2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

 

2. Jeff Hardy vs. Darby Allin AEW Rampage 1/19/24

ER: I am pretty deep in the bag for anything involving Darby Allin and A Hardy Boy. They haven't had a single thing to do with each other since 2022, but there were three different Darby/Hardy matches in 2022 and I loved them all: I loved the Tornado Tag with Darby teaming with Sting and the Hardys, I loved Darby vs. Matt despite what everyone said about Matt's "Always Been Weird, Actually" legs, and I especially loved Darby vs. Jeff. I haven't seen any of Darby's matches with Shaun Cassidy but as I said, I've loved every other match involving Darby and the Hardy Boys so I assume they're great. Now, I assumed that Darby/Jeff match was going to be The Last Great Jeff Hardy Singles Match. There was no real indication he had another in him, and while he won that match and didn't actually pass a torch, it felt almost like a guy winning in his last match before retirement, only there was no retirement. 

Now it's a year and a half later and nobody seems to want the Hardys around anymore, so Jeff gets to have a big time swan song, again. Darby and Jeff's first match felt like Jackass Forever: two lunatics doing stunts, but one guy is old and broken so does 1-2 really big stunts, making up the difference in damage to his dick, and leaves the constant bumps to the New Jeff. This match might not have a ridiculously tall ladder made for suicide attempts, but I think it's better, meaner, and created room to be more violent without needing to build to a Big Stunt. 

Hardy wrestles completely differently here and I think it's his literal best individual performance of the decade. His game looks tighter than at any part of his career, and instead of trying to match his stunt successor he decides to just beat the shit out of him. Find me any other matches where Jeff Hardy punches someone - multiple times - as hard as he was punching Darby and I'll show you some more Jeff Hardy matches I'll be writing about. Almost every time Hardy tries any kind of risky stunt in this match, he eats shit. He learns quickly that he doesn't need to eat shit to beat Darby, because he is physically bigger than him and can hit harder. Hardy has a great early miss, vaulting off the ring steps one step late and hitting the guardrail hard enough that it looked like one of the most painful bumps of the match, and decides Fuck This and just starts stiffing Darby the rest of the match. 

For years now Hardy has been mostly doing really sloppy versions of all his trademark pieces of offense, but in this match it looks like he actually wants to murder someone. Suddenly he isn't just hitting everything crisp, but he's finding violent innovations. His Curt Hennig rolling neck snap often looks like trash, but here, when he started doing them perpendicularly, running in from Darby's side and snapping his ear to his shoulder it somehow breathed new life into a move that has been co-opted by too many bad wrestlers. Jeff Hardy is somehow working smarter, not harder, and it's like finding out a guy that has a 98 mph fastball 15 years ago also could have been using a knuckleball the whole time. 

But it's difficult to work smarter when you are historically known for making stupid decisions. Hardy figuring out to dominate Darby with fists but then relapsing into missing a swanton off the top to the floor? That's just the story of this man's life. It doesn't matter that he learned to use his fists, crash landings are hardwired into this lunatic's brain. It was inevitable. This match was one of my absolute favorite Hardy stories of his career, and I'm honestly not sure he's ever told it better. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

9. Darby Allin vs. Jeff Hardy AEW Dynamite 5/11

ER: I love these guys. This was so good. The best kind of sicko wrestling, where two guys in face paint try to see who can break their skeleton faster. Time leaves Hardy as the safer bet to do so, but Darby has a fearlessness that makes me buy fully into his character, so this match is even money. Darby has done a couple hundred crazy good tope suicidas but his dive into Hardy was one of the fastest full contact dives I've ever seen. That was one of the fastest full contact topes of any kind I've seen from anyone. It's a No DQ match, and his cannonball of a tope annihilated Hardy so fully that it made sense for Darby to set up an elaborate folding chair death trap, and the match continued on as a great story of both guys choosing smart moments to set up complicated spots, so nothing ever felt like it had to be paused. Ring steps, chairs, and a damn tall ladder all added to the presentation and the build to their involvement felt natural. 

When the ring steps came in, it's Darby going teeth first into them because he took too long setting up the chairs. Hardy flew off the ring steps with a clothesline that he wanted to connect with good, and Darby flew into that clothesline neck first and really got hooked by it. My cousin Mikey broke both his arms when he was a kid, leaping off their doghouse in an attempt to fly. Because he jumped without noticing the clothesline in front of him, his flight went a bit longer than expected. That boy got flipped. 

This match wasn't just painful crashes though, it was little moments that built to those crashes. I liked when they were fighting over that big tall ladder in a tug of war, and how when they both yanked it out of the other's hands they just kind of ran at each other with no plan. They had an exchange that ended in a Darby Code Red, but it's easy to picture a lot of matches going right to a cleaner Code Red instead of two guys running toward each other on instinct with no sequence to run straight into.  

Hardy's seated jawbreaker couldn't have felt good on those steps-loosened teeth, and his corner dropkick was right into the side of Darby's neck. It's all a perfect mix of an old legend tightening up all the signature offense that he's looked so bored doing for the last 5 years. Hardy was capable of putting in occasional surprising effort during his last few years in WWF (see his 1/4/21 Raw match vs. Randy Orton), but maaaaan has he had some real dogs the last decade. I don't accuse guys of going through the motions that often, but brother brother brother. I just love seeing the man motivated and doing this thing that's wrecking him, all while wearing the worst face paint a first time Burning Man attendee ever wore. 

