I bit on the idea first, and did the Heat one quickly (also available on this very site!) because I knew I wouldn't have as many Cruiserweight matches to sort thru and debate. Then, Weekly Visitor did their own funnier looks back at Velocity and Heat, and cohort Justin Shapiro took it to a higher level by scripting out a imaginary Best Of Heat show in place of the garbage Best of Raw rerun they always run. And then long after the gag was funny, I finally got the Velocity one done. Ah well.

Strenuous Selection Process: Read old recaps, see what I marked out for, and add match to list. Occasionally wonder why I stopped doing a permanent tape, then remember never actually watching other permanent tapes. (So I didn't actually watch these matches another time, and my memory may be a bit fuzzy.) Only one listing for each match - if there were multiple Hardcore Holly vs Mark Jindrak matches worth rating, only the top one of that match makes my list. (Don't worry - there are no Holly/Jindrak matches worth rating.)

The real point is I get to pontificate and act like I know what I'm talking about when it comes down to nitty gritty. No *****'s as to not offend former Mutants Against Star Ratings, but I did break out the stopwatch a couple times. (Also, *****'s suck.) 

The list is of course a bit messy; I don't know that 12 is definitely better than 11; it seemed that way when I was throwing this together at 1 am, but it may have been different had I had another Mountain Dew and stayed up to 2 AM. Also, I'm horribly biased towards matches I liked, and biased against matches I do not like. Please do not hate me for those biases. As a general rule when ratings these things, it's hard not to pick a dozen Paul London and Jamie Noble matches. So...that's what I did.

1. Jamie Noble vs Paul London - 03/06
- Near four minutes of chain wrestling to start the match before someone uses the ropes to get running. I don't think there are many people on the roster who could even think about pulling something like that off, and they did a great job doing it. London, not in the Cruiserweight Open, is attempting to prove that he belongs in it, almost complete takes himself out on a dive to the barrier, and tries to fight his way back in the match versus Jamie, but Noble and the Paydirt facelock prove to be too much. London's struggle while in the hold made the match. Notable not only for being a great wrestling match, but for London not going for a top rope move after the dive (he did do a 'rana when Jamie went up there first); he's a good a misplaced rep as solely a high spot artist, but he's a lot more three dimensional than that. Another good match on 06/19 is screwed by the rules.

2. Jamie Noble vs Rey Mysterio - 05/01
- PPV match for free! And seeing as they got 11:17 not including a commercial break, probably a longer one than they'd get on one of those shows. Noble goes counterintuitive by working against Mysterio's arm instead of the knee, and it's not top because Rey ignores it as they go into the crazy near finisher exchange (London didn't.) Silver linings: Maybe Gail Kim's departure means Rey can bring back the headscissors into fujiwara armbar he used nicely here, and maybe RVD's injury means Rey can liven up a dry division - all this time, and they haven't done Rey vs Funaki. Not that he was working with slugs, but Noble was a candidate for best wrestler in the freaking universe at this point in time.

3. Paul London vs Akio - 12/04
- So it's going until London tries to flip and lands on his head. Normal reaction would seem to slow the match down and get out without any more pain, but these two opt to make them forget the mistake by beating the crap out of each other for five more minutes. Akio gets in most of it early, seeing as London is still half conscious and all, but it leads to a great "punch each other in the face" exchange, if you can imagine that. Akio gets a great near fall off a moonsault bodyblock, but London ends up winning by crushing Akio's skull with a flying DDT. Stiffest cooperative match you want to see. Penalized for being six minutes of excitement instead of the twenty they needed. Actually, it needed to be the match - it fell like the greatest blowoff to a non existent feud ever.

4. Rey/Kidman vs Noble/Nunzio - 02/21
- THEY'RE COUSINS! At the time, I said: "possibly the best Velocity match ever." That's usually a stamp of approval. I quite possibly was right at the time, but it was only February and I like solo matches better, I guess. It was really probably just Rey and Kidman doing the same WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Match we saw a bunch when WCW was still in business, but rarely in the slowed down and broken up WWE. This played exactly form - faces control early, eventually leading to a (wild) dive sequence sidling up to the first break, extended heat sequence on Kidman's left shoulder, hot tag nuttyness with a big combo move for the win - but played the form awesome. And it's not a bad form.

