches that attempted to fuse fighting games and pro wrestling. These guys all had varying levels of training and in ring backgrounds, but I don't think you could have laid out a better match for this specific combination of wrestlers, and it resulted in an insanely fun PPV opener. It's 10 glorious minutes of shockingly good spin kicks and crazy double teams, like a cartoon version of a Low Ki/Red match several years before that was a match. I'm not sure Ernest Miller or Glacier ever fit so naturally into a match again, Wrath and Mortis doing a great job of being in all the right places to take some complicated kick landings. This was much more snug than other Glacier/Miller matches, everybody really tightened up their punches and so many of the kicks looked genuinely explosive. The US was still in a big martial arts craze in 1997, and this match fit so well into that, and the crowd reactions showed that. There were some crazy spots here, all using some impressive timing. Mortis and Wrath hit their great powerbomb neckbreaker, Wrath hits a big cannonball of the apron, Miller is trying springboard attacks, and Glacier looks like he gets a concussion on the floor when Wrath hold a chair for Mortis to superkick directly into Glacier's ear. His left ear eats chair, right ear gets smashed into the ringpost. There is a little slow down before the finishing stretch, but when Miller tags in and is hitting spin kicks and James Vandenburg gets superkicked off the apron you won't care. The finish is the best possible Memphis Mortal Kombat, when Vandenburg wraps a chain around Mortis's boot for a loaded karate kick win. Pure brilliance, one of my favorite PPV openers of the 90s. 

2. Ultimo Dragon vs. Chris Jericho (12:55)

This was a pretty good embodiment of a lot of the 1997 WCW juniors matches. There's a lot of great spots that get big reactions, a couple of ambitious spots that look blown, they lose the page a bit and try to make up for it with big bumps, and it works! The best stuff makes up for the worst stuff, they mostly keep a good pace, and throw in some genuinely memorable spots. A lot of it is fairly typical 90s juniors wrestling: some engaging but meaningless matwork, a mirrored move, some cool backdrop reversals (Dragon landing on his feet, Jericho cartwheeling through), a stand off, we all loved it in 1997. It was the reason we traded for WAR tapes before all collectively realizing that the lumpy old sumo main events were the reason to be trading for WAR tapes. The best stuff here is very good, with a couple of very nice Jericho moonsaults and fun Dragon kick combos, a big double powerbomb from Jericho, great Asai moonsault to the floor, and some fun reversals. They get off the page a little bit when both men fall on a top rope spot, Dragon basically leaping to the floor while Jericho leapt back into the ring, and Jericho feels like he's trying to make up for that spot by taking a couple of really big bumps to the floor. It doesn't ever quite seem like it's anything other than a nicely laid out collection of spots, but the effort being put in elevates things. 

3. Steiner Brothers vs. Great Muta/Masahiro Chono (10:37)

This was filled with a lot of miscommunication, but still came off great to the crowd thanks to some huge Steiners throws and a fantastic stooging heel performance from Chono. He yelled at the crowd the entire time he was on the apron, and continues riling them up any time he was in control. He easily crossed any language barrier just by having no problem throwing the sole of his boot into heads with his great yakuza kicks, while also rubbing the crowd’s nose in it before inevitably getting smashed by the Steiners. The match is pretty formless, but the nWo Japan control is very fun and it’s cool seeing them dominating the Steiners and not being eaten alive like has happened. Scott looked absolutely massive here, which only makes it cooler when he is throwing Muta across the ring with his hip switch belly to belly or nailing the Frankensteiner. Muta hits his own big top rope Frankensteiner and Rick hits dangerous overhead belly to bellys on both. Chono also took some big backdrops from Rick, just a great house show main event heel performance. The match was a mess, but a cool mess, with big charisma and big highspots. The finish is dangerous and made everyone in the building get to their feet, with Muta taking an electric chair DDT. It looked as safe as possible, meaning it looked like a man taking a vertical dive off another man's shoulders. Those kind of things made it feel like a bigger, better match than it was. 

4. La Parka/Villano IV/Psychosis vs. Juventud Guerrera/Hector Garza/Lizmark Jr. (10:08)

This was the same kind of fireworks that made the opener so much fun, although the Daytona crowd didn't react as loudly to this as they did to that. It wasn't for lack of effort, and all kept working so hard to impress for 10 minutes that eventually the crowd finally had to respect it. It started a little slow with some nice Psychosis/Lizmark maestro match up, and the crowd reacted kind of confused to it. Even Tenay had to explain to Schiavone and Heenan that it was common for lucha matches to start with matwork. From there they build to some huge flying spots that come mostly at the end of the match, and they build to those big spots with hard bumps and stiff strikes. I don't think the crowd was looking for the luchadors to beat the hell out of each other, it's as if it isn't even happening right in front of them. Villano IV especially just comes in murdering everyone with chops and punches and lariats. La Parka does the same (he hit an amazing clothesline on Juvy in the corner, running down the length of the apron to land it), and Psychosis throws maybe the two hardest lariats in the match. 

