WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 11/24-11/30

Smackdown 11/29

Drew Gulak vs. Mustafa Ali

ER: "A rivalry that really heated up when Drew Gulak did a PowerPoint presentation on Twitter" is something that's going to sound just as stupid to future generations as it does now, yes? This match goes maybe 3 minutes - pretty dumb on a 2 hour show with only 4 matches - but is fairly meaty for the short runtime. Gulak is back to shaved head and is sporting some cool as boots, and he aims to make the most of his ring time (and the way things have been going this might be all the ring time he gets this month). Gulak looked sharp in control, backed Ali with hard chops, worked a nice single leg crab, and hit a wicked one arm powerbomb when Ali jumped to the middle buckle (he really flung him too, really great). Gulak made Ali's kicks look like a million bucks, and the match had an actual good use of a superkick that made for a plausible nearfall even just 2 minutes in. Sub-3 minutes is almost always going to be unfulfilling, but Gulak made the most of his time.

205 Live 11/29

Jack Gallagher vs. Angel Garza

ER: 14 minutes of Gallagher on my TV on a Saturday morning is just not something I'm going to complain about, but I am really not a fan of the way Garza transitioned to comeback throughout the match. The bones of a killer match were there, with Garza working over Gallagher's stomach and Gallagher being the one to try to keep him at bay with cool strikes. You don't see a lot of stomach work, but Garza was clearly targetting Jack's stomach, setting up a big dropkick to the gut in the corner, dropkicking him again in the stomach on a missed Gallagher crossbody, and in maybe the coolest moment of the match breaking out a slingshot gutbuster. Gallagher hasn't been done many favors with the way he's been portrayed. He's the guy they use as a heel or face depending on what's convenient that week, and throwing a pasty British guy into the ring for almost 15 minutes in Alabama is the kind of thing that has been leading crowds to root for matches to end. Gallagher is diligent and eventually wins them over, but it is not easy. And I think part of that is because almost all of Garza's comebacks are structured to come immediately after taking a big move from Gallagher. This was the worst use of the Gallagher standing thrust headbutt (he has a nice one early in the match where he rains it down on Garza while trapping him in the corner), and he lays that headbutt in, causing Garza to bounce off the ropes and hit a superkick. Obviously that is one of the worst trends in go go go wrestling, where a guy can take a move that has always been used for a nearfall, but this time the momentum from getting headbutted really hard makes him bounce off ropes and throw a kick. Maybe there's a way to make a spot like that work. I'm sure Finlay could find a way to make it work. But I don't think I've seen it work. Gallagher does win the people over when he kicks Garza in the face on a corner dropkick and begins landing stiff windmill punches. The windmill punches were hitting hard enough and landing quick enough and overwhelming Garza enough that the folks in Birmingham couldn't help but make a little noise. But Gallagher got crippled by another lazy transition: Late in the match Gallagher leaps onto Garza and tries dragging him down with a guillotine choke, shifting weight, gradually seeming like it could work...but Garza just gets choked for awhile and then hits the wing clipper. Oh. The layout only seemed to work to the match's detriment, and the worst version of a 50-50 match is where one guy responds to a big move immediately with a big move. This had the chance to eclipse their better, shorter match from a couple weeks ago, but alas.

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New Footage Friday: Finlay, Brookside, Dundee, Smothers, Nishimura, Inoki

Antonio Inoki vs. Tracey Smothers NJPW 4/17/89

PAS: Fun if bizarrely laid out match. Smothers (in full Southern Boys regalia, which in hindsight, jeez) jumps Inoki at the bell and takes 5 minutes of this 6 minute match, including powering up a seemingly sandbagging Inoki to put him in the tree of woe. Inoki fires back with some punches and a nasty koppo kick for the pin. One of those things that is crazy that it exists, and who wouldn't want to see the Wild Eyed Southern Boy and Inoki greco grapple?

ER: Ever since Matt sent me lists of what was on this motherload of Japan handhelds, Smothers vs. Inoki was one of the main matches that jumped out. The potential classics never seem to be the ones jumping out at me, it's always the potential weird, or the unique pairings. And the pairings don't come more unique than this. This was basically the final month stretch of Inoki as an active worker, and for some reason he spent a bunch of it wrestling singles matches against guys like PN News, Ron Starr, Maxx Payne, and this match against Smothers. I'm unsure why Inoki decided to work singles against a bunch of guys who were lower card gaijin, but I like it. I love it. And Smothers - confederate flag trunks and all - really gets to run the match. He slams Inoki in the corner with an Oklahoma Stampede, works go behinds, throws kicks at Inoki in the corner - seemingly trying to mime the exact way Inoki throws kicks, which looks odd when worn by Smothers - and tries to do the Backlund lift out of an Inoki armbar (he tries to lift Inoki up a few times, both of them looking extremely painful, while Inoki just stays planted on the mat holding that armbar), and really this is almost entirely a Smothers show. Until, I guess, Inoki decides that the festivities are over, as he punches Smothers (with Smothers taking this big exaggerated bump onto his shoulders, flipping over to his stomach) and then hits a cool rolling kappo kick. I wish we had every late career Inoki vs. gaijin match, but I also have no idea how we have this one.

MD: As we all know, Inoki faced off against challengers from all around the world to gain his status as the greatest martial arts warrior alive. This is an odd and short interlude in that storied career, where he faces off against the elusive and dangerous Wild-eyed Southern Boy for about five minutes. I'm a big fan of 92 heel Smothers, and this feels a little like a prelude to that, as he really takes it to Inoki without hesitation or remorse or really common sense. There are two moments in this where he just tries to power him up as if he was Bob Backlund or something, right at the beginning when Inoki didn't want to go up for a slam, and then later on when he tried to deadlift his way out of a grounded armbar. Anyway, there's a few minutes of him kicking, slamming, and trying to contain Inoki with chinlocks before he gets fed up and beats the snot out of Smothers, before knocking him out with a rolling kick. A fun four minutes that could have been a legitimately good ten, maybe. Maybe.


Superstar Bill Dundee vs. "Pretty Terrific" Bobby Blade MWA 12/7/96

PAS: All shtick main event, which of course is great, because Dundee maybe the greatest shtick worker ever. Blade is a perfectly fun dance partner (and the guy we have to thank for the footage), but Dundee could (and I am sure did) work this match with a local car dealer. Lots of fun punches, a great spot where Dundee makes Blade run the ropes for a long time, and a nifty fight out of a chinlock. Great chance to check out touring indy Dundee formula.

ER: This is money before anything even happens. Just soaking up the 1996 Kentucky fairgrounds vibes of this whole show and realizing it's the kind of special pro wrestling that can't exist again. People are too self aware in a post internet age, but this is the real mainlined winter weather fairgrounds indy wrestling. There are big puffy NFL jackets, Dundee comes out to Frankie saying Relax, "Pretty Terrific" Bobby Blade is one of the most delicious and delightful names in wrestling history, Blade is wearing those specific-to-Tennessee/Kentucky-wrestlers zazzy pattern tights w/ matching top w/ fringe sleeves (like the hand me down version of Jamie Dundee's weird similar outfits, only his had shoulder accessories), and then....well, then Bobby Blade hands his ring gear and lightheavy title to a man clad in head to toe denim, cigarette poking out of the side of his mouth, long feathered hair inspiring jealousy I didn't know I had contained in me, and a full desire to spend the entirety of this match standing directly in front of the tripod cam, one knee slightly bent, throwing out that skinny denim butt vibe until a man in a button up American flag shirt comes out and tells him to fucking kneel or something. And then the man in denim turns and looks over his shoulder, directly into the camera and also your soul. The match itself is obviously less important than the aesthetics of the pro wrestling - I am convinced anybody who was going to enjoy this will have already known they were going to enjoy it before any pro wrestling exchanges had taken place - but also important because it's Bill Dundee. And they work a shtick heavy match, Blade's manager getting involved and getting chased off, Dundee getting a stick and chasing him to smack him, and it ends with Dundee throwing some nice punches, then hopping effortlessly up to the middle buckle to win with a crossbody. The second the 3 is counted three men - one wearing overalls - immediately stand wordlessly to their feet and proceed to quickly beat traffic to the exit as a man over the PA lets the fans know that they should feel more than welcome to talk to wrestlers from this show, if they happen to see any of them standing around; and if you bring 5 people to their next show a month away, well then you get in for free. Should I be reviewing every single full show that Bobby Blade puts up? I think I should.

Fit Finlay/Robbie Brookside vs. Osamu Nishimura/Michal Kovac CWA 8/10/97

PAS: This was really freaking great. This was Finlay mid WCW run kicking huge pallets of ass. Brookside was right there with him showing a nasty streak I hadn't seen from him before. This was worked like a standard southern tag, with the streetfight parts only coming in at the end. Finlay and Brookside really work over Kovac, who has a nifty comeback to finally get the tag. Lots of great little Finlay moments in this match, he adds an extra shove to a Brookside superplex, and he cuts off a Nishimura run by palm striking him directly in the nose. Loved the finish with Finlay applying a choke using the ring ropes, which Nishimura has tap out to. Really clever use of the streetfight stipulation, total joy to watch, and I need to see all mid 90s CWA Finlay.

MD: This was a street fight tag, which basically meant that the heels could swarm and repeatedly cut off babyface hope spots. It ended up as bit of a tecnico/rudo situation where Finlay and Brookside were able to take full advantage while Nishimura and Kovac struggled to stay in it. The good news is that Finlay and Brookside were absolutely able to fill the time with compelling and brutal stuff. Brookside, in this incarnation was a 98 Chris Jericho with slightly better offense: over the top theatrics, loud and annoying. Honesty, with Finlay coming into WCW just about when Jericho kicked the heel turn into high gear, I wonder why he didn't suggest Brookside to be part of his act.

They had a bunch of simple but mean tandem stuff, and while they weren't always quite on the same page, they got there quickly enough. Finlay's so good that he could be a half step behind on something and still catch up with twice the impact of most guys in the end. The coolest bit was probably Finlay whipping the leg around from the apron to spike Brookside's superplex, and the second best maybe Brookside running across the apron to forearm Kovac after a corner whip, but it was all good. Nishimura and Kovac didn't have to do a lot as they were mostly working from underneath, but when it was their turn, they hit everything picture perfect. I could have used just a little more revenge in the last third but this was ultimately a good chaotic match that still had form and build.