Hardy draws a ton of sympathy from me, doing his body breaking stunts. I'm a guy who cried during Jackass Forever, seeing these broken down men and their mangled dicks, and the feeling with Hardy isn't dissimilar. Jimmy Snuka was still on indy shows doing the Superfly Splash when he was 10 years older than Hardy and he wasn't pulling a single part of it. He was splashing people's guts out and telling them to puff up their chests for it. He was in no way taking any part of that in return. Hardy takes receipts gladly, but I guess that's probably not the only reason he's more sympathetic than Jimmy Snuka.  

That ladder was too high. Way too damn high. That could have been a man's death. Hardy hung in there and did his best to catch that Darby's death drop but he probably did his body a lot worse for it, as Darby came crashing through Hardy's arm and shoulder and sandwiched it hard into the chairs. I have no idea how either man walked away from that with nothing broken, but I'm assuming they just know something that I don't. I can only assume - I have to assume - they know something I don't, or that they have Wolverine's bones, because Darby's missed Coffin Drop on the apron and Hardy's missed swanton on the ring steps looked like two men flaunting their Adamantium skeletons. Jeff took all of Darby's in-ring Coffin Drop, too, and it's good to see that the guy who is no longer going to land on his tailbone to ease off the swanton, is also going to let you land as hard as you want on his torso. I usually hate that roll up pin after a guy takes a big finish, but fuck, Hardy took every finisher in this match. He's a guy I fully buy being able to take a finisher and then pull a high cradle. He takes it all. He just made it even better by pulling a cradle so high it actually looked like Darby couldn't kick out. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2022 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW 8 Man Tornado

16. The Hardys/Sting/Darby Allin vs. Private Party/The Butcher and the Blade AEW Dynamite 3/23

ER: Man this rocked. Jeff Hardy debuted the previous week in a big way against Private Party, and I love how he kept the chaos going. At the same time, this continued the improbably, amazing run of Sting, somehow putting in his greatest work of the century in his early 60s. Tony Schiavone has been so good on commentary during Sting matches, and I loved the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flew too too far with an early match plancha onto everyone. Tony is totally beside himself, talking about how he told Sting to "not do crazy things like that anymore", but laughing to himself at the same time. 

The action splits up and goes all over the arena, and really the only bad thing about the entire match is that we couldn't possibly see everything happening. Every pairing looked like it was worth seeing, at least based off what we were able to see. Everybody played into their role and did it well. Jeff had this crazy clothesline over the barricade (silly me thinking that would be the most reckless thing Jeff would attempt), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and the action flowed really well from ring to ringside to crowd to backstage. 

Jeff did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, never denying his yarder's heart. Teenage backyarders have that skateboarder mentality of looking for things to do a move off of, and here's a broken Jeff still looking for ledges that would be cool to stunt dive from. A majorly underrated part of the spot was Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. That kind of attention to detail is the perfect encapsulation of Sting's veteran knowledge and how the smallest things can make a match great. Matt Hardy looked awesome during the finishing stretch, like he and Private Party had been feuding for years. Private Party have come a long way in the past couple years, and they're getting so much better at feeding for offense and moving into position. I thought the finish was spectacular, as at this point I fully believe that Sting is as crazy as Terry Funk ever was and would be foolishly willing to take a frankensteiner into a cutter. Sting hopping off the middle buckle and blocking the cutter, dropping into a dragon sleeper and fighting up to his feet for the Scorpion Death Drop was such an awesome moment, timed expertly with a Twist of Fate. This is the most hyped I've ever been for Sting, a man still gaining new fans into his AARP membership. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Broken Hardys vs. Private Party

16. The Hardys vs. Private Party AEW Dynamite 3/16

ER: I thought this was a blast, a great TV comeback for the Hardys and the kind of high end role-working from Private Party that shows how they've really grown. Private Party knew the right balance of "Younger Version of Hardys" and "Lite Heel Showcasing Legends" and they hit it dead on, and the Hardys worked up to their legendary status. The Hardys are the biggest US wrestling tag team of the last two decades, and I am always a sucker for a wrestling match featuring aging veterans tapping into their spent youth. I thought Matt looked great here. His timing was awesome, and his offense lands heavier than ever. He still might have the best punch in pro wrestling, but every move he did landed hard. His Side Effect looks like a dangerous 90s joshi finisher, his Twist of Fate really yanked Kassidy's neck, and his downward strike elbows to the neck looked Misawa-level. Jeff moves like 48 year old Rusher Kimura now, and doesn't seem to be able to bend over and lift anyone to their feet any longer. But, now he just wrestles like old indy freelance Jimmy Snuka, landing full weight on every splash and elbowdrop, absolutely murdering rib cages with his Swanton. Jeff's Swanton has to feel worse than a Vader Bomb at this point, and Private Party hung in for every single heavy landing. 

Quen and Kassidy wrestled this with a smug confidence and it might have been the most I've ever been into them. Flashy babyface teams are okay, but Kassidy nailing a tope con giro and smiling at the camera comes off way better as a brag. Private Party were great at feeding for both Hardys while peppering in their own highlights, and both knew how to time kickouts for stronger effect. It was no guarantee that the Hardys were going to win this. AEW knows how to showcase veteran acts without crushing upcoming acts, and seems to recognize that some acts develop over longer arcs. When Dynamite debuted, Private Party were a featured tag act, and they weren't quite ready for prime time. Careers don't always arc as planned, and this was a great example of two careers at very different points of their arc, colliding nicely. 