La Parka is an excellent base for Juvy's headscissors, even catching a nice one through the ropes to the floor, and Psychosis took hiss missed corner bump on the back of his head. The crowd didn't react to any of Psychosis's bumps, even though he was killing himself. Seeing that, you really got the sense of how well Juvy and La Parka understood the timing of spots and how to hit them for the maximum crowd reaction. But the crowd got more involved after a series of misdirections, every member of the match missing consecutive top rope splashes, and it's like it suddenly woke everyone up and reminded them that bodies were crashing for their amusement. The dive train was tremendous, all started by Lizmark flattening V4 with a plancha. Psychosis got backdropped by Garza into a tope con giro, Garza acted as a tabletop for Juvy to get *incredible* height and distance on Air Juvy, just soaring beyond the ropes, building to the big Garza tornillo. A match that deserved to win the crowd over, and eventually did. Very memorable PPV lucha trios, one of the best. 

5. Chris Benoit vs. Kevin Sullivan (13:10)

A tremendous swan song performance for Kevin Sullivan, a real fight feel for its duration with some great use of non-participants and a ton of violence. The violence never dips and it's a painful pace to keep up, things beginning with a punch exchange that makes it clear Sullivan will be throwing fat fists square at Benoit's face. Benoit keeps everything entirely professional the full match, always working snug but clearly working elbow strikes and kicks. Sullivan, however, has no interest in worked shots and beats Benoit up the way someone fighting for their career would. Every punch is thrown to hurt, every kick to the stomach looks upsetting, he stomps Benoit in the balls, double stomps him in the stomach, throws him through a display of surfboards and even throws Jacqueline at him. Sullivan was an expert at taking advantage of Jacqueline and Jimmy Hart's interference, and both of them are great additions to the match. 

Jacqueline is relentless when things spill to the floor, getting flung aside by both Sullivan and Benoit but always screaming back into action. Benoit lifts her up for an atomic drop and instead launches her at Sullivan; Sullivan shoves her at Benoit while immediately following up with a fist to Benoit's eye. Jimmy Hart climbs a lifeguard's chair only to ride it into some fake palm trees after Benoit shoves it over, and the fight continues. Sullivan hangs Benoit in the tree of woe and delivers three hard running knees, and they cool things down a bit with a long crippler crossface. I really liked the long application, Benoit locking his hands right underneath Sullivan's nose, and Sullivan getting a long hard fought rope break and a nice reaction from the crowd after fighting to his feet. The ending pays off the weeks of Sullivan shoving Jacqueline around as she brains him with a wooden chair and leaves Benoit to fling himself straight down with a headbutt off the top. Great fight, worked with the importance of the stipulation in mind, stands out as a stiff brawl in a promotion full of them. 

6. Steve McMichael vs. Jeff Jarrett (6:56)

Very entertaining US Title match, with a crowd loudly against Jarrett. Jarrett knew exactly how to get heat from this crowd, and knows how to rub it in every time he's in control against Mongo. I love how Jarrett bumps and gets upended by McMichael's offense and has to keep spilling to the floor, yelling at fans, then pointing smugly to his head at those same fans whenever he would lure Mongo into a trap. Mongo looks good on offense, hitting a big powerslam and heavy knee lift, but was even more effective bumping for Jarrett. McMichael misses an awesome kneedrop into the corner, patella straight to the top buckle, and Jarrett immediately begins mocking him as he goes after the knee. The crowd hates it when Jarrett goes into a three point stance and takes out Mongo's knee, and just when it seems that Debra is about to step in and save her husband, she instead gives the Halliburton to Jarrett! The finish looks great, with McMichael blocking the first briefcase shot with his forearm and grabbing at it in pain, opening himself up to take the briefcase to the head. The crowd seemed genuinely surprised by Debra turning on her husband, and the announce team all seemed just as shocked. Everyone played their role really well and it lead to a great 10 minute segment. 