ER: Loved this. This was during that weird year and a half break between Finlay's WCW stints. It's like they brought this mulleted madman in to just bruise and break Regal's face for a couple months, then we didn't see him for 18 months. And to the shock of nobody he was just hanging out back in Germany bruising and breaking everyone else's face. Finlay and Brookside are a helluva team here. This is the stiffest work I can recall from Brookside, and their teamwork was genuinely great, with Finlay adding touches that I've never seen. Finlay has done more unique little things in a ring than maybe anybody I've ever watched, and it's a main reason he's always right towards the top of my all time favorite wrestlers. He is someone who never rests and is always thinking of new ways to tighten up all facets of pro wrestling presentation. At one point Brookside is going for a superplex on Kovac, and from the apron Finlay helps muscle Kovac over. It made so much sense, and is one of those things that felt so obvious after I saw it. I have never seen anyone else do this, and Finlay made it seem like the easiest way to lend a hand to your partner, without even throwing an illegal strike. Finlay is the man constantly making me go "why hasn't anyone else thought of this!?" His wrestling mind is brilliant. He and Brookside really take Kovac apart, and they aren't any nicer to Nishimura. Brookside clocks him right in the back of the head early, and Finlay slugs him right in the eye later. Brookside looks like the greatest in ring version of Edge here, adding a ton of personality to his stiff work, frequently rubbing the crowd's nose right into his and Finlay's dominance. I loved the small but important uses of the street fight stip, like Finlay choking Nishimura with the tag rope or the insanely brutal finish of Finlay trying to murder Nishimura by strangling him using the top rope. This was as good a Finlay performance as we've seen, and it seems like our Catch YouTube hero is just going to continue supplying us with more gold.

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Coliseum Video Thanksgiving: Rampage '92

ER: In what has become somewhat of a Thanksgiving tradition, my friend Josh is over on a brisk Thanksgiving day, the heater in the house is turned up, and Josh brought a bag of Coliseum Videos with him (as well as TWO full pies. I'm looking at YOU Pear Cardamom). We randomly grabbed one, and the choice was the EXTREMELY great looking on paper Rampage '92. We pop it into the VCR, and it turns out Rampage '92 has an Old West theme! Sean Mooney is in a old west town like he's in Mad Dog McCree and he shoots a man! Some bronco buster talks trash to Mooney and Mooney just turns around and shoots him! Twice! This tape is going to be great.

Razor Ramon vs. The Undertaker

ER: The fans are weirdly not into this one, but it's really fun and low-key awesome. The slugfest spots all look good but get no reaction, and the two seem to noticeably ramp things up to win the crowd over. Taker takes a bunch of big bumps, missing a high leap elbow, dropping hard on his tailbone for a legdrop, takes a lariat to the floor, and in the coolest moment of the match gets absolutely launched off the top when going for the rope walk. Ramon evens breaks out a chair - stealing it from a security guard! - and bashes Undertaker in the kidneys! And that wasn't a DQ I guess! Gorilla really puts over Taker eating a chairshot to the kidneys, and this is SUPER important because it actually makes Razor Ramon's abdominal stretch make sense!! Ramon goes for a chokeslam which is some nice hubris, only to get reversed, then Taker goes to chokeslam him again and Ramon does a cool escape by using the ropes. And then he just says fuck it and walks out and gets counted out. He knew when to fold 'em, and I respect that.

Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart

ER: I can't get super excited for a match between these two. They've matched up a lot. BUT this is a very fun version of their touring match. When these two weren't such total cocks to each other and were generous in the ring with each other, they really did match up nice. Bret is insanely crisp in this match, every strike, every shoulderblock, every elbow, every clothesline, they all looked amazing. Shawn doesn't bump theatrically here, he bumps HARD. There are two different ridiculously fast and hard bumps, one off a simple shoulderblock, the other off a gorgeous diving lariat to the back of his head, and the two were just like chocolate and peanut butter, perfect complementary parts. Sherri is at ringside and an absolute treasure, cutting promos constantly, looking like a wrestling character in a John Waters movie. This was basically the best era of Michaels, before too much ego took over. He was a really fun heel and made for a fun act with Sherri. And I liked his big heavy bumps, liked his strikes thrown with dickhead aggression, does cool running knees, nice backslide, just a good pro wrestler. He was a like a tighter John Tatum, easily the best iteration of him. I thought this match-up was played out when it started, but they really were satisfying opponents, and this was one of the tighter matches I've seen from them.

40 Man Battle Royal

ER: This is just beautiful. And this is an entirely DIFFERENT battle royal than the infamous Berzerker 40 man. This is worth it just for the entrances, as everyone comes out single file and at LEAST 15 people in this are total pasty nobodies. Some of the nobodies (Rick Johnson? Dublin Destroyer?) actually have decent looks and builds but went absolutely nowhere to my knowledge. There are future names like Glen Ruth, and what's cool is that we don't get exclusively jobbers getting eliminated early. In the other 40 man the opening was so great, with Kerry Von Erich just hiptossing every single jobber to the floor immediately, while Berzerker stomped them all in the head. Well in this 40 man, a lot of the jobbers stay in really long! Guys like Jerry Sags and IRS get eliminated before half of the nobodies, and I thought that was pretty awesome. There are plenty of great moments, like Knobbs trying an honest to god shoot takedown of Bret, and Bret completely stuffing it and dropping a full force knee to Knobbs' chest. I swear to you. Glen Ruth and Duane Gill make the final 10, and they pair off in a way that says "Maybe nobody will notice us if we just punch each other". The final 4 is brilliant, as it's British Bulldog, Bret Hart, and THE BEVERLY BROTHERS! Obviously they don't win, but they both get to eliminate Bret! Bulldog smokes them, icing the cake by press slamming Beau into Blake, and it rules. The format of this battle royal was so good, such a unique look with 40 guys shoved into the ring at the same time

Rick Martel vs. Tatanka

ER: The match itself is simple, the chops looked good, it was somewhat dull, but it always amazes me how into Tatanka everyone was. There was some of the power of just WWF telling this guy is someone worth rooting for, but fans also really took to Tatanka. And yet he was never given any kind of title run. Fans were way into him though, and that's cool.

The Beverly Brothers/The Genius vs. Legion of Doom/Paul Ellering

ER: This is an honest shock to me, as I had NO idea that Paul Ellering worked any taped WWF matches, and no idea The Genius was still working taped matches in 1992. I'm blown away right now. Ellering looks in great shape and is just wearing black trunks and boots, but The Genius is wearing a FULL black body suit with neon yellow GENIUS written multiple times down the leg, and a gigantic superhero G on the front of the suit. He looks like he's wearing LA Park's gear, but with GENIUS instead of bones. I have NEVER seen this version of The Genius. I can barely even focus on the match because The Genius is just standing there in a dayglo bodysuit. But what I am able to see of the match, is obviously super fun. The Beverlys and LOD both get to throw big powerslams, and Mike Enos is a tremendous stooge the entire match. You'd think that with Genius on his team, that Genius would be handling stooge duty, but no! Here's Blake Beverly getting shot into the ropes by Hawk, Blake holding onto the rope to stop his momentum before posing to the fans, and then getting leveled by Hawk. At another point Hawk is chopping Beau in the corner, and Blake charges at Hawk from the apron to break it up, Hawk chops him, and Blake just takes a huge banana peel back bump from the apron to the floor. It looked incredible. Animal is our fun hot tag, sending Beau flying with a backdrop, tossing a nice dropkick at Blake, dropping them both with a DDT, big clothesline, another powerslam, and then LOD uses the Rocket Launcher as their finish!!! Genius gets the Doomsday Device post match, but they win with the Rocket Launcher!!

Tito Santana/Virgil vs. Money Inc.

ER: Dibiase comes out wearing the all white Million Dollar Man suit and he looks downright resplendent. His all white trunks/kneepads/boots look amazing. Tito and Virgil get separate entrances and I'm not sure why that is so funny to me. And Dibiase is a real star in this one. He avoids Virgil, so Virgil has to do a blind tag cheat to get in the ring at the same time as him, and when he is finally forced in with Virgil he works real tough, nice punch combos and a big boot to Virgil's stomach, but is also generous with bumps. He and IRS are great cheaters, cutting Tito off from Virgil, and it's just a great formula. Tito is obviously going to be a great FIP, and Money Inc. are giving leverage assists to each other from the apron, constantly keeping Tito from making the tag. The crowd is hot for Virgil's eventual hot tag but it's kind of flubbed (he throws a couple of off balance lariats and gets a little crossed on the ropes) but the crowd is still into it. The match does not end great but it easily had the strongest build of any match on the tape. I don't think I've seen as much end of career Dibiase and this was a real nice showing for him.

Repo Man vs. Randy Savage

ER: This one is pretty active, even if 90% of the action seems to be axe handles. These two kind of walk around ringside and in the ring exchanging axe handles, and it's not super interesting but it's not bad either. This was World Champ Savage, and babyface Savage always gave up a ton of offense in matches. So here we get Repo controlling things with chokes and a nice flying lariat, nice side suplex, a real look at the Repo Man's offensive game. You knew Macho Man was coming back right in the final 30 seconds, but the elbow he hits is gorgeous.

The Berzerker/Papa Shango vs. The Undertaker/Ultimate Warrior

ER: I really really liked this. It was pretty much just what you would want from this match. It was a fast 8 minutes, which meant that nobody got exposed (anybody know what is considered the best Shango/Kama/Godfather match? I can't recall ever seeing a match with him and thinking "now THAT'S a keeper", but they must exist, right?), and everybody could go go go, and they did. Berzerker/Warrior was a genuinely fun match up, and Warrior busted ass in this, as did Berzerker (I guess I had assumed that would happen though). Berzerker bumped all around for Warrior as if he was Savage or Flair, and Warrior ate a big boot really nicely. I mean Warrior looked pretty bad throughout, and he looked so much smaller than Berzerker that it looked weird that he was shoving Berzerker around. But his energy was there and that's important in a match like this. Shango and Taker were more background characters but the money was in the Warrior/Berzerker showdowns. Another match where you can say with no argument that Berzerker worked harder than anybody else in the ring, really a super generous opponent, took his requisite 3 bumps to the floor. Considering all four of these guys weren't considered "workrate legends" during this time, this match was a blast.


