WWE Evolution 10/28/18

ER: Nita Strauss and Lizzy Hale start us off with some shredding, which is a cool touch, but I am already a bit worried that every single woman who is on this show is going to be called a trailblazer and a groundbreaker. Which is fine. But it feels like they say this about everyone, which makes them come off more like them talking about how inspirational it was for someone in a wheelchair getting pushed over the finish line of a marathon.

Trish Stratus/Lita vs. Mickie James/Alicia Fox

ER: Lita and Trish are Team MOB here, Mesh OverBoard. I know a little about fashion, and it's weird for Lita to want her outfit to have an intentional whale tail. Bliss/Fox/James definitely smoke them with their Queen of Hearts attire. And a lot of this is really James and Fox doing an excellent job at setting up offense for two non-active wrestlers. They're both really great at stooging; Fox has been the women's division bumping MVP for a couple years now at least, and James has had one of her absolute strongest wrestling years ever, and I think her contribution in getting Ronda over has been really undersold. Here James handled a 2 count kickout as well as some of these great Meiko kickouts we've seen in the MYC. I really thought they were giving Trish and Lita a quick feel good win do go a different way after Bliss was no longer involved. After a fairly one-sided run of offense, Lita misses the ALMOST GED STUDENT OF THE SKY moonsault to allow our favorites to finally control. I wish James and Fox got more control though, as it was good but still made them feel way inferior to two women who aren't going to be around much. Lita and Trish wrapped things up way too neatly, the end stretch could have used a couple more momentum shifts, and with Bliss on the floor there was no need to have Trish and Lita be so dominant, overcoming essentially three women with very little trouble. Fans were into seeing Trish and Lita, so if the point of the match was to give them a strong showing leading to a double comeback, then it was a huge success. I'm pretty sure they aren't planning on that though.

ER: Just noticed Beth's Bull Nakano shirt and I want it.

Battle Royal

ER: Big battle royal with practically every single WWE women's wrestler returning. We get Molly Holly, but throw in Layla and Bull Nakano and this PPV gets 10 stars for me. Molly still looks exactly the same. And I loved Iiconics telling the old timers that they were going to throw them over the top rope and back into obscurity. It's also funny how Tamina is lumped in with the present since she's just been around for almost a decade, and was in WWE longer than most of the women in "the past". Who actually would want Tamina on their side, though, is the predicament. Carmella is dressed up as an all time great GLOW worker, love the gear. Torrie Wilson takes an unexpectedly big bump off the apron from a Mandy Rose knee, and Rose eliminates Deville too. If Rose gets the win here this will be the best. They are really desperately trying to Make Tamina a Thing. She won't ever be a thing. There is literally nothing they can do that will make people interested in seeing Tamina. She is 40 years old and she has been doing this for a decade. I totally forgot about Zelina and liked the stuff with her at the finish, LOVED Nia's huge press slam to eliminate her, chucking her far into Tamina on the floor. They were giving Moon some big moments and when she eliminated Asuka I really thought she'd be winning, but am excited to see Nia back in the title scene.

Toni Storm vs. Io Shirai

ER: This was about the level of match I was expecting from these two, and just makes me more annoyed that we didn't get Meiko/Ripley. This was fine enough, and you could tell both busted ass and wanted to have a really good final, and they were able to pull out some tricks that nobody got to use in the regular tournament. Shirai hit a moonsault to the floor, and Storm gave her a German suplex on the apron, don't think we got a top rope to floor or apron spot in the 8 MYC episodes. So if so I liked that they mapped things out to be that way. They didn't do anything wrong here, really, only it was a structure that I'm really bored with, as it was basically the structure of a lot of 2018 wrestling: we're in a war, a finisher gets kicked out of to a shocked face reaction, both have moments where they can barely get to their feet but are up on offense a moment later, there's a strike exchange in the middle (and Shirai just doesn't have very good strikes. Dawn Marie had better strikes. Shirai's might be closing in on heel Torrie Wilson. She's probably above face Torrie Wilson), a big move hits knees; it all looked pretty good, it all just felt way too familiar. I do agree with them that Storm has potential to be a big star, so I fully get why she was season 2 champ.

The Riott Squad vs. Natalya/Sasha Banks/Bayley

ER: While watching this Rachel shows off her gamer dork knowledge and says that Liv Morgan should go as (Liv) Morgana from Super Puzzle Fighter II, saying she already has the pink hair and just needs a black bodysuit. She says this will solidify the 30-and-Up nerd fan category, which I told her is the last category of fan these girls would want obsessing over them. Those are the guys who would show up to her house with a knife concealed inside a teddy bear. This match was also decent enough, and was getting great reactions from the crowd, but just felt like a longer than normal Raw match, and there were some pretty rough spots like Sasha barely tumbling to the floor with a flip dive, or a really dumb spot where Natalya puts the Sharpshooter on Morgan and Logan at the same time, even though Logan alone is larger than Natalya. Plus this show feels a little too intentionally feel good, 4 straight face victories and everyone having this weepy overly smiley ugly cry finishes for all of them, every face acting like they simultaneously won the Hunger Games and also were retiring from wrestling after the match. It's all a bit thick. However, Rachel thinks that a lot of the emotion the girls are showing post-match is genuine. She makes a lot of sense in her defense of why, and it genuinely feels like she's gee, Riott Squad really feel like a team they should run with, Riott has been impossible to ignore the last 6 months, they're just wasting so much time keeping Natalya inexpicably strong. Everyone knows she's the biggest heel on Total Divas, because she is awful but thinks she's the nice one. The Squad could be a way bigger deal than they are. Natalya  cannot. I liked the Squad launching Sasha into the barricade, liked Bayley's fast tope con hilo at the finish, but I wanted something very different from this.