7. Randy Savage/Scott Hall vs. DDP/Curt Hennig (9:35)

This show has been really great at keeping every match within a perfect time window, giving everyone long enough to work an interesting and memorable match while not risking them losing the audience. It keeps the audience up the entire time, and this match had a good TV build. A lot of time was spent on who DDP's mystery partner would be, with Hennig and Raven being the ones not so subtly hinted at. In fact, it was hinted at so strongly that it felt more likely it would be neither of those two, so I was actually surprised when Curt Hennig came out as the partner. But even then the announcers had the appropriate reaction when they said "Oh so it IS Curt Hennig!" The match itself doesn't actually build much, as it turns out to be more angle than match, but the rare match ups elevated things and got us nicely to the angle. Hennig and Hall were a strong AWA tag team a decade prior and only fought on house shows and one PPV tag in the WWF.  And, outside of a few possible Royal Rumble interactions, Hennig and Savage is a first time match. So those are fun pairings, and to add to that DDP always works well with Savage so the floor on this one is high. This was an inspired stretch for Savage, always loved the energy between he and DDP. Hennig and Hall square off and it feels new, even though it's not, ahem, perfect. It all builds to DDP skinning the cat which causes Hennig to get slowed by a low bridge, but then he attacks DDP and leaves him prone to the Outsider's Edge/Elbow. I think Hennig made more sense as a heel during his comeback, so I liked the turn and thought it came off unexpected. 

8. Roddy Piper vs. Ric Flair (13:26)

I loved this match. Piper vs. Flair hadn't faced off against each other since 1992, and most of their early 90s WWF feud was house show only. Their interactions in the 1992 Rumble were arguably the best part of one of the most legendary Rumbles, and this match immediately brought back the energy of those Rumble interactions. Whenever I think of the 92 Rumble I think of Piper going after Flair every chance he got, running in and flinging himself onto Flair, and that's exactly how the first several minutes of this match go.  Piper's strikes all look classic, throwing hard overhand right chops, mixing up punch combos, big knife edge chops, Flair off balance the whole time and only making his way into the match by landing a chop block after Piper briefly gets tied up with the ref. Both men are good at both sides of the match, Piper looking like a crazed lunatic going after Flair, but also doing an impressive job selling the damage Flair was doing to his knee. 

Flair stooged and bumped and flopped for Piper's strike barrage, then looked near sadistic every time he would kick or stomp at Piper's knee or ring one up below the belt. Flair takes a couple bumps to the floor and Piper not only kept up the brawl energy at ringside, but he managed to limp around on his worked over leg the entire time. We get a couple of dramatic figure 4 moments, and a great twist when Piper has to deal with Benoit and Mongo. It's a bunch of chaos all at once, with ref Randy Anderson suddenly very easily distractible while people are crashing behind his back, but the payoff is worth it. Piper suckers Benoit into hitting a flying headbutt on Flair, but Mongo absolutely spikes Piper with a tombstone. There's a lot of great Flair/Piper drama as Flair crawls to cover Piper after Mongo's tombstone, and it really felt like it could have been the finish. Flair takes just enough time getting to the pin that it feels like there's a chance of Piper kicking out, and when it does it gets a huge reaction from the crowd. These two knew how to build to convincing pinfalls, with Piper also getting a reaction from a swinging neckbreaker that looked good enough to be the finish. But everyone wanted to see Piper drag Flair to the mat with the sleeper, and it was great seeing Flair's arm drop. This would have easily played as a strong main event a decade prior, and it was great to see both really go at it. 

9. Lex Luger/The Giant vs. Hulk Hogan/Dennis Rodman (22:30)

Buffer really adds to the big main event feel for this one, although he gives the nWo a way cooler intro than our two babyface heroes, saying that Rodman is a bad boy because he's good enough to be as bad as he wants to be. This tale of the tape feels very opinionated, but it does get the crowd buzzing. The match itself is long, but expertly laid out like a Memphis arena main event. It's classic Memphis, with a charismatic heel teaming with an athletic superstar and a charismatic face teaming with a green Giant. Sometimes the athlete is a babyface and sometimes the giant is a monster heel but the Memphis feel is strong. Hogan adds to that vibe by working as total chickenshit heel, and while the match had a purposely slow build, they knew exactly what they were doing as the crowd built along with it. They hide weaknesses and bullshit around strengths, with the Giant not tagging in until over 11 minutes into the match and Rodman being celebrated for every single wrestling move he managed to pull off. Hardly anything happens for the first several minutes and the crowd is along exactly where they need to be the whole time. Hogan takes forever to lock up with Luger, it builds nicely to Rodman entering the match, and the match works as a real impressive way to frame Rodman's first pro wrestling match. 

