Three Months, Three Oney Lorcan Matches

Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Joaquin Wilde/Raul Mendoza 205 Live 9/11/20

ER: This has been part of an ongoing 205 Live feud that includes Ever-Rise, and it's something I always enjoy seeing. I think they should start mixing up the feuds with singles matches, but for a promotion that's been traditionally more about tags than singles they've been rerunning tags a lot more. Wilde is someone who I like a lot more in tags than singles, and think he's really come into new strengths within the short span of Legado del Fantasma. I dug his headlock/headscissors takedown exchanges with Lorcan to start, with Lorcan working the kind of engaging holds that he works best and Wilde tossing in some nice color with a hand stomp and a dropkick. Lorcan gets his arm worked over by LdF, takes a cravat from Mendoza, and I like how sometimes these combos of teams work actual long heat segments, and then this time they'll keep them quicker. Lorcan getting worked over isn't the match, he gets to Burch fairly quickly and then Burch runs wild on Mendoza for awhile. There's enough mileage to these pairings to run them back the next week only work the match around Burch taking heat.

But Burch and Lorcan working over Mendoza is fun for this one, with them hitting a double suplex, Oney grinding in a facelock, Burch throwing big uppercuts, and Mendoza eventually coming back to hit a nice enziguiri and springboard crossbody. They're a fun group to keep going back and forth on each other, and it's a neat way to change out 2 on 1 pairings. LdF hit a double spinebuster and sandwich Burch with a basement dropkick, and there's good energy kept in the match at all times. It all builds to the most energy, and everyone knows that means an Oney Lorcan hot tag. Oney hits one of his big clotheslines that take him and Mendoza to the floor, comes back in with chops, big uppercuts, and a hard blockbuster to Wilde. Ever-Rise come out to interfere, and AGAIN I hope and hope and hope this leads to something more interested than a 3 way tag match. Those always blow, and it would be far more interesting to bring another team into the mix and work that way. Or, force Ever-Rise to work face with Lorcan/Burch and find a 4th member for Legado del Fantasma. I want that. Add Brian Kendrick into this feud as a total wildcard gun for hire. They're keeping it fresh, but 205 Live has been bad at feud blowoffs. So far so good.

Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Tyler Breeze/Fandango NXT 10/21/20

ER: Well I've been saying for several years that I have just been waiting for them to actually give some kind of big win to Oney Lorcan, and now they've finally done it. Was it perfect? No. Did they only win because of interference from the returning Cole Carrier Pat McAfee? Almost certainly yes. The match was a little disjointed and the in ring story was all over the place, but within story perhaps that makes sense as neither of these teams expected to be facing each other. Lorcan worked some cool headlock takeovers and I dig the slow burn start, but we get one of those annoying commercial breaks where you get the sense something interesting may have happened while we weren't watching. We went to break with Breeze starting to work over Burch's knee and wrap it around the ringpost, and when we come back Lorcan and Burch are working over Fandango. That has to be one of my biggest pet peeves in wrestling TV: leaving with one man in control and coming back to the exact opposite. Fandango matches up nicely with Lorcan and Burch, throws some heavy clotheslines, hits a nice guillotine legdrop (less style and grace than others, but a nice heavy landing) and we build to a moment where Oney gets stopped during a dive attempt, crashing to the apron and floor. Lorcan and Burch tried working Breeze over with a crossface/half crab combo and we get a couple pinfall saves (though even one of those seems overly planned, the fashionable kind of pin break where you tackle your opponent into the pin and everybody dogpiles). McAfee (under a Doom mask) shoves Fandango off the top and Burch lowblows Breeze behind the ref's back, then they hit the elevated DDT to win the tag belts. Obviously we'll find out more and see where their apparent heel turn is going, but I don't think they needed the lowblow in addition to interference. Let's at least make it look like they could have maybe beaten Breezango of all teams. A Burch headbutt or a leveling Oney uppercut would have been an excellent way to set up the DDT win, and would have had them KOing the champ with one of their own signature strikes, not a shot to the balls. Was this role originally going to have been filled by Ridge Holland? I don't know, but I'm happy for the new champs. I wish they could have won the belts in a bigger match on their own terms, but I've also thought they've been the clear best men's tag team in WWE for some time now and deserved these belts. 

Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Drake Maverick/Killian Dain NXT 12/23/20

ER: I liked the dynamics of this street fight, the fun size difference of Dain and Drake playing out in fun ways. It had that WWF street fight problem of the action slowing down for some spot set up, meaning the match was built into a series of crash landings instead of those spots being worked a little more organically into the match. Also, they weirdly decided to settle the match down into traditional tag rules, which at least kept things from completely devolving into a series of prop set ups. Things were at their strongest when Lorcan and Burch were isolating Maverick, as Dain would come in as wrecking ball, and someone like Lorcan is great at getting wrecked. There was a sick spot where Lorcan took a backdrop kidneys first over a couple set up chairs. The Dain/Maverick drop toehold senton combo is nice, and Lorcan's wild blockbuster on the floor felt extra crazy considering that bump he had just taken across the chairs. Dain gets to crash through and off of tables and bodies, sticking up for his little buddy, hitting avalanches and a big powerbomb, getting knocked off the apron that bounces him off a table instead of through, which leads to a great final Maverick blowout. Maverick comes in with low blows, takes off his belt and whips the hell out of the champs, including a belt shot literally across Lorcan's face. WWF are idiots because they don't have enough awesome belt whipping in their No DQ matches, instead opting for played out cane shots. Maverick's belt shots were really great, and I love how Lorcan responded to that belt to the face by paying back the low blow, before the champs absolutely stuff Drake with the elevated DDT. Cool stuff. 

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NXT TakeOver: XXX 8/22/20 Better Late Than Never Blog

Breezango vs. Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. Raul Mendoza/Joaquin Wilde

ER: A match that had some of the typical problems of any triple threat match, meaning we got a lot of different guys lying around for far longer than they should have been. If I focused on how many guys were lying around, and the moves that caused them to stay down (often just "guy gets thrown through ropes to floor", which happened a lot) it would be a silly match. But just trying to ignore the dumb match type and there was a ton of good action. Raul Mendoza looked awesome whenever he was in, loved him slipping through the ropes to the apron to catch Fandango with an elbow, and his rope run tornillo looked insane. Wilde is a big bumper and worked that well into the match (took a big lariat on his shoulder, got dropped with a Burch/Lorcan double DDT), Burch had a decent hot tag, there were a couple of nice offense chains (dug Lorcan hitting a flying uppercut only to eat a Breeze superkick), and a decent nearfall save. I would have rather seen either team other than Breezango win, but oh well.

Finn Balor vs. Timothy Thatcher

ER: Strong match, and it was stronger the closer they were. All of the grappling was really really good, and a match focused solely on that would have been awesome. The stuff I liked less was whenever it tilted a bit more into a Balor match with move reversals and a little stand and trade. The former made up a far higher % of the match, and the latter was worked in well. But the grappling was so strong that I just wanted it to be the whole match. Thatcher went after Balor's leg, and I love how Thatcher gets a tight leveraged grip on his single leg crab, locking his elbow crook in Balor's knee pit and absorbing boots to the face just to do some more damage. I like seeing Thatcher work guys who typically don't do matwork, as it forces them out of their comfort zone and usually makes them look cooler than their normal style. Balor didn't get clowned on the mat, even while Thatcher was bending at his arm and working to lock on chokes, or stomping on inner thigh to open up the left leg to a target. And I liked how they came back to the leg when Balor missed a stomp. Thatcher smelled blood and swam in. Some of the Balor offense felt like it went away from the cooler story they were telling, and I always wish guys were better about adjusting their offense game depending on what their opponent had been working, but I still liked this alot.

Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Bronson Reed vs. Cameron Grimes vs. Velveteen Dream

ER: Not only does Dream get to talk about "getting a second chance" during the pre match video and gets the last entrance, looks like the books are closed on that one. Bronson Reed is wearing a rad Bam Bam Bigelow singlet, and I am into it. And this match was odd, as I didn't really care for the match itself, but it had some pretty spectacular crash landings. Matches with odd number participants are usually off, and a lot of the stuff based around climbing ladders here was actively dumb. There are only so many ways to climb a ladder, and we're pretty far past the point of finding clever new ways to climb ladders. The cuter they get, the lamer it gets, and almost all of the stuff revolving around guys climbing was dumb. Guys also disappeared for odd stretches of time, sometimes after a bump that should keep someone disappeared, other times not. Plus, this thing was too long. We don't need to run past 20 in these stunt shows, just makes it feel silly the longer guys go surviving these crashes. The dive train was strong, especially liked Reed's big tope and Priest's wild tope con hilo after running up a ladder. Grimes did the splits between two ladders but the payoff was kind of weak, the ladder bump crashing over the barricade was wild, and my absolute favorite thing was Bronson splashing Gargano off a ladder with Candice on his back. The rest of the Candice involvement felt way too shoehorned, too out of place and Grimes looked silly selling any kind of offense from her. But a fat man hitting a superfly splash while wearing a tiny woman as a backpack is always going to fucking rule.

