WWE WrestleMania 39 Night One Live Blog 4/1/23

 

1. John Cena vs. Austin Theory

ER: Just once I want one of those Make A Wish kids to go into business for himself. Eventually, one of them has to realize that they have full diplomatic immunity, a Get Out of Jail Free card that has unlimited uses. One year we're going to get a MAW heel turn and that kid will burn out a legend. Cena and I have the same exact bald spot and he has the exact same Miller's Outpost jorts that I had in 6th grade, so clearly I'm pulling for him. Cena sells Theory's punches very generously but I like how Theory bit his way out of the STF. Theory throws stomps with the same physical movement as Randy Orton, but doesn't have the finishing strength of Orton's stomps. Cena's stumbling and staggering is what's making this. The way he staggered down to a knee when Theory jumped on him during the sleeper, but I'm not sure any of it was as good as his Namaste prayer hands before doing the five knuckle shuffle. The fistdrop itself was thrown better than he typically threw it over the last decade. 

2. Street Profits vs. Alpha Academy vs. Ricochet/Braun Strowman vs. Viking Raiders

ER: Otis looks fatter since last I saw him, which shows he's a man who truly understands the Grandest Stage of Them All. You want to play to the back row? Fatten up my boy. Ivar's dumb spin kick hit harder than I expected, Erik's knee lift looked good, and the fucking Doomsday clothesline was fucking murder. The tandem powerbomb on Ford looked great but goddamn replay that clothesline. They really should have built longer to Gable hitting the rolling German on Braun. I mean it looked cool, but how cool would his Dead End have looked towards the end of the match after already trying it a couple times? His missed splash is full commitment and so is Ivar's missed moonsault, and capping it with a treacherous shaky Braun top rope splash that hits was sweet sweet icing. Braun's splash looked like the kind of splash we don't get enough Today: messy, and performed by those who do not normally go to the top rope. The tower powerbomb spot was unnecessary and beneath what they had been building to, even if I liked the twist of Ricochet riding Ford down like Clark Griswold hanging onto his ladder. They had been doing a good job mixing up pairings and they took too long tying up every man. But Braun's long stretch of ringside shoulderblocks being blown up by Dawkins made this great again. Dawkins hit Braun as hard as he could too. That shoulderblock would have given me a lifetime injury. Then Ricochet hits the most gorgeous springboard shooting star press balls first into Dawkins' face. For a wrestling company who forgot how to film wrestling a couple decades ago and has seemingly got even worse at it, they set up and shot the shoulderblock and shooting star perfectly. Ford's pin breaking and match winning splash was good. This was good. 

3. Logan Paul vs. Seth Rollins 

ER: I haven't watched any WWE program since Elimination Chamber, but the hype video for this match has made me more excited than I've ever been to see a Seth Rollins singles match. I also know really next to nothing about Logan Paul, only that I've loved everything he's done in pro wrestling. I don't think I'm ever going to understand what Seth Rollins' vibe is supposed to be. Is he like if Willy Wonka was a farmer's market jock? A hipster mom who is obsessed with being the one in the friend group who keeps up with trends? Is he just a guy who misses a big stomp by about 7 feet while wearing attention pants? He's the kind of guy who wears big eyeglasses without needed eyeglasses?  

I like how Logan Paul uses his boxing sparingly. I bet most in his position would do feet shuffling Shane McMahon bullshit. Paul understands to use 1-2 punches to mean something, doesn't have enough of a Wrestler Brain to do unnecessary strike exchanges. He makes his punches into actual turning points of the match. Rollins' triple suicide dives look better than normal, because Paul walks into and towards each one. Usually Rollins' opponents just stand still waiting for contact, leaving Rollins to just lightly bounce off, looking like he was trying not to hit the guy he was trying to hit. Paul walked into these and took growing, appropriate bumps backward in reaction. Find me Rollins dives that look better than these and we'll see a pattern with the opponents' catches. The KO punch nearfall was great and Paul's high leap into the sitout powerbomb was like prime Juventud. 

Bye Bye Bitch is a line that can be pulled off by John Early, but it can't be pulled off by Seth Rollins. High end nearfall after the pedigree and Paul's missed splash through KSI, who I have heard referred to as Logan Paul's Business Partner. Michael Cole calling for YouTube Phenomenon KSI to Capture Another Viral Moment is a 0.6 on the Fallon/Hilton Scale of poor shilling. Literally every nearfall in the match worked great, and the only thing wrong with the match is the company's insistence on keeping the old tired stars at the top at the expense of the young hungry rising stars. I wonder what the actual percentage of WWE in-ring employees are actually pissed off about how much better Logan Paul understands wrestling than they do? Or do they not actually realize this, because they don't understand wrestling as well as he does? 

4. Dakota Kai/Iyo Sky/Bayley vs. Becky Lynch/Trish Stratus/Lita

ER: "You gotta take the WWE Universe out of this early," is such a sucky commentary sentence. Becky Lynch is better as a heel because she's better at taking offense than doing offense, so the match being structured around Damage Control cutting her off from a low energy Lita was smart. She hung in for Sky's nice springboard dropkick. Lita always manages to look like she's never actually gone running in her life. Lita has the worst body language of anybody in the ring so it's a weird choice to keep such an extended heat segment on her. Trish is more explosive but also sells way better. Her reactions to Bayley kicking at her and talking shit would have had the right kind of glowering eyes reaction. Lita just kinda flops around like a fish, like she's trying to make a baby laugh. Trish's assisted handstand rana to the floor gets some set-up excuse because the finished product and Kai's crash into Sky looked good. Hats off to Trish for running face first into Bayley's baseball slide too. After praising the camera work in the tag scramble, I gotta wonder whose decision it was to keep the camera on Lita during this match's breakdown. Mae Young's stomach kicks never looked as bad as the kicks Lita threw here. If someone wants to volunteer their time to a Segunda Caida project that I personally do not want to do, your feature here can be documenting every single part-time model WWE ever employed who threw a better stomach kick than Lita. Remember all those Diva search competitions that I assume some people watched? How many of them were actually worse than Lita here? I can't imagine many were. Dawn Marie and heel Torrie Wilson only look like Fujiwara-level legends in comparison. 

5. Dominik Mysterio vs. Rey Mysterio

ER: Seth Rollins can wear all the try hard entrance jackets he wants, it will never be as good as Dominik's shitty spiked Hot Topic Alucard coat and his entrances will never be as good as Dominik wearing that coat out of an ambulance in his father's mask. Jeers, however, for Rey's American Made-era Hogan gear. That's like the second worst Hogan era next to the N-word era, or the Nick prison phone call era. I think those were the same Hogan eras. Rey goes to the belt whipping way too early. My mom used to use a wooden spoon, but you don't START with the wooden spoon. Even she knew that you throw a slipper or flip flop before you go to the wooden spoon. This isn't as good as it should be, and that's too bad. Seeing them doing armdrags and some of these other exchanges feels like them working some other match, where they were still tag partners but were forced to work 5 minutes of a gauntlet against each other. Dominik's mom held back too much on the slap, even the water thrown into Aaliyah's face didn't sting like it should have. It gets better when Dom really starts killing his father with a Michinoku driver, but there weirdly isn't any kind of father vs. son vibe. It just feels like a Finn Balor Smackdown match. The late match interference shouldn't be the thing adding energy to your match. Santos Escobar shouldn't be getting the big dive in your father/son match. This was a let down. 

6. Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte

ER: I think Charlotte is leaning more into her Drag Queen era and I hope she keeps leaning harder. Has that been the entire point of The Queen run and I've just missed it? I haven't watched for a long time. I love David Arquette's wrestling, and Charlotte could be a really good Alexis Arquette. Her puffer vest robe is incredible, like she's the Cruella de Vil of litigious Aspen ski slope house wives. The shoulderblock exchange looked good, and Charlotte full assed the lariat that sent Rhea to the floor. That's a good sign for this one. Charlotte's knife edge chops do read more like a drag routine strike than an actual knife edge chop. The wrist action is all wrong, which makes it either bad wrestling or too on-the-nose for a drag routine. Rhea is a strong body vice and I liked the way she fought up from her back out of it. Rhea working as poor man's Dump Matsumoto is really good. The Queen Smells Blood sounds like an incredible drag revue, and Charlotte's chops suddenly come to life during her comeback. I like how Rhea staggered and knee buckled to her feet to lift Charlotte, and the head spike DDT reversal looked awesome.  Their showdown strike exchange stunk, but Rhea's stomach kick and foot stomp to stop the nonsense was a good way to snap out of it. I think I like them doing a messy 2003 GHC Title match the longer they do it, but it started iffy. Once Rhea dropped Charlotte on her face with a suplex it looked like Rikio/Takayama. One of the biggest appeals of Takayama's brilliant early 2000s was that he understood the value of a horse faced weird body wrestler getting suplexed on their face. The big nearfalls worked even if the moonsault press is still going to be overshot. Middle buckle Riptide with a high folded pin is a good 2003 NOAH finish. I'm happy Rhea won this. The shot of her holding the belt with the Actually Cool WWE Babylon Oscars stage lording over her was a great visual. 

7. Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens vs. The Usos

ER: This starts real slow and I'm not sure Jey's side headlock was good enough for the slow start. Sami's big bump to the floor and Jey's elbow suicida kick it into gear though. Jimmy is better cast as the guy who cuts off the ring from the apron than the guy controlling the heat, so not all of the Uso control felt like it was working. Owens' hot tag was necessary, swan dive and frog splashes a nice kick back up. This had a tough act to follow but I'm surprised at what a Regular Match this feels like, even with Owens' dives. Sami's big splash felt a little anti-climactic after Owens had already done like 5 variations of that same thing, but this crowd loves Sami and that's cool. I just wish it didn't feel like such a major step down from where he was at Elimination Chamber. I didn't feel the drama of all the superkicks, and there was a mistimed Sami kickout that was supposed to be BIG but the crowd reacted dead silent. The reaction was there for the 1D kickout and Jey was good enough at the in-ring monologue portion of the evening. Some of it felt too I'm Sorry, I Love You and I knew they had the potential to hit there I'd rather them lean into more ass kicking. All of the Usos tandem superkicks were really well timed. They threw a half dozen of them and they all managed to connect at the same time. That's a really impressive consecutive success rate on that. This is easily Michael Cole's best call of the night, as his energy - which usually feels like an alien trying to blend in - actually captured the mood the more the crowd began to Believe. 

Best Matches: 

1. Logan Paul vs. Seth Rollins

2. Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte

3. Tag Scramble

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Smackdown Fatal 4-Way

15. Dolph Ziggler/Robert Roode vs. Rey & Dominik Mysterio vs. Otis/Chad Gable vs. Street Profits WWE Smackdown 4/9

ER: I love when they pull off one of these fast paced quick tag escalating move matches, reminding me of the best kind of 2000s indy spot tags. Every time someone new entered the tag it felt like the wrestling version of the Soul Train dance line, each person making the most of their screen time, and yet this never felt like anyone was trying to upstage anyone else. This gave us a great sampler of dance combos the whole runtime, never lingering on one specific pair. Every combo was great, every team got cool moments. I kind of hate when Ziggler has a good match like this, where he has a cool attention to detail, and Roode has that same attention to detail in a match like this (and is less hateable than Ziggler). Both keep working from the apron when they're not in, and both do a good job cutting off the ring. Rey has looked a bit washed this year, one of those things I haven't wanted to admit, and I've been waiting for months for a REY performance. 

