WWE Elimination Chamber 2/18/23 Live Blog

Do they not do Kickoff Show matches anymore? We really need a full hour of video packages and talking heads with no wrestling? Either way, I'm excited for how excited people are for this show. WWE hasn't felt like any kind of Hot Product in several years now, but people are downright buzzing about this show. That's pretty cool man. I haven't been watching the TV but I watched Rumble, and my boy Martin caught me up on the angles. I'm in, I can't pretend I have better things to do on a winter Saturday. 

1. Women's Chamber: Natalya vs. Liv Morgan vs. Asuka vs. Raquel Rodriguez vs. Carmella vs. Nikki Cross

ER: This is the best haircut Natalya has ever had, but it coincides with her face turning into a face that is more like Dana's Brooke's 2nd to 3rd face and it would have looked better with Natalya's own face. They got Raquel into the match took quick and all it lead to was Too Many Three Way Spots. I wanted Raquel killing individuals down the stretch. I can't be the only one who can't stand Nikki Cross acting like an annoying 7 year old's impression of an annoying 7 year old, right? Raquel's ring post bump looks good, Liv's bump into the pod looks better, but Liv makes a dumber face after the bump. Feels dumb to go to a big Nikki Crossbody spot wiping out everyone so early, because it just leads to everyone lying on the mat exhausted at like 6 minutes in. Carmella gets nearfalls on everyone who took a single crossbody block 4 minutes ago. Raquel is a wrestler who is great at saving matches like this. Maybe it's not that she has a track record of doing so, but she has the ability to force a long gimmick match into being something good in a way that Liv Morgan or Natalya will never have. When Raquel starts breaking out the big shit - running Nikki through a pod, pulling girls off the cage, taking a huge bump on a top rope sunset flip - the match finally comes alive. 

Raquel ramps up the crowd for two minutes, all leading to Asuka's big entrance, the perfect mood setter. Asuka knows how hot to come in, and Liv's missile dropkick to finally stop her looked great. Liv keeps getting bigger and bigger reactions the phonier her character seems. I thought people in Montreal had no time for phonies? I thought the people of Montreal were the kind of people to announce to the room "Are there any Fake People here? Because if you are, I respect your stance, but get the fuck out of my party"? Liv, you're fake. The run to the finish felt real quick, I think too quick. I'm seeing the words I'm typing and I see myself asking for more time from a Brand PPV WWE Gimmick Match, but this really did feel too short. The eliminations piled up too quick and all felt underdone. At the same time, I thought they actually did the complicated multi-man stuff and big bumps really well, and Asuka/Bianca is a match I would want to see much more than Bianca/Liv. Good match, but could have used a couple of better one on one showdowns. 

2. Brock Lesnar vs. Bobby Lashley 

Bobby Lashley's King Kong entrance is incredible. Think how much better it would be without a giant stupid PS2 graphic Bobby Lashley making a dead eye posing face. I'm excited for this match. I did a Royal Rumble live blog last month and was actually pissed when Lesnar got eliminated from the match so early. In response, now Brock tries to eliminate Lashley's shoulder socket by bouncing him across the ring with a belly to belly. I wish Lashley threw even more behind his spear, but the full nelson stuff was cool and the F5 power out was cool, but isn't it kind of weird how the F5 isn't a killshot? Like Lesnar is turning the F5 into Suplex City but without replacing it with anything more dangerous? I assume the reason he never brought back the stretch muffler was because he wound up shredding everyone's knee ligaments? Because bring that back. Finish was bunk, match pacing got tanked once they started spamming finishers and then Lashley didn't do enough with the full nelson to make it seem dire. Lesnar needed to be way more purple to seem like a man in real desperate danger, like 5 hours of terrible sex purple. 

Boy that Seth Rollins Joker stuff is just about the dorkiest shit around huh? Cowards couldn't even pay for the pedophile hockey arena song? 

3. Rhea Ripley/Finn Balor vs. Edge/Beth Phoenix 

ER: I should like a couple that looks like absolute shit, but I just cannot get into the couple of Edge and Beth Phoenix. I think they actually finally figured out the Beth Pompadour. They took the bulk out of the sides and slicked them down, makes the angles much better and avoids the Frankenstein wall of hair up top. This version works well. Edge still looks like shit though. I do think everyone's gear looks fantastic. Rhea's whole crew looks great, and the deep maroon/black/gold pattern is a very tasteful choice for Edge and Beth. I hate the moments of Beth Phoenix matches where she has to do acting. I love that Dominik is drawing heat in a real way. Rhea leans into Phoenix's nice running clothesline and takes a hard bump into the steps. Finn leans into Edge's running clothesline the same way as Rhea did, for team solidarity. The timing of everything in this has been great, it's all paced out so well. Dominik's heat keeps growing. The Phoenix superplex looked great, but the build hung Rhea out to dry a bit. Of course the second I type out the words "The timing of everything in this has been great" and then Beth Phoenix comes diving into frame a second too late for a pinfall save and then lies there on her stomach like Willie Mays Hays coming up a foot short on his slide. Rhea's brass knux punch to the side of Edge's head looked perfect. Old Man Edge is much better than Peak Edge in a lot of ways, and it's wild his spear looks this good now. Dominik should have leaned more into Edge's tope, but this was good. Rhea had an excellent performance here. 

4. Men's Chamber: Austin Theory vs. Montez Ford vs. Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Damien Priest vs. Seth Rollins

ER: Oh damn this is a pretty bad looking match right? I don't think the gimmick much matters, you see these six names and that is going to look like a bad match. I don't get Austin Theory in similar ways that I don't get Ricky Starks. Did Bronson Reed come back in the last two weeks or something? How did he go from not being one of 30 men in the Royal Rumble, to one of 6 men in Elimination Chamber? I was hoping I'd get a callback to the dogshit Gargano/Rollins sequences at the Rumble, so lucky they're the two starting this. It still looks bad a month later. Okay seriously what is the deal with Austin Theory. How does any of this stand? What is that jumping stomp that he does? Vince used to fucking love Dr. Jerry Graham? What the fuck happened? Edge doesn't wrestle as much like Edge anymore, so I'm really happy we have 6'4 guys like Damien Priest to bring some spiritual Edge Offense into 2023. His running slingshot senton looked like it hurt but I think that's because he messed up the landing. Goddamn this sucks. Bronson Reed came back with a cartoon Bluto sneer and it would have been way better if they just brought him back dressed as Bluto. He has the black beard and heard and his torso is comic book large, make him a fucking dock worker. 

To Reed's credit, he has been the most interesting part of this terrible match, as at least he was just smashing people in between his body and surfaces, not doing a series of tumbles and spins. He takes the poison rana really vertical and his selling afterward was an actual good use of WWE dramatic selling. Ford's sheer drop looked great, just belly flopping stomach first over Balor's shoulder from like 20' up. The best part of the match is now gone. The Rollins/Gargano stuff on top of the pod took way too long for what it was, but that huracanrana off the top of the pod was a great spot. Rollins is the worst possible Matthew Justice but he's at least better when he tries to be like Justice. Remember when I said the Women's Chamber match felt like it needed more time? This match feels eternal. Montez Ford does look pretty great. Look at his gear! You look at his gear in Street Profits and then see these tights? Great pair of tights. The repeated flip dives into the cage looked good...but having him get pinned by Theory just tanked this whole thing. What a bad look. Anyone explain Theory to me. I'll listen. They should have had Omos come out dressed like El Gigante to carry Ford out of the cage to the back.  

5. Roman Reigns vs. Sami Zayn 

ER: I used to feel like the biggest Generico critic, a guy I liked so much less than anyone else I knew. But sometime in 2020 I really did a full 180 on Zayn and well, his last few years speak for themselves. The wife and kids at ringside! I always like when they make someone's kid watch their dad take a beating while surrounded by weird strangers with parasocial relationships who think they know them. And this match was good! I don't think it hit the heights everyone wanted it to hit, but I do think it hit several heights. This was going to be a hard match to stick the landing on, and admittedly the long drama segments don't always work for me. Maybe (probably?) they would work better had I actually been watching all of the storyline play out in real time. It felt like the match peaked too soon and then had to be carried by the drama, and I think drama carried by a match would have been a more interesting way to play this. Every week they do the drama, this is when they can do the match. Roman's cut offs were strong, and Sami's cut offs were stronger, as it should be. Roman is much better at dramatic kick outs than Sami, but Sami was great at making it look like he was done. The ref shenanigans weren't necessary and came off weak, Sami and Roman did a good job of recovering the match every time there was a storyline pause. I thought the family would be involved a lot more (Sami's family, which basically wasn't shown after Zayn kissed his wife midway through the match) and I thought the finishing stretch de-escalated the match too much. Working a match with this much downtime scattered throughout isn't easy, and they never lost the crowd for a second, which means a lot. A Sami win would have made the moment better, but I don't think it would have made the match better. 

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NXT TakeOver: Stand and Deliver Night Two 4/8/21

Night One turned into a really great show after we got past the first two matches. I'm less excited about the Night Two lineup, but they got a lot of good will from me after the last 80 minutes of Night One. 

