11/29/93 WWF: Shawn Michaels vs. The 1-2-3 Kid 15:00
ML: This was a very fast paced, burst oriented match for WWF. Kid's speed and workrate got Michaels out of his usual box, forcing Michaels to react to him rather than do his usual solo routine. They took their breaks for control, but always went back to rope running before it started to drag, and overall it was an exciting match. It was a really good, exhilarating performance by Kid, taking advantage of having a more athletic opponent. Michaels took one really ridiculous bump, jumping at the post and basically wrapping his arm around it for a sort of bent lariat just because Kid reversed an Irish whip on the outside, but overall was far less over the top than usual. Kid then tried a cross body off the apron, but Michaels powerslammed him out of the air. It's a good thing Kid is a good athletic kicker because his punches are thrown from an angle that doesn't even make sense where he windmills up and then comes down on the top of the opponent's head. This was enjoyable while it lasted, but ultimately just a backdrop to promote the Razor Ramon vs. Michaels feud. Michaels trolled Razor by using the Razor's edge after avoiding Kid's senton atomico, pulling him up at 2. Ramon strolled out after a 2nd Razor's edge, and pulled Kid by the feet through the ropes to stop a 3rd. Apparently Kid was already just dead from the first 2 because he was never seen again. They abandoned the match and did an angle where Michaels tripped running to the locker room to escape from Ramon, but Diesel was hiding behind the curtain to cheap shot Razor. Michaels eventually gave Ramon the slowest, lowest impact kneel and place Razor's edge humanly possible. After some taunting, he did a 2nd more tired out Razor's edge that faded off to the right, and that was the end of the segment. ***

2/15/98 WWF In Your House 20: No Way Out Of Texas, WWF Light Heavyweight Title: TAKA Michinoku vs. Pantera 10:11
ML: The best WWF Light Heavyweight Title Match, and the one time WWF successfully competed with the action WCW was regularly delivering before the division was overtaken by the lousy wrestling and awful unserious personalities of Lawlercito, Scotty 2 Shitty, and Gillberg. One of the big problems the division faced is WWF simply refused to give them any time. Along with this, only TAKA's debut against The Great Sasuke and the Title Tournament Final against Brian Christopher even barely just cracked the 10 minute mark. TAKA vs Jerry Lynn from 8/23/97 would surely have been a recommendation if it was a competitive 12 minute match rather than a 5 minute showcase for TAKA. The problem with the aformentioned Sasuke match is they tried to compress their whole 20 minute match into 10 minutes, so there was too much going on and not enough time develop any of it while also including their better spots. This Pantera match was just the strong 10 minutes rather than grasping for balance with middling matwork and whatnot leading up to a few good minutes before they ran out of time. Since it's a Lucha based match, focusing on the action worked better than trying to make up for lost time and be something it really wasn't. There was more action in this one TAKA vs. Pantera match than in the average 10 of these 90s WWF matches I've been watching, and I've only been watching the ones I thought might actually be worth talking about. It's lean and to the point rather than the usual Stamford bloatware. Pantera was one of the best flyers of his generation, but he's from the previous generation, and isn't the athlete that TAKA was at this point, although really no one else was either, as the speed and athleticism of TAKA was still off the charts in 1998 when he had functioning knees. Pantera is a little slow for a technico to begin with, so the difference in speed and explosion is quite stark. TAKA still did all his impressive offense even though he's ostensibly in the rudo role of basing for Pantera though, so it was pretty much a win win, with TAKA making Pantera look better without having to forgo most of his own offense in the process. Pantera was working like his future depended on it, absolutely busting it. If you had someone in charge who appreciated the business he was in, Pantera would have earned many more chances due to this outstanding effort, but this Vince's carnival, so it was Pantera's only WWF PPV appearance. Pantera got off to a fast start with an early no touch tope con giro. TAKA soon answered with his springboard plancha. TAKA was a lot more comfortable here than in the match vs. Sasuke, as he was used to the difference in the WWF ring, and understood how to do a consistently entertaining short match now His personality was coming out a lot more here. Pantera seemed to be setting up a victory roll off the top with TAKA on the apron, but there's no need to go into the pin on the outside, so he just shot TAKA to the floor with it and followed with a tope. TAKA took a massive back body drop to the floor and Pantera followed with a no touch senton atomico. Pantera was focusing on the back, but not in manner that distracted him from his real purposes of being spectacular and entertaining. The point was more to take away TAKA's Michinoku driver II finisher, and when TAKA came back with a diving knee and set it up, Pantera countered into a small package and got his final hope spot with la magistral. TAKA turned the huracarrana into a powerbomb though, and was able to finish with his Michinoku driver II after a missile kick. While the action was fantastic, like most WWF matches of the era, even the great Jim Ross couldn't save the broadcast from the awfulness of the Burger King Jerry Lawler, perhaps the single worst announcer in wrestling history who isn't just some clueless comedian like Rob Bartlett. He wasn't screaming, wailing, ang laughing inappropriately as much here because he's mainly interacting with his almost equally cringy son. Still, this is what mute was invented for. In the end, while TAKA is the better wrestler here and is more memorable wrestler overall, Pantera still kind of stole the show due to giving such an awesome effort here. He may not be the most skilled or athletic Luchador, but with this kind of work ethic, it's disgusting they didn't do anything with him. As Robert DeNiro said in A Bronx Tale, "The saddest thing in life is wasted talent." ***1/2