This really felt like a classic Rey performance, so the reports of the middle aged legend's demise have been exaggerated. His misdirection was great, and his timing was as excellent as ever. He looked like he was directing traffic in there again, and back to being the guy you had to have your eyes on at all times. Dominik is coming along well, and is improving nicely for being maybe the most prominent guy thrust straight onto TV since Maven. The spot where his dive was caught by Otis, and his big frog splash that lead to him getting squashed on a save where great moments. Dawkins had a great hot tag, Ford bumped around huge for suplexes and a Roode tornado DDT, Otis was a great base with a couple of big power moments like his 360 lariat and that pinfall save I mentioned. I also loved Ziggler going for the Famouser and the faces he and Roode made as he was caught, like when heel Ricky Morton would get caught trying a headscissors. The build throughout was great, and this whole thing felt like an overproduced HD AIW tag. 

PAS: This was pretty fun stuff, sadly a bit chopped on TV. I liked the opening with Gable working Dominik's arm, would have liked to see 90 more seconds of that matwork. I haven't been watching much WWE TV in the pandemic, but man is it great to see Rey again. He looks just as fast as always, and I really want to see more of this Otis feud they are talking about. The bang bang at the end was fun too. Montez Ford gets crazy height on all of his dives, and that frog splash was killer (although it kind of showed up Dominik's a bit). I agree that this had the feel of an AIW four way and I really miss those. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE TLC 2020 Late Blog

My sister is moving in a month, so I spent the weekend with her packing boxes and moving things into her garage. A stunt show PPV I can have on in the background and pay partial attention to sounds like it could be fun. Not super familiar with the card so I'm kind of going in blind, which hopefully leads to being pleasantly caught off guard. Am very excited for Sasha/Carmella.

Daniel Bryan/Otis/Chad Gable/Big E vs. King Corbin/Cesaro/Shinsuke Nakamura/Sami Zayn 

ER: Bryan keeps shaving the sides of his head higher and higher, and he continues his career trend of Always Having the Hair of a 10 Year Old. Otis is wearing a Vader singlet, and this match looks like something that can't miss on paper. These 8 guys in a 2000s NOAH setting would light things on fire, so I'm high hoping this one. And it was actually really good. It had a great Coliseum Video feel to it, the way it was worked, and the way it was 4 babyfaces vs. 4 heels and they're mostly aligned because of being either a face or a heel. Zayn was avoiding Big E and running around the ring and hiding like Jimmy Hart, and it was balanced well with quick tags and a brief cool down to build to the big finish run. Corbin is good at working cool down (that's an actual compliment) and good at inserting himself in the hot finish, Bryan glues all this together to build to the big Otis hot tag, and the finish stretch move chaining all looked good. Cesaro hits this awesome deadlift Dr. Bomb and just lets him go, Corbin hits a great spinebuster on Otis, we get our big showdown between Big E and Zayn and Zayn gets caught. It's all very satisfying pro wrestling. 

AJ Styles vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: I really liked this, but thought the ladder stuff really took away from the match at points. I liked the first 8 minutes when no weapons were used the best, with Styles bumping big around the ring and ringside. He took hard hits into the buckles, got dropped ribs first a couple times on the barricade, got thrown over a table with chairs on it as if he were in a fight in a closed bar, and it was great. Setting up tables and climbing ladders changed the pace of the match, which they made up for by building to hard landings (Styles gets tossed hard on a ladder and thrown over the top through a table at ringside), so everything looks like it really stings. But I think the ladder climbing really took me out of it as the climbing doesn't feel anywhere near as climactic as had they just been wrestling. Miz cashing in his briefcase and then doing the slowest possible climb really made this stip feel stupid, though I think the fight choreography when they got to all three fighting on the ladders was good. Styles working over McIntyre's leg lead to a couple nice moments, like the calf slicer through the ladder. Styles' bump off the ladder to the floor looked sick, and Miz was made to look like an absolutely tremendous fool. Also, I do not need Miz in the title scene and him losing in this kind of fashion is perfectly fine for me. A match that lost me, but one that also had a lot of good (front loaded), but needed an editor. 

Sasha Banks vs. Carmella

ER: I thought this was really good, as good as I was hoping it to be. It had a couple twists and turns, made Carmella look like a worthy challenger, built to a feverish home stretch, one of those matches where a better opponent helps bring out the best parts of Carmella. Sasha is really great at this point, so much that it always bums me out that none of this is playing in front of live crowds. Sasha feels like she'd be the biggest thing in 2020 wrestling if there were live shows. I'm really glad this was a straight match and not worked under the TLC stip, a straight match was the right choice and the drama over nearfalls and submissions is more interesting than climbing and falling. The involvement of Reginald was good, loved him catching Carmella on a dive, ducking Sasha, and tossing her into a headscissors. And the payback was well played late in the match with Sasha hitting a meteora and then getting blasted by a couple superkicks for a genuinely strong nearfall. I thought Carmella could actually win it there. Sasha was great at running into everything Carmella had, and both kept things real close on sunset flips and small packages. It's really nice seeing such fine execution on pinfall attempts. I loved both of Carmella's submissions, both of them look like sick lucha maestro subs and are both somehow locked on just as smoothly. Both of those subs would look awesome applied by Negro Navarro or Blue Panther, but it also looks awesome applied by Carmella. It makes me happy. This whole match was fun throughout, really made me smile and enjoy the wrestling the whole time. A very tight build and explosive finishing stretch, just another great Big Match Sasha performance. 

Shelton Benjamin/Cedric Alexander vs. Xavier Woods/Kofi Kingston

ER: This was good, and kept up the same fun energy the entire rest of the show has had so far. This has been a very fun show, everyone feels like they're trying a couple new things in the ring, it's made things feel special so far. This tag was no different, and it made me realize that I appreciate that The Hurt Business actually seems to be growing as an idea. I like that it wasn't one of those ideas where WWE seems on board with it for two weeks and then loses all interest, instead it seems like they're letting it grow naturally. It's given new life to Shelton Benjamin and made him as relevant as he's been in 15 years. If they want to they could let him ride out a couple more years as an upper card tag worker and he'd be great at it. It's also been good for Cedric Alexander, who instead of being one of several similar 205 Live babyfaces, his style feels more focused for being in a regular tag team. Both teams worked a fun fast big bumps style, and kept the match to a brisk 10 minutes for maximum impact. I love how definitively Hurt Business won the belts. There was no bullshit, just a dominant team catching the champs. Benjamin hit a pop up superplex that should play in Hurt Business highlight videos, and the Alexander backcracker finisher is the premier use of that overused move, and shows that an overplayed move can still be used effectively. I'd love to see the Hurt Business continue to evolve and even add members, and would love to see them have a run with multiple title holders in the stable. This whole match really got me into the potential of them, so I'd call that a huge success. 

Nia Jax/Shayna Baszler vs. Asuka/Charlotte

ER: I was just thinking the other day that I had not missed Charlotte, and yet I was happy to see her here just because I will take any new face in this match rather than see Lana in the main women's program on Raw. It's poorly executed, it's obvious, the commentary screams all of the bullet points for how we're supposed to feel about it all, but I just don't want Lana in these matches anymore. That said, I wish it didn't feel like Charlotte was immediately Superwoman again. It felt like she just ran through Nia and Shayna, and while I admit the Nia/Shayna hasn't lived up to its potential, they should be a pair who are on Charlotte's level. You can make an argument for the surprise factor, they weren't expecting her, but they just got outmatched and I didn't like that. Asuka automatically feels like the smaller banana with Charlotte around, as she had to spend the match being the one to take a lot of Nia and Shayna's offense. But Asuka is good at that and I liked the way her hip attack took Nia out of things at the finish. Still, this match played into my worse fear, that we're going to go straight back to a Charlotte-dominated scene. 

Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens

ER: This didn't feel far off, but this didn't work for me. I didn't like the Uso interference, and Uso made to look as effective as a manager only type. There were a lot of big spills - maybe too many - yet I thought several of the biggest ones were shrugged off in the name of blocking someone's climbing. I was not into the slow climbs no matter how earned they were with big bumps. I thought going to Uso for every big Reigns comeback came off weak, and that it would have been perhaps more played out to have the interference happen in only one big moment instead of all through the match, but it would have made for a better match and made it appear Owens had more of a chance. Roman going through the barricade looked fantastic, and was one of the best looking "leveled barricade" spots they've done. No matter how I felt about the match layout as a whole, I thought that looked the best. Owens took some nasty falls into ladders (Roman too), but these slow paced Roman walking matches have not been my thing. 

So, I had a really fun time watching this show, and the vibe seems to be turning with those last couple matches, turning into something much less good. The tag match and Reigns match were not my thing but I also don't think they were bad. BUT. It feels like I would be tossing a lot of goodwill and pleasant memories right out the window if I put myself through a Randy Orton/Fiend match. I mean what kind of psychopath would I have to be to do that? 2020 has been difficult enough, why would I put myself through all of that? Let's go out on a high note, and be happy for the fun stuff we did get. 

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New Footage Friday: LASARTESSE! VAN BUYTEN! AMERICAN ALPHA! REVIVAL! CAIFAN! HECHICERO!

Rene Lasartesse/ Double Trouble vs. Franz Van Buyten/Scott Casey/Boston Blackie CWA 1992

PAS: Lasartesse vs. Van Buyten is an all time legendary feud and this maybe one of their last matches opposite each other. This is a really fun house show style six man tag. Van Buyten kind of reminds me of the Bullet as he has some really fun old man dancing, monkey flipping and armdragging. Lasartesse struts around the ring like a total dipshit and stooges great. Really enjoyed Double Trouble, they were a totally ok roidy tag team, sort of a heel High Voltage and they should have had a solid WCW Pro run. They even hit an assisted flip senton, which is a pretty big highspot in 1992. Lots of jazz and misdirection and hot tags, exactly the way you want to see legends showcased in their declining years.

MD: Watching this, I'm not sure what I'd rather see, late 92 Lasartesse vs Lawler, with both of them letting every little moment sink in or 92 van Buyten doing that headscissors (or step over) counter to the armlock vs old man Nick Bockwinkel. We've hit a point where we've seen that counter so many times that it doesn't quite have the same zing it did before, but if it was really so commonplace, why aren't people using it in matches today? Anyway, this was a tale of two matches. About midway through, with a lot of heat and antics, Van Buyten (who had played FIP very well for a lot of the first ten minutes, so well that the camera angle/video quality really wasn't a problem at all) and Lasartesse (who had played a chickenshit old heel during that time) both got tossed and it settled down into a 2 on 2 with Casey as FIP. It was still perfectly fine, with everyone playing their roles well, but we were here for the old guys so it was a shame to see them gone. It built to a pretty amusing spot with one Trouble tied up and the second one used as a battering ram, before the heels overdid it and everything got thrown out.