ER: This has easily become one of my more anticipated wrestling traditions, and it helps that we've randomly chosen good tapes. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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Lucha Underground Season 4 Episode 17: The Moth and the Butterfly

TL: Oh my God, the opening cinematic with Aerostar telling Melissa he's seen the end of everything was extremely bad. Cringey bad. Like the SNL guest who can't read the cue cards off camera bad. Melissa had to have been fed every line she said. Aerostar, bless his heart, is doing what he can with this.

XO Lishus/Joey Ryan/Ivelisse vs. Paul London/The White Rabbit/El Bunny

ER: The return of Mascarita Sagrada to LU can only be a good thing, and Killer Kross finally makes a TV match, a fun late addition to the fed. This was a jump up from last week's trios match. The Rabbit Tribe is a fun stable and the mix of London/Sagrada/Kross is a twisted WAR team that totally works. Sagrada vs. XO Lishus was not a match I realized I wanted, but damn was it fun as hell as it was happening. Paul London bumps around for Ivelisse as well as any man in the fed has, a nice recovery for her after a sloppy performance last week. We got a huge London dropkick to the floor and a Sagrada stopped momentum dive to Ivelisse that somehow looked good. And they did a fun thing all match long by having Kross glower from the apron, with it practically a known conclusion that he was just going to end things the moment he stepped into the match. He did, and they finished on an awesome visual, Kross choking out Joey Ryan with a mandible claw, wearing gimmicked gloves with bloody fingers, like he was gouging into Ryan's esophagus.

TL: I'm stoked to see what Kross does here as the White Rabbit. Mascarita and Paul bring it more often than not, but Kross is here to be brooding and explosive (supposedly). The London unitard/powder white face paint combo is the right kind of weird. Ivelisse getting the hot tag here was certainly a choice. XO LIshus and Sagrada paired off somewhat nicely, and Sagrada just in general came off really well here. One of the better examples of his size not being played up as something of a detriment. I agree that the match-ending mandible claw visual was awesome, and shows how presence and intent goes a long way. The stuff surrounding this was fine, but the Kross payoff was about as good as it's gonna get. It's so weird that they bring him in now with only a few weeks to go and he goes over that strong, but my thought is they take the trios titles...and then the company folds? Sigh.

Killshot vs. Son of Havoc

ER: So I forgot what had been going on between Killshot and Son of Havoc, or if they even had anything, but Striker tells me this is a big match so I'll go with it. They did work it as if it were more important than the #1 contender's match last week, so maybe this is a big deal. They use way too much sound sweetening, but there was good stuff here. Son of Havoc hits a big tope and he's always landing too close to the Temple steps, and I could see these two stepping up and having a fun mask match. They felt like they had big match formula down in a good way here, even if I don't like some of their offense.

TL: Seeing Strickland as Isaiah Scott now in NXT allows him to show off some more personality but the offense still doesn't work with me yet. He needs to tighten things up a bit, and this match doesn't bode well for two guys who like to try stuff that come off incredibly choreographed. And while this did have hints of that, they didn't try to do as much as I thought! It at least had good intentions, and I thought for sure there was going to be a few spots that got too cute. This was fine. And now we get to see it again as an apuestas. THAT'S probably going to be when they get too cute and I yell and scream, but whatever.

TL: Moth gets some promo time and looks way more comfortable in pre-taped segments than with a live mic. Reklusa is a great wrestling name for Chelsea, too.

No DQ: Marty The Moth Martinez vs. Mariposa

ER: This was great, easily one of the best LU matches in this cursed season. I think we'll have to do an actual ranked Season 4 Top 10 matches list when we're done with this. There's a strong chance that I won't have anything from this season on our MOTY List, and there have been strong representatives from the other 3 seasons. There were many reps from season 1, several from season 2, less in season 3, but none so far 17 episodes in to season 4. This came damn close, a really fun and violent brawl with Mariposa taking a cruel beating and firing back with some inventive comebacks. We built up to a couple of very strong nearfalls, more effective than anything I can remember this season. Martinez really beats her up, and I think it actually worked better because they have been presented as having a weird relationship for their entire time in LU. They've established that we could really expect these two to treat each other however, so the intergender thing worked for it. Mariposa took a great beating and bled, got slammed into walls and even powerbombed on the floor! Her comebacks were logical and violent, at one point burying Moth in about 15 chairs, all throwing hard at him, and late in the match she punts him right in the balls as payback for his shot to the crotch at the beginning of the match. I get the Reklusa interference (and love the name too) but I was enjoying the match so much that I was hoping they'd build to something more special for a finish. But this was good, and the postmatch beating Marty gave her felt edgier than LU has felt in awhile. Fans are super hot for the Moth/Pentagon title match, and even though Pentagon is probably the guy I'm least interested in watching on this current roster, I am now foolishly excited for that match.

TL: Oh HELL YES. MORE CHEERLEADER MELISSA. Low key, she's been one of the best match for match performers in the show's history, and I'm stoked to see her get a showcase match here. The start was great, the headbutt from Mariposa, the low blow, the vicious beatdown and mask ripping in the corner by Marty, Mariposa flying into the stands and then SHE BLEEDS ON THE CHAIR SHOT. And then Martinez whips her headfirst into the table like a goddamn madman and this has my attention pretty easily from the get go. Marty then powerbombs her into the grate and then sits out on the floor with it; a sequence that looks kinda blah in other matches, but because of the carnage on the outside so far, really fits in as Marty dominating her early on. They're going for it and it's like they woke this show up a bit. And then the madness of that chair pileup spot during the Mariposa comeback, and Vampiro literally jumping for joy as Mariposa rains down two dozen or so thrown chairs on Marty. I can't get over how much this rules, to be honest. When she set up the chair, I thought she was gonna go crazy and hit the Kudo Driver through it, but the Samoan Drop was nasty as all hell, too. Amazing near falls in this match on her two attempts. Then Marty retains with Pentagon's Fear Factor to retain after Reklusa interference to rub it in. Spectacular stuff, an absolute burst of energy on a show that has long needed it, easily the best match this season. Mariposa remains one of my favorite wrestlers in the history of the show, and even though for whatever reason they didn't give her much to work with in-ring, she absolutely crushed it every time she was given an opportunity to shine. Marty is gonna die for us in the Cero Miedo match (let's be honest: he ain't topping Vampiro from the first one) and that will be fun but man, even without spoilers, it's easy to see how things are going to end up. Five more episodes to go...

COMPLETE GUIDE TO LUCHA UNDERGROUND

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Ohno vs. Bate

11. Kassius Ohno vs. Tyler Bate WWE NXT UK 10/5 (Aired 11/14/19)

ER: This was pretty fantastic, and a real masterclass performance from Ohno. This was a long match, at 25 minutes one of the longest WWE matches of the year. But Ohno is one of the best time fillers in wrestling, and his attention to small details and effective delivery in the biggest moments continues to keep him one of my all time favorites. Ohno can work the mat, he can deliver trippy sequences other people can't, he can work a big bomb throwing stretch, he can really smash a guy and really pump him up for babyface comebacks, and has no problem talking a bunch of trash. Ohno comes off as confident as anyone I've seen in a ring, someone who never even seems like he's thinking of the next spot, who often makes his match progression seem effortless and instinctive. He broke out some tricks that I could watch over and over, stuff like grabbing Bate by the arm and pressing in on Bate's inner knee with his boot to force him down, some neat standing exchanges around abdominal stretches, or when he worked a cravat with Bate held completely off the ground (with such a size difference that it made it look like Ohno was choking out a doll in his Baby Bjorn) before snapping him right down to the mat. 

He sends Bate flying and crashing after lifting out of the Tyler Driver, buries a sick knee into Bate's guts on a corner charge, and lights Bate up with kicks, elbows, punches, every single shot landing big. Ohno was such a bully and such an asskicker that it almost made it implausible that Bate could come back from it all. Ohno looked like he was aiming to win by count out when he kicked Bate's head clear out of the ring. But I like how Bate hit harder the longer the match went on, really trying to bridge that gap. We've seen so many awful stand and trade strike exchanges this year, and here's Ohno and Bate punching each other in the face, Ohno trying to fake him out by going high (Ohno had successfully faked Bate on a few moves throughout the match) and getting popped for it. Bate hits a torture rack airplane spin which looked downright freakish due to the size difference, like Superman growing into his strength and realizing he could lift his father for the first time. Not many guys can make me excited for a 25 minutes match these days, but Ohno is one of them.

PAS: I have been watching Chris Hero matches for about 20 years now, and he continues to deliver in new and interesting ways. He is probably the most formally inventive wrestler of the 2000s. He constantly tweaks his approach, not just by adding cool moves but by switching up his approach. And I love his new approach, where he tries to prove his wrestling superiority only to snap and try to knock someones head in. I loved how the size difference was used here, Ohno was able to manhandle Bate in some really cool ways, and that hanging Hero's clutch was truly disgusting. On the other side of it Bate was able to hit his power moves, but had to really convey struggle. Bate lifting Ohno into a German suplex after failing early, by using every ounce of his strength, was so much more impressive then big guys flying around the ring for little guy throws (that was always one of my few problems with Vader, he needed to sandbag a bit more). Clearly we need to go back and watch the NXT UK Ohno because he has been hiding in plain sight.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 2019 Catch-Up

ER: No 205 Live this week, no sign of our guys this week, and it feels like we've seen much less of our guys ever since Smackdown started on Fox. A sign of bad things to come. BUT there is still 2019 stuff from these guys that we haven't seen, and this gives us another chance to dig back and find potential gems.

Oney Lorcan vs. Cedric Alexander WWE 205 Live 3/12/19

ER: Great stuff from these guys, a cool slow burn tournament match that built nicely to the biggest parts but didn't race through them once they got there. The first half of this is cool, the whole thing could have been worked with no ropes, a lot of the action based around holds or strikes. Even the running attacks didn't really need the ropes, as it was just both guys using the large ring to build whatever momentum they needed. Lorcan lands chops and uppercuts, Alexander throws back chops of his own and a couple kicks, Lorcan hits a hard lariat and works a waistlock and abdominal stretch, and the whole thing is very contained but very engaging. By the time they're using the ropes it feels like the match has taken off into the next plane, and I especially liked the swinging flatliner Alexander hit. I thought both guys were really good at busying themselves while waiting for attacks, like the way Alexander stumbled to his knees while Lorcan somersaulted off the top, then ran back to nail the blockbuster. The nearfalls felt earned, a lot of things that could seemingly end things, that blockbuster and the fought for half nelson suplex, but also Alexander's cool STO on the ring apron with a quick snap Michinoku Driver back in the ring. Lorcan kept working slaps and uppercuts, and I really dug how Alexander would buckle for them, though that also made the actual finish come off a little sudden. Still, I thought they built this whole thing real nicely, one of the 15+ minute 205 matches that I think really worked with the runtime. So many of those long matches just feel too long, but this felt like they were actually working the proper back and forth for the time.