Adam Cole vs. Pat McAfee

ER: I LOVE matches with non wrestlers. I always get excited for them. I watch so many damn matches with guys who are trained specifically to do professional wrestling, that it is always exciting to see what someone - especially athletes from other sports - "gets" about wrestling. Sometimes it's Jay Leno doing an arm wringer a few times, but sometimes it's fucking Floyd Mayweather! I've seen Hijo del Santo live more than once, but how cool are those people who were at one of Marcus Dupree's first indy matches? What about those people who got to see Lawler and Dundee each teaming with local Tennessee pediatricians? I love non wrestler matches. And I think this was one of the greater non wrestler performances we've seen.

Pat McAfee was a real natural, and I'm not sure what it says for NXT that he was so much better at wrestling acting than Adam Cole? The match has a weird heel vs. heel vibe to it, that kind of works for the match overall. Cole isn't the guy defending the honor of pro wrestling against an invader, and McAfee isn't the local babyface star from another walk of life playing star in another sport. They're both heels, with McAfee a deservedly cocky loudmouth, and Cole a little brat who feels like the worst guy to be a public face of pro wrestling. The heel vs. heel vibe got me into it, something more fun about two unlikeable guys hurting each other (though I was rooting for McAfee obviously, who wouldn't root for him over Cole). They're smart with smoke and mirrors, and McAfee ramps things up appropriately, showing more and more athleticism and grasp of wrestling. He hits a dropkick, has a nice grounded chinlock, and then takes things to the next level with a tope con hilo into a crowd of plants and wrestlers. McAfee keeps looking more and more like a natural, and by the time McAfee did a backflip off the top, then leaping back to the top with no hands, to superplex Cole off. It was a great superplex, too. But once they start working the match around McAfee being an actual high level punter, this goes from a great non wrestler performance to a great match.

McAfee goes to punt Cole on the apron, Cole moves, and McAfee boots the ring steps. It looked great, and I love the idea about the great distance punter injuring his foot. We get a great moment of Cole kicking out his kicking leg on a charge, playing up the hurt foot and knee that he's had a few surgeries on. McAfee punts Cole in the balls and honestly, the McAfee punting Cole right in the chest and yelping at his hurt foot was one of my favorite wrestling moments of the year. Cole is a little too Edge Acting for the finish - again, McAfee shouldn't be able to play his character than Cole - but McAfee taking the flipping piledriver is a bonkers thing for a new wrestler to be taking. I am always going to be excited for a non wrestler match, and this one was one to seek out.

PAS:  I thought McAfee was incredible in this match and Cole was awful. If you showed someone this match in a vacuum, and asked which one of these guys was an untrained amateur there is no way they would pick McAfee. Everything cool in this match was on him, the tope con hilo, the backflip into the high jump superplex, and everything around his punt of death totally ruled. Meanwhile Cole is making dramatic acting faces and did maybe the worst hockey fight in the history of wrestling, swinging his tiny little T-Rex arms into something resembling a punch. Cole has to be 5'6 with a 4'11 wingspan. I am not sure how he wipes his own ass. That dramatic teased removal of the knee pad was embarrassing. There is a reason I don't watch this community college Death of a Salesman shit anymore.

Dakota Kai vs. Io Shirai

ER: I liked a lot of this, and yet a lot of it left me hollow? Even the stuff I liked kind of felt hollow as it never felt like it had grave consequences. Example: I thought Shirai's double knees and knee strikes  looked uniformly great throughout...and yet she did SO MANY of them to Kai that she made her own offense look ineffective. If something looks like a kill shot, but is sold similarly to a hard bodyslam, by the end of the match I don't care about it. The match was filled with hard knees and double stomps, but the only thing really sold as damaging was a so so moonsault. I liked Kai's work on Shirai's arm, and really thought the struggle by Shirai to get to the ropes made it even better. Shirai was good at selling her arm, and it slowed her down an appropriate amount while not getting too in the way. Kai's strength is stringing together semi-complicated sequences and making them turn out plausible, like when she slid to the floor, spun Shirai out onto the apron, and delivered a yakuza kick. Those kinds of sequences can come off too dance-y but Kai actually makes them look as intended. I think it went too long and they went back to certain things too many times. You cut this 16 minute match down to 10, thus cutting out some of the move spamming, and I think it hits.