ER: When I saw the name Double Trouble I thought we were getting the two big fatties who worked WWF house shows in exchange for selling the Undertaker name rights. That said, I really liked them and yes they definitely seem like a team that should have showed up somewhere. They broke out fistdrops and flying headbutts and high legdrops, each took big bumps over the top to the floor, an unexpected Drive-By, set up a great spot where one of them got tied in the ropes and the other gets rammed HARD into his gut battering ram style and yeah these are probably the actual better Double Trouble team. I liked how the first half played as the old man Van Buyten vs. Lasartesse showdown, and the second half was our Double Trouble showcase (or at least a showcase for me). Van Buyten was still super spry in his early 50s and his early headscissors is downright majestic. Van Buyten had wonderful babyface energy and I adored all the mincing and posturing from Lasartesse, the whole thing was satisfying.

Caifan Rockero vs. Hechicero Poder y Honor 1/31/09

PAS: This is the earliest Hechicero match we have on video and we get to see him against probably his greatest rival in Caifan. This was really a treat, you could tell that they had kind of a touring match worked out, and this had all of the little beats you want from these two.  They had an opening llave section with a lot of very cool twisting leg locks, the rolling leglock submissions is a Hechicero trademark, and he breaks out a bunch of cool ones here. It build to a bigger near fall section with some cool arm trap slams, a big armlock triangle submission near fall by Hechicero and a nifty top rope springboard rana by Caifan. You could see that both guys hadn't fully developed their personas yet, there was a lot of mirroring that was cool, but didn't allow then to differentiate themselves, the way they would in later matches. It felt like what it was, two super talented young guys in a garage figuring their stuff out, our boy Rob Bihari dug this one out of his crate and it was really cool to see.

MD: This is a great little piece of history and I'm glad Rob posted it. We don't have a ton of pre-2010 Hechicero online. I wrote up their 2010 match almost five years ago when I was still figuring out lucha. That was a hair vs mask match with more intensity. This had a very different feel given the sparse crowd. Hechicero didn't forget they were there certainly, but this did feel a bit like a match in a bubble or an exhibition. They had all the time in the world and a thousand things to try. It made for one tricked out hold or interesting spot after the next. I think I preferred it once they picked up the pace because they were more actively trying to foil and counter each other there. Honestly, I think my favorite thing in the whole match was Hechicero feigning not knowing that Caifan had landed on the apron after getting hoisted over the top so that he could try to launch a sneak attack. It failed, of course, letting Caifan fly in, but the set up with Hechicero tapping his head and really milking it before going for the sneak attack turned a normal spot into something with extra wrinkles just like one of his tricked out submissions.

24. American Alpha vs. The Revival WWE 4/23/16

MD: It's a little bit hard to remember just how special those first run of NXT house shows were. They didn't get around to my part of the country until Fall of 2016, and by then, a lot of the match-ups and moments I had wanted to see before had been cycled out. Top of the list was probably American Alpha vs Revival. We obviously have a number of big matches between them, southern tags turned up to 11 style, but it's nice to see one on a smaller stage.

The first fall was basically all shine, super athletic with well coordinated, complex spots and reversals, with AA looking world class and Revival being just competitive enough to make it seem like Alpha earned it. There was a transition tease at the end (with Dawson swatting down Wilder's feet from the apron to prevent a German) which really stood out.

The transition was also the end of the second fall, a set up for a shatter effect so elaborate that it could have served as a finish in and of itself. The structure of 2/3 falls tags is always interesting to look at. We have so many from Portland specifically that there are great examples. I think my ideal is when the heels takeover at the end of the first fall and the babyfaces come back at the end of the second, with a reset and second bit of heat into the third, but having an extended shine through most of the first two falls and lean into the heat for the third was a fun (and very WWF/E) house show variation here. Alpha has enough stuff and Revival stooges well enough that it worked. There were a lot of little things to like too. Dash is underrated at working the apron. Dawson doing a twenty second set up for a slingshot suplex in 2016 is how you make a move matter. I don't care whether they were just playing along or not, the fan reaction to the ref missing the tag was just what you wanted, as was the Gable chant that followed and the pop for Jordan pulling down the strap (even if maybe you wanted a bit more for the actual hot tag pop). The crowd knew that what they were getting was special and unique. Glad it popped up now.

PAS:  This was a lot of fun, I could totally see going to an NXT house show and just being engrossed with what they were doing. I was really impressed by Jason Jordan in this match, what a bummer the ending of his career ended up being. He was totally explosive, almost like Doug Furnas with better amateur takedowns, some of the better popped hips on suplexes, a total treat to watch. The Revival have their shtick down, and are really good at filling time, which is a real skill for a heel tag team in a southern tag style.

ER: I have been to three NXT house shows and all of them have been great experiences, real high bang for my buck while being set in nice smaller venues (including a gorgeous old rock venue in the middle of downtown Sacramento). By the time I got to see my first NXT house show in 2016, neither of these teams was on the tour, and this match was better than any match I saw across three shows (with a War Raiders vs. Strong/O'Reilly match from 2018 being the closest competition). This felt like an actually fleshed out (and better) version of the fondly remembered Brain Busters/Rockers tags from 30 years earlier, without ever feeling like they were aping those matches. AA just felt like such a timeless classic babyface team, a team who moved so explosively that it felt like they could be responsible for getting casual fans excited about high dropkicks and tight armdrags and classic Morton/Jannetty style headscissors (that Gable himself doesn't even do anymore). Both of them - especially Jordan - had such pop in everything they did, and this is the kind of go go go I wish had caught on as a house style instead of the learned behavior horseshit we got instead. Gable was charismatic as hell, loved him hitting an axehandle off the middle rope on Dawson, rolling through and coming up swinging at Dawson on the other side of the ring; also loved him hitting a second headscissors on Dawson right near the opposite side of the ring and pointing at Wilder on the apron while before taking Dawson over. It was like he was waving to his buddy from the top of a rollercoaster. Both teams spent their time in control wisely, and Revival particularly feel like a team that can work an interesting 5 minute or 45 minute tag match on any given night. Down the stretch we even get a perfectly timed moment of Jordan finally getting a hot tag only for the ref to send him back to the apron and admonish him for not using the tag rope. This was such a good tag, and it felt like they had material they hadn't even worked through yet. These teams worked a ton of matches throughout the Carolinas, I have no doubt that all of them ruled.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Royal Rumble 2020 Actually Kind of Live Blog

ER: These PPVs start HOW early and go HOW long!? This thing had already started by the time I got back from freaking brunch and will end hours into darkness. But I think the card looks good on paper, and the Rumble has traditionally been a favorite gimmick of mine. Admittedly, I do not get as excited for the Rumbles as I used to. Even when I end up liking them (I remember really liking the 2018 Men's Rumble, for example), they have still felt very same-y the past decade. I'm not sure what it will take to freshen it up a bit, whether the answer is to move the concept forward or backward, but I'm here for it.


Sheamus vs. Chad Gable

ER: Damn this feels like a pretty big match for the pre-show. Maybe it's just because I'm very excited for the on-paper potential of this match. I've been a high voter on Sheamus and I think higher than average on Gable, and the pairing seems natural. This is Sheamus' first TV match in over 9 months, and it's a tough spot to be in for your comeback match: 75 minutes before the actual PPV starts, while people are filing into a large baseball stadium. And Sheamus *does* look rusty for the first couple minutes of this, mainly in the way he perfunctorily went through standing exchanges; Sheamus is a good wrestler, he's not someone who sleepwalks through missed clotheslines and rope running, but he was clearly a guy finding his steps, looking a little careful. They even start talking about ring rust on commentary (and after the match) which sounded like they were smartly covering by just admitting. But Sheamus knocks Gable hard to the floor in a fun violent way and the tone shifted to more stiff and confident from there. Sheamus worked like a more WWE-style Timothy Thatcher, bending Gable by the hand and wrist, kneeling on his head, pushing on his face while stretching a limb, even busting open one of Gable's ears. He also aims to cave in Gable's chest with 20 or so clubbing forearms, really getting that filing in crowd going the more the match went on. Gable fought back in cool ways, tons of foot stomps and hard elbows, and ever harder overhand chops. He threw a couple different overhand chops that landed loud and left Sheamus in an almost stunned laughter, and then he would go right back to nasty stomps to the feet. Gable hit a nice dropkick to take out Sheamus' knee, and Sheamus is a compelling limb seller who works in some nice knee moments. I really liked him catching Gable off the top rope and buckling his knee, leading to Gable spiking him with a nice DDT. The nearfalls were exciting, Gable broke out a cool Chaos Theory and it looked plausible that Gable could actually beat Sheamus in the latter's big return match. I thought this played honestly and was a real nice return match delivery. This was a real good "first match" from these two, plenty of cool ideas I wasn't expecting, and a nice reminder of what Sheamus can bring.


Humberto Carrillo vs. Andrade

ER: This had a lot of ideas I liked and what I thought was a great Andrade performance, but also thought it was one of those matches where Carrillo oversteps. Carrillo has a lot of fun ideas with sometimes iffy execution, and his best matches tend to be when his dance flourishes get reigned in. He was pretty free to try things here and Andrade is a generous base, and I do think we got a few too many dance sequences muddying up things (for a guy who likes dance-y missed kick reversal sequences, Carrillo isn't always great at them). But there was a ton of match that wasn't those kind of things, and Andrade put fun twists on a couple familiar Carrillo spots. I liked the fight over a crucifix pin, like the way Andrade can insert some struggle into moves that could come off too smooth. Andrade has great small stuff, which adds to matches like these: hard stiff leg kick to the stomach, heavy back elbows, sharp forearms to the jaw (he had one early that really snapped Carrillo's head back). There were also good believable nearfalls in this one (a nice theme for the show) and the pairing is really good when Andrade is running the show. The match ending springboard rana reversal was cool and there probably aren't many guys in the fed (maybe Cesaro?) who could have taken it better. This match also benefitted from Zelina Vega's fun ringside presence, a loud, active manager with always amusing reaction shots.


