Coward Shit (CM Punk & Buff Bagwell) | NITRO MASTERLIST XTRA #1
CM Punk in disguise! Vicious & Delicious in Japan! An AEW / NJPW post that isn't about Forbidden Door!
If the only thing I thought I'd get out of the WCW MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST was a complete accounting of WCW Monday Nitro as an in-ring wrestling product, I wouldn't have done it. As much as I love Nitro, as often as I find myself returning to it, the show is a dead-letter issue — the world has had its say on the subject without some weirdo chiming in 30 years later with an exact ranking of every match in the show's history. As much as I'd like to think otherwise, the amount of ink I have set myself up to spill over the Disco Inferno's career is unlikely to change any of the long-espoused narratives about the show's successes, failures, and legacy.
Why do it, then? Because over the last couple of years I've found myself getting frustratingly incurious about wrestling beyond what Joseph and I cover here on BIG EGG, and no number of smart Discord groups, fun blogs, great YouTube videos, or text messages from friends laden with personalized recommendations — not even the fun I've had at DPW shows since moving to Durham — has gotten me out of that rut. But maybe a deep dive into something familiar would.
As I was writing week one of the project, I found myself thinking about how it compared to the first couple months of AEW Dynamite, itself a high-concept wrestling show doubling as a pitch reel for a different angle on pro wrestling. Watching Vince Russo hit the ring to Goldberg's music, I thought about how much I loved the Goldberg/Scott Steiner Fall Brawl street fight ... until he came in and ruined it. I thought about writing about those points of comparison (and still might) but didn't really know what to do with those thoughts or where to put them.
This week, I put Vicious & Delicious vs. Los Guerreros at the top of the WCW MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST and also reviewed the "Macho Man" Randy Savage vs. Diamond Dallas Page match where Page is disguised as La Parka, currently #3 on the list. My mind turned towards two places: my insistence that there's more to Buff Bagwell than meets the eye, and the 2023 angle where another knackered man with full-body tattoos took to disguising himself head-to-toe in a luchador get-up for the sake of getting it on.
Colette Arrand
Here, then, is the first edition of MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST XTRA, in which we head to Japan to see Buff Bagwell & Scott Norton vs. Satoshi Kojima in New Japan Pro Wrestling, and to the dying days of CM Punk's credibility and tenure in AEW for Samoa Joe vs. Golden Vampire. This post and every one that follows in this line is FREE, but you've got to sign up to receive the BIG EGG newsletter to read on — ain't that just the way of the world?
Samoa Joe vs. The Golden Vampire CM Punk (AEW 8/19/23)
Friend of BIG EGG Robert Newsome had this bit about Ric Flair, whom he considered to be the greatest wrestler of all time, that went a something like this: Ric Flair was the greatest wrestler of all time, and it’s a damn shame he disappeared one night in 1996 and was never seen again.
As someone who loved CM Punk and wrote rapturously of his return to professional wrestling, I cannot do him that kindness: not only is he not in the running for greatest wrestler of all time, but he is decidedly, unmistakably at the forefront of the narrative of American professional wrestling in 2025, publicly walking back his stance, real or kayfabe, on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the sake of rehashing his feud against John Cena (himself a one-time conscientious objector to WWE’s sportswashing of that country) who is, like Punk, spinning his wheels at the end of his career despite the high-profile nature of his billed retirement run.
It was nice to pretend otherwise, once, because my view of wrestling in the year 2023 was bitter and I ultimately didn’t care how the sport fared, large or small scale — whether AEW would suffer without Punk (it did) or whether CM Punk was a hollow, gormless sellout (he is): On August 27, 2023, while trying to make it back to his hotel without the aid of AEW staff or Google Maps, a bloody, exhausted CM Punk disappeared into the London Underground and was never seen again. Here then is one of his last Stateside appearances, under the guise of the Golden Vampire so he can spring a trap on his longtime rival Samoa Joe, setting up their final encounter.
If you’re already a reader of the WCW MONDAY NITRO MASTERLIST, you know why this thrown out match came to mind — it’s a refashioning of Diamond Dallas Page’s 1997 ambush of Randy Savage. Its purpose and prelude are different — Joe was actively hunting Punk, calling him out where Savage was ducking the “jabroni” Page, and unlike DDP, CM Punk doesn’t have a finisher to establish as a death move — but they share DNA. Revisiting the angle two years later, there’s more going on subliminally than on the surface, the hidden-in-plain-sight messaging Punk was fond of in AEW reinforced by his tearing the logo mic flag from the base in the absence of the championship he’d spraypainted an X on. If you’re here for the wrestling story, he’s angry at Joe. If you’re here for the parasocial relationship, he’s mad at AEW. Guess which one is the richer text.
Where this fails, I think, is in Punk’s crises in how he was perceived. Returning from injury and suspension to launch AEW Collision, he was damaged goods and was treated as such by AEW fans. There’s a lot of good stuff in the final leg of his professional wrestling career, but this is a bit too cute. When Page disguised himself as a luchador to hide his tattoos and unique visage, it’s because Savage wouldn’t accept his challenge. Punk needed no such pretense, so the Golden Vampire getup, made new for this one-off appearance, is just a cute nod to their shared past on the independents. The ruse, such as it is, is over as soon as Punk attacks Joe, and doesn’t hold the surprise of Jon Moxley’s stunning conquest of Punk from 2022 because he shoves the referee down, ending the match before it begins, and goes straight for his signature offense. A real shame that Punker hadn’t seen the Rocky movies.