Karrion Kross vs. Keith Lee

ER: This didn't work for me. It felt like they were moving in slow motion right out the gate. I'll take this kind of match over the Lee/Dijakovic style of main event, but this was not a match with 20+ minutes of material, and didn't need to be. Lee is bizarre to me. He is an incredible athlete who almost always plays against his strengths. He should be doing things to maximize his size and speed, and yet ever since joining NXT he almost always just comes off as everyone's equal. He's not a good striker, and yet he always does these stand and trade sections that remove any wonder. It would be like Vader working an equal strike exchange with someone 50 lb. (or more) smaller than him, it would look odd and make Vader look far less impressive. Imagine if Lee worked more like a larger, more spry Masa Saito?? Instead he's someone who works to minimize his size, and I don't get it. I was a big fan of Kross vs. Ciampa on the last TakeOver, and that match was worked with an immediacy that made Kross look like a killer without hurting Ciampa. This match had none of that immediacy, and instead was worked like at a slogging pace. I get they are saying that Keith Lee is a big man and takes a long beating to wear him down, but I don't think this did either man any favors. Keith Lee just got slowly worn down over a too long match, and he kept striking to comeback, which paints him in the least favorable light. He needed to just slam his body into Kross on every comeback, and that just didn't happen. I did like the Kross suplexes, and the whipping Saito suplex off the top was a cool finish, but even with the title win this match felt like a step back for Kross, and Lee has felt like he's been spinning his wheels on NXT all year.


ER: Weird show, my feelings for this one are a real rollercoaster. The show felt like a solid TakeOver show, but I really didn't like any of the matches other than the McAfee show. The pre-show match was fun but too short (considering every other match on the show got way too much time, they really could have used more balance), and Thatcher/Balor approached being a really good match but I didn't like the ways Balor took away from their own narrative. Ladder matches don't really move my needle any longer, they just happen far too frequently. The main event didn't work for me, and I was left with a former NFL punter carrying this entire show for me. And yet it felt like an overall good show? And yet it also felt like it went way way way longer than its actual run time. I'm torn on this one. But of one thing I am certain: Pat McAfee rules, and is a far more interesting performer than a large % of the NXT roster. That should be a major look in the mirror moment for the NXT brand. It likely won't be, but it should be.

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WWE Big 3 Returns! Lorcan, Gallagher, GULAK 5/24-6/7/20

Battle Royal WWE Smackdown 5/29

ER: Drew Gulak has not had great luck in battle royals during his WWE tenure, but he's always a good presence in a battle royal. Here he is mostly on the defensive, but I like how he hooks his leg over the bottom rope while trying to eliminate guys from the apron, mostly locked in a battle with Cesaro. I will always love battle royal spots where one man is on the apron and someone in ring is pushing boot to throat, and Gulak is great at hanging on while Cesaro pushes that boot under his chin.  It feels like a good idea for me to make a couple keyboard shortcuts for Gulak, one of them being "would have liked to see this go longer but", as I was foolishly thinking his return after not taking a weak offer was going to turn into one of those weird Vince "this guy stood up to me and now I respect him" kind of situations, and I would have like more of him with Corbin. Corbin and Gulak had a good match on Smackdown last month, and Bryan had a great match with Corbin, along with a great trios. So they were keeping that Cesaro/Nakamura/Corbin feud going with Gulak and it would have been cool to see that go in Gulak's favor. But I also like Gulak taking a huge hiptoss to elimination, so oh well. As for non-Gulak people, Dolph Ziggler continued to show that his greatest strength is as a guy who comes very close to being eliminated from battle royals before eventually dying on his elimination bump. This was a decent enough battle royal.


Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. vs. Roderick Strong/Bobby Fish vs. Tyler Breeze/Fandango NXT 6/3

ER: I wish this got twice the time it did, because I loved what these guys were bringing. The structure was tough to follow as it was a 3 way tag, meaning three guys were in the ring at all times, except for half of the match you had both members of UE in there and after awhile everyone was involved. Typing that out makes it sound like this was a mess and that guys would constantly be getting in each other's way, but somehow this was worked with precision. Everyone (except maybe Fish?) was working snug, and with nearly everyone involved at all times I thought they did a killer job of always giving everyone something to do. Burch is like an old man luchador as he seems to get better the higher up his trunks go, and here he at later career Villano III levels of trunk height (he really needs to pace himself as he's the same age as me, meaning those trunks will be over his tits by age 48, way too soon). Three way exchanges can be clunky and tired, but Burch was in their keeping things moving and mixing up strikes, throwing in a hard headbutt to make sure the exchange never approached rote, hard dropkick, throwing a surprise back elbow at Fish on the apron (which was paid off nicely when Fish laid him out on the floor later), and running interference for Lorcan's hot tag. Strong was a great pinball for Breeze and Burch, and I like that he took over when he just said fuck it and had Fish come in the ring full time. Fandango's hot tag was cool, totally forgot he had a cool snap powerslam and after he broke off the second one I kinda just wanted him to keep going. Lorcan's hot tag obviously ruled, with him flying into everyone with chops and elbows. Love how he flew into one corner with an uppercut, and cleared his path with an elbow on his way back to throw an uppercut in the opposite corner. Fandango tossing him over the top into most of the guys was done really well, but everything here was done well. With just a couple more minutes this could have been list, and it really wasn't far away as is.