Falls Count Anywhere: Roman Reigns vs. Baron Corbin

ER: This was one of those matches where I started the match into it all, and got less interested every passing minute. Before the match, Corbin was carried out to the ring in his meh throne, and Roman jumped him during the entrance and threw around the guys carrying him. I was into it. Turns out, that would be my peak moment of interest. The match didn't really land for me. Sometimes it literally didn't land, as early on Corbin seemed to be leaning way out of strikes. The brawling through the crowd felt sluggish, the concept of brawling around an entire baseball stadium was hurt by keeping most of the camera shots too close. They may as well have been brawling around a civic auditorium for over half of the brawl. By the time we got to the interference from Ziggler, Roode, and The Usos, my interest was waning. By the time we get a porta potty spot I was more than ready to get to the next match. You go to the extremely stupid lengths to set up a fake row of porta pottys, you need to go the lengths of making the spot as stupid or as dangerous as possible. Either Corbin comes out of that thing covered head to toe in fake shit, or he needs to take a stupid bump through a row of toilets. They did neither. The match goes 22 minutes which was so much more time than it needed, and the few big moments (and Uso dive off a high stack of equipment, some impressive bumps through tables) didn't sustain the match. "These two have been through hell and back," Michael Cole says unconvincingly. Nope.


Women's Rumble Match

ER: Alexa and Bianca is an opening combo I can get behind. Stadium entrances make Rumbles infinitely cool, and when Bianca's music hit I said "Man I hope Bianca skips all the way down the long damn entrance," and she did, and it was great. Great Big PPV Gear from Bianca, killer black/gold combo with 10/10 gold glitter boots. Alexa's faces as Bianca danced were also great, so I am firmly on the side of this match. And a Molly Holly appearance is clearly only ever going to be a plus. Let's do a Backlund moment and keep Molly in there for the match. Lana is genuinely terrible on the mic, has no originality, stumbles over words, and isn't quick on her toes...but she clearly puts energy into it and seems to enjoy the role, and she plays a good dummy who isn't as smart as she thinks. And that kind of saves the act. Mercedes Martinez is a nice surprise. The Lana/Liv pull apart brawl felt better than it should have been. Mandy looked good in her first two minutes, getting into it with Nikki Cross and stopping her with a shoulderblock, nice running knee, and a slap that echoed hard in the stadium.

And goddamn I am into the comical Mandy fake elimination. She gets casually tossed by Alexa in what seemed like an incredibly underwhelming elimination, almost a punishment to Rose. She was thrown to the far side of ring from camera, meaning we didn't see her hit the floor. And when when the camera shifts to her side we see she landed perfectly onto Otis, who was weirdly laying flat on the floor for some reason. Otis plays it like a fetish, coming off like the world's largest Jimmy Valiant under a glass table. The fans reacted bigger than I expected to it, made a really odd spot come off great. The involvement of Otis on both Mandy and Sonya's elimination was amusing, but Otis had just started being fun yelling ringside encouragement to Mandy, and I wanted the bit to continue longer.

We hit a boring little stretch where Dana Brooke and Mia Yim and Tamina do that annoying modern Rumble trend of coming in and just running through your offense on several people, just a stupid string of ninjas attacking once at a time for trademark spots. Older Rumbles felt like they had more small moments where a guy enters and quietly finds a the most advantageous dude to go after. Tamina has the worst ring gear in WWE women's history, a terrible look, a terrible run of offense, just a clumsy bull in a Houston china shop. Her elimination is thankfully quick, with her taking a stumbling bump to the floor like someone falling for the first time. Once Tamina was gone, things picked up. I liked the Bianca/Alexa hair tug of war on the apron, and Naomi came back after 6 months away and had her greatest look ever, an immediate contender for greatest wrestling hair of the decade, obviously Naomi paying respects to Mr. Niebla in a totally iconic look. And she gets a gimmick moment we've seen before, getting knocked from the apron but leaping to the side of the barricade like spider-man. But whether Intentionally or not, she lands VERY low on the wall. Her feet were just a few inches off the floor, giving her almost no wiggle room. It looked several times like she might just give up and let them hit the floor. Her crawling up to the top felt like a genuine dramatic moment, and I don't care how stupid that sounds. Beth Phoenix apparently suffers a massive head wound at some point, as suddenly there is a huge spreading dark red spot on the back of her head, and it somehow isn't getting nearly the attention it deserves from commentary. Super excited to see Shotzi in the Rumble. We were wondering if it would happen as I know they like to debut fairly new workers like that, and when her name came up I popped. Santina stuff felt dumb and more than a little out of place but they didn't linger on it, which has been a strength of the match. Shayna's entrance run is great, but let me tell you: Not interested in how easily Charlotte dispatched Shayna. That's just dumb. Charlotte was in this match as long as anyone, and made absolutely no impression. Overall I thought this was a good Rumble match, veering into great at times. Finish disappointed me though, and I'm bored watching Charlotte point at the Mania sign. Belair's elimination was disappointing and didn't come off like a big enough deal, and Naomi's long journey back to the ring felt was undercut by her getting eliminated immediately once back. A Naomi Rumble return leading to a big Mania match would work, disappointing they went with such a bland choice.


Bayley vs. Lacey Evans

ER: Not a match-up that's super intriguing to me, and I think most of that is I have not been into heel Bayley one bit. And I don't think I'm alone, as the match played real cold to the crowd. The crowd still seemed to like the Roman match that I didn't, but this match was quiet. This was a better match than Reigns/Corbin, but it did not connect. Stuff looked good, but it needed Sasha making noise at ringside or some other element than them just going out and having a match. This was worked without history and wouldn't feel out of place on an episode of Main Event, and played like a match that would be considered a good match for Main Event. But it felt light and unimportant here.


Strap Match: Daniel Bryan vs. The Fiend

ER: This was slow paced, and the crowd was quiet, and I have very very little interest in the Fiend gimmick or the Funhouse stuff, and there are dozens of guys on the roster that I would so much rather see Bryan face on a big PPV. But I was into this. Bryan comes hard with punches to the head, but before long we get long sets of Fiend slowly whipping Bryan over the back and chest, and Bryan getting a bunch of ugly welts. I thought they made a very compelling match based almost entirely around whipping each other. Both guys knew how to throw nice strap shots, and Bryan added big bumps at key moments. Getting eaten alive by a lariat on the floor and running into the Sister Abigail nearfall are things Bryan does better than most. But they lost me maybe 3/4 of the way through, started overstaying its welcome, and then hit us with some lame character aspects of the Fiend. Bryan really got made to look like a chump, and the Fiend's revolutionary gimmick of just walking through shots and clowning people, has absolutely zero legs. Bryan tried to get people into it postmatch, tried to pull those strings, clearly doing as much as possible to put some sort of dignity to this ending. But man I'm pretty positive the Fiend sucks.


Asuka vs. Becky Lynch

ER: This one felt like a big deal going into the match, but Lynch has a way of turning feuds with potential into kind of boring matches. I don't know why she doesn't seem to connect, but her run of matches during her long feeling title reign have consistently underwhelmed. This didn't get the crowd response it could have and should have been better. But it was not bad, and I thought Asuka brought a lot of color to it. She had my favorite moment of the match, when she splatted with a nasty belly flop bump to the floor off a front suplex from the apron. She threw nice thrust kicks into Becky's face and threw herself enthusiastically into her offense. It had a good finish too, with Becky landing a kick to Asuka's stomach right as Asuka was going to mist her, making cartoonishly mist herself. It's a spot I can see working all through the territories and I liked it here.


Men's Rumble Match

ER: I'm into the idea of a full match Brock run. I don't care. People are tired of Brock, but he's a total freak and I'd love to see him wreck dudes for 45 minutes. And I think he has the selling ability to actually provide some dramatic openings along the run. Right out of the gate, doesn't feel like a necessary move to throw Rowan to the wolves so quickly. At least give his comeback some kind of chance of success, this felt undercutting. But it also kind of makes sense, because Brock *should* run through these dudes. Elias, Roode, yeah, Brock should crush them. Roode shouldn't be hitting a spinebuster on Brock, so hell yeah, toss these men! I am into this idea and into the execution so for. I'm already excited for who will be the first entrant to last until the next entrant, who will finally last long enough to have someone else distract Brock for a bit, and who might be the first guy who Brock actually *isn't* excited to see? This is a different way to book the Rumble, and I am into it. The answer comes quick, as Rey enters while Kofi is still in the ring, and the star power feels bigger and it feels like a bigger moment to see Brock manhandling these two. And when we build to Big E, Kofi, and Rey all swarming Brock, it's a full great sequence of early Brock vulnerability. Trouble in Paradise, Big Ending, 619, Spear, and Brock is just so great at taking finishers. And with a finger snap he tosses Rey, jumps off Big E to hit a superman lariat through Kofi, lariats E to the floor, and disposes of Kofi. Brock as the Royal Rumble Ken Jennings is great pro wrestling for me. The pairings are well thought out: The Shelton Benjamin stuff was amusing, Nakamura hit a cool sneaky spin kick before getting tossed (would have liked a longer pairing here, as that's a 15 year old match I'd actually love to see re-run), MVP is a decent enough nostalgia return and takes super huge bump off the F5 for a guy pushing 50, and Brock keeps making things better with his reactions to Keith Lee at 13.

Keith Lee vs. Brock is a great dream match, and Brock is so good at getting run over by Lee. Lee doesn't hold back, both guys crash into each other like an airshow disaster, and I lost it when Braun was 14. Those 3 are a 305 Live dream, and all the interactions came off like a sequel to Rampage. The only problem is I wish we got way more. Let the three of them throw out the next 6 guys and have them absolutely ruin a city's infrastructure in between. And I was really into the idea of Brock going to the final 4 at least, but how pro was McIntyre's elimination of him? Brock leaned cheek first into that claymore kick, and Brock's big bump to the floor while Heyman flips out was classic. But Drew isn't done many favors as they kind of just have him do exactly what Bock had spent half the match doing. It's a big spot for Drew, but it almost did him no favors to have him be dominant. Plus he gets the bum luck of a few dud entrances, Ziggler and Karl Anderson, people aren't gonna be into that. The Edge return is obviously a gigantic moment for many in the crowd, and while there are few returns that could have been less exciting to me personally, he's a guy the fans filling out a Texas stadium clearly want to see. Edge felt like a major deal, people were flipping out like they were on an Oprah's Favorite Things. But we've fallen into a rut of people I'm not interested in (Gallows, Orton, ugh these are the Raw matches I skim through) and they eliminate Riddle in a minute. That pissed me off. I do NOT have interest in Randy Orton & Edge dancing their age old dance, and this thing is screeching to a halt for me. Is it the show that's too damn long? Or the participants that got less interesting? By the time Seth Rollins hits the ring, the ring is nearly entirely filled with men I do not want to see in a long WrestleMania title match. The final 8 really dragged for me, though it got a little better with the final 4. Edge hitting a spear on Roman came off big, and Drew really killer Roman with the claymore. If this is the big McIntyre push, I'm curious what a Brock match looks like. I could see fans getting into Drew with some momentum behind him, so let's see where this goes.


ER: The show had strengths but a big weakness in just being too long. A lot of the wrestling was good while rarely rising to great. The very first match of the night was my favorite, and that wasn't a match that is going to wind up super high on a MOTY list at the end of 2020. I liked both Rumbles, preferring the women's one overall due to less drag and down moments, but the first half of the men's match showed it could have hit greatness. We had a lot of good individual performances (Bryan, Andrade, Asuka) in so-so matches, which kept the floor of the show high but the ceiling low.

