1-2-3 Kid vs Hakushi, WWF Monday Night RAW 02/05/96 Options

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This is great! This is the match that anyone should point to whoever wants to make the case for Sean Waltman as a performer. This is also maybe a template for what the WCW cruiserweight style should have been. Now, I think Benoit, Guerrero, Misterio, Juventud, Ultimo, Malenko, etc. didn't really work the same style as Waltman, and they were far better in the ring than he was at this point. But what makes this work is that there's a template here to include as many highspots as you might want to include, but underneath it all, this still has the same basic face/heel template fans are used to in the U.S. The cruisers did get over in WCW, but not really in a way where people were invested in them personally. There are a lot of factors more important than the style that went into that, but this works really well because underneath the flash, there is a really basic layout.

It also helped that they were given more time than most of the WCW cruiser matches were given on Nitro at this point. The cruisers usually had about 7 minutes including intros and the post-match promos, and were specifically told not to work holds. So as a result, you weren't really seeing matches most of the time on Nitro, you were seeing showcases.

But this match proves it's possible to do both match *and* showcase if you add a little time and give the wrestlers a little more freedom. Yes, I'm making a claim that WWF wrestlers had more freedom than WCW wrestlers with a straight face, but in this particular case, it's true. Both guys have a lot of martial arts offense, so they build the match around that. You could take this same layout and make it a match between a mat wrestler and high flyer, two high flyers, etc. and it would work each time.

The WCW cruiserweights surpassed the quality of this match. Many, many times in fact. But aside from a few standouts, few of them had a match structure this good.

[soup23]

Watching Nitro sets in 1997 and 1998 alluded to what you are discussing here about match structure with the cruiser weights. I think some people have romanticized that Nitro every week had a 15-20 great junior match and that just simply is not the case. They had a few shining moments, but also had many weeks with 2-3 matches at around 5 minutes each and not much to work with. In many weighs I would say Smackdown this year had as many "showcase" matches as Nitro from say 1997.

[Dylan Waco]

Nitro cruiser wrestling is comically overrated. Hell from memory my favorite matches involving cruisers from that era were matches with bigs v. littles like Jericho v. Enos or Eddy/Jarrett v. Benoit/McMicahel

[KB8]

Yeah, there's an Eddy/Jericho v Faces of Fear match from the Nitro after Superbrawl '97 that is immensely fun, primarily because the cruisers are willing to be tossed around by by guys that are good at tossing you around. I watched a pretty big chunk of a "Best of the WCW Cruiserweights" comp between the time I watched the tag and now, and there wasn't a single thing on it that I thought was better than the tag match.

[Matt D]

Not 96, but I saw Malenko/Benoit vs Guerrero/Mr. JL from late 95 recently and it wasn't a match at all. It was just a spectacle. In 95 I would have loved it, of course, but it was just frustrating to watch now.

Also, I found it really funny for some reason that Colt Cabana didn't know who Sato was when Waltman was trying to explain that Hakushi had a manager during Cabana's podcast.

[Dylan Waco]

Also Malenko/Benoit v. Blue Bloods from 95 is the best Malenko/Benoit tag match I've seen from WCW and that falls under bigs v. litles