Santos Escobar vs. Jordan Devlin

ER: I think modern ladder matches have done passed me by. There hasn't been enough "new" done to the format or match layout to keep me interested. On paper I thought this was a cool pairing, but in execution it didn't work for me. You know there are going to be a couple of cool spots, and there were, but these matches are just designed to be 3 minute YouTube highlight reels at this point. That's fine if that's their purpose, but it doesn't make for an interesting match. Escobar seemed off through the first half of this, moving through spots real tentatively, like he was overly focused on hitting his marks, and it made the opening exchanges look really bad. Devlin had a few big bumps, like his fun one bouncing from a ladder to the top rope to the floor, or that nasty bump getting shoved backwards off a ladder into another ladder. We got a nice dive that plastered both guys into a ladder, and Devlin's moonsault off the ladder looked great, but took an eternity to set up. And "looked great, took an eternity to set up" is a great masthead for WWE ladder matches at this point. This was very disappointing, would have been better off with a normal singles match. 

Candice LeRae/Indi Hartwell vs. Shotzi Blackheart/Ember Moon

ER: The Dusty Classic was filled with great matches, and I'm all for this because I would love a serious tag division. And while the match itself got a bit messy at times, I liked the energy and they never let the messiness divert from the match. Now, it is true that one of my favorite things about the Dusty Classic was how focused a lot of the tags felt, like each team was bringing in their own style, and this match felt more like WWE Great Match Style, which isn't nearly as interesting. Dusty Classic had a lot of personality, this was more cookie cutter "plug in fast workers" style, and I think the personality aspect is what made those matches shine. Indi and Candice felt like a typical workrate team here, not at all like how they've been the past several months. Ember had a couple fun sequences, got an unexpected laugh out of me when she finished a strike combo with a Suck It. Shotzi will always be Shotzi, and that leads us to Shotzi spectacularly splitting the uprights on a tope con giro. I have no idea how it happened, but Shotzi has this magical ability to find no bodies on dives, and she somehow flies right in between Indi and Candice and straight into the barricade. This felt too rushed, never got the time to settle in and get anyone isolated, felt way too get in-get out the whole match. A couple double teams looked good, like the Indi/Candice pancake slam. Ember's double team Eclipse was a bit too ambitious, not sure it really worked in practice, but Shotzi's big senton landed heavy and I loved the way Indi sold it. 

Bronson Reed vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I've been really loving NXT the past several months, and it's because they've gotten away from the house style that ruined much of 2020. This match went back to that style and it sucked. Reed used to work as a big guy, but now that they don't have Keith Lee on the roster it's like they needed a big man to work 50-50 exchanges with a 160 pound man. It sucks so bad, and we all knew it was going to suck 20 seconds in when Gargano hit a sloppy headscissors and Reed missed a beat before doing a cartwheel. The cartwheel looked entirely disconnected from Gargano's headscissors, and Beth Phoenix screaming "SHADES OF BAM BAM BIGELOW" really hammered home how shitty this was going to be. Last night we got an insanely good women's main event, with Raquel Gonzalez doing an excellent job of selling for someone so much smaller than she, and here's Reed working as Gargano's equal the entire match. I hate it. This brought back all of my least favorite parts of NXT house style, the mirror exchanges, the selling entirely disconnected from the moves that each man just took, and the stupid offense that spins somebody into position to hit their own offense. Reed is not good at working equal to Gargano, so you knew they were going to throw out the stupidest tropes of the style. Was there a poison rana? Brother you bet there was, and brother you better believe that it looked like Reed leaping backwards onto his own head. Gargano was just dangling off Reed's neck, hanging there, no momentum, and Reed just threw himself over. Reed was always a second behind on every exchange like this, the entire match. Did we get a superkick exchange? Brother you KNOW we did! Reed hits a tope on Theory (he's a big man, but look at him MOVE!!) and I cannot tell you how uninterested I am in modern big man "moving like a cruiserweight" wrestling at this point. I thought Reed's crucifix bomb from the ramp into the ring looked great, but it meant nothing whatsoever because this is throwback NXT house style baybee! That move should be a finisher, not a forgotten footnote in an uninteresting match. You're a big round man, think of all the cool big round wrestlers you could be, Reed! Instead, he's like my old boss's dog who was 50 pounds and was scared of 15 pound dogs, like he had no idea what size he was. 

Karrion Kross vs. Finn Balor

ER: Feeling bad for Ray Rowe here, as they gave his whole look to the new bald guy. And it wasn't going to take much of a match to look better than the trash that came before, and it was fine! I can't really get into the Kross character, still really don't know what I'm supposed to think about him. But the Reed match set a low bar, and it looked like gold coming after. I liked how Kross actually recognized that he was larger than Balor. I personally always know if someone is larger than I am, or if I am larger than they are, but a lot of people in NXT do not know that! So when Balor locked up with Kross and Kross threw him down on the mat, I thought "Now there is a man who recognizes when he is larger than another person." And that's why this match is a win! Balor didn't play total underdog, but didn't play equal, and that's important. I like how Kross threw him around, dug how it looked like Balor was really getting upended on every big Saito suplex. We didn't go overboard with shocked faces and kickouts, no surprises whatsoever. It was just a bigger guy throwing a smaller guy around and eventually beating him, and that's all it takes to stand out in my brain right now. 

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Adam Cole

ER: This match is unsanctioned. It's on Peacock, broadcast from their own Performance Center, with commentary just like any other match, but someone back there does not agree with it and will not sanction it. Men fell dangerously into ladders an hour ago, and that was sanctionable, but one of these men is now wearing a denim vest and we cannot sanction that. The problem with giving a couple like this too many toys to use in a match, is they get too cute with their toy usage. We can't just have a couple guys braining each other with a chain, we need to have one of them bent at the waist for an eternity while the other takes forever to wrap his boot in a chain. Just hit Cole with the fucking chain, Kyle! You're holding the chain! Hit him with it! You knew this shit was going to be unbearably long, and even though it was UNSANCTIONED I wish we could have sanctioned some time limits. Save the fans from the unspeakable actions these gladiators were going to put themselves through. We go through all the same tired stuff that they always go through whenever any indy fed goes through an unsanctioned match, other than the actual ring being taken apart. You know what makes a brawl interesting? Blood and guys beating the shit out of each other. If you have a chain, you can just hit a guy with a chain. But the spots get way to cute way too fast, and you know these two are absolutely killing each other out there, but it's the worst combination of painful violence and cornball violence. I knew they were going through the ramp, I knew just knew it. It was either going to be the ring taken apart or the ramp crashing through, and I'm most shocked that it wasn't both. There were parts of this I liked, with my favorite spot being Cole grabbing the chain and clotheslining O'Reilly with it. But this was predictably long, and had too much over thought out bullshit. There's no excuse to go 40 minutes in a match like this. Going that long makes the punishing things you are doing come off LESS punishing. Cut this in half, focus on the violence rather than the humanity, and then maybe you have something. 

ER: Well, this was easily the worst of the two nights. This show was bad, not even sure what match I would most recommend to someone (probably the tag match? It was fast paced and didn't step on its own dick), but a lot of this show was a MAJOR step back. This show was a microcosm of every single thing that I hated about 19/20 NXT. I've been loving 2021 NXT so far, it's my favorite weekly show, and this show was like they decided that EVERYTHING they've done this year hasn't been working, and throwing it into reverse to bring us back into the worst era of NXT history. Absolutely terrible. 

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: O'Reilly vs. Balor 2

1. Kyle O'Reilly vs. Finn Balor vs. NXT 1/6

PAS: This isn't something I would normally seek out, but enough people I trust put it over huge, and damn does it deliver. Balor isn't a guy who has done much for me his entire career (he had one great Brock match, and I don't remember much else noteworthy) but he was awesome in this. This opened with some very cool matwork, with Balor working an abdominal stretch in really awesome ways. I loved how he shifted O'Reilly's body away from the ropes, forcing him to break the hold by grabbing the rope with his teeth. This sets up the story of the match, with Balor kicking the rope and damaging O'Reilly's jaw (which was a payback from their first match). Balor spends the rest of the match viciously beating on that jaw, with crossfaces and rakes. O'Reilly counters by attacking the arm, including some really great looking chaining of submissions on the ground. It looked less like a guy doing catch and release submissions and more like a grappler taking openings and capitalizing on them. Finish run was very cool, with Balor cutting all of the fat out of his offense, and focusing on making sure O'Reilly can't chew for a month. I loved him going back to the ab stretch at the end of the match and transitioning to an almost Rey Hechicero grounded stretch with a forearm on the bad jaw for the tap. Fuck me, I could actually see this ending up as the 2021 MOTY at the end of 2021.

ER: I think Phil was harsh on their first match, as even though it was nearly a half hour and had some extra NXT melodrama, I was a big fan of what they did. But I understand being a little more down on that match if you watched this match first, which trims some of the fat and less desirable moments of their first match. No doubt it runs tighter and the tighter runtime lets the physical damage come off more believably (ironic, since they legitimately put each other on the shelf for a couple months each in their first match). This had all of the violence of the first match, and it benefitted from having less NXT drama. The violence felt more mean and vengeful, and it does have the first match to thank for that. They played off that match a lot here, and while this match stands on its own even without the story continuation, it does benefit from it. This had the feel of two guys who had been waiting for their next chance at each other, and I thought it was maybe the best O'Reilly has looked since joining NXT. There was always a wink/nudge element and shoehorned comedy by way of heel stooge facials, or worse, unintentional Davey Richards "too serious" comedy. He's cut a lot of that out and is now able to make matches serious from strong work, and not just making dumb faces. 