Rodman has a high floor as a wrestler. His size is impressive, and it makes his slow hesitant movements come off like a dangerous giant, not a tentative celebrity newcomer. Macho Man is the nWo's second, and he and Hogan are perfect cheeseballs who celebrate Rodman's every move as a feat of wonder. He locks up and armdrags Luger, and Macho and Hogan come screaming into the ring like Rodman had just grabbed a rebound to seal a playoff win. A Rodman leapfrog exchange leads to a reaction typically reserved for gold medal sprinters breaking the tape, and it's all great. The fans cannot stand Rodman and hate the idea of giving him credit, so we begin to get loud Rodman Sucks chants, and Rodman knows exactly how to soak it up. But they also can't help getting excited when he got more and more involved, and by the time he was hammering a trio of very nasty looking back elbows into Luger in the corner, he no longer felt like merely a celebrity attraction. They built well to everything the crowd wanted to see, and they especially reacted big whenever Rodman took damage. Rodman's size made his bumping more impressive, the crowd loved seeing him knock Luger down with shoulderblocks and also leap into a huge Giant bearhug. Giant is still real raw here, does a lot of Giant Gonzalez wide eyes swinging arms selling and comes off clumsy and unsure, but Hogan and Rodman are both good at working around him. It's all basic southern house show, but those connect with crowds and these reactions kept getting bigger. 

Not only did we get a steady stream of wadded up garbage thrown at the nWo, but the big spots all felt big. Rodman and Hogan did a double hip toss on Giant that felt shook the building, and the fans reacted like they had just been through an aftershock. Rodman violently manhandles ref Randy Anderson and headbutts him in the back of the head, and it leads to a chaotic finish that works for the match. Sting (a man who is clearly not Sting and instead a 7 footer who steps over the top rope entering and exiting the ring) hits the Giant with a baseball bat but WCW still gets to triumph amid the confusion, with Luger torture racking Hogan, Rodman, and Savage one after the other. It's a strong main event to one of WCW's best PPVs, a match that felt like a main event and properly navigated the egos of two top wrestling stars, one star rookie, and a major mainstream celebrity. It's not necessarily an easy match to book, but they made it look simple. 

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2003: Lesnar vs. Benoit VS. Honda vs. Kobashi

Brock Lesnar vs. Chris Benoit WWE Smackdown 12/4/03

This match has been recommended a couple times as a contender for the 2003 crown, and it's notable to me because of my personal connection to the match, and for how entirely different it may be viewed in 2020. Outside of WCW TV, we really haven't written up many Benoit matches since 2007, and I don't anticipate that changing. He was a favorite of mine for many years, and he's decidedly not a favorite of mine now, and that's only partly related to him being a child murderer. His style hasn't aged well for me in the past 13 years, similar to the Christopher Daniels effect. Daniels was one of my very favorite live workers and favorite workers period around '99/'00, and then a few years later I aged out of being interested in Daniels. In going back and watching Benoit matches, they don't hit me the same way they did when I was there experiencing them in real time. His limitations seem more glaring now, in the same way Daniels' limitations seemed obvious even by 2003. Also, to my knowledge Christopher Daniels is an upstanding citizen who has yet to kill his family.

Not by accident, Phil has reviewed at most four Chris Benoit matches since 2007, and I'm not about to ask him to start reviewing more now. But this match was suggested as a 2003 challenger, and it's an extremely important match to me and my pro wrestling fandom, so it felt appropriate that I would review it alone. This was actually the first big wrestling show I ever attended. When I was younger my parents wouldn't allow me to attend wrestling shows, so I didn't start seeing live wrestling until I turned 18 and began attending Bay Area APW shows. My dad actually went with me and friends to my first wrestling show (APW 1/16/99) right after my 18th birthday. He hated it, but wouldn't say so. He used to attend Cow Palace shows when he was a youth so was not yet fully ashamed at my level of wrestling fandom. The only name he really remembered was Pat Patterson, because he and his buddies had all called him "Fat Pat" while heckling.

In college, a friend of mine had a WWF ticket connection through the radio station, but that connection dried up from '99-'02 due to the insane demand. By 2003 demand had lessened enough that he was finally able to get us some comped seats. WWF's west coast ticket guy was Will McCoy, and he hooked up a tiny little college radio station with some great seats for several years - long past the time any of us were still attending college - and for that I am still thankful. When we showed up in San Jose to get our Smackdown tickets, one thing we were not expecting was Will McCoy hooking us up with 2nd row ringside seats. Radio giveaway tickets were always good, but nowhere near this good. Typically they would be lower bowl, same side as camera. Those were the less desirable seats, as it meant your unfunny sign had zero chance of ending up on camera. And yet here we were walking closer and closer to the ring, until we found our seats directly to the left of the announce tables. My god, was I excited.

