Segunda Caida

Phil Schneider, Eric Ritz, Matt D, Sebastian, and other friends write about pro wrestling. Follow us @segundacaida

Monday, December 31, 2018

Complete and Accurate Slim J



Slim J is a guy who has had a long relatively unexamined career working the Georgia Indies. Outside of a brief ROH run during the beginning and a couple of TNA shots, he has mostly been under the radar, still he seems to be able to do almost anything. Violent brawls, mat wrestling, high flying. His 2018 run has been great, he was a huge part of the 2006 MOTY and there are 20 years to sift through for classics. As always matches are broken down into EPIC, GREAT, FUN and SKIPPABLE. EricR and other guests will make appearances.

2006

Team Anarchy (Slim J/Ace Rockwell/Shadow Jackson/Nemesis) vs. The Devil's Reject's (Iceberg/Tank/Azrael/Shaun Tempers) NWA Anarchy 7/22/06 - EPIC

2007

Slim J vs. Patrick Bentley NWA Anarchy 12/29/07 - EPIC

2012


2013


2014

Slim J vs. Iceberg NWA Anarchy 4/26/14 - GREAT

2015

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Sunday, December 30, 2018

All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2009: FUTEN Tag VS. Foley vs. Nash

Kevin Nash vs. Mick Foley TNA Hard Justice 8/16/09

ER: This is a great match. A legitimately great match. Kevin Nash was 50 in this match and I'm doubtful that he has another performance as good at any point in his career. Foley barely had 10 matches left in his career at this point and he turns in easily one of his best performances of the decade. I honestly didn't think either of these two had a match anywhere close to this good in them at this point in their careers. This is a straight up fight, with great selling from both, great blood, and no skipped steps. The selling is great from go, as Nash is throwing super forceful knees in the corner to Foley's gut, and Foley is just stumbling and crumpled after. This whole match is like a super serious version of the Roy Munson/Big Ern showdown, and I mean that in the best way possible. Both men were worn, not 100%, tired, but proud. As the match goes on Nash keeps making all of these hard-breathing "what the hell is wrong with this guy...what the hell is wrong with me!?" faces. Foley takes a hard spill onto the apron, then gets kicked into the guardrail and flies backwards into it, banging off it in sick fashion. Foley amps the crazy by doing his leaping elbow off the apron, with Nash under a chair, and Foley gets his head busted open when Nash shifts the chair.

Foley gets a classic Mick gusher going, and Nash is savage working it over, and still wrecking the rest of Foley's body by ramming the back of his head into the ringpost, the steps, and keeping those knees and elbows coming. Nash's knees and elbows move slow here, but the hit with great impact. His hair keeps getting more fly aways, his eyes keep saying "why isn't this OVER" but there's Foley, getting up after each rough fall, firing back with headbutts and hard fists, and you know Nash gets busted open too. We even get the visual of blood flying onto the camera like I'm watching Hacksaw Ridge. Nash works over Foley's cut with elbows and jabs, and Nash's own cut is dripping pretty good. We don't get a great finish, with Traci Brooks running out and getting on the apron for reasons I don't care about and will never bother to look up, but I liked how the two wrestlers handled the final moments: Foley distracted by Brooks, Nash gives him and eyepoke and boot to the face before Foley can use his barbed wire bat, and Nash pins him by defiantly/desperately pulling that leg WAY back while sitting on his chest. This was an awesome old guy war, the kind of war that's tough for younger wrestlers to have because the added mileage of both men adds in every way to the brutality. This was legitimately great.

PAS: Cactus Jack was at one point my favorite wrestler in the world, one of the first comp tapes I made was a Best of Cactus Jack. I assumed he was completely washed by 2009 but this was a classic Foley performance, basically it was the WCWSN Vader match, with fucking Kevin Nash of all people playing the role of Vader, and doing a pretty solid job of it. The couple of insane bumps Foley takes are legit insane Foley bumps, when Nash kicks him into the guardrail you can see his head snap into the metal and hear the dull thud. The hipbuster elbow into the chair was lunacy, you could see the metal bend, and that eye wound that opened up was truly grizzly. Don't have a ton of nice things to say about TNA over its run, but they would always bring the plasma. Nash landed his stuff with real force, and I enjoyed how frantic he got as Foley kept coming, really good subtle in ring acting. Finish was kind of goofy and unnecessary but otherwise this was a treat. Eddie Marlin vs. Tommy Gilbert with insane bumps, can't ask for more then that

FUTEN Tag Review

Verdict:

PAS: I figured this would be a swamping. FUTEN tags are maybe my favorite thing in wrestling history, but Nash vs. Foley was really awesome. If it had a better ending I could actually see this being a discussion, but that run-in was pretty deflating and the FUTEN retains.

ER: This started when I watched the match a couple months ago on a lark. I'd seen it brought up in various places as a good brawl, and one late night I was in the mood for a short old guy wrestling brawl before bedtime. I never actually considered that the match would be worth writing up, let alone worth writing up as a challenger for our All Time MOTY list. But I was pretty blown away by the performances here, and can honestly say it's one of my 5 favorite matches in TNA history. The ending was stupid, and I would have been furious had I wrecked my body in a physical match only to have it end with an angle that nobody was going to remember. I think this match would have finished really really high if we had a 2009 MOTY List. It's not beating the FUTEN tag, but at several points during the match I loved that my brain was actually thinking "IS THIS MATCH GOING TO BEAT THE FUTEN TAG!?" That's a pretty wild accomplishment on its own, and I would heartily recommend everyone watch this match right now.


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Saturday, December 29, 2018

ACTION Wrestling 8/17/18

Ike Cross vs. Slim J

ER: Hot opener, tough to start off a crowd with something this dynamic. Everybody else on the show is going to be working from behind. I just saw Cross for the first time while watching the recent SCI, so I saw him there as this great babyface. Here he's a heel and just as fun, and very different than his SCI performances. Slim is a great babyface, really he's AJ Styles without a TV deal. If people out there think AJ Styles is great, there is no reason they wouldn't love Slim. He's strong as hell, gets crazy height on everything, hits hard, and can take a beating. A really great babyface. I think Styles is clearly a great, but right now Slim is better. He and Cross do a really fast rope running bit, Slim has an amazing high dropkick (and later a cool spinning kick of the top), and I love it when AC Mack starts running distraction on the floor. Cross drills Slim with a brutal running elbow to the back of the head, and Cross is really great at finding ways to get the ref's attention while Mack interferes. Cross played powerhouse here, and he pulls out some real stunners: a ridiculous sky high Dr. Bomb, a deadlift tilt a whirl backbreaker, and a uranage type slam where he just yoinks Slim up and plants him face first. It looked like something that should have finished the match. These two matched up really well here, and this kind of had the feeling of a tryout match, with both guys keeping a quick pace and breaking out impressive tricks. I pretty much need to be tracking down every match from both of these guys.

PAS: Fun stuff, interesting to see Cross as a heel, he is a great traditional babyface, but here is a fun trolling heel. Lots of shtick distracting the ref while AC Mack mugs Slim, he also stomps Slim in the corner and pretends his leg is spasming to get in some post ref break shots. Slim has decades of experience getting a crowd behind him, and all of the early stuff really got them into the nearfalls. I loved all of Cross's power moves, working heel we didn't see as much of his vertical leap, but he was beasting Slim, that lawn dart into the turnbuckles looked like Slim was 2 inches shorter post match (inches he can't afford to lose), and that reverse uranage thing was awesome looking. That final bump Cross took on the electric chair headrop was harrowing, that is big dude to be landing on his neck like that. Great stuff and another example of Slim J being this gem hiding in plain sight for years.

Alan Angels vs. James Bandy

ER: First time seeing both guys, and I came away seeing a couple cool things I hadn't seen, and liked this take on the modern indy match. Bandy had a few nice full extension suplexes, Angels was good at taking suplexes, and neither guy held back on strikes and kicks. Bandy had a nice kick to the chest and Angels hit a cool spin kick. We also had Angels working Bandy's arm in some cool ways, whipping his arm into the mat and breaking out the wild Rings of Saturn after rolling through with a Tim Horner style armdrag. I've not seen that attempted before, and I dug it. The arm stuff didn't really go anywhere, but I liked it peaking with that armdrag into the Fujiwara, into Angels throwing elbows to the ribs. When Angels tries it against he gets his momentum reversed and caught with a quick curb stomp. I liked a lot of what I saw here.

Kevin Ku vs. Tommy Maserati vs. Bobby Flaco vs. Dani Jordyn vs. Matt Sells vs. Shawn King vs. Teddy King

ER: I might have a name or two wrong on this one, only seen about half the talent before. And this was a perfectly fine scramble match, although we didn't always have a great use of time, and a LOT of people disappeared too often for it to really have the chaos of the best scramble matches. As it was, we got fun snapshots of what everyone can do and would up with a few memorable moments. Jordyn has a powerlifter build and got to throw a bunch of fun suplexes (and especially launches Flaco who bumps high and hard), and has a cool Jeff Cobb-like momentum reversing slam on Shawn King (?) late in the match that looked cool, and that guy also leaned in . Ku looked like more of a bully than I'd previously seen him, I got a kick watching him run as hard as possible into corner attacks, really pushing the pace faster than anybody else. I don't love his need to get some kind of lungblower into a match, but he was a good dominant mid-match presence. We get a couple of big dives to the floor, a flip dive that takes everyone out (and sends some kid in an orange hoodie running for the hills), and then an awkward set-up/fun result slingblade from Flaco, springing off the ref and delivering it to Ku on the apron while he basically stage dove across the other workers. Weird/cool landing, clunky set up, but these are the moves you need to be breaking out in a scramble match, so it totally works. Maserati is a great bumper, even if I don't like how his kicks land, he at least makes offense look good. I wouldn't mind seeing more from some of them, so as a showcase the scramble did its job.

Cain Justice vs. Dominic Garrini

PAS: This is one of my favorite current matchups in wrestling. They had a match last year in CWF which went super high on our 2017 list, the second match was fun although not as mind blowing and this is the rubber match and the first outside of CWF. These guys are both super skilled, super interesting grapplers, and they have a couple of really cool scrambles to open the match, Garinni especially is whipping out really cool stuff, including a couple of super tight chokes with Justice finding cool ways to escape. Garinni has gotten better at landing his shots in the last six months, and he hits some big bombs including a nasty spinning back elbow. Justice is really great at using his environment, the Action ring has these hooks on the outside of the ringposts and Justice has used them in cool ways in all of his matches, here he traps Dom's foot in the hook and torques on the metal. Garrini did a great job of selling a damaged foot on his throws for the rest of the match. My one quibble in this was that Justice was back on offense too quick after the Screwdriver, but I did really like finish run. I am excited to see both of these guys grow up together, and I hope we get to see some more classics. I would rank this a little below their first match, that match coming out of nowhere really made it special, but this was good stuff for sure.