All of the mat scrambling is tough, and it reminded me of the best Catch Point stuff, then only got better once Balor kicked the middle rope while O'Reilly's teeth were holding it. O'Reilly's jaw selling was really good, and the selling never overshadowed the actual punishment he was being put through. There were several surprises, things like O'Reilly hitting a desperate running kick on Balor but immediately taking a Chris Hamrick worthy flying back bump to the floor, or Balor getting busted open in a way that made a lot of his offense look cooler. Balor was good at selling his left arm, including using it as a blunt weapon to do one of his best ever sling blade clotheslines (where he faked with his good arm and lead O'Reilly directly into the clothesline). O'Reilly's kicks really sang, the standing high kicks looking like Balor was taking them full power off his bad arm and chest. It was two guys presenting nothing but receipts, and I bought into the full presentation. Balor was really cruel about locking in headlocks and crossfaces across O'Reilly's hurt jaw, and everything O'Reilly did felt like a justified response. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool 1/12/19

Tyler Bate/Trent Seven vs. James Drake/Zack Gibson

ER: Talk about underwhelming. I've actually seen this tag talked about as "the best WWE brand tag of the decade" and that is just madness. This was an overly long tag match that occasionally threatened to get good, but was always derailed. First things first, this did not need to be a 24 minute match. The work within in the match did not justify the length, as it basically broke down into a long heat segment on Seven, building to a Bate hot tag that required Drake and Gibson to either hold still or dump themselves on their heads (Drake especially leaned into and flew for every strike, lariat, and suplex Bate threw). Bate's offense was nothing but GYV repeatedly getting into position to take something ridiculous, from Gibson having to constantly be flustered by any strike Bate threw, on up to both Gibson and Drake having to hold perfectly still for several seconds just so Bate could do one of his Big Strong Boy spots and lift both in a short airplane spin. Gibson and Drake did excellent work finding plausible ways to fall for the same Bate tricks and make the offense look as good as it did. Seven turned in fine work as the FIP and I would have liked to see more of that, building to an actual comeback from him. Instead it felt like Bate kept hogging all the big babyface moments for himself. Seven did hit a nice low elbow suicida early, but much of this was built around Bate as the big star. Drake and Gibson had some great moments down the stretch. I thought both had real on point elbow strikes, and they hit a twisting suplex/Drake 450 that looked like something that should definitely finish a match. The wildest spot of the match was GYV hitting a Doomsday Device tope that Bate is pretty damn crazy to even consider taking. For a match that felt built around Bate in some selfish ways, I can't deny he took the silver bullet with that one. With some editing and a more of Bate's nonsense cutoff this could have been really good, as it was I will just remember it as a tag match that was too long. 

Jordan Devlin vs. Finn Balor

ER: This was going to be Devlin/Banks and then they changed it to a surprise Balor appearance. He got a great reaction from the loud crowd, but the match wasn't as satisfying as it could have been. They were bringing up the teacher/student aspect a lot throughout the match, but that aspect was kind of the monkey wrench of the match. Devlin has been dominant and mean during the entire run of NXY UK so far, and this match just made him look like a weaker version of Finn Balor. This should have been Devlin surprising the returning star, not the returning star showing that he's still on top even though he hasn't been there. I just don't see the point in running a "new guy dominating everyone here is always a step behind guy who has been up on the main brand". This was where Devlin needed a definitive win. Balor did look good, and that at least made him mauling Devlin make sense. I can get more behind a cocky heel student underestimating his teacher. Devlin is generous about running into Devlin's best stuff, but he throws harder. His kicks really land well here, the sliding apron dropkick looks decapitating and his shotgun dropkick makes Devlin's fast corner bump belieavable. Devlin's offense paled next to Balor's, and he had been looking like a real killer on the weekly shows, but he still made offense look great. He really got dumped with a great Balor brainbuster right after impaling himself into Balor's knees while attempting a moonsault. So it was not a match without great moments, and Balor looked like a star, but it all felt backwards. 

Eddie Dennis vs. Dave Mastiff

ER: This took a little bit to get going, but eventually came through on delivering what I wanted from it: The heaviest guy on the brand going at it with the tallest guy on the brand. The No DQ stip was the thing that slowed things down at first, as not far in we were taking long breaks to go grab chairs and ring steps and set up tables, and when you look at a 10 minute match and realize that 15% of it was plunder retrieval you gotta wonder about your resource allocation. But I appreciated Mastiff's dedication to John Cena's specific kayfabe ritual of preserving the sanctity of the ring steps' weight. Mastiff hoisted these steps into the ring like the weight 200 lb., a thing I always genuinely got excited to see Cena do. Cena would stumble around struggling to lift the ring steps in the way Marcel Marceau would struggle to keep his kite line straight, and while Mastiff doesn't have that same commitment I still always like wrestlers giving some integrity to their weapons. Mastiff ends up eating a nasty side slam on those ring steps, and the Singapore cane shots where metered out and delivered to strong effect, never devolving into exchanges and always given time to sink in. We got a couple cool visuals off of Dennis catching Mastiff up top and planting him with a Razor's Edge, didn't actually think Dennis would be able to pull off the lift and he did these great shaky legs as he was walking to the center of the ring to deliver it. Awesome spot. 

Things got really good when Dennis flipped out and tore back the ringside mats, knocked Mastiff off the apron with a hard back elbow after blocking Mastiff's suplex off the apron. But Mastiff winds up planting him on the ballroom floor with the Finlay roll and then squashes him with a senton. Dennis gets one last nice shot at a win after Mastiff misses a split legged moonsault, and even muscles Mastiff up for the neck stop driver. Mastiff handled the kickout so well that I actually thought Dennis was winning. But, Mastiff slips out of another Dennis Razor's Edge attempt, and bounces Dennis off his neck with a sick German suplex, then a cannonball through the table that Dennis had set up. I thought the violence worked well in this match, and they didn't shoot way past the time they needed to have a nice big man war. The big spots that got nearfalls were built to well, and the lack of overkill made the spots they did do mean a lot more. 

Toni Storm vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: I liked the first 2/3 of this a lot more than the final stretch, as the finishing stretch really felt like they threw out everything that was working for the match in favor of doing the same strike exchange/finisher trading that you see in a lot of modern title matches. The first parts of the match where filled with little things and attention to detail, stiff work over melodrama. Once the melodrama and ugly crying and Home Alone faces kick in you know what kind of match it turned into. The opening cat and mouse was fun, loved the timing the went into Ripley running out to the floor only to be nailed by a Storm tope, and I love how Ripley switched up her game to work this obnoxiously dominating style, always yanking Storm around the ring by her hair and mashing her face with palms and boots. Any time Ripley was in control it would be filled with these dirty exchanges, not just locking a move on but pulling hair before hitting a move. When Storm would kick out of something, Ripley wouldn't just lie there before picking her up for another move, she'd be instantly kicking at Storm, and not enough wrestlers fill those spaces with actual action. I thought Storm was great at fighting back, and I liked how the worked in the headbutt cut off spot as an almost equalizer, giving Storm recovery time while making Ripley vulnerable. Storm's Germans kept landing, and I liked where this was heading. Until I wasn't. I didn't love the hockey fighting (and the fact that it looked better than a lot of other hockey fighting spots just shows you how awful these spots almost always look), and the big melodramatic shocked face 30-45 second waiting period in between hitting finishers a few times just felt like a different match, or a big fat forward to the end of this match. 

Joe Coffey vs. Pete Dunne

ER: I correctly pointed out the needlessness of the tag title match going nearly 25 minutes, so obviously when you get a main event that goes 35, there will be complaints. This is one of those long matches where the longer it goes, the more flaws you notice from both wrestlers, things that could have easily been avoided if they just stuck to their strengths and didn't try to take such a big slice. If you turn this into a 17 minute title match - which is more than enough time to hit literally every single beat you would want to hit - then this could have been something worth talking about. It's biggest crime? It didn't feel like it built at all for 30 minutes. The opening mat work looked good, I was into Coffey trying to bend Dunne's wrist and Dunne making Coffey stop that by bending on his fingers, the kind of opening couple minutes that could lead to good things. But once they got that out of their systems this turned into a match where minute 5 looked eerily similar to minute 35, and that's almost always a problem with this overly long "wars". Guys are dead on their feet throwing...and they remain dead for a half hour. There was a spot where Coffey locked in a nice crab and started stomping on Dunne's head, and of course Dunne was then "knocked out", which lead to Dunne selling the crab the exact same way he sells any submission: lie there motionlessly until it's time for him to just get out of it. It also revealed how much Dunne requires his opponent (especially larger opponents) to do all of the lifting while he's planning his next move. Multiple times I saw Coffey have to roll himself into the ring, move his arm into a submission, place himself just right in the ring so Dunne could get to his next spot. The rolling into the ring annoyed me the most, as Dunne couldn't even go through the motions of attempting to lift Coffey, just put his hands on him and let Coffey roll himself back in. It's the equivalent of a wrestler who just puts his hand on his foe's shoulder and lets the guy stand back up on his own before getting hit with another move. It's lazy and unfocused.

