WWE Survivor Series 2015 Live(ish) Blog

So I basically have not been watching any WWE television. If I remember something is on then I'll flip over to the channel, see if anything catches my eye. The product is not doing a whole lot for me right now. I'm going into this not knowing literally any of the matches on the card. That sounds like a terrible idea.

1. Traditional Survivor Series Match: The Miz, Bo Dallas, Stardust & The Ascension vs. Neville, The Dudley Boyz, Titus O'Neill & Goldust

ER: Kind of hilarious that we get a "traditional" Survivor Series match on the pre-show of Survivor Series. Can't have this Survivor Series shit getting in the way of Survivor Series. And woof that is one dogshit 5 man team right there. I mean good lord. The team name should be "The 5 guys Eric would switch channels to avoid". I mean come on. I'm watching you BLIND Survivor Series, and this is what you immediately do to me!? But I cannot skip it, because they had to throw Goldust into the thing. And he was the 10th guy announced. If it had been pretty much 90% of the rest of the roster, it would have been skippable. But I gotta watch any and all Goldust. And he immediately eliminates Viktor with his gorgeous powerslam. I'm not too broken up about that. Titus' corner strikes on Konnor look really good. Konnor's jumping elbowdrop on Ray looked pillowy soft and terrible. Neville gets a fun flurry against Stardust and then gets pinned by a bulldog. We're going into dumbshit quick pin mode. This is mostly awful. Cody punches Goldust in the ear and things get better. Bo Dallas has a shitty chinlock. Match ends awhile later. Nothing to see here. Goldust looked good. None of the eliminations had any build or meant anything. This is clearly a horrible idea of mine.

Byron Allen (?) says that match reminded him of all the Survivor Series matches from when he was a kid. Yeah. There's zero chance this match reminded anybody of anything.

2. Roman Reigns vs. Alberto Del Rio

ER: Roman is getting what they call a "Cena reaction". Del Rio looks like a star. He looks like he's in the best cosmetic shape of his career. He looks pretty massive. I didn't realize he was larger than Reigns. Del Rio looks really good throughout this. Dug his hotshot and enziguiri, then he takes a nice thud on a Fuerza bump. Reigns takes a nice ringpost bump. ADR makes me buy his missed double stomp off the top. He did a real great knee buckle stumble sell. JBL tries to make it out like he faked that knee buckle as part of a strategy, but faking a knee injury to take a superman punch sounds like a pretty fucking stupid strategy. I liked ADR in this, and the match got about 14 minutes to do something, but didn't do much for me. They tried to make the stretch run dramatic, but really they just had ADR lock in the armbar a couple times only to have Roman power out. Kinda made all the babbling about a weak shoulder come off as a shrug. Nice individual moments. Pretty unfulfilling as a whole.

3. Dean Ambrose vs. Kevin Owens

ER: There's a fat guy in the crowd clearly telling his woman the back story on every match so far. You can totally tell. He's pointing at each guy and leaning in, you can just picture him saying "alright so this guy beat a guy named Dolph Ziggler. I know, right? I don't know. Yeah it's probably not his real name. But Ambrose. Yeah the skinnier guy. He beat Ziggler. This is a semi-final. There's a whole tournament." And boy this isn't doing a whole helluva lot for me either. And as I type that they start to win me over. Owens hits a mammoth superplex, Dean hits one of his best ever rebound lariats, Ambrose eats a couple nice superkicks, takes a gross slam into an announce table. But the build for these matches has done absolutely nothing for me. Both have come off like guys doing moves with no consequences. I mean jesus even though I thought they looked nasty, in the last minute of the match Dean got slammed into the announce tables, took two superkicks, and then still got the pin.

The SNES commercial for TLC looked really great. The Reigns superman punch animation was perfection.

4. Ryback & The Lucha Dragons & The Usos vs. New Day, Sheamus & King Barrett

ER: Unhip Sheamus made me chuckle saying they were gonna get jiggy on these poseurs. Big E avoiding eye contact with him afterwards was perfect. Woods has an amazing James Brown pompadour with a ducktail mullet. The construction of the whole thing is really impressive. Sadly it will probably all tumble down after one bump. Sheamus takes a couple really great bumps to the floor working Sin Cara: one nice tumbling one landing on his side, and taking an enziguiri and bumping on his knees to the floor. Ouch. Ryback hits one of the ugliest dives ever, but we'll just go A for effort on that one, like when Road Dogg tried to moonsault off a cage. This whole thing is pretty fun. Big E's spear to the floor is such a brutal spot. New Day is probably the best possible use of Kofi ever. He doesn't have to do tons of offense and let Big E carry the load. New Day ditching Sheamus kinda makes sense, and Sheamus works shockingly well with smaller workers. I loved him stomping on Kalisto's hands. Sheamus did about as good a job as possible holding down the fort without a team. This elimination match was a massive step up from the garbage one on the pre show.

5. Paige vs. Charlotte

ER: Charlotte has never impressed me before. Paige has a really great abdominal stretch, pressing down hard on the side of Charlotte's head every time she wrenches it in. Paige also takes a mean electric chair bump onto the apron. Charlotte's rolling headscissors was both goofy and painful looking, so it gets a pass. But it's not as nasty as Paige's surfboard lock or her great knees in the corner. But those were not as nasty as Charlotte's scream and face after hitting a so-so spear. Match overall was pretty decent. Charlotte still doesn't do much for me. I don't think she has much body charisma, and a lot of her offense feels very dependent on somebody leaning way into her offense.

