Reel in Place

  Kazuyuki Fujita, from the second he walked into NOAH, has been divisive. One camp thinks that this old, broken-down MMA fighter should not be beating the younger, more proficient, wrestlers in the promotion. The other camp thinks that it is great that this old bruiser is dominating the promotion, bringing an element that is missing from a lot of modern wrestling, harkening back to the era of New Japan that Fujita came from. I'm somewhere in between the two, I suppose. I think if you bring in a guy like Kazuyuki Fujita, he should be running through guys. No one wants to see a guy like Fujita doing workrate classics with the juniors on the card, they want to see him beat people up, to have him give some sheen of legitimacy to the goings-on in NOAH. Sometimes the results can be pretty great, like when he choked out Masao Inoue in less than a minute. Other times, the cracks start to show, Fujita is old and battered, modern wrestling, as it exists, for the most part, isn't somethi...

At Royal Rumble, John Cena beat Edge to regain the WWE title. Because the Royal Rumble winner was challenging for the Smackdown title, they had a tournament to determine Cena's opponent at WrestleMania. Triple H won that tournament, and we got the ultra helpful angle of Triple H continually pointing out that John Cena can't wrestle. Now, Triple H is a heel, and even at this point, John Cena has proven to be a perfectly fine wrestler, at the very least. But, wrestling fans want to view things in the way they want to view them, and so Triple H saying these sorts of things, well, they're not so hellish and they're especially not too helpful if you're John Cena. On commentary, JR points out that everyone in the arena cares about the outcome of the match, they either love Cena or hate Cena and from the early going that is obviously true. The crowd is firmly anti-Cena, cheering even the most trivial bit of Triple H's offense. There's not a ton going on early, but ...

  The customary lacuna between John Cena PPV main events featured another Angle/Cena match at Survivor Series, this time with a crooked special referee. Cena won, after angle bumped the referee, Shawn Divari, causing a Smackdown referee to run into the ring and count the subsequent Cena pin. This displeased Ray GM Eric Bischoff, and determined to get the title off of Cena, announced an Elimination Chamber for New Year's Revolution. After a bevy of qualifying matches, the field became John Cena, Kurt Angle, Carlito, Chris Masters, Kane, and Shawn Michaels.  Cena and HBK start things off, and we get a heavy chorus of Cena Sucks chants, a first here for this project. Pretty standard stuff here. Chops punches, spots to get over the physicality of the chamber match; standard fare. Shawn does some overselling of kicks while draped over the corner. Goofy stuff and the sort of thing that his worst detractors are always keen to point out.  Carlito is in next, and the crowd is more...

This match is a continuation of the Unforgiven match between John Cena and Kurt Angle, but this is Taboo Tuesday and the fans get to vote on a third wrestler to make our main event a Triple Threat Match. In the weeks leading up to this show, Eric Bischoff set up an angle for Shawn Michaels to get involved with Cena and Angle, stacking the deck in HBK's favor, especially considering the other options for the poll were Kane and Big Show. It is also worth noting that this match follows a very good, and incredibly bloody cage match between Ric Flair and Triple H. Cena is still over like crazy at this point in 2005, but having to follow a bloodbath cage match isn't exactly an envious position.  Shawn Michaels, predictably, wins the poll and at one point in the show we are shown Angle approaching Michaels, proposing a deal of sorts; He and Shawn take out Cena and wrestle each other for the title. The posture before the bell seems to indicate that Angle and HBK have a deal, but as soo...