And just as the opening tag felt like everyone in the match was working just to give Tyler Bate showcase spots, this whole match was selfishly and overbearingly the Pete Dunne Show. Every move that Coffey did, no matter how devastating, was used as a way to get Dunne back into the match. I'm not even certain Coffey was able to string two pieces of offense together, because there were so many times where he hit a powerslam, or a suplex, or a clothesline, and it would lead to Dunne getting to his feet first or Dunne kicking out and going right back on offense. When you factor in that Dunne was the one going for cheap shots by attacking Coffey's fingers, the whole match felt like Coffey was the underdog babyface who couldn't keep down a heel Terminator. The whole match was about Dunne's explosive offense, so everything Coffey did was just to set up Dunne being explosive again, and every big spot in the match was used as a match restart. That's the main thing that lead to this feeling like it had zero build, is every big spot for 30 minutes just lead to either both squaring off in bad looking exchanges as if there hadn't just been a big crash. I think Mastiff/Dennis earlier on this show was a good example of making the biggest stuff in a match mean something, give them consequences. This could have built into a match with consequences at any point, but they kept choosing to make their own offense mean little. 

These complaints would have been there without them doing other annoying fluff like "my elbow strike knocks you into the ropes which allows you to bounce back and lariat me which allows me to spin around with a punch!" Dunne has a few bad strike combos that make opponents look like total clowns when they fall for them, made me appreciate more of Tyler Bate's misdirection attempts before hitting his combos. Dunne's combos all require Coffey to duck stupidly just so Dunne could hit bad left/right combos. By the end we lose the thread so much that we get a couple of weird "both men fall off the top rope but we don't know what move they were supposed to be hitting so we'll just act like it didn't happen but also act like it was extremely damaging even though both wrestlers just went back to doing things." Through 20 minutes of this match I still thought there was a salvageable match. They clearly wanted to do something special in the first UK TakeOver main event, but their idea of "something special" was always "let's get to another run of big Pete Dunne offense!" This needed an editor, badly, but post HHH wrestlers have this weird aversion to hiding their weaknesses. 

ER: I was hoping for a better show considering it was the first TakeOver, and the people wrestling clearly wanted to put on a great show. Sadly, it appears that I dislike the instincts a lot of the guys when constructing a "big" match. It felt like the time could have been much better utilized on the show. They could have easily trimmed 12 minutes off the main event and had Jinny vs. Isla Dawn, showcasing two other women to set up a future title contender. Having only 5 matches, one of them FAR too long, just means less people showcased on the biggest show the brand ran so far, and one of those matches was used to show that the already established Finn Balor could still easily best someone who had been looking like a title threat. This show should have been used as a springboard and it came off like a muddled, confusing show when looking at what it actually accomplished.

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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NXT TakeOver 31 Live (Until 49ers) Blog 10/4/20

I'll level with you, this card does not excite me. Phil asked me yesterday if there was anyone I even liked currently wrestling in NXT, and I actually had to think about who that would be. The brand is really stale to me right now, and the few people I have been still tuning in for are not even on this show. The brand was great when there was frequent promotion turnover, but ever since it began being promoted as its own thing it has stagnated and seemingly run out of ideas. Maybe guys on the roster realize things have been blah, maybe they take this opportunity to put on a show that will get people talking. I don't care one iota about the AEW/NXT online feud, but maybe a few of the guys on this show DO care about it and want the internet to buzz about it for a few days. Or, maybe it will be the uninteresting show that it looks like on paper, and I will only have myself to blame.

Also I saw HHH called this new performance center something like "The ultimate heavy metal soundstage" and I am curious see what that means. From Damian Priest's entrance it looks like they have a large tron and a screen wrapping the lengths of at least a couple sides of the room. I'm more excited that there are at least some people (in masks) around the hockey rink baseball backstop like guardrail shields. We still have the home viewer screens in the majority of the crowd, but down front is actual people, and it's good having actual people there. On commentary is Sebastian Gorka.


Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I don't think Priest is a bad wrestler, in that I think he has the tools to be a compelling wrestler, but he would have to be completely broken down and retrained to not be 2020 Edge. Like Edge, Priest is someone who loves to work even sized with small guys, and it comes off like a large dog who doesn't understand that he's a large dog and gets bossed around by tiny aggressive dogs. Priest is 6'5 and 250, similar size to Edge, and yet he works matches like he's a bad version of Billy Kidman working Ultimo Dragon. And I do not like this match. It came off like a modern update of a Lance Storm/Jerry Lynn match from ECW. 20 years ago that was a match and match type that felt fresh and was done well by then. But it's not a style I want to see in 2020. There are other things from that era that I'd rather seen updated than that specific counter based evenly worked style with some extra shitty If-Nova-Was-Taller embellishments from Priest. Priest's tope con hilo looked good, and a couple of the reversals do work, Gargano takes a hard powerbomb on the apron, and a couple of the nearfalls were effectively placed, and Gargano's low blow kick leading right to the finish looked great, but overall I just didn't like this.

Velveteen Dream vs. Kushida

ER: Dream is dressed like Doc Brown to counter Kushida's McFly, which sounds like something I'd shit on but it's also a fact that I went to a high school dance as George McFly. It was a Hollywood theme dance and you were supposed to come as a celebrity or movie character, and I had found a neat vintage suit jacket at the Salvation Army, and a character with big nerdy black glasses was easy for me to aim for. Now, I suppose I was also 16 years old, and not a grown man playing cosplay dress up as one of my last appearances before pressure mounts to have me punished for being a nonce, so I think I can still shit on Dream.

But I thought their match was really good, albeit perhaps a bit too long. The chemistry between them was stronger than I expected, and the strength was that there was an impressive (and unexpected) amount of struggle to everything that happened, so no parts of it felt like a competitive partners dance. Kushida kept going after that arm for the hoverboard lock, and I liked his tenacity. Dream kept using energy to fight back in cool ways, like refusing to go down on drop toehold and making Kushida work for moves like that. It looks so much cooler when Dream struggles and fights before getting dragged down, makes all of Kushida's passes look fought for and earned. I loved how Kushida rolled through to an armlock after finally getting the drop toehold. There was a lot like that, and Kushida built to some vicious stuff like kicking the ring steps while Dream's arm was pinned between stairs and ring, or catching Dream in various triangles that always felt important. This had the feel of a match that was writing Dream off for a bit, which is a thing that I think will only continue to be demanded. The finish felt like a big FU but a cool finish, with Kushida taking working the arm and Dream powering to his feet for a dream valley driver, only Kushida doesn't let go of the arm and gets the immediate tap. Kushida attacked him too long after the match though, and Dream was doing this weird theatrical screaming and crying. It felt like Kushida turning heel and them making Dream a sympathetic babyface, but I hope that's not what they're doing. I hope it was them just writing Dream off TV. We'll see I guess.

Isaiah "Swerve" Scott vs. Santos Escobar

ER: This had a lot of moments I liked even though I think a lot of Scott's embellishments are really annoying. The match really came alive when Scott hit a one man dive train, and that Fosbury Flop was a cool highlight of that. I like Escobar's stable and would like to see them do things other than feud with Scott, but this match felt like the best case scenario for the pairing. Scott's big stuff looked good (one of Escobar's strengths is taking offense, and that shines here) and Escobar got to plaster Scott with his great tope. This one also could have used an editor, as I think it would have been more effective under 15 minutes, but I also think they did a good job at filling those 15 minutes. Ashante Adonis came back for (I believe) the first time in NXT since his name change from Tehuti Miles, and I could see him having fun matches on this roster. He's a guy who is low on offense, but works a similar style to other offense deprived wrestlers who I enjoy (i.e. cruiserweight Stevie Richards is more interesting to me than Isaiah Scott). I'm glad Escobar retained and would love to see his group presented as an actual threat, even pushed to the level of Undisputed Era.

Candice LeRae vs. Io Shirai

ER: I think this one had the right energy and built in a nice exciting way, but the Wife Guy Johnny stuff coming out for the finish and bumping around like he was on a trampoline while making shocked Gargano face was something the match really didn't need. The ref bump to set up the Gargano new referee silliness was inventive and fun, with Shirai eating knees on a moonsault and letting her momentum carry over and basically Pele kick the ref. The ref bounces to the floor and LeRae's curb stomp looked really gross, mashing Shirai's face into the mat. I think the Johnny stuff really took away from all the drama they had built in the match, as it came off cartoony in a way that the match hadn't been. I liked Candice here more than I did the last time these two had a big singles match (last year at TakeOver Toronto). She kept taking me out of that match with weird selling and getting into position too early for Shirai, and she worked this better as an aggressive heel. I don't think Shirai was as strong in this one as that one, but she made the big moments count and took offense nicely. Still, I thought some of the 50/50 stuff in the middle lost track of things, and then when they won me back Gargano took me back out of things, plus the finish looked a little ugly. Toni Storm and Ember Moon returned in two different post match segments, but it's really weird to bring back two people to the same division in segments immediately following each other. It kind of lessens the impact of both, although I can't deny that Toni Storm is a welcome return. Anything that gets a little less Tegan Nox blandness off the weekly show.