Shayna Baszler vs. Kairi Sane

ER: This was a nice tough fight that went longer than I thought it would, but also made really good use of its time. It does require you to think that Sane could stand and strike with Baszler in an exchange, which is a bit much, but I think that while small Sane is still really good when she's using her body as a weapon, so it makes up for the overall size difference. Shayna dominated for much of this, but Sane never really felt out of it. Sane was valiantly getting beaten down, while getting in some stuff, but it felt like Baszler was always dominant. Baszler ran her into the steps, then we get several different nasty Baszler knee strikes, a cool as hell gutwrench slam, starts working over Sane's arm including a nasty stomp. Shayna handled the Sane strike exchange portion well, threw a kick at the arm to end an exchange, but ate a nice spinning backfist from Sane. I do really like Sane as cannonball, and she's convincing on a suplex, and we go into some bigger spots. Shayna drops her arm first over the top rope to the floor, Sane winds up hitting a hard crossbody to the floor, really smashing into Shayna, Sane takes a big bump into the crowd right into Shayna's squad. We get a big interference portion that I think they make work, timing it well enough and making it fit in. We get a really tight nearfall that fooled me, with Shayna locking in a tight rear naked choke and Sane rolling through like the Bret Hart/Austin finish. I could buy Shayna losing with that and it wouldn't make me upset. But Jessamyn Duke sneaks in a shot just behind the ref's back and immediately allows Baszler to lock in the clutch again. Both rear naked sequences were handled really well, by both parties. Baszler made it look like something that should finish a match, and Sane looking like a person getting choked out. I really liked this one.

PAS: Really great performance by Baszler. I don't think Sane is particularly good,  she is a stylistic daughter of Manami Toyota without Toyota's otherworldly athleticism. She can take a good beating though, and Baszler delivers one. That arm work was so vicious, that Sane should almost be out six months with surgery, rather then delivering offensive moves (the selling issues were what damaged their last NXT match, it wasn't as bad here, but still present). I just loved the way Shayna would manipulate the arm, the set up for the stomp on the elbow looked almost as painful as the stomp itself. The move where she hung her over the top rope by the arm was so violent looking, and I loved the mock salute afterwards. Some of Sane's offense looked ok, the plancha was nice, and I love a good backfist (and like an OK one, and this was OK). Finish angle sets up some cool stuff, although both Shafir and Duke have the same horse girl straightened long hair and thus are hard to tell apart, one should get a different haircut unless they are going to do Killer Bees tag spots. Still I am excited for a distaff Makai Club running shit.

Last Man Standing: Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch

ER: You know, I've never been a major fan of either, although Lynch has really won me over since the turn, and I really like how both of them are playing their face/heel dynamics. Charlotte is playing it up perfectly smug, cold bitch straight-facing those boos, snottily bouncing off the ropes to steal a little thunder from Lynch's name being announced. Lynch, the champ, holding up that belt knowing she's going to get cheered? I'm into it, and they have immediately got me into this match without locking up. They know exactly what they're doing. And this sauce has some heat to it. Both of them look downright pissed when the other comes out ahead and it is simmering fire.

But overall I thought the match was pretty so so. I thought it was overly sloppy, had an abundance of time stand still moments (and not just during prop set up moments), had some glaringly bad ref involvement, had weapon shots that looked piddly, and jacked a big moment from literally the last Last Man Standing match in WWE (and didn't do it anywhere close to as effectively). However, the reactions they got for nearly everything was tremendous. The crowd was extremely invested in this from beginning to end. There were some pretty nasty spills and the intensity was a plus at times, but for every intentional nasty spill (like Becky taking a back suplex into a big pile of chairs) there was something that looked bad, like Charlotte overshooting a moonsault and knocking over a table leading to Lynch landing right on top of her, and then both selling because neither knew what to do. We got a too long segment of Lynch lying perfectly still while Charlotte could do a convoluted figure 4 set up with Lynch's leg for a stretch of leg work that doesn't really go anywhere interesting. We got Lynch absolutely burying Charlotte through a table with a huge legdrop, but then we get a total repeat of Ciampa burying Gargano in anything he can do keep him from getting up, except Becky gently lays down several things on top of Charlotte and we get an odd ref count as Charlotte inevitably gets up before 10. I remember Ciampa wasting Gargano with these weapons as he buried him in them, and  this was just Becky tipping over a chair onto Charlotte and then placing things on her the way someone might see how many flip flops they could put on their sleeping cat to get the best Instagram picture. We get the cliché reaction of Becky being terrified when Charlotte feebly stands up from the rubble, and Becky eats a spear really nicely, but Charlotte fights back with a bunch of weak looking cane shots and middling chops (I've said before that it's a shame she's forced to cosplay her dad as she's really clunky with a lot of her Flair cosplay offense). The fans were still fully along, and I'll give them credit for that, and I was happy Lynch kept that title and Charlotte really flew through that table to the floor...but this whole thing I thought was decent enough, but underwhelming in a lot of ways. It's possible I missed some nuance, but I was pretty stunned to see some of the hype that was being thrown on this, as I thought there was just too much awkwardness to ignore.