Drew Gulak vs. AJ Styles WWE Smackdown 6/5

ER: Hot little Nitro match with both working quick to make up for the time. Styles always tightens things up when working against guys like Gulak. Not that Styles is out here showing daylight every other week, but he's also not throwing corner punches or aiming lariats at throats like he did against Gulak here. I like how Gulak recognized Styles' aggression early and started turning that into submission attempts, running Styles' into the mat with his cool crossface variation. Both guys got bounced off their head and shoulders in uncool ways: Styles shoving Gulak down into a backbreaker that bounced his head to the mat was probably my favorite moment of the match, and Gulak pays him back late with his cool drop down Michinoku driver variation. A fired up Gulak is quite a thing, and he really crushed AJ down the stretch with a dropkick that looked like it would have staggered anyone on the roster, big clothesline and an even bigger corner clothesline, and he knew exactly how snug to hold that pinfall. I had the weird hunch Gulak was winning here, and I'm happy he got the win with no kind of shenanigans, just outsmarting Styles and beating him to the punch.


Oney Lorcan vs. Tehuti Miles 205 Live 6/5

ER: I've been enjoying Tehuti on 205, he's the newest 205 guy who doesn't actually work like a cruiserweight. I like his brand of minimalism, and really enjoyed his Tyler Breeze match from a couple weeks ago. This match is built around the simple premise that Danny Burch kicked Miles around the ring last week, but Miles won with a schoolboy while grabbing the trunks. Someone who does a schoolboy with a handful of trunks on the show hyped entirely around the spectacular things that smaller wrestlers can do in the ring is someone I'm going to enjoy. This whole thing is worked simply, like a fun house show match where the goal is to pay off the simple story they broadly presented to the crowd. There's a reason that simplicity works. Lorcan uses almost entirely chops - and one wicked knee to the gut - to start and finish, hitting our story note early when Miles bails to the floor after taking some chops, gets stopped by Burch, then turns around into another Lorcan chop. The camera work was surprisingly good (because it was actually different) during Miles' control, and I especially liked the camera zooming in on Lorcan's face when Miles was scraping it with his boot in the corner. Miles drops some nice elbowdrops and works a cool Fujiwara armbar, then of course tries to win a handful of tights. This got a lot of time and I'm sure there was a better match they could have had, as neither guy was bringing out his biggest guns. But I liked the simple storytelling, Burch yelling about the pulled tights leading to Lorcan rolling Miles up with a prawn hold, and I like when guys work a more bare match like this. It's cool seeing wrestlers boiled down to their basics, and I'd love to see them build off of it.


Jack Gallagher vs. Isaiah Scott 205 Live 6/5

ER: This felt really scattered but always threatening to get really good, and the most successful moments were typical for Scott matches: whenever he drops the unnecessary embellishments things look better. This had a lot of Scott embellishments, and it played more like a Scott showcase than an actual match. And that's kind of what it feels like EVERY time we get a Gallagher/Scott match. Gallagher is great at working style clashes, but against Scott you never get enough "clash", you get guys waiting around for Scott to finish his windmill backspins so he can finally hit his headscissors. There were at least four different moments where Gallagher had to pause and leave a limb out for Scott to finish his embellished sequence, or stop short because he arrived at the right time for a sequence but Scott wasn't done with his handstand. Gallagher would try to drop interesting threads into the match, and Scott would make sure they'd go nowhere. I got excited for the moments that felt like the change was happening, like Gallagher wasting Scott's time avoiding him on the apron, only to grab his leg and yank it through the turnbuckles. But those moments where quickly forgotten in favor of Scott working so so armbars. When he toned down the BS it got good, and Gallagher's adjustments to go briefly into control were cool. I loved Gallagher leaping into a guillotine to drop Scott to a knee, or Gallagher working a side headlock on the top freaking rope, and reversing a big backdrop suplex into a hard landing crossbody. But you take a cool moment like that, and it instantly looks more silly with Scott kicking all four of his limbs like an upturned turtle. There was plenty to like here, but the main thing that hurt this match was that it never felt like a match, it just felt like Scott doing Scott things.

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Regal Will Creep into Your Thoughts Like a Bad Debt You Cannot Pay

William Regal vs. Fandango WWE 4/23/13 - FUN

PAS: This was one of Regal's last matches, and was on a RAW at the O2 arena in London. Regal was of course crazy over, and of course they had him lose to Fandango in 3 minutes. There was some fun stuff in the match, I loved Regal's dance off response to Fandango's opening dance moves, and I loved how aggressive Regal was and how much JBL clearly loved to see him throw potatoes. Fandango actually worked decently stiff until his dumb finisher. Regal deserved better, but he pretty much always did.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WILLIAM REGAL

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WWE Survivor Series 2017 Live Blog

"We were all picked essentially at random to be on the brand that we're on, and nobody talks about brand loyalty except for one month out of the year...but tonight, that brand loyalty MEANS SOMETHING for reasons."