Kyle O'Reilly vs. Finn Balor

ER: Watching this one got delayed by me watching a mildly crushing 49ers loss, with an uninspiring Nick Mullens performance paving the way for an exciting but ultimately futile comeback from CJ Beathard. George Kittle is a more fun to watch wrestler than anybody on TakeOver tonight. I want to see Timothy Thatcher work a shoot style match with Kittle, based around Thatcher being unable to take down Kittle but being persistent about it. Brandon Aiyuk hit a ridiculous leapfrog hurdle for a touchdown, the coolest and best utilized leapfrog spot I've seen tonight. But the Niners lost and this match will now lift my spirits.

And this one won me over early, overcoming it's NXT Main Event Epic Drama layout with compelling selling and nice targeted attacks. Kyle O'Reilly put on one of his strongest singles match performances that I've seen, coming off like Bryan Danielson working like a 2001 NJPW kickpads junior. We get the cool story of O'Reilly exacerbating a Balor shoulder injury early, leaving him susceptible to a near match ending attack on a different limb. Both guys hit the strikes and offense harder the longer the match goes, justifying the overly long near half hour match length. It felt like things really ramped up throughout and never skipped ahead at any points. O'Reilly has a cool set of rolling double underhook suplexes and some knees, but gets a rib kicked in by a great solebutt and then run sternum first into the turnbuckles. From here on out O'Reilly is gamely selling a rib injury and while it was dramatic I also thought it was effective. O'Reilly had a couple of big comebacks (I especially loved him dumping Balor with a real high bridged Regalplex on Balor's neck) but Balor did cool things like work an actual persuasive abdominal stretch and stomp the hell out of O'Reilly's guts.

Both guys bleed from the mouth, and there's some some strong camera shots of O'Reilly stuck in a nice sharpshooter while blood cuts down his cheek. They also do some nice close up magic, as the closest the camera ever got to an O'Reilly knee strike it happened to be the hardest knee strike he hit all night. Finn stomps him in the ribs more, and O'Reilly fights back with a cool standing guillotine that looked nice and snug. O'Reilly played well as a lower rung FUTEN guy who hangs for 13 minutes against Katsumi Usuda. O'Reilly catches Balor with a couple of dragon screws over the ropes, and then hits a totally killer kneedrop off the top rope directly onto the back of Balor's thigh. O'Reilly's kneebar he locks on is some righteous Volk Han shit. He really twists and bend the ankle and when Balor tries to kick him away he grabs that leg and twists it violently over Balor's other leg. The kneebar was so good it made me suddenly start rooting for O'Reilly to win the title here, wanting Finn to tap. That kneebar got me Immediately invested in seeing a specific result, made me spontaneously root for a guy I've never been super high on, and that kind of moment is special. Balor doesn't tap, and he does finally make the ropes no matter how much I wanted him to tap. And, somewhat disappointingly, while his double stomps to finally slam the window shut on O'Reilly's ribs looked really great, I wish more respect was paid to the tendon damage that kneebar should have caused. Even so, I think the double stomps were a fitting end to the match and worked well in context. This was an unexpectedly strong main event within a style I don't adore, building to actual drama and justifying the overly long runtime with some stiff work.

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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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NXT TakeOver: In Your House 6/7/20

So it's Sunday afternoon, and NXT hasn't been hitting the way it used to for the past 6 months, nothing on this card jumps out as something I think will be Actually Good, but I'm gonna give this show a shot. If I'm not into something I can't say my attention will be 100% on it, but I'll give it a shot. But I dig the IYH set, which really just makes me want to get back on watching 1995 WWF and reviewing IYH shows. And I appreciate Pettengill coming back and sounding exactly the same and using the same exact vocal delivery, honestly doesn't sound any differently 25 years later. But it's pretty shitty they aren't giving anybody a house this time. Some people could really use a house right now.

I thought Damian Priest's shitty band was starting off this show, but it turns out that is Code Orange. And you guys, regardless of how Code Orange might sound on album (I listened to Forever a couple years ago, thought it was fine and remembered it sounding more like hardcore grunge and not dog balls nu metal through and through), we can all agree that they sounded like absolute shit here. Show the first minute of this performance to anyone and try to get them to explain why it is cool, and you will be met with a person who suddenly forgets how to speak. This is a bad omen.


Shotzi Blackheart/Tegan Nox/Mia Yim vs. Dakota Kai/Raquel Gonzalez/Candice LeRae

ER: This was a perfectly fine opener, and I think the trios format made it a stronger match than any combo singles match they could have done. This was the first time I think Nox has looked convincing against Kai ever since the turn. The two of them ramming heads got a vocal reaction out of me, and Nox really knocked Kai to her butt right after with a hard corner back elbow. Everybody was given good time here and nobody hung themselves, even with them trying a couple new things. The dive train was fun, dug Raquel brusquely tossing Shotzi aside, the Candice crossbody looked good, Nox's 450 to the floor a fitting closer. There were a couple of not ready for prime time moments, but those coming in a trios are way better than in a singles, because they easily kept the tempo up with quick tags. Big suplexes down the stretch were a cool way to ramp up to the finish, and it still surprises me that Mia Yim of all people is the one allowed to do a full dragon suplex. We go through years of WWE changing the bumps on suplexes - turning the half nelson into a full rotation stomach bump, having some guys throw German's so it's a flatter back bump than up on the shoulders - and Mia Yim comes in and just does bridging dragon suplexes. It would be like Eric Bugenhagen being allowed to do a Jerry Lawler piledriver. But it's good to have a spirited match like this start the show, and to actually have it all tie in to current feuds makes something like this stronger. Also Tegan Nox needs to drop the chokeslam. It looks stupid.

Damian Priest vs. Finn Balor

ER: So outside of a couple of moments, I thought this was really good. Priest has done nothing for me on NXT TV but I thought he added nice heft to this match. Balor's matches against larger opponents have always been way more interesting to me than his mirror matches against other Finn Balor guys. Priest threw a couple of brick wall lariats and really tossed Balor around, which is the kind of match where Balor can excel. Balor takes a mean bump into the ring steps, looking like he literally aimed to fly in to them like a tackling dummy. 10 minutes later and Balor still had strong ring step pattern tattoos branded into his right shoulder, and that will always kick ass. I mentioned Balor's best work comes against larger opponents, and it's also true that Priest's best work comes against smaller opponents. Watching him against Dijakovic or Lee is torture, but here his exaggerated Edge/Test offense works. His high lift flatliner looked awesome, and the sit out chokeslam from the top was killer. Really, the only part of the match that didn't work for me was when Balor decided to turn things into a step routine out of nowhere. Whatever clown thinks every NXT match needs to stop for a dance party is someone I wouldn't trust with any decision. But the obnoxious thing here, is that Priest allllllmost makes it work. I think Priest did as good a job as possible to physically respond to Balor's shots, making it come close to looking like he wasn't a man merely bracing himself for the next part of the rehearsed combo. A strike exchange is only as strong as the person being struck, and I appreciate what Priest brought to that moment. Seeing Balor's branding didn't make me consider that we'd get an even uglier moment involving the ring steps, but Balor using his shotgun dropkick to send Priest flying into and over the steps was awesome, and I love how it directly lead to the finish. Priest's bump looked great, and this whole match was satisfying as hell.

Johnny Gargano vs. Keith Lee

ER: Before the match we get Gargano sitting at his kitchen table wearing his dress up clothes and cape. When I was 6 I got to be Dracula for Halloween, and had this black cotton cape that had an easy one snap closure around the neck. And I wore that cape everywhere until at least March of 1988. If my mom was going to the market, I would be like "I wanna go! Just let me go get my cape!" And my mother is joyless so one day she just hid the cape so she wouldn't have a "cape kid" when I was 12 years old. Johnny Gargano is that kid. We also get that specific WWE Brand comedy where their idea of a joke is just showing an older WWF character. Similar to the gag of "and then Brother Love shows up and says his catchphrase and that's the joke", we get Johnny looking at a shot of Dok Hendrix. Use Michael Hayes to interview Gargano for the match or something, if you don't actually feel like writing more than the first part of a nostalgia joke. But Keith Lee is awesomely wearing Black Lives Matter gear so if that won't make Gargano a convincing heel then I don't know what will. And now it just feels like Keith Lee is going to lose. It just feels like a thing that they'd do.

And this match was actually good? I wasn't expecting that, but this is my favorite thing Gargano has been involved with in a long time. It wasn't perfect, and I hated the dance fighting stuff here as much as I usually hate it. Take that trash out to the curb and leave the rest of the match the same, and this works great. Gargano as an overwhelmed hero is way more interesting than never say die Gargano or epic match Gargano. Outside of the dancing this felt closer to Jeff Jarrett vs. Mabel on a Coliseum Video than what I was expecting, as that's obviously way better than what I was expecting. I liked Gargano working over Lee's hand and didn't have a problem with the size difference due to how Lee sold for Gargano. Lee was still able to power him around with one arm, but it slowed him enough. This is a match also greatly helped by the NXT wrestlers in the crowd. There's a certain kind of enthusiasm that can happen when wrestlers watch their peers, that same kind of energy that was on early Evolve shows. You can tell when they're not just adding heat to help vs. actually getting into things, and it just felt like we got a little bit more of that energy here. Lee body checking Gargano through the hockey shielding was awesome, a real unexpected moment right after Gargano hits the floor to shake the cobwebs out. Lee just wrecking balled Gargano through that wall and I loved it, a stunt spot that came off organic. I like the way this match rolled out, like that they didn't linger long on lame "swinging to miss" spots, and let Lee flatten Gargano in fun ways.