Men's Battle Royal WWE Worlds Collide 4/4 (Aired 5/1/19)

ER: This was a good battle royal that really didn't have much of Gulak, eliminated within the first third. He was a guy worth watching while he was in it, with he and Riddle going at it one of the big highlights of the this. They even cosplay Ken Shamrock/Don Frye on the ring apron, something I've not seen in a battle royal. But then Gulak was eliminated by someone. Maybe Steve Cutler? Possibly Steve Cutler. But there was other fun battle royal stuff. Brian Kendrick never even took off his leather jacket (and yet lasted much longer than I expected for a man my size who didn't bother to get fully into gear), Riddle was the obvious megastar here but was eliminated by unexpected final 4 guy Saurav Gurjar, and Dijakovic looked like a teetering oaf but got punched into extinction. But there was also some trash! After having Gurjar take out Riddle, they had Tyler Bate eliminate him by...picking him up, walking him slowly over to the ropes, and then just tossing him over. Gurjar put up no sort of struggle during any part of this. A man 100 pounds smaller than him just picked him up, walked him across the ring, and tossed him. It was one of the lamer things I have seen in a battle royal. And while I liked parts of the Strong/Bate survivor battle, it went too long, and had FAR too many moments of one guy getting tossed over the ropes, dangling, only to have the other guy just walk away. Bate is just swinging, Strong just slowly walks across the ring. It's like a Kane cage match  I was at live, where he opened the cage door, stepped down to the bottom step, grabbed a chair without stepping one more step for the win, and went back into the cage to use the chair. This was on a show that was just two battle royals, the other with all women. The women's battle royal was better, with nice showings from Bianca Belair and Jessamyn Duke and a far better knowledge of how to build to neat battle royal moments. But this wasn't bad.

Jack Gallagher vs. Humberto Carrillo vs. James Drake vs. Mark Andrews WWE 205 Live 5/14/19

ER: This didn't have enough pairing off, and spent too much time trying to work a 3 way instead of working their natural 2 on 2 hand they had been dealt. And this whole thing was spent mostly showcasing Drake and Andrews at the expense of Gallagher and Carrillo, and that's not what I wanted to see. Gallagher was even the guy kept on the floor, who couldn't get in the ring because of a tough game of King of the Mountain. Seriously, Gallagher was the little kid who kept getting brushed aside, and he should have been running this thing. There was even a moment where he was fighting up top and then just had to sit on the top buckle leaning out of the way, so other people could fight around him. Our boy was made to look like a clown for much of this, and I didn't dig it. Carrillo was really good at making Drake's and Andrews' offense pop, Andrews ate a wicked facebuster into the apron, and all of the flying looked good. By the time Gallagher was actually allowed into the action, he broke out the umbrella senton and hit an awesome falling meteor from the top (like Mr. Fuji's great finisher only insanely off the top rope), Carrillo's twisting moonsault off the top looked great...but then Gallagher dispatched of everyone in cool ways and got to look like the ultimate chump by getting rolled up. They made some odd choices in this one, paired off funny, and really seemed to showcase people in the reverse order that they should be showcased. The action was enjoyable and quick, and that does count for a lot, but I wanted something different from this.

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Late But Not Bad: WWE Survivor Series 11/24/19 Blog

Luke Gallows/Karl Anderson vs. The Revival vs. Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler vs. Bobby Roode/Dolph Ziggler vs. Montez Ford/Angelo Dawkins vs. Curt Hawkins/Zack Ryder vs. Tyler Breeze/Fandango vs. Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. Otis/Tucker

ER: Oh man this is exactly the kind of thing I love to start a show. Gimme a big colorful 20 man battle royal with a long as hell entrance time, every single team getting a separate entrance but an abbreviated one. I'm not kidding here, I was into this from the second I heard there was a 10 team battle royal to start this PPV. I do prefer when BOTH members of a team have to be eliminated, it makes more openings for different psychology scenarios. And this was a good battle royal! I would have changed the order of several eliminations, and you bet your ass the first team eliminated would have been the team that won the damn thing. Wait, do I like this match? I would have rather seen any of these 9 teams win than Ziggler/Roode, so I can't like this match too much. But the work within the match was above average for battle royals. There were plenty of quick glimpses of nice battle royal close quarters striking; Gallows would punch Otis in the head, grateful to be here Curt Hawkins would throw a couple decent punches, people busied themselves well. We did get too much awful Ziggler 1996 HBK cosplay. Too much. How the hell is he allowed to do such hammy tribute? But guys really threw themselves into their eliminations, I was crushed when Otis had his Caterpillar interrupted before the elbowdrop, Aichner should have absolutely slaughtered  Ziggler while he was dangling over the top rope for the zillionth time. Worst possible team won, match was still fun.

Kalisto vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Lio Rush

ER: This was plenty fun, some nice go go go, kept the spotlight shifting to each of the three guys without ever feeling like an exhibition or outright showcase, a weirdly natural way for these three to show their specific skills. This had the feeling of a Amazing Red trainee match, in a good way, with Rush being one of the best post-2000s Red combo of fast precise bumps and great inventive kicks. Tozawa is always a great cog in these cruiser three ways, even when it feels like he's nowhere close to the focus. He's clearly good at helping direct these things, he winds up in good ones too often for that to be false. Kalisto gets all Fenix on us in cool ways, and I dug the Salida del Sol attempts and successes. We get Tozawa's big senton and one of the better sliding kicks in the company, Rush throws the nicest kicks of the match and his frog splash looked tremendous, just a fun match that left the party at just the right time.

Big E/Kofi Kingston vs. Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish vs. Viking Raiders

ER: So far it feels like everything has been given a lot of time, guys getting time to try some new things and stretch out in some ways. This match felt longer than it needed to be, yet came with an absolute superstar performance from Ivar, a guy who has been improving every year for the past few years. This was one of my favorite performances of his, a total wrecking ball, looking bigger than I think I've ever seen him but still flattening with crossbodies, flipping over that top rope like a he was prime Berzerker, working this super fast lengthy hot tag where he just nailed every single mark. Big E takes a big bump on his missed spear to the floor, throws some big belly to bellies, then takes an even bigger bump when he hits his spear to the floor. Viking Raiders are so cool, really a team that was always fun and just keeps finding ways to improve, keeps tinkering with and tightening up offense, evolving. How did they never do a Vikings vs. Harper/Rowan match? What a colossal fuck up. But this was all fun.

Sasha Banks/Lacey Evans/Nikki Cross/Dana Brooke/Carmella vs. Asuka/Kairi Sane/Sarah Logan/Charlotte/Natalya vs. Bianca Belair/Rhea Ripley/Io Shirai/Toni Storm/Candice LeRae

ER: This really did feel closer to some of the overstuffed Survivor Series tags from 30 years ago, though it was also rife with some bizarre character contradictions (Charlotte is just never going to be the likable one in any situation, it does not work), Lacey Evans shunted WAY too far into the background and coming off like nothing (unfair for how far she's come over this year), I have no idea why Candice and Shirai's big plan was just to let their team almost get beat but then run out, and we got a weird tentative performance from Ripley literally one night after she was this Braveheart leader against the odds in War Games. Made no sense. Asuka is still popular than any woman in this match, Kairi Sane came off like the cool smallest/craziest member of a team, Belair should have been made the sole survivor of this and then shot to the top, but her star will be undeniable soon. Her 450 is so rock solid and she knew how to work team bragging better than most here. Carmella deserves a lot of credit for her genuinely good Survivor Series throwback performance, bringing levity but fine execution to all her segments. Dana Brooke also made the most of her actual airtime, thought she took some risks she normally doesn't. I didn't agree with some of the eliminations (Natalya should not be getting the better of her feud with Evans), and it felt like their attempt to keep at least 8 of them even stevens, wish they would have let someone come off more dominant while being confident.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Roderick Strong vs. AJ Styles

ER: This one had moments but was a little long in the tooth. I mentioned earlier how it felt like some people were allowed to stretch out on this show, but I could use a little editing at this point. This one had peaks and valleys, but did come into the peaks nicely. It's hard for me not to like Strong getting this kind of showcase; the guy might not be a trendy wrestler to like, but he's had a real phenomenal decade while still feeling underappreciated. Styles was really good at running into offense face first, and it was either all AJ or Nakamura was also throwing some of his nicest kicks in recent memory. Roddy had some big cool version of backbreakers, Nakamura is basically Japanese Randy Orton as it's annoying how good they can be sometimes while noticeably holding back on things. Styles has a brighter performance than he's been turning in lately, and this flows relatively smoothly for a 3 way. And I must say I LOVE Strong going over, even if it was of disputable means. A overall nice delivery.

Pete Dunne vs. Adam Cole

ER: This was a lot of what I didn't really want to see. This is a long show, too many matches, but this was the first one I wanted to skip past. Dunne is kind of a frustrating guy for me, and let's just say the Adam Cole Championship era is not something I am enjoying, or looking to more of. Both do a lot of Offense I Don't Like and this was filled with it, like a nightmare 2005 indy match that grew up watching 1999 offense and did it more dangerously in stupid evolved variations. So here we are growing up from doing a Burning Hammer onto a picnic table on an amusing Dateline special, you're a couple of dudes breaking out a flipping piledriver on the apron, in a company where the piledriver is a banned move. But we'll always have a bunch of close ups on derpy faces after unexpected kickouts. I will thank them for keeping this (barely) under 15 minutes, but I don't have to like it. This was not the match to work after War Games, and these two wouldn't realize that.

Daniel Bryan vs. The Fiend

ER: Man this PPV has run into a ditch and I am really hoping we right this rig before blowing a tire. The Fiend is just slow crawling death, the light is bad, and Bryan almost made this into something interesting. Bryan was interesting! Bryan worked with what he had, and it wasn't much, but he somehow got the fans semi-involved in something that The Fiends was actively trying to not court. Bryan's plancha looked great and was filmed great, Fiend did have a couple nice moments of catching Bryan in mid air and dispatching him, punching him out of the sky or just catching him with a slam. But Bryan was flying into any of that (and into the ringpost) like someone desperately trying to make lemons out of lemonade, and it just did not work. This may have been the worst match on the show, and that should never be the case with a Bryan match.