At that point in time, my favorite wrestler in the world was Brock Lesnar. First run Brock Lesnar is STILL among my favorite wrestlers in the world, and by that point I was watching enough Japan and Mexico footage to be confident that Brock was the best wrestler in the world, period. And whenever I go back and watch footage I'm reminded of how undoubtedly inarguably correct I was. Plus, we all knew that due to the battle royal the prior week, we were guaranteed either a Brock/Benoit or Brock/Cena main event, both of which sounded great. We were all rooting for it to be Brock/Benoit, as Benoit had been a favorite of ours for far longer than Brock had been, the pairing seemed like a natural fit, and - this is big - it was a singles match that hadn't yet happened on TV. Midway through the show, once Benoit beat Cena, we knew we were guaranteed what probably would have been my literal dream match at that point in time. Three months later I got to see my next dream match, Brock vs. Eddie, but on 12/2/03 Brock vs. Benoit was the match I wanted to see more than any other. I was so excited that early in the match when they brawled near us on the floor, my friend Sean turned to me and asked "pretty into this one, huh?" When I asked how he could tell, he informed me that I had been jumping up and down with my arms in the air the entire time they brawled on the floor. I did not realize I was doing this, but I can say 17 years later that you can clearly see an idiot 22 year old near-sighted goober pogoing in place, arms lifted directly above my head, nearly the entire time they brawled on the floor. I was that excited to be seeing this match.

When we left we all thought it was one of the greatest matches any of us had ever seen live. Two months prior a couple of us had driven down to Tijuana to see El Hijo Del Santo vs. Super Parka, Mascara contra Mascara. The live atmosphere for that couldn't be beat (and I still hold out hope that Roy Lucier is going to randomly throw that match up on his YouTube channel some day, as I have not seen it since), but Brock vs. Benoit was the match I had been dying to see for months at this point, and we all felt so lucky that the match had been given every opportunity to live up to its on-paper potential. I watched the match on TV a couple days later, loved it again, and haven't seen it since.

The match benefitted from a strong, concise TV build. Benoit tapped Brock at Survivor Series, and Brock was pelted with You Tapped Out chants every time he appeared in the ring afterward. Brock was so dynamite on the mic during this era. I think people forget how often Brock cut promos, since Paul Heyman has been used almost exclusively as his mouthpiece for the past decade while Brock hops around behind him. In 2003 Brock was one of the most confident mic workers of all time, able to expertly manipulate and taunt crowds while coming off intense and unscripted. He knew how to shut down chants, while also showing a small amount of ass for those chants. The crowd saw Benoit tap Brock, and they wanted him to do it again, and Brock saying boastful hyperbolic things like "I will NEVER tap out to anything EVER again" was said with such undercutting pride that it thread the needle of "he's definitely going to tap" and "maybe he really WON'T ever tap again". In addition to Brock's jock hubris, we got very effective segments backstage from other wrestlers. The best job of selling this match may have actually been done by A-Train. There was a running gag during this era where Nunzio, assisted by Chuck Palumbo and Johnny Stamboli, was running a backstage gambling ring. Nunzio laid the odds at 3:2 Brock, because while Benoit had tapped Brock, Benoit had also worked a match against Cena already that night. We got a great shot of the chalkboard with every wrestler's laid bets, and A-Train comes into the room wanting to drop 10 grand on the match. And we got this simple, but perfect exchange:

Nunzio: "Alright boys, put 10 G's on Brock!"
A-Train: "No. I'm putting it on Benoit."

That's the kind of easy attention to detail that is completely absent from modern WWE programming. Portraying wrestlers with no allegiances to either guy, actually expressing interest in who wins and who loses. A-Train was aligned with Brock at this point, was on his team at Survivor Series, and this simple action of betting against the odds - and against his own interests - is the kind of moment I would be stunned to see on TV in 2020.


The match itself delivered exactly what I wanted, and watching it back it's still a testament to how great a talent Brock Lesnar was in 2003. Brock is obviously still a guy I am going out of my way to watch, and has been in some of the best matches of the decade since his return. But in 2003 he was even better, and he was doing it full time, and it was incredible. In hindsight this came off like an incredible Brock performance, and I get the sense he could have done this same match with Edge, Test, Shelton Benjamin, Rodney Mack, honestly anyone on the roster at that time. Benoit brought an intensity that others on the roster couldn't, a toughness that many others didn't project, and - most importantly - the fans believed he could beat Brock. For his part Benoit went at Brock like there wasn't a massive size difference, attacking with chops, a couple of big Germans, and a brutal diving headbutt. But Brock was The Terminator here. He came at Benoit with big swinging arms, brutal kneelifts, and threw him around at will (including a wicked hotshot on the announce table, and a German suplex that whipped Benoit's head disgustingly into the mat). Where Brock excels as more than just a great smashing machine, was his attention to small details. Brock knows how to make a big bump mean something (check out his explosive bump into the ring steps, as I cannot imagine someone crashing harder full weight into those steps), and he connects the dots on all of his smaller moments. 