ER: I think this one falls as their third best match together, which isn't really an insult to this match, as I really liked those two matches. This felt a little more disjointed. Their first two matches didn't necessarily establish a match long narrative, but this one stood out because of that weird Screwdriver thrown in there. That move, and Cain getting up from taking that move at almost the same time as Garrini and going right back on offense, really made the match feel like they were just doing stuff until THAT moment. It felt really out of place the way it was used here. I would have loved it if that had finished things, going from grappling and striking to a sudden unexpected exclamation point, Justice beat in an instant because he wasn't expecting something like a Screwdriver. Instead we just kind of get up and do a little reset, Cain working for the Twist Ending and Garrini working for a triangle, gaslighting us into thinking we hadn't just see that big spot. I liked the bulk of this (though I thought the finish felt a little tacked on, even though I liked Cain winning with leverage to reverse a triangle). I really liked the grappling in this match, especially thinking Garrini looked sharp on the mat. He looked like he was calmly setting traps for Cain, dropping down in a certain way to get Cain to go one way, opening up his leg which was Garrini's goal all along. There was stuff that looked fluid yet nasty, and it looked like you got a cool insight into Garrini's crazy muscle memory, knowing what all his options are on the mat at any given moment. I loved Cain using those ringpost hooks, as Dylan Hales pointed out on commentary, he uses those every time he wrestles in this ring, and I love him for that. I liked some of the striking in this, but thought other parts focused to much on making a slap sound. I don't need a slap to know Garrini is hitting a nice kneelift. Now, a silver lining in that Screwdriver spot: They set it up close to the ropes, so Cain got his foot up. I still don't like what came after, but I'll give credit to both for clearly setting up near the ropes to avoid an unnecessary kickout. In retrospect, I think my favorite thing about the match might have been Cain's irritated glances at children while he was on the floor, being booed by kids. Just a bunch of kids booing him, while he shook his head at them, hands on hips.

Kavron Kanyon vs. Fry Daddy

ER: Short and sweet, didn't really get much of an idea what Fry Daddy is about, but I liked our Kanyon squash. Kanyon looks like a smaller Chris Hero, had a big kick combo (I really like a good high roundhouse kick, the type of kick Eric Bischoff would call a "back leg front round kick") and he finished it off with a brutal knee to the face. He had Daddy up for a package piledriver, then tossed him straight out and met him with a knee. It looked brutal enough for a finish, so I was pleasantly surprised when it was the finish.

Arik Royal vs. Fred Yehi

ER: Damn, boys, you go get it. I loved the dichotomy of this, with Royal being bigger, but Yehi hitting harder, and I loved the build. Royal is the king and Yehi basically had the best August of any other wrestler I watched. We get a fantastic lock up to start, both men all in and getting low, and Yehi blew up Royal's spot here, not letting him breathe, and Royal is one of my favorite "falling behind" wrestlers, making great faces and fun wobbly selling when he's getting overwhelmed. Yehi slams Royal into the ring apron and Royal comes up selling as if he were a man stumbling lost out of the desert. Yehi keeps ramping up the vicious, peaking with two spinning back elbows/fists to the back of Royal's head. But the big moments were yet to come, as once Royal uses his size, Yehi flies around like a popped balloon. Royal absolutely upends Yehi with his tackle, getting low and exploding; Yehi looked flew like he was riding a banana boat that got hit by Jaws. Royal throws Yehi back-of-neck first into the bottom rope (feels like a great lost Finlay spot) and in something I don't think I've ever seen, skips Yehi across and out of the ring like he was a damn stone on a pond. Royal had a couple of great biel throws in this, but here he just skipped Yehi across the damn ring. Awesome. We got a couple cool momentum shifts based on failed charges by both men, and Yehi sinks in a crucifix bomb before rocking him with that brutal Koji clutch-with-elbows. What nastiness. I think the match should have ended there, as afterward Yehi got freaking blitzed by another great tackle, sending him soaring, and a hard lefty lariat from Royal. And the finish was a little confusing as Yehi ties him up and a grounded kind of octopus, and the ref counts the pin even though Yehi looks more pinned than Royal, so it was somewhat deflating after all we'd been through. But damn still a total banger.  Post match Royal is the best, always, and he draws out all the sympathy from the crowd, acting despondent from his loss, holds up Yehi's hand to a couple sides of the ring, lets the crowd know Yehi was the better man. And then, as we all wanted, levels Yehi. This was all great.

PAS: I liked how the commentary mentioned that both guys do things a little differently, and this was a traditional big match indy formula just turned 10 degrees to the left, enough variety to really make it interesting. I love how Yehi is always moving forward, his pushing the pace is treated like a real advantage. He wrestles like a pest point guard who picks his opponent up full court, like the Patrick Beverley of wrestling. Royal has some off the charts power moves in this match, the spot Eric mentioned where he skips Yehi across the ring like a ground ball was a spot of the year candidate. Yehi is great at mixing in nifty pieces of offense and bumps into his match, he really reminds me of Finlay in that way. I thought we had some really great nearfalls, with Yehi smashing Royal with backfists and chops and Royal throwing him. I dug the flash pin, and the post match nicely sets up a rematch, which I am excited to check out.

The Lynch Mob vs. Team TAG (Chris Spectra/Kevin Blue)

ER: More of an angle than a match, with TAG jumping the Lynch Mob and eventually ending things prematurely by bringing in a couple chairs for the DQ. We've seen Team TAG work some more violent matches, including that awesome WarGames from last year, and I was less interested in seeing them work their way into Joey Lynch tandem spots. They both have tassels which is a plus, and I like a brash cheapshotting team.

AC Mack vs. Austin Theory

ER: Really fun match, the most I've enjoyed Theory, and further cemented how much I dig Mack. Austin Theory is a smooth athletic move-chaining wrestler, except in other matches there was always some hesitation. Here he and Mack worked together extraordinarily well, as if they had come up together and worked dozens of times. Both guys worked really quick and snaked some cool sequences. They worked fast rope running spots, really on your toes stuff. Theory's offense looked really tightened up, but damn Mack can GO. Mack gets crazy height on spots (what is with Georgia workers getting unreal height on bumps and offense?), and I liked every single thing he did in this match. I loved the smoothness he used to get into position for a low dropkick to a seated Theory (kick looked great too), and there was one spot where he leaped practically halfway across the ring to hit a superkick on a slumped-in-the-corner Theory and I jumped out of my seat. Some of Mack's movements seem so impossible, and then they hit flush and it's just...WOW. We get some fun learned behavior moments, like Theory catching Mack's uppercut on his knee/Dustin uppercut spot, and a couple of very believable nearfalls. Now, what's weird, is mid match we get a Theory knee injury. Theory misses a springboard stomp and begins limping around. Pulls off his next piece of offense, but goes down to the mat yelling about that knee. Great, I'm thinking, now we get a bunch of cool cocky attacks on the knee from Mack. Except that didn't happen. Theory continued barking and screaming and emoting about the knee, all while hitting increasingly bigger moves. Theory hit more moves after the knee injury spot than he did before. It was so weird. He was acknowledging it the entire time...except he was on a dominant run of move after move after move, huge sitout powerbomb, huge (great looking ) running blockbuster, a freaking running buckle bomb, getting Mack onto his shoulders for a fireman's carry, just...none of it made sense. The match did not need this knee injury whatsoever. It got really comical after a few moves. If they had changed nothing about the match, but made no allusions to a knee injury, I think this would have easily been high up on our list. Mack gets this hard low blow for an awesome false finish, and Theory comes up holding his balls...and his damn knee. This match was still very good, but that knee injury was such an unnecessary addition to the match. Mack came out of it with a big unexpected (to me) title win after an awesome hard kick to the knee and then his variation of a pedigree. I loved how the finish happened, with Theory just wanting to throw down fists and Mack laughing and agreeing, tossing off his gloves before just kicking low, what a great dickhead heel move. It really did feel like the preceding low blow would have been more than enough to justify the Theory loss, without needing any kind of knee injury angle. I mean you took a hard shot to the balls, nobody would think you didn't fight hard enough. But working in that knee injury without it every coming into play AT ALL just felt truly bizarre. Still, again, with it, the match was very good, and Mack is a guy I'm going to need to see every time he shows up.

PAS:  These guys are both WW4A trainees, and this match had the feel of a classic post match Ian Rotten speech touring showcase. I haven't had much time for Theory before, and his knee injury after a move/knee is fine during a move, is exactly the kind of dumb Seth Rollinism I can't stand. Still he has some pretty great chemistry with Mack and they pull off some really breathtaking stuff. Mack's vertical leap and speed almost feels like a tape glitch, they have a spot where Theory knocks him off the top rope and Mack hits a spinneroonie into a leaping enzigiri directly into this jumping superkick from three quarters of the way across the ring, it felt like watching Zion Williamson dunk, people aren't suppose to move like that. I agree with Eric that if you edited out Theory's weird unnecessary knee selling this would be a better match, but I did dig how it played into the finish. Mack nut punches Austin for a near fall and Theory gets up holding his balls and limping, he screams at Mack to come and fight, and Mack takes off his gloves, and then sneak kicks Theory in the patella, cross arm pedigrees him and pins him. Such a great bit of heel prickishness, fuck fighting like a man, win a match. Mack is a must see guy, what a star making performance.

ER: This was a tightly run, very fun show, with some genuine bangers, fun matches top to bottom, and even standout performances in the lesser matches. You could tell people were working hard, and that's always going to make me seek out more from a promotion. Can't imagine us being not fully onboard for what ACTION has in store going forward. Indy wrestling shows with diverse, killer action and a sub 2 hour run time? That's the market inefficiency right there baby. We placed a whopping 4 matches from this show on our 2018 Ongoing MOTY List, and I'm sure we'll have more ACTION matches on that list before it's done.


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Friday, December 28, 2018

New Footage Friday: Rock 'n' Rolls, Hennig, Gagne Long Riders, OMX, Tully, Magnum

Rock 'n' Roll Express vs. The Long Riders Pro Wrestling USA 12/29/85

ER: Really fun tag with the hoss Irwin brothers picking apart Robert while we get a fun show from Ricky on the apron, leading to an absolutely scorching Ricky hot tag. I like the Irwins. I don't know if they're actually good, but they read how I want a couple of bullies to read. They got big arms and big bellies and look like farm strong Moondogs, and they don't really need to do much more than that to make things work against a team like the Rock n Rolls. Ricky and Robert seem to work up to the Irwins (I mean literally, since the Irwins are big boys) and both tighten up their strikes so the size difference doesn't seem like a big deal. I was just tickled every time we could see Ricky on the apron, firing up the hot Meadowlands crowd (and really this had to be one of the first times the Rock n Rolls ever played in Jersey), throwing big punches from the apron, all leading to that hot tag. The hot tag even has my favorite Irwin moment of the match, as Ricky hits a cool crossbody on Bill and while pinning him, Scott just strolls over and kicks Ricky in the eye. Ricky looks so small compared to the Irwins but his power cannot be denied, he comes in and works absolute rings, throws these fantastic underdog fired up babyface punches, and wins with a cool slingshot sunset flip. Not an essential match, but delivered in the ways I wanted it to.