Roman Reigns/Braun Strowman/Chad Gable/Baron Corbin/Ali vs. Drew McIntyre/Ricochet/Randy Orton/Kevin Owens/Seth Rollins vs. Matt Riddle/Tommaso Ciampa/WALTER/Keith Lee/Damian Priest

ER: So, I did not like a lot of this. This PPV has turned into my own personal nightmare as time has slowed way down and this feels like I will never not be writing about the happenings of this show. Braun got to run ham on people on the floor leading to a big Lee collision, and the home stretch Roman/Lee battle felt like a real Clash of the Titans that SHOULD really elevate Lee. Lee got given a moment, and he made the moment. And there were good moments. But this took a long damn time and just felt hollow and incorrect for much of the runtime. Riddle got what looked like a big moment, and maybe it leads to an Orton feud that he wins, but Riddle is someone that fans are ready to get behind in the biggest way, a guy clearly primed to make the huge crossover jump from NXT. WALTER went out quick and that's really dumb. Rollins is someone I dread at this point. Gable got tricked into looking like a goof, sounding like a goof, and getting treated like a goof. Priest looked like a goof. This was just no good. This has been bad.

Rey Mysterio vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: We know this was going one way or another, and it went the way nobody wanted it to go. I was genuinely excited about this match. We knew Brock was going to destroy Rey. Obviously he was going to snap him in two. But with the added No Holds Barred stip I was expecting Rey to make WAY more inroads than he made. Rey got steamrolled. Rey looked great getting steamrolled, but this was a real flattening. You want to see Brock destruction, but Brock is one of the great selling monsters, so you get more excited to see how small old Rey is going to take a pipe to Brock's balls and maybe somebody gets shoot busted open somehow and Brock ends up beating Dominic with a chain. We get the destruction; Brock throws cruel short arm clotheslines and big Germans and Rey gets ragdolled unprofessionally over the table and into the barricade, but the comeback that comes is just a blink, and comes off more like Barry Horowitz ducking an Undertaker lariat and landing a couple punches before shitting his pants when his luck runs out. We knew this was a possibility, but the thought of the great possibilities was too intriguing.

Bayley vs. Shayna Baszler vs. Becky Lynch

ER: I cannot get over how bad Bayley's haircut is. It is so dated on arrival, the worst kind of late 2000s mom framing, and the battle of The Man vs. The Mom cannot interest me. And they did not do much in this match to interest me. This goes WAY too long - the central theme of almost this entire show - and is just total Dullsville. I thought this was fairly interminable at times, and early this year there was nobody hotter in the company than Becky Lynch and a former MMA crossover star. Now Lynch feels ice cold and Baszler has gone from being a super aggressive asskicker in her 2018 matches to just hanging so far back in the mix in 2019 that it almost feels like she's injured and working 50%. The story was Baszler dominating Bayley but I don't think it came off great other than the nice hanging choke over the apron. This needed to be a real statement and it feels like this just continues a trend of bad main event women's trios. Now the main takeaway - the fair takeaway - is that 3 WAY MATCHES ARE ALMOST ALWAYS TERRIBLE. In some ways the women have been completely upended by these dismal main event PPV 3 ways. But it's only because they won't commit to one or two women that we keep getting these main event 3 ways and multimans that just blow. This never shifted into 2nd gear, and I'm not sure it's they're fault. None of them feel like they're being put in a position to succeed.


ER: This show started promising and had some on paper goodwill, but it just wasn't happening for me. I like some of the wins given to NXT, but a lot of this felt like a flop. And it's tough to sit still during such a long show that also feels like a flop.

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Much Later Than Live NXT TakeOver: WarGames 11/23/19

I had a co-worker's 50th birthday party to attend earlier in the evening, so couldn't get a reasonable start to this one. But it's not tooooo late and I'm all partied out, so let's see if this WarGames is going to be decent.


Rhea Ripley/Candice LeRae/Tegan Nox/Dakota Kai vs. Bianca Belair/Kay Lee Ray/Io Shirai/Shayna Baszler

ER: I really was not feeling Candice in the opening minutes of this, didn't think most of her offense looked good; but I really enjoyed everything being done to Candice, and that's important. Shirai boots her with a big missile dropkick, Belair cracks her with an elbow, powerbombs her several times, throws her into the cage with LeRae sliding uncomfortably down the metal, really everything done to punish LeRae works. But once Ripley gets in, takes a long time grabbing the same exact weapons you've seen for decades now, we build to several dumb uses of them. I think your work should be able to stand alone in a match like War Games, and going to trash can shots and propping up chairs and having everybody make increasingly stupid decisions to get into a big tower in the corner, just comes off lazy. Even when the end result is LeRae getting the back of her head whipped into a pile of chairs,  it still feels like they spent way too much time on dumb bullshit. I didn't anticipate the Kai turn, but I also am not an avid TV follower and Kai has never done much for me anyway. I do like how Kai kept running back to repeatedly attack Nox. Belair is I think the only person making strikes and weapon shots mean something. There has been a comical amount of bad hockey fight spots in the match, and here's Belair finding three different cool ways to make a trashcan look dangerous. Belair is really the mega star of this match, and it's kind of crazy how much of a non-factor Shayna was after getting into the ring. Shayna is in the ring for 2 minutes and then sells on the mat for the next 10. But Belair just won't quit, she's whipping the hell out of Ripley, jumping around like she's getting swarmed by ants at a picnic when LeRae is whipping her, in with a great nearfall save, tasked with catching Shirai on an ill-advised top of cage moonsault, Belair was just EVERYTHING in this match. Mauro Ranallo was expectedly unbearable, and my least favorite Mauro moment is when he described a "top rope avalanche poison rana" by LeRae as "desperate". I will not be able to understand how doing a move that you have done before, here performing it when your opponent gave you the opening and it could lead to a win, is "desperate". Shitting your pants and smearing Kay Lee Ray with your own shit would be a desperate move. That is the move of someone with zero options left. But performing a complicated reverse rana? That seems like someone very much in control of things. Shayna stopped selling long enough to lose the match, just a bizarre misuse of her, but Belair's performance made me overall like this match despite not liking a TON of directions this mess went.

Damian Priest vs. Killian Dain vs. Pete Dunne

ER: This was a much too long 3 way that had the problems nearly every 3 way has, and could have ended earlier after a few specific spots and been better for it. I'm a Damian Priest novice and will probably opt to stay that way. Priest feels like a better version of Matt Taven, which means he is a worse version of just about anyone else. He's not good at occupying himself, forced Dunne and Dain into unlikely scenarios just to get his shit in (most egregious is Dain having to get up way too quick so he can be ready for Priest's spinny kicks), he's the guy who is always too early or too late to his marks. Dain had a real nice match, kind of got stuck in the thankless role of getting shunted aside so we can continue to watch Dunne/Priest have zero chemistry together, or have his very good offense shrugged off early so we can get to more stupidly chained 3 way moments. But Dain had cool stuff, leveled Priest with a dive, did a bombs away on Priest while hitting a Michinoku Driver on Dunne, and was the guy who was actually bringing something a little rough edged to the dance fighting of Priest and Dunne. The finish I thought was pretty dumb, with Dunne getting Dain in a backpack choke, leading Dain to leap onto Priest while wearing Dunne...but then Dunne just shoves Dain away and gets the pin. This match was filled with moments of "Wait why is that guy selling so long...wait why is that guy selling nothing at all?" (much like that War Games we just sat through) but damn did that finish come off dumb as hell to me.

Matt Riddle vs. Finn Balor

ER: I dug a bunch of this, while this also made this the third ending of the night that I just really did not like at all. I haven't read what anyone else has said about this show, but I cannot fathom logging on tomorrow to find out the rest of the internet thought this was a night of the sickest finishes. These matches finishes have been fucking terrible to me. I liked too much of this to shit talk too much, as these two were super complementary wrestlers breaking out some wild stuff in their first ever match of any kind opposite each other. I really dug all the submission stuff, and liked how Balor was actually lacing in some nasty stuff to rub Riddle's face into it. That baseball slide dropkick was just plain mean, and we even got a very special All Japan Comm Tape slo mo shot of Riddle's mouth going all rubber face mask after eating that boot. Now, it left me a little cross when Balor sent that boot straight into Riddle's teeth, but then bumped noticeably early the first time Riddle went for a big kick. I mean you gotta give and get, and luckily Riddle made him pay with some nice throws (his early Karelin lifts will always look cool), and I like how he just showed Balor how shit his German was by hopping up, hitting that V trigger, then dumping him with his own German. Riddle catching a Pele kick was probably my favorite part of the match, as it turned into an actually good ankle lock sequence, something I could have actually bought as the finish - and would have loved for it to be the actual finish. Riddle caught that Pele kick perfectly, twisted that ankle, sent an axe kick down into Balor's kidneys, grabbed the other ankle when Balor gave it to him, and I just really wanted that to end things. Balor was actively good at selling that ankle, and I even got into all the performative shit like Balor coming up lame while getting thrown into the ropes, because Balor was actually doing it really well! Now, obviously, that ankle selling went WAY out the window when it came time for Balor to do a double stomp of the top, and...I can't speak for everyone here, but I, if I was limping badly on an ankle, unable to even run, able to put no weight on it....and then I was given the opportunity to jump as high into the air as I could, and stick a landing right on my Kerri Strug'd ankle...I probably wouldn't take it. But Balor cannot WAIT to jump as hard as he can right onto that ankle, a man literally incapable of coming up with ANY other offense to do to Riddle, a man so set in his ways that he is obviously going to just jump into the air and land upright. I don't think Balor needed to win this match, and I didn't like that he did, and I didn't like the stupid double stomp because man what the fuck.

Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish/Adam Cole vs. Keith Lee/Donovan Dijakovic/Tommaso Ciampa/Kevin Owens

ER: This came off like a big, bloated, overly dangerous indy War Games, and I mean that in a good way. I like the regional indy flair it had: An oafish giant, an anti-hero team captain wearing weird facepaint, a big man taking stiff shots to the side of his cinderblock dome, guys going through tables at awkward angles, and just the way the big moments kept inching up bigger and bigger, bumps getting dumber and harder. Some of the prop set up was too focused and mapped, but at times it added to the cheap charm of them being big stage backyarders pushing their limit. I really loved the first 5 minutes, Ciampa vs. Strong. I thought the match did get weaker once we got the tables integrated, but the first 5 minutes were those two really laying in stiff strikes and constantly pushing pace. Ciampa hits a wicked kneelift after tying Strong up in the corner, and it was the start of a really great match long performance for Ciampa. Keith Lee is a super fun wrecking ball, takes a few big ass bumps, and deals with multiple moments of Undisputed teeing off on the side of his head. Lee is a great Hulk to sit there and be slowed by hard shots to the ear. Owens got a good reaction and seemed to feed off it, turning in a real spirited performance with dangerous bumps, including my actual favorite use ever of Adam Cole's bunny hop flipping piledriver. I really loved the struggle the two of them went through, fighting on the metal plate joining the two rings, like they were fighting on a stadium's catwalk in a Bond movie or something, and they way they fought over it I had no clue who was going to be dumped on their head. It went long, but it felt like it ramped nicely, felt closer to real epic than faux epic.


ER: I really didn't like the finishes of the first three matches, but the PPV ended on a decent note for me because I liked each subsequent match more than the last. I was majorly disappointed in the women's War Games - fantastic Bianca performance aside - and the three way felt clunky during all the Priest/Dunne moments. Riddle/Balor was very fun for much of the duration, and the main event delivered better than I was hoping. So it kept getting more enjoyable as it went on, which will make it seem better than it was in hindsight. But it was still one of the weaker TakeOvers I've watched.

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New Footage Friday: Survivor Series Showdown 1992

ER: I have a feeling Phil might sit this one out, but these kind of drops are the kind of thing I adore. Obviously there should have been a Berzerker match on here somewhere (seriously why was he booked so strongly but rarely involved in PPVs or PPV build?), but this is an era that will always score major nostalgia points with me.


Big Boss Man vs. Nailz

MD: This was actually pretty good. Bossman had complete presence by this point. It's not hard to make the argument that he has a better WWF portfolio of matches than WWF Dibiase, but you watch this and wonder if he wasn't a better "ring general" too. They'd been working since July and it showed. Very smooth all around. The long goozle in the middle was a bit much but Bossman's comebacks were good and the finish, while cheap, more or less worked. Honestly, Nailz moved around a lot better than I remembered him.

ER: This is exciting because it's the first time we've ever written about Nailz on Segunda Caida. We wrote about him a lot on our proto-SC blog "Nailz in the Coffin" but not on here. This also feels like the best time - maybe the only time - to mention that a kid I went to school with thought Nailz was also Dauber on the TV show Coach. And this match rules because a ton of it is based around punches to the face. Nailz gets written about as a big lug, but he bumped around perfectly for Bossman, threw heavy punches back, and was right where he needed to be for everything. Bossman really came off like a force here, moving so quick, throwing the best right hands to punch Nailz into position (seriously there were at least two moments where he just threw right hands to move Nailz to where he needed him. Bossman takes a nice bump into the ring steps, sets up a fun slam dunk hot shot on Nailz, misses a big splash, gets a nice nearfall off a spinebuster slam, actually press slams Nailz off him on a kickout like Nailz was some cruiser, but you came for those big right hands and you left satisfied.

Jimmy Garvin interview:

MD: This is mildly historic, one of those things that always stood out when looking through the results, an oddball "did you know?" It was brutal. Garvin could work the crowd, but Gene kept wanting him to work the camera. He could get heat, but his means of doing so was taunting Gene's affinity for females. Add in the fact that he kept trying to get the last word in a way that killed the flow of things and that he refused to go into detail on any of his heel-specific predictions and it's no wonder (though likely a shame) that this didn't become an actual gig. The alternate reality where Garvin is an office guy twenty years later instead of Hayes is strange and confounding.

ER: I think Garvin got into the swing of the interview style pretty quickly. Early on he was definitely cutting Gene off in the wrong spots and not hitting his marks, but a couple minutes in he was picking up on camera changes and improvising his amusing support for every heel. I thought it was funny when he tossed out "Now I'm not a guy who respects many people, but..." and then of course talked up all the heels. I thought Garvin was getting smoother the longer he went, and this felt more successful than any of the sleek goofs they throw on TV today. I assume what did him in was throwing in two separate jokes about Gene hooking up with jailbait.

Bret Hart vs. The Mountie

MD: So, last month, we saw that 30 second Ron Garvin match that was absolute perfection. This isn't quite as good, but it's sure close. As I understand it, Rougeau walked out of the company after this match (in part because of it?). If he did, you'd never know it from watching. He was a consummate pro, completely into the moment and working with what they'd given him. Jimmy Hart's out with him and he does a perfect rendition of his chorus. Then, when Bret comes out, he points at him as the match is starting and says "This is going to be your shortest match in the history of the WWF because I'm the Mountie...", tries for a cheapshot a moment later, gets blocked and eats an immediate Bret German with a bridge for the three. After the match he complains about the bell not ringing yet. Perfect farewell. What a pro. This was absolutely nothing but it was probably the most special thing the fans saw that night.

ER: Big fan of every second of this. I'm also curious about the reasons behind Jacques walking out, since he was back the next year anyway with Pierre. How many guys walked out of WWF and then just came back 6 months later with a push? But we get a great Mountie sing-a-long, Rougeau hitting all the notes and really hamming up his greatest of all time theme song, tries to cheapshot Hart and gets immediately caught, eats a perfect German suplex for the pin, all of it so good. Rougeau is a guy I would have loved to see in an extended John Tatum role.

Virgil vs. Bam Bam Bigelow

MD: This was Bam Bam's first match back and he got a nice enough welcome. It was what I was looking forward to the most from the listings, and it came off as a little disappointing accordingly. It wasn't due to Virgil, who was doing next to nothing at this point, one year removed from his big Million Dollar Belt push, and primarily just killing jobbers on Superstars and Challenge. Go back and watch some of those from this era. That meant I wasn't surprised at all when he kept laying shots into Bam Bam during the arm control that was the brunt of the match. Unfortunately, the second Bam Bam took over, there was a weird ref touch and an immediate DQ, because if this thing was an actual match, it could have been pretty good. I did like Bam Bam on the way out complaining that "it was in the heat of the moment" in his over the top Jersey accent.

ER: This really was shaping up to being a cool match before the DQ which nobody could have even seen happen. Most people probably thought it was the quickest count out ever, just a confusing and messy way to end a match. Up and until the sudden and disappointing finish we had the start of something special. Virgil was really relentless and had to of bruised up Bam Bam's shoulder the way he was striking it. Virgil would wrap Bigelow's arm around the ropes, swing hard at it, get pinballed away, and come back gunning for that arm. The shots were tough and both guys were working kind of off rhythm so you saw them swinging at the same time, not really a style in WWF at the time. Virgil took a huge flapjack and Bigelow threw a dropkick right into his gut (intentionally, it wasn't just Bigelow not getting up for it), but that DQ was a bummer.

Razor Ramon vs. Randy Savage

MD: This is probably the best match I've seen between the two and the sort of thing that could have made a WWF 1992 permanent tape back in the day. The brunt of this was Ramon working over the leg, after earning it, with Macho selling huge, even in his comebacks, and Ramon utilizing some great, targeted cutoffs. The finish was novel as Ramon rolls out to avoid the elbow only for Savage, bad leg and all, to leap off the top rope after him on the floor. We miss that due to the stationary nature of the camera, but it made for a believable finish where Ramon could beat the count but Savage couldn't. The post-match assault was maybe unnecessary but they were putting heat on Ramon before Survivor Series.

ER: I really dug this too, and am only annoyed that our camera operator was asleep at the wheel, making us miss Savage's (presumed) axe handle to the floor and their earlier floor brawling. He moved the camera around the catch all of the Bossman/Nailz floor fighting, but was dozing for much of this. This was a really cool version of the "Savage gets no offense until the last move" formula Savage match, as it actually has substance to lead to Savage's one move. That's usually just about my least favorite formula out of the established big star formulas, as Savage would take a 5 minute beating and then basically get a bodyslam and big elbow to win. Here Ramon punches him around the ring and starts working that leg, and let me tell you that Razor had one of the absolute BEST, SMOOTHEST, and downright vicious leg attacks: He hits a drop toehold and all in one motion rolls through it, locks calves with Savage, and snaps it off. I don't know if I've ever seen that sequence pulled off smoother, even by someone like Eddie. Savage really sells that legwork, limping around like a lady with a broken high heel, Razor sweeping his leg in the ring, Savage chasing him on one leg around the ring, all of it great. I wish the camera had panned back a couple of times, but other than that this was house show style gold.

Bret Hart vs. Papa Shango

MD: This was during that first month of Bret's run where they put him over a bunch of guys (Kamala, Virgil, etc.). This was not the Charles Wright you remember. He started the match with a leap over the top rope to the apron and a sneak attack on Hart as he was giving the glasses away and he didn't look back. Yeah, there was the shoulder nerve hold, but he was eating back body drops and the big transition spot was him missing an elbow drop off the top. I don't ever remember seeing him so mobile. Bret came off like a champ (though maybe an IC champ?), constantly fighting back and ultimately taking it clean with a submission. I get why they'd think that someone as outlandish and monstrous as Shango submitting would be a big deal to get Bret over, but it just felt weird and out of place. Unbelievable. He just got his hat back on and did his funny walk to the back afterwards as Bret celebrated.

