RAW
RAW was great, except for the fifteen or twenty minutes that were the worst things that have ever aired on the show. That said, what was good was among the best stuff ever presented on RAW.

They had all the girls backstage and had Coach do the suspense thing, walking back and forth up and down the line before telling them which one had been eliminated. One of the Juggy Twins got the boot (which makes me think that the other may be next). They were then told that they would be trying to seduce a former WWE Superstar later in the show. Why me?

Most of the active roster, except for Benoit and HHH, came down to the ring to start. A lot of guys got good reactions, though I’m sure that they were hoping for more from some. Bischoff came to the top of the ramp and announced that this would be a twenty man battle royal with the winner facing the winner of the Benoit vs. HHH match. The WWE has been learning how to properly run a battle royal for years, and they’ve got it right to the point where they are over-using it. This makes the third, or perhaps fourth, battle royal on TV in less than a year. Still, very well done and a good way to get the guys at least some face time on screen.

They eliminated the guys you’d expect: Regal, Tomko, Polumbo and Venis. They had Matt Hardy eliminated pretty early after tangling with Kane. Matt then ran back in and beat on Kane a bit. They are working the wrestling end of the Lita / Matt / Kane storyline pretty well, I must say. Hurricane got Double Press-Slammed out, but Rosie charged and Clotheslined both of the guys out of the ring to eliminate them in a spot that got a good pop. Everything goes pretty much as expected: little guys get tossed, and bigger guys look good.

Edge got to give Batista a headscissors to eliminate him, then Jericho, who had been working with Edge, knocked him from behind. Edge looked flamed, and Jericho looked unapologetic. This left Jericho and Randy Orton in the ring. The two worked a bit and they ended up doing a great ending sequence where Jericho went over the top, but held on. Randy eventually ended up getting brought to the outside apron and the two of them work on the apron teasing elimination for both. Eventually, Orton gives Jericho the RKO and then boots him out to the floor. Great ending and I’d say this one was just a smidge below the quality of the SmackDown! Battle Royal that came down to the Big Show and Eddy back in January.

...and she may actually WATCH wrestling...

They had all the girls try and seduce Kamala, who was doing his old gimmick to the Nth degree (which, by the way, is a fantastic magazine). None of this was entertaining, but the worst one by far was Carmella (or am I forced to call her Former Playmate of the Year Carmella?). Amy got a good pop when they announced it was her turn, but she did no more entertaining a turn than the others. They really should have had Joy, who went last, just pop her top to give the crowd something to cheer over. This was the worst segment in years. Nothing this bad has been on TV since Nitro. Ok, except maybe for the Katie Vick stuff. And Al Wilson.

They showed Ivory, Stacy Kiebler and Linda McMahon at the Democratic convention. They talked about why they were doing it and showed some clips of Mick talking with folks. Mick and Linda were on MSNBC later, too. You know, I really think the SmackDown! Your Vote campaign is a good concept, and they’ve done fairly well.

They had the potential Divas come out and parade around in bikinis. Joy has both of what it takes to be a Diva in today’s WWE. Amy got another good reaction. Amy, in her announcement, said that she thought Chris Benoit would win the Ironman Match, and I believe that that was the only mention of any wrestler by any of the girls. Joy is super hot. So is Amy. Maybe it’ll come down to them, which would be interesting.

The Iron Man Match will be one of the most remembered RAW matches of all time. I think that the Flair vs. Mr. Perfect match from 1993 may be the only singles match I thought was better. I’m sure there’s a Shawn Michaels match that comes close, maybe one of his with Marty Jannetty, or perhaps the Bulldog vs. Owen Hart match from 1997. The Benoit and Jericho vs. HHH and Austin and the Owen and Bulldog vs. Austin and Michaels matches were also right at this level. The match made total sense, felt like a major title match, and had an ending that worked and got a teetering Eugene back into the loving eyes of the fans.

They started off by reviewing the rules with both guys, just like a boxing match. They should do that for every World Title Match, as it adds an air of legitimacy. They work old school tie-ups and hip tosses, before doing some more modern mat work. This reminded me a lot of an American version of the classic Misawa and Kobashi matches, where there were simple segments to open before they took it far and above. The exchanges were crisp, they didn’t miss moves and they just looked great. Benoit took a brutal looking DDT, but still managed to comeback and get the first fall with pinfall after a crossface. There were a lot of chants for HHH in this one, and a few for Benoit. It just may have seemed that H was getting the face reaction because there was a very vocal section right in front of the camera.