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

Drew Gulak Was Raised on a Promise

Drew Gulak vs. Mansoor WWE Main Event 11/25/21 - GREAT 

ER: This was the  6th (!) and final match Gulak and Mansoor had in 2021, and perhaps the final match they will ever have. I liked all six of their matches, but we didn't quite get one that was a head above the rest. All of them were good, none of them were quite enough to make a list (unless you were compiling a list of Gulak/Mansoor matches, to which I would say that all six of their matches belong on that list). This was a cool match, just like most of their matches, with Gulak starting things off with wrist and ankle control, and I've always been impressed by how well Mansoor stays in sequences with Gulak. It never looks like Gulak leading someone through matwork. Mansoor is always doing something like grabbing at Gulak's ankle, and he's really squirmy, constantly moving forward, so just holding onto his wrist always feels difficult. This broke open nicely with a real sick inverted atomic drop from Mansoor. He stopped Gulak running the ropes by grabbing him like he was going for an exploder, and instead just brought the hammer up into Gulak's balls. Gulak always has nice counters to throw out against Mansoor, and the best was when he threw him off mid-tornado DDT and then hit a fantastic running lariat while Mansoor was still getting his footing. 

I liked Gulak working over the ankle and back, love his little leg whip takedown. It's not a dragon screw he just has a hold on Mansoor's ankle and flings it while dropping his body weight down. There was an interesting fight over a vertical suplex, which isn't something that you really see in WWE. Both kept blocking each other's weight and kept backing the other up, until Mansoor wisely dropped back with his weight, rolling backward and came up to his feet powering Gulak into the suplex. Mansoor really looked like he was fighting to get him over, and the crowd responded much more to that fought-for suplex than they would have to either just hitting a snap suplex (source: they actually responded to that deadlift suplex and had been mostly quiet before that). My big complaint with the Gulak/Mansoor series is that they never really adequately build to a finish, and the finishes can be a bit sudden. It happened five times, so there was no reason to believe it would change for the sixth, and it didn't. Still, this was a real good way to cap off a series that a lot of people did not watch, two fun dance partners who would go on to be even more grossly underused in 2022. Unrestricted 5 minute matches on Main Event every month will always be better than random 2 minute Smackdown matches every few months.

#1 Contender Black Friday Battle Royal WWE Smackdown 11/26/21 - FUN

ER: There aren't many 2022 Drew Gulak matches, so one of his last TV matches is going to wind up being him getting eliminated 90 seconds into a battle royal. Somewhat cruelly, they teased two Gulak interactions that we've never got to see in actual matches: Gulak vs. Sheamus and Gulak vs. Sami Zayn. Gulak mixed it up with both and tried to eliminate Zayn before getting booted spectacularly to the floor by him, sprawling out onto his stomach when he hit. He wasn't the first eliminated (sorry Jinder) so he'll always have that at least. The rest of the battle royal, as battle royals go, was fine. It had Shanky without Veer, and Mace without T-Bar. Sami Zayn won, and he was far and away the best battle royal worker in the match, working constant character moments that added to the whole match, never making the match stand still the same way Happy Corbin and Madcap Moss made it stand still for their character work. Zayn knew how to cheapshot and get almost eliminated, and knew how to always be working while not always being the focus. Angel and Humberto should have stayed in the match longer, as they're better at integrating singles match spots into a battle royal setting, but both took great elimination bumps (Garza going fast to the floor, Carrillo getting body slammed into him). A lot of this felt like it was focusing on the wrong guys. Asskickers like Sheamus and Holland and Cesaro felt underutilized, and Sheamus wasn't working this like it was for a title shot. Fast guys like Mansoor were out of there before the ring was cleared out enough to do anything, but it got saved by Zayn running and stumbling through, Ricochet working a hot finishing stretch, and a false finish Jeff Hardy win before Zayn shoved him painfully to the floor. Needed more Gulak, but Zayn's 2021 was so great. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DREW GULAK

Read more!

The 2002 WWF Royal Rumble Match: A Great Royal Rumble Match

ER: I had not watched this Rumble since it originally aired, and I was surprised at just how many specific things I remembered. I have real goldfish brain these days and yet I somehow remembered more about this Rumble than almost any of the 20+ that have happened since. I watched this one specifically for the 2002 Boss Man content. Boss Man was good enough in 2002 that it's worth checking out a 70 minute match for what is no more than a few minutes of Boss Man action. This was his final PPV match appearance before spending the next few months working compelling matches on Heat. Going out like a legend. But this match had a lot more value than just a few minutes of Boss Man. This is one of my favorite Rumbles, one with nothing but great punches and ass kicking. Goldust/Rikishi was a great starting two for this Rumble. Honestly, Goldust making his WWE return and looking this damn good is something that should be brought up every time you talk about Dustin career highlights. He and Rikishi were pacesetters for this, focusing snug punches, fast near eliminations and hard bumps, and at least 15 guys in this Rumble focus on the same. Boss Man is actually the third guy in this whole thing, and in a Rumble where half the men involved made a case for having the best punches in WWF, Big Boss Man made the best case for #1. 