ER: This was no different than any Bret Hart Coliseum Video matches from this era, which means it was a match that was totally up my alley. I really loved that Kamala match that Matt mentioned, and this one is probably even better. Shango leaps off the apron at Bret to start, boxing his ears while Bret was just trying to give his glasses to a(nother) kid, and I certainly can't recall a Shango match where he leapt off the apron at someone to start a match. And we get a few smart exchanges near the ropes, really well laid out stuff: I loved Hart hitting a big running crossbody for a pin, Shango presses Bret through the ropes to the floor on the kickout, but Hart rolls right back in to hit an atomic drop, giving Shango the perfect amount of time to to a full 360 while selling his balls while Bret is sprinting off the opposite ropes to clothesline Shango to the floor. That's a great sequence and Hart barreling into Shango with that clothesline felt like a huge moment. I dug how they integrated Hart running chest first into the buckles, Hart holding his chest throughout the rest of the match, and Shango doing simple things like throwing stomps right to the chest and dropping elbows. Another layer that made that so smart is it focused Shango's attack on Hart's chest, which lead him to go for the risk of a 2nd rope elbow that he missed, leading to Hart's big comeback. That simple kind of linear chapter 1 to 2 to 3 stuff seems like it should be easy, but it must not be because guys get lost within whatever story they're trying to tell all the time. But here's Hart setting up the chest injury, here's Shango taking the opportunity and focusing wholly on the chest, and here's that chest injury somehow working to Bret's advantage. I dug how they integrated all the turnbuckles into the action, playing to every side of the arena: Bret ran chest first into the upper left, Shango ran him into the lower left, Shango missed his big elbow off the lower right, Bret came off the upper right; it's a cool performance technic and it's a professional thing that Bret doesn't get enough credit for. Bret's attack was nice, and the backdrop was cool in that he just ducked his shoulder right into Shango's waist, sending him more over as a purposeful hockey trip than a showboat high backdrop.

And, I'm glad Matt also noticed the absolutely wonderful post match visual of Papa Shango just...gathering himself. Like a vaudeville team packing up their trunk, we get the gift of seeing Papa Shango collect his garments, in a too real agony of defeat moment. "Big chunky necklace goes on first, gotta put that on before my hat, make sure to grab my voodoo stick, get my strand of skulls..." It's one of the hazards of coming out with seven different accessories and seemingly no ring boy to run all your shit to the back. So here's a vanquished voodoo priest carrying his gimmick away, stopping once to point and shake his fist at Bret, then just walking away. It was a tremendous humanizing look at performers, your favorite guitarist putting his pedals away after the lights have come up.

Nailz vs. Ultimate Warrior

MD: This was disappointing in how short it was. I was expecting something all time bad and we got a blip. Nailz goozled. Warrior spasmed. The transition was a few kicks out of the corner and Warrior hit his clotheslines and the shoulder/splash. You get the feeling that they could have had something memorably terrible and that they couldn't have anything that was at all good, but this wasn't the former; it was only barely the latter. I do foresee a time in a year or two when WWF has exhausted a lot of the Georgia/AWA footage and most of what they have left for Gems are these taping dark matches. It's nice to have one of these now and again but I wouldn't want it every week.

ER: Yeah this was basically the Warrior/HHH Mania match, except there we at least got a press slam spot. This surely gave the fans at the taping something they wanted to see, which was Warrior running out to his music, shaking things, and eventually doing rope running into a couple of moves. I was excited to see what they could do in a 5 minute match - even moreso after seeing what Bossman did with 5 minutes of Nailz not one hour earlier - but this was a quick crowd pleasing Warrior match. Oh well.

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Matches from CHIKARA Aniversario: Scotch Mist 5/26/19

The Crucible (EM Demorest/Matt Makowski/Tunku Amir) vs. The Colony (Fire Ant/Green Ant/Thief Ant)

ER: I hadn't heard of Makowski until that Bloodsport show a couple months ago, where he had one of my favorite matches of the year opposite Rory Gulak. So, obviously I'm going to seek out more Makowski, and here we are! This is a fairly sloppy trios match, but the sloppiness kind of worked to the match's advantage. Makowski looked cool throughout, looked great on his missed strikes (great spot where he swung for face on a kick that Fire Ant narrowly avoided) and landed well on his big strikes, and tangled Green Ant up into a cool triangle attempt. All members of The Crucible are super new, and Demorest and Amir look super new, but Makowski already looks like he's been doing this for awhile. It's kind of amazing how quickly MMA people have been able to crossover and adapt. The Crucible is a pretty cool idea, a group of guys throwing a wrench into the gears of the most established trios team in the company. I dug all the spots of Crucible catching the Colony on dives and interrupting their momentum and flow, and how it lead to cool stuff like Green Ant absolutely crushing Makowski with a double stomp off the top while Makowski had a submission locked in. Crucible interrupting the flow of dives, Colony interrupting subs, that's just smart layout. The Colony were clearly pros leading a some sequences, and that's cool, as my main takeaway was just how awesome Makowski looked regardless of experience.

Ophidian vs. Mike Quackenbush

ER: Well this was not what I was expecting. Ophidian jumps Quack to start and locks on a guillotine, then hits a flipping piledriver after sufficient choking had taken place, locks on a sub and Quack's arm hits the mat three times. Well, I'm the one who always gripes about how flipping piledrivers mean nothing, and this certainly put over the danger of a flipping piledriver. The angle was put over strongly by Quack, who did insanely great neck selling post match, looking like a guy who clearly knows the ins and outs of neck pain and neck injuries. I was obviously hoping for an actual match, but am admittedly curious where this angle leads.

43. Mask vs. Mask: Dasher Hatfield vs. Boomer Hatfield

ER: Now I'm not someone who keeps up on Chikara storylines, but that's why I have always appreciated Quackenbush's commentary skills. He presents silly information with a straight face, like Joey Styles without the smarm or digs at competition, and there aren't many commentary guys who can naturally go over storylines while calling action, explaining why certain moves should have more meaning. This is a father and son mask vs. mask match, Dasher one of the longest tenured Chikara guys, and the confusingly named youngster Boomer being an 18 year old rookie. There's a pretty significant size difference, Dasher being possibly the largest guy presently in Chikara and Boomer being practically half his size. But they made up the difference well, with Boomer relying on fast leverage moves like backslides, crucifix roll-ups, hanging off Dasher with guillotines, or just flying into Dasher body or feet first. Dasher worked this less flashy, really being a bully, coming in hard with big one knockdown chops and hard single arm lariats, and using his size advantage to toss him around like a dummy, but also doing dickhead heel stuff like faking a ball shot only to get a minor cheap advantage. Dasher hits a couple powerbombs - one a huge running Liger bomb - and maneuvers him into a cool Gory Special, and I liked how after taking some damage, Boomer started firing back with nice uppercuts. I thought they ramped nicely into the big spots, with one awesome moment really ramping things up: Boomer had reversed lariats into a hanging guillotine a couple times already (and Dasher was really great at selling the guillotine, making it seem better than it looked, really yanking on Boomer's arm to try to free himself), caught him in another, and seeing no better way out Dasher rushed the ropes and took both of them painfully to the floor. Dasher even suplexes him into the ringpost/buckles once they're on the floor. I thought they did a real good job at working like they knew what was coming, really putting over the mentee son angle, and I liked a lot of the learned behavior results (loved Dasher catching a running back elbow and quickly converting it into a Gory bomb into the turnbuckles). I did think the ending was a bit sudden and meant Boomer had to shrug off some pretty big offense, but overall this was a great main event that I thought captured the drama that an apuestas match should have.

PAS: This was shockingly great for a match between an old timey baseball guy and a smaller old timey baseball guy. I couldn't be less interested in this match on paper, but man did they deliver. Dasher was really great as a Great Santini style abusive dad, who continued to escalate his abuse as he began losing control. I thought all of the cheap shot stuff really worked as Dasher was especially dastardly while trying to beat and unmask his son. I thought they built to guillotine really well, with Quackenbush putting over how quickly that move can put someone out, and Dasher already desperately diving out of the ring to avoid it earlier in the match. I didn't like Boomer almost no-selling a top rope powerbomb to put it on, but that was really my only problem with this match. I get the sense that this match was worked out move for move at a training center, but it kind of makes me want to watch more huge Chikara main events.


ER: It looks like you'll be seeing more Chikara on Segunda Caida. We've mostly avoided it over the years, but I watched this show on a lark and came away impressed with some things I wasn't expecting. I liked the allure of the mask match - that's mostly what brought me here: I'll give any lucha unknowns a chance if it's a mask match. I'm a sucker for them. Phil mentioned the main event felt really written out, and I agree, but it's a kind of worked out that makes me want to seek out more of their main events as well. I like how they laid this out and presented the story, and would like to see more of their layouts. We're a Chikara blog now? Seems like.


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AEW Dynamite Workrate Report 11/20/19

What Worked

-I like the idea of throwing a Buck into a singles match. I don't think I've ever seen either in a singles match before (and scanning quickly doesn't look like something that's happened in at least 3 years), so it's a fun idea. The match had several moments that didn't make a lot of sense, and the pacing meant that they were up trading superkicks seconds after Fenix absolutely flattened Nick's chest with a full force top rope swanton. But they clearly went all out, Fenix tried rope tricks that he appeared to be making up on the spot, Nick took a couple of major spills, we got a good nearfall, it was fun. I think they could have done the same moves and laid it out WAY more effectively, but that sentence feels like something I will just be writing about at least one AEW match a week.

-Britt Baker got busted open early with something, and that is how you make a Britt Baker match slightly more interesting.

-Battle Royal was good, had plenty of the elements that make for a good battle royal. There were guys I wish were in it far longer (Sonny Kiss really should be more of a featured player, though I laughed when I think I caught Orange Cassidy lowering his sunglasses in the corner while Kiss shook his ass), Chuck Taylor hit an actual awesome knee out of the corner, Orange Cassidy got amusingly launched by Billy Gunn, somebody hit a wicked tope (I think it was Kip Sabian, but the promotion is batting 1.000 so far on missing at least one big dive per episode), Kiss took a big elimination bump, and they kept the pace up. A fine battle royal.

-Jack Swagger looks like a guy wearing four different rows of Invisalign, but damn if AEW doesn't know exactly how to use Swagger. He looks like an imposing goof, they use him like an imposing goof.

-Jericho promo before SCU came out was my least favorite Jericho AEW promo so far, but once he had Scorpio Sky to play off of I think it picked up real nicely, liked a few of their exchanges and liked how Jericho did his promo as if he was both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

-Two weeks in a row and they've properly thrown in a nice squash match, which shows they're at least learning the importance of show pacing. Deflated Bobby Roode got most of his mic work during the break, made a fossil fuel joke, and then got wrecked by Luchasaurus as he should have been.