After the break, Benoit was in command and worked some great exchanges. HHH hit a backbreaker and Benoit was being whipped all over the place. Benoit went for a dive through the ropes, but ended up flying right into the barrier. After another break, Benoit worked a bunch of submissions. He goes for a sharpshooter, but ended up with an Indian Deathlock, which is one of my all-time favorite moves. Benoit hits a few German Suplexes, but goes for a diving headbutt when HHH moved. HHH managed to hit the Pedigree for the pin to tie up the score.

Benoit rolls out of the ring and eventually HHH followed and dropped Chris gut first on the steps, which got Benoit counted out. The score was 2 to 1 in favor of HHH at slightly beyond the half-way mark.

Who gets to be Iron Man? And who has to be War Machine?

HHH worked Benoit and was in control most the next few minutes. He kept whipping Benoit chest first into the turnbuckles. It’s like an All Japan match where they beating on each other with the same simple moves and every time it looks more painful. Eventually HHH hit a Spinebuster for the pin to move into a commanding 3 to 1 lead.

After another break, Benoit almost took another Pedigree, but slipped away and managed his own Sharpshooter. HHH held out for a few minutes, but ended up tapping to bring Benoit back into it with about 15 minutes to go. More exchanges for the next couple of minutes, but Benoit gets a crossface and another submission just ahead of the ten minute mark. Things were tied going into the back finishing ten. Each time HHH tapped out there would rise a ‘You Tapped Out!’ chant. Trips was getting a face reaction, but the crowd certainly gave it to him when he came up short.

Flairtista came out and did some interfering when Benoit was thrown outside. They eventually busted Benoit open, which was a risky thing to do considering that he had been working 50+ minutes. He gushed a fair deal, and it made it look far more desperate for Benoit going into the closing minutes. HHH bumps the ref by accident, and Benoit managed to catch another crossface with no ref to make the call. Flair and Batista enter the ring, with Flair giving H a chair. Benoit manages to take out Batista, but HHH hits him with the chair. About this time Bischoff comes out with another ref and when he counts, he only gets a two as Benoit managed to raise a shoulder. This got a good pop. HHH took out that ref with an intentional smash, and then there is more triple teaming.

Then there was someone coming through the audience towards the ring and getting some good heat.

Through the crowd and over the barrier came Benoit’s idiot savior:

Eugene!

The crowd went nuts when he got into the ring and starting knocking around Flair and Batista and HHH. Eugene took all three of them, then he cold-cocked Bisch. The crowd loved it, especially when he gave Batista the Stunner and Flair the Rock Bottom. He gave a weak drop kick, too. HHH went to hit him with a chair, but Eugene ducked, gave him a kick to the gut and drilled H with it. Benoit was out from the triple team, but started to crawl over to H. Eugene brought the ref in and he very slowly made the count.

Eugene was on the announcers’ table, clapping as Benoit smiled and smacked his belt in victory.

That was a great ending. We had set up Orton vs. HHH, as most folks seem to think that H was gonna take it, me included. Then they switched it to Orton vs. Benoit, which is another good match, and HHH vs. Eugene. The booking here was smart and complex, and it only added to a match that had everything going for it. I‘d say this was a slight mite better than the Angle vs. Lesnar, if only for the finish. Great stuff that could lead to more great stuff.

NEWS
Edge and Randy Orton weren’t on the house shows this weekend. According to the Observer, it wasn’t injury related, but they both have had a lot of very tough matches with each other over the last few weeks, so it may just have been a breather weekend.

Eddie’s hamstring is acting up. That’s a bad sign, but he’s still expected to do his match at SummerSlam.

Joannie Lauer, aka Chynna Doll, was a judge at the World's Most Beautiful Transsexual contest in Vegas. Wow, that’s a weird one. She’s slowly burying herself down to the D-level of the celebrity.

Speaking of celebrity, Chris Jericho’s stock is rising. According to a couple of folks who work with creative over at VH-1, they’re very happy with the amount of comedy he provided to the ‘I Love the..’ Series and the ‘Best Week Ever’ stuff. He’s expected to get more chances at things like that in the future.

Another name that has been bounced around as a possibility to bring in for future projects is John Cena, who is also supposed to get one of the WWE films to star in as well. Cena’s rap CD is also postponed until at least November, though some say it may just be shelved.

FlashBack!
Japan and the US are very different in their approaches to wrestling companies and co-promotion. In the US, there was once a sense of cooperation due to the fact that the NWA was actually comprised of dozens of smaller promotions. The rise of the WWF in the mid-1980s, and the collapsing of the NWA into a single entity out of Atlanta pretty much spelled the end to the seeing matches where one fed’s champ might take on another.