Nikki Bella vs. Ronda Rousey

ER: Now this totally owned. I thought the layout was super smart, the use of Brie was smart, and Ronda's selling was awesome. Match starts with Ronda completely toying Nikki, showing her several ways that she can toss her ass over elbow and break her arm, repeatedly letting her get up after having her likely beat. And as you're wondering if this is just going to be a total Ronda mauling, Ronda eats two of the best shots to the ringpost you've seen, I mean full Lawler, just fantastic looking post shots on the floor (and another great one inside the ring) and the spends the rest of the match shaking off the cobwebs. Ronda made those post shots so important, not just by making them look as great as they did, but really treating them as a big deal throughout the match. I had just watched a match with several potential big moments that could have been treated this way, that were moved on from pretty easily. Seeing Ronda taking the postings so seriously, and really turning in an impressively evolving sell throughout the rest of the match, was a real treat to watch. Nikki takes over and Ronda feels like she's in it but also struggling to stay focused, working like she got her bell totally rung and went spaghetti legged and was now fighting from behind. The Bellas throw her around ringside, into the barricade, Nikki hits her big kick off the buckles and locks in an abdominal stretch, Ronda misses a huge crossbody when it looks like she was possibly turning it around, all of it was handled really well and turned what could have feasibly been a 3 minute match into an exciting 15 minute match, great turns and build. Brie finally gets hers when Ronda rolls through an ankle pick into a fireman's carry (and I LOVED how she did it, playing up her dizziness and looking fully unsure if it would work, relying on muscle memory, awesome spot), and when Brie has to reach too far over the ropes to stop it, Ronda uses that leverage to her advantage and also drags Brie in to dispose of them both. Brie gets tossed over the announce table and we get an awesome nearfall as Ronda takes a nasty Alabama Slam and the Rack Attack; easily could have seen the match ending there. But Nikki goes up and Ronda rolls through shakily (which, seeing as how she was selling during that rolling fireman's carry, easily could have been more of the same selling paying off those postings) and yanks that arm. I thought this was completely awesome, a really terrifically laid out match, and a killer main event. I cannot imagine this match being better than what they gave us.

ER: A fun, fresh PVV, if a little overrated. But I liked the concept and it was nice not having to write up a Rollins or Ziggler match. Nikki/Ronda was white hot fire, far exceeded my already high expectations, and we dug Baszler/Sane as well. Both land on our 2018 Ongoing MOTY List.

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WWE Extreme Rules 2017 Live Blog

1. Kalisto vs. Apollo Crews

ER: These pre-show matches almost always deliver, which makes sense as they're a combination of low expectations with guys seemingly trying to get noticed. Kalisto hits an Aerostar-esque 450 from the middle rope to the floor, hopping from inside the ring to the rope on the outside, and crashing senton style into the standing Crews. Awesome. And then he follows it up with another springboard and crashes spectacularly when Crews enziguiris him on the way down. Back in there are a couple of slightly mistimed spots, but all is saved when Crews takes a gorgeous tornado DDT and later hits a huge pop up Samoan drop and a flawless standing shooting star. Kalisto kicking Titus off the apron while hitting the Salida del Sol in one motion was a nice touch to the finish.

2. The Miz vs. Dean Ambrose

ER: First minute or so is total dullsville, and then suddenly something wakes up in Dean and he starts throwing stinging chops on Miz and a huge lariat that sends Miz super fast to the floor. Okay, we're doing this. Miz is great trying to goad Dean into using a chair, and Miz hitting an apron DDT looked real good. Both men tighten things up with Dean actually trying on a couple kicks to the stomach (something he hasn't put effort into in over a year), Miz hits a great dropkick in the corner, Dean levels Miz with his flying elbow to the floor (great timed bump by Miz) and this is definitely better than I was expecting. The fight over the figure 4 is pretty lackluster and I hate that the rebound lariat hits 90% of the time. Finish was logical but couldn't be seen as satisfying to anyone, as ending a match by arguing with the referee for 30 seconds before being hit with a finisher is just unsatisfying. Still, match exceeded expectations.

3. Alicia Fox/Noam Dar vs. Sasha Banks/Rich Swann

ER: Really liked the early Fox/Sasha tangling, Alicia going for a tilt a whirl only for Sasha to reverse to the Banks Statement looked really great. Goddamn do I hate Michael Cole constantly given the directive that black babyfaces "love to have fun!" It's a dumb as hell line that they keep going to, and it never sounds convincing and always sounds insulting. Thankfully the fun hating women get in to break up a pin and yank arms in nasty ways. Sasha hits her pretty spectacular double knees off the top into Dar on the floor and Swann plants the phoenix. This whole thing felt like an inconsequential pre-show match, but was perfectly fine for what it was. Dug Team Swasha's post-match dancing.

ER: I have no clue who Elias Samson is, but shitty guy with an acoustic singing original songs is some pretty immediate heel heat from me. It feels like more of a college heel gimmick but it works as a guy who plays open mics and works 12 hours a week at a coffee shop. Michael Cole almost makes me spit out my coffee after the song, with the hilariously mis-delivered line "That sounds like something that should be on The Ghost of Tom Joad!" Nothing like dropping a reference to Springsteen's worst album, which is also over 20 years old. That's his go-to stark singer songwriter album reference!? Compare Samson to fucking Nebraska or something if you're going old. Shit, do I now have to go back and see if GoTJ has gotten better with age? Whatever, Cole's line could not have sounded less cool. Nobody reacted to it. It was amazing. "That sounds like a cut off of No Jacket Required!!" he says in his voice that sounds like he's recording a video game soundbite. 10 stars.

4. Kendo Stick on a Pole: Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss

ER: Well this couldn't have been more disappointing. Did Miz/Ambrose go way too long and this just had most of the middle cut out? The hype video was longer than the match! I don't tend to use terms like "bury" but damn did this feel like a "Spirit Squad get sent back to OVW" moment for Bayley.

5. Cage Match: Sheamus/Cesaro vs. Hardy Boys

ER: Both teams go for escapes right away which is like the least interesting way to work a team cage match, but Cesaro does look awesome running across the ring, leaping up the ropes and springing to the top of the cage. Jeff hits on of the best lariats of his career on Sheamus. Cesaro does the Scott Hall "Bad Guy" pose. Sheamus is the only one saving this with several painful looking bumps into the cage. he really has no problem flying over the ropes into that cage in violent ways. The escape attempts don't do much for me and I'd much rather see violent asskickings and guys getting thrown into the cage, but they win me over once Jeff is dangling from the side of the cage while Cesaro is holding on to only his arm. That looked great. The psychology of team escape cage matches just never makes sense to me, as it seems like the heel team should just let one of the faces escape, and then just kick the shit out of the remaining face for 10 minutes and walk out the door. If they had let Jeff escape 10 seconds in, this could have just been both of them teeing off on Matt with Jeff unable to save. It all just makes no sense. Jeff coming back in to do a dive off the top makes confuses me even more. So is he back in the match? Is he unescaped? Cole says so, and I actually like that. THAT makes me more interested in this. And that rule totally saved the match. Cesaro and Sheamus giving Matt such a beating that Jeff reenters the match, which leads directly to them losing, is a great finish. Matt dragging Jeff for the door while C&S climb over was really well done.