MD: On paper, I was really excited about this one. I got a kick out of early, early 80s (Dr.) Bill Irwin in Memphis footage, which was my first exposure to him, and I've always had a soft spot for the guy. If the Long Riders had teamed in the AWA a year or two before, I feel like they'd be much better remembered. This was just a cool, unique match up. It couldn't try to overshadow the Russians vs Roadies match that every single person in the crowd was there to see, or even the sheer heat (heel control might be a better term) of Slaughter vs Markoff/Zhukov that was higher on the card too, but it was still a really fun TV style match. Bill and Gibson had a really solid early exchange, one of the best I can remember having seen Gibson having actually. Scott was a really strong presence, using his size for the cutoffs. Really, both tag teams worked so well, the Express with their constant motion and quick tags, and the Riders just tearing at the Express like dogs with an axe to grind, taking every advantage. Gibson put on a strong performance as Face-in-Peril. The hot tag was hot. Morton was doing weird back bumps on his dropkicks. The finish was clever. It's really everything you'd want from a ten minute 1985 tag match. Good stuff.

PAS: I was totally into this. Rock and Rolls are my favorite tag team ever, and their legend has really been built against some signature opponents, so it is cool to see them work a new pair. I thought the Irwins were really good here, especially Scott Irwin who really came off as a violent force of nature, he had real explosiveness for such a big dude and landed everything with a thud. Morton was an awesome hot tag, he came in like an uncaged badger and really laid it in to the Long Riders. Really made me want to see a long feud between these two teams as they really meshed well.

ER: I actually didn't know that the Rock n Rolls are Phil's favorite tag team. The more you know.



Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard Pro Wrestling USA 12/29/85

ER: Like most of you, I'm a ranker. I don't know if I'm good at it, but every year I make ranked lists, favorite albums, favorite movies, favorite wrestling matches, favorite wrestlers, I like ranking. While watching a match - whether intentionally or not - I'll try to decide who I like most in a match, who's my favorite guy. It gives me a little framework for what I'm going to write about, and it's fun in a trios match as new guys capture my attention as a match goes on. And then you get something glorious like this and it is nearly impossible to pick a favorite, it's just 12 condensed minutes of the type of asskicking you watch professional wrestling to see. We get some hot as hell punch exchanges, and Magnum looked like an all time babyface superstar, like someone who was clearly going to be one of the biggest names in wrestling for the next decade. Tully knew exactly when to show ass and show his vicious side. He had a couple different very subtle weak leg moments, just absolute perfection, no stoogey Charleston wobbly knees, much more like when a fighter gets rung and you see a little buckle as they momentarily check out of our universe. He gets punched in the ropes by Magnum - short, violent, totally on point shots - and falls through the ropes onto the timekeeper's table, stands back up to the apron and gets rocked again, and uses the ropes to guide his butt down to the apron. 

Magnum's punches didn't really need much putting over in this match, but Tully did little things the entire match to make them pop even more. Both guys bleed, and we work a lot of this with minimal rope running. I think they really only used the ropes a few times, with TA springing off with a running punch, and later shooting Tully in for the belly to belly, so this felt more like a fight. Of course, both guys throwing fiery punches and elbows for 12 minutes *may* have helped with that fight feel. The pro wrestling integrated itself nicely, with Magnum hitting a gorgeous press slam and the ref wearing some Shinya Hashimoto flared pants, and there's officially just Too Much Good about this. I loved when Tully knocks Magnum to the floor a couple times (with simple, fast and hard bumps to the floor from Magnum) and when TA started crawling back in, Tully just scampered over on his knees and started firing short punches from the ring to TA on the floor. Tully was really great at scampering, really added to the pacing of his matches, and here it made him come off like a wounded yet still aggressive animal, shoving off to create space but always as a means to attack, not hide. The match wrapped up a little too neatly, which is really my only complaint, but I fully buy the belly to belly as a finish because moments before I fully bought a punch as a finish. The punches that happened all match long were great enough that I would have bought one of them merely falling over and getting pinned as the finish. Glory be to the Network.

MD: Keeping in mind this match's placement on the card and the fact it was going to have time limitations, if nothing else, the only thing that would have made this one even better was if Tully had worn an eyepatch. It was a hell of a house show sprint between these two, just turned up a couple of notches considering the occasion. This is only the second full match we've ever seen between the two of them and it delivered well enough to be considered the little cousin of the first. They went all out, beat the crap out of one another, each got revenge on one another, Tully, on the outside, for what Magnum had done to him at Starrcade and then Magnum, on the outside and inside both, for what Tully did to him here. With a definitive finish, this felt like a feud ender, a final bit of punctuation (an exclamation point) at the other end of the war.

PAS: What a present this match was. We have one singles match between these two, and it is arguably a top ten match of all time, so getting another bite at the apple is amazing. It appears that these two don't know any other gear then hellfire, as they lace into each other here with wild abandon. We get two sets of wild punch exchanging, and it as good as the best Lawler vs. Mantel or Dundee punch exchanges, wild swinging and landing. Magnum looks great here, dominating Tully, but leaving openings to take shots. Both guys bleed, both fight like their life depended on it. Great, great stuff and I was thrilled to get to watch it.


Original Midnight Express vs. Midnight Rockers AWA 12/25/87

MD: The 86-7 Midnight Rockers would probably be a lot easier to swallow if more of their matches were this heavily clipped. Michaels especially had a tendency of taking too much too early for far too long. The stuff that they did was often really good: elaborate, creative, hard-working and compelling (as was the case here with some complicated set up and payoff to specific spots with Condrey and Rose stooging like champs). There was just always too much of it. They gave the fans too much of it for free bleeding well past the point where the heels should have been making them pay for their insolence (to the point where they should have been bleeding). It all becomes noise after a while. Here, due to the clipping, it doesn't wear out its welcome. Without that bloat dragging it down, the shine is good and memorable, the heat's good and memorable, the comeback is spot on and the rush to the draw is fun. It's a shame we can't judge this one for what we got instead of what probably really happened.

PAS: It seems kind of crazy to have a southern tag go to a 30 minute draw. That is a match formula which is pretty foolproof, but caps out at about 21-22 minutes. I agree with Matt that the clipping might have been a blessing, we had some fun spots in the opening face control, I loved the spot where Marty blocked Shawn getting whipped into the corner with his body, only to have it backfire when Randy Rose tried it, and OMX were champion stooges. This match went more then ten minutes before any heel offense, and even the best stooges would have trouble filling that time. I liked the heel control section, both Rose and Condrey are pretty vicious, Condrey really ripped Michaels head off with a clothesline. Still when they got to the countdown, it felt kind of rushed, and they never really built to a compelling conclusion, it just kind of ended. I loved the Star as a spot in a tag match, but it should be part of the early face control stooge section not your compelling saved by the bell near fall. Match with fun parts that never really came together.


Greg Gagne vs. Curt Hennig AWA 12/25/87

MD: There is a time and a place where this match would be special, a lost match hinted and rumored at, where this would be the great find of the week. Unfortunately, it wasn't the AWA and it's not 1987. I do sort of love the atmosphere here. Larry the Ax being supportive of his son was well and good a few years earlier when Curt was an up and coming babyface. It's endlessly superior when he's the preening, cheating champ. Proud, heel dads are the best dads. The deal with the multiple refs, with Verne being tied to the Ax, with it being Christmas, with Greg having come so close for so long... all of this felt big and special. The wrestling itself was really good too, with each guy standing tall and hammering one another, and Hennig's bumps being ridiculous but adding to the total effect instead of distracting from it, and all of the limbwork giving this the gravitas and weight a title match deserved. It's just that it's the AWA and they can never get the big things right. By 87, Verne, who had been so good at eating up opponents in his home territory, couldn't even protect himself properly. He looked like a dottering fool as Larry cheated how he liked, punching the old man for getting in his way and breaking up the sleeper just like Verne hadn't been there at all. The post match was heated enough and this should have led to a geriatric mixed tag match (it led to a non-title cage match instead), but they definitely blew the landing on this one.

PAS: I thought this was tremendous, we don't have a ton of AWA Champion Hennig, but all I have seen is stellar, so much better then the Mr. Perfect run which he is best known for. Gagne was really fun, he looks like a schlub but is a pretty dynamic offensive wrestler and a good seller. The early exchanges almost looked like Tiger Mask stuff, with really big height on all the throws and really athletic counter wrestling. I loved Gagne hitting a big headscissors and crotching himself on the ropes on the second try, great set up for Hennig's leg work. Hennig takes a big bump of his own into the ringpost setting up Gagne's arm work. I would have liked to see a little more stealth in the finish, as a straight belt shot in front of the ref is a pretty unsastifying finish to a big title match. I thought the pull apart post match was pretty electric. Greg is bleeding, Verne is slinging the strap at both Curt and Larry, and Curt is breaking away from the wrestlers pulling him apart to wildly throw shots. Really should have sold out the next month with a tag or hair match or something.


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Thursday, December 27, 2018

2018 Ongoing MOTY List: PCO vs. Homicide

96. PCO vs. Homicide MLW 7/19 (Aired 9/7/18)

ER: I think it's a smart move to have PCO's singles match debut not be a squash match. Instead MLW brings in Homicide for a one shot (well they also had him in their big battle royal that same day) and have these two beat the shit out of each other. Homicide works this match like he was the same size as PCO and brings the stiff work to back it up. PCO has no problem taking stupid bumps and working stiff, so clearly this is going to be a fantastic pairing. This is worked at a great pace (the best matches of the PCO revival have been the ones where his opponent pushes the pace) and it's nothing but the two crashing against each other a bunch of times. Hard shoulderblocks, clotheslines to necks, big yakuza kicks, kicks to the body, shots to the face, all of it metal as hell. PCO takes an exploder into the corner at a nasty angle, hits a great dive that smashes Homicide into the barricade, and we get a bunch of convincing nearfalls down the stretch. PCO takes the hardest shots Homicide has to offer, even taking the full force of a killer leaping Homicide knee from the middle rope. Homicide eats some big PCO chokeslams, and PCO just crushes him with his moonsault and a big splash, it was all great. This is my favorite PCO performance of the PCO comeback matches so far.