Based on this Rumble alone, the 10 best punchers of 2002 WWF were:

1. Big Boss Man

2. Matt Hardy

3. Val Venis

4. Goldust

5. Perry Saturn

6. Mr. Perfect

7. Chuck Palumbo

8. Christian

9. Scotty 2 Hotty

10. Steve Austin

Goldust/Rikishi/Boss Man makes for a really great fast paced three way, with all taking big bumps and throwing stiff strikes. Goldust gets crotched up top, Boss Man gets whipped into Goldust's groin, and Boss Man slips Rikishi ass over elbow with a running forearm shiver. During his few minutes in the Rumble Match, Boss Man threw upwards of 16 different precise punches to Rikishi's and Goldust's body and face. 

He made the most of his too brief time, then took a real tough elimination: He was the matches' lone Stink Face victim, and it was a particularly aggressive and lengthy, just buried. What were they doing out there. How were we a baby step away from a wrestler being allowed to put his balls in his opponent's mouth or something. Boss Man staggered into a big bump elimination, Rikishi blasting him with a fully extended superkick and a freight train clothesline over the top. I still can't believe how great Boss Man was in 2002. 

Goldust has some of the best in-ring timing of any wrestler of the last 20 years, but we get blessed with an unintentionally hilarious Rumble moment where Goldust starts a corner 10 count punch sequence on Bradshaw at almost the exact same time the countdown clock begins, so you have 13,000 people colliding on numbers with everyone going in different directions. 

Undertaker clearing the ring, laying waste to everyone - Goldust claiming best elimination with his chokeslam bump elimination - was really well done. Undertaker felt like a real force and everyone in 2002 moved like they were somehow injected with extra testosterone. But the best past of Undertaker eating waste was Matt Hardy and Lita beating the shit out of him, and it only got better when Jeff Hardy came in because then all three of them kicked the shit out of him. I wish we got more of that before Taker made his comeback, but I just love the Hardys. The Last Ride on Matt was huge, and Jeff got to distract Taker enough for Maven to make him look like a bug eyed idiot. But they got a lot of good mileage out of the Undertaker/Maven brawl, with Undertaker beating the shit out of the never-eliminated Maven and then walking down the aisle to punch Scott 2 Hotty in the face before just walking back to continue the beating. Maven bleeds and gets dragged into the concourse area, security guards having to actively shove fans out of the way as they crowd in. 

There's a lot of star power, and the guys who get less of a reaction all do stuff to make the crowd pay attention. Christian, DDP, Scotty, Chuck Palumbo, Godfather, Albert, all worked hard for their 1-10 minutes, everyone of them throwing hands and bumping big. DDP had this great tumbling backwards bumps through the ropes after a Scotty superkick; Christian, Palumbo, and Perry Saturn all have a face punching challenge and we are all winners, with Saturn and Chuck especially teeing off on each other. 

The match can be divided up 65/35 between the build to Austin charming the big crowd by running the ring, and the comedown when Austin has to share the ring with HHH. Even though the entire Rumble has good parts, it is top loaded and I like how everyone filled time before HHH was in there. Austin is a great battle royal worker. That's no secret. I love watching him fill time and I loved the gag of him eliminating everyone too quickly, so needing to punch everyone back into the ring to eliminate them again. Austin runs through several guys and it's a weird call to have Val Venis show up for the first time in 8 months and be the first guy in the match to ice down Austin. Turns out, it was a good call. I liked the Austin/Venis stretch so much that I immediately checked for any singles matches they had, and now I'm definitely going to watch their 1999 Smackdown match. I don't think HHH is bad in this Rumble per se, but he's so fucking serious and it kind of spoils all the fun. He's a scowling frowning buzzkill who glowers and sucks the fun out of exchanges, and spends a lot of time lying down and catching his breath. The first 70% of the match is kids having a blast at a sleepover, and the last 30% is like kids still having fun, but it's on a field trip while a teacher keeps telling them to be quiet. 

I really loved this match as Mr. Perfect's last big moment. Making the final three, swatting his gum into the crowd while Austin and HHH try to eliminate. What a guy. Does anyone else swat their gum like they're Mr. Perfect? I think I'd be too afraid of it getting stuck to my hand or whiffing. It takes high levels of confidence to pull Curt Hennig's gum swat success rate. Do you remember the little buzz after Perfect came back after almost a decade? I was on those message boards. I was talking about how great the Perfect/Tommy Dreamer match was on Heat. I didn't know he wouldn't even work 20 matches after that one. Is the Curt Hennig Puerto Rico any good? What about the XWF that he recorded right before returning to WWF? It probably is, and I'll probably watch that along with the Austin/Venis match. This Rumble has a lot of fallout. The push to the finish of the match was exciting enough. Big Show looked really good in the double strap Bundy singlet. Kane lifting, walking, and tossing Big Show over the ropes to eliminate him was legitimately impressive, Kurt Angle had a lot of enthusiasm, the Austin elimination was fairly shocking, and you're left with a 70 minutes match that did not at all feel 70 minutes long. I think that counts as high praise. 

Read more!

Found Footage Friday: TULLY~! BUDRO~! HARDY VS HARDY~! GANG~! PITTMAN~! FANTASTICS~! BUSHWHACKERS~!