6. Austin Aries vs. Neville

ER: I hate how high Neville cuts on missed clotheslines. Aries is freaking 5'5", he can duck a normal lariat. This gets good once Neville goes after Aries' left arm. Graves is good putting over how Aries is a southpaw and this is going to take his most important weapons away from him. The kicks to the arm look great and the fight to the ring ropes was quality. They lose the magic pretty kick when Aries grabs a guillotine with that same arm that's been beaten to a pulp. Do you know how hard your arm has to work to hold a guillotine? So I did not like that, but then Aries crashes hard on a missed dive and Neville hits a picture perfect red arrow, so I can't complain too much. Still, other than some Kendrick, it doesn't seem like I'm missing too much by skipping 205 Live.

7. Bray Wyatt vs. Samoa Joe vs. Seth Rollins vs. Finn Balor vs. Roman Reigns

ER: I wish they had found a 6th man, odd numbered matches are usually the pits. This is okay I guess. There's a lot of movement, so that's something. Bray is doing a nice job of not ignoring the people just lying around selling, always throwing in a kick or stomp whenever he passes one. This is pretty predictably a mess, but the fans have been engaged the whole time which doesn't always happen in formless multimans. They even counted along to Roman's corner clotheslines which made me smile. Roman/Joe do an absolutely terrible phone booth fighting spot. My god those were ugly punches. Does Rollins aim a couple feet past his opponent on every dive on purpose? All of his dives end up looking like really painless slingblade clotheslines. It has to be intentional. At least Bray throwing Joe into a tope looked nice (even if the tope was ugly). This is apparently "Extreme Rules" but it takes 18 minutes for a chair to get involved. How is that possible? The big moment in a lot of these matches is the go go go spot where one guy hits a finisher, then gets leveled by someone else's finisher, and so on. But since this match was tornado style they had already basically been doing that the whole time, so when they went into that mode it felt pretty anticlimactic. Having Joe against Lesnar is at least a new match, so I'm interested, despite not being very interested in current Samoa Joe.

ER: Overall the PPV over-delivered, though Rachel was most excited for the Bliss/Bayley match and that...was really weird. That's like the match that happens before we find out Bayley got a wellness suspension.

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WWE Clash of the Champions 2016 Live-ish Blog

1. Alicia Fox vs. Nia Jax

I liked the little build we got to this one, as Alicia flipping out on Jax in the hallway seemed like it had an unexpected moment in it, with Fox seemingly accidentally smacking Jax in the face with a box. You look at the reactions of both when it happened, and I genuinely think it was an accident. But it lead to that super violent shove and I was interested in seeing a match. I really liked Fox not long ago when she was a big bumping heel, but almost right after I wrote something praising her work she got buried in 6 mans and wasn't really face or heel. She was just around. And this match went just about as it should. I love monster heels and Fox was given just enough, and I really liked how they transitioned to Jax finishing her off. Fox was smart and jumped her with kicks, but I loved when they went into Jax hitting her with bigger, more damaging kicks. Jax tossing Fox around was great, as Fox has these long limbs that make her ragdolling look even better. She's also just a good ragdoll bumper in general, so it's almost disappointing that this basically ends their feud. I could watch her get tossed around at least a couple more times. But Fox's comeback crossbody was great, loved how Jax leapt into it. Also love how they set up Jax's butt splash in the corner, with Fox slipping out of the Samoan drop and falling back into the corner, only for Jax to be on it. Fun opener.

2. New Day vs. Gallows & Anderson

Damn this was really good! It's one of those wonderfully constructed hot 8 minute tags. It's short enough that nothing stupid needs to happen, but long enough that it feels like it has some substance. Nobody has time to deal with their shortcomings, it's just a hot match that keeps the crowd up. This may have been Anderson's best performance in WWE so far. He really came off like a badass whose moves all ended with an exclamation point. That spinebuster was sick. And the match was obviously tightly constructed, but had a nice chaos to it, with interference and brawling on the floor not being the moment the match breaks down, but being integrated nicely into the match. Big E looked good as usual, both teams clicked, this was a real nice "opener".

3. Brian Kendrick vs. TJ Perkins

Well TJP clearly has a barely rejiggered version of the best parts of Mega Man 2 theme, and I can't help but flip out for that. And WWE putting up the purple ropes for this match is an awesome attention to detail. Phil and I each compared Kendrick in the CWC to Finlay, so it's appropriate he's the one who gets to bring Finlay's great apron skirt trap back into play. I'm picturing Finlay blessing him with the spot backstage in a gruff but touching moment. Perkins is kind of awkward in this one. His double chickenwing just looked like Kendrick fell on top of him with all of his weight. And then he whiffed on that neckbreaker (but Graves had a nice cover for it saying him drug Kendrick down by his hair). TJP hits a wild rana off the apron that sends both men splatting. I think Kendrick's scrappiness is kind of a good way to cover up for any accidental sloppiness. He does some stuff that's unpolished, throws some timing off, it adds an element of uncooperation without ever coming off unprofessional. There was an moment where they abort an Irish whip and it landed in a neat moment of "guy changing his mind on a spot vs. guy just shifting his timing to keep opponent on his toes". The match overall was a step below the CWC stuff, but still plenty fun.