PAS: Homicide is really great at working at pace, this wasn't Corino or Teddy Hart level Homicide, but it was a quality example of what he brings to a match. We haven't has been as excited about the PCO run as other folks, but he is a unique presence, and his tope, moonsault, frog splash combo was great looking. I also loved the finish with both guys wailing away at each other, only for Homicide to run right into a great looking forearm which dimmed his lights. I still think the WALTER match is the best thing PCO has done this year, but this was quality stuff.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Santo vs. Bandido

81. El Hijo Del Santo vs. Bandido York Hall, London 6/24/17

ER: This was one confusing middle section away from easily landing on our 2017 list, and it needs to be said how cool it is that Santo is the guy using his lucha fame to work matches around Europe this past decade. "I'm a famous masked wrestler, I'm going to showcase that in famous museums and boxing gymnasiums" is a weird line to follow, but it's great. This plays like a Santito greatest hits, done as well as you remember them being played, but the best thing about Santo's greatest hits is that they never feel like he's just running through spots. He always puts something behind them, and their still shockingly beautiful. A lot of this is Bandido stooging for Santo, stooging for headscissor variations (I'll never not get excited for the crossed ankle headstand, never showing any light on his grip around Bandido's neck), fighting out of camel clutches, taking nice arm drags, and fighting back with lariats. Bandido eats a great boot in the corner, flying in with a dropkick and getting knocked out of the sky by a Santo foot, and Santo dropkicks him off the top to the floor before hitting a fantastic dive past the ringpost to the front row. This match could be from 2001 the way Santo is moving, and I'd have no idea. Bandido lands a couple corner dropkicks, and Santo (in tree of woe) sits up on the third and Bandido takes a great sliding bump crotch first around the ringpost. Santo hits an incredible crossbody from the top to the floor, landing high on Bandido's chest and making you come to terms with how disappointing the landings are on most flying offense to the floor. With Santo energized we go into the awesome Santo brawling segments, with him kicking Bandido's legs out, hitting high knees, and going for more clutches.

Things get confusing when Santo gets slammed into a turnbuckle while holding a choke and the match just stops for a couple minutes. Both guys are squaring off but nobody is touching each other, and I have no idea what was supposed to be happening. I didn't love the 2 count tradeoff section, felt too modern lucha and while Santo's sunset flip slams always look great I thought an earlier one was worked into the match in a more interesting way (with Santo being pulled out of a grounded headscissors into one) and I just get restless in lucha now when the guys start trading nearfalls for a few minutes. There's impressive stuff within, as both take nice vertical suplexes on a hard mat, we get rana pinfalls and a victory roll, and Santo's rolling sunset flip bomb is truly one of the great marvels of lucha; the way he rolls into and up and over his opponent's body is something that a 53 year old shouldn't be able to do, and Bandido is a great dance partner as he SUWA's himself into the thing. Finish run is fun with Bandido hitting a rolling senton and them committing big to a missed splash off the top, allowing Santo to finally sink the clutch. This match really wasn't missing much; you had that weird couple minutes of standing and squaring off, and the nearfall section could have been ordered a bit more logically, but if this match had somehow been the only match we got from return Santo it would have been proof positive that he hadn't lost any semblance of a step.

PAS: Honestly this could have been Santo in 2007, 1997 or 1987 and you really couldn't tell. He was taking bumps, throwing big shots, hit his awesome tope, and his classic plancha, both of which were beautiful looking and actually looked like they hurt. He looked 100% there, and if he can still deliver at this level, there is no reason he can't have one more big run in him. CMLL is setting up Atlantis vs. Villano IV and Santo looked way less washed then current Atlantis. No one wants to run a Santo match Wrestlemania weekend? NOVA Pro is flying in Session Moth Martina from fucking England, and there isn't one money mark willing to fly in one of the greatest ticket sellers of the 21st century? There were a couple of moments where Bandido looked off on offense, I don't know how much he has worked rudo in his career, and he seems to have lost the thread a bit. Still he is a really athletic guy, and sold most of Santo's stuff really well.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Santo Baby, Hurry Down the Chimney Tonight

ER: One of the finest luchadors in history came back from retirement a couple years ago and began working matches again (many with his son, which is what likely made him start working again), but I hardly saw anybody writing about the matches. It felt like it was treated as a non-event, as opposed to an exciting event that we now have more footage of a legend who never deteriorated. I decided to run through several of the matches from his most recent active year on file and see what we seemingly collectively missed.


El Hijo Del Santo/Rey Mysterio Jr./Discovery vs. Dr. Cerebro/Super Crazy/Yakuza LLT 9/17/17

ER: This was plenty fun, but when a match has 2 of the 10 biggest lucha legends of all time in it, you hope for a bit more. The rudo control segments were a little underwhelming, and Yakuza kinda stinks and looks like he's mailing it in the whole match (or maybe that's just his operating speed; I assume if you're across the ring from Santo, Mysterio, and the top local lucha tecnico that you would be going your hardest). The early pairings are fun with the tecnicos all getting to show off their arsenal of armdrags and headscissors, but the rudo beatdown after gets a little tedious. We have two short and chubby refs in the ring, one indifferent and one a rudo. I know if I were in the crowd watching a match with Santo, Mysterio, Cerebro (in the states, so wearing his all time great mask), Crazy, I'd personally be interested in some spots where a referee is front and center. It's arguably the worst trope in any style of wrestling. But the home stretch is a solid burst of lightning, with Crazy taking a great bump to the floor off a Mysterio headscissors, Santo hitting his rolling senton off the top (and weirdly barely getting a reaction for a dive onto Cerebro that sends both of them to the guardrail), Yakuza takes a lazy bump to the floor but Discovery hits a nice flip dive onto him (which Yakuza doesn't really catch, moreso lets Discovery bounce off him onto the floor), and then the crowd of course explodes for the 619. Santo was super engaging throughout, really active from the apron, not going through any motions (I thought it was cool when his guys were on offense that Santo was always watching the loose members of the rudo side). But out of all the available 2017 Santo this one was the on paper champ, and didn't really live up to that billing.

El Hijo Del Santo vs. Silver King vs. Alberto el Patron MDA 10/1/17

ER: You might have guessed, but this would have been much better had it been a singles with either of those two opposite Santo, as this had too many moments of three guys in the ring where one guy is just in the way. The money match here is Santo/King, and it's not really that Patron is bad, more that the match would have worked far better as a singles and he's clearly the odd man out. Silver King works the match as a kind of upsetter, like LA Park or Rush, first guy to go looking for weapons, first guy to go for ball shots, just trying to cause chaos. He also lands stiff and takes big bumps, so I'm all for it. Santo works all of his majestic spots off these two, hitting a headscissor and flipping armdrag on King, vaulting off King to hit a dropkick on Patron, and late in the match hitting his rolling senton into tope past the ringpost. Is there a man with a crazier "signature spot" that he's executing into his 50s? Santo is great when a match turns into a brawl, as he has awesome shots and takes Lawleresque bumps into furniture and metal. He even moves a lot like Lawler as he bumps, so seeing Silver King throw him hard into a chair is gonna look great. King comes out with a couple full containers of empty beer bottles and bounces one off Santo, a mere foot away from a man holding his infant. King smacks Santo around with a bottle, then jabs the ref with it, and later blasts Patron with a serving tray.  Finish felt like a good brawl finish, with King bringing in a super heavy looking container of empties (and if it wasn't actually heavy, let's credit Silver King with his John Cena-like ability to make things appear heavier than they are) and looks like he's about to crush Santo's head with it, but Patron throws beer in his face to allow Santo to lock on la caballo. This was very clipped, although I don't think we missed anything, and probably just helped with flow. The performance of Santo and King certainly made me excited for the following tag.

El Hijo Del Santo/Garza Jr. vs. Silver King/Silver King Jr. Auditorio Municipal 11/17/17

ER: This starts out feeling like it's going to be really good, until the back half of this gets plunged into the murky waters of the worst lucha tropes. This started fine, with Santo squaring off against King Jr. and working through some Santo-y mat spots, and then King Sr. and Garza squared off with Garza doing a lot of mincy movements and teasing all the ladies by showing skin, a flash of an ab here and a flash of a left buttock there, all culminating in him missing a big avalanche to get hung up butt up on the top rope, allowing Silver King to expose full butt. The squeals mean it's working. Garza does fully seem all the way into Buddy Landel no kneepads work, but shtick works fine when used properly. There's a FANTASTIC spot where King Jr. gets a cheap shot in on Santo, and King Sr. cheapshots King Jr. to tell him to knock off the cheapshots. Brilliantly timed. Santo comes in and rips off a bunch of classics, big flying headbutt off the top, some victory rolls, big flipping armdrag, a couple nice alley oop headscissors, stuff that looked like good Santo. This didn't appear to be that big of a gymnasium crowd, but Santo is clearly still a guy who busts ass no matter the crowd. And then everything goes to absolute hell in the tercera. The referee turns on Santo for some stupid ass lucha reason and starts putting the boots to him with the Kings. Then Garza also turns on Santo but keeps avoiding taking bumps so he's just a guy who turned and then ran around the ring taunting all match. If I was Silver King Jr. and was paid less than Garza for this match, I'd be pissed. Garza worked this match the way a guy would work if he had found out just before the match that he wouldn't be paid. But then even though Garza turns on Santo, King Jr. still treats him as an enemy and keeps trying to attack him. Maybe King Jr. really *was* pissed about Buddy Garza goofing off the whole match. It was just really weird that Garza wasn't trying to harm the King Family, and was trying to lie down for pins, but King Jr. kept going after him like they were in a fight. None of this made any sense. Santo does still manage to hit his rolling senton and tope past the ringpost into King Jr., but we get nothing but fast count cheating, Santo eating a huge kick to the balls for the finish, and just a final 10 minutes that nobody could possibly be happy with. The one saving grace in the last 10 minutes was Santo still breaking out big spots when allowed, and him finally slapping both Garza and the ref. The fans responded to Santo finally snapping as a big deal, and the ref took a great floppy oversell off Santo's punch. But damn, guys, knock off the horseplop.

El Hijo Del Santo/Santo Jr./Hijo de Black Silver vs. La Mascara/Bandido/Black Silver Jr. LLA 11/19/17

ER: This was nice condensed fun in a neat outdoor soccer field venue. Mascara works as a decent rudo stooge throughout, Bandido is a rudo with excellent fringe on his tights so I am beholden by law to give him positive marks, and apparently the sons of Black Silver are having a row. Black Silver Jr. appears to be the better of the brothers (and sadly passed away in a car accident a few months after this match), and we get more of a look at Santo Jr. Santo Jr. is not that good, but he can blend into a trios well enough and hits a nice dive off the top to the floor late in the match. But you have to sit through sloppy headscissors to get there. He bumps well enough and it's kind of weird because sometimes he tries to almost mimic his father's movement. He can't pull off the execution, but he sometimes moves like him and it's kind of weird. Santo obviously looked like a star here, with a big rana and high knees and slick headscissors, brawling through the crowd with Mascara, and hitting his rolling senton/tope combo. Seriously, Hogan has severe hip pain from doing the legdrop too long, Santo's still out here diving onto soccer fields. Match was a nice crowd pleaser.


