How's the King of New York Rockin' Sandals with Jeans?

Eddie Kingston/Darby Allin/Jon Moxley vs. JD Drake/Ryan Nemeth/Cezar Bononi AEW Dynamite 8/25/21 - GREAT

ER: This was like one of those fun weekend WCW shows where the 4 Horsemen would take on Men at Work and Joey Maggs. A match where the result is never in doubt doesn't have to be obvious about it, and there are still a million fun paths to take while still presenting a strong team. I liked the losing team here. At this point AEW has a roster that's probably larger than the most bloated WCW roster, so JD Drake showing up like Big Bubba (great look for him honestly), Nemeth working as a stooge with just bumps and no offense, and Bononi as the big man is a fun weird trios. I'm already a Wingmen fan and I really loved every time Nemeth got in the ring. Nemeth is a great stooge, excitedly getting in the ring opposite Kingston only for Kingston to completely no sell his one knife edge and give Nemeth one of his own, and Nemeth bumps it like a huge lariat and immediately tags out. I love that shit and it's something that we don't get much of anymore. Eddie and Cezar are a fun pairing too, with both slamming into each other, and it's always a great look when Eddie is throwing hard chops at a larger opponent. 

The bullshit on the floor is always fun, with Sting running off all the flunkies like Peter Avalon. Drake had some nice stuff throughout, great at making all three of the stars look great. His run with Eddie was all action (interrupted amusingly by Nemeth running in and immediately getting punched by Eddie), and Drake is a big guy so it looks even better when he's being tossed by suplexes and a uranage. Drake/Darby is another great pairing, as we move from Drake chucking Darby around at the beginning of the match, to Drake taking a cool Code Red off the ropes and then getting just crushed by the Coffin drop. Darby landed flush on Drake's big belly, the way I used to land on my dad's stomach when I would Superfly Splash him off the back of the couch. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

Read more!

Matches from HOG For the Glory 12/11/21

The Bollywood Boyz (Harv & Gurv Sihra) vs. The Mane Event (Jay Lyon/Midas Black)

ER: The Bollywood Boyz were actually one of my favorite tag teams to watch in the first half of 2021. They were two of the more unheralded guys on the WWE roster but stayed on the roster a really long time. Harv is the better tag worker, Gurv is better in singles and good at peril segments. In 2020 and 2021 they fit in really nicely on 205 Live, putting on several hidden gems and growing into one of my favorite tag acts. Check out their feud vs. Tony Nese/Ariya Daivari from earlier in 2021 to see Harv put on a Bret Hart-like performance, and check out Gurv's match against Alex Zayne. Gurv Sihra and Alex Zayne putting on a 6 minute Worldwide classic on WWE programming. 2021 WWE is just bizarre shit. 

This match was great, The Boyz working a more amped up indy version of their 205 Live style, and Mane Event building to a great Jay Lyon hot tag. Lyon is really fun, a short fat guy who can hit a big tope con giro and muscle around both Boyz with throws and a high slam backbreaker. The Boyz have great teamwork, smart tags and engaging apron work. they're both great smug pricks who will cheapshot you off the apron, and will wreck someone with a Powerplex (polished off with a Gurv top rope elbow instead of a splash). Both Boyz hit great top rope elbows, but my favorite bit of theirs the whole match was Harv laying in wait to waste Midas around the ringpost with a lariat. Mane Event had some cool double teams (including Black rolling off Lyon's back for a smooth reversal) and had great chemistry with the Boyz. I'd love to see Bollywood Boyz in AEW, their tight work would reign in a ton of AEW teams in really fun ways. 

57. Eddie Kingston vs. Low-Ki - GREAT

PAS: Very cool to see these two absolute icons match up 15 years after their only other singles match against each other, and although the match was hijacked by a dumb DQ finish, what we got was really building to something cool. Stiffness and Eddie Kingston selling is a great way to build a match, and this was mostly built around Kingston getting his chest caved in by stiff Ki chops and stomps and fighting his way through a smushed chest. Lots of cool crumpled sells by Eddie, and when he is able to power through the pain and fire back he hit really hard shots himself. It felt like a truncated match, as the Buddy Murphy run in happened before we really got a Kingston comeback, so it wasn't like Murphy ran in at the final moment to cause a DQ. Still I appreciate any chance I get to watch either of these guys, and a surprise match up is a mitzvah. 

ER: This is a real minimalist Ki/King match, 75% of this being mostly about two of the greats hitting each other with chops and then selling the impact of those chops. Kingston is the most compelling salesman in wrestling and I easily could have just watched him sell Low Ki's chops in different ways for 12 minutes, and in some ways I did! These two can make the most forgotten wrestling sequences look engaging, look no further than their opening match knuckle lock. Ki and Kingston are guys that work little stories with each movement, and I dug seeing Kingston fearlessly knuckle lock Ki to power him down, before Ki realized he'd be better off subduing King with strikes. Kingston knows how to make a crumpled sell mean something, and this was filled with moments where Kingston's brain was firing synapses to strike back before the pain caught up to his body. Kingston hits back hard when he can (like that running kitchen sink knee which landed like a cannonball and lead to Kingston briefly selling his own knee), but Ki can be a hard guy to consistently hit, so it turned into a cool battle of Kingston attempting to ground Ki and work body locks before trying to swing on him. I liked how Kingston dodged Ki's delayed kick to the back of the neck. It's Ki's one piece of offense that doesn't consistently read, doesn't have the visual impact of the rest of Ki's offense, so Kingston just takes it out of the equation and uses it to set up something bigger. The run in was poorly done and a major wet blanket, but I did get a kick out of Kingston crumpling Murphy with his backfist and then dragging his body into position for Ki to land a disgusting double stomp. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Corn! Doukhan! Les Blousons Noirs! Petit Prince! Saulnier! Genele! Renault!

Jacky Corn/Gass Doukhan vs. Blousons Noirs 10/18/71

MD: Really good match that oscillated between heat and comebacks. I think at one point the Blousons got too deep down the rabbit hole after an extended period of cutting off the ring and sneaking in cheapshots because a fan started to go after the ref. They let the stylists have some more control after that, including some feel good stooging from the heels. Gessat might have looked a bit older and couldn't quite rock the black jacket the same way he did a decade before, but they were picture perfect in the ring. Manneveau had this great belly to belly toss over the top and wasn't afraid to bump into the second row either. I loved this bit they did where Manneveau had Doukhan in a grounded armbar in the corner and Gessat kept stepping on his other hand from the outside. The finish involved the Noirs begging off from some celebrity to the delight of the crowd but by that point Corn had already beaten everyone around the ring in his final comeback so it was fine.

Petit Prince/Michel Saulnier vs. Bobby Genele/Guy Renault 12/14/71

MD: The usual good stuff from d'Éricourt and Saulnier with Renault and Genele serving as bases and bruisers depending on what the moment called for. The VQ here was a bit rougher than usual but with a bit of work you can tell the difference between everyone. The first ten minutes, before the heels started to cheat, was as good as you'd expect but maybe not novel in any particular way. The most interesting holds actually came in the back third, with a long short arm scissors bit by Prince and subsequently a hammerlock he had to work out of. His act where he gets knocked out of the ring repeatedly and has to fight his way back was compelling and over. Saulnier was very effective as a hot that that would rush in and hammer everyone, despite his relatively diminutive size. There was always a sense of struggle here despite the complexity and sharpness of spots. There was a moment where d'Éricourt came in low on Genele and he just jammed him and power bombed him and it came off as incredibly uncooperative. In general, we're quite used to matches like this, but it's like watching a magician manage to repeat a difficult trick: it reaffirms what we know about the greatness of these juniors.

PAS: Prince is really a special talent, really all of these guys are, but he is so unique and incredible to watch. It is crazy that we discovered this guy, and get to watch him perform his magic in so many different ways. I am a huge short arm scissors fan, and this had one of the cooler short arm scissors spots ever. Saulnier is great too, and is a bit shortchanged by tagging with the Prince, it is like that WCW Nitro dark match where Blitzkrieg did all of the same spots as Super Dragon, just higher and faster, if Blitzkrieg wasn't their Super Dragon would have gotten his spot, Saulneir is also a transcendently talented athletic technico, it's just that he isn't the Prince

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 3/21-3/27

AEW Dynamite 3/23

CM Punk vs. Dax Harwood

MD: This was a bit of a tricky match, just for where it was positioned. This was Punk's first time back in a few weeks. He had been feuding with the Pinnacle over all including a big beatdown and the Moxley tag against the Revival so there was logical lingering heat here. Revival is in the midst of a babyface turn (presumably capitalizing on attention from the podcasts with Renee but who knows what the actual plan was). I'd say Dax wrestled this more as a de facto heel than a fully committed one, being in the position to cut Punk off and occasionally using a hairpull to escape a killer hold, aggressive but only so overtly underhanded. Even when Cash came out, it was to slap the mat and keep the fans in it. As usual with Punk matches, I loved the selling and the attention to detail, and more over, how much things were milked for value. Look at the spots in the corner that ended with the big superplex. They went around three or four times before getting there, building up the tension and the importance and then paying it off with a huge impact. Another match on the card might have done three or four moves in that period instead of building and building. Likewise, the bump to the floor off of the inside-out suplex. This was more of a Bret Hart tribute match than a Davey Richards one and both guys were laid out for a while after that, which is where Cash came out to keep the crowd in it and further that babyface turn. If wrestlers who the fans care about decide to place more value on a bump like that or on moments like that, it's something that can transfer across matches on the card and give every AEW wrestler more meaningful tools to play upon. If you can do more with less, that means that the times that you actually do more, it matters even more. Theoretically at least. It's a way of taking back a superplex or a bump to the floor for everyone and it's hugely appreciated. I hope it's capitalized on because it'll make everything in AEW better. 

ER: Phil did some of his best work writing up this match for The Ringer, and I think he's the only one approaching the best takeaway from this match. I saw a lot of talk online about the Bret influence on the match, and I didn't prioritize the match due to my own lack of interest in seeing more tribute spots to a wrestler that I love, who still has a long list of matches that I've never seen. I love Punk, but seeing people talk about spots lifted from Bret matches just makes me want to go watch several Bret matches instead. This match was not about lifting sequences from old Bret matches, it was more about the Bret influence on modern wrestling, and how you can still show your influences on your sleeve without being derivative. All of the comparisons to Bret Hart classics do matches like this a disservice. These two connect in different ways, and have different strengths, but I guess it's always more interesting compare good wrestlers to another good wrestler, than to note broadly that "these two are influenced by good wrestling matches". This was a simply constructed match that hinted at moves early and paid them off later, and some moves hit early that lead to different results later. 