New Dimension Wrestling 7/18/98

MD: This was a show at a racetrack with Chris Cruise and John Hitchcock announcing and Bruce Mitchell in the crowd. The announcing was as insider as it could get for 1998 as Hitchcock spent the whole night trying to pop himself and his friends. It was a moment in time, so there were crotch chops in about three matches but they still put on a good show overall. 

Ring Masters vs. Rikki Nelson/Colt Steel

MD: I'll move through this one quickly as there's a lot to cover here and I'm not outright skipping anything but Abby vs Ric Link (bloody but not much to it, no great Abby cutoffs and there's a better brawl on the card) and Iron Sheik vs Jimmy Snuka (coolest part was to see Sheik with his giant belly still able to do the club gimmick). Nelson could get great heat. Steel had some good looking takedowns and knees. They were working a gimmick where they were rivals that were teaming for the belt. Ring Masters came in on motorcycles and both kind of looked like Jimmy Jam. Crowd didn't want to back them but they were de facto faces and willing to bump. Colt and Steel were the sort of guys who could carry an indy when the big stars weren't there and this was pretty good accordingly but no one's reading for this one.

Ricky Morton vs. Manny Fernandez

MD: At one point this was supposed to be Manny vs Willy Clay and Ricky vs Sheik, because Snuka got there late, but they shifted things back when he arrived. That would have been morbidly interesting but this was far better. Manny based well and gave a lot early (he was going over). The heat was mostly a chinlock with cut offs but if you're going to do that to anyone in the world, Ricky Morton's the guy. Finish had shenanigans. Manny could have a pretty good ten minute match in 98 but I would have liked a bit more imagination when he was leaning on Morton.

Willow the Whisp vs. Surge

MD: The young guys match where they did everything under the sun. Cruise said that they'd be still watching these guys in twenty years so we weren't quite at the "Matt will be world champion and Jeff will be in a wheelchair" mindset yet. What's funny is that you can absolutely see who Jeff would be in Willow, just in the way he moved and in the dives and bumps, but Matt wasn't close to being who he would be yet. He instead did every move he knew, a bunch of stuff he wouldn't be doing in a couple of years, while Jeff's stuff (like the whisper in the wind) was more unique and would stay with him forever. This served its purpose, being spot after spot that let the announcers say that they weren't just a nostalgia act but on the cutting edge as well.

ER: This was so awesome. This was basically the exact kind of match all of us were hoping to see in 1998 when we traded tapes. When I traded for my first FMW tape around this same time, I was blown away by Hayabusa doing things no more crazy than what Jeff Hardy was doing here, only one guy was doing it in the middle of a literal Olympic swimming pool and the other guy was doing it in the pit area of a southern race track. I love these kind of brother vs. brother showcase matches, two guys who learned together and honed their impressively different styles, unleashing everything they know. Just a few years later we got a match with two under 18 year old Briscoes doing 2 count kickouts after top rope sitout powerbombs and that circle of life continued. I think this kind of match showed good reason why both Hardys sat so high up on DVDVR rankings, that for the time were based on matches that some people had seen live. Had I been seeing this kind of thing in rectory basements or bar backyards in 1998 I would have thought it was the best wrestling in the world, too. I think it was more than just big moves and moving from one spot to the next, as you can see the build and escalation throughout, the big guns coming out the longer the match went on. 

The Hardys were just a month or two away from actually getting wins on WWF TV, and now it's 25 years later and both are still in great matches (Their tag against Private Party earlier this year was one of my favorite TV tags of the year so far) but there's an undeniable melancholy to them still wrecking their bodies, no matter how much I love these two for doing so. Jeff was on the cusp of stardom, and here he is stumble walking his way down the bleacher seats looking no different than any VHS video you've ever seen of a teenage backyarder making a dramatic appearance around the corner of his friend's side yard while Mudvayne blared through someone's JVC Kaboom Box. Jeff brought yarder tendencies to the mainstream and became one of the biggest wrestling stars of the 21st century, 100% deserved. I also like how he still throws stomach kicks the exact same way as he did back then, and how Matt knew how to throw several great punches just as well in 1998. Matt had the kind of punches that made a bunch of us fall in love with worked punches. He has a tornado punch that catches Jeff under the chin, two perfect - and I mean perfect - fistdrops, and the longer this goes the more he starts unwinding his excellent overhand rights. 