5. Kurt Angle vs Hardcore Holly - 10/23
- easily the best heavyweight match on Velocity this year (and possibly ever), which really isn't saying much. As usually with Angle and Hardcore, Hardcore improbably gets to push Angle to a higher level than anyone with his push would seem to, but Angle's unlikely body part attack (chest) ends up working at just the right time, allowing him to escape the Alabama Slam and barely pull out the win. It's another discussion if Kurt Angle should ever be wrestling on Velocity, and if Hardcore Holly should be kicking out of the Angle Slam, but I think we can all agree that if those things are going to happen, it's great with a good match from it.

Note: Somewhere along the next five or so matches, we drop from "good matches" to "good TV matches", which obviously aren't the same thing. I still like good TV matches.

6. Billy Kidman, Akio, Spike Dudley vs Shannon Moore, Nunzio, Chavo Guerrero - 11/27
- six man tags can be great when not overdone; I think they rarely do them because the roster's on the small side and there aren't big advantages to them in WWE style, but it works great with cruiserweights or whenever you let the finisher stuff go nuts. Unlikely winner Shannon Moore would be completely forgotten after this, but they totally had me sold on Shannon Moore as legitimate contender there. Oh well. The Chavo/Kidman stuff in here was arguable as good as their feud got.

7. Spanky/London vs WGTT - 01/10
- well, look at the lineup and I don't have to explain it to you, duh. As time goes on, it's becoming more apparent that Shelton was blessed with a different and interesting move set, and Charlie is the non-Candaian Lance Storm. USA! USA! USA!

8. Rey Mysterio vs Akio vs Billy Kidman vs Nunzio - 04/10
- Probably the easiest match to guess onto this list based on listing alone. Frantic pace made up for any reason for the match to happen and any particular deep story to be told (usual guys got along, didn't get along), and the weird/irrelevant #1 contendership win by Nunzio. Akio seemed very much trying to prove himself worthy of a job post-Tajiri, and did good work in that end here.

9. Billy Kidman vs Paul London - 12/11
- Unlike Chavo (see next), this was the actual blowoff, or at least it appears that way right now, and it tried to tell a story of London out high risking London. It certainly wasn't the big ending people were hoping for, but it still was pretty nice.

10. Billy Kidman vs Chavo Guerrero - 12/04
- The rematch from the cut SD! match, when they appeared to still have hope of doing something with this feud. That hurt the match, because a definite finish (and not the feet on the rope cop out) would've made this a much more memorable encounter. They were still building to something bigger here instead of trying to give the conclusion, and while they did a fine job of building, it remained a disappointment. I have this theory there should never be screwjob finishes on Velocity; screwy finishes only exist to try and keep someone's heat, which you don't really have if you're on Velocity to begin with. At any rate, the 12/04 show with this and the #3 match is easily the best Velocity of the year, even granted the third match on the show was Funaki and Nunzio vs Jindrak and 

11. Ultimo/Funaki vs WGTT - 02/07
- Usual good WGTT stuff from late '03 and early '04; it's too bad many of the guys pushed on the B-Shows right now aren't entertaining workers, but it seems like it ebbs and flows. I tend to be easier on Ultimo than the people who actually say him when he was good in Japan, but I think he fit in well in WWE tags.

12. Ultimo Dragon vs Chavo Guerrero - 03/20
- Ultimo Dragon was far past being Ultimo Dragon by the time he got here, but he was at least able to have a good match if not spectacular match given more than four minutes. This is one of the times he got that - and he pulled out the Dragon Sleeper! Almost on the list for the Dragon Sleeper being used and called. This was his last good match in. I think he had some better stuff in 2003 - I have really fond memories of a Matt/Shannon vs Ultimo/Funaki match from that period.

13. Shannon Moore vs Paul London - 03/13
- You'd think they would have done this match fifteen times already on Velocity, but they're crazy like that - it's actually been a rare occurrence - they've done FBI vs the Bashams far more often. This was pretty good with the fake storyline of London trying to get into the Cruiserweight Open once again, but failed to live up to previous week's London/Noble match. I didn't like 12/18 match as much, because even given 8 minutes, it felt a few minutes short - they never quite got to their end game stuff.