There are a couple of really big moments that happened at smart parts of the match, with a big superplex as the centerpiece. I really liked every around that moment, with Punk going up top and showboating a bit with some extended Macho Man arms and then immediately realized how he fucked up when Dax swept his legs. The superplex was really good, Dax pushing hard off the top rope with his legs, and I also like how they handled the vertical suplex reversal not long after, ending with both tumbling over the top and ricocheting off the apron. All of the Sharpshooter work was great, although I wish they had done a bit more with Dax getting kicked off and hitting his head on the bottom turnbuckle. Coming not long after a superplex, another shot to the back of the head could have taken things in a more interesting direction. That said, I do like how Dax sold the kick off and how he staggered into a very close nearfall right after. When he finally gets the Sharpshooter locked on, Harwood can proudly state that in a world where almost every person who attempts it has the worst Sharpshooter ever, his is much closer to Bret or Choshu than the rest. I would have bought that Sharpshooter as the finish, but I loved the quickness and the slyness of Punk's Anaconda Vise. There was a cold methodical killer aspect to it, but also a touch of desperation. If not desperation, than still the work of a man who knew that NOW was the time to end things if possible. 

Darby Allin/Sting/Hardy Brothers vs. The Butcher and The Blade/Private Party 

MD: Too much action for the camera to follow here. Once they split into two zones, it got a little bit easier but we missed things on both counts: how Blade got opened up, a lot of the one-on-one between Kassidy and Matt. Everyone got moments either in hitting things or taking things. Darby and Sting had those opening dives. Butcher got to pinball Darby around and send him down the stairs. In general, a match like this protects Matt and he gave Kassidy some comeuppance before getting ambushed by Quen and ultimately eating the double side effect. Jeff being more concerned about hitting his crazy swanton in a 3 on 2 scenario than saving his brother follows him dancing to his music instead of making the save the other day pretty well. The finish could have gone a little better but it was easy to cover as Sting fighting for the reverse headlock and the timing still worked out. You can tell that there's nothing Kassidy would rather do in wrestling than feed for Sting. Really, this is the sort of thing that they could have run twenty years ago as a dark match main event every week for months after TV show to send the fans home happy.

ER: Man this rocked. This was the AEW debut of Jeff Hardy and I love how he debuted in this chaos. This also continues the amazing run of Sting, somehow putting in his greatest work of the century in his early 60s. Tony Schiavone has been so good on commentary during Sting matches, and I love the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flies super far with an early match plancha onto everyone. Tony is totally beside himself, talking about how he told Sting to not do crazy things like that anymore, but laughing to himself at the same time. The action splits up and goes all over the arena, and really the only bad thing about the match is we couldn't possibly see everything. Every pairing looked like it was worth seeing, at least based off what we were able to see. Everybody played into their role and did it well. Jeff had this crazy clothesline over the barricade (silly me thinking that would be the most reckless thing Jeff would do in his debut), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and I love how the action flowed. 

Jeff Hardy did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, and I love that he still has a yarder's heart. Teenage backyarders have that skateboarder mentality of looking for things to do a move off of, and here's a broken Jeff still looking for ledges that would be cool to stunt dive from. I also loved Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. Matt Hardy looked awesome during the finishing stretch, like he and Private Party had been feuding for years. Private Party have come a long way in the past couple years, and they're getting so much better at feeding for offense and positioning. I thought the finish was spectacular, as at this point I fully believe that Sting is as crazy as Terry Funk ever was and would be foolishly willing to take a frankensteiner into a cutter. Sting hopping off the middle buckle and blocking the cutter, dropping into a dragon sleeper and fighting up to his feet for the Scorpion Death Drop was such an awesome moment, timed expertly with a Twist of Fate. This is the most hyped I've ever been for Sting, a man still gaining new fans into his AARP membership days. 

Blackpool Combat Club (Brian Danielson/Jon Moxley) vs. Varsity Blonds

MD: This worked as contrast to Danielson's matches over the last month or two at least. It made me better appreciate what Yuta brought last week. Danielson and Moxley are going to make you more violent, more aggressive, work for it harder no matter who you are, but there was a lower floor to start from here. Griff had his moments, including some driving forearms at the end. There's a lot of upside there potentially, but I don't know if we'll see it with Mox and Dragon as there's a lot of lower hanging fruit elsewhere in the company. Pillman, on the other hand, probably needs a different presentation or a different role to see if something might click. That doesn't mean things weren't smooth at times, like how he leapt right into Mox's double-arm DDT, but smooth wasn't necessarily what I was looking for here. On the other hand, every week Ambrose and Danielson start to add more unified offense and bits of timing to their repertoire. Here it was the set up for Danielson's knee off the top and the way they synced up their finishers. It's hard not to be excited for whatever's next.

AEW Rampage 3/25 (taped 3/23)

Dustin Rhodes vs. Lance Archer

MD: Archer is a guy who I like a lot in 3-minute Dark and Elevation squashes but that I'm iffier about in the actual payoff matches against name talent. This played to his strengths though. Dustin went after Lambert early and got a shot to his ear for his trouble and Archer zoned in on the damage. This was low on spots (which isn't to say that Archer didn't hit some of his big offense down the stretch or that Dustin didn't take a crazy flip bump to nowhere off the apron, but it was more about shots to the ear and grinding Dustin down, with Dustin working the crowd hard on his comebacks. Even the powerslam got jammed by Archer. When he's in the right environment, Archer's instincts are quite good. I like how he works the crowd. I like how he teases them. He's constantly present when he gets a chance to be. He didn't get to scare any kids this time around, which is one of the best parts of his act but you work with the crowd you're given. This was very much the right match for him and Dustin, ear bleeding all over the place, fit into it perfectly. When a guy's ear is bleeding enough that it gets all over your chest, that's something to lean into, and they absolutely did here to the betterment of the match.

PAS: The ear bleed here was cool, but I didn't think this worked particularly well. I kept wanting it to be better so that I could justify writing about Dustin on The Ringer. Archer always feels like a guy pulling his shots, and this is the second violent Dustin match I thought underwhelmed. For some reason they just seemed on different pages. Nick Comoroto hasn't been around nearly as long or had the heights that Archer has had in wrestling, but I though he matched up way better with Dustin in a similar type match. Finish was clearly setting up a third match so maybe they can deliver something special there. 

Read more!

Andre the Giant Was Not Tested By Rusty Brooks

Andre the Giant vs. Rusty Brooks WWF 9/11/84 - FUN

ER: Rusty Brooks didn't even get to last a minute against Hogan, and when I saw his Andre match was over 3 minutes long I got excited. Maybe that's a bit irrational, to think that noted Fattest WWF Jobber Rusty Brooks would get to work some kind of competitive size vs. size match against the largest man on the planet, but we don't really get a ton of Andre vs. Big Fat Guys so who knows? The match was mostly angle, as Andre entirely ignored any of Rusty's offense while focusing his energy on Kamala's wild man presence at ringside. But also it kind of rules? Andre is a brick wall and there are two different excellent moments where Brooks flies into Andre and then flies off of Andre. Rusty's opening shoulderblock attempt was an A for effort, really running his big body into Andre and then recoiling hard when Andre plants his lead foot and leans in his shoulder to counter. Later in the match, Brooks came in with a fat guy version of Tito Santana's flying forearm (fat guy version because no feet leave the mat) and Andre just shuts down the attempt with a simple raised forearm. 

Brooks even gets to be a fat guy with a low center of gravity attempting to fireman's carry Andre, and I love that Rusty went for it. You get Andre to the mat, you increase your odds. Kamala comes out early in the match and yells at Andre the entire match, Kim Chee doing his best to hold back the godless savage, Andre laughing at Kamala while ignoring Brooks. Brooks had some great bumps, big back splashes with his legs up in the air, and I loved him running chin first into Andre's big boot. I thought it was funny when Andre backed Brooks into the corner and held him there with his big butt, Brooks desperately throwing strikes and axe handles to Andre's back, and every time Andre thrust his buttocks at Brooks, Kamala would angrily chop the ring apron. Andre's smile as he trolled Kamala was great, showing how Not Mad he was, while Kamala kept getting madder and madder at ringside. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

Read more!

2002 Boss Man Crashes Into Crash

Big Boss Man vs. Crash Holly WWF Heat 2/3/02

ER: Man, Boss Man was an absolute killer here. He looked amazing, a real bully, every strike looking awesome. It really looked like he was killing Crash out there. It's pretty one sided, yet it's also longer than his other 2002 syndicated matches. Crash kind of worked his brief offense section like he was Pepe-era Chavito, more goofing off than actually going for offense, so the bulk of this was 4 minutes of Boss Man beating his ass around the ring. I am totally okay with that, because Boss Man has nothing but great looking offense, clearly a guy who could still work way above the level he was being used. He has really impressive presence and everything he throws looks lethal. He hits Crash with four different punch variations in the corner, and I have no idea how to pick a favorite. There's the overhand right and the uppercut, but I think my favorite is when he just rears back and pops Crash straight in the forehead. 

Boss Man decks Crash with his sliding punch, throws an all time great cross chop to the throat, and makes something as simple as a running stomp look devastating. He leans into Crash's nice elbow strikes, and drops a great knee right to Crash's temple. At one point he literally just stands on Crash in the corner and it's the greatest thing: One boot on the stomach, one on the throat, just standing on him like a hate filled surfer. Crash takes the kind of beating that makes it look like he's on his way out of the fed, and basically his one bit of offense is a sunset flip that ends on a one count when Boss Man pops him in the eye with his calf. Outside of looking like the best striker of that era WWF, Boss Man shows insane amounts of personality. I laughed out loud watching his reaction to loud "Boss Man Sucks" chants, not getting fired up and yelling back, but instead standing there with his hands on his hips, lips pursed, equal parts annoyance and disappointment. I love this guy. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: JERRITO~! MASCARITA~! WARREN BOCKWINKEL~! KABUKI~! THE V~?

Mascarita Sagrada vs Jerrito Estrada AAA 2/20/94

MD: Bit of a wonky finish, though one that was set up well enough and that led to a bigger match down the road, but didn't do the match any favors. That's not to say the match wasn't really good because it was. Jerrito leaned on Mascarita Sagrada well from the first second power bomb all the way to the end, which, given MS' physical charisma and explosiveness, created a fairly unique sense in a lucha match outside of the normal rhythms. I had the feeling that he really could come back at any point, as opposed to just designated transition points. Likewise, even while he was in the midst of a comeback, I got the sense that he could get cut off, either by Jerrito dodging or just being a brick wall, or, to play into the overarching story, by Espectrito snatching a leg from the outside. The camera was somewhat erratic on those big moments causing the viewer to leave certain things up to the imagination. We saw MS fall to end the primera but it was only on reply you really saw that trip from the outside. The finish had him fed up at the interference (which was not overbearing necessarily but was just frequent enough to add something without taking away too much attention from the match) and waste a dive towards Espectrito but I have no idea if he completely missed or just got a bit of him or what. The countount and title change came as he was trying to get another pound of flesh. Where the match actually was hurt was by elongating the segunda instead of giving MS a pin to go along with one of his comebacks, and having the dive and the countout be in a tercera instead. I'm sure there was some mindset to it but it raised expectations that something off was going on and took me out of the match a little. Still, another great find.