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Monday, December 24, 2018

Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 24: Ki vs. Dragon 2

Low-Ki vs. American Dragon ECWA 7/21/01 - EPIC

PAS: This was the rematch of the Super 8 final which drastically changed indy wrestling. Ricky Steamboat was brought in to be the special ref, and it really felt like he was passing the Flair/Steamboat torch on to these two kids. I loved the early lock ups, as they worked a bunch of cool variations out of both a collar and elbow tie-up and a knuckle lock. We get some real stiffness, chops, kicks and even JYD stye headbutts, pre Dragon vs Ki, Northeast US indy wrestling was really loose, so to see these guys lay into each other on the same card as a Japanese Pool Boy match was clarifying. Ki does the kick combo which Dragon will later steal, and his final kick to the head was totally nasty. I loved the arm focus by Dragon, Ki went for a tidal kick and Dragon slid dropkicked his Finish was great too with Dragon dragging Ki down the mat and locking on the Cattle Mutilation until Ki passed out. I was at this show 17 years ago, and it blew me away then, and I am glad to see that it holds up really well on a rewatch.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Sunday, December 23, 2018

Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 23: PWG Legends 4 Way

Low-Ki vs. Necro Butcher vs. Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston PWG 8/3/08 - EPIC


PAS: This is a four way made up of incredible match ups. Kingston vs. Hero and Ki vs. Necro are all time feuds and every other combo of these guys have had amazing singles matchups against each other. This took a minute to get going, there was some early Necro and Kingston comedy which didn't do much for me, but man when it got rolling it was as violent as promised. These are four guys who throw with abandon, and there were parts of this match that was uncomfortable, Ki hit a koppo kick on Hero that looked like it sliced his skull like a meat cleaver, and then hit a koppo on Necro that looked like it broke his wrist. Necro was throwing huge potato right hands on everyone, Kingston was throwing big chops, talking shit, and Aja level backfists. We get a nice Ki vs. Necro section, no one takes full force kicks to the face like Necro, and if he is going to kicked in the temple he is going to try to clean Ki's teeth with his fist.  Match finished with Hero KOing Kingston with a big elbow while Ki was trying to tap Necro. Hero grabs the mic after the match, and calls Kingston a piece of shit and they have an awesome violent pull apart. The internet thinks it might have been a shoot, (Kingston hasn't been back to PWG since) and there are definitely stuff in it that don't feel like wrestling, Hero throws a slap right to Kingston's ear, and Kingston tries to choke him and Hero violent throws the back of his head into Kingston's face, I love this feud so much. Real treat which delivers all of violence you want.

ER: I had never seen this before, and it's just about the most indy wrestling dream match you can get in the Segunda Caida universe. I've never gotten the chance to see Kingston live (he really didn't make it out to CA a ton), but the others I've seen live several times and it was always super memorable. The two Necro matches I've seen live were such fun experiences, me running around a venue following all the action. I saw him in an SF club working King Dabada, a big fat guy, and they brawled all over a small club and fell onto Rachel's sister and her girlfriend. Just a big sweaty fat guy and a hillbilly brawler falling onto their laps. All these guys are among my all time favorites so this was exciting just knowing this match existed. But that it also wound up totally delivering on its on-paper potential, just made this kick extra ass. It felt set-up for disappointment due to high hopes, but over-delivered. The early comedy was a fun twist from the violence that was to follow, and limiting it to the very beginning was fine. Because I wasn't thinking about Kingston running away when every body in the match was throwing fists and boots and kicks and elbows at each other. There's a fantastic  sequence where Hero grabs Ki in this nasty cravate while Ki is flopping about, and Kingston breaks it up with a nasty spinning backfist on Hero, and immediately pins Ki which narrowly gets broken up by Necro. Ki hits his nastiest ever koppo kick into the middle of Hero's forehead and then turns around and throws his nastiest ever koppo kick to Necro's swinging arm. Necro's arm selling looked great, probably because the man just took an insane kick to the arm. Necro punched a lot of face (loved another Ki crumbling sell), Ki bounced off Necro's spine with a Warriors Way while Necro was draped in the ropes, and the end is sudden and violent, Hero finally dropping Kingston with one of several elbows. This match delivers everything you could ever want it to, jumping a high bar.


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More 80s Christmas AWA! On Heenan! On Martel! On Blackwell and Gagne!


Rick Martel vs. Bobby Heenan AWA 12/25/82

ER: Network puts up new hunky Rick Martel, Rachel is going to be interested in seeing new hunky Rick Martel. Every time we see some early 80s Martel she just exclaims "He's such a good babyface!" This is, I believe, the only wrestler she has said this about. I don't even think she's seen much of The Model era, or how she would even handle heel Rick Martel. Oddly, I think she's seen the '91 Rumble, but Martel lasts so long that it's basically like a babyface Rumble performance, working against the odds. But it is undeniably true that Martel is a fantastic babyface, super expressive and knows how to make things feel like a big deal. Heenan here really comes off like a big deal. He's practically Fit Finlay in how well every single shot lands, and how nicely he takes every Martel shot. He even moves similarly to Fit. Heenan comes off like a total badass, just look how he kicks at Martel from the apron to keep him on the floor or throws winging double chops off Irish whips. Heenan was so good here that it's crazy to me he was only a part timer a couple years later.  Heenan blinds Martel early in the match and Martel is weirdly a guy who is really great at dramatically selling blindness. It's an odd thing to be good at but something everybody clearly knew or they wouldn't have had him still working it into matches a decade later. Martel is great on the defensive in this, but also great on offense. He fired back blindly against Heenan, tossing him with backdrops when Heenan would get close, firing back with great punches (that knock Heenan into the ropes Andre style), kicking at his legs in the ropes (nasty kicks to inner leg), and broke out a textbook sunset flip. The finish was awesome as Heenan gets dropkicked in the back and flies chest first into the middle turnbuckle, made the bump look real violent and worthy of a finish.


Rick Martel vs. Superstar Billy Graham AWA 12/25/83

ER: This was really fun, just a bunch of simple knucklelock exchanges and a nicely worked bearhug by Graham, which is more than enough to frame a nice babyface Martel performance. I like a good bearhug and post-WWF Superstar can still squeeze. I thought he was good at cutting off Martel, especially with a nicely timed throat thrust (a "tae kwon do chop") when Martel was starting to fire back. Maybe Graham's stuff wouldn't have looked as good without someone as expressive as Martel selling it, but the combo worked. Finish is at least a good bullshit finish, as Martel starts making strides and Graham just decides to launch him over the top to the floor for the DQ. Martel took the match finishing bump like a champ.


Jerry Blackwell/Ken Patera/Mr. Saito/Sheik Adnan Al-Kassie vs. Greg Gagne/Jim Brunzell/Ray Stevens/Baron von Raschke AWA 12/25/83

ER: Hell yes, inject this kind of classic multi man action right between my toes. It's JIP 5 minutes but that still gives us 11 minutes of party. The heels all cut off Gagne from his boys, showing how effectively a simple formula can work 35 years later. The heels all took turns distracting the ref to keep Gagne from getting to hot tags and allow double teams, Saito sneaking in with leaping elbows off the middle rope, Patera coming in with a nice cut off shot while Blackwell is busying the good guys, Adnan sneaking in shots, Blackwell hitting a nice falling elbow and later missing a splash, all simple but effective stuff. The whole babyface side is excellent on the apron, keeping everything fired up, Stevens running in to try and do justice, Baron getting to goose step around to thunderous cheers on the hot tag, but Gagne again had an excellent babyface performance and even got to hit this ridiculous double stomp off the middle rope right off Blackwell's belly. This kind of match is like tasty popcorn in a movie, just can't stop eating it.


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Saturday, December 22, 2018

Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 22: Ki vs. Necro in JAPW

Low-Ki vs. Necro Butcher JAPW 5/19/07 - EPIC

PAS: I still have one more singles match to track down and watch, but so far this is an unimpeachably all-time great series of matches. It is like the US version of Ikeda vs. Ishikawa if Ishikawa was a homeless drifter. This had some structural issues which kept it from being at the all time great level of the second IWA-MS match, but this was just as stiff and had as many eye popping moments. Ki just brutalizes Necro as one might expect, he laces him with chops so stiff they bloody his chest a bit, and throw these full force kicks right to Necro's mouth. Necro responds with full force punches right to Ki's jaw, he does the Tenryu chop/punch combo stiffer than fucking Tenryu does it, and I have seen Tenryu straight break a guys nose with those punches. Necro also takes two horrifically violent spills through wood doors, including missing a cactus elbow off the apron through a propped up door, and getting John Woo kicked through the door where he looked like the victim of a car bombing. There is a great spot where Necro fights out of hanging double stomp by punching Ki square in the mouth, and then Necro's hits an awesome looking sloppy top rope rana for a near fall. They do some stuff with thumbtacks at the end, which is really redundant, stepping on tacks is nasty, but Necro was taking full force kicks to the ear, a tack in the foot is nothing in comparison.

ER: I thought this was great, as great as any of their other singles matches. It is notable for being the most slender I have ever seen Necro. He's never been a fat guy, but this is definitely the leanest I've seen him. He's almost fully Lead Singer from Spin Doctors here, and he's awesome. Also, we have Monsta Mack on commentary and I had no idea that Mack sounded liked Bobcat Goldthwait mixed with Don Knotts. And that voice happened a LOT throughout this match. But this was a total brutal beatdown from both guys, and nothing will keep you from enjoying that. Ki throws some of his best kicks here, with a ton aimed right at Necro's face and head, with several more right to his chest. There's a kappo kick that is the most deserving thing of a Necro stumble sell. Necro punches to offense and kicks at Ki, flies through a table set up at ringside, hits a nasty folding powerbomb that Ki almost reverses, and punches some more. We got a cooler version of Necro fighting out of the tree of woe, with Ki grinding on Necro's kneecaps from the top rope leading to Necro decking him, and that sloppy rana was dangerous and exciting as hell. I liked how they used the thumbtacks, personally. Necro brings them out then starts stumble stepping into them, tries to powerbomb Ki on them but Ki wriggles out, then Necro hits the punch of the match (punch of his career??) and Ki takes this spectacular falling bump into the ropes, hitting all the ropes on his way down before lying slumped in a pile. He didn't go full Bernard Hopkins, but he didn't need to. The thumbtacks were used as a great distraction for Necro to allow Ki to recover. Necro stumbles through them, and while the kicks to the head earlier, this was a good way to occupy Necro. Ask Phil how he feels when he inevitably steps heel first onto a LEGO when his boy is old enough to play with them. So while Necro is trying to sway tacks out of his feet Ki hits his shotgun dropkick to propel Necro through a table like he was making an airbag test video to post on YouTube. Necro takes that killshot, Ki lands in the tacks back first performing the dropkick, but the shelled table leaves Necro prone for the Warriors Way. Awesome, awesome match, right up there with the best they've done.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Friday, December 21, 2018

New Footage Friday: Hogan, Bockwinkle, High Flyers, Blackwell, Hennig, Tito

The Network delivered a tidal wave of AWA this week, with a lot of new stuff, including a real gem.