4. Sheamus vs. Cesaro

Cesaro comes out dressed like a badass maitre'd who is actually just a hitman disguised as a maitre'd. I will never have a moment in my life where I look that cool. I love both of these two but weirdly liked the very first match in this series more than the others, and that was buried on a pre-show. Cesaro seems weirdly light in the first half of this. His uppercuts had a little less mustard, that crossbody landed like a Petey Williams crossbody, and that 619 should never see the light of day again. AND THEN THAT HAPPENED. THAT happened. Cesaro takes one of the most grizzly bumps in wrestling history, and the look of fear on his face after his spikes himself on a dive was horrifying. And WWE make sure to show 5 angles of it and it keeps looking uglier, keeps looking more like something a man shouldn't live through. I assumed immediately they would call an audible and just end on a count out. And somehow they didn't. Somehow it kept going. I wake up some days with a kink in my neck just because I slept wrong, and here Cesaro just basically leapt into the air and  landed on his head. We had a swimming pool growing up, and a diving board. And there was a sticker on the side of our diving board with a cartoon man diving into an empty pool, with a red circle and line through it. And when they showed Cesaro's dive in slow motion, he was in the exact same position as the man jumping into the empty pool. But somehow things continue and the crowd's disbelief leads to the crowd getting way into this match, and the drama seems huge afterwards because it doesn't even seem like Cesaro should be walking anymore. I had no problem with the double count out, because after that dive it's like the rule book went right out the fucking window. This wasn't either man not wanting to get pinned, this was two dudes fighting and not caring about a count. Great stuff that all built from a very, very scary moment.

5. Sami Zayn vs. Chris Jericho

Somehow the slight facial hair has massively improved Jericho's look. He went from looking like old lesbian Denis Leary to more of a Timothy Olyphant type. A massive improvement. And his walk to the ring is very much perfect. The ring work and execution isn't the great in this, but it feels nicely laid out. Jericho is just really bad at taking offense at this point. He essentially bails on Sami's flip dive and baaaaarely catches that through the ropes DDT. Sami wins me over by appropriately selling his genitals and groin after missing the yakuza kick in the corner. The blue thunder bomb was a big moment and Sami added an extra spin, but I thought the finish was extremely lazy with Jericho just standing up and hitting the codebreaker. We can do better than that, right?

6. Bayley vs. Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte

Not a big fan of three ways but I dug the way the early part of this was worked. I must have missed why this is No DQ though. Sasha and Charlotte match up really well, loved how Sasha bumped face first into the bottom buckle off a Charlotte kick. Bayley seems like she's been disappeared for 6 minutes. Sometimes Charlotte has a really goofy way of getting into position for the next spot. Like she's just doing a zombie sleepwalk. It's weird that it's No DQ but Dana Brooke has only interfered one time. Shouldn't she just be working this like a tornado tag if it's No DQ? Charlotte is just being booked like a beast throughout this whole thing. No move can hurt her, she's hardly needed Dana's interference despite being 2 on 1, and she gets big spots like that moonsault onto both women. You would never know the Bayley to Belly was used as a finisher, because Charlotte didn't even take a moment to act like a move had been done to her. Bayley was just a total afterthought in this whole match. Gone for much of the middle, never made to look important at any point other than the first 10 seconds. This got an insane amount of time and was just a total mess.

7. Rusev vs. Roman Reigns

This was a little deflating, as I really like Roman, but the whole thing was handled so poorly and obviously by the announcers that I just couldn't get into the match. The end felt inevitable. No matter how good Rusev looked, all you would hear about was just how brave Roman was for surviving, or how "Roman just needs to...." or "Is this Roman's moment..." It just sucked all of the drama out of everything for me. Though I was genuinely surprised by the big reaction to Roman's match winning spear. Crowd really exploded for it. I liked the Lana yanking the ref false finish, but I just didn't think this was one of Reigns' better performances. He seemed sluggish throughout, seemed tentative on offense.

8. Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Owens

I'm really liking Owens in this, liked his shit talk as he caught Rollins' leg and kicked him, liked him dropping the elbow out of the apron and working a snug horizontal chinlock. I get a little burnt out by PPVs though. I don't think I have proper stamina for them. I don't know if it's how WWE paces their shows, or if I can only just watch 2 hours of wrestling at a time, but matches just take more to get me involved in them the longer a PPV goes. The crowd seems with me. They all seem super quiet. Owens is trying. That missed cannonball looked great, and the gutbuster off the top was wild, and Owens is so wanting to get ANY kind of reaction from the crowd that he even does crotch chops before missing his announce table senton. That feels barely one step removed from people using a stunner on 1999-2003 indy wrestling shows. And I'm so sick of that moment every PPV where one or all of the announce team goes "Not like this!" This match felt an hour long.

It seems like all of these PPVs start out exciting and just get more and more arduous the longer they go.

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NXT Episode 220 5/8/14 Review

1. Emma vs. Charlotte

Man Jason Albert tries way too damn hard on commentary. He comes off so phony and forced. And it needs to be pointed out again just how tragic Sasha Banks' hair was during this period of NXT. It's like she had shorter hair, but got extensions, but only in the back, so she had a weird mullet that was made to look even weirder by her always parting it down the middle. It's a terrible terrible choice that has somehow lasted for a couple months. And this wasn't much of a match. Charlotte had a couple of really nice bridging pins, including the one for the win, but not enough happened in this one to make it worthwhile.

2. The Legionnaires (Sylvester Lefort & Marcus Louis) vs. El Local & Kalisto

This is the Kalisto TV debut, and El Local is Del Rio's former ring announcer Ricardo Rodriguez. I've never seen Louis before. Lefort is a guy I really like who never gets a ton of offense. But he takes offense really nicely, and here he really leaps into all of Kalisto's flip offense. Leaps into his high crossbody and springboard tornillo, leans temple first into a couple really nice Kalisto rolling kicks. Local is a little slow but did a fun sliding stop when thrown into the buckles, and turned that into a nice Pele kick. I couldn't get any sort of read on Louis. But a nice debut for Kalisto.