Warren Bockwinkel vs Billy Varga Los Angeles 5/23/53

MD: We just have a handful of Warren Bockwinkel matches on tape. This one has a little audio problem (Jimmy Korderas talking about TNA overlaid over it for part of the first fall) but otherwise is very watchable. Good gritty holds throughout, but each one had real progression. There was maybe just a little bit more narrative than I was expecting at points. Bockwinkel won the first fall with a drop toe hold into a leg submission but lost the second as Varga leapt over the same trick attempted. Then, right as the time was going to expire in the third, Bockwinkel went for it again only for Varga to counter. I liked Bockwinkel's counters of counters here too. Early on Varga went hit an up and over headscissors takedown out of a hold, but Bockwinkel got an arm up to block it the second time; that sort of thing. There was a great short armscissors in there too. I would say that there was less kinetic energy than in the French matches from a few years later. For instance, in that short arm scissors, Varga tried to escape by rolling and was rolled back by Bockwinkel using leverage and slamming his leg down. In a French match it would have led to lifts and much bigger rolls. Likewise though things were just starting to heat up and get to scrapping as the time ran out, it really needed another minute of them hitting each other. They had only just started. Still, a lot of good holds and wrestling in here and a nice look at the elder Bockwinkel as the measured veteran and Varga as an energetic crowd favorite.

Great Kabuki vs The V AJPW 8/30/88

MD: Usually we only look at the stuf that's at least good on paper, but sometimes we have to cover the strange and bizarre or disastrous. Late 80s- early 90s All Japan is not exactly known for crazy gimmicks. You'd get the occasional show with Land of the Giants or the Blackhearts but this feels a step further than even that. The V was Don Sanders who we have spotty results for over the 84-93 period doing enhancement work in the Southeast. This looks like his biggest actual run, fifteen matches in 88 including a tag spot low on the card with Rocky Iaukea against Taue and Nakano on a Brody Memorial Show. As best as I can tell, this is the only footage of him in the gimmick that's ever slipped out. V was an 83-85 American TV show about lizard people aliens that dressed up like humans in orange-red jumpsuits and tried to conquer Earth. That's the gimmick. Sanders had a purple jumpsuit with a black mask and at the start of the match he'd pull it off to reveal a lizard mask underneath it. The main event of this show was a Hara/Tenryu vs Jumbo/Yatsu tag that came in #47 on the DVDVR 80s set. And down on the undercard was this guy doing working this absurd gimmick and making "V" peace signs as he revealed his lizard face to the world.

It's what inspired Kris Statlander's green-face make-up but Sanders wasn't the galaxy's greatest alien. He was a guy who could be led through a fairly simple match on the mat with Kabuki with a monkey flip and a leap-up turn around cross body off the second rope and one of the world's worst dropkicks ever, right to Kabuki's gut (not intentional). Kabuki's someone who excels in tags or six-mans against guys who will scrap with him, but that isn't always the most dynamic undercard house show singles match wrestler. Here, it seemed to be about surviving the night as much as anything else. The two guys filming this were pretty into the V though, ironically or no, counting the pinfalls and oohing and ahhing for the offense attempts. At least someone was having fun with this thing. But hey, now have footage of one of the most bizarre footnotes in 80s All Japan. It's not all Ikeda and Ishikawa killing each other. Sometimes you guys come to the blog for that sort of thing too.

Read more!

2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Park and Rush Return!

LA Park vs. Rush AAA/Sanchez 7/17

PAS: This was their first singles match against each other since 2019 and I am happy to watch these two guys slam their bloody heads into each other again. This was a bit of a Greatest Hits version of their match, with a little less frenzy than their best stuff. There was no crazy Park tope here, and I hope that is still in his bag. But, their greatest hits are still pretty great. Rush dominates early and opens Park up with a broken beer bottle, Park fires back and bounces an entire case of beer off of Rush's head and carves him up as well. We get a bunch of big exchanges and a couple of foul near falls, before PARK gets a surprisingly clean pin with a spear.  I imagine Rush leaving ROH leaves us open to this match being run back more times, and while we are probably never getting the hair vs. mask match, I'll watch this as often as they run it. 

ER: Man this was great. I love this feud. Phil and I love this feud so much that we actually went to New York just to see this match, which of course wound up canceled. But I'll watch any match these two have for the rest of their careers, just to see their specific kind of magic. This was nearly two years after their previous match and didn't break new ground, but it's amazing what kind of drama and frenzy they can whip up playing the hits. This is some great Fat Elvis Park and it's great how much sympathy and excitement he can draw while taking a beating, because everyone in Arena Neza knew it was leading to him potentially murdering Rush. The acoustics in Neza are perfect, and when Rush whips Park's chest with his big belt it gets an incredible echo. I think part of the reason why I continue to love Park and Rush matches is because they're always filmed the exact way I want to watch Park and Rush. Every big chop, slap, and bottle break sounded amazing, and the camera made me feel ringside. Rush beat Park around ringside and into the crowd, throwing a drink overhand at him while Park was being comforted by a very small child. Minutes later after getting a box of empty beer bottles bounced off his head, Park breaks one of those bottles on a chair directly next to that same child. 

There's a great shot of Park as he's in the crowd breaking bottles, where you can see his big belly hanging down, and you realize Park is getting the same Regional Old Fat Guy huge crowd reactions Big Daddy or Otto Wanz would get. Park takes some big spills in the ring, going down hard on an overhead belly to belly and getting the back of his head whipped into the mat on a German that was mostly just a fast rear waistlock takedown. The match structure with them always works, as Park takes big falls and needs recovery time, so Rush gets to flex and preen and toss his hair and it's always great. Park's overhand chops are the loudest in wrestling, the referee takes a hard slap from each (which slows him down counting the pin after each guy kicks the other in the balls), and Parks' match finishing spear hit Rush like a truck. I really loved the build to that spear, getting things to the point where both just ran at each other for one final joust, Rush getting stopped dead cold by the biggest skeleton in history. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

THE NXT UK TOP 50! (Covering Episodes 1 - TakeOver: Blackpool II)

It's the 3rd wrestler ranking for my NXT UK Guide! Here's the Original Top 50 (which covered episodes 1-TakeOver: Blackpool), and then I had the Next Top 50 (which factored in every match from Episode 1 thru Episode 50). Now we have another 25 shows under our belt, and TakeOver Blackpool II felt like a great end cap for the 3rd Top 50. 75 different shows gives us a great sample size to draw from, and I will again state that these rankings are based ONLY on matches from NXT UK. It does not factor in any matches any of these wrestlers had anywhere else, *only* on NXT UK. All wrestlers' placement on the prior 50 will be listed in parentheses after their current ranking (a dash means they were previously unranked). 

1 (1). Kassius Ohno

2 (11). Noam Dar

3 (2). Jordan Devlin

4 (6). Wolfgang

5 (3). Mark Coffey

6 (9). Fabian Aichner

7 (13). Marcel Barthel

8 (14). James Drake

9 (4). WALTER

10 (10). Joe Coffey

11 (7). Dave Mastiff

12 (5). Wild Boar

13 (12). Ligero

14 (22). Zack Gibson

15 (19). Flash Morgan Webster

16 (17). Tyler Bate

17 (20). Mark Andrews

18 (8). Jinny

19 (21). Trent Seven

20 (15). Eddie Dennis

21 (49). Alexander Wolfe

22 (18). Travis Banks

23 (16). Toni Storm

24 (24). Kenny Williams

25 (23). Tyson T-Bone

26 (25). Rhea Ripley

27 (30). Joseph Conners

28 (32). Ashton Smith

29 (26). Isla Dawn

30 (31). Primate

31 (-). Piper Niven

32 (29). Saxon Huxley

33 (-). Ilja Dragunov

34 (47). Kay Lee Ray

35 (27). Jack Gallagher

36 (-). Cesaro

37 (-). Kona Reeves

38 (28). Pete Dunne

40 (-). Oliver Carter

41 (34). Nina Samuels

42 (-). A-Kid

43 (-). Riddick Moss

44 (-). Dorian Mak

45 (-). Sam Stoker

46 (33). Mansoor

47 (-). Lewis Howley

48 (35). Dakota Kai

49 (36). Amir Jordan

50 (48). Xia Brookside

As expected, with a larger sample we've more or less established our Top 20. There is plenty of movement within the Top 20, but 18 of the 20 wrestlers from the last Top 20 are still there. Most of the drops on the list can be chalked up to "wasn't featured as much" and several of the gains are due to someone being more featured. Kassius Ohno retains his #1 status, as I don't think there's anyone else in NXT UK who comes close to having the most consistently high end matches with the biggest variety of opponents. It's that easy. He's obviously the best and he feels like the least contentious #1. What's going to be interesting is how many years after he stopped working NXT UK that I'll be able to justify keeping him in the Top 10. 

The most consistent high end wrestler (other than Ohno) was Noam Dar, who jumped from #11 to #2. Not only was he featured more during this ranking period, but he was responsible for 3 of the best ever NXT UK matches during this period alone. WALTER dropped in the Top 10 due to being the least impressive member of Imperium during the ranking period. It didn't feel right to have him above Barthel and Aichner, so I moved them up a bit and moved him down a bit. James Drake is a definite Top 10 at this point, Grizzled Young Vets had their best run of the series, and I bumped him and Zack Gibson up accordingly. 

The biggest gainer was Alexander Wolfe, a guy who seems destined for the Top 5-10. He was only so low to begin with because he only had one eligible match in the last ranking. Now that he's a regular, he's having standout matches, and will likely be the biggest gainer on the next ranking too. 

Most of the women dropped during this ranking, as NXT UK devoted less time to the women's division than ever. I wanted to keep Jinny in the Top 10, but the overall role of the original NXT UK women changed so much during this period that it made that tough to justify. Overall, Jinny, Rhea Ripley, and Toni Storm were either featured less or moved to other brands, their TV time replaced by Kay Lee Ray and Piper Niven (who each bumped up the list accordingly). 

The Bottom 20 is a mix of wrestlers who haven't been on NXT UK since the early episodes, and wrestlers who have only been on NXT UK starting with the latest episodes. The middle of the list is mostly home to wrestlers I like who I wish I could rank higher (Tyson T-Bone still my guy who would be Top 5 if he showed up more often). 

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Kamikazes! Dumez! Cohen! M'Boba! Bernaert! Cohen! Trijo!