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Matches from WWE Crown Jewel 10/31/19

What an uncomfortable Halloween treat we were gifted by WWE! I'm going to go through and try to cherry pick a few matches before Monday's inevitable RAW Tribute to Mohammad bin Salman episode, featuring between match pre-tapes of guys like AJ Styles saying "You can tell how much the people over there really love him, and respect how much he does for them."

Brock Lesnar vs. Cain Velasquez

ER: This was like 2 minutes of a great Bloodsport match when it should have pretty easily been at least 8 minutes of a great Bloodsport match. There was a lot of crowd anticipation during all of the early grappling, Brock backing Cain into the corner and Cain trying to sneak in shots, people excited for the first blow that would actually cause one of them to pause. And when Cain landed a hard knee to the body and followed up with a perfect head kick, Brock sold it perfectly (as Brock almost always does, even in his frustrating matches) and the fans sounded like they were about to see Brock lose in a punishing upset. But, a quick kimura happens and that's that. Obviously this was a disappointment, as this was a singles I was excited for the moment it was announced, and I'm not sure what it would have taken for me to be satisfied with a 2 minute match. Is this it for Cain in WWE?

Cesaro vs. Mansoor

ER: This was my first time seeing Mansoor. He was a Bay Area indy guy who worked mostly for a fed that I don't attend, but I am a total sucker for a big regional babyface. This is WWE forcing a connection the same way they've always done, except the fans in Saudi Arabia are not as jaded towards pro wrestling and they respond to the whole thing as if Mansoor really is the superhero representing them all. Mansoor was the local being propped up for cheap pops, again, but the fans treated him like the Riyadh God and it ruled. Cesaro threw and bashed Mansoor in pretty spectacular fashion, and Mansoor takes some pretty gross bumps. This match might have the best possible version of someone getting their dive interrupted with a strike, as Cesaro completely shifts Mansoor's momentum with an uppercut during his tope, but Mansoor legit just toped into Cesaro's uppercut and dropped, looked insane. Later Cesaro swept Mansoor's legs while Mansoor was up top, and he took a tough back bump on the buckle before whipping face first down to the mat. It looked fantastic. Cesaro got to show off a bit, basing for Mansoor's headscissors and tornado DDTs, but best of all was him hopping to the middle buckle and deadlifting Mansoor from the apron, launching him with a tremendous Karelin throw. And it lead to a huge moment at the finish where Cesaro went to do a similar throw and Mansoor reversed it to an impactful sunset flip bomb. This whole thing was really good anyway, two complementary dance partners - Cesaro is clearly the perfect type of opponent for a wrestler like Mansoor - but seeing all of the kids in the building absolutely living and dying with Mansoor put this way over the top for me.

Braun Strowman vs. Tyson Fury

ER: So let me say that before he got brought in to feud with Braun, I had no idea who Tyson Fury was. I still don't. I don't follow boxing, I'm unsure what his significance is to Saudi Arabia (wouldn't it have made more sense to use him on a big UK show?), BUT - and this is a big but - I LOVE when non-wrestlers do wrestling. It's always interesting to me seeing their athletic skills kick in within a pro wrestling structure, and I think it provides a helpful barometer on the actual wrestler doing the heavy lifting. I think it's cool when wrestlers get to show what they can do opposite a limited opponent, see how good they are at highlighting any ability. But Tyson Fury did not do a whole lot for me. He seemed scared to bump, and scared to get backed too hard into anything. Braun seems to work a little more snug in the opening parts of this, and by the end he was backing way off shoulderblocks, so we would up with light shoulderblocks followed by Fury bumps that looked like me getting on the floor to do sit ups. Crowd was into Fury, and Braun did a nice job running around and making his offense look like more of a spectacle, building to a big moment where he ran all the way around the ring into a Fury drive-by kick (and Braun threw a great worked punch on the floor that Fury sold like he had an itchy beard), but Fury projected as very uninteresting for a larger guy. I would take any guy with the last name McCully over Fury.

Lacey Evans vs. Natalya

ER: This is pretty exciting, more so than other "first ever" occurrences, although Natalya's overdone "this is a big moment and I'm almost overwhelmed by it" facials almost ruined it. They're wearing full body suits, yoga pants, boots, and big baggy t-shirts, essentially dressed as "girl looking through Trader Joe's tea selection". The crowd responds well throughout, even though this ended up being pretty easily the weakest of their several match series. It didn't have the snap or violence that their best matches have had, the matwork didn't have the same uncooperative feel, but it did have a couple nice moments. Lacey had a nice slingshot dropkick that look like it took Natalya's head off, but there may have been some nerves at play from both, which is understandable. Things felt kind of trepidatious, different tone than their other matches.

Chad Gable/Ali/Roman Reigns/Rusev/Ricochet vs. Baron Corbin/Drew McIntyre/Randy Orton/Bobby Lashley/Shinsuke Nakamura

ER: This wasn't much by WWE multi man match standards, though it played well as a big house show main event. I think this could have been special but they played it too down the middle: Not letting it unspool as a big chained spotfest until the end, but also not really isolating anyone to build to anything big. It just kind of kept churning until it stopped, though we got some pretty nice build toward the finish itself. The presence of Hogan and Flair was awkward and pointless. Hogan looked like he could barely walk as he shuffled to the ring, and the two of them just stood around at ringside barely even showing emotion. I also have zero clue what the Saudi Arabia fans think of the Rusev/Lashley angle, but the moments where Rusev was going after Lashley at least felt big, felt like a babyface really gunning for a heel (even though his big moment was basically interrupted by a Reigns superman punch). Fans were way into Reigns, and his big dive onto everyone was cool. I can't decide if I like or dislike Ali's RKO "block", because he blocks the move exactly like he takes the move. Yes, I saw that his head missed the mat and so I saw that it didn't connect, but his head never connects with the mat even when it lands. So visually it came off like him eating the RKO and then springing back to his feet. The "everybody chains together finishers" part of the match felt too rushed and came kind of suddenly, the layout on all WWE multi mans used to be much better and more satisfying. Also, and this is VERY important, Hogan looked like he was wearing his sunglasses as if he didn't have ears; his bandana appeared to be holding his sunglasses in place. And it annoyed me.

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WWE Hell in a Cell 10/6/19, Not Live But Not Bad

Lacey Evans vs. Natalya

ER: Lacey's yellow outfit is fantastic, easily the best gear she's had. And this has become a feud that I have enjoyed far more than I ever thought I would. Tamina is probably the only woman on the roster I would want to see Natalya over, and Evans felt like someone who was a slightly better Eva Marie, but not only has Evans improved seemingly quite quickly, but their ring chemistry is genuinely really good. They have worked several matches this year, but I wasn't paying attention to them until one caught my eye on Raw a month ago. And this was definitely the best of their recent series, and what felt like a career making performance from Evans. Evans comes off really nasty, and has a ton of different attacks to the body and face. I'm not sure what it says about the state of WWE that Lacey Evans' strikes are top 5 in the company right now. She dropped some indy aspects of her offense and instead has focused on stomping limbs and throwing elbows to throats. I love how she stomps Natalya's arm just to get it out of the way, and when the action rolls to the apron she starts slamming her leg into the apron, kicking her in the knee, slamming her into the ring steps, and strangling her with the ring skirt. The moment Natalya rolled to the floor, Lacey met her on the floor with a straight kick right to the chest, and was still dropping those kicks later. Natalya seems to tighten things up opposite Lacey, her elbows hit more snug and she puts actual personality behind slaps, a bad actress that is suddenly able to look like she cannot stand Evans and wants to hit her hard. The finish is quick and satisfying, with Evans missing her really nice double jump moonsault and tapping quick to the Sharpshooter, then getting waylaid by one last Natalya elbow post match. I love the way they played up the personal elements of their ring feud, and wouldn't have guessed these two would have matched up so well. The best pre-show match this year. It's extra impressive to come out and have a nasty little match the crowd gets behind, on a card filled with gimmick matches.

Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch

ER: Ever since Becky Lynch reached main event feud status, the singles matches that feel like they should be great with the build, haven't been great. Most have fallen short. I don't think I've actually been that into a Becky Lynch match all year, until this one. And even this one was mostly for the big time Sasha Banks performance, easily Sasha's best performance since the Ronda match earlier this year. Sasha had an awesome violent cage match performance, getting thrown painfully into the cage several times, flinging herself back on hard dropkicks and flying into it with big splatting bumps. Sasha built to her big garbage moments well, with the Meteora off the apron into Lynch/a ladder looking great (and impressive how she aimed her knees safely between ladder steps and also not into Lynch's face), and the one into the ring was a nice mid-match nearfall. Lynch doesn't always throw weapon shots with enough force, and some of her loaded chain punches and chairshots looked a little light. Luckily Sasha was there to violently throw herself into everything, with Lynch taking plenty of mean shots as well, including a big bump through a table. Sasha set up a chair, wedged into the cell, fairly early in the match, and I love how they paid that off late in the match with Sasha reversing an Irish whip to send Lynch face first into it. The violent escalation was handled really well, the spills looked good, and they actually opened the show with a superplex into a messy pile of chairs. Awesome.

Roman Reigns/Daniel Bryan vs. Luke Harper/Erick Rowan

ER: This took a bit to get going, and it was weird how much they were overshadowed by the 4 ladies who wrestled before them. Reigns and Bryan in the same match should always be a big deal, but they found themselves with some surprisingly big shoes to fill. And this turned into a real good, exciting tag match, that was still somehow the weakest match on the card. Somehow, indeed. Things seemed a little jumbled at first but when they moved into the Bryan heat segment I was into it. Bryan is good at eating a beating, Rowan and Harper are fun to watch deliver one. They had some big spots to compete with in just the prior match, and I think they did a good job getting to them. The big ones, Bryan getting powerbombed through a table and Roman spearing Rowan through the other announce table, looked great and got their own reactions. But there were other big spots like Harper hitting Roman with a tope and nearly smashing his face in the edge of a table. The second half of this really brought the heat, and it would be a shame if they matched these teams up a couple more times to see if they have a full classic in them. This could have possibly stood out more on a weaker show, but this match overall delivered.

Randy Orton vs. Ali

ER: See, this is turning out to be another no buzz underbooked WWE PPV that ends up delivering big fun. This is a match I would probably fast forward through on Raw, but I gave it a shot and liked what they did with the time. It played as a nice gimmick free palate cleanser after the two openers, just  solid simple ring work with a no fuss finish. I'm sure people could be upset that Ali didn't go over, as Orton isn't a guy who needs wins and Ali sure could use one. But as a match in a vacuum (which is all I really care about if it's guys I'm not super interested in) it was good. Ali took big bumps and Orton came off like a dick. I like when Orton uses unnecessary stuff like eyepokes, things he clearly doesn't need to do to win. Ali took big bumps, Orton knocked him off of high places, this was fun.

Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross vs. Asuka/Kairi Sane

ER: Asuka has been majorly lost in the shuffle ever since the winning streak stopped, but the crowd is still clearly into her and I'm glad. And this match continues the good vibes of this show. I LOVE when they go out and actually work to exceed expectations. The whole roster has felt really energized tonight and maybe that's even a happy byproduct of the new competition. Asuka came off as fresh as she's looked all year, totally dominant in all her moments and instantly tapping back into her unique charisma that has just been absent from TV. Bliss was great on the apron, really one of the best apron workers in WWE (which is a cool, undertalked about skill), and Cross was really good at running headlong into the Warriors offense. Sane throwing a full body weight elbow drop right into the feet of Cross was an awesome moment, and I was way into Asuka cutting everyone off with kicks throughout. This was real fun, and I hope it leads to more Kabuki Warriors on TV, freshen up some match-ups.

AJ Styles/Karl Anderson/Luke Gallows vs. Viking Raiders/Braun Strowman

ER: I thought this continued the streak of really great to really fun matches on this card, even with an impossibly uninspired finish. A match that just ends because another team got disqualified for unfairly kicking ass is never going to be an interesting finish. Unless you go so extreme with the one sided beatdown that it builds to a blood feud. But this just ends because of stomping, and that's pretty lame. But the rest was good! Vikings are both going to bring fun hoss moments, Styles took a bigass backdrop bump and then got leveled some more during Braun's great hot tag, Gallows brought nice uppercuts, this was a perfectly fun six man. It felt a little more TV match than PPV match, but the action was good nonetheless.

Baron Corbin vs. Chad Gable

ER: I love how the consensus opinions are turning on Corbin. He's still divisive but you can see more and more people getting into his specific brand of annoyance, because his brand is pretty undeniable at this point. He's the only guy on the roster really allowed to work this slow methodical actively trying to piss off the crowd style, and it's fun. And I really liked this one, thought they effectively laid this out for Gable to take a big bumping beating and still able to come back in the second half and start plausibly hitting some big things. Corbin was slow but explosive on control, and Gable would fly hard into his stuff. The slide in running clothesline hit big (and nicely set up an important moment in the closing stretch), and Gable was taking hard bumps for everything including a nasty rolling tumble into the ringpost. But Gable's comeback was fun as hell, and he really seems like someone who the crowd has been wanting to get behind. The "Shortly Gable" stuff on commentary comes off pretty lame, but if they actually let him go in there and kick ass like this then it won't matter. I dug him flying into Corbin, countering the sliding lariat, nailing the cannonball, hitting a big crossbody, and nailing the Chaos Theory. There was nothing screwy at all about the finish, and it made Gable come off like a cool threat. Corbin is deceptively large (he looked like he towered over the Rock on Smackdown) but he's good with working smaller guys and making them seem credible. Both guys could come out of this feud looking great.

Bayley vs. Charlotte

ER: Gotta say the first thing that impressed me with this match was how vocal the crowd still was. They were loudly Wooing along with all of Charlotte's chops, and that's a testament to this being a hot show. It's impressive that we're 7 or 8 matches in and the crowd hasn't burnt out. The good stuff has been constant, the Great stuff has been peppered in, and it's had a great vibe that's held interest the whole night. Even as the match was feeling a little slow or a little too dry, the crowd was right there breaking out the loudest chant of the night, people loudly split between Charlotte and Bayley. This was the weakest match of the night, but the crowd was still hot for it, and that's cool. It felt a little too basic, felt too anticlimactic, and felt like a match that Charlotte definitely should not have won. Sasha lost in nasty fashion earlier, and then Bayley kind of just goes down easy like this was Charlotte vs. Dana Brooke in the last hour of Raw. That seems kind of dumb. Charlotte worked a basic attack the knee story, and that looked good, and it logically lead to her winning with the figure 8. But I wanted a more interesting journey on the way to the destination.

Seth Rollins vs. Bray Wyatt

ER: So, I don't care enough about either guy to waste much energy going off on how bad this was and how stupid the booking was. I was at least curious to see where the whole Fiend thing was going to go, but goddamn am I just tired of seeing Seth Rollins matches. The dude stinks. I have skipped several of his main events on nights I wasn't digging the PPV, but I was so into the rest of this show that my mood was strong and I wanted to see if we could implausibly knock it out of the park. Obviously, they didn't fully, because this match blew. Bray losing dumb, Rollins matches bad, the end.


ER: The last match sucked in ways that people are loudly and justifiably complaining about. It is fair. But since I really don't care in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't affect how much I enjoyed this show. This was one of the most fun overall shows of the year for WWE, and if only 85% of it is good then I don't honestly care that the lame 15% came in the last 15%. The rest of the card kicked ass, with Evans/Natalya being my favorite pre-show match of the year, Sasha delivering her best performance of the year, and Gable/Corbin being a great non-gimmick match. This was a blast of a show, even if I do wish Seth Rollins was not a thing.

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WWE Big 3: Lorcan, Gallagher, Gulak 7/13-7/20

EVOLVE 131 7/13

Drew Gulak vs. Matt Riddle

ER: Gulak gets Catch Point druids!!! As a match I think this underperformed and never felt like anything new. This felt like kind of a greatest hits collection from both guys without some of the drama that their best matches have. It felt like a slightly sanitized version of a match they would have had a couple years ago. The good news is that I happen to love the greatest hits from these two. We get a pair of cool belly to belly superplexes (Riddle getting the worst of it), both guys throw hard shots to the body (which were weirdly maybe my favorite thing about this), big Riddle senton, both throw hard uppercuts, Gulak always cutting in for single legs, it's them doing things that I like to watch them do. But this kind of felt like the recent run of 205 Live main events, where good workers are given 20 minutes to do their thing and it doesn't totally live up to the time. There were obviously hot stretches of this, and the Riddle corkscrew senton into Gulak's rear naked choke felt like a cool spot to end things. They didn't end it there, with Riddle simply picking Gulak up and hitting Bro Derek that didn't look finisher worthy. It really just looked like Gulak taking a heavier than normal slam, didn't read as a piledriver at all. This match was going to have a high floor - both guys are great - but it felt like we only bumped our head against their ceiling a couple times.

PAS: I liked this more then Eric (he has been grumpy lately). Greatest hits from these guys are pretty great, and it sort of makes sense to run a match like that when EVOLVE debuts on the network. I really enjoyed how Gulak used space in this match, always looking to keep close, grabbing for limbs, throwing body shots, negating Riddle's size advantage by grinding on him. Riddle is more explosive and I liked how Gulak tried to limit that explosiveness. I agree about the finish, that Gulak rear naked choke would have been perfect, and the Riddle finish was the weakest thing about the match, but lots of this was really great. Riddle seems to have tightened up his strikes and moved away from New Japan overkill since coming to the WWE, and both things are welcome additions. Loved all the Catch Point stuff in this match, and now that this is WWE canon Gulak really should bring Catch Point back on 205 Live: Oney Lorcan, Cameron Grimes and Chad Gable would make a pretty rad Catch Point.

Extreme Rules 7/14

Drew Gulak vs. Tony Nese

ER: Early on we get a "Let's Go Gulak" chant which is an awesome surprise. If Gulak actually starts to get over the same way Bryan got over earlier in the decade, how great will that be?? This is kind of what anybody could have expected going in: Gulak looked great, Nese did not, but Nese tried some things that worked in a stupid risk taking way. Nese has that "hey Evan Karagias is getting better" vibe to him, but he doesn't actually have babyface charisma. He does things that some fans should find cool, but Gulak is the one getting the reactions here. YES, obviously this is being held right in Gulak's stomping grounds, but that isn't a guarantee to get a great reaction and he got them throughout. Nese did a wild moonsault the the floor, hitting Gulak who was tied up in the ropes over the apron; it didn't really work, but I like him going for stupid stuff. He also overshoots a 450 and slams those knees right into Gulak's ribs, throws him messily into the corner with a german suplex, basically the nastiest parts of Nese's attack were kind of accidents. Gulak threw great kicks, and I think his reactions are going to keep getting louder, and they'll eventually babyface him. Early in the match Gulak hit an awesome diving clothesline off the apron (hard to make diving clotheslines look good) and his folding powerbomb looked great and would make a fine finisher, but I love the old school style of his spinning back suplex. Gulak is here baby!

PAS: I thought Nese was pretty terrible, for a guy I have had to watch a bunch due to this project he is one of my least favorite guys to watch in the world (I have excised most wrestlers I can't stand). He was in full dance fight mode in this especially early, and I agree with Eric that most of the good looking stuff he did seemed like a botch. Gulak looked great and I dug Philly getting behind him. Really simple wrestling, especially while matched up with a flipster like Nese, big lariat will always be cooler then a cartwheel. Happy that he won, hopefully he puts Nese in his rear view mirror and matches up with some of the cooler smaller guys in different parts of the fed. I am not a Shane Strickland guy, but it is cool that Gulak is mixing it up outside of the 205 live roster.

205 Live 7/16

48. Jack Gallagher vs. Chad Gable

ER: We got a great 10 minute sprint between these two a month ago with nary a mention of it since. Without a warning they bring us back into that feud and continue in the unexpected recent tradition of letting the 205 Live main event fly past the 15 minute mark. This felt like the 2019 indy version of their fantastic first match. I thought their shorter match was tighter and laid out in a more interesting way, and thought this one turned more into a shocked-by-nearfalls finisher trade-off that their first match didn't really attempt. I think both guys have the material to go this length, but I think dynamite short bursts keep their style stronger. The first match was two unknowns exploding off each other, while this match integrated learned behavior and the longer runtime perhaps made more sense because now both men were wrestling more cautious around each other. They were known quantities at this point, and neither wanted to rush into a mistake. The crowd couldn't care about those plans as we got several attempts at BORING chants through the first third of this, which is an odd thing to come up with right after watching a Mike Kanellis match.

I didn't think this was as focused as their first match, as both guys spent a long time looking for openings, Gallagher working a short arm scissors (which may have been done so Gable could show off his 0.7 Backlund strength), Gable working the arm, working the leg with a dragon screw, and while I like how these guys flow it was also hard to shake that we were just getting some limb work to pad time before we got to the match proper. And sure enough, by the time Gallagher planted a dropkick firmly on the chest and then hit his delayed vertical suplex, people were more on board with the match. I think some of the learned behavior benefitted the match, and other stuff felt a little out of place or inorganic. My favorite moment of that was Gable catching Gallagher over his shoulder in the corner off a dodged dropkick and then swinging him back down into a DDT. One of the announcers even said "I've never seen Gable do that before!" and that's really important, as it wasn't Gallagher just doing a dropkick he never does so that he's in position for Gable's over shoulder DDT. This was Gable scouting Gallagher's corner dropkick and turning it against him. I like Gable rolling Gallagher into the ring after the German on the floor (last time Gallagher got counted out after taking it), but Gable also had to pretend he didn't really get hit with Gallagher's tope to do the spot. That's part of the inorganic feeling I was talking about. Even Gallagher's great headbutt spot is done in a 2019 indy way, with Gable hitting a koppo kick that sends Gallagher bouncing upside down in the ropes and back into the headbutt. I don't think these guys need to drift into "I hit you which causes you to swing around and hit me which causes me to swing back around into an..." wrestling, they've shown they have more interesting ways to get to those moments. The closing stretch had some great moments (Gable reversing a belly to back superplex into a hard landing on Jack, and Jack landing high and hard on the Chaos Theory suplex), but it felt like two really talented guys inputting their skills into a match style I don't love. I'm going to like Gallagher doing it more than others, but more pieces of this than I expected didn't really work for me.