3. Camacho vs. Captain Comic

Comic is Jody Kristofferson, who I forgot was in WWE developmental at one point and has since come back to the Bay Area indie scene and is the present APW Champ so they can hilariously brag on Facebook that "If Kris Kristofferson shows up to your show, you've done something right". Yeah. You booked his son in the main event and gave him the title. It's not like he just showed up at a wrestling show to check out the talent. I dig Camacho so it's nice to see him get a squash win. He throws a cool pump dropkick to Comic's stomach dishes a nice over the shoulder powerslam, and admittedly wears one of the worst Converse Chuck Taylor designs: camouflage. Yuck. Just go with a plain canvas color dude. The camouflage Chucks are like barely a step above the Flame print ones.

4. Alicia Fox vs. Alexa Bliss

Another debut with Bliss likely being some sort of fitness model. She certainly doesn't know how to do wrestling offense, wherever she came from. She throws a real ugly mistimed dropkick and then hits a bad handspring standing moonsault that sees her accidentally land in an awkward kneeling position. Her elbows to get out of a headlock land nowhere near Fox. Man this girl does not look ready for TV in any way. Fox, however, looked awesome. Fox hits a real mean northern lights suplex, big tilt a whirl backbreaker, and really cranks in a side headlock. Bliss was lost as hell so Fox had to lock on a few chinlocks and headlocks to save things, but Fox made every single one of them actually look painful. Of course Bliss gets the upset, but man did she look bad.

5. #1 Contender Battle Royal

Not too many ways to determine a #1 contender for your main belt are more dumb than a battle royal, but I'm a weird sucker for royals so whatever. Tons of guys are waiting in the ring, but Mojo Rawley, Sami Zayn and Bo Dallas get entrances. We have a Curt Hawkins sighting! I mean, the sighting came when he got immediately eliminated, but Hawkins is still a guy who is around and doing things! I do like Albert putting over Yoshi Tatsu, saying he has legitimate Royal Rumble experience so he should be a favorite in this. But damn this really isn't much of a battle royal. It felt more like just filling time. Bo Dallas got a couple nice shine moments, getting to eliminate Mason Ryan and Big Cass, the two big guys in the match. But the whole match is used to set up a Breeze/Zayn/Tyson Kidd triple threat with HHH coming out to announce it and acting like a triple threat is the best possible match we can get. I would rather see a singles match between any two wrestlers in the battle royal, than the triple threat match we're going to get next week. So is HHH or JBL the Commissioner? Can anybody from WWE come in and make matches? Even Brodus Clay was able to come in and put himself immediately into a title match.

Weird episode this week as I do like seeing debuting wrestlers, but the two tournament matches fell flat, and the battle royal was uneventful and poorly filmed, and sets up an undesirable match.


NXT EPISODE GUIDE

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Arbitrary WWE Match Thoughts

It feels weird being the guy championing workers within the Divas division. Usually that spot is reserved for creeps and...well I'm not sure anybody else has really supported or defended the Divas division aside from creeps.

But I really enjoyed the Paige/Alicia Fox match from the 4/14 Raw. I've been a fan of Fox for awhile, but most of the time you talk about Divas matches you have to qualify any praise with "...for a Divas match." Whenever I've mentioned a decent Divas match to Phil he immediately thinks I'm working some sort of short con on him, as if getting tricked into watching a Divas match will end with some stranger popping up and slapping him. across the face. But there's no con. Sometimes I just enjoy Divas matches.

And at this point I feel comfortable saying that Alicia Fox is actually really damn good at pro wrestling. Her offense really works for her. I loved her triple spinning backbreakers here, and Paige is super pale so every backbreaker she did would cause Paige's back to get redder and redder. It's like in a video game boss battle where you can tell which areas you've damaged. Fox also is great at talking trash, like a female Mark Henry. It never seems like she's distracting from the match, or using it to stall. Most WWE workers can't be bothered with trash talk as I'm sure it could take your own brain out of the match. But Fox does it so naturally. WWE is a promotion that requires almost all their heels to work a chinlock into a match to be used as a babyface comeback spot. Doesn't matter if the match is alotted 2 minutes or 12. So in a promotion full of people required to use this spot, Fox clearly has the best chinlock in the promotion. She really throttles Paige, making it look like actual damage is being done, not just using it as a comeback device. She also really yanks Paige around by the hair whenever she picks her up for more offense. Most wrestlers use the "hair pick up" as a way to signal to the other person that they want them to get up, but Fox really grabs Paige by the hair and yanks her up. Paige has some cool offense too and I really dug her three straight short arm clotheslines, but Fox is also really great at selling and putting over offense. Fox's stumble after getting hit with a Paige mule kick was great. Paige has a cool submission finisher, but even cooler was Fox not just offering her arms up and getting into position for Paige. Fox struggles to keep her arms out of reach and Paige really has to work to lock on her position. It made everything look so rough.

The match was only 3 1/2 minutes, but didn't really need to be longer. It was really great as is. The little touches Fox has been putting in her matches remind me of things Finlay would do. He wouldn't let opponents rest on their laurels within a worked setting, never went through the motions. And now Fox is doing that same stuff. She's already selling strikes based on how each one looked, not how each one was supposed to look. All the struggle, all the flair, it's all coming together.

Am I saying Fox is Finlay? No. That's crazy. But if you miss Finlay (as we all do), then she's a really good female, black, leggy Finlay substitute. I'd never thought I would actively look forward to watching a Divas match, but at this point Fox matches are well worth your viewing time.