7/7/19 Senjo Sendai Girls World Title: Sareee vs. DASH Chisako 13:15
ML: These are two of my favorite modern wrestlers because they're intense and spirited. The whole wrestling is fake argument never felt remotely interesting to me, but there's a huge difference between announcing it's a bs exhibition at every turn by giving the opponent 30 seconds to recover when they are theoretically at their most prone and actually working hard to provide the continuation required to keep things somewhat believable. Sareee is one of the best at that in her post WWE run, she's there to keep beating her opponent up until they are down for the count. DASH was a great heel or face in this 10s era because she both got in the opponent's face and riled them up and brought energy and excitement at the right times without having to stop the match to do so. She's the rare wrestler who is better the more attitude she brings because she directs it at her opponent rather than forgetting about them and standing around screaming at the crowd nonsensically. Sareee's the Kana of the next generation, while DASH is the Mayumi Ozaki. All that being said, this didn't wind up being nearly as amazing as it could have been. This Sareee wasn't nearly as good as the one from 2023 onwards, she's still doing a lot more of the Manami Toyota stuff here. Even though DASH is the veteran and the actual Senjo wrestler, she's always been terribly booked in her home promotion, and you never really believed she might win this one. Given that, this was an entertaining sprint of roughly the proper length. The match was more interesting to me when they met each other with an intense striking style than when they did junior style or DASH did her brawling, although everything was good for what it was. Maybe DASH sweeping Sareee when she was postured up dropping a series of mount elbows and answering with her own isn't quite MMA, but this especially felt like fighting to win, and is the stuff you'd expect to see if we're supposed to believe titles actually mean something. The more the match was DASH doing the beatdown and Sareee doing athletic comebacks rather than answering with brutality, the more the action failed to truly escalate to a level that would bring out the best in both and elevate the title though. The match started to reach its potential when they get back in the ring after DASH's brawling, with an elbow exchange that seemed to end with DASH ducking into a stunner, but she screamed to the crowd with her back turned when she got up, so Sareee came up from behind and hammered her in the back with another elbow. This is what should happen literally always, but today's wrestlers don't mind being disrespected as long as it allows them to get away with doing less. From here, the impact increased considerably, even though it was still a lot more of an athletic match than Sareee would initiate today. The match built well despite having no particular story, in the sense that they were amping up the speed and intensity throughout, even though it started at a good level. This was ultimately an energetic sprint, with DASH being merely competitive enough. I thought this finish was more effective than some of the more recent Sareee ones in the sense that while Chisako predictably kicked out of a series of her favorite moves, she never really regained the momentum, and was basically just surviving until she couldn't. I wish we would have gotten to see a rematch when DASH finally won this title, instead of dropping it to Meiko Satomura, who also didn't need the title during her retirement run. ***1/4

7/26/15 Beyond: Mike Bailey vs. Danny Cannon 8:20
ML: Cannon debuted at the end of 2009, and wrestled part-time through 2014, ammassing just 122 matches that made the Cagematch database. He returned after an 11 month absence for this one match, which surely was one of the best of his career, and never wrestled again, opting for a career in the military. It was an intense, all out sprint. Short, but they really brought it. The matchup worked stylistically because Cannon can do the things that Bailey does well, particularly striking wise, where he appeared to bringing a karate background to match Bailey's taekwondo. The early portion was flashy kicks, but they kept it hard hitting and not too ridiculous. Cannon is athletic, but he's more muscular. The "Dynamite" nickname seems purposeful, as he's going for the brand of junior style that still appears to be about hurting the opponent. He had hair in his earlier days, but the skinhead look he was sporting tonight made him even more reminiscent of Low ki. He got some actual impact on moves such as his shoulder on his tope, and spear in the corner. Bailey was the one bringing most of the flips as the action shifted away from martial arts, while Cannon maintained the more intense and hard-hitting style while doing enough gymnastics to stay in the realm of what Bailey turned the match into. Both were impressive at what they were doing, both when they were matching each other and when they were showing some variation. Bailey is always exciting and on point. Cannon was a bit sloppy at times, but I appreciated his intensity, and more rugged take on the action. Bailey won sort of out of nowhere countering Cannon's aggressive charge into a fall-away moonsault, but for an opening match on a dinky indy show, this was several classes above basically anything you could ask for, not to mention better than anything Bailey has done in AEW, largely because it just felt more serious. It's unfortunate that Cannon didn't venture much beyond the Illinois circuit because he seems like someone who could at least have garnered a cult following. ***1/2

7/10/26 ONE Muay Thai: Omar El Halabi vs. Klarob Nuicafeboran 3R
ML: This fight had a lot of intense back and forth exchanges. They weren't waiting for one another to finish, they were each punching within each other's combo, so there were some pretty wild segments. El Halabi would back Klarob into the ropes with his punch combinations, then Klarob would fight his way back to the center. El Halabi was sitting down on his punches, so one of the keys for Klarob was that he was chopping the lead leg, which was costing El Halabi his punching power by round two. By round three, El Halabi was compromised, more notably due to a broken hand, and now Klarob was able to back him. Klarob was able to capitalize on this positioning a lot better because El Halabi didn't have the energy by this point to fight his way back off the ropes the way Klarob kept doing. Klarob knocked El Halabi's mouthpiece out with a couple of lefts. By the last minute, El Halabi was too tired to get his back off the ropes, but still answering everything back from muscle memory, even if it didn't have anything on it. Round 3 was a decisive win for Klarob, so he won the unanimous decision, but with round scoring it might have depended on who you gave round 2 to. Good match.