There's a moment in this match that I love, and it's a spot we've all seen hundreds of times, where someone pulls down the top rope to send a charging opponent tumbling over. And Brock did that spot here better than I've ever seen it done. Nearly every time we see that spot, we see the guy pulling down that top rope and we see the opponent clearly seeing the top rope pulled down, and yet charge over anyway. What move were any of those guys doing? What did they have planned if the rope hadn't been pulled down? Were they just planning on awkwardly colliding? Well, just like that first time you saw someone actually try to take out an opponent's legs during a drop down, here Brock does every step of the spot perfectly. It's amazing when you see a common spot executed perfectly, reminding you of what a poorly set up crutch the spot almost always is. Brock busied himself excellently while Benoit was charging, looking like a sitting duck, Benoit charging in for a lariat, and Brock yanked that top rope down at the precisely CORRECT time, when it was too late for Benoit to stop, and Benoit takes an absolute gem of a fast dangerous bump to the floor. It seems like a small thing, performing the top rope feint correctly, but it's one of those moments - of many - where you see what an excellent pro wrestling brain Lesnar has. This is a guy who truly gets it, truly understands why moves are done and what they mean.

We get the great section where Brock hoists Benoit up for the F5 and accidentally, or not, bashes swings Benoit hard directly into ref Brian Hebner, and the fans get that visual tap out as Brock taps repeatedly to the Crossface while the ref is down. Brock survives, the ref doesn't see, Brock gets a chair, and wastes Benoit's knee. We then get treated to the debut of the Brock Lock, the greatest main event submission during an era where WWE was giving their main event guys submissions. This is an absolutely body damaging submission, with Brock not only bending that damaged leg around his traps, but sitting back into it so deeply that Benoit's body gets as contorted as a Peking acrobat. Benoit passes out from pain, Brock retains, and in a perfect meathead moment, Brock applies the Crossface to a passed out Benoit, making Benoit's free arm tap.


Honda vs. Kobashi Review


Verdict:

ER: This is not unseating Honda vs. Kobashi, but it's a fantastic Big Match Brock performance, and remains a favorite (if tarnished) live wrestling memory for me. The stuff with the referees was inconsistent in a way I didn't remember. Hebner goes down and Hebner misses Brock tapping, but then Nick Patrick runs out the second the match is over to save Benoit. It's annoying when a ref misses a finish, but even moreso when it's made clear that another referee has been watching the match and surely saw what happened. It also could have used more of Brock bashing Benoit's knee before the Brock Lock, but the hold itself was applied so painfully that a pass out finish was totally acceptable. This is still a great match, and if anything, it cements Brock's standing as a true all time great.

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New Footage Friday: WWE MSG HandHeld 9/20/03

Full Show


MD: I was at this show. My college roommate was from the area and got me a ticket for my 22nd birthday right before I went off to grad school in England. This was the only time I ever went to MSG to see wrestling and as you can tell from the first few seconds of video, business was way down. That meant we ended with great seats, not ringside, but close. I'll be honest. Past the main event and the Taz surprise, I don't remember this card that well. While it was nice to see guys like Spanky, London, Mysterio, and Dragon in a setting like this and the main event felt special, I think, at the time, the main draw was just being in MSG to see wrestling.

Chris Benoit vs. The Big Show

PAS: This was far enough away that I am going to go ahead and try to pretend this was Quiet Storm vs. The Big Show and review it as a match instead of talking about all of that. Mark "The Shark" Shrader vs. Big Show was always a really great match up because John Walters would always move forward constantly while bouncing off of Show. This was a pretty great Nitro length match with Dingo hitting a great looking top rope shoulder block, and locking in the Josh Daniels crossface for the tap.

ER: I didn't love the layout of this one. Big Show took his offense up front, Benoit took all of his in the back, and that might be my least favorite layout in wrestling. I enjoyed all of the work, especially liked Benoit's shoulderblock off the top. But too often this had the vibe of a formula Randy Savage match, where he'd sell the whole match, hit a bodyslam and then finish with the elbow. This was better than that formula, and I liked how the tracking line skipped when Big Show hit a legdrop. Cooler version of the rumble effect WWE always tries.

MD: I don't see a lot of Benoit these days. He was perfectly serviceable chopping from underneath and the timing and explosiveness of the finishing stretch (headbutt, chokeslam reversal into a crossface) was great. The crowd was as behind him as they ever would be too, but to me, this was all about Show. He'd gotten it by this point and the way he controlled the ring, even in just a few minutes, was perfect, absolutely larger than life. This was a victim of the number of matches on the card, much shorter than it needed to be to move the needle, but they gave us a very good TV C show sort of match.