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NXT Episode 208 Workrate Report 2/11/14

1. Natalya, Bayley & Emma vs. Alicia Fox, Sasha Banks & Summer Rae

Oh weird. I saw Bayley wrestle a few times in Bay Area wrestling promotions as Davina Rose and dug her then. She was always a heel there, though. This was a really fun trios. All of the stuff between Banks and Natalya was really good. Banks bumps around for her in that fun Diva way where they don't look totally trained and it makes the bumps look nastier. She and Summer Rae play chicken nicely, both sprinting away from Natalya while Natalya gets to throw in her comparative power offense. Most of this is Bayley getting worked over by Fox and Rae, with Fox's work being much better. Rae threw a nice butt bump after choking Bayley over the ropes (and then had a really embarrassing slow crawl to the hot tag), but Fox is really great at building to a babyface comeback, as she really yanks in chin locks and actively taunts faces (also threw a mean Northern Lights with a crazy high bridge). Emma is kept out of this until the finish which is probably best. Emma did a nice sunset flip and I do dig the Emma Lock. She just doesn't do much for me yet.

2. Aiden English vs. Colin Cassady

Cassady looks a lot like Edge and wears a gigantic goofy gold chain. He's billed as being almost 7 feet tall but I don't know how accurate that is. I'm not sure how big English is so I don't really have any context for that height. Cassady seems alright but didn't get to do much. English looked really good here, with a nasty spinning neckbreaker, nicely elbowing his way out of a fallaway slam, and running hard into Cassady's (nice looking) punches and big boot. This was a short match and I assumed the guy being billed as 7' would go over, but was pleasantly surprised to see English get the win.

Big promo setting up Sami Zayn vs. Antonio Cesaro for the NXT live show a couple weeks after this. I have not seen any of their NXT matches, but I've seen Claudio vs. Generico live and was a huge fan of that, so I'm excited to see them again. Cesaro has obviously been one of the best in the world for some time, and while I was never as high on Generico as most, it's clear that these two match up nicely. I dig how they're setting up that big live show. Although seeing Zayn wearing a t-shirt under a baggy blazer made me want to see Cesaro dismantle him. Regal on commentary puts over how incredible their last match was and how excited he was to see the rematch. Regal is so fucking stellar on commentary, and a big key is because he doesn't force talking points, doesn't sound like he's shilling anything, everything about him sounds like he's just giving his genuine thoughts. Michael Cole is the shits as he just spews constant buzzwords and shouts in soundbites. It gets fucking unbearable. Regal is calm, doesn't shout out his phony sounding cliches, and just seems like he enjoys what he enjoys. Renee Young is really great too and sounds like she knows her stuff. Her interactions with Regal are gold. Although god is the Simpsons "Choo-Choo-Choose Me" line the only one anybody in WWE knows? Feels like I've heard it three times on TV this year.

3. Tye Dillinger vs. "Moonchild" CJ Parker

1 minute match which is a real bummer. There's no real reason to do 1 minute matches these days. Especially disappointing as both guys looked good. Well, Moonchild doesn't look good, he's horrible to look at. He looks like a man who refuses to leave an Umphrey's McGee show because they may come out for another set. "I'm not leaving until I get a Trenchtown Rock cover!" Dillinger hits the mat and looks great on it, and if Regal is putting over your matwork on commentary then you're doing something well. Things pretty much end here with Parker hitting a nice senton, airplane spin and then the most awesomely ridiculous palm strike called the Third Eye, which is basically a Shoryuken.

After the match Parker gets on the stick and breaks out some insanely great hippie heel work. "You people boo me? I should be booing you for what you're doing to the polar ice caps!" Talks about how his modified Ford Fiesta gets 40 mpg and how he always practices recycle/reduce/reuse. Yes! This motherfucker joins the loop and I want more heel hippie dirtfuck. "I was the guy picking up garbage at Reggae on the River, and now I'm the ones picking up wins in NXT!"

4. Luke Harper & Erick Rowan vs. two guys

Surprised to see the Wyatts here but their appearance is just a brief kiss, as Harper blasts one guy off the apron with a beastly running elbow and this doesn't really go 30 seconds. Just a mauling.


COLLECTED NXT REVIEWS

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NXT Episode 207 Workrate Report 2/5/14

So I am almost 100% unfamiliar with the NXT goings on. 207 episodes!? How the hell is that even possible?? Have I literally missed 4 years of NXT? Or does it work like weird TV season numbers and this is just the 7th episode of season 2. But yeah, I have haven't seen much of NXT, is what I'm getting at. I've seen the occasional Hero or Ambrose match and that's about it. Never watched a full episode, but I like the fact that exists in its own little bubble, in the same way that Saturday Night or WorldWide used to exist. So in a way this is like WWE B-Sides. I still wish there was a show like Velocity, but this is probably the next best version of that. So, what the hell, let's start reviewing NXT weekly shows!

1. Sin Cara vs. Alexander Rusev

First time seeing Rusev here. I dig the guy's old school powerlifter build. He....doesn't seem that good. But I'm not shocked that he's getting brought up to the main roster. He's not very good at hitting his marks. Cara had to shove him into position at one point when he was taking too long, and he backed too far away from a Cara moonsault press so it ended up hitting him like a backflip dropkick instead. His offense is pretty dry, with mostly power stuff and some random kicks peppered in. He did do a running dropkick at one point that looked really great, really felt like a John Tenta style dropkick. He works this match too evenly, and at one point holds Cara in an armlock for far too long. I get that most short WWE matches need to have that pointless moment where the heel holds a face in some sort of a rest hold to build for the comeback, but it felt more pointless than usual here. Needs more impressive power spots. Plus his average height will be exposed when on the main roster.

2. Alicia Fox vs. Emma

Fox has been the best Diva for some time now, does all "between moves" stuff a lot better than most Divas (and plenty of male workers). Nice stomach kicks, actually makes restholds look like she's working a hold, really nasty wristlocks that looks like she's manipulating joints, cool reckless forearms from the mount. Emma does not seem very good, and I'm already starting to turn on her as she's getting mostly tepid responses but announcers on the main brand and now NXT are putting her over as somebody the crowd just goes batty for and pretending more than 30 people in the crowd are doing her dance. Here she takes a year to do a reverse rolling cradle and just as long to try and set up the Tarantula. I do like her doing the Emma dance into her finisher submission, but most everything else she does doesn't look good.