In Japan, All Japan was strongly isolationist, very rarely working with any other promotion. While there were moments of good tidings, such as the Budokan Dream show in 1979, it wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that the companies in Japan started working together on big shows. While New Japan led the way, there was a show produced in 1995 that made the world take notice.

Baseball Magazine Sha’s Weekly Pro Wrestling is one of the two biggest wrestling magazines in Japan. A great publication, Weekly Pro decided to hold a huge interpromotional card. This was huge, as they managed to get All Japan to agree to send some representation. By having it by an outside source, and one that had a profound effect on wrestling fans, they managed to get all the major, and most of the significant minor, promotions in line for the show.

The whole thing did have some problems. First off was the main event. New Japan was arguably the hottest promotion in the world at that point, and they agreed to send their champion, Shinya Hashimoto, to take on Masahiro Chono. All Japan made the play that they were so rarely on these big shows that they should get the slot for their champion. FMW was sending one of the biggest names in Japanese wrestling at the time, Atsushi Onita, for an exploding barbed wire match. The show was headlined by Chono vs. Hashimoto, but most folks believe that the All Japan six man match stole the show.

The matches themselves showed the gross difference between the big time and the bush league promotions. One of the weirdest matches I’ve ever heard of was Go Gudan’s "Alien Death Match" to win the vacant Go Gudan Interplanetary Title. That’s right, Ryuma Go beat Uchu Majin Silver X in fifteen minutes to win an Interplanetary title. This was an awful match. Akira Maeda, another big name of the past who was on the south side of his career, represented his promotion, RINGS, by beating Chris Dolman in a match which sucked beyond all belief. There was a Woman’s UFC-rules match, but it paled to the mainstream women’s matches and the stronger group shooting matches. Even Pro Wrestling Fujiwara-gumi had a match on the show which sucked when compared to the UWFi and other worked shoot promotions, which frequently sucked in and of themselves.

They're a different kind of Diva in Japan.

Once you got beyond all that awful stuff, you hit some great wrestling. The opener was a great match from the girls at JPW. Dynamite Kansai, Hikari Fukuoka, Candy Okutsu & Fusayo Nouchi beat Devil Masami, Mayumi Ozaki, Cutie Suzuki & Hiromi Yagi in the match that was fast and showed why Japanese Women’s Wrestling was at the peak of it’s power. Ozaki, the cutest of all the Japanese Wrestlers, was the best in this match. All Japan Women’s Pro Wrestling also had a great match, with Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue beating Manami Toyota & Blizzard Yuki in a match which featured three of the best workers in the world at that point. I still think Toyota should be remembered as the female version of Chris Benoit, she was so great and almost never had a bad match.

The men had a few classics in various styles. IWA Japan had Terry Funk, Shoji Nakamaki & Leatherface taking on Cactus Jack & The Headhunters in a "Barbwire Barricade Barbwire Baseball Bat Texas Tornado Death Match." This might have been the most violent match on the card, as the guys took a hell of a beating. I am thinking that this was the biggest crowd that Terry Funk ever worked in front of, as I don’t believe that he ever worked any of the big New Japan Dome Shows, he was at the North Korean shows, and the FMW stadium shows never drew this big. There was a lot of shooting and shoot-style working from groups list Pancrase and UWFi. Michinoku Pro gave us a great Japanese Lucha six-man match. I think it might have been the best match on the show if not for the other big six-man.

Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi & Stan Hansen wrestled Toshiaki Kawada, Akira Taue & Johnny Ace to a memorable draw. Misawa and Kobashi were the best workers in the world at the time, and Kawada and Taue were probably the best regular tag team. Stan Hansen is a legend and had been having a good run, while Johnny Ace knows better than any other American how a good six-man should be worked. This was a classic thirty minute draw and should be watched by all those folks who love wrestling with a lot of heavy psychology.

FMW’s entry was Atsushi Onita fighting Mr. Pogo, though not under those names. Onita wrestled as The Great ‘nita, a reference to The Great Muta, who wasn’t on the show. Pogo wrestled as King Pogo. The Exploding Barbed Wire match wasn’t great, as Pogo was mostly useless by this point. The match was OK, but by 1995, the spectacle of the exploding ring was wearing off.

The main event sucked. Hashimoto had been having knee problems and Chono hadn’t been terribly healthy, but they also worked before a crowd that had just been burnt out. The match didn’t click, odd for a Chono match, but there was no joy.

There was talk of making it a regular event, but they never seemed to make it happen. They did a memorial show to Rikidozan the following year, but that suffered even more from the differences between the big and the small promotions, and All Japan didn’t even send a top worker to the show. There have been a few other attempts, but the Weekly Pro Wrestling Show of 1995 will likely remain the last great Super Show for a while.