-We get an honest to god cut off the ring tag match and that is a great thing. I do think that Quen would have been better as the hot tag guy, because he's just better than Kassidy at running together offense, but that's a minor gripe because I also liked how they handled Kassidy's hot tag. LAX were real dickheads while cutting off the ring, with Ortiz especially being mean. I dig all the nonsense like locking Quen in a Boston crab and Santana vaulting in just to lightly mule kick Quen in the face. The back work paid off nicely and I absolutely love paying off limb work within a signature spot: Kassidy goes to roll over Quen's back on the apron to hit the silly string, only Quen's back can't hold the weight and he falls off the apron. Those spots seem so obvious if you stop to think for a moment about what part of the body had been worked over, and yet some guys seem so averse to doing them. I love "obvious" payoffs like that, and thought this tag came off so much better than if they had gone out and just done a big go go go big spots match.

-Dustin is already my favorite wrestler in AEW, and if he decides to become a guy working a cast gimmick and add a bunch of cast related strikes? Well then brother I can't think of anyone who would be a threat to unseat his #1 status.

-Moxley/Allin was pretty easily the best Dynamite match so far. We'll be writing that one up in its own MOTY post.

What Didn't Work

-I am so sick of flipping piledrivers that don't mean anything. I probably could have stopped that sentence after "piledrivers".

-Has Britt Baker been featured every single week? I'm not sure. Has Britt Baker been exposed every time she has appeared on TV? Yes, definitely yes. Her match with Shida was filled with both of them kicking out of their own pinfalls, lifting their legs up to make it easier for their opponent to hook legs, and at least a couple moves that landed as if whomever was taking the move had no idea what the move was actually going to be.

-Jimmy Havoc continues to be the supreme dweeb, even if him stapling Billy Gunn's stomach was funny, he immediately ruined it by calling everyone tossers as they cut to commercial, his voice breaking like a 13 year old, using slang that should be natural to him yet sounded like he'd never said tosser before.

-Talked with Phil about what cowboy wrestlers lamer than Hangman Page, and the best we could do was Killer Tim Brooks or ultra gassed Scott Casey. But neither of those are definites, and I would rather see both of them than Page.

-AEW Dynamite has one camera-missed dive per week, and they also seemingly want to corner the market on refs stopping 3 counts for things that nobody actually saw happen.

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Matches from PCW ULTRA No Quarter 8/9/19

Mil Muertes vs. Dan Maff

PAS: Muertes has the PCW title, and this was an expected Boricua slug fest. Muertes has a great short punch and he and Maff pounded on each other, including Maff getting thrown over the guardrail into some chairs, and exchanging chair shots in the ring. Maff landed some real rib smushing sentons too. There was a bit too much hitting and staring while the guy you hit made faces, and I didn't love the finish with Muertes semi-no selling a burning hammer just to hit his flatliner for the pin. Still I dig both of these guys and will always be into a big boy fist fight.

ER: This is an on paper dream match that hadn't ever actually crossed my mind, two guys I always enjoy who have never been working the same place, so this is something that really leapt out at me. And then they make it the opening match on a card filled with constant movement guys! If Warbeast vs. Outlaw Inc. wasn't bookending this card I could have seen showing up for this one and then beating traffic by 2 hours. I liked this a lot more than Phil, I think this totally delivered on its on paper potential. I wanted a big boy slugfest, I got a big boy slugfest, and I honestly didn't notice any of the problems that Phil did. I thought they kept a great pace and impressively ramped things up without approaching overkill. They filled the match with hard standing lariats, big shots in the corner, Maff had some brutal sentons and cannonballs, Muertes brought big arm strikes and a nicely set up lungblower, I thought the whole thing ruled. Maff took a big bump into the front row, both guys beat each other up with chairs, it felt like the best Lucha Underground match that never happened. I was totally fine with how Muertes treated the burning hammer, as they established that Maff had trouble getting him up for it, and Muertes took it as a stomach bump rather than vertically. I liked him taking it lighter but still needing to barely get a hand on the rope to break it, showing that even when not dropped vertically it still came this close to putting him away. And it played nicely into him reversing it and landing on his knees moments later. I thought this was a damn cool first time match, delivering on its potential.

60. Tessa Blanchard vs. Sumie Sakai

ER: Hell yes this ruled. This was some great ass kicking at an awesome pace, and I thought it nailed a classic 90s GAEA feel. Both gals threw fists, and both leaned into feet and fists, and it was all so great. Tessa punched her right in the mouth early on, they traded sharp angles, and Tessa dropped her with one of the nicest cutters I've seen. They had me hooked quick. Tessa came off like a badass in the moments she was getting her face busted open, and the moments she paid Sakai back. Sakai threw a nice beating her way, busting open her nose, stomping all over her in the ring and on the floor, rubbing her boot on her jaw, throwing a missile dropkick right at her face, and then stretching her with a lengthy Indian deathlock. Tessa is always a heel for great reason: I can't think of many wrestlers who read more "heel" than her in 2019. She comes off mean, and this was a cool glimpse of her showing vulnerability while roaring throw the pain. I thought her selling in the Indian deathlock really started to put this match on the next level. Her screams as Sakai pulled her arm back and the wide eyed panic with bloody nose, she saw that blood and she worked with it. She also has this way of going on a real furious comeback, and doing it with babyface energy, but still coming off like a clear heel. Her comeback shots after taking a long beating were great, really looked 1.5 speed in her quick violence. The kicks landed fast and didn't feel locked into combos, and Sakai winning felt like a great moment. Her winning cradle looked like an absolutely impossible trap to escape from, and I loved how she held the cradle past the 3 count, as if she was just as tangled into the pin. The chemistry between them was great, I totally bought into everything they did.

PAS: I haven't thought about Sumie Sakai in years, but I have seen two bangers in the last month (this match and her Bloodsport match). I agree with Eric about how great Blanchard was in this match, she is really great at conveying disdain and that disdain makes the post match handshake a bigger deal. I thought the near fall on the jumping chestcracker was pretty great (although that is a very 2012 IWRG finisher). Sakai's kickout seemed huge, and I liked how that brief shock Tessa had allowed Sakai to hit that awesome cradle for the win. Good stuff, and I need to look for more from both ladies.

47. Eddie Kingston/Homicide vs. Warbeast (Jacob Fatu/Josef Samael)

PAS: This is the stuff right here. Homicide is at his best when he can let his inner psychopath fly, and he jams Josef Samael's face into thumbtacks, stabs him with a fork and hangs him with a chain. They work this as a NYC invasion into California and are working straight heel which is fun to watch. Kingston wanders around the arena talking shit to fans and hitting Fatu with chairs, he also takes a huge thrown Samoan drop through a door which was the biggest bump of the match. Kind of weird to see Warbeast work as babyfaces, but it works surprisingly well. Finish was a no contest with NYC hanging Samael and leaving him laying and bleeding. We get a post match challenge for a Samael and Homicide dog collar match and a Fatu vs. Eddie I Quit match, both of which I am very excited for. This match was JAPW as fuck, which is something I both miss and love.

ER: This kind of felt like an XPW brawl, as you had guys disappearing for minutes at a time, and other guys doing super violent stuff that most people in the crowd wouldn't have even been able to see. It doesn't get much cooler than Kingston/Homicide as invaders, and I like seeing Warbeast as crazed local babyfaces. I love the unhinged babyface as a wrestling character, but it can be done pretty poorly; not here. Fatu is working a 'round the venue garbage brawl while barefoot, total insanity, stubbed toes just waiting to happen. But it doesn't slow down any part of his attack, as he's still falling to the floor, wastes Kingston through a table with the alley oop Samoan drop, and had several moments of popping into frame with a nicely timed punch to the neck. Samael takes some cruel punishment, with Homicide digging a fork into his head (Homicide should keep getting fatter and just spend the next years being the new Abby), grossly hanging him over the ropes with a chain, and my favorite spot: smacking him face first into some thumbtacks on a chair. Fatu even throws thumbtacks at Homicide's face! Kingston is endlessly entertaining in these kind of brawls, impossible to not watch as he swears at people, swears at getting hit, and then grabs body parts and yells. The finish was more to set up a pair of intriguing stips matches, and yeah Kingston and Fatu disappeared through a big chunk of the middle, but this should be the start of something awesome.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Eddie Kingston Has Whips on His Fist, Houses on His Wrists

Team AIW (Eddie Kingston/BJ Whitmer/Tim Donst/Chris Dickinson) vs. #NIXON (Ricky Shane Page/Bobby Beverly/Eric Ryan/Necro Butcher) AIW 11/23/12 - EPIC

PAS: This was a mystery partner tag brawl with #NIXON bringing in the Necro Butcher and AIW bringing in Chris Dickinson, both guys who had been banned from AIW in the past. This match had lots of booking in it, which was a little hard to parse dropping in the middle of it, but the action was pretty awesome. The whole match was brawling in the crowd, and these are a batch of crazy fucks. This might be one of the last incredible Necro performances, as he was bleeding buckets, punching and headbutting people right in the face and bumping around. I loved the moments where he and Kingston start clawing at each others eyes, and he and Dickinson really test the boundaries of acceptable stiffness, Necro just blasts Chris in the jaw, and Dickinson spin kicks Necro right in the temple. Match doesn't really have a finish with Dickinson turning on his team and dropping Whitmer on his head, and Gargano coming out to even the odds only to get DQed by a #NIXON heel ref. Really overbooked finish which almost keeps it from EPIC status, but the work was killer and this was a hidden gem for sure.

ER: I thought this kicked huge amounts of ass. The overbooked finish was a couple minutes out of 20, with the other 18 minutes filled with blood, stiff strikes, and some insanely painful landings. Beverly and Ryan are total maniacs. Several people were having a "who can hit the guardrail more painfully" contest, and Beverly probably won it when he leaped off the apron chest first into the rail, looking nastier than that time Bret Hart broke his sternum. Ryan bleeds buckets and I had no idea him bleeding profusely was something he's been doing for years now. Both future Studs take hellish bumps, Ryan getting vertical suplexed on the floor by Dickinson, Beverly flying across the floor while weapons fly at him magnetically. Kingston throws a heavy trash can off the side of Beverly's head, Page is gushing blood while sporting a 5 years in the future Tim Donst look, Donst also crashes and burns hard on the floor a few times, everybody throws great punches and kicks, Necro practically KOs Dickinson with a punch, the hardwood floor is so covered in everyone's blood that Kingston slips in it while throwing a punch, the whole thing was sheer brilliant street fight chaos. Fans gathering around the action are standing still with their mouths open, like they're witnessing a street crime. This was how you do a crowd brawl. This whole thing felt dangerous as hell and had I been in attendance I would have been losing my mind the entire time.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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