Matt Hardy/Shannon Moore vs. Spanky/Paul London

PAS: Really fun TWA vs. OMEGA tag match you could imagine seeing on Break the Barrier. It was really interesting to see how much bigger the OMEGA guys were then then London and Spanky, how even a three year difference in indy juniors meant 3 inches and 35 pounds (and I am sure London and Spanky would look like giants against the Undisputed Era). Hardy and Moore were the heels here and did a nice job cutting off the ring on Spanky after he took a big bump to the floor (his crazy bump would be topped by Shannon Moore later in the match). I thought the London hot tag was cool including a nicely set up SSP after spring off of Spanky's back. Just what you wanted from this cool matchup.

MD: This was good. I didn't like it as much as the later tag but that was more of a structural preference than anything else. You really got the sense that Hardy was glad to be in there with these guys and that Spanky and London had a lot to prove. They fit a lot into a short period of time and everything looked good with people in the right position at the right time. Again, with a card this stacked, they needed contrast and this was there to get the crowd going after their appetites had been whetted by the early burst of size, spectacle, and star-power.

ER: This is really cool, as Paul London hadn't actually made his TV debut. He had done some Velocity job work, but I bet 90+% of the crowd had no idea who he was, and the reactions for his biggest spots really showed they liked what they were seeing. I also had no memory of Brian Kendrick actually working WWE as "Spanky". What a silly name to have used for so long, and another name to add to the list of "Wait so Bryan Danielson had to be Daniel Bryan, but..." I obviously remember London & Kendrick, I had no memory of a London & Spanky WWE team. I dug this tag, felt like something that would fit in perfectly on this era Velocity. There were a couple minor timing issues and a swinging neckbreaker that looked like it didn't really swing, but the fans were reacting big to London's dropkicks and flipped out for that shooting star off Spanky's back (which is a fantastic spot), and the finish was really great. Spanky goes for a pescado and Moore dunks him right into the floor, then runs halfway around the ring in time to shove London off the top into a Twist of Fate. I thought they added in a couple of good twists, like Spanky being unable to get to his hot tag while Moore got to his, the kind of things that add different gears to a fun spot tag.

Sho Funaki vs. Nunzio

PAS: The Bloodsport version of PWFG trainee versus UWFI undercarder would be pretty cool. The WWE house show version is a pretty basic undercard juniors match. Lots of dropkicks and armdrags. Nunzio did take a big backdrop which was pretty cool, otherwise this was pretty dry.

MD: Nunzio was really great here, just excellent at working the crowd and keeping people engaged, from having the ref mimic his mannerisms pre-match to mocking Funaki. Because of that, even though you had guys down the cruiserweight chain and basically your third-string Japanese guy on the card in a time where you'd be liable just to have one or two, they never lost the fans, which is saying something because this was a crowd that was capable of tuning out in the midst of a good match.

Bashams vs. Ultimo Dragon/Jamie Noble

MD: Enjoyable southern tag, with Dragon playing face in peril and the Bashams dismantling his arm with perfect precision. Here, they did lose the fans, though it wasn't necessarily the fault of the match. It certainly wasn't Noble's fault, since he was working the apron hard and expressing real indignation in his attempts to get in there, even at his partner's expense. The Bashams had only been on TV for a few months and they didn't have Shaniqua to get them heat here (not that she would have necessarily helped). While they were sound in everything they did, it was the opposite of Nunzio. They barely acknowledged the crowd. When the boring chants started, Noble redoubled his efforts on the apron and Dragon went right into hope spots, but it didn't really work out. Noble was fiery enough that the comeback more or less worked out and the finish was effective and elaborate but the crowd just didn't want to come along for the ride of the match. Shame.

PAS: I thought this was spectacular. The Bashams were really great at making a heel beatdown interesting, and they really worked over Dragons arm in cool ways, while feeding him some nifty comebacks and hope spots. I am sort of a low voter on Ultimo, but he can really be breathtaking when he gets on a roll. Noble was really awesome in this match too, knocking out some cool quick takedowns early, being a killer house of fire, including jumping into a guillotine, and then eating that killer super spine buster for the pin. This is a show with some of the most talented wrestlers in wrestling history on it, and it takes a lot to stand out, and he really did.