1. Elias vs. Matt Hardy

ER: It's so strange to be running a match when the arena is maybe 20% full, feels like those opening card UFC fights where you're hearing individual voices from the crowd and everything is echoing. I think Matt Hardy matches that leave him to sell a specific limb almost always deliver, so I like Elias going after the arm, running the shoulder into the buckle, and breaking out an awesome leaping kneedrop to the arm. The crowd is sparse, but quietly getting into a Hardy comeback, and Elias' double underhook shoulderbreaker is pretty cool, but probably should have been treated as a bigger deal. This never really hits a new level, though. Hardy gets a comeback with the side effect on the apron, but Hardy is moving really slowly these days so even his comeback doesn't feel very exciting. I still like his injury selling, and he takes the post shot great, snaps over on Elias' fishermans suplex neckbrearker, but this was mostly an extended Elias squash.

2. Kalisto vs. Enzo Amore

ER: Crowd is still slowly filling in but my are they silent for this one. Enzo is at least good for a couple dumb bumps a match, and he really whips the back of his head into the mat on that code red, and Kalisto hits a cool rolling death valley driver that I don't think I've seen. Enzo's offense looks pretty bad, that falling boot offense almost always looks dumb. Kalisto gets yanked into the buckle really nicely, but this was nothing to blog home about.

3. Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens vs. Breezango

ER: I don't follow the backstage news as much anymore, but I heard something about Owens and Zayn getting sent home from a tour, and here they are opposite Breezango on a pre-show. And the two of them really lock in those chinlocks. Breeze this rows a nice back elbow but he's mostly in there building to Fandango's hot tag, and his hot tag is good! I liked Fandango's hot jabs and his run up the buckles tornado DDT was nice. Owens finishes with a real nasty pop up powerbomb. He really planted Fandango with it. But this match also wasn't much.

4. The New Day vs. The Shield

ER: This is nuts to see the reunited Shield opening up the PPV, but it's cool to officially open things up with something big. Hey those halfsie Raw/Shield shirts look bad. And I'm into this, as I should be, because these teams should match up well. Kingston's offense looks all flimsy, but we build to Big E's big spear to the floor which always looks the greatest. Ambrose tags in Rollins with the most hilarious fake Ricky Morton hot tag ever, because he "leaps" to tag him, but he's literally standing right next to him. It had to be done to be silly. I think. Thankfully the rebound lariat gets reversed by a huge Big E tilt-a-whirl slam. The New Day stacked splash in the corner is a little silly, but then they shut my mouth by doing a truly silly leaping double DDT with Rollins and Ambrose stacked onto E's shoulders. This whole thing was pretty underwhelming. Roman's spear to Kingston looked nice, but the triple powerbomb somehow looked weaker than Owens' bomb on Fandango.

5. Becky Lynch/Carmella/Natalya/Tamina/Naomi vs. Alicia Fox/Bayley/Sasha Banks/Nia Jax/Asuka

ER: Not enough attention was paid to Lana's awesome Smackdown cocktail dress. Raw team really should run the boards, meaning instead they will just have Tamina eliminate everybody. Tamina has been on the roster for EIGHT YEARS!! She is still really really terrible at pro wrestling. The internet will be furious at the early Lynch elimination. And man they are really actually spending way too much time on Tamina. She is the clear #10 on the totem pole in that ring, and somehow she is being treated as the big star here. It's terrible. I don't so much care about her eliminating Bayley, they've already done the damage to Bayley. But having her treated as as big or bigger star than Nia, and man does Tamina throw some of the absolute worst headbutts I've seen. Tamina has a terrible look, and is really bad at wrestling, and you no longer owe anything to her father. Let the Tamina push DIE. Crowd gets lit up every time Asuka tags in, and her stuff against Carmella looks awesome. That flying hip attack looked near decapitation level. We really have Tamina sitting in the final 4. What have you done. Who wanted this. Sasha is really great at putting over Natalya's stuff, leaning into the 360 lariat and snapping her neck back getting run into the buckles. Boy we are really getting some Tamina Time. Asuka gets the final two eliminations, but man I am confused by sudden big deal in 2017 Tamina. A lot of this was handled pretty poorly. Even the final 2 on 1 was silly, because there wasn't any kind of attempt at a save. They just kind of let Asuka get the pins. This was bad.