Kamikaze 1/2 vs. Maurice Dumez/Georges Cohen 10/4/71

MD: Our list had this listed as Guy Mercier vs Kamikaze but it seems like we don't have that one, which is a shame since Mercier vs Aledo sounded pretty great. That's not to take away from this tag though. If it was just the first fall, it'd be a real classic. Even with all three and the match getting thrown out at the end for the Kamikazes brutally cheating and tossing the ref around, it's still up there. That first fall, though, had the sort of shine/heat/comeback format you often find yourself longing for when watching the French footage and four absolutely game wrestlers.

At any point, I could make at least a healthy guess on which Kamikaze was Aledo. He'd be the one who was rolling around the ring and coming off the top more while the other one leaned more into the strikes and bruising and tossing people out. That's just a guess though. Both could base for Cohen and Dumez and both could rope run when necessary; one just seemed better at the latter than the other. Cohen and Dumez had a lot of the skills you'd expect from turn of the 70s French junior heavyweights, going up and over, or down and around on holds. Dumez was spry, following recent Bordes matches by springing his legs off the ropes while holding a headlock, and having some amazing bounding escapes from headscissors for instance.

They wrestled clean for the first ten minutes or so, but once the Kamikazes started to go dirty, they were great at it. They cut off the ring, used ref distractions now and again (and the ref, who was antagonistic to the stylists, apparently had recently suffered an eye injury, which justified some of it), and came off the top frequently for double teams. Aledo (I imagine) had a great wrenching double arm submission that looked nasty, and both guys used the hangman's noose choke over the shoulder. The quick comeback in the first fall and the more extended celebratory spot-heavy one early in the third were both very good. While the finish sort of stunk, even if it let the Kamikazes keep their heat, this had pretty much everything else you would have wanted from a 71 French tag.

M'boba Les Congolais/Pierre Bernaert vs. Vasilios Mantopolous/Jean Claude Trijo (Trichet/Trigeaud) 10/18/71

MD: This got a lot of time, though it was primarily situated in the first fall. It was probably better as a total package than just one fall though since some of the biggest spots and moments were in the last few minutes. Trichet (or Trijo or Triguad, I'm not sure) was ok in his role and had this one nice little bit where he locked in a hammerlock, leapt over his opponent's head and turned around with a dropkick. Bernaert, a true veteran and master, even countered it late in the match. Otherwise, Trichet was there to get beat on a lot so Mantopolous could make big comebacks. He also had assembly line uppercuts from stooging opponents fairly late that were pretty over. Bernaert was more than happy to stooge throughout, including trying to ape Mantopolous' trademark hand-offering draw-in and turtling for instance. Mantopolous was his usual star self. By this point, he was established and his act was incredibly over with the crowd but he constantly added in new bits, or escapes, or counters. He could do these big sweeping flourishes of headscissors takeovers or bounding through his opponents' legs but also head close-up precise counters to holds. M'Boba's act had advanced quite a bit since his first appearance too. He now took a boa constrictor out to the ring and put it into his mouth repeatedly. Fransizka the handler who discovered him was now his wife. He constantly wore that put upon look on his face but also seemed as likely to be found lounging with a cigar as biting his opponent. Anyway, this had a good balance of the stylists outsmarting and out-maneuvering their opponents and the heels cutting off the ring and drawing heat by working over Trichet's legs with some of those big set piece spots with all four wrestlers at the end. Bernaert is the steadiest hand in all the footage and Mantopolous remains amazing to watch.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 3/14-3/20

AEW Dynamite 3/16

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor/Wheeler Yuta)

MD: I saw some criticism that this was a little bit long and maybe there was a little bit of that; maybe just a bit too much wrestling for the sake of wrestling, and a general house style sense of how long an AEW TV match has to be, or a technical need to encapsulate the commercial break. But when you look at what this match was trying to do, you can't say they didn't nail it. This was about Danielson and Moxley completely dismantling their opponents with Regal commentating over them, about Taylor looking resilient despite the fact that both Cassidy and Trent were down with injuries, and to get Yuta over. That meant Danielson and Moxley took 90% of this, including a double heat. It meant that while Taylor was able to have a moment after a hot tag, it was Yuta who got that last hot tag and got to look strong against guys way above his paygrade. We talk about how Kingston is the guy who understand the emotional weight behind the old AJPW style, but this nailed how hierarchy could be used to get someone over. Yuta's defiance at the end when Danielson was kicking him and how the crowd started to chant his name felt like when a lion would step up to Tenryu only to get crushed for his affrontry. Speaking of those kicks, I kind of loved how Yuta took them, throwing his hand back in order to steady himself. It gave him a place to go as he started to lean into them more and more before finally drawing Danielson in. So far in this arrangement, I wondered about exactly how well Moxley fit, as he had come back as a huge babyface with a meaningful story, but you're seeing him revel in the violence more and more every week. You really were able to see that here as they cut off the ring and just bore down upon Taylor and Yuta. 

ER: I am not a Chuck Taylor guy, and I am not a Yuta guy. The latter encompasses a lot of the things I hate about modern wrestling house style, the style where every guy with a year under their belt gets the same "this guy is going to be the best in the world in just a couple years" hype and all I can see is someone who can't set up offense and whose bumps almost always look disconnected from the moves they're bumping for. And I liked how Danielson acted exactly as he should, the old head scoffing at the new hype, and then punishing him for it. I thought Yuta and especially Taylor looked pretty bad in this, but Taylor kind of has an excuse to look bad because, well, people know he wrestles like Chuck Taylor. So I reveled in the extended aggressive beating that Danielson and Moxley dished out to Yuta, while Regal's honeyed tones described the savagery. Regal was as much of an MVP in this match as Danielson, fleshing out the story of the match being told, and Danielson had another one of those runs where I instinctively want to write that it was "one of the best performances of the year for Danielson" despite knowing that I've written that probably a dozen times already. Yuta gets full credit for standing up to a beating that wasn't going to stop, and I really liked Matt's comparison to the AJPW hierarchy, and found it apt. Those fans knew when young KENTA was landing more kicks than normal on a main eventer, just as they knew when Misawa was suddenly getting deeper into matches against Jumbo. Yuta's got a long way to go before that, but he knew exactly what role he was playing in this tag, and that's more important than a moveset. 

 

AEW Rampage 3/18 (Taped 3/16)

Darby Allin vs. The Butcher

MD: Phil covered this one on the Ringer and his review is more poetic. Go read it. Here's mine: Great chemistry here. So much of what made this work was Darby's confidence in how over he was and in his own offense. He knows the fans are behind him not because he dominates matches but because he never quits, because he takes a beating, because he can come back at any moment believably, because he wields his own body like a weapon like maybe no other wrestler in history, and because he layers upon that speed and explosiveness and technical savvy. It means he can give the Butcher most of a match, can lean into his ever shot, can take offense that's visually dramatic like the cloverleaf powerbomb and the swings, both within the ring and into the steps, and come back at the last second and have it all work. Moreover, the advantage of having someone so dependent on risks or very specific openings (like manipulating the fingers) in order to stay in control is that it creates narrative possibilities. Darby has to throw his body at Butcher. That leaves him open for Butcher to catch him. It's as simple as that. Disparities, if capitalized on correctly, create drama. Butcher was great here as a looming, crashing, clashing, violence presence. The announcers played up that he'd been injured against Darby previous and was taking a pound of flesh in revenge. Whether that was what was going on in Butcher's head or not, you could read that into his ringwork and it gave Darby a very tall mountain to climb.

Read more!

On Brand Segunda Caida: Tully vs. Ricky...in 2004

Tully Blanchard vs. Ricky Morton NWA-Bluegrass Boogie Bash 2004

ER: Blanchard come out of another several year retirement on a Jimmy Valiant tribute show, in a main event oddly and very specifically announced as having a "16 minute time limit". Don't ask me, the time limit never factored into the match in any way. Blanchard is 50 here, looks to be in great shape (probably much easier to stay in great shape when your body is not beaten up from wrestling), and it's pretty stunning how good he looks in ring after such a long layoff. He is clearly faster than Morton, but Morton is no slouch here. Blanchard really runs into Morton on a shoulderblock, and they both show off how quickly they can both snap off an armdrag, and bump for an armdrag. Tully's rope running is really impressive, and both bump nicely for each other. I'm talking about them like they're total dinosaurs (Ricky is only 47/48 here) but this felt a little more inspired than some other legends main events we get on convention shows. Tully is a great heel, really animated, and his execution on any move he does is excellent. I loved how he tossed Ricky to the floor, loved how he would screech at the ref whenever the ref made a call against him. We did get into a long series of chinlocks, but get this: Tully Blanchard has a really good chinlock. Did the match need three different chinlock sequences? No it did not. But Tully worked all three of them differently, including a great one where he got extra leverage by leaning into Morton's back with a knee. Morton had a nice fiery comeback and threw a couple of great right hands, and Tully's stooging and swinging at air was as great as it was in 1984. The finish is a bit of a mess, with a series of small package reversals where neither guy really looks like their shoulders are down, and then the ref does a distractingly fast count to give Morton the win. The best part of the finish was Tully acting like he won with a small package, and then screeching WHAT!?!? when Ricky was announced as winner. 

Read more!

NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool II 1/12/20

Trent Seven vs. Eddie Dennis

ER: Eddie Dennis has a wild set of reptile gear, full boots and toxic slime green snakeskin like he's some kind of early 90s straight to video punk. It's glorious. I like him and Seven as a match up, and there's some explosive stuff. The match starts with a wicked one armed powerbomb by Seven, planting Dennis after catching him charging in. Dennis takes Seven's offense really well, bouncing right off his head on a DDT, getting dumped to the floor with a snap German. But Seven's punishment gets even better with a fast tope and and a snapdragon suplex on the floor. Their pace is really impressive for the level of big moves they're piling up. It's like a weird crazy WCW Power Plant match if they only studied NOAH tapes, with some forearms and big flipping slightly complicated slams, threats of Burning Hammers and Emerald Flowsions, and Seven hitting a right forearm in the corner as hard as Misawa's best. There are a bunch of big complicated slams, and the absolute craziness peaks when Dennis launches Seven with a Razor's Edge to the floor like he was Mike Awesome. Totally crazy spot to lead to a finish, not like any other finish I've seen on NXT UK. This was a cool ass 8 minute gem, really scrappy and portent, filled with big slams and cool bumps. Hot as hell start to a TakeOver. 