14. the Dudley Boyz vs Billy Kidman/Paul London - 07/03
- This one worked because the situation; we're expecting Bubba and D-Von to win this one because no one believes they're taking Kidman and London seriously, so neither down the Dudleys, and then all of the sudden Kidman and London are in and have a chance and Kidman gets an opening for the SSP - and then Bubba pulls out the ref and this falls down the list, fun post match thrashing or not. Didn't make since to do the non clean finish since they were going to do it on SD! anyway.

15. Shannon Moore vs Jamie Noble - 05/22
- I thought this was good, but the crowd collectively bought a hot dog on this one. This played like a lesser rerun of the London/Noble match from way up there, to the point where I'm not sure if I can rate both on the same list. Probably unfairly down because of the dead crowd.

16. London/Kidman vs Tajiri/Akio - 03/20
- Hey, one of London & Kidman's best tag match happened before they existed as a team! Odd how that works out. This was Tajiri's last match on the SD! side for the time being, but he made sure to go out on a high note (outside of losing and all.) Looking back at it now, they really should've not broken in Sakoda (no offense, Sakoda) and then not broken up the group for no particular reason, but that's way down on creative's list of crimes against humanity.

17. Akio vs Funaki - 01/31
- actual quotes from this match, with Josh and Cole as 'announcers': "MOOOOOOOOO", "You and Tazz are not great friends. You should hear what he says about you behind your back." "Who's Robin Hood"?, "I know a lot about your personal life, I've been text messaging your girlfriend all day.", "Akio, world renown." There was a match here too. You have no idea how much Evil Cole rules; I think he's probably in charge or producing this show and/or grooming Josh to be competent (at styling his hair, I guess.) That's also your number one sign about how different the Velocity announcing gig and an legitimate occupation: just about everyone (except JR) can shoot the breeze and have fun when the matches don't mean much and your only real job is to push a couple story points about major feuds, but it's a different skill set required to be serious life or death announcer full time on the A-Shows. I've probably hammered this point too much all over the place, but if they truly want Josh or Todd or whoever to be ready to take over an A-Show slot (and who knows if they truly do), they've got get them with Dean Hill and Jim Cornette in OVW, or behind the microphone in their next developmental area so they can have the experience of calling a show meaning everything, instead of picking up bad Coach-like habits calling a nothing show.

18. Mark Jindrak vs Shannon Moore - 09/18
- Anytime someone confronted with their fourth or fifth Shannon Moore match on Velocity in five months shouts out "I DON'T CARE ANY MORE!" and purposely gets themselves DQed because they're so sick of the B-Show treadmill, you get on this list. This was perhaps the greatest moment (on purpose) in Mark Jindrak's WWE career, and so it got mostly forget and he was suddenly a Angle buddy. Oh well.

19. Mark Jindrak vs Tyson Dux - 03/27
- Greatest Mark Jindrak moment on accident here. Just being in the right place as wacky dance guy Tyson Dux horrifyingly blows out his knee on a turnbuckle collision. On the list for the Pain In The Name Of Velocity award of the year.

20. Billy Kidman vs Arch Kincaid - 01/17
- Speaking of pain and jobbers, "SHOOTING STAR KNEE DROP TO THE HEAD". Yea, he really ought to do something about that before he hurts someone...

21. FBI vs Akio/Sakoda - 06/19
- Just so you know the FBI had one good match after being on here every week. It surprised me too! They were actually a better team with Chuck Palumbo than without him, and didn't click as a Nunzio/Johnny tag team as well as people might have thought they might. This was the exception. Akio and Sakoda probably would've worked out better as a tag if they were a team for any amount of time before coming to the WWE - it took them a couple months to get some nice teamwork spots down together, and while some of the stuff they came up was neat (like the kick to the front of the head/kick to the back of head combo particularly), it was long after creative had given up on them.

And that's how it ends. 21's an odd number, but I don't feel like cutting down any more.

If you're done here, you might as well move onto the Heat one.