6. The Miz vs. Baron Corbin

ER: Miz goes after Corbin's knee and I like how they handle it. Though I was really surprised that they basically had Miz wrecking Corbin the whole match, and had Dallas and Axel at ringside...but Corbin basically took a bunch of damage and then hit his loopy finisher on him to get the win. I have friends over so maybe I missed some of the nuances of this match, but it really felt like Miz worked really hard in this one to wind up with that finish.

7. Sheamus/Cesaro vs. The Usos

ER: The brand vs. brand has been kind of weird as we have a lot of heel champs right now, so we're getting a lot of heel on heel action, so the crowd is just picking guys as default faces. Which I guess is fine. The work in this is both really good, and also not really captivating. They're all doing good looking moves, they just aren't building in a very interesting way. The end run is really fun, but even then it felt like a sudden call to go home. But these guys are all total pros and hit their stuff really well, and they all have cool stuff to hit. The final Uso hot tag is great, with one of them tagging his brother while doing a running no hands dive over the top and into Cesaro. That's awesome.

8. Charlotte vs. Alexa Bliss

ER: Really liked when this broke open with Alexa whipping Charlotte's shoulder into the floor off the apron. Her abdominal stretch was really great too, digging in her elbow into Charlotte's exposed sides, scratching at her. I love how tenacious Bliss is, loved that guillotine choke build. And both of them going after the other's lower jaw was awesome, just grabbing at jawbone to get to a standing position. Bliss eats knees spectacularly on her twisting moonsault, but leans way out of Charlotte's follow up yakuza kick. This was a fun one, probably the best match on the show so far.

9. AJ Styles vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: I'm not sure how well this will go for Styles fans, but I'm curious how they'll work this one. And as many of us assumed, this is an absolute mauling. Brock tosses AJ around like a total dead body, and AJ has some of the more spectacular German suplex bumps. AJ is flying around spectacularly, including a wild bump over the top to the floor. All of Lesnar's knees to the ribs look absolutely devastating. AJ comes back nicely and I always love Lesnar's missed knee bump in the corner. And then AJ gets probably the longest actual run of offense we've seen against Brock in probably 3 years. They flub that corner tornado DDT, but then Brock bumps around big for him, including an awesome moment where he gets run through the ring steps. AJ hits a bunch of big flying moves, and the big moment of AJ locking in the calf crusher was awesome. Lesnar was selling it great, and the size difference was completely erased in that moment. And then Lesnar just smashes AJ's head into the back of the mat a bunch, and it looks horror movie violent. Every time AJ went up for a flying move I got nervous that Brock would catch him, and sure enough, we got there. AJ takes the F5 super great, and this was really fun. I'm happy AJ did as well as he did.

10. Kurt Angle/Finn Balor/Samoa Joe/Braun Strowman/HHH vs. Shane McMahon/Randy Orton/Bobby Roode/Shinsuke Nakamura/John Cena

ER: I know we all want this to come down to HHH and Shane. I kind of want that. HHH looks really stiff...not in his strikes, but in his mobility. But I think overall this is handled pretty well, with everybody getting time to do their stuff.  But we knew where this was going, and it was awful. There were individual moments I liked, but as a whole none of it worked. When one of the things I wrote down as enjoying is "Angle grabbing an ankle lock when Cena was going to do a fistdrop", or "Shane really flew hard into the ring barrier on that dropkick"...that cool stuff is really minor compared to the blatantly awful longform storytelling once we got to Shane being the lone survivor. There was approximately 12 minutes of guys standing around silently making eye contact while breathing heavily. And thank goodness Raw has HHH on their team, so that he can outsmart venerable warrior Shane McMahon. He sacrificed Angle so he can claim the victory for RAW BRAND! Which comes with no actual reward whatsoever, other than bragging rights that not one single person actually cares about in any way. Braun barely gets any sort of comeuppance, gets to choke him down briefly, which will no doubt lead to a 25 minute WM match with a 10 minute HHH cosplay ring entrance. You knew where all of this was going, and knew it was going to be awful. It was. You could see the crowd actively not enjoying much of the last half. It never got to them chanting or singing or something stupid like that, but people just looked tired and bored and defeated. I can't really blame them.

ER: Underwhelming card. The bad stuff was bad, the elimination matches were the worst, and the good stuff was merely good. Nothing stood out as particularly great. These longer cards are almost always the pits, even the ones that look interesting on paper. The upside is that Brock/Styles exceeded expectations. That was a real high point.

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WWE Battleground 2016 Live Blog

1. Usos vs. Breezango

ER: Mauro forces in an overly long House of Cards reference and Byron Saxton's big contribution seems to be "_____ seem to be working well together!" We hit the hot tag 150 seconds in. Tyler Breeze is still awesome and takes three bumps from the apron to the floor in one minute. And for a 6 minute match this got really good. Everybody was hitting enziguiris to people on the top rope, an Uso hit an awesome tope past the turnbuckles, Breeze got knees up on a splash and then locked in a tight roll up. Crowd was really really hot for this. People wanting to see some wrestling! This must be the reason why that Nationals game I watched some of earlier was so sparsely attended on a Sunday.