This has some fantastic spots and some pro wrestling culture that only those of us who were up to our eyeballs in green board would ever understand. Matt is just tossing off moves like he's flipping through a CAW list, and damn does he make it work. He's just casually tossing out a high lift hotshot, Michinoku driver, middle rope legdrop, and missing a top rope springboard moonsault while Chris Cruise is talking about what a great wrestling fan Mike Lano is. Let me tell you, as a Bay Area wrestling fan who had Mike Lano's gigantic sweatpants-covered ass bent over in my direction far too many times as he took intrusive photos at an indy show, I miss those days of making fun of that dude and his huge ass. Jeff is a total lunatic, breaking out things that most of us just weren't seeing in 1998. He lands a superfly splash right on Matt's head and it was 100% on fucking purpose. This man didn't slip and land on his brother's head, he intentionally leapt onto his face. They duplicate a Rey Mysterio spot and make it look as good or better than Rey, when Jeff gets alley-ooped onto the top rope, sticks the landing with no hands, and flips back into a corkscrew moonsault. Some goober on commentary actually drops a JUSTIN Thunder Liger when making a comp to Japanese wrestling. I had to skip back multiple times to hear a Justin Thunder Liger reference in the wild. I remember my friend dying when he was showing his now ex-wife some Liger matches 20 odd year ago, and her asking where the other guy was. "The other guy?" "Yeah. If this guy is Juice, where's Thunder Liger?" Jeff does a big Sabu flip over the top off a chair, crashing them both onto grass, and Matt hits a gorgeous Asai moonsault, landing perfectly vertical with Jeff's chest. After Matt wins, he turns to the camera and says "I'm getting way too old for this," and it plays with the same wistfulness and past begets present wisdom as Johnny Knoxville hopping and limping and laughing through crash footage from 20 years ago.

Fantastics vs. Bushwhackers

MD: An inversion of the classic feud, though this was Jackie and Bobby with no Tommy. I don't know if I've ever quite seen this version of Bobby, in a red full body suit with dark hair and a complete stooge. He came down to the ring with a huge Buff Bagwell style hat and cut a promo about how they were northerners from Ohio and so on. Then the Bushwhackers came out and talked about southern pride, so that was an aesthetic choice. It did draw "Yankee Scum" chants. First third of this was them running a spot and the Fultons running out to get heat, including apparently taking Bruce Mitchell's chair. Then they did the longest "pumphandle my own partner's arm" spot I've ever seen. I was curious if the Bushwhackers would throw back at all to previous iterations of this match up but if anything, they went the other way with the Fantastics stooging to the utmost. It was still a lot of fun to see once but I'm not sure I'd ever have to see it again. 

Craig Pittman vs. One Man Gang

MD: If this was a no DQ and they let it go, it could have been pretty great actually. Pittman was a replacement for Tony Atlas who was the only no show on the entire card. Probably a big step up in 98 too. After the entrances and the push-ups there wasn't much to this in the ring, with the best part being Pittman taking Gang down. Once it spilled out though, it became a pretty great brawl, with tables flying and a brief time in an enclosed cage-like area by the racetrack. they were just laying in chair shots one after the next at one point. It kind of made me wish that Pittman had gotten a 98 ECW run.

ER: After seeing the mildly amusing ways that OMG stalls for time in the first two minutes of this match, I was not expecting this to devolve into such a spirited ringside brawl. I know how much of a fan Matt is of stalling bullshit era John Studd, so I would have expected more love for Gang demanding Pittman remove his belt before starting the match, lest it be used as a weapon. Gang himself devolving things into a weapons brawl a couple minutes later is the kind of dumb heel stuff I love. Just the visual of Gang - the largest man in Concord, NC at the time of this match - demanding an even playing field is great. Pittman hit his peak as a pro wrestler in 1997, when he returned to WCW TV working a much more overt heel style. Due to his military background he spent most of his career with that hanging over him as a babyface, but his punishing style fit so much better as a heel. I can only imagine how well he could have integrated that into Inoki's early 2000s New Japan. 

When this spilled to the floor we got some fun bits of magic, including both Pittman and Gang taking bigger than expected bumps on grass, Pittman spilling painfully over the announce table (Chris Cruise getting upset about his spilled drink in the process), Gang bumping painfully over a chain link fence, and both delivering some hard and some not hard chair shots that still looked painful. Gang even hit Pittman with the metal bar of a camping chair, which I don't think I've seen. I particularly liked when the referee tried to get Gang's chair away from him, and Gang held it up for him to take, then just punched him in the stomach. They punch their way to the exit, Pittman torpedo headbutts Gang in the back, and a shirtless fan holds Pittman back from attacking further. 

Buddy Landel vs. Tully Blanchard

MD: This went 30 and I think there was a high spot at the 20 minute mark and another around the 25 minute mark, but it was still pretty great. They spent a huge chunk of this just trading toeholds with each other, one guy taking down the other, jockeying for positioning, working the escape and then turning it around, up and then down, but never really shifting to rope running. Instead, there were little flourishes like leaving the ring or the head games of a clean handshake or jawing with one another. All of the takedowns looked smooth but competitive and it had a title match feel, leaning even further into that mat-based style than usual. I'm honestly surprised that Landel wasn't stooging more because he was more than capable but maybe Blanchard, who was more of a de facto babyface than anything else, didn't want to play into it much. He did one strut at the beginning but that was about it.

When they did pick up the pace, it was just for one spot that would clearly gave Landel the advantage for the last third. Tully taking out his own leg in the corner looked great, and his selling was spot on as he tried to punch his way back on one leg at times, and otherwise survive the figure-four and continued toeholds. It led to a moment where Tully's leg gave out and he dropped Landel on his own head and on Landel's all at once and both guys sold the impact all the way to the roll up out of nowhere finish. It wasn't the match I was expecting, but in a lot of ways it was just as good if not better.