Adam Cole vs. Velveteen Dream

ER: This is a tough one for me, as I don't want to see these two in a cinematic brawl, but I would probably rather see that than these two in a 30 minute Adam Cole main event epic. Dream's stock as a character has fallen a lot for me and Cole is just not a wrestler that I enjoy. Dream destroy's somebody's mom's 2001 Saturn and I'll always enjoy somebody bumping onto a windshield. Dexter Lumis shows up, and he feels like a genuinely refreshing addition to NXT. He comes off like a pro wrestling version of an abusive cop taking his family out to Olive Garden and ruining the night when he finds out they missed never ending pasta bowl. The stuff at the finish through the chairs looked good, felt more like an indy garbage spot than a big match WWE spot, and that helps things. I'm glad this was kept to 15 minutes, even though I am not excited for Cole still champ. Why is Cole the guy? Why is Strong not the champ in UE? Cole is such a weird choice to me.

Karrion Kross vs. Tommaso Ciampa

ER: This ruled and was exactly the kind of match I didn't expect them to have. This show has really come off stronger than expected for me, because they have played against type for the entire show. Priest/Balor and Lee/Gargano were sensibly and smartly worked, the Cole match went half as long as I expected, and it's almost like I keep dreading the epic and they keep going more understated (compared to recent big match NXT). This was hugely successful for me, a near total steamrolling by Kross, in a way that I don't think hurt Ciampa while making Kross come off big. Kross murdered Ciampa with strikes and lariats and as they were doing his big choke finish I'm sitting here excited because it actually felt like a finish. It's only been 6 minutes, no way they laid this thing out that smartly, and I dug it all. Ciampa really leaned into everything Kross threw, loved how he sold his beating. His small comeback came off really well but I like that it was contained to more of a last gasp than any sustained back and forth. I just really like that they went this route, came off like another breath of fresh air and a nice change of pace from the last two matches.

Io Shirai vs. Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte

ER: I liked parts of this, but I am beyond tired of big match Charlotte. Ripley seemed like a genuine big deal just a few months ago, and that feels like another lifetime ago. Shirai had some big moments but is still someone where the loud Mauro praise feels real hyperbolic. Ripley felt a little sluggish throughout, Charlotte isn't a good "constantly vocal" Barry Darsow, and three ways in general stink. Three ways being the big main event payoff of the women's division has been death. I liked Shirai going off the house, Charlotte sold the downtime well selling Shirai landing on her nose, we get one of those cutesy three way finishes with Shirai moonsaulting and pinning Ripley before Charlotte could tap her. It came off like a big Shirai moment, but I just couldn't get into a lot of it.


I don't think this show was great, but it delivered better than I was expecting. Kross/Ciampa, Lee/Gargano, and Priest/Balor made sure that it wasn't at all a waste of time, and I call that a win.

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NXT TakeOver: Portland 2/16/20

ER: I was seriously consider going up to Portland to see this, but instead I am sitting at home wearing soft pants. Nobody I knew was interested in either a) seeing this with me live, or b) spending a few days in Portland, and that is fine. It's a place I frequently look for excuses to travel to, so I will surely be there in the next couple months anyway. Let's see if friends and well wishers were correct to convince me not to go. Although, to be clear, this show could be terrible and I would have had a great time in Portland. Plus I can go up there and eat at Screen Door any time I like without having to also sit through an Adam Cole singles match.


Keith Lee vs. Dominik Dijakovic

ER: I saw the hype video with Mark Henry talking about how big these two are, and how unfathomable it is for big guys to do what they do. And I am so happy that Mark Henry did not do what these two do and instead wrestled like Mark Henry. I want to see a hoss fight, not two big guys cosplaying an Ospreay match. And this match was definitely these two having their match, and their match does very little to excite me at this point. It is their collection of "Isn't it crazy that THESE two are doing THESE moves!?" exhibition, and I have seen it a lot and I hope this is a blow off match. I think all their stand and trade spots look badly rehearsed, and Dijakovic always seems to be 25% off on every super complicated thing he executes. So these matches are always filled with "MAN that's impressive for a guy his size. Imagine if it landed!" moments. The whole thing is one Eliminators move set up after another, with one big move leading to rest, leading to the other guy doing a big move, and then more rest. Dijakovic keeps breaking out new things, and they are impressive, like his twisting moonsault in ring or his gigantic swanton to a seated Keith Lee on the floor, but these moves always seem to get sold about as long as any other less dangerous move he could have done, and that's a "him" problem. We get a lot of "your big move/strike made me recoil off the ropes/mat and bounce back with my OWN big move/strike" and that's something I typically hate from 160 lb. guys, and lemme tell you that it sucks even harder with 290 lb. guys. For every move I liked, there was a moment that immediately showed that it wasn't actually that devastating, and Dijakovic doesn't have the acting chops to pull off the bad fighting spirit faces he always attempts. This was the match I was expecting, and I probably would have praised it to the heavens if they came out and worked a Mabel/Diesel match instead.

Street Fight: Tegan Nox vs. Dakota Kai

ER: I haven't been sold on heel Kai, but her street fight gear is legit. This is the coolest that Dakota Kai has looked. Kai is channeling mid 90s AJW street fight attire and it rules. Meanwhile, the person I'm supposed to root for is just wearing her normal wrestling gear and has her hair bumped up to absurd levels. I think a lot of the small stuff worked here, while a lot of big stuff did not. This was my favorite Kai performance, and it worked because she was making small things look as good as big things. She took an early drop toehold into the barricade and just went into it mouth first. And she continued to pay that kind of attention to every little spot, and it elevated things. My favorite moments of the match were not complicated, they were things like Kai snapping off a quick kick from the apron to Nox's face, or Kai splatting hard on her stomach on the apron, or Nox calculating wrong and throwing a low right while Kai is meeting her head with a trashcan lid, or Nox swinging a chair right into Kai's knee and Kai going down like someone who actually had her bad knee beaten with the odd angle of a trash can. When they kept it to basic street fight elements, I thought it was working well, and only fell apart in the moments where they got too cute or overthought what they were doing. No matter how nice Kai's kicks looked, duct taping Nox's wrist to the ringpost comes off a little silly when Nox is watching you do it, and her hand only shoots up to stop you the second you stop wrapping duct tape but not a moment before. But I liked stuff like trapping Kai's knee in a chair and smashing it, the German suplex into a trash can was nasty, and the visual of Kai's head in the chair on the table was strong. Now, using this street fight as a way to reintroduce Reina Gonzalez (with a painfully flat "Oh My God That's Raquel Gonzalez" read from Beth Phoenix) came off more than lame. She looked bad in her big moment, futzing around on the top rope with Nox, before Nox has to jump entirely on her own "through" the table. Gonzalez took forever and couldn't get into a good position to throw her, so Nox did everything on her own (no camera angles could make Gonzalez look good) and the painful bounce off the table came off much more accidental than "intentional badass move" from Gonzalez. Bad reintroduction, flat finish.

Johnny Gargano vs. Finn Balor

ER: This one was one of the on paper matches I was mildly dreading, having those "I just volunarily agreed to watch a show with a likely hour worth of Balor and Cole matches" thoughts, and then this started out just fine. The problem was that it kept going, and I did not want it to keep going. But I was fairly involved with this when they weren't doing "well scouted like looking into a mirror!" wrestling. Heel Finn don't interest me, Face Finn don't interest me, so there wasn't likely much they could have done to win me over other than surprise me with something different. And I was into this, until I wasn't into this. Once this started getting overly sequenced it got the same kind of silly I was expecting. It's so funny that they work on crafting these fast elaborate reversal sequences, and I am into stuff like Finn catching Gargano's spear from the apron. But I can't help but giggle when they run this fast sequence, Balor drapes Gargano over the top rope, sprints to the apron...and then carefully climbs up every single buckle on his way to the top rope. No matter how quickly and ironed out these sequences get, I'm always left with silly little moments where someone is holding themselves in an awkward position waiting to take a move. And so before long Gargano is doing that offense that Gargano does with a lot of pointing, and I chuckled at Balor kicking him off the announce table. Went too long, but the odds of this ever being "for me" left the building pretty quick.

Bianca Belair vs. Rhea Ripley

ER: This was the match I was most excited for, and while it didn't hit the high level I was hoping for, it was still a good match that delivered much of what I wanted. This was a tough position for Bianca, as the match has clearly been treated like a lame duck to Charlotte/Ripley in all of the build. This match was so clearly second banana, with a result so obvious, that getting people invested was going to be like not getting robbed blind in a trade after the player publicly demands a trade. So they don't work this cute, and they throw hard shots, and the occasional messiness on suplexes added to things for me. NXT has had to much cleanness in their main events, I like a little mess. The important thing is that Rhea threw harder clotheslines to the chest and harder knees to the head than Lee and Dijakovic earlier in the evening. I enjoyed how they handled learned behavior, like Belair eating a big boot after going for her series of leapfrogs, and Ripley scouting the hair whip after taking one to the midriff earlier in the match. I really wish Bianca had been treated like more of an overall big deal, as she's lost on every single TakeOver I've watched so has that "Luger always loses" mid 90s WWF feeling to her. Belair as Luger isn't actually crazy now that I think about it...and I really like Luger...and I really like Belair's power here. This was good, and pretty easily my favorite match of the night so far, even if I am getting very tired of Charlotte.

Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish vs. Matt Riddle/Pete Dunne

ER: This was good! I expected this to be good! Some restraint would have been welcome, but the NXT house style is getting further and further away from any kind of restraint. I got into it from the beginning, with UE jumping Riddle and Dunne in the aisle way, babyfacing themselves by stopping the awful Bobby Fish song, which had the special power of getting less funny every time it was spoken. I thought this was an especially cool showing for Fish and O'Reilly. Bobby Fish is basically the least talked about member of UE, but he brings a cool salt and pepper old athletic guy energy to things. Fish is like the best possible Frankie Kazarian, that tanned guy in his 40s who is now leaning deep into his aged hair, only Fish does great offense catered to his age, and is maybe the finest example of a silver fox wrestling has seen. Dude was owning the silver and I thought he came off with actual star appeal. O'Reilly had a real nice very fast kick combo, that didn't actually look like he was just thinking about the next step, it really just came off like he was winging kicks. Sure he had some silly wobbly legs down the stretch, but there were a lot of things O'Reilly did great in this one. My one hang up is that I don't really think the Riddle/Dunne team works as well as I thought it would. There's something missing and they just aren't as complementary as I thought they'd be. I like both of them, Riddle especially, but the team just keeps coming up lesser than sum for me. Riddle is always going to do things I like, and here he's hitting sentons and taking big bumps barefoot and tossing out Germans and I'm just going to like that. I don't think this reached the kind of fluidity that some of the best of these NXT go go go tags can hit, and of course doesn't touch the same kind of match from To Infnity and Beyond or Philly-Marino, but this was very fun and part of a really enjoyable 1-2 with Ripley/Belair.

Adam Cole vs. Tommaso Ciampa

ER: Nope.

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

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


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

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

Damian Priest vs. Killian Dain vs. Pete Dunne

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

Matt Riddle vs. Finn Balor

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

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

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


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

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Men's Money in the Bank

Baron Corbin vs. Finn Balor vs. Ricochet vs. Andrade vs. Ali vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton vs. Brock Lesnar WWE Money in the Bank 5/19

ER: Within the first two minutes of this, Andrade takes a gorgeous Jerry bump, Ali gets backdropped on a table, Balor gets backdropped on a table, Ricochet hits a springboard 450 to the floor, and Ricochet gets backdropped on a table. This match feels like it knows it can definitively be the best of the night. They do a lot of big things here, and it consistently looks good and painful. Ali and Ricochet both eat backdrops onto ladders, and Andrade spectacularly springboard dropkicks Orton off a ladder. This has been a night where agents have laid out some real clunkers, so guys stepping in and having one of those fun WWE Heavyweight X Division matches is going to come off even better. WWE has a decent history of being able to do a "many guys chaining together offense" multiman, and this played like one of the good ones. Andrade hitting a sunset flip powerbomb on Finn off a ladder through another ladder - Andrade landing on his feet and Finn recoiling like a skinny kid getting bounced off a trampoline by two fat kids - was one of the most spectacular WWE spots of the last decade. That was WWE stealing the brilliant insanity from the Crazy Crusher vs. Hell Storm Canadian backyard ladder match. Ali, Balor, and Ricochet really sacrificed their backs for some cool moments tonight, all of them taking multiple back bumps onto ladders, onto the floor, and onto unbudging tables. Ricochet taking a mammoth hip toss from McIntyre, from the ring through a ladder set up at ringside really made this feel like we were getting an ECW match with 3 Spike Dudleys. Corbin is pretty good as modern Justin Credible, pushed cartoon rat faced heel who has been shaving his head for hairline reasons since late 20s getting a ton of go away heat. I would have preferred an actual finish with the guys involved, since really everybody here absolutely busted their ass and someone deserved some credit for that. But I also love Brock more than most people so I can't deny that I think he's a fun guy to be running around threatening to cash in briefcase. What an absolutely scary monster in the closet, knowing that Lesnar could run out at any time to potentially concuss someone! This match played a lot more like something you'd see on a dirty indy show, everyone taking some impressive risks and the fans really getting into it. This show desperately needed to go out on an exciting note, and this match delivered that.

PAS: This had a pretty amusing structure with all four juniors taking enormous disgusting bumps, while the three heavyweights just pinball them around. I mean Orton takes about 10 minutes of this match completely off, I wouldn't be shocked if he went to take a shit or grab a cup of coffee, and meanwhile Ali dies five hideous deaths and Balor nearly snaps his back in half. It almost felt like this was booked as a rib by Kevin Nash. In that sense Brock running in and winning the match while taking zero bumps works perfectly.  Hell of a career shortening bumpfest performance by Ali, Balor, Andrade and Ricochet, and those are super athletic guys to die in interesting ways. I am pretty tired of ladder matches, but can't hate the hustle.

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I Forgot WWE Money in the Bank Was Today Blog! 5/19/19

Got it in my head that this thing was happening next weekend, went on a nice jog during the breaks in the rain, hot shower, cozy pants, sitting down with coffee and Phil texts me if I'm gonna write up the PPV. Crap. I had been planning on watching a Death Wish sequel, a couple Beyond matches, and the Schitt's Creek finale I've been saving...but let's dive in blindly to Money in the Bank!

Daniel Bryan/Erick Rowan vs. The Usos

ER: Pretty genuinely surprised that this wound up on the pre-show. Now, I don't actually know what the rest of this card is (been only skimming through TV the past several weeks, and now that I'm watching it's more fun to just see what happens), so maybe it will knock my socks off! And this whole thing delivered the usually fun pre-show match quality, but with these guys it should have been way better than that. It was good, it was fun, but it really wasn't that much more fun than if we had gotten a Mojo Rawley/No Way Jose 8 minute match. The timing looked just slightly off throughout, things like one of the Usos leaping far out of the way to set up Bryan catching him in an armbar, or Bryan arriving at the edge of the ropes and having to wait a split second to be hit by the double superkick, Usos double splash finish looking ugly with both guys landing more on their feet than landing the splash, just felt like a lot of this was worked at 75%. There were cool moments - hard not to be with these guys - and Bryan pretty clearly looks like the best wrestler in the company right now. I liked Rowan catching both of the Usos on dives, thought each Uso took a nice big bump, but this underdelivered expectations from these four.

Naomi vs. Carmella vs. Nikki Cross vs. Mandy Rose vs. Ember Moon vs. Dana Brooke vs. Natalya vs. Bayley

ER: Everybody has new gear which is cool as I don't even remember people having notably cool new gear at Mania. Was their seamstress running behind? Naomi in the afro puffs and bumblebee look is fantastic, she pulls it off so well. I really, really love that gear and look on her. And Carmella is finally out of the Baywatch swimsuit and into a money two piece. This whole match is somewhat sloppy, a little disjointed, but they went for a ton of shit, tried out some cool new shit, and tried to be a little unique with the concept. Not all of the spots worked, some of them felt way too choreographed (stuff like Carmella holding the ladder too long waiting for Mandy to kick her knee out (and the extremely awkward aftermath of that spot, with Carmella weirdly shoving her away with one arm and saying "get away from meeeee" like they were two kids play fighting and one actually got hurt), or Dana Brooke reaching right over the briefcase to grab the rope because the spot was for her to swing from it, that stuff never looks good and I hate when we see the end of the sequence telegraphed by the process. But the painful stuff was painful and the cool stuff was cool. Mandy Rose took a couple big nasty bumps, one over the top to the apron to the floor, the other getting kicked off a ladder; Sonya Deville came in to fireman's carry Mandy up the ladder, and that looked awesome; Ember hit the Eclipse off a ladder into the ring, Nikki does a nice version of Finlay's ring skirt trap beatdown, Naomi took a painful as hell atomic drop bump on a ladder, Mandy ran up a set up ladder to hit a knee in the end, tons of cool stuff. Overall I thought it was too mapped out and a little messy, but it was an appropriate length, and fun! And Bayley could make for a fun title chaser.

Rey Mysterio vs. Samoa Joe

ER: Man are we ever gonna actually get a total badass match between these two? This is a genuine dream match and we've gotten a pointless Mania match, a rushed Raw match, and now an even more rushed PPV match. This was more angle than match, with Joe getting legit busted open by a shot and then getting pinned fairly quickly while his shoulder was nowhere close to the match. It's pretty lame to have them both wildly celebrating a late career Mysterio title win, while also getting thoughtful Michael Cole voice saying "You now Samoa Joe has a legitimate beef about that pin." This match needed Dominick to take a real shit kicking. Instead we got Cole saying weird things like "He's making Rey's teenage son watch his father get beat!" First, Mysterio's large ass adult son has to be in his 20s by now, old enough to foolishly run in to help his dad. We've had Miz's dad eat a beating, Dominick needs to get busted open. If you don't want to have Dominick eating a beating on the same show where that happened in a different feud, then what is the point of even debuting Dominick at this point? What we got of a match was fine, these two are nice dance partners, but we just didn't have the time to make it very interesting.