2. Charlotte & Dana Brooke vs. Sasha Banks & Bayley

ER: They pumped too much air into those inflatable tree things! They were just standing all rigid. Except for that yellow one going into business for himself, which was awesome as it flopped over like it was giving Bayley a high five. And this match was a real blast. Great debut from Bayley who worked like someone wanting to make an impression, Brooke was a big ol bumper taking these bouncy flip bumps all over the ring and floor. Loved all of Bayley's back elbows, loved the way her and Brooke flew into each other on a double clothesline, loved Bayley's sliding corner kick. Sasha drops the knees on Charlotte and Cole shits out "Vintage Sasha Banks". Yeah man, that's like...2014 Sasha Banks right there. Luckily Cole and Saxton exist in that level of terrible that mostly makes them easy to tune right out. Really fun match.

3. The New Day vs. The Wyatt Family

ER: Yeah this was awesome. This felt like a 2014 WWE trios with everybody utilized properly and all the cool shit stacked up in the best way possible. Bray looked and vicious and motivated as I've seen him in over a year, Rowan targeted Kofi and stomped the hell out of him (even walking over his chest post match), Kofi bumped all over including running ear first into a Bray lariat that knocked him ass over elbow, Big E has a major death wish and mah god does he take a vicious spill on his neck and shoulders doing his nutso spear to the floor. Even Bram gets some nice moments, specifically with a massive boot to Woods that, due to his clumsiness, sees him following through until he's just standing on Woods' face. Woods gets his biggest star moment yet (well, biggest star moment not involving a trombone) by getting to snap on Bray like he was Ralphie going after Scut Farkus. On first watch this felt like a total badass Rowan/Bray show, but I bet on rewatch a couple other guys will stand out as even more awesome. That's when you know you watched a killer little trios.

4. Rusev vs. Zack Ryder

ER: Lana is gorgeous but still hasn't figured out how to properly say "hand" or "true" in that pesky accent. And man this match was awesome too. Look at me, ol "Everybody Gets a Trophy" Ritz. This is about as excellently laid out as you can lay out a Rusev/Ryder match. Ryder worked up to Rusev and had some great snap on stuff, blasted Rusev with his corner kick, loved that crazy dropkick off the ring barrier, really planted that flying leg lariat. And then I found myself getting excited for Zack Ryder of all people when he started fighting out of the accolade. Rusev worked around Ryder perfectly, setting up some nice comebacks by missing stuff, hitting some nasty kicks to the back of Ryder's head, and yeah this was all real good. PPV of the year so far (he didn't expect to type when this show started).

5. Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens

ER: I am tired of these two fighting, but WWE promises me that this is the blow off! It is amusing that WWE isn't doing some sort of stip match for it, since they rarely advertise a match as the blow off. Usually they don't mention it's a blowoff, they just let the severity of the stipulation be the barometer for the feud. I like the beginning of this with the Owens cannonball and surprise pop up Sami lariat. But my lord Sami might need to retire that rope flip moonsault. At its best, it doesn't look very good. At it's worst, the ropes are too bouncy and you blow up your own shoulder. And damn they're certainly ramping things up to kill mode here, but if it is indeed the blowoff then more power to them, drop each other on all of your heads. Zayn just flat out snaps and breaks out all the exploders, all the corner kicks, fans go wild, and if this IS indeed the blowoff then it was the right match for them to have. Man this show has been really good. I have not liked the other WWE Owens/Zayn matches, but this one won me over.

6. Natalya vs. Becky Lynch

ER: Natalya working as cocky zillionth generation Stu Hart "stretcher" is far and away the most interesting use of her. Crowd is silent throughout this but I'm into it and Natalya as bully is the best. It lights a fire under Becky's ass too as she works as stiff as I've seen her, really surprising the tired crowd with a shot in the corner and a big kick on the apron. Nattie was great always trying to grab at Becky's legs, Becky was great firing back in the corner. Match was the perfect length, really well paced (though Lynch couldn't be bothered to even act like Nattie had been yanking on her leg), and man I must be in the best of moods tonight. Eric likes everything!! I'm just waving my pennant that says "Pro Wrestling" over here.

7. Darren Young vs. The Miz

ER: Jeezus how many matches are on this PPV? This is what I get for not knowing what the card is ahead of time.


*****I gotta go to a Gun Outfit concert right now, so will not be able to finish the PPV report until some time later. Sorry for the inconvenience (?)*****

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