I'm making the most of that fuckin New Japan World subscription that I've had for about ten months and used for maybe two weeks tops. Don't try and stop me!
This is probably not going to be something I'll love at this stage of the game, but there was enough here to keep me interested and overall I'd say it held up pretty well. Look, if you're one of the seven people who read this nonsense of a thing on a regular basis then you don't need me saying another word about Eddie Guerrero to know where I stand on him. If I watch a match with him in it and he's at least halfway entertaining then I'll write lengthy paragraphs about everything he did that made him so. I'm a broken record and I know it. But here I am, back on my bullshit to yet again tell you that Eddie Guerrero was outstanding in this wrestling match. It might be his best heel performance as Black Tiger and almost certainly his best performance under the mask up to this point (heel or babyface). He was fully in Gringo Loco mode by now back in Mexico so he brought some of the bastardry over with him for this tour. To be honest I don't know if anybody actually worked babyface here. I guess there were babyface moments, if for no reason other than the fact someone was being beaten up for stretches, but everybody basically acted like a dick and there was tetchyness all around. Ohtani is the young pup but he would dish out as many cheapshots as he'd take, so it was sort of hard to feel any sympathy for him. Benoit was surly as a bastard and sure never worked babyface and...well. You know. Sasuke was MAYBE sympathetic? A little bit? Then again he did not enjoy being chopped out of his pyjamas and I get the feeling his response wouldn't have been very babyface-like if he wasn't physically restrained. Still, we are all about the chippiness and potato-farming and so we welcome it, embrace it, treasure it. Eddie was working OVERTLY heel, though. He would come in and break up pins or submissions, but he'd do it by being a prick and I about lost it when he sauntered over and broke up a Boston Crab by casually poking Benoit in the eye. Fancy watching some of that snappy juniors offence? Eddie wasn't bothered his arse about what you fancied and would intermittently come in to put a stop to it. He brought the surliness, the hostility, the rampant shithousery, and everything he did on offence looked picture perfect. The finish was whiffed to hell but Ohtani scoring the win felt like a big moment for him, and ultimately was satisfying in that respect. Yeah, this was decent.
Shinya Hashimoto v Riki Choshu (New Japan, 1/4/01)
The final chapter in the eternal story of Hashimto and Choshu beating the dog piss out of each other in front of 50,000 people. This did not reinvent their particular wheel, did not stray far from their beaten path. There were many thumping lariats, many chops, many kicks and many awesome bits of selling. The one major wrinkle here was that Hashimoto in full dickhead mode. I guess as a rivalry or series there's never been a true heel or babyface divide between these two. A lot of it was built around respect and HONOUR and not so much about good or bad. Grey areas and all that. By this point Hashimoto is close to being out the door in New Japan, and I don't really know the full history behind that but I guess his ongoing disagreements with Choshu were relatively well-known. Either way, as soon as this started Hashimoto remained in the corner and wasn't even interested in locking up. Choshu was obviously annoyed by this and continued to get more annoyed as Hashimoto would barely acknowledge him. Even the ref' was getting frustrated! Then Hash stepped onto the ramp like he was ready to walk out on the whole mess and it's the first time I've heard a crowd actively boo Hash in...what, forever? When he eventually decides he's ready to fight he slabbers Choshu. And Choshu slabbers him back and neither will give the other the satisfaction of leaving their feet no matter how hard they're hit. It's the tried and true Hash v Choshu formula, just a bit more strike-driven than some of their previous matches. The finish is a bit hokey with Fujinami putting a stop to it, I guess because he's worried someone gets beaten to death or whatever, and the crowd were not particularly happy about it. However it is these two and so we take every second of it.
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