High Flyers vs. Jerry Blackwell/Sheik Adnan Al-Kassie AWA 12/25/81

MD: This was basic and straightforward but just so well executed. Shine/Heat/Comeback/cheating heel finish. It's JIP so we lose some of the shine. If there was double heat on this, that'd probably where it would have been. It's hard to say. You get a complete picture here though. It's striking just how much stuff Gagne has a ton of stuff. If you need someone to control a heel's arm (even one as big as Blackwell), Greg's the guy to go with. Brunzell is more fiery than you'd think working the apron. The Flyers do feel like a big deal here, but that's not surprising. They always somehow do. All of this felt iconic, pure, distilled AWA.

PAS: Really solid main event tag team match. Blackwell and Adnan are a bruiser tag team, Kasie almost seems like too much of a bad ass to work as a heel manager. Blackwell has fists like hams, and a demolishing fat guy elbow. Greg was a great in this, I loved his wild punch combos to Blackwells body to make space for the hot tag, and he had some nice looking offense, including some nasty shots to the Shiek's knee. I totally buy a sneaky Blackwell splash ending anyone, that is a fat dude right there.

ER: I love Blackwell so much. He's the fattest version of Haley Joel Osment and is a guy I'll watch in anything. It feels like we've gotten a ton of fresh Blackwell in the past couple years, from Japan handhelds to stuff like this. And it's all great, I love how he moves, you get to see awesome elbowdrops and big fat guy bumps and painful avalanches and great missed splats on splashes, and after the match he lands an absolute curb stomp of a running stomp. Guy comes off like a total killer. Greg Gagne is a guy I like that really got a bum rap for years. He's a great babyface and always brings good determination, his blow up fired up punches are great and he's a good face in peril. I now get excited when new Greg Gagne footage shows up. Brunzell is a durable guy with a fantastic dropkick who can hang with bigger guys, and Adnan does amusing older guy heel stomps and reactions and backrakes. Plus we get some great regional folksiness on commentary, my favorite being "Greg Gagne just folded like a carpenter's rule." You picture James Stewart saying something like that in "Fools' Parade" and it sounds right. This is the kind of pro wrestling I like to watch.


Tito Santana/Hulk Hogan vs. Bobby Duncum/Ken Patera AWA 12/25/82

MD: There's a lot to really enjoy here. Hogan is an absolute bully, going out of his ways to poke Patera in the eyes when he doesn't have to, all of that. The fans love it. Santana works as rudo as I've ever seen him, faking the tags and cheating left and right. Tito Santana! Hogan's a bad influence. Patera really shines in this one. There's just real star power there. Everything he does has extra oomph and energy. It's patently ridiculous that this ends not in a double DQ but in Hogan getting DQ'd because he was getting in the way of the heels cheating. It might have been to set up Patera/Duncum as contenders but it just felt like punishing the fans for no reason.

PAS: Really fun to watch the two babyface icons of my early wrestling fandom team up. Hogan and Tito have barrels of charisma and I really enjoyed all of the babyface scheming early. Tito is a really good face in peril, and Hogan is an all time hot tag. Tito breaks out a Gibson leglock and takes a great semi flip bump on Duncum's lariat. I loved we got a couple of big Heenan bumps and didn't mind the double DQ as it had the kind of Katie Bar the Door finish you got a ton of in the 80s. This was a nostalgic match, so I dug the nostalgic finish.


Nick Bockwinkel vs. Mad Dog Vachon AWA 12/25/83

MD: Just watch Bockwinkel rush in for the attack. Always a game plan. Always a purpose. Mad Dog wasn't going to do any topes in 1983, but his stuff looked nasty and credible. He'd bite your nose off if you weren't careful. Or, in this case, he'd fishhook your mouth and all but suplex you with it. Bockwinkel stooges and feeds and makes this feel like a right and proper main event for an end of the year show. This had a pretty goofy Dusty finish but the pop on Mad Dog getting the apparent win is huge. It's a testament both to the AWA crowds and to Bockwinkel that you could put almost anyone up and down the roster in there, from Brunzell to Rheinghans to the Baron to Robinson and the crowd completely believed that the title change could happen and that they might witness history.

PAS: I really enjoyed this, classic wrestling trope of over as fuck babyface taking out a sneaky heel champ. The Crusher is accompanying Vachon as a counter to Heenan, and has an unlit cigar in his mouth and another two in his pocket. Vachon tears Bockwinkle up, bumping him all over the ring, with Bockwinkle only getting brief moments of offense, when he can sneak in a cheap shot. Vachon really comes off as a vicious tough guy and Bockwinkle sells his ass off. The ending was super dumb as the ref just stops counting to DQ Bockwinkle before Heenan does anything. We do get some fun postmatch with Heenan taking a classic insane Heenan bump to the floor, but I can see why this kind of booking BS eventually doomed the fed.


Nick Bockwinkel vs. Curt Hennig AWA 12/25/84

MD: Nick Bockwinkel vs Curt Hennig is one of the greatest feuds in wrestling history. Maybe before I'd say it was one of the greatest feuds of the 80s. Before we didn't have this match. It slots in so perfectly and it's one of those things that I don't know how we, as wrestling fans, ever lived without.

This was during the period where Martel, not Bockwinkel, was champion, where Hennig was coming into his own as a singles mid-carder and occasional contender. Remember, just two years earlier he was reffing the Christmas show. It would still be a couple of years, and the tag run where he was to make Scott Hall a star, before they'd feud in earnest. This match was full of sparks that would ignite years later.

People praise Bockwinkel for a lot of things, for his promos, for his matwork, for his bumps, for his presentation as the perfect heel champion, and I love all of those things. What I love the most, however, is that he is always absolutely in the moment. He is entirely in to every moment, not as a performer hitting spots, but as a method actor who's completely dropped into what he's doing. It's the little things. There's a moment early on after he took over with an unclean lock up off the ropes where Hennig bumps out of the corner, selling. Bockwinkel does this tiny, enthused pump of his arm. It's the smallest thing but there's not another wrestler out of a hundred that would have chosen to show that emotion in that moment and it is absolutely everything when it comes to immersion. Bockwinkel believes. You believe.

This shifts to a great King of the Mountain and subsequent revenge from a fiery Hennig after that (the transition being wholly logical and warranted as Bockwinkel decided to play to the crowd and mime having the belt once more; everything always makes sense with Nick Bockwinkel). From here it's back and forth with Bockwinkel able to bully his way to advantages and Hennig selling the damage tremendously. Ultimately, after a second sunset flip hope spot (one that Bockwinkel struggled on much more than the first), Nick goes after the leg, locking in a string of figure-fours until the Hennig, toughing it out, somehow rolls him up for the pin and the win. Post-match, Bockwinkel is behind himself and beats Hennig to a pulp, coming back in again and again with no one able to stop him. You can't watch this and not think about what would happen two years later when a frustrated Hennig would turn heel on Bockwinkel. This was great on its own it's all part of an even greater whole and it's a whole that we've got an clearer picture of today.

PAS: Getting a new Bockwinkel vs. Hennig is like getting a new Santo vs. Casas or Dundee vs. Lawler, another chance to see a legendary match up, with all time greats who are always going to give something different. It was neat to see this version of the rivalry with Bockwinkle so dominant and Hennig still a young boy. Bockwinkle is so vicious and dismissive, tossing Hennig to the floor,  and really kicking the shit out of him when Hennig tries to get back in, it is the ultimate in dismissiveness. This kid doesn't even belong in the ring with me, and I refuse to treat him like an equal. It is what makes the reversal of fortune so satisfying, with Hennig constantly knocking Bock to the floor. The figure fours looked great, and I loved how Bock snapped after Hennig gets the sneak pin. Brutal onslaught, and Bockwinkle does really come off unhinged, like he can see all of his glory slipping away and was going to hold on tight with both hands.


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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 21: Ki vs. Crash

Low-Ki vs. Crash Holly WWF Metal 2/17/01 - FUN

PAS: This was Ki working WWE Metal jobber duty, but he gets to show off some stuff, including his big handspring tornado kick right to Holly's jaw. I don't really remember much about Crash Holly, but he seemed to be working a bunch of fun carny roll-ups. I thought he was all comedy bumps, but instead he was wrestling like Checkmate Tony Charles.

ER: I thought this was some fantastic syndicated pro wrestling. Metal was my JAM during this era. I was doing my college radio show midnight-2 AM on Saturday nights (The Late Night Honey Run), and during my show I would set a tape for Worldwide and Metal. I would play music, get calls from drunk students, pick up some Taco Bell on the way home (2 bean burritos, 2 double decker tacos), then plop on the couch and see what jams were on my syndicated pro wrestling. I loved it. Metal was basically thee place to see snippets of random indy guys that I had read about. Ki was a semi-regular on Metal/Jakked during this era, popping up memorably every month or two and actually getting talked about by commentary during matches. That wasn't a thing they did for every indy jobber. I remember being really excited when Ki worked the West coast and I got to talk with him about his Essa Rios match on Metal, and Ki said "You see that guy in the front row flip out when I threw that kick?" I followed Crash more than Phil did, if only because he came up in local indies and I was extremely excited when he made it to WWE. But even I didn't remember him breaking out trippy nearfall roll-ups. I don't remember anybody working these kind of roll-ups in early 2000s WWE, or even in 2000s indies. World of Sport tape watching didn't seem to hit indy wrestling until maybe 2003. But Crash breaks out a couple cool ones here, trapping Ki's arms behind his head (as if he was standing backwards during a stump puller) and flipping that into a roll up, then later trapping Ki's arms, pulling them through Ki's legs and flipping him into another cool pin. Both of these roll ups are ripe for stealing today, nobody would know the reference point by now. Crash also has a dope reversal on a tornado DDT, turning it into an inverted atomic drop. Most WWE Metal Ki matches were more competitive than your average WWE guy vs. indy guy, and Ki getting to hit his handspring roundhouse kick is a super showcase move for someone to get, and the crowd responded accordingly. Lots of fond personal nostalgia from me for this era, glad it still holds up as good fun.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 20: Ki vs. Scorpio

Low-Ki vs. 2 Cold Scorpio IWA-MS 8/11/06 - GREAT

PAS: Ki comes in with the X division title and Scorp comes in with the GHC Hardcore belt, so you know you aren't getting a clean finish. My only complaint about this match is that was worked like a draw, it never felt like it went for a finish run until the five minute overtime period. Despite that there was a lot to love here. There was some really gritty grappling in this match, lots of hard takedowns, body vices, legscissors, both guys seemed to be using the matwork to sap their opponents wind, not really going for submissions, just grinding to punish. As one might expect this was really stiff too, Ki through some big chops and kicks, but Scorpio was up to the task, with big thick elbow smashes and a front kick which bloodied up Ki's mouth. At one point Ki dimmed Scorpio's running lights with a kappo kick right to the bridge of the nose. The first time limit call felt sort of out of nowhere, although they did build to a big finish in the 5 more minutes. Including Scorpio hitting a gorgeous moonsault and Ki crushing him with a double stomp (complete with Scorpio's bug eyed Pigmeat Markham sell.) It felt like they left a lot on the table for a rematch which never happened, but this was undoubtably a heck of a contest.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Thursday, December 20, 2018

2018 Ongoing MOTY List: PCO vs. Walter 2

107. WALTER vs. PCO IWS 7/14

PAS: This was the rematch from the big Spring Break match which was PCO's breakout, and WALTER continues to be his best opponent.  We have had a big sample size of PCO matches at this point, enough to judge what he does best, and I think he is much more effective working from below, as an underdog taking a beating. He is a good bumper and willing to take a beating, and his offense works better in spurts then with a long control section (he had the worst Darby Allin match I have seen all year, and that seemed promising on paper.) IWS is Montreal based, so this was a homecoming, and the crowd was totally into PCO, with WALTER working straight heel. The chops in this were the main course, and WALTER just pulverized PCO's chest, PCO fired some nice ones too, but WALTER was on another level, WALTER also landed some unsafe chair shots and hit his John Woo dropkick which sent PCO flying into a chair with the back of his head. I don't love the Destro car battery hulk up, although it worked better here then in the Darby match, and I really dug his second hulk up where he just started punching chairs out of the air. Fun stuff, and I hope their Iowa match ends up showing up somehow.