It’s not bad, per se — it's certainly not the worst decision CM Punk makes in August 2023 — but it is weird that his remix of one of the hero moments of the 1990s boom that inspired him to become a yarder casts him as something of a coward. Yeah, Joe ambushed Punk after the Owen Cup match and on Collision, but as the turning point of a one-month program designed to simply get a marquee match onto the biggest show of the year, this adds nothing — it doesn't even get Punk further into Joe's head in the wake of defeat. "I accept, bitch" is a tuff thing to say to a guy once you've knocked him out, but in terms of spelling out the stakes it has nothing on the angle he takes in the Countdown to All In hype video.
Punk and Joe are not exactly aided by the commentary of Kevin Kelly, who couldn’t sound more disinterested in this late act in one of wrestling’s most famous feuds if he was being paid to actively sabotage the show. Nigel McGuinness doesn’t have much hope of bailing him out, either, and his “wait a minute…”s give the whole affair a sort of plasticine feel, which is something that’s dogged most of AEW’s television endeavors outside of Dynamite but was felt more keenly on Collision because it was presented as being the flagship’s equal at the time. Joe is incredible as the monster heel falling to ambush, but you already know that.
Rating: ** & ½
Buff Bagwell & Scott Norton vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Satoshi Kojima (NJPW 1/29/97)
The only guy here who didn’t win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship was Buff Bagwell, which is the sort of interesting analysis you’ll only get on BIG EGG. Buff is in his WCW/nWo World Tour attire, AKI’s isometric pre-match view of the ring is pretty clearly grounded in NJPW’s camera work, so I immediately feel a warm glow watching this. The fans are into what Vicious and Delicious are selling, which is the new World order, calling for Buff to throw his t-shirt in the crowd. He makes like he is going to, then hands it to a ringside youngboy and tells the fans to fuck off. Hear me out: Maybe Buff Bagwell should have won the IWGP Championship.
Bagwell isn’t a small man, but in the ring with Norton, Kojima, and Sasaki he looks tiny, a man destined to have his ass beaten. He has no shame about this, playing the fact that Kojima and Sasaki want to fight Norton to the hilt and making a show of giving Kojima a clean break in the corner. Then he poses. Then there’s a cut to his crazy goddamn abs. This rules and nothing has happened yet. Kojima does not give Bagwell the benefit of a clean break, chopping the hell out of him in the corner, then we’re off. Buff may be the stuff, but he isn’t homegrown NJPW, so it’s Kojima who roughs him up, lariats him over the top rope, and hits his own poses.
They tag out to their partners, and Scott Norton immediately bowls Sasaki over. They ram into each other over and over again, exchanging shoulder tackles and lariats in a way that’d inspire listless “BEEF” chants today but rules on tape. When Sasaki gets Norton down, he tags out to Kojima, who has to start all over again. Norton has NO time for Kojima’s lariats, which, as you know, are kind of Kojima’s thing. A third lariat takes him down, but an attempted fourth leads to Norton turning Kojima out. Scott Norton is a fucking mountain of a man, an obstacle on the order of a prime Big Van Vader. When he chops Kojima, Kojima cries in agony. When Kojima chops him, nothing. When Norton hits a lariat, it’s like watching a world end. He’d be fine in this match without Buff Bagwell, but with him he’s got an able distraction, buzzing around the action and stirring the pot when he can. The camera absolutely loves him.
Nobody here is doing anything new, but it’s a lot of fun watching Sasaki and Kojima work 1997's most southern heel outside of Too Much, and I remain fascinated by this period where it seemed like Buff Bagwell might turn out to be a major player in professional wrestling. There’s a lot he needs to work out — he tries to work in some classic junior heavyweight stuff that feels light, and he poses a bit too much and loses the crowd — but it is fun to see him get his ass kicked. Every time he’s left to his own devices, he gets WHOOPED. Sasaki has no trouble getting him in Strangle Hold Alpha but is stopped by Norton, who is knocked away long enough for Kojima to drill Bagwell with a lariat. He gets no quarter in the closing stretch of the match, eating everything you want to see from the NJPW team while Norton bides his time.
I *think* this is supposed to be a powerbomb/blockbuster combo, which would rank as one of the greatest tag finishers ever if Buff had more vertical or Norton were shorter or if the world were more kind.
— BIG EGG (@bigeggwrestling.bsky.social) 2025-07-02T04:30:59.635Z
Their finish here is straight up reckless, Norton bringing Kojima up in a powerbomb and Buff presumably mistiming the Blockbuster and hitting Kojima with a shoulderblock instead. It’s spectacular in theory, the sort of idea I’m kind of surprised a big guy/little guy tag team hasn’t picked up on the indies except that Bagwell and Norton don’t exactly hit it here. 33 years on we can state conclusively that Kojima turned out okay after this, so who cares — the match stomped ass and was a split-second away from featuring one of the craziest tag finishes in history. I can picture it in my mind, and that is satisfying enough.
Rating: *** & ¾