PAS: I liked this more then Eric did. Gable really unloaded a ton of great offense early, awesome armdrags, killer koppo kick, some big throws. Really overwhelmed Gallagher, the short arm scissors reversal was more of that domination, I am an enormous fan of the short arm scissors reversal and these were two cool guys to pull off that move. I did like how Gallagher was able to use his craft to get some advantages, his reversal out of the ankle lock was really slick grappling, and I thought the hammer fists after were great looking. I also thought his big end of the match offensive explosion was nasty, with Gable's moonsault landing on an upkick, and an incredible dropkick in the corner. I did think it got a little indy in the end, but these are a pair of guys with awesome looking stuff for a this is awesome section.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE BIG 3: Gulak, Gallagher, & Lorcan, 6/9 - 6/15

With their number of different weekly shows WWE has gotten to an almost WCW level of matches per week. One big advantage of this is that some of the best guys in the fed - Jack Gallagher, Drew Gulak, Oney Lorcan - often get multiple chances a week to have long matches on shows no one watches. Well we are going to start watching now, and I am looking forward to checking out what those guys will deliver!


205 Live 6/11

29. Jack Gallagher vs. Chad Gable

PAS: Man was this really good, I think Gable is still an imperfect worker, but Gallagher is such a master that he can carry a guy with some fun spots and explosion to a real banger. Early mat work was really cool with Gable dominating with his explosiveness and Gallagher using guile to get some cool escapes. It builds to a bigger finish with both guys hitting some awesome suplexes including a super long delayed suplex, and Gable with gorgeous rolling belly to bellys, the snap Gable has on his suplexes is just unreal. Finish was very cool with Gallagher attempting a tope, getting caught on the floor, dumped with a german suplex and failing to beat the count into the ring. Super physical match, Gable was bleeding from the mouth, and Gallaghers body was covered in bruises. Match seemed to set up a rematch which I am very excited for.

ER: Aw man this ruled. I'm not sure why the possibility of this match never actually crossed my mind, as it feels like a perfect pairing. Gable is a pitbull but Gallagher hits harder, and Gallagher keeps almost luring him in to situations that end with Gallagher throwing his best-in-fed (and arguably best in current wrestling) stomps to the head, short hard forearms, and a lariat that feels like it's thrown by a man 100 lb. larger. Gallagher has such a cool arsenal that he doesn't even break out his world class headbutt or violent dropkick, fully able to have a match more on Gable's terms while finding little ways to subvert Gable. The crowd still doesn't seem to know what to do with these guys, so I appreciate them showing off actual unique gifts that literally forces the crowd to respect them. Gallagher holds Gable up in one of the longest delayed vertical suplexes I've ever seen in a WWE ring and after 8 seconds you can really hear buzzing and by 20 seconds they're fully giving it up for these two. I love Gallagher's pale body as it makes every hard shot really read, you see a big bruise on his leg, later on a bruise on his back, but Gallagher is a real Gentleman (not the fedora type of Gent, but a guy who can actually look good in a suit) and doesn't want Gable to feel left out, so he bloodies his nose. Gable throws maybe the most gorgeous belly to belly suplexes in wrestling history. Off the top of my head I am thinking Gary Albright, Scott Steiner, Alexander Otsuka and, perhaps oddly, former bay area indy worker Tony Jones (a former wrestler with incredible throwing strength). Gable's are thrown closest to Albright's style, an impossibly tight pivot into a high 3/4 release, and the snap he brings to the floatover makes him look like a sleek robot programmed to wreck skeletons with suplexes. The finish was really cool as it's very difficult to work a "caught" move without looking like the person on the receiving end just no sold a normal move, but they get the spacing right so that it feels like Gallagher came up just short enough of the dive that Gable was able to fully negate it, and I appreciate the fact that they treat getting suplexed on the floor like an actual thing that could keep someone down for a 10 count. Totally fine with seeing these guys run it back.

16. Drew Gulak vs. Humberto Carrillo vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Oney Lorcan

PAS: Another killer match, what a show this episode of 205 Live was. Gulak was super aggressive and that real intense smash mouth style really helped temper the craziness of the other three. Gulak and Lorcan took it back to 2014 with some great exchanges including a really nasty slap fight. Lorcan is so great in these spot fests because he is so good at crazed intensity. He is one of the best guys in the world at working fast and making it look like a fight, rather then just someone performing high level acrobatics. Hadn't seen Carillo before sans mask (seen a couple of Ninja Jr. matches) and he had some really fun stuff, a super cool spot where he yanked Tozawa off the mat into a Japanese armdrag, a cool flip dive and a nuts bump where Gulak pushed him off the top rope and flew super high and hard chin first into the guardrail. Tozawa is of course an old hand at these kind of spotfest, and is very good and bring his personality into these matches. I could have done with out the Ariya Daivari run in, but otherwise this was this kind of match done about as well as it could be.

ER: Total banger, an immaculately laid out spot fest that actually paid mind to how much damage each guy had taken, and built so that every single guy felt like they had a shot up to the finish. Gulak and Lorcan are absolute glue for a match like this, but I like the elements that Tozawa and Carillo bring as it's more exciting than having 4 similar workers. Carillo looks like a hispanic Michael Ian Black and hits about as hard, but he makes up for that with some wild bumps (huge bump off a massive Gulak lariat, gets shoved to the floor by Gulak and aims to rearrange his body on the barricade) and breaks out some flashy offense like a handspring in the ropes that sees him hook Tozawa's arm on the way back over into a Japanese armdrag, or his springboard dropkick on Gulak late in the match. Tozawa brings life to matches like this, and I genuinely appreciate the work he puts into making his fireman's carry slams actually look difficult to pull off. We're deep in an era of over-cooperation in wrestling where literally any move is very easy to hit, so seeing Tozawa buckling his knee and making it look like he's deadlifting everyone only makes the moves feel more impressive. It reminded me of when Cena would pay extra attention to slowly lift tables and ring steps to give them even more heft. Tozawa is great at making overused offense look good, and I dug the spot where he and Carillo superkick Gulak and then Tozawa superkicked Carillo, both looked great and like an actual kick that mattered. Tozawa's boss senton off the top to break up a pin looked fantastic, with Lorcan feeling it in his back and Gulak getting squashed beneath. Obviously any time Lorcan and Gulak teed off it was going to be class, and that strike exchange was a really slugfest, totally nasty with no turns taken whatsoever, just a battle of dudes landing hard shots without waiting for openings, winging their arms at face and body. We got a few cool moves off fireman's carries, not just the Tozawa stuff but an absolute beast of a spot where Gulak tossed Carillo off his shoulders into a Lorcan uppercut to the neck. The dives were outstanding, big flip dive from Carillo and an even more unhinged one from Lorcan, but the money spot of the match was Carillo kicking Gulak off the apron and Gulak doing a really perfect stumble sell off the apron and into the barricade. And then Tozawa just PASTES him with the best possible running cannonball off the apron. Sadly the finish ends in confusion, with Tozawa and Gulak both having their shoulders down after a superplex, so I guess the only solution is to run this whole thing as a rematch. Sigh. Crowd knew they were treated to an absolute gem here, and it was great to hear their appreciation.

NXT 5/18 (Aired 6/12)

Drew Gulak vs. Kushida

PAS: Match started out super promising, with some really nifty mat wrestling with Kushida gaining some advantages by using his speed, really great looking reversals and scrambling. Match lost its thread though, with Kushida doing a bunch of springboards and cartwheels which didn't look great and took away from what the match was trying to do, at one point they have a lame forearm exchange (which Mauro says is a tribute to Frye vs. Takayama for fucks sake) and a silly spot where they do Malenko/Guerrero rolls in a match without pinfalls. Gulak had some cool shit, including maybe the nastiest ankle lock I have seen, but for a match billed as a mat classic, this was mostly just an OK juniors match without pinfalls. I know it seems silly to expect a shootstyle match on WWE TV, but we have actually gotten stuff like that recently with the proliferation of shows, so this didn't live up to my weird expectations.

ER: I liked this more than Phil though agree with the moments that looked bad. I have no idea what that Malenko/Guerrero roll-up loop was, with both men stuck shoving the other through pinfalls instead of actually trying to pin the other, that was just dumb. The forearm exchange was meh but I also watched the match on mute so no doubt it would have been worse with Mauro calling it. Also there was only one handspring, not a bunch, and it was fine. I think the okay spots just looked that much worse because the first several minutes of this are FIRE. The mat rolling was so cool, all flash but when you do flash, this is how you do flash. There was a ton of cool rolling and fast go behinds, and I especially liked a slick as hell rolling fisherman's cradle by Kushida. There was a ton of great stuff here, even if it was front loaded, and Gulak is good at taking Kushida's offense, really leaned up at just the right time for his rolling low dropkick. Outside of that glorious match opening scramble my favorite thing was easily Gulak's ankle lock, as I'm not sure I've ever seen someone cinch in an ankle lock and then throw in a couple stomps to the kidneys. Front end of this seemed like a lock for the list, back end drops us down into "overall a very fun cruiser match" territory, but this still had a lot to love.

37. Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Kyle O'Reily/Roderick Strong

PAS: This was a really great sprint, all four guys are really good at pace pushing, and this was stiff and intense and never kills a million finishers like so many workrate tags. Lorcan and O'Reilly match up really well with each other, I love how they mix in different kind of strikes with uppercuts and and body shots a slaps, I also really love how O'Reily uses knee on the stomach to control on the mat. This actually had cool double teams too, that were more about violence then prettiness. Strong and Burch were fun too, and if this had a better finish I could see this pretty high on the list. Even with the finish it had, this is list for sure.