Shane McMahon vs. The Miz

ER: I really enjoyed their Mania match, thought the stunt spots were genuinely nutty and built too nicely. Having them fight in a cage kind of contains the stunt aspect more than I'd like, but they bring good energy to this. Shane is a fun stuntman, but here he shows that he's a fun cornered animal. I was fully expecting him to work a fully equal match, because for whatever reason Shane is always treated like an equal. But here he comes in playing desperate strategy, scrambling for escape any way he can. I do like the moments where he can't help himself but always pays for it, even if Miz catching him on the coast to coast was kind of awkward. Miz unleashing actual punishment was really good, with Cole calling him a sadist (which is a weird thing to have your announcer saying about your babyface who isn't doing a heel turn) as he beats Shane with a chair. I was hoping they'd end it like this, with Miz getting some revenge and dropping him face first on a chair. But they opted to go a pretty stupid route instead, as they apparently think the hot way to draw fans into this PPV is some refs making mistakes! The ref stops the match when Shane gets his foot on the ropes, even though it's a No DQ cage match. Two matches in a row where a ref mistake changes the outcome of a match is just stupid, uninteresting, and lazy. That Shane eventually wins the match by dropping to the floor, ensuring the feud continues, was not what I wanted. This started very promising but didn't go in a direction anybody could have wanted.

Tony Nese vs. Ariya Daivari

ER: Damn this feels like a couple deep cut guys on the roster to be getting PPV time. I don't really have the time to watch 205 Live, but damn what is the state of that program? Tony Nese really stinks. This whole thing is ice cold (possibly by design) and Nese doesn't help any one soul in the building get warm. His prepared combos are so sloppy and shitty looking, he runs through this awful high kick/kneelift, leg sweep, leg drop combo that is so slow, and manages to look shittier literally each step of the way through the combo. Daivari has a couple more interesting things than I remembered. I liked his jab and a couple of his cheapshots, but he doesn't have anything interesting enough to make the crowd care about Tony Nese. We do eventually get a Boring chant, and it's stupid but not undeserved. Nese doesn't deserve cheers for his shitty elbow exchanges and slow kicks, all delivered with absolutely zero personality. Nese is such a zilch. Fans at least make a little noise for his flip dive and 450, but I actually laughed when it got a kickout. These guys are going for This Is Awesome Please Don't Stop epic without earning one damn ounce of it. I hate it but I kind of love it. The finishing stretch was nonsensical and cut short right when they decided to do some silly kickouts. Really this whole thing showed that neither of these guys are anywhere close to deserving PPV time. This was outright bad.

Lacey Evans vs. Becky Lynch

ER: I really have not been into any of the Lacey Evans stuff we've gotten so far, so this is a decent chance for her to win me over. I think I'm still upset that we never got the culmination of this exact same run for Eva Marie. I wasn't expecting any good matches from that, but I got a genuine kick out of the Eva Maria stuff. And Lacey looks if not great, interesting. Her arm work was nice, whipping Becky's arm into the match, wrapping it around a post, stomping on the wrist, kneeing the elbow, all of those are cool things. She threw a hard elbowdrop to the stomach, overall a nice attack. The crowd doesn't really seem to buy into her game though, and it makes for some pretty quiet control segments. Perhaps worse, is that Lacey doesn't eat a babyface beating very well. She is really stiff - not in a cool strikes kind of way, stiff as in "kind of a lug" - who doesn't bump excitedly for explosive offense, kinda just clunks her way over on big dropkicks, and always seems just slightly out of position. The finishing sequence building to the Disarm-her was messy and unconvincing, with another bizarrely out of place ref leading to the sequence looking even uglier than it should have. Was this a case of "refs call it like a shoot and the shoulder wasn't down" or have they not been instructing the refs to act like it's a shoot for a decade? This whole PPV has felt both cursed and like a curse over the past hour.

Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte

ER: This could be a nice way to turn our misfortune around. This overall feud has had some unfortunate detours and misdirections, and has been a disappointment, but it still has high ceiling potential and it's always a possibility one of the matches could reach that ceiling. It doesn't really get to that ceiling, and is also kind of a dull mess. There were also several moments where one of them intentionally or unintentionally flinched out of the way of important strikes, so you got a few moments of sold strikes that ate a ton of air, including the kick that literally ended the match. That stuff is ugly as hell and the wrestlers need to be given the confidence to call audibles more often. The match didn't work to any interesting peak moments, was not memorable, and then it ALSO turns out it's even more of an angle than a match, as we get the full fan requested Bayley run in complete with her cashing in the briefcase.

Charlotte vs. Bayley

ER: This was at least memorable for the fans' legit large pop for the quick Bayley win. It would be a real kick if Bayley suddenly got a groundswell of support the way fans suddenly took to Kofi. I would love if the end result of all of this fairly botched Becky/Charlotte feud is Bayley becoming as popular as Becky was a year ago. Bayley running through the crowd was a genuinely fun moment.

Elias vs. Roman Reigns

ER: You guys I really don't like this PPV and I definitely would rather be listening to the angular guitar synth sounds of Jimmy Page while Paul Kersey takes down a sect of LA new wave gutter punks. I am starting to resent the PPV a little at this point. "Big Dog" Commentary Count: 3

AJ Styles vs. Seth Rollins

ER: This was not the match I was hoping for, when I was hoping for my luck to turn around. AJ has been a noticeable step down over the past year, and Rollins is arguably my least favorite guy on the roster. This just wasn't the match I wanted. It's a match that I'm very tired of. We haven't really seen these two in a match, but that's not what I'm mean, I mean that I'm tired of these Seth Rollins style fitness routine epics. This stuff is such soulless junk, I always wind up totally zoned out 5 minutes in. There were things that looked cool: AJ sets up a nutso piledriver off the apron and Rollins drops hard to his escape, Rollins hits his dive a little more recklessly (not as daintily) as he can, stuff like that. We get an actually AWESOME reverse suplex off the top, with Rollins whipping Styles with a low arc, making it look like AJ bounced right off his face. It was great and infinitely cooler than any other piece of Rollins' offense. So naturally it was used as a mid-match nearfall surprise. The missed and hit superkick tradeoffs look as silly and overdone as they usually look, and "The Beast Slayer! Looking to burn it down!" is so cringe that I don't even know if Manowar could make that sound cool. It certainly doesn't sound cool when describing Seth Rollins. This may have been a good version of "this match". It didn't go anywhere deep into overkill, even if I thought the layout was boring and predictable. That makes it at least an above average version of this match, but I'm tired of this song.

Lucha House Party vs. Lars Sullivan

ER: Pretty sure this match was booked as a Vince dogwhistle to trump showing he fully supports the burgeoning market of white guys with questionable tweets pushed too far and taking the matter of getting rid of brown people into his own hands.

Kevin Owens vs. Kofi Kingston

ER: I'm not expecting to really enjoy the "not against Daniel Bryan" portions of Kofi's title run, but we'll see. I don't have much skin in either of these guys, so it's tough for me to get into this, but they do well with the time they're given. Owens superkicking Kofi out of the sky on a big plancha to the floor looked cool, Owens took a big double stomp on the apron, Owens takes a big upside down bump in the corner and drops on his his, and more. This does continue the unfortunate trend of the night of every single match having an absolute dogshit do si do reversal sequence that looks like slow mo play fighting. Those sequences are really bugging me tonight, so things weren't perfect here. But it's probably the best match on the show since the MITB women's match, and that wasn't a particularly high bar.

Baron Corbin vs. Finn Balor vs. Ricochet vs. Andrade vs. Ali vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton

ER: Within the first two minutes of this, Andrade takes a gorgeous Jerry bump, Ali gets backdropped on a table, Balor gets backdropped on a table, Ricochet hits a springboard 450 to the floor, and Ricochet gets backdropped on a table. This match feels like it knows it can definitively be the best of the night. They do a lot of big things here, and it consistently looks good and painful. Ali and Ricochet both eat backdrops onto ladders, and Andrade spectacularly springboard dropkicks Orton off a ladder. This has been a night where agents have laid out some real clunkers, so guys stepping in and having one of those fun WWE Heavyweight X Division matches is going to come off even better. WWE has a decent history of being able to do a "many guys chaining together offense" multiman, and this played like one of the good ones. Andrade hitting a sunset flip powerbomb on Finn off a ladder through another ladder - Andrade landing on his feet and Finn recoiling like a skinny kid getting bounced off a trampoline by two fat kids - was one of the most spectacular WWE spots of the last decade. That was WWE stealing the brilliant insanity from the Crazy Crusher vs. Hell Storm Canadian backyard ladder match. Ali, Balor, and Ricochet really sacrificed their backs for some cool moments tonight, all of them taking multiple back bumps onto ladders, onto the floor, and onto unbudging tables. Ricochet taking a mammoth hip toss from McIntyre, from the ring through a ladder set up at ringside really made this feel like we were getting an ECW match with 3 Spike Dudleys. Corbin is pretty good as modern Justin Credible, pushed cartoon rat faced heel who has been shaving his head for hairline reasons since late 20s getting a ton of go away heat. I would have preferred an actual finish with the guys involved, since really everybody here absolutely busted their ass and someone deserved some credit for that. But I also love Brock more than most people so I can't deny that I think he's a fun guy to be running around threatening to cash in briefcase. What an absolutely scary monster in the closet, knowing that Lesnar could run out at any time to potentially concuss someone! This match played a lot more like something you'd see on a dirty indy show, everyone taking some impressive risks and the fans really getting into it. This show desperately needed to go out on an exciting note, and this match delivered that.

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