Toni Storm vs. Piper Niven vs. Kay Lee Ray

ER: I really hated how they turned this match into a 3 way. I love Toni, but she felt like a real third wheel in the build to this match, and in the match itself. Niven won the title shot, and then the week before TakeOver Storm just demands Niven let her have the match, and then they put her in the match just because she said she should be in the match! It's awful wrestling storytelling, but she's also a kind of necessary distraction in the match, and allowed them to do some big things that would have felt silly to kick out of. I hate 3 ways as a rule, but they actually kept things at a great pace to start. Niven works really well in a 3 way, as one of her issues is insisting on working fast paced singles without always keeping pace. Here she's able to pace things out and is a great wrecking ball. Niven flattens Ray with a tope and misses a fast cannonball into the barricade, but is back to flattening when she breaks up a pin with a senton. The match gets pretty bad the more melodramatic they got, with dumb stuff like Ray finding a chair under the ring and choking Storm while showing tons of light on the choke, or a big dumb face off between Storm and Niven where the camera framed them. The "making movies" thing can be real painful, but when they went back to being dangerous things got good again. Nigel on commentary calls Kay Lee Ray the "Glaswegian Sabu" at one point, which sounds near blasphemous, but when she hits a somersault plancha to the floor and bounces her legs off the barricade and head off the floor, then breaks up a pin by spiking herself with a somersault senton, this could be an Actual Thing. She looked like she under-rotated on a crazy senton, and then took a powerbomb right after. That's nuts. Storm gets to visually beat Niven before Ray superkicks her off, and I guess now that sets up Storm/Niven which feels reductive, since Storm just shoehorned herself in to begin with. There was some really good stuff here though, a lot of it. This was actually my favorite match of either Niven or Ray in NXT UK, and Storm facilitated some of that. 

Tyler Bate vs. Jordan Devlin

ER: This was a big match with a big payoff and big in-match build, a singles match that actually felt mostly worthy of the long TakeOver match lengths. I think Devlin put his time in well, liked how a lot of the offense built, I mainly just didn't like the ways Bate would just pop up to start his own sequences. Now, Devlin works around most of that really well, finding fun ways to set up Bate's comebacks. Devlin kept using the ropes in fun ways, like cutting off a Bate dive and nailing a nice rope flip moonsault, choking him in the ropes, also getting caught in a torture rack-type fireman's carry when he went to slingshot in with a cutter. Devlin, unsurprisingly, was a real asshole here. He mocked Bate and added some extra sauce to holds and strikes, the best being Devlin dragging Bate down into a Romero surfboard, then bending back on Bate's chin until they were staring eye to eye, sicko stuff.  

Devlin is good at working enough actual offense that reversals of that offense actually make sense, and Bate is good at stepping up with someone like that. I do think it veered into move trading, with Bate constantly need to shrug off whatever had just happened to him to hop up and do something impressive, but luckily Devlin is good at facilitating those hop-ups and Bate can break out something impressive. Bate does an airplane spin that starts slow and ugly and looks like it will be a dud, but keeps going and going and by the end I loved how Bate started with a bit of struggle and then kept building speed. By the time he dropped Devlin I was dizzy on my couch, which sounds stupid, but I'm not sure I've seen someone do an airplane spin this fast. Devlin had smart counters to expected Bate offense, dropping him with a cutter to the apron that almost leads to a count out win (with Devlin amusingly kicking him around 8 to keep Bate out longer), and nailing him with a Spanish Fly to counter a Bate charge. Devlin incorporated a lot of learned behavior into reversals, but Bate mostly just took big moves and then decided to do his own moves. This was the match with the somewhat infamous "punch out" spot, which I actually think is "not actually as shitty as it was made out to be". It's kind of hilarious to me that of all spots, Bate and Devlin doing stand and trade got GIF'd and laughed at, because most feds run shows with worse standing exchanges up and down the card. Do Tyler Bate's arms look short and silly when he swings them? Short? Always. Silly? Sometimes. Give me a punch exchange like this every single time over turn taking elbows and forearms. I liked how some of their punches whiffed completely, because it's frankly silly when every strike in an exchange hits perfectly. Bate needed a big finish to firmly put away Devlin, and Devlin is always great at getting spiked on DDTs and flattened by powerbombs, and the crowd was along for every second of Devlin taking it. Perhaps this went too long

Mark Coffey/Wolfgang vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. James Drake/Zack Gibson vs. Flash Morgan Webster/Mark Andrews

ER: So, this match was insane. This was easily one of the greatest highspot ladder matches in history, not just WWE history. This was 25 minutes - normally a match length that I would argue is completely unnecessary for *most* matches - but due to the furious pace that this things was worked, I was shocked at how "long" the match was when it was over. This does not feel like a 25 minute match, because from minute one every single person is flying around the ring at breakneck speed taking bumps that surely shaved months/years off their careers/lives, and I don't think that pace even took a slight break until the 18 minute mark. Not only did they work wall to wall crazy spots and dangerous moments, but they did a great job of making every team seem like they could walk away with the belts. I thought they did so well without the ladders, chaining offense together faster and faster, utilizing all 8 guys to give proper rest and generally avoiding guys ignoring damage to get to the next spot in time, that I was kind of dreading this becoming a climbing contest when it settled down. So, they opted to never settle the match down, using the ladders at first in familiar ways, but then doing twists on familiar ladder match spots before exploding with some things I've never seen before. 

It is completely pointless to detail all of the spots that happened in this match, because it would take me twice as long to type everything than it would take you to find and watch the match. One of the cooler aspects was that every team in the match, worked like a team. They all had tandem offense that was not always their typical tandem offense, remixing some spots and adding in ladders to others, and all the teams actually felt like they had individual strategies. They kept the spot set-up time to a minimum, and when they did one gigantic crash spot that had everyone fall like dominoes, prolonging the punishment instead of everybody just landing like shit from one giant tower powerbomb. It's tough to pick a standout, but I really liked Wolfgang a ton. He's the guy doing crazy spots while also shaking his arm out after punches. Yeah, he'll throw big ass Mark Coffey over the top rope onto everyone and then vault out himself to powerslam Drake on the entrance ramp. But, while men lay dying on the battlefield around him, he's still remembering to sell that his fist hurts, and I love it. So Wolfgang was probably my favorite, but this was a team effort. Every guy got at least one big moment (at LEAST). Mark Andrews hit a perfect shooting star press off the ladder onto Coffey, he and Webster hit a wild tandem somersault senton off a very high ladder, and Grizzled Young Vets seemed to be on the end of all the worst punishments, especially poor James Drake. Drake got smashed with ladders and under ladders and under bodies so many times, poor guy spent most of the match kicking his legs and holding his insides. Imperium looked like real beasts, squeezing their double teams into a ladder landscape even better than the others, Barthel tossing smaller guys off the ladders into waiting arms of Aichner so they could be dropped on their heads. 

It's a match with nothing but great spots, but my favorite had to be Imperium punishing Webster. With Webster laid on a ladder, which had been propped up on the ropes, Barthel holds Webster down so Aichner can hit a springboard moonsault, with Barthel rolling OVER Webster at the last minute TOWARDS Aichner's moonsault, so he wouldn't be standing where Aichner's boots were going to whip. I mentioned the car crash spot, and it really was great. They brought 5 or 6 ladders into the ring, everyone was climbing on them and climbing over each other like World War Z, one guy getting knocked to the mat here, Barthel getting knocked all the way to the floor there, Webster amusingly setting up his ladder so it smashes Gibson in between his own ladder, total madness. Wolfgang goes bet mode down the stretch and spears Aichner so hard into a ladder that the ladder breaks into 4 pieces. I don't think I've ever seen a ladder snap right in half during one of these matches, even when someone falls onto one from a great height. I thought I was pretty burnt out on stunt ladder matches, but this one had me from go and was absolutely relentless. 

WALTER vs. Joe Coffey

ER: I thought this was a pretty great 17 minute main event that made the decision to be a 27 minute main event, and treated that extra 10 minutes as if the previous 17 were just a dream. It was admittedly a bit odd how the match seemed to position Joe Coffey as the babyface and WALTER as kind of a generic heel , but I liked the actual ring work a lot. WALTER worked this mostly as a big chopping monster, and Coffey was the smaller "babyface" who kept trying and throwing WALTER with suplexes. WALTER is great at a big man getting knocked off his feet, and I loved how all of Coffey's suplexes looked like he was having trouble lifting WALTER, because he *should* be having a lot of trouble suplexing WALTER. WALTER wasn't hopping into any suplex and it ruled. If Coffey was going to hit a Saito suplex, it was going to be low to the ground with a heavy landing for both, making the suplexes look more like something you'd see in a Hashimoto/Red Bull Army match. There were a couple odd miscues every time WALTER threw a big boot (one that was supposed to hit did not at all; one that was supposed to miss, hit, and was treated as a miss anyway), but mostly it was WALTER throwing heavy chops while Coffey kept deadlifting WALTER on suplexes. WALTER threw hard elbows, cranked Coffey's neck, and worked a nice STF, Coffey hit a boss shoulderblock off the apron (flying at WALTER like a torpedo), fought for a big German suplex, and hit a surprising moonsault. 

When WALTER accidentally hit the ref with a John Woo dropkick (and the ref sold it like a drama queen rolling down a very soft incline), things mostly fell apart. Coffey gets an immediate visual pin off a powerbomb, Alexander Wolfe and Ilja Dragunov run down and get involved, Dragunov knocks Wolfe into Coffey and they basically do a full match restart for the remaining 10. Nothing felt like it mattered down the home stretch, and WALTER - who had just been "pinned" by a powerbomb moments before - now has several winds and the two trade moves until one of those moves wins the match. Every big move (WALTER powerbomb, Coffey avalanche belly to belly) was used as a way for the guy taking the move to transition back to offense, and there were more miscues like Coffey mostly missing a big clothesline and them just repeating the spot right after. After WALTER chokes out Coffey he had to give the biggest acting performance of his life, acting vaguely threatened by Adam Cole. Cole looked tinier than both referees and the camera angles made it looked like a small child ran into the ring after WALTER's win. 

This was a top to bottom great show, with the only bad 10 minutes being the last 10 minutes of the main event. Every other match was a total over-delivery, making this easily one of the best TakeOver events. WALTER/Coffey was probably the weakest overall match, and that was a match I really loved until it went crazy with the booking. Highly recommend this show. 

Best Matches: 

1. Tag Team Ladder Match

2. Jordan Devlin vs. Tyler Bate

3. Eddie Dennis vs. Trent Seven

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: REY JR.~! PANTHER~! GILBERT~! FIRE~! INFERNALES~! LA PARKA~!

Eddie Gilbert vs. Huracan Castillo WWC 8/6/94

MD: This was limited by the gimmick, obviously, but you watch it to see the spectacle of it and how Gilbert chose to work it and milk moments. For one, before they got into the ring he took a head into the post and immediately bladed. That way, if nothing else, there would be color. There were flammable pieces of material in fixed intervals just outside the ropes and visually, things were most spectacular when the wind was blowing and the fire seemed to be reaching into the ring. Much of the match was based on Castillo trying to work Gilbert into those ropes and it portrayed that sense you get in exploding cage or barbed wire matches that the heel simply cannot escape. For most of the match, the payoff was Gilbert's hand getting whacked into the fire. Gilbert was able to get a little bit of control and get some revenge, but after Castillo's comeback (off of a Hotshot of all things), Gilbert took some shots to the face into the fire, bumping around and recoiling like crazy for it. The overall effect was diminished by the end since the fire had gone down significantly, but the finish revolved around Gilbert getting some barbed wire and choking Castillo with it, moving things forward to the next match in a very Memphis manner.