3. Sylvester Lefort vs. Mason Ryan

Oh hey it's Mason Ryan. Forgot about him. This goes about 45 seconds but is done the way a squash match should be done. Dug Ryan's hotshot into a running big boot. Good follow through on the boot. Would have liked to see some more from Lefort as I dug his hiked-high tights and beard. His strikes didn't look very good though.

4. Aiden English vs. Tyson Kidd

English looks like tall muscular Screech, and when he's wearing that beret he looks like Screech from that Saved By the Bell episode where Screech was in a chess tournament, and Zack and Slater make a bunch of money by running a gambling ring to capitalize on Bayside's sudden and never-again-mentioned chess fever!! Kidd looks really good in this, missing a crossbody in the ropes, throwing nice kicks and doing a cool rana that sends English face first into the turnbuckles. Kidd gets the Blockbuster for the win after English is distracted by some guy named Big Cass who threatens to steal Screech's lucky beret. Couldn't get a great read on English but he threw some great Bret Hart style falling elbows.

5. Adrian Neville vs. Corey Graves

Neville used to be PAC (they still use his moniker The Man Gravity That Gravity Forgot) and Graves is the former Sterling James Keenan. Boy WWE developmental names leave a lot to be desired. Graves has a real good look, like an indie rock Chris Isaak. PAC's flying is always impressively effortless.  I cannot imagine having that much knowing control of my body. I mean I have alright balance and don't trip over my own legs when I go running, but seeing PAC hitting a running tope/moonsault press (picture what starts as a dive over the ropes but adds a twist in the middle to land like a moonsault press) is pretty stunning Most of this match is Graves working over Neville's leg, which he does well. I always like the DDT done to the leg, and he gets a real high cradle on roll ups. The guy looks like he has to actually kick out of pins, not just get let out. Neville is really great at selling the leg, too, which makes the leg work better. Crowd doesn't seem to give much of a shit though. Neville is still good at selling while doing his moves, which is not something you see often. He eventually makes his comeback and hits his killer twisting shooting star off the rope. I liked what happened in the match fine, everything looked solid. It wasn't terribly compelling, and it should have been. The story of "guy gets weapon taken away by wily opponent" usually gets people into it, but they certainly were not here. Now I know nothing of the history, or how the crowd normally responds to these two, but I would have expected them to be a little more receptive to this.


COLLECTED NXT REVIEWS

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The Unironic Enjoyment of a Divas Match

Alicia Fox/Aksana vs. The Bella Twins WWE Main Event 1/22/14

Wednesday was a pretty normal day for me. I listened to Jay Reatard while driving to work, and also while at work. I had a meeting with my boss. I made toast. I had an apple. I spent time dicking around on fangraphs. I dealt with  Fixed Assets tracking. I spent my lunch break reading a magazine in my car while listening to John Fahey. I used words like "sub-object" and "ledger". I drove home from work while listening to Pharmakon. I played with my cat, Tacos, and kissed my girlfriend, Rachel, when I got home. This is a Wednesday for me. Or a Tuesday. Any weekday.

But then I eventually watched and enjoyed a WWE Divas match. I enjoyed it enough to text Phil to go out of his way to watch a Divas match (I assume Phil has not watched a Divas match since Aja Kong vs. Chaparrita Asari). I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a Divas match. It may have been a LayCool match. It was likely a Layla match of some sort. Or a Cherry match. It was probably Layla vs. Cherry.

We start with Aksana making fun of Brie's hair, and when she goes to touch it Brie slaps her hand away and elbows her face, then dishes out nice knees from the clinch. Brie also has a shockingly nice missile dropkick. But when Aksana takes over is when it gets real, as she throws a nice shot to Brie's stomach, and then drops three really great elbows. Fox tags in and Brie does a nice sly drop toe hold on the advancing Fox, which Alicia takes great by spilling dangerously face first into the ropes. Aksana cuts off Brie's attempt to tag out with another nice elbowdrop, and holy cow does Aksana throw great knees at Brie's face in the corner. Alicia Fox works one of the most compelling chinlocks I've seen in months (which is painfully obvious when most matches in WWE have to include a face-in-chinlock spot as the transition to final babyface comeback), and then locks in a nasty Can Opener. She seriously looked like she was choking her out! Fox really knows how to bump for Bella offense and really throws herself into bumps and spills, running especially hard into a missed turnbuckle charge. Nikki comes in with some flashy indy offense (I take your face and kind of snap it into my knee!) which is made to look not actually preposterous by Fox, who whips into that knee and snaps back. Nikki finishes it with a sick sit-out torture rack, with Fox ragdolling afterwards.

Okay. A couple things:

~This match was like 3 minutes long. It shouldn't be impressive that 4 wrestlers went 3 minutes without screwing anything up. It was likely more impressive because Main Event sucks now. It used to guarantee a long Cesaro match but now it's always got a super long Kofi or R-Truth match instead. Divas matches are going to look better after Kofi or R-Truth matches.

~There were some weird things that I would call out in a second in other matches. Aksana, for as good as she looked on offense, took one of the worst bumps off the apron I've seen. She fell off the apron like somebody dipping their toe into a cold swimming pool, and then getting pushed in unexpectedly. She also, midway through the match, got obsessed with adjusting her onesie over her butt. You know, the way Samoa Joe used to constantly pull his trunks up over his tummy. Well Aksana was constantly tugging on her trunks like that. Major pet peeve from me, for whatever reason. I can handle rope running, but don't adjust your gear too much! Derp derp.

Whatever. Fun Divas match on a Wednesday.

PAS: I did not watch this match.

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