ER: I thought this was excellent. Tully barely worked post-WWF and any time he would show up anywhere he would look like he's barely lost a step. The only weird thing about retirement Tully is that seeing him was such a rarity that his appearance would always turn him babyface, so we had these weird glimpses of a natural heel working babyface-by-default matches once a year in front of 100 fans and occasionally 3,000 fans every 10 years. It's a weird career and I've yet to be anything but impressed by retirement Tully. This match has to be the peak of what I've seen. This goes an actual 30 minutes and I loved it. It's as minimalist as you can get, but the up close camera work really benefits two guys who are great close-up workers, making a match with hardly any "moves" into something special. Also, we should take a second to appreciate how great Buddy Landel's hair looks here. Usually you don't see such healthy well-conditioned bleached hair, which only lends credence to Buddy really being all natural. 

This was a mat-based match and would have fit right in on the Muga card Tully worked a couple years prior. The stooging was kept shockingly sparse. I say "shockingly" because when you go into a 30 minute main event on a card utilizing a 1/2 mile stock-car track as a backdrop, you'd be right to expect a lot of bullshit. The bullshit was quick and always built the match a bit more, usually it was something as simple as a long hold finally broken up in the ropes, and Buddy rolling to the grass to throw a chair down in a little micro-tantrum. There wasn't a ton of crowd work although both guys were in tune with the crowd. No, the bulk of this was leg work and it was tight, focused and entertaining leg work with interesting interludes. It was a match filled with great small moments, like Buddy Landel's punches or Tully running right at Buddy's leg with a straight kick. Both sold the work well and never skipped steps. Tully was a bastard about how he attacked the leg - kicking it in the ropes, even swinging at it with a clothesline from his knees - that when Buddy turned the tables he dialed it up even more. 

I loved Buddy working a toehold and egging Tully on, getting Tully to throw punches from his back while Buddy kept asking for it right in the chin and pulling his head back. Tully's missed running knee into the buckles looked really nasty, and his staggered selling and unreliable base was really compelling, still swinging at Landel but a step slower. Landel had some classic asshole stuff when he he knew Tully was wounded, even doing a hilarious bit where he held an Indian deathlock while smoking an invisible cigarette. For a match that had basically a couple physics-based Tully armdrags as the major highspots, Tully's knee buckling on a suplex and turning into a spike brainbuster was a helluva a thing to happen. The spot was so crazy that whoever edited this tape showed the brainbuster in slow motion three straight times right after it happened. And yet, Tully and Buddy sold it so perfectly that these dudes might have just meant to do that crazy damn spot. I can sometimes be a high voter on heavyweight minimalist wrestling, but I watch a match like this and can't help but think of all those Ric Flair/Terry Taylor matches that so many people loved on the 80s Watts set, and I know that those matches felt like a weak version of Blanchard/Landel. 

Read more!

AEW Five Fingers of Death: Week of 5/9 - 5/15

AEW Dynamite 5/11

CM Punk vs. John Silver

MD: Interesting match due to the crowd not quite being as anti-Punk as was likely expected. While there were clearly some planned callback spots, namely Silver hitting the backslide early and then rolling through when Punk tried it later and the tornado DDT spots (two attempts tossed off, the second with Silver landing on his feet and then a back twisting one that Silver fudged a little but not hugely to the detriment of the match), a good chunk felt called too. Punk made sure to give everything impressive and impactful in the match to Silver. When he had Silver beat him to a pulp in the corner, the fans stopped being so split and got behind Silver. Later on, during the break, when it was Punk's time to be in charge, it was with slow and methodological offense and he drew chants about Chicago pizza being terrible and PG Punk, which he reacted to, garnering more heat. Still, the crowd wanted to cheer for him and by the time he'd fought back in the end and was hanging out on the apron, things were split again, which makes it all the more impressive the boos he got for using the Buckshot. It was never about Punk being an over the top heel, just the little things that shifted the hearts of the crowd.

ER: I really got into this when Silver started beating Punk down in the corner with elbows, but also how quickly Punk took back control after. It's a real important moment in this fun TV match. Every time Silver threw at him, it rocked Punk, but Punk controlled long stretches with his statesman Bret Hart offense. I don't think of Punk as a guy with a great Russian legsweep or inverted atomic drop, but damn did they look great here. Silver's fired up comeback was awesome, loved the kick combo that looked like it came from three directions, and the brainbuster was good enough that it made me think about how nobody really does a great brainbuster these days. The ugly ass buckshot lariat with Hangman looking on commentary looking like a Wyatt Russell character was great antagonizing king shit. I hate Jim Ross saying "Johnny Hungie" more than I hate almost anything. 

Jeff Hardy vs. Darby Allin 

Phil covered this over at the Ringer.

MD: Even with that in mind, I'm not entirely sure what to say about a match like this in 2022. It was weirdly minimalist in as there were not that many spots, not that many interactions, but every single one had a huge impact. It went maybe twelve minutes but it felt somehow infinite and instant at the same time. My favorite part of the Fish vs Hardy qualifying match was Matt working the apron as a corner man and keeping the crowd focused and on point. There was none of that here. It was all climbing and set up and then payoff. 90% of the harm done in the match was self-inflicted. That said, even in a promotion full of big stunts, and big Sting stunts at that, the leap off the ladder stood out and should be memorable for at least months to come if not years. The first replay angle was remarkable. Jeff didn't catch as well as you'd hope but it was like losing a fly ball in the lights. That was Jeff's body language. That was the height differential between them. Jeff's physical charisma and his full body selling has been developed and honed over decades and Darby's one of the best today in emoting the impact of damage done; that combination meant that everything resonated and meant something even if it never coalesced into an overall story. You believed that they would try to one-up each other until the end of the world or until their joints and bones turned to dust, and you sort of believe the finish, that Jeff realized that nothing was going to stop Darby and the only way to save both of them was to break the code of daredevils and sneak in a pin, pressing Darby against the ladder after the coffin drop. I don't know. The match was a pretty good trick but I never need to see them do it again.