6. Tyler Breeze vs. Dolph Ziggler

ER: Ziggler has an updated look on mid 90s cruising attire Shawn Michaels. Even has those same awful boots. Kenny Omega douche hair + Shawn Michael lube guy at the fisting station gear = profit?  Match itself was decent enough for a completely heatless affair. Both guys did some things that looked cool, also never made me care about the things they were doing. Some of this may be the announce team. The announce team is the ultimate limp dick tonight. They sound rehearsed to say what is happening in front of them, while also not making it important or interesting or dramatic. It's a brutal combo. Breeze bumps into Dolph's stuff well, flying into a dropkick and planting himself on a flapjack. Announcers push this as a HUGE win for Breeze, but really it would have been far more shocking to everybody if Ziggler would have won. That dude loses to everybody, and has been doing so for years.

7. Wyatt Family vs. Undertaker & Kane

ER: Undertaker's slow menacing walk to the ring looks less doomy and more accident victim learning how to walk again. But in the ring he looks spry enough against Harper. Kane takes an awesome bump over the announce table. Cole is desperately trying to push every single Undertaker movement as "ANOTHER CLASSIC #UNDERTAKERSURVIVORSERIESMOMENT!!!" He's beyond insufferable. Braun takes a fine bump through an announce table, Undertaker impresses me by getting Harper up for a Tombstone eventually, and really this was Undertaker going through some greatest hits so Cole could cream his jeans and scream VINTAGE!

8. Dean Ambrose vs. Roman Reigns

ER: This was pretty easily the best match of the night, but that wasn't really saying a whole bunch. I almost always like it when Shield guys match up, and this match was short for them (about 10 minutes) but was worked at a quick 10 minute match pace. I don't care for the spear as a death finisher, but Ambrose is great spilling all around for Reigns, and I liked the kneeling punch exchange. Also thought Ambrose looked badass with his torn shirt from the previous Owens match, made him look like a hero towards the end of an action movie.

Sheamus cashes in MITB afterwards, and yeah that concept is pretty beyond played out. It's an amusing dick move to cash in on Reigns while Reigns was celebrating in his massive confetti pile Good lord whoever ordered confetti accidentally checked the "case" measurement instead of individual confetti packages, so on the "Confetti Celebration Dial" instead of getting "Tasteful World Title Celebration" we ended up getting "Rip Taylor Just Died Two Days Before Pride Weekend and We Must Celebrate His Memory".

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Paragon Pro Wrestling 10/24/15 Review

1. Espiritu vs. Remy Marcel

This worked as a fun 5 minute Marcel showcase, who normally just gets a scant amount of time as the Whirlwind Gentlemen hot tag. Espiritu doesn't really do tons here, locking on two separate chinlocks. For a guy who hasn't been on TV for 2 months you'd think he'd try to go out of his way to impress. I liked his missed senton? Anyway, the beginning was real cool with all their standing wristlock exchanges. I especially liked Espiritu rolling through the wristlock, but Marcel rolling with him at the same time so both ended up back on their feet where they started. Looked cool. Espiritu hits an okay vertical suplex, Marcel hits an okay crossbody, really liked Marcel's out of control frog splash. Marcel looked good in this, and that was the point.

2. Greg Romero vs. Jack Manley

Now Manley gets his 5 minute showcase, and it's also fine. Other WG showcase match was better, but this was good enough. The important thing is the fed is actually establishing hierarchy, showing two members of one of their top tag teams easily beating two guys who aren't on TV that much. That seems like a super obvious thing, but this fed is obsessed with presenting every worker as a very accomplished mat grappler who is one step away from the title! Romero works a Danny Zuko gimmick in 2015 which is...pretty annoying and very pointless. He's also not that good, throwing slo mo punches, attempting complicated roll-ups he saw on TV once, taking slow back bumps, just a pretty big bleh. Manley works better as a FIP and here he was more aggressor, but I like his back elbow so that's something. This was what it was.

3. Mike Santiago vs. Mikey O'Shea

It's weird that the fed pushes every single match as if it's going to be an incredible match. Seriously, before every match starts they'll say something like "this is going to be an incredible match", or one minute into a match they'll talk about what an amazing match we're experiencing. But they never ever put guys into position to actually have an "amazing match". Matches usually run 4-7 minutes, most of them are worked in a vacuum, and things usually just don't stand out. But they keep talking about how incredible the matches are, and they say it during almost every match. Here they talk about what an amazing match this 3 minute match was, and then talk about the main event which is "sure to be an incredible high stakes match". Everything is super important, everything is super incredible, it's just misguided and tiresome. O'Shea is morphing into a Bigelow rip-off, and Santiago tries bumping around for him but O'Shea just isn't that interesting. Incredible match though.

4. Tyshaun Prince & Caleb Konley vs. Gangrel & Exile

Hey, I liked this! It was probably the best I've seen Prince look. Gangrel matched up nicely with Konley, Prince was a good bully and did a good job trapping and punching Gangrel in the corner, the announcers kept referring to Exile as "mysterious" but really how mysterious can a guy wearing pleather pants be? Konley adds speed to the match that would have otherwise been completely absent. I kinda like Gangrel's short straight right hands, and Exile/Gangrel make a good team. This whole thing didn't really have the "high stakes" the announcers promised, and I am beyond tired of Prince matching up with Gangrel, but this worked.

And after the match we get a huge pull apart brawl with the boys from the back all separating Hammerston, Chamberlain and the Whirlwind Gentlemen. WG each do big running dives off the entranceway ramp into the big schmoz of people, and the far away shot of it looked really cool.

Also, Joey Ryan - new champion - is missing.

And I found out this show is getting bumped off Pop! in favor of TNA (blecch) so we'll just ride the rest of these shows out (4 more?) and then sit in satisfaction that I wrote up every PPW broadcast. Maybe we'll do some kind of rundown of the best matches or something? I don't know.

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