ER: I'm with Phil, I thought this was great. Bashams were always a team that I was fine with but never fully got into them, always thought they didn't live up to all of the OVW hype Meltzer gave them at the time. There would be flash standout performances, but I also remember them being tied down with Tough Enough manager Linda Miles and I don't think the act worked. But everything about this tag worked for me and made me want to go back and revisit a ton of Bashams. This was easily one of the best Ultimo Dragon performances I remember seeing in WWE (a stint I thought was super disappointing overall). Dragon was the reason for me to buy WAR tapes back in the day, and at this point in my life there are probably on average at least 15 guys on any given WAR show that I would rather watch. But this was the ideal version of WWE Dragon, all his combos landed and I flat out loved the missed strikes between he and Danny Basham. Danny Basham was full of awesome missed strikes here, I don't remember him cutting so low on missed lariats and punches; he really made Ultimo duck and was throwing them super fast. Noble really did look like a much better and more interesting version of Benoit here, everything he did looked fantastic, that running low knee especially was something that I don't think any current worker does as well. But everything he did was done with such exciting speed and impact. There are plenty of guys with speed on the 2020 roster, but Noble was using his speed to make his impact look greater, not using it to work out overly complicated dance routines based around missed your opponent a bunch. Great tag that I would have loved to see get more time.

Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Tajiri

MD: Everything hit, but I wanted a little more out of this, just given who was in there. I liked how they didn't dally in getting to the transition (which was smart and flowed, as Mysterio went up one too many times and ate a kick), but past one roll-up out of nowhere, there weren't any hope spots and and cut offs. This is the sort of match that needed a few extended comeback spots where Mysterio could get a few things in. The finishing stretch was as good as you'd expect and I liked how they protected Tajiri's kick for the post match, though it was a little weird that Mysterio would rather celebrate with the crowd than go after the guy who snuck in a cheapshot.

PAS: I thought these guys worked really well together, for a pairing you don't necessarily think about. It felt like Tajiri was trying to out Rey, Rey almost trying to one up him in slickness and speed especially at the beginning of the match. The fact he kind of pulled it off is pretty amazing. Loved how Tajiri went after the ribs, using the big kick as a cutoff spot, and then peppering in little body shots and additional kicks. Great stuff which really makes me want to track down all of their other matches against each other.

Charlie Haas vs. Billy Kidman

MD: I haven't seen either of these guys in a long time. There were some things I really liked: Haas' initial intensity with the mat wrestling (though it didn't last long enough; the way he jammed Kidman's outside-in shoulder to set up the posting and the heat, then how Kidman had to work to get that shoulder for a hope spot later; the back-work in general which was intense, and the comeback took effort and the finish was solid. They had the crowd early, probably due to Haas getting promo time, and lost them midway through, but not for long. I outright laughed when Haas tried to power bomb Kidman, because I didn't think that was still happening in 2003. So I liked the brunt of the storytelling here. Some of the spots were awkward and Kidman's offense in the stretch wasn't great but you couldn't have wanted much more from a cold house show match between these two.

Eddie Guerrero vs. John Cena vs. Rhyno

MD: As triple threats go, I thought this was pretty good. They kept the laying-on-the-outside to a minimum. Cena was definitely full of star power and willing to throw himself into everything. Eddy had this way of creating chaos so effortlessly and then taking advantage of it. You should have been able to see the strings but you never did.

PAS: Three ways are far from my favorite kind of match, but you put two of the most charismatic wrestlers of all time along with a fine utility man like Rhino, you are going to get something really worth watching. I just love watching Eddie move, even in a minor key house show match like this he just exudes something. It is like watching Prince or Richard Pryor, really that kind of kinetic star power was supremely rare. Cena has it in smaller doses, but this was before Cena was Cena really. I did like his squat press suplex, and he didn't look out of his depth in there with Eddie. Rhino was shaped like a cardboard box, and I always enjoyed him bouncing around like a Box Troll.

Brock Lesnar vs. The Undertaker

MD: It's hard to ignore the complaining from the fans. All of the heat here was ultimately on Vince, and yes, the match did come alive in that back third when he was involved. Before that, though it was more of a traditional WWF cage match, lacking hate, lacking blood, not nearly enough violence, with a lot of transitions and spots based around trying to escape the cage, peppered with good use of the cage to do things their size wouldn't usually allow and a few bits of matwork that you know Taker was excited to be able to work with Brock. Vince brought so much energy and excitement relative to the actual wrestlers, which is weird to think considering how the entire world seems to buzz when Brock is in a ring now.

PAS: These guys had an all time great Hell in the Cell match around this time. This wasn't that, but these guys do match up really well. Brock is such a freak athlete and even on simple bumps is just flying around the ring. They also laid in their shots which is really what you want from Matt is right about the match really picking up when Vince comes in. Vince can really emote to the last row, and takes some big bumps for an old man with a lot of money. I really loved his post match celebration only to get ripped by Taker. Fun stuff, although it really could have used the plasma which livened up the Hell in the Cell.

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