ER: Babyface underdog PCO is really fun and it's great to see him on his home turf wrecking his body in super painful ways. Nothing garners sympathy like going against a man who, had he been a robot on Futurama, would likely be called Chopper. There can be yawning holes in PCO matches the longer they go, with extended prop set up, awkward moments of getting into position, and a now skippable Destro moment, but it helps when the parts of the match that aren't that are just two big guys clubbing each other. WALTER is really punishing here with his big chops and boots to the face, and I especially flipped for his running dropkick that sent PCO flying middle of spine first into the front of a seated chair, crushing it. WALTER murders him with a couple powerbombs, one through a table, but PCO fighting back was good fun. He gets reenergized, fires back with a ton of chops, hits his crazy guy tope, and starts punching thrown chairs out of the air (thrown by WALTER) before catching one, tossing it back, and punching WALTER right through it. PCO ends up winning with a huge moonsault while WALTER was buried under a half dozen chairs, and while I think the bloom is just about off the rose with him (for me), I can still get behind this kind of crazy, in the same way it was amusing seeing 50+ year old Terry Funk decide to do moonsaults.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 19: Ki vs. Sabu

Low-Ki vs. Sabu ICW 1/25/02 - FUN

PAS: This is a touring indy legend of the 90s versus a touring indy legend of the 2000s and unsurprisingly is kind of a muddled mess. Shocking in a Sabu match, it is Ki with the biggest botches, he blows a tope early and lands on the top of his head, and then blows a second tope later getting caught up in the ropes. Sabu does some Sabu stuff, including a crazy spot where he stands Ki on a chair on the floor and springboards off the rope, Ki moves and Sabu crotches himself on the lip of the chair and the guardrail. They do a terrible, crowd killing double count out (what happens I guess when the unjobbable force meets the unlaydownable object). Still there is enough wacky shit to at least get this to a fun, there is some early Sabu grappling which I always love and a couple of car crash spots which were car crashable. It's a trainwreck, but trainwrecks are cool to watch sometimes

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 18: Ki vs. SAT vs. Red

Low-Ki vs. Amazing Red vs. Jose Maximo vs. Joel Maximo NWA-TNA 8/21/02-FUN

PAS: This was an elimination four way for the X Division title, which made no sense, but was undoubtably a barrel of fun. The Maximos are not rewarded by a deeper dive. There are a couple of pretty bad moments, including Jose getting hit with a dropkick and instead of bumping, pausing and then stumbling through the ropes. There were also some triple teams which didn't come off. I did dig Ki just kicking Joel in the face multiple times, and there was some fun Red versus his cousins spots. The Red vs. Ki stuff was great as always, I loved Ki countering the Code Red by hurling him back first into the turnbuckle. We had a bit of a kung fu standoff and a finish with Ki absolutely murdering him with a top rope Ki Krusher. The crowd was clearly ready for Red to get a win over Ki at some point, they blew it by never paying that off.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Monday, December 17, 2018

Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 17: Ki vs. Necro KO or Submission

Low-Ki vs. Necro Butcher IWA-MS 12/16/06 - EPIC

PAS: This was flat out incredible. Probably Necro's career match, and he is a guy with a great fucking career. This was the perfect mix of Ki's sadism and Necro's masochism. This was a KO or submission match and both guys were at their apexes. Necro takes an all time shellacking, and has some incredible moments of selling which really gets over the brutality of Ki. He gets kicked in the temple and falls on his back and starts pawing in the air like a kitten with a ball of string. He ends up getting double stomped with his chest on the back lip of the chair, and sells like he is going to puke blood, and he gets a 1970s Wahoo level chop right to the dick and sells like he got chopped right in the dick. Necro has great looking offense in this match too, he throws these Juan Manuel Marquez style hooks to the body with full force, and you can really see him move Ki's organs around with them. He also has some great headbutt's nice powerbombs and various awkward hurls of chairs. Real testament to the greatness of both guys, and it is pretty amazing that Ki can have mat classics like the Danielson matches, bonkers spotfests like the Red matches, and horrifically violent spectacles like this, what a versatile maestro he is.

ER: My god the violence! This match gets a *lot* of time, and the fact these guys kept up the level of beating for the entirety of the match was just an absurd level of violence. You can count over a hundred strikes in this match, but you can't count a single thigh slap. Ki throws so many kicks at Necro's legs, chest, and head, and all of them land great. There were a few moments where Necro would lumber toward Ki and Ki would fire off a 3 pronged attack one step ahead of Necro's reactions;  take out his leg, kick his chest, kick his face, and not many people get kicked in the body and face better than The Necro Butcher. The whole match Necro is taking these shots and responding with relatable moans and OOFs. Ki kicks him right in the stomach and Necro just goes "Ooooooooooooooo" like he was a cartoon fox getting hit in the stomach with a cannonball. Necro filled the match with a ton of great doddering sells, struck stupid faces, and Terry Funk like punch drunkenness. Necro's whole body was a shade of pink or red by the end of this. But while we've gotten kind of used to seeing Ki eat guys for lunch, he doesn't come anywhere close to escaping this unbruised. This is probably the biggest beating I've seen Ki take, and Necro's shots landed with an impossible thud the whole match. Both guys had these King Kong chops, Necro was throwing big knee lifts, shifting Ki's ribs with nasty blows, and always ready with a punch to the jaw when he needed it (loved him using all his strength to lift himself up out of the tree of woe and punch Ki before the Warrior's Way). The big moves looked dangerous and suitably crazy: Necro drops Ki on some chairs with a backbreaker, body slams him while holding a chair to his back, whips him violently into the mat with a Tiger Driver (the snap on that thing made it one of the greatest tiger drivers I've seen), and even went so far as to do an insanely not recommended tiger driver off the top. Someone could have died on that one. We had headbutts and kicks behind the ear and Necro's big awesome barefoot boots to the face; we had Ki throwing Kawada kicks to Necro's trapped head; we had Low Ki double stomping Necro's stomach from the apron to the floor. And the spot of the match sees Low Ki throw a freaking knife edge chop right to Necro's balls. Necro sold it so great that I assume he fully got hit in the balls, and I am shocked that he didn't puke. We've seen Necro puke in matches before, this would have been just as appropriate a place. I was disappointed by the finish, with Ki locking on a sort of sloppy triangle. I can see a submission being the only way to actually finish a guy who can seemingly take blows to the head as well as Homer Simpson, but we had spent 20+ minutes on two guys trying to knock each other out that it felt we had all collectively moved on from submission being a part of it. But it's a light blip on a genuine all time war. After the match Ki gets on the mic and groans "...god that hurt." No kidding, it was like we were watching Daisuke Ikeda vs. Daisuke Ikeda in a Chicago suburb.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Sunday, December 16, 2018

WWE TLC 12/16/18 Late Blog

Late to the show as we had a fun day seeing Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas at a local theater and getting pizza, getting me in a righteous Christmas mood. There are a few matches I'm into on this card (really all the women's matches have potential, even the Natalya one) and it should be fun overall. Afterward I'll watch Silent Night, Deadly Night 3.

 Cedric Alexander vs. Buddy Murphy

ER: This was a mostly fun cruiserweight opener that hits some fun flippy vibes, and it's amusing that we opened a 8 hour PPV with a big apron bump that gets blown off a minute later. It's silly, guys. But I liked Murphy a lot here, loved the great kneelift counter to Cedric's bottom rope cutter, thought he bumped really impressively for Cedric's offense (especially that big backwards bump into the barricade off Alexander's nice dropkick to the floor). I did think it went too long and thought going to the apron spot was unnecessary. Even though Murphy recovered what I thought was too quickly, I like that he immediately took the lumbar check but had his foot over the ropes. Rope escapes are an underutilized way to avoid big move kickouts, so I thought that worked to the match's favor. Overall it was good cruiser action, Murphy delivered on some of the hype I've seen from him this year, and Cedric is at least consistent.

Ladder Match: Elias vs. Bobby Lashley

ER: This didn't do a whole lot for me, felt like a poor ladder match that would get cut from a Coliseum Video. This was really dull and we also have a guitar hanging above the ring, and apparently the winner gets to use the ladder as a weapon. But then when Elias gets the guitar the bell just rings, so he won the match just by getting the guitar. So...why would it matter that he gets to use it as a weapon? This felt not only boring but rushed, there was a big bump but not a lot of interest. Majorly disappointing as Elias has been delivering as a character, but nothing about this match delivered.

Alicia Fox/Jinder Mahal vs. Carmella/R-Truth

ER: This was pretty sloppy, pretty messy, and it was worked as if it were main eventing an indy charity show. That charity show vibe worked to its advantage even if some of the execution was ugly.  We got some comedy breaks, Carmella and Truth doing a dance break when Jinder and Fox bumped to the floor, the Singh brothers getting involved and getting their culture mocked before getting tossed to the floor, Fox and Truth attempting to stumble their way through physical jokes about Fox's large hat, it all felt very crowd pleasing support the troops charity show. The work as I said was often messy, but since pristine execution wasn't really the vibe of the match it didn't affect things the same way as it would have if Murphy/Alexander had been even 1/4 as sloppy. I wouldn't expect a ton from Truth or Jinder (though I liked their early match sequence where Truth hit a crossbody for a pin and followed it up with two surprise nearfall inside cradles), but Fox has always been a favorite of mine and Carmella had been looking better so I was hoping for better showings from them. Still this was fine for what it was and kinda funny that this was what was chosen to open the actual card.