PAS: I thought this was awesome, it would have ruled if it was just a bloody Memphis punch out, but add the spectacle of the flames into, what a treat. Tremendous Gilbert performance, his punches looked great, got great early color, and did a wonderful job of making the fire bumps look horrific. Castillo was a fine regional babyface, and got amped up, but this was an Eddie show. I am surprised they used powder as the transition weapon, rather then the Gilbert fireball, but I dug Eddie using the barbed wire to set up the rematch, clever booking, and I need to search out the barbed wire match between these two.

Winners/Rey Mysterio, Jr./La Parka/Octagon vs. Blue Panther/Los Payasos AAA 9/2/95

MD: Maybe the biggest appeal here is just seeing Blue Panther hang out with a bunch of clowns. Really straightforward structure on this one. Exchanges in the primera leading to a tecnico pin, beatdown in the segunda, comeback in the tercera leading to some of the flashier spots, the dives, and the finish. A lot of the details were very good though. I loved the Panther vs Parka exchange in the primera. That felt like a fairly unique match up and they had fun with it on the mat. Coco Azul based really well for Rey too. I was less into what Winners and Amarillo were up to. Payasos and Panther worked well on the beatdown including some nice tandem offense and submissions. The comeback was great as Rey just went through everyone's leg to create chaos for La Parka to dance around. It was exactly what it should have been and the fans loved it. In general, it was a lot of fun to see the other tecnicos keep Parka chants going throughout the match. Rey's backflip dive over the top with a La Parka boost was memorable, but just the way he'd get up on a floating armdrag was endlessly impressive for the time and even now. Finish involved Los Payasos beating down Octagon after a dive and then starting to fight with the crowd, allowing Rey to slip in for a last second countout win. This was pretty much as enjoyable as you'd expect.

Infernales (Satanico/Pirata Morgan/MS-1) vs. Hector Garza/Lizmark/El Dandy CMLL 9/2/95

MD: Fun bit early on here where Satanico and Pirata had Garza held hostage in their corner and Lizmark and Dandy had MS-1 in theirs and it was a bit of a standoff. You're not going to win fighting Los Infernales on their own terms, however, so they eased into the beatdown almost immediately thereafter. No one can direct traffic quite like Santico and lucha beatdowns don't get better than Infernales ones. The comeback moment was just ok, Lizmark coming in to get a shot in, but he was really over with the kids on this night, so it's hard to complain. It was followed by Dandy throwing amazing punches at everyone, including an all time shot to Pirata on the floor. There weren't a lot of exchanges in this one, Satanico putting Garza through the paces to start and then later on a really good Dandy and Morgan one but given who was in there, it all flowed well and did what it was meant to.

Read more!

Everybody Goes as Far as They Can, Lawler Don't Just Care

Jerry Lawler vs. Zach Gowen JCW 7/17/04     Pt. 2 - GREAT

ER: Lawler working a one legged man feels like the most pure Memphis occurrence to me. This feels like a heel Lawler studio match set up angle, like something late 80s Miami Vice heel Lawler would do. I can picture him coming out and addressing Lance Russell and the audience and fielding questions regarding his lack of title defenses, and I can picture the entire promo about how he found a young contender who has fought harder to get where he's at than anybody else in the back, and then picturing the uproar when he brings out this new contender with only one leg. This isn't that, but the elements are all there, and Lawler is someone who - more than maybe anyone - can figure out neat ways to work a match against a man with one leg. He makes a few good jokes before hand, worried that the beating he unleashes on Gowen might be so severe that he could get sued. But, luckily for him, Gowen wouldn't have a leg to stand on. I like how Lawler leaves openings for Gowen by talking trash, love the shtick and facials he works around the missing leg. 

They lock up and Lawler goes in for a single leg takedown, and makes funny faces when he whiffs at the absence of leg. During a knuckle lock he knows what he has to do, keeps looking down at Gowen's legs, looks at the ref, finally says to the crowd "sorry but I have to do it" and legsweeps him. All of his punches look great, the kind of strikes that a loud and surely drunk Juggalo crowd can do nothing but howl about. My favorite is when he rears his fist back and brings it straight forward into Gowen's nose and upper lip. He hits two perfect piledrivers and makes faces while holding him, looking right past the absent leg and acknowledging the absurdity of it all, before fully spiking him. Great piledrivers. Of course we don't end with those, as instead there are some feet on ropes shenanigans which lead to a Lawler loss and leads to Gowen - a Michigan boy - crowd surfing and no doubt getting his butt accidentally touched by a man wearing a Twiztid hockey jersey. Maybe several men. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING

Read more!

Andre's Interested in Things, He's Not a Real Doctor

Andre the Giant vs. David Schultz WWF MSG 6/16/84 - GREAT

ER: This was one of those fun "only happened this one time" singles matches, not a hidden gem, but a match that has no other versions, no alterations. There's something pure about that, knowing in hindsight that they never got a chance to rearrange things or add new turns. This was it. The match was on a huge drawing MSG card underneath one of the Slaughter/Sheik boot camp matches, and it was worked in a real fun house show style. Schultz is an odd guy, and works this match the same way Steve Austin worked house show matches a decade later. It's a one sided Andre beatdown with Schultz coming off strong just by virtue of not backing down. It's honestly not far off from being a Schultz babyface performance, except Andre was working his almost bashful giant routine and the crowd was too in love with it. A lesser babyface would have turned Schultz face, but this was one of those Andre performances where he does those shy smiles during his entrance, like he was somehow still overwhelmed by how much 25,000 people enjoyed seeing him. "Okay guys, I'm just getting in the ring to crush a man. Sheesh c'mon." Schultz keeps getting knocked around by Andre, and it's because he keeps running into the fight as if the two are the same size. It makes Schultz come off even bigger than he is, even though every one of his takedown attempts goes terribly for him. 

Andre throws him with two different, awesome, almost amateur form belly to belly suplexes, stomps on Schultz with boots that look the same width as Schultz's chest, steps on him, and still Dr. D tries to take him to the mat. Dr. D goes for a single leg, Andre clubs him and knees him; he rushes in with a waist lock, Andre elbows him in the head. There's a great spot where Dr. D forces a rope break, and Andre just lets him drop to the mat on the break. There's a cool minute or two of very vague unprofessionalism, as Schultz starts just tying Andre up in the ropes, grabbing at his tights, refusing to break holds, not really doing damage but just obnoxiously preventing damage. It made things look more like a shoot, because it was realistically boring (but a fascinating kind of boring?). Andre looked a little frustrated and it made it seem like Schultz really was trying to get under Andre's skin, and watching a guy do things to annoy an actual Giant is like waiting for someone to step on a landmine. Andre's suplex after finally getting free is a great moment, and D runs smoosh-mouthed into Andre's big boot for a cool finish. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE

Read more!

Tuesday is French Catch Day: Aubriot! La Bête Humaine! Ben Chemoul! Bordes! Tejero! Montoro!

La Bete Humaine vs. Dan Aubriot 9/3/71

MD: In general, this went better than the last Bete Humaine match. I'd say there were specific periods of it which were actually quite good, most especially the first five minutes or so when Aubriot was trying to contain him in holds and was using every wrestling trick he had to stay in it. There was real and compelling struggle there. And of course, what La Bete could do here was considerably impressive. His cartwheels were impressive. How he jumped to the top rope (not to actually do anything, but...) was impressive. His flips back up and over Aubriot, including out of a hammerlock, definitely impressive. And some amazing dropkicks. Throughout the back two-thirds of the match he just didn't sell anything and with that in mind, it probably went on too long. The big spots where the ref jumped on when La Bete had Aubriot up in a fireman's carry and where both of them got dumped over the top were big crowd-pleasers. In general, La Bete was incredibly athletic and portrayed a wild monster well, and Aubriot held up his end in getting him over, but we have two matches of build and no payoff in the footage against someone who could stand to him so he'll end up as little more than a bizarre footnote of French Catch.

Rene Ben Chemoul/Walter Bordes vs. Anton Tejero/Antonio Montoro 9/20/71

MD: Ben Chemoul and Bordes vs Tejero/Anyone has been a pretty wonderful formula so far. Here, though, Montoro was very impressive. Tejero had put on some more weight but could still bump around and had big hammering shots and really a great look, but Montoro came off like an all timer. He could not only keep up with Bordes (whose stuff was more and more tricked out each time we see him) but managed an actual handspring off the ropes during one fast exchange (a gif of which went pro wrestling twitter viral over the weekend actually, thanks Allan and Emil). He had some cool stuff too including a conjuro (arm hooked spinning backbreaker) and really, just his ins and outs with Bordes had a lot of satisfying wrinkles and counters. Ben Chemoul and Bordes debuted a sweeping headlock series on top of their repeated headscissors and dropkick spots down the stretch. Tejero and Montoro bumped and stooged all over the ring and out of it and Bordes had one amazing bump over the top on a catapult. Structurally, they started fast and leaned into holds before picking things back up in the long first fall. The second was mostly heat, cutting off the ring and quick exchanges by the heels until the faces made the comeback, and then things were pretty celebratory in the last fall. Nothing groundbreaking but the fans loved every second of it and the action was good throughout with Montoro doing everything you could possibly want him to.

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 3/7-3/13

AEW Dynamite 3/8

Bryan Danielson/Jon Moxley vs. Workhorsemen (JD Drake/Anthony Henry)

MD: There's something to say about just about any match but I don't have a whole lot to talk about here. The choice to use Henry/Drake instead of Drake with Bononi, Avalon, or Nemeth was interesting. Drake, in and of himself, is (of course) not necessarily a comedy figure, but if you put him with another Wingman, he automatically becomes one. In general, he was one of the people on the AEW roster I most wanted to see against Danielson, up there with Serpentico and Bear Country, but he was mostly matched up here with Mox. In general, Danielson and Moxley were dominant but they had individual exchanges, Mox with Drake, and Danielson with Henry where they were able to trade strikes. I have no idea what Henry was doing on Moxley's dive but it definitely wasn't catching him; to be fair, he might have gotten caught in the ropes a bit and spun nearer to the ring than intended. Because of the size differential, it meant more for Drake to eat the stomps and the LeBell lock than someone of similar hierarchy but less mass. While I would have liked to see something more competitive, this needed to be a 90%/10% showing where the Workhorsemen got in just enough to make it mean a tiny bit more than they got crushed. That's what we got. Sometimes what you need isn't what you want.