ER: Hot damn this match. These guys all beat the hell out of each other and there are suddenly a ton of dudes in WWE who are way into lean protein diets and all weight like 170. These dudes are all my size only their bodies look like they eat turkey and almonds and broccoli for every meal and I look like I sit in a chair and type about wrestler's bodies. No wonder Erick Stevens suddenly popped back up, probably angling for a NXT nutritionist gig. And all of them are absolute ass kickers, doing something actually interesting with the new "constant motion" style that's all the rage. The thing with constant motion BS is everything is so planned out and phony and cooperative and sleek. These guys actually know how to do constant motion wrestling but have it be slightly out of sync, slightly messy, slightly uncooperative. That's not by accident, it's that these guys are all great enough to realize that you still need a little messy uncooperative wrestling that hits at hard angles. That seems like a pretty obvious thing to me, but some pretty bad stuff appears to be en vogue these days. This felt like a real coming out party for O'Reilly. I don't think I've ever enjoyed him as much in a match as I enjoyed him here (and his stock has risen for me since he joined NXT). He was just a mean asshole hear and I've never seen him outright torture a guy the way he tortured Lorcan. He throws hard shots to the head and then aims to bruise Lorcan's kidneys and make him piss blood by flying into him with several knees, dropped them hard into the lower back and side, a wicked running kneedrop low and quick off the ropes, and then just scrapes his knee heavily across Lorcan's back every time he passes to his other side. This is an O'Reilly I want to see opposite Gulak and Gallagher and really, against anyone.

Roderick Strong has been kind of quietly one of the best wrestlers in the world for the past decade. He keeps things snug and works fast, really lays it in and can do complicated stuff while making it feel plausible. He had a over shoulder backbreaker in this that made me go take ibuprofen. Lorcan is one of my very favorites, a guy I've been lucky to see live several times and always delivers. He comes off like one of the hardest workers in the biz, and there are few people I'd rather watch fling their entire body into someone. His tope con hilo is always him launching himself thoughtlessly, and his dropkicks and flying back elbows look like he's trying to knock over a soda machine. There were several moments where someone would walk in a pop someone else right in the face with a hard slap, or a kick to the ribs, or a freaking headbutt to the chest. Even the run in interference lead to two big bumps, with Strong especially flying out of the ring when Burch shoves him, and the rolling cradle was held in real tight for the finish. They can just go ahead and keep running these kind of tags every damn week. It's the best.

ER: Three of these matches are landing on our 2019 Ongoing MOTY List, which is a real nice haul from 2 hours of TV. But go on and keep wishing guys would leave WWE so they'll finally be allowed to wrestle.

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WWE Clash of the Champions 2017 Live Blog

1. Mojo Rawley vs. Zack Ryder

ER: I liked these two together, more than I'll ever like Ryder on his own, and I guess I'll never really understand their need to break teams up before they really do much with them. If we strung together all the PPV pre-show matches from 2017, you'd wind up with a pretty great 2 hour special. This is another nice showing, with Ryder taking a couple big bumps, getting a nice comeback, and then getting obliterated on the finish. Ryder gets shoved from the top rope to the apron to the floor, taking a mean tumble, then Mojo runs around the ring to awesomely check him into the barricade. Back in and the camera nicely picks up a Mojo big boot with his boot staying on Ryder's face all the way down to the mat. Ryder's comeback is at minimum explosive, even if the cameras zoomed in too hard on his thigh slaps, the impression of impact was at least there. But Mojo's 1-2 finish was really cool, taking out Ryder's knee with a diving block, and then blasting him with that running forearm in the corner. Fun opener, hopefully Mojo doesn't get totally lost.

2. Bobby Roode vs. Dolph Ziggler vs. Baron Corbin

ER: Just FYI, it still sounds incredibly stupid when someone bumps over the barricade and someone shouts that they just got knocked "into the WWE Universe!" They got clotheslined over a short wall. Does the WWE Universe only start once we've passed the plane of the barricade? Does nothing happening inside a WWE ring count as part of the WWE Universe? Are the concession stands part of the WWE Universe, since they're beyond the barricade? Is someone urinating in the arena bathroom urinating into the WWE Universe? Does it apply to both people AND places? Is someone buying a WWE t-shirt an example of "The WWE Universe purchasing the WWE Universe within the WWE Universe'? It's beyond the worst. Roode and Ziggler don't match up well, Ziggler leans out of simple things like stomach kicks and then just doesn't connect on his own. But someone (Graves?) just said Ziggler may be the greatest performer in WWE history, so what do I know? I have no clue what actual performance metrics you would have to fudge to even squint and believe that statement. Roode has taken big moves nicely in this, splatting face first on the famouser and getting big height on a spinning slam from Corbin, takes Ziggler's big DDT really nicely. I really liked Corbin trying to vulture Roode's win, only for Roode to throw him to the floor and Corbin breaking up the pin anyway. If I didn't care for him the rest of the match, Ziggler at least made the finish work: Corbin was about to hit End of Days on Roode and Ziggler jumped in at the perfect moment with the Zig Zag, the momentum also slamming Roode tailbone first into the mat to presumably keep him from breaking up the pin. This was fine, crowd was really into it though and that counts for something.

3. Aiden English/Rusev vs. Shelton Benjamin/Chad Gable vs. Big E/Kofi Kingston vs. The Usos

ER: Fans are really stoked for Rusev Day, so we got a nice hot crowd tonight, good to hear, and it warms my heart to hear English getting a great reaction. This starts with a pretty great car crash as Kofi gets tossed into a plancha, an Uso hits his big no hands plancha to the other half of the match, and Benjamin launches an Uso with a belly to belly off the top. Kofi eats a great boot and ring post shot courtesy of Rusev after goofing around. Rusev doesn't have time for that nonsense on Rusev Day. I like how English is doing a bunch of solid little things in what most want to be a spotfest: doing nice grounded punches off in the corner of the camera, locking in and wrenching a nice headlock. Don't let the match style conform you. The Texas Tornado style of the match feels a bit to crowded, and it's making half the guys wait to do their spots while the other half does their spots. It's messing up flow. Why is this the match without extra refs? This is kind of a mess even though everyone is working hard. I think Big E might have arguably the best standing splash in wrestling history. It's got the incontestable best height and the impact is great. Kofi springboards into the ring and gets stuck with a great Benjmain powerbomb, and they are freaking killing me with these Rusev/English nearfalls. There were three pins all in a row that looked like they could plausibly win the belts. Come onnnnn. The finishing stretch is flat out GREAT. Rusev and Big E have a great battle over the Accolade, with E almost powering out before Rusev bends him back violently. Gable comes in and hits a tremendous deadlift German on Rusev, just dumping him on his shoulders, then hits a rolling chaos theory on English that dumps him even more violently. We get a sneaky Uso tag as Gable tries for another chaos theory, couple superkicks and a big splash finishes him, straight up fire finish. Awesome stuff.

4. Natalya vs. Charlotte

ER: Alright, and now for nobody's favorite gimmick match! Natalya is a far better heel when she doesn't actually realize she's being a heel. Her acting like a heel is just hammy. She's a much better A-Rod style "heel who doesn't know that she's disliked" heel. Who in wardrobe allowed Carmella and Lana to both wear red swimsuits? Also, Carmella's suit looks like a placeholder for her actual, real gear...except she's been wearing it for months. Tamina continues having the worst gear, it's like they tailored Viscera's old gear and gave it some darting. Charlotte takes a nice awkward bump to the floor, and I liked the bridge up to dodge a baseball slide. Charlotte is good at coming up with cool ways to engage the lumberjacks, really liked Natalya pushing off the figure 4, sending Charlotte flying into a dive on Ruby Riott. Tamina runs point on catching a Charlotte moonsault to the floor, which predictably means that she bumps out of the way before the moonsault hits and 6 women take bumps anyway. Tamina is so bad you guys. She did absorb all of the Naomi springboard, so I guess I shouldn't be so harsh. Thankfully we don't have to endure a Natalya win, and Charlotte worked hard in a difficult gimmick match.

Natalya threatening to leave WWE is like a parent threatening to take their kids broccoli away. "That's it, you keep mouthing off, now I'm giving you another spoonful of mac and cheese and YOU don't get any more broccoli! Actually, why don't you go to your room and play video games and then see how you feel!"

5. Breezango vs. Bludgeon Brothers

ER: I know I just said a few minutes ago that Tamina has the worst gear possible...but my god the Bludgeon Brothers. They look like a Hot Topic was destroyed in a hurricane, and a seamstress assembled their outfits out of found scraps. I have no idea what vibe they're going for. So many studs and zippers and hanging bits and that riveted cummerbund corset awkard tight bits side by side awkward loose bits. And the match is over. A straight match between these two would have been really fun. But, I guess we were running long (no we weren't)?

6. Shinsuke Nakamura/Randy Orton vs. Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens

ER: I'm not totally sure who this match concept is supposed to appeal to. This tag match with a normal referee already had a chance to be pretty uninteresting, but jamming two authority figures into it as mildly disagreeing distractions should practically guarantee it's no good. The fans, to their ever loving credit tonight, are into it. Still! They're still excitedly chanting for this show. The great finish to that tag match feels like an hour ago and we haven't accomplished much since then, and they're still chanting for their guys. I like it. Props to Orton for hitting a chinlock literally 10 seconds into the match. Zayn and Owens are also working their share, but they at least are making them look good, with Zayn going after the eyes and nose bridge and Owens making his snug. I'm kind of okay with them cutting the ring off with chinlocks for as long as the crowd can take it. All of Nakamura's kicks to Owens look really good, loved the falling enziguiri as Owens caught a kick to the chest. Bryan and Shane haven't even been very involved in the match itself but man they are so distracting, with the camera purposely keeping them both in frame most of the time. "Triangle!" "Shoulders were down!" means that someone decided to get a Dental Plan/Lisa Needs Braces joke into things, which we were probably all hoping for. My god Shane's facials and movements might officially make him a worst guest ref than Shawn Michaels. I think he's been worse than current Red Shoes in this...but may even be Michaels bad. That's really bad. Boy that finish was really bad. Who could have wanted any of this? I know Orton has been snail slow in his PPV matches the last two years, and this whole match he seemed even slower as everyone had to let this guest ref angle breathe a bit. Woof.

7. Jinder Mahal vs. AJ Styles

ER: I really liked this, and while a lot of it was because of another excellent Styles performance, I thought Mahal worked smart and didn't overreach, thought both worked together to craft an interesting match around each man's strengths. There was also that real fear from a lot of people that Mahal was going to win the title again (while I don't hate Jinder, I also wanted to see AJ hold the belt longer), so the fear and tension on some of the nearfalls was there. Jinder worked over AJ's ribs in simple and effective ways, and AJ made a point of landing in all sorts of nasty ways on his ribs. Styles bumped huge into the timekeeper's area, just about the most painful way you can get into that area. Jinder just worked simple knees and kicks and holds targeting AJ's ribs. The springboard block was great, with Jinder hitting the ropes to knock AJ off, and AJ naturally landing ribs first again. Mahal keeps up the targeted attacks with a big gutbuster and awesome flapjack (Styles takes a flapjack better than maybe anyone), and I liked Styles' comeback Pele kick (with Mahal going for the kill with his cobra clutch slam only off the middle rope). I didn't love the finish with Styles just kicking out of the slam to eventually roll Mahal into the Calf Crusher, but the whole thing built really solidly and I love how serious they're treating the Calf Crusher. I loved when the top guys all had submission finishers in 2003, so I would not mind going back to that. Styles can basically do no wrong at this point.

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