New Day vs. Usos vs. Sheamus/Cesaro

ER: Matches between these teams always have a decently high floor, but never seem quite as good as they should be, and they're almost always worked like nothing at all matters until we get to the boom boom boom finish sprint. You know those sprints, where several guys leap into superkicks as if their only plan was to get kicked in the face. Plus Woods/Kingston is easily the weakest version of New Day so we don't get any great power battles between Big E/Cesaro. But we still had some fun spots and the guys involved always work with an energy that the live crowds respond to, and that counts for a lot. I liked Sheamus hitting Woods with the brogue kick as he was bouncing in off the bottom rope (two cool reverses of that spot tonight) and Kofi's trust fall off the top onto everyone looked cool. But damn for all the times we've gotten this combination of guys going against each other, you'd think we would have more of their matches on our MOTY lists.

TLC Match: Baron Corbin vs. Braun Strowman

ER: It's a No DQ match so Gable, Angle, Crews and others just beat down Corbin so Corbin is removed from authority on Raw. But since I always fast forward through those kind of storylines I didn't actually have any horse in the game. I have no clue how Corbin has been as a leader, no clue what he had done to make him lame or whatever we were supposed to think, so I was way more interested in just seeing these two have an actual match. Corbin's best stuff has come in stips matches and the two could have done something cool. But I assume the crowd would have chosen this match over an actual match. And now I assume Vince will be back on Raw tomorrow specifically to say that Raw has sucked without him.

Tables Match: Natalya vs. Ruby Riott

ER: Nobody wants to see a Natalya featured story match, but I'm optimistic about this one as the Riott Squad has really shone when given the opportunity. And a couple minutes in we get the spot of the show so far when Riott is on the apron and Natalya runs to kick her off through a table set up on the floor, and Liv Morgan pushes her out of the way and takes a crazy backwards bump herself, right through the table. It looked great and snapped me into it. Natalya is a little clunky with some stuff, not really connecting when dropkicking a table into Sarah Logan, but the Squad is providing nice smoke and mirrors to this when Logan also goes through a table. There's some silly and kind of welcome melodramatics when Riott rubs Natalya's face onto a table they brought out with a picture of Natalya dead dad on it. Anvil coming out and interfering on behalf of his daughter is going to fuck people up BAD. Nice moment where Natalya gets Riott up in an electric chair but Riott manages to knock over the table should would have gone through, but Natalya drops her hard anyway. We get a wayyyy too long moment where Natalya pulls out a table with a full size Riott picture on it (but how is that a burn, is it some unwritten table code that going through a table with your picture on it somehow stings more? I'm not seeing how it's more humiliating). And once Natalya pulls out her dad's old ring jacket (Jesus how does that fit her so well? When was the slender Anvil period?) and does bad fake cry face you kind of know how the rest of the match was gonna go so I just wanted it over with. Natalya takes an eternity setting up the finishing spots but the powerbomb on Riott off the turnbuckles through the table looked good at least. I wish Natalya as the pushed winner of feuds wasn't a thing. This really could have been a big moment for Riott and a great heel moment for her to still win and leave Natalya crying. Natalya handling the entire Riott Squad all by herself is just wayyyy too much.

Drew McIntyre vs. Finn Balor

ER: McIntyre was so good on his post WWE indy run and I don't think he's been in anything that interested me since coming back. This one isn't going to be it. Balor is the pits and hits some absolutely comical offense in this one, it was embarrassing seeing Drew have to bump around for it. Balor's flying forearms couldn't crack an egg and his slingblade might be the worst version of any of the bad versions of that move. The best moments were McIntyre catching Balor with power spots, a big overhead belly to belly that launched him across the ring, a big back breaker, big air raid crash off the middle rope ("If he hits this it's over!" Graves says, which always guarantees we're getting a kickout). Ziggler interferes so the babyface can get a win which makes a lot of sense, but at least the big double foot stomp off the top looked really good. If Balor has to win, at least the move he won with looked better than the rest of his stuff. Last couple matches really felt like the wrong people won.

Chair Match: Rey Mysterio vs. Randy Orton

ER: Mysterio is decked out like a mini version of CMLL's Nitro (friend their live thinks he's doing an LA Park thing, and he does kinda have the gloves for it), and I'm down for this match. I weirdly liked Orton/Rey from Smackdown the most out of our WWE return Mysterio matches, they have good chemistry and haven't gotten stale even though they've worked matches dating back almost 15 years. Chairs are set all around ringside and there are a ton of them so it looks cool, looks like we could get some real mayhem. Neither guy skimps on shots in between chair moments, so it's cool when you don't see them just standing around, you get nice kicks, nice elbows, snug work in between the chair violence. We get a couple absolute banger chair spots, Rey slides belly first on a chair landing on Orton on the floor, and Rey crashes and burns on a Thesz press off the apron, crashing through a chair seat. Orton takes a headscissors that sends him into a chair in the corner, but rebounds with a nice snap powerslam to catch Rey. Graves starts talking about Randy Orton with a bunch of facts that make him sound like a sociopath date rapist, like "Orton is so good at luring people into a false sense of security" or "It's eerie how calm Orton remains while inflicting violence". So that needs to be workshopped a bit. Orton is always fun with Rey, knows how much of a bully to be with Rey's body, little actions like Rey climbing to the top and Orton just yanking his ankle with a snap of the wrist. The finish takes a little long to set up, with Orton lining up several opened chairs, but the finish itself was unique and cool: Orton tries to hit the RKO on the chairs, Rey stops it with a kick and hits a weird leg drag headscissors to send Orton face first into a chair, then hits a victory roll to a seated Orton. This was pretty easily the best match of the show so far,

Nia Jax vs. Ronda Rousey

ER: This was the match I was most excited about on paper, both have consistently delivered on the big stage this year. And I thought this was good but not as good as their best stuff. Ronda gets more confident literally every match at this point, but here I thought she maybe tried too much new stuff. Practically every weird bit of offense she pulls out winds up looking great, so I get the temptation to keep breaking out new stuff. This maybe felt a bit too much like new move exhibition in spots, even if her stuff is always cool. Nia is really big and wears it well, but I love how Ronda bounces off of her and how Nia tumbles. Ronda starts with peppered in strikes which is a way she's never really started a match, and you knew it was a matter of time before Nia caught her. When she eventually does with a big sit out powerbomb it's a cool moment, great looking bomb. Ronda has some cool reversals, a rana out of another powerbomb attempt, and I liked her fun super hang time superman punch. Nia breaks outs some stuff I love, her elbowdrop might be the best on the roster right now and is somehow weirdly the most Stan Hansen elbow on the roster; plus, she always hits and misses her legdrops with authority, and her miss was a good one. Ronda always has at least one nutty bump in a match it seems, and here there's an awesome moment where Nia smashes her arm into the ringpost (even though that didn't really seem to go anywhere). We get some awesome monkey bars spots as Ronda slips out of a cool vertical suplex into a standing rear naked and climbs all over Nia's body, and Ronda hits one of the finest crossbodies to the floor, Nia taking it with an awesome catch. The finish stretch was good though not quite as exciting as past big Ronda matches, not as dynamic of a build, but some great Ronda trash talking as she kisses Nia's fist before locking on the armbar. I really wouldn't mind if these two had more matches.

AJ Styles vs. Daniel Bryan

ER: These guys are both clearly great wrestlers, but I kinda want to see Bryan against someone else at this point. This is the 4th AJ/Bryan singles match we've gotten since Bryan came back, and they've all been fun but I'm a fan of new match ups. I was much more excited for the Mustafa Ali match this past week. I have no doubt this will be good, it's just a good thing that I've seen a lot. They've fought in WWE this year almost as much as they fought in 5 years together working the same indies. Match is kind of weird as it's slow and worked deliberately (which I dig) but the announcers keep talking about how "emotionally" each man is presenting himself. "Look at the emotion Styles is showing" as Styles is throwing a chop, "Bryan showing a lot of emotion here" as Bryan throws a kick to the liver. An announcer I don't know paints Bryan as questionable because "he never wants to have a fun time". I don't understand any of these motivations. But the boys are taking their time and it starts to pay off, Bryan working this slow mocking style with ramped up stiffness makes for some damn good Bryan. Bryan is practically acting like Naoya Ogawa as he runs into the corner to hit multiple hard dropkicks, Styles knocks Bryan silly with a lariat, Bryan hits the nastiest spot of the show when he grabs Styles in a cravate and hits a bunch of sharp knees to the side of the head before throwing him by the neck. Bryan is throwing his kicks harder than normal and working cool slapping body shots, like Bryan is just trying to work a 90s Japan shoot fight gimmick. They do a couple things down the stretch I don't like, the head kick countered with a head kick feels way too indy epic. But they do a bunch of cool stuff around Styles wrenching Bryan's ankle, hitting a fast and violent dragon screw, wrapping it around the ringpost, working a super visually effective half crab and the great calf crusher, all of that stuff was awesome. On the floor we get some cool gymnastics with Styles leaping the barricade into the timekeeper's station and blasts Bryan with a hard elbow when he comes rushing in. Finish even feels like a tribute to Bryan working PWG, getting the win with a small package battle. Needed him getting dizzy doing an airplane spin and dizzily dropkicking the turnbuckle. This was a really hard hitting match, paced in a cool deliberate style that gave it a cool fight feel. We've gotten three really good ones right in a row.

Dean Ambrose vs. Seth Rollins

ER: Oh no what's happening my WWE Network is skipping at 5x speed through this entire match oh no what is going on?

TLC Match: Asuka vs. Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch

ER: This was kind of a tale of two matches for me, sometimes switching back and forth between those two matches. It was a violent match, but also a match that took too long and looked too unnatural in endless spot set up. The former was great, the latter was tired. But it was worth sitting through the latter to get to the former. We got some great nastiness, Lynch splashed Charlotte through the announce table, except the table didn't really give so we actually got Lynch's body basically bouncing off Charlotte's ribs. And I flipped out when Charlotte hit a spear on Asuka that sent them crashing through the ringside barricade. That's a spot that was done with such conviction that it would have worked great no matter what happened to the wall. The way the wall buckled on impact looked really cool, and if it hadn't budged I think Charlotte would have compressed all her vertebrae with the speed she was charging. Charlotte also hit a big moonsault to the floor that kinda dropped Lynch and Asuka like she was doing a wild reverse DDT, and did a dumb-as-Jeff Hardy senton through Lynch on a table. Guh. While I didn't love all the work and thought the stipulation actually got in the way of them just beating ass, they worked the match like they honestly didn't like each other and that added a lot to the vibe. It needed that, and they knew it. The finish totally works and I'm happy to see Asuka back with the belt. She's taken the backseat to some super emerging women over the last year (since her big Rumble win a year ago you have Ronda debuting, Becky moving to the next level, Charlotte being a wildly resurgent heel, Bliss stepping into her heel role, Nia delivering in big matches) so I like moving her back to more spotlight with the title, while Charlotte and Lynch didn't get knocked down a peg at all. They can all continue to fight and it'll continue getting over, which is awesome. I thought this was a step below some of their other stuff together, but it was still a great way to cap a PPV.




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