ER: This is the Great Match Enthusiast in me speaking, but I really wanted an actual match here. I understand this was the match needed to show Danielson and Moxley as unrelenting ass kickers (and boy was that accomplished with this mauling), but as Matt pointed out, they easily could have just used other members of the Wingmen here and not the two I specifically wanted to see have an 8 minute tag. Should AEW book directly to me? Absolutely not, it would tank them in weeks. Maybe I'm just rooting for Anthony Henry to finally get a break. I think Henry was the most under-appreciated part of the 2021 WWE roster, even more than guys like Lorcan and Gulak. Henry was there for maybe three months (as Asher Hale) and it clearly didn't matter how well he wrestled, he was always going to be immediately cut. His brief run on 205 Live was excellent. Go watch these matches to see what he was doing in WWE while nobody watched: Hale vs. Tony Nese (5/28 205), Hale vs. Grayson Waller (6/18 205), and Hale vs. Guru Raaj (7/16 205) and tell me he wasn't one of the five best wrestlers on the 2021 WWE roster. 

And so I want more for him in AEW than getting pummeled in the face by Moxley, but I do really enjoy Moxley bluntly elbowing someone in the face and making them attempt to catch his dives (even when he has no clue where he's going). Danielson's kicks to Drake had to leave Drake with several different welts, and I let out an audible oooooooo after Drake grabbed Moxley by the chin and slapped him HARD...and Mox didn't flinch an inch. When Mox returned fire you could see every synapse in Drake's body firing to get him to Matrix out of that slap. I wanted more, but that's not what this was. AEW is good about giving the people what they want, so maybe we can get back to this someday. 

AEW Rampage 3/11 (Taped 3/9)

Marq Quen vs. Darby Allin

MD: There's a decent amount to unpack here, but I liked, as much as anything else, how they timed the commercial on this one. After some engaging headlock work (including one great escape counter by Darby) they set up the narrative of the match: Darby crashing into the stairs due to a Kassidy misdirect, and then Quen taking over on the torso, both front and back. With Darby, it's never the shortest path between two points but a fakeout or two before the impact. It keeps you guessing though sometimes it's a little much. That was true in his hope spots and cutoffs later on as well. Anyway, instead of going right to commercial on the heat and dumping a brunt of the slower, more methodological (but meaningful!) work there, they let Quen work him over during the main telecast and only went to the break after a hope spot got cut off. That meant we even got to see an abdominal stretch. It's really good to break formula sometimes in that way since it keeps the viewers from getting too complacent. If you can predict both when the commercial break will happen and what will happen during it, especially if what happens during it only ever happens during a commercial break, that's problematic.

The match continued on, with Quen staying in it by focusing his attack, all building to the crazy 450 to the floor. Darby's someone who throws himself into his offense and throws himself into every bit of his opponent's offense. What makes him so interesting is that he marries that and the high-risks with a lot of attention to detail. Basically, he could get by without it and still be very over, but we probably wouldn't be reviewing his matches here. Anyway, this ended with another big dive attempt by Quen right into a Fujiwara armbar. It felt like the sort of spot that would be shown in opening packages for months fifteen years ago and that was just another Friday night here in AEW. Pretty good showing by Quen over all, even if he should have left that backflip DDT thing on the drawing board.

Read more!

2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Strong vs. Dragunov

24. Roderick Strong vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT 8/17

ER: What a great Roderick Strong performance in a gritty NXT opener, Strong throwing some of the best strikes in the entire WWE calendar year, busting Dragunov open and landing every shot square. Dragunov is an annoying hambone and Strong bloodies him up bad and keeps up the beating. Strong had several nasty knee strikes, maybe the best kneelifts in current wrestling. Dragunov throws his own big knees to Strong's midsection and I am perfectly fine with two guys deciding who can knee the other harder in the stomach or kidneys. Strong also throws blistering chops, and seeing a stiff chop battle between them feels almost novel in a world of forearm exchanges. Whenever Ilja would start to make one of his dumb faces or do one of his dumb flourishes, Strong would be there to shut it down. The best was Ilja going for his rope feint but getting punched through by a running Strong dropkick before he even got midway through the ropes. When Ilja gets busted open it's an awesome visual, as he starts leaking out of his head and dripping a ton of blood down Strong's back while fighting for some big launch angle German suplexes. I didn't love the finish, as Strong hit the nastiest strike of the match to reverse Ilja's torpedo headbutt and it had to get ignored for the sake of the finish. The timing on it was spectacular, with Strong nailing a flying knee right as Ilja has flown into his headbutt, and it looked so rough that it 100% should have been the finish. But Ilja is the guy in a big singles match at the next TakeOver, so he just gets up and hits the headbutt anyway. I didn't like that. Still, a great 12 minute TV war and most of the theater kid stuff neutralized. 

PAS: I am just one hundred percent in on Ilja at this point. Like I said in my Ringer piece, I think he has transcended the shittiness of his faces and is now just the Crispin Glover of pro wrestling. Strong doesn't have a lot of charisma, so is a great foil for an over actor like Ilja. It's like Pacino doing line readings with underacting Keanu Reeves in The Devil's Advocate. Strong brutalizes Ilja's chest, he has some great pale skin to get bruised up. His gross blood adds a lot to the match, and I loved how fast Ilja can move, he has real fast twitch explosion. I didn't mind the finish. Dragunov's whole thing is how much brutality he can absorb, and I don't mind him eating a huge shot and continuing forward. Forward is his only gear so if he isn't dead he is coming at you.

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

Big Boss Man & the Bodyslam

Big Boss Man vs. The Hurricane WWF Metal 2/2/02

ER: When you have less than 3 minutes to work with it comes off extra impressive to me when you can build to big moments within the minuscule narrative you created. We start with Hurricane trying to just take Boss Man off his feet any way he can, not budging him with a shoulderblock and getting the back of his head elbowed after a couple of failed bodyslam attempts. Boss Man throws Hurricane around with real strength, a nice mix of Boss Man's power and Hurricane's big bumping, and Boss Man's right hand variations in the corner look real mean. Boss Man had a limited moveset at this point but was super smart about utilizing every little movement and making stories out of those movements. Here, Molly hits him with a missile dropkick behind Nick Patrick's back and slips out of the ring, but Boss Man uses his slide to the floor to chase after her, sliding out of the ring and chasing her back in, and upon sliding back in Hurricane intercepts him and uses his chase momentum to actually hit that bodyslam. The crowd erupted for that bodyslam like Hurricane had just won the match, or even a title. Hurricane tries to take it too far and hit the chokeslam, but Boss Man shrugs him off, sends him into the ropes, and puts him away with the Boss Man Slam. How many throwaway bodyslams have you seen in all your years of watching wrestling, and here's Boss Man constructing a short match to make one actually feel like a major highspot. That's the story here.

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: SANTO~! CASAS~! PANTHER~! BLACK MAN~! DANIELSON~! SHIRYU~!

El Hijo Del Santo/Black Man vs. Blue Panther/Negro Casas Tijuana 2/21/86

PAS: El Hijo Del Santo's youtube page has been a real treasure trove as of late, and he gives up a mid-80s match with young Santo, young Panther, young Casas and youngish Black Man. Totally new match with three of the 20 or so greatest wrestlers of all time in the bloom of their youth. What a blast. Like all great lucha matches of this era, it is all about build, we get some cool exchanges, I especially loved all of the freestyle mat rides by Santo on Panther, but it was all pretty great. It moves into bigger moments, including the rudos getting DQ for press slamming Santo onto Black Man, and beating on the technicos on the floor. We get a quick comeback after with Santo hitting a huge plancha tope onto Casas (after sending him flipping over back first to the floor) and Black Man hitting a flip dive onto Panther, and getting the count out. Such a treat, any new footage of any of these guys is a blessing and we got all four. 

MD: Obviously, it's unfortunate that this match came to light due to Black Man's death but it's a great discovery and way to honor him, even if we're especially excited that it has Casas, Panther, and Santo in it. There are a few clips in here but you basically get everything you'd want, a long stretch of Santo and Panther up front, some manic matwork by Casas with Black Man. Then two distinct rudo beatdowns, the first long and varied and the second mean, quick, and nasty, with two comebacks and big high spots at the end.

This was probably from 86 (and if the 2/21 date is right and who knows? it'd be right after Black Man lost his match to Panther), so it's very early as footage of Casas and Panther go and they at times seemed a little less polished than they'd eventually be, but also full of ideas and imagination, and absolutely themselves. I love how well they worked together in the initial beatdown, steady and in sync even if nothing was too over the top except for maybe Casas' running senton where he turned himself in half. We missed a bit of the comeback but Santo was as fiery as you'd hope for and there was a great moment where, after knocking Panther out of the ring, Casas, on the apron, clasped his hands together and prayer and leaped off backwards, bumping himself instead of taking whatever Santo was going to bring to him.

The second bit of heat was pretty great, as they double press slammed Santo over the top onto Black Man on the outside and then followed up with this cool bit where Panther lifted up Santo vertically and brought him down with a knee drop or a stomp. They repeated it in the ring as well. The comeback had some huge moments like Casas taking an absolutely wild bump over the top after getting knocked halfway across the ring and Santo hitting a huge dive from the top to the floor.

Shiryu/Pilota Suicida/Capitan Oro/Jalisco vs. Terry Boy/Lover Boy/Super Boy/Bobby Bradley Compton Lucha 11/5/93

MD: This got a ton of time and was full of action, with a hot and happy crowd full of kids ready to cheer for each tecnico. Opening had a rudo rush but it calmed down to exchanges, and constant feeding for the primera. Pretty much everyone looked good here on the tecnico side but I'd say Piloto Suicida looked the best and probably had the loudest chants too. Jalisco is always such a surprise in these matches as there's a hard to pin down verve to him, just a big energy as he peppers guys with shots. The rudos took over in the segunda and even given the time this had, it probably wasn't a long enough beatdown but it was a good one. Bradley and Terry Boy felt like they belonged, both with the appropriate swagger and ability to fight dirty. Then the tecera had some big brawling in the comeback followed a lot of quick switches and break-ups leading to the dives and the finish. Post match they brawled all over the place until the tecnicos finally cleared the ring. It probably all blurred together in the end, but left me and the crowd with a contented feeling that we got to see a pretty enjoyable, hard worked, highly competent match.

American Dragon vs. Johnny Storm ASW 2003

MD: This was a steep angle handheld from a fairly interesting venue in 2003. I think we might have had five minutes of this before? It's quite the ladder match actually, with both guys putting it all out there utilizing both the ladder and the interesting venue. All that and a pretty novel finish too. I liked the early crowd brawling, both for Storm being willing to bump big into the crowd and the way they slammed each other into walls and chairs and whatever they could find. When they made it back into the ring, Storm had a pretty clear agility advantage, so Danielson started a reasonable and sound period of focus on the leg. This began without the ladder in play but eventually he used it. Storm made a valiant effort, given the physical strain required of him, to sell that leg for most of the rest of the match. That didn't stop him from hitting both a revenge dropkick into the chair right between Danielson's legs and some big ladder assisted offense (and bumping) as he came back and they went down the stretch. There was a precious moment where Dragon crashed Storm into the ladder in hte corner from behind and then hit a dragon suplex as the ladder, moving Storm out of the way of a falling ladder at the last possible moment, a great visual. The finish had Storm unhook the belt, but Danielson kicked the the ladder out from him at the perfect moment and both Storm and belt went tumbling down. Danielson caught the latter (being the belt) and seems to have stolen it from that. You wouldn't want to see that finish twice but it worked the once. This was twenty years ago and before everything under the sun had been hit and hit again in matches like these. The ladder was rickety and the match didn't revolve around complex, highly choreographed spots. I don't think they could have had the same match five years before or five years later. It definitely captured a moment in time and captured it well.

Read more!

NXT UK Worth Watching: Wolfe vs. Dragunov No DQ

Alexander Wolfe vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT UK 11/16/19 (Aired 1/2/20) (Ep. #74)

ER: Dragunov is a sincere goofball, and in a No DQ match there are abundant opportunities to make a ton of faces while acting like you're charging into battle. All of that starts when Ilja pulls a kendo stick out from under the ring and then holds it aloft like the world's dorkiest Beastmaster. He gets in the ring and levels the cane at Wolfe as if anyone in wrestling has felt threatened by a cane over the past 20 years, and that's when we get something I didn't expect: Wolfe disarms Ilja of that cane so quickly and efficiently that he looks like the type of man who says "look I don't want any trouble" moments before leaving 14 moaning broken bodies in his wake. Wolfe made this match cool, and he was a real savage with that cane. He challenges Ilja to pick up the cane and when Ilja foolishly takes the bait Wolfe kicks him right in the face, hits a disgusting cobra clutch neckbreaker using the cane to choke Ilja, throwing the back of Ilja's head into his knee. Wolfe jams the cane into Ilja's face and chokes him with it, and Ilja shows a ton of bruises on his neck and body early. 

Wolfe throws a chair off Ilja's face to knock him off the top rope (and almost hits himself in the face on the rebound) and then  hits a wild death valley driver off the apron. Ilja kicks out of some pretty big stuff, and the match was hurt a bit because you knew there was zero chance that Wolfe was going to beat Dragunov, so the bigger the moves got the more you knew they would wind up with Ilja back in control moments later. But that still gives us great stuff like Ilja piling a ton of chairs into the ring only to get tossed onto them with a sick release German, and then spiked vertically on the chairs with a DDT. Wolfe even gets to torture him with those chairs: slamming him throat first with the edge of the chair and smashing his fingers. Obviously, no matter how many ugly horrified faces Ilja made while holding his mangled hands in front of his eyes, you knew he was going to quickly put this thing to bed, and that's fine. We got another great Alexander Wolfe match, the clearly coolest member of Imperium. 

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death Part 2: AEW Revolution 3/6/22

AEW Revolution 3/6

Eddie Kingston vs. Chris Jericho - EPIC

MD: I wondered how Jericho was going to handle this one. There were limitations due to the card. In a world without MJF vs Punk they could have done a bloody brawl or something more cinematic. In a world without Danielson vs Mox, they could have had an absolute slugfest. What we got instead was the most in shape Jericho has been in years and him pushing himself to the limit physically to work a Kingston match. That meant the perfect mix of hard strikes, big selling, and nasty bombs.

Eddie was going to be Eddie. He's a constant, always on, always filling the gap, always thinking, always acting, always hitting as hard as he can and leaning into everyone else's shots to make them twice as resonant. Jericho, however, was absolutely present, selling the emotion of the match, responding to the fans' chants, getting into it with Aubrey to get more heat after a near-fall. He started out from a deficit, getting caught with the half and half immediately. The hole was only going to get deeper when the striking shot because he couldn't match Eddie's chops (in fact, no amount of leaning in that Eddie did could fully justify how much he was selling for Jericho on them).

What he did instead was acutely target Eddie's orbital bone with pinpoint shots. That paid out throughout the match. When he wanted to hit the top rope frankensteiner, he'd shoot a palm strike up first. When he wanted to cut off Eddie in the corner, it would be with a jab to the eye. Of course, Eddie was Eddie and would shoot a poke right back at Jericho. Likewise, Jericho was Jericho and instead of leaning wholly into his strengths, he had to try to outsuplex Eddie with a number of Germans and one amazing Foley-like bump from Kingston off the apron to the floor. It all built to Eddie surviving the Walls, Jericho surviving the backfist, then almost winning by hitting a first codebreaker onto the orbital bone. Eddie bumped for a second codebreaker as hard anyone ever took it, but Jericho's ego and spite won out. He went for a Judas Effect to crush Eddie's face instead of going for the pin and Eddie was able to capitalize with two backfists and the world's most over the top stretch plum. Eddie's match is a hell of a thing, something that wears all of its influences on its sleeve but while making everything matter and everything hit emotionally, and Jericho jumped headlong into it better than anyone could have expected.

PAS:  Eddie just delivers every time in big matches. This was Kingston Road Eddie, which isn't always my favorite style of his, but it was a great version of it. As always Eddie elevates the match over a regular All Japan pastiche by his amazing selling, loved all of the stuff around the eye, and how vicious Jericho was. Potato shot Jericho isn't the way he normally works, but it is my favorite version of him, and he was matching Eddie with every blow, some of those suplexes were really sick, and good on old man Jericho for taking those head drops, and it made total sense for his old crickly neck to be the thing that did him in with the Stretch Plum.

CM Punk vs. MJF

MD: I've watched this one twice now and I appreciate the work and the effort certainly. I appreciate the thought put into it. Nothing is in there without a reason. Everything builds from something else, whether something from four decades ago, two decades ago, or two months ago. The announcers did a fairly heroic job in connecting the dots and laying everything out for the audience, on the understanding that the fans in the crowd would be the most hardcore possible and would know enough to begin with to follow along for most of it. And overall, I did think it worked.

There were things I outright loved. I loved the build early on to the chain being used as a punch-enhancing weapon. I'm a proponent of the gimmick immediately being present and having an indirect impact on what happens in a match but also being built up for an early payoff. That's true with a cage or barbed wire or a chain. Here it impacted movement and was used indirectly and the punch was teased a few times, but when it paid off, it was on MJF's hand and led to Punk gushing. That followed, by the way, MJF using the chain to block Punk's bulldog out of the corner, so it was the ultimate indirect use of the chain leading to the first meaningful direct use of it, which, in turn, led to the blood. By the way, the corner bulldog would come up again twice later, first Punk hitting it with the chain wrapped to avoid the indirect counter and then MJF trying it onto the thumbtacks, which was him, once again, showing his hubris and needing to vanquish Punk with his own move.

Once Punk's gusher started, we got what I thought was the most important moment of the match and the entire feud, when Max took the mic and reiterated that Punk abandoned and betrayed him. Even after the victory in Chicago, even after the ambush last week, even after bloodying him with the chain, Punk was in MJF's head, he had no catharsis, and he lashed out at the fans for not going along with him and seeing him as the hero of his own story. This is pro wrestling and one feud has to move on to the next and Wardlow was waiting in the wings, but that was the moment that signified that no matter how else everything played out in the match itself, the feud could end and Punk could win it. In many ways, it proved he already had.

Still, the match had to get there, and I think it moved along fairly well, through the crushing of the hand, through the submission attempts, through the wrapped knee opening MJF up, through Punk dragging Max around the ring (though that felt a little too collaborative to me), through Punk shattering his knee on the stairs, right up until the tombstone on the apron. That's when things veered off a bit. It was one too many clever spots in a match that could be allowed to be clever, but only up to the point where that ingenuity didn't get in the way of the visceral violence. To me, the tombstone and the thumbtacks that followed ended up as one too many spots from the head when they should have been laying it into each other down the stretch instead. Maybe it's okay because Max had already lost himself the war. Maybe it's okay because he'd already bled (though not nearly enough). Maybe it's okay because Wardlow had learned his worth and was about to show it to the world, but maybe okay isn't what the match was going for and maybe that final patch of being okay snatched away just a touch of greatness. Just a touch though, since there was still a lot of greatness to be found.

Bryan Danielson vs. Jon Moxley

PAS: Wrote this up for The Ringer  . Easily one my favorite matches of the year.

MD: Phil's covered this already and at length, but I'll lead with this: with Punk and MJF, I saw the strings. I appreciated the work and effort put into them. I liked most (but not all of them), but there was never a moment in the match that they weren't clear for everyone to see. It's 2022. That's ok. But.

There were definitely strings in Mox vs Danielson. There were parallels. Mox went for the big clothesline twice before hitting it. Danielson focused on the ribs for a time. They had parallels towards the end with the submissions and the specific flip over counters. They had Danielson and Moxley both use the hammer and anvil elbows and the repeated kicks to the face. There was thought put into this, but there were also absolutely zero gaps to be found.

There were strings because there had to be strings because not all of it could have just been intuitive, but you have to exhume them after the fact, a dry listed out post-mortem at the brains behind the heart. Because this match was all heart and all emotion and all intensity. Every second of it had both guys completely on, completely in the moment, driving forward. If Kingston vs Jericho were a series of moves and moments that all fit the character and all made sense and all hit hard, this was a twenty minute primal scream, airtight blood, and violence, and technique. Danielson, over the last few weeks in interviews, likened this level of intensity to being as close to god as he could possibly be.

Mox wrote an entire book that espouses his philosophy on wrestling and life and you can watch it play out on screen in his matches. With Mox, it was the early egging on, hands behind his back, the headbutts, the burst of energy when he finally hit the clothesline. With Danielson, it was that moment after Mox kicked out of the flying knee, when he just shook his head again and again and again, horrified that he didn't win but elated that there was more to come. Horror and elation sums this one up pretty well as a viewer too.

Darby Allin/Sammy Guevara/Sting vs. Andrade/Isiah Kassidy/Matt Hardy

PAS: Perfect palate cleansing match in between the Moxley vs. Danielson and title match. Just 13 minutes of car crash spots, including two of the crazier garbage spots I can remember (and shockingly neither included Darby, the rare match where he is out nutsed). The stage dive Spanish fly through two tables was so psycho that it really should have been saved for a different match where it could stand out, the level of difficulty on that spot was wild, one one wrong inch could have gone very wrong. Of course Sting diving off of a balcony through two tables was totally wild, the stacked tables meant he didn't have to fall as a far, but that is an insane thing for a 60 year old guy to do, what a treat this Sting run has been, he has just been perfect.

Read more!