Read more!

WWE Elimination Chamber 2/21/21 Not Quite Live Blog

Elimination Chamber used to be my favorite gimmick match, probably because it's only seen once per year and the Rumble match has gotten far more formulaic over the past decade. The on paper lineups don't look great for this year's Chamber matches, but it's a match type that has had several great matches with so-so on paper participants. Any Chamber match has the chance to be good, so that's a good thing have going into a show. 

Mustafa Ali vs. John Morrison vs. Ricochet vs. Elias

ER: I like it when the pre-show matches have some kind of immediate implications, here the winner gets a spot in a three way match later on the PPV, makes this match feel like there are at least some stakes. The match, sadly, stinks. It's got all the problems that the weakest multiman matches have, guys getting in each other's way or lingering noticeably long in one spot waiting for someone else, and a lot of the sequences come off a little messy. Ricochet works hard trying to take folding bumps off everyone's offense, and it helps, and there's a fun moment where Retribution catches Ricochet on a dive after saving Ali. But the chained sequences felt a little off, the big moments weren't there, it mostly fell flat. 

Kevin Owens vs. Sami Zayn vs. King Corbin vs. Jey Uso vs. Cesaro vs. Daniel Bryan 

ER: This match had some nice highs, but had some problems with pacing and some overly scripted multiman stuff. Bryan and Cesaro are a great pair, but their starting section felt kind of rote, which is a things that's happened a lot in big WWE gimmick matches the past few years. A lot of sequences are ripped directly from other, non-gimmick matches, and it's a boring way to work a gimmick match (even if what you're doing looks good). Nobody wanted to see a War Games where guys are working their normal singles match spots, and that's what happens through a lot of this. Most would probably scoff at the idea of Baron Corbin joining a Daniel Bryan/Cesaro match and improving it, but that's what happens. Corbin beating the hell out of both of them was maybe my favorite run of the match, especially when he was ramming Bryan's knee into the support corners of the chamber pods. Corbin even smashed Bryan's face into the chains and punched him hard in the side of the head. Zayn was a fun addition but also added distracting moments that everyone else had to just sell quietly during, and I don't think his cage climb was worth the time it took to knock him off, even though Cesaro doing pull ups at the top of the chamber was a cool visual. Still, Zayn took harder bumps overall than anyone in the match, and it's important to have that guy in a chamber match. I thought Corbin's elimination was handled poorly, as he had been such a wrecking ball and then essentially got put away after a big swing and a sharpshooter. Almost right before that Corbin had caught Cesaro and slammed him into the cage, dropping him across the turnbuckles, clotheslined him back into the ring, and had taken far less damage during his time in the match. Didn't like that at all. Uso was a real highlight, and him slamming Owens' arm into the chamber exit and teeing off with superkicks was awesome, my favorite part of the match, great way to take someone out. I thought the overall quality of the match was lower than most chamber matches though, and it never really felt like it gelled as a whole match. Chamber matches have a high floor, but this leaned a little bit much into the things I don't love about chamber matches. 

Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns

ER: This was a good angle to either continue a feud while beating Bryan quick, and Reigns looked strong in his quick steamrolling. The more they book Reigns as Brock Lesnar by having him work mostly PPV matches, the more special the opportunities at his belt seem. Here you get Bryan working a long match and getting immediately ground and pounded, but not before nearly getting Reigns with a flash Yes Lock. It really seemed plausible that Bryan could have tapped him, and even when Reigns lifted him up for a hard powerbomb I was expecting a Bryan triangle. However, I couldn't care much less about Edge challenging for a title.  

Matt Riddle vs. John Morrison vs. Bobby Lashley 

ER: This was mostly a typical bad three way, though I liked Lashley running through and treating Riddle and Morrison like tackling dummies. Morrison had a bunch of dumb overly flippy bumps off Lashley offense that didn't need flowery bumping, but Lashley's explosiveness made it all work. Riddle took a big high backdrop bump on the floor, Lashley caught Morrison with a huge uranage slam, and the two corkscrew topes to take Lashley out looked good. But the Riddle/Morrison martial arts exchanges looked stupid and too telegraphed, things were always better the simpler they kept it. Something like Riddle hitting a running elbow smash looked way better than any of their "missed kick/spin around" sequences, of which there were several. I thought the finish was really weak, Riddle and Morrison overshot their rope flip finishers, Lashley felt absent from the action too long, and then apparently the match was No DQ? MVP is sitting at ringside the whole match with a crutch, the match is apparently No DQ, and MVP spends the match not interfering? That's pretty dumb. 

Shayna Baszler/Nia Jax vs. Bianca Belair/Sasha Banks

ER: Another underwhelming tag from the Baszler/Jax team, another reminder that there should be more chemistry there, but there just doesn't seem to be any. I keep waiting for it to work, but I just don't think it will. This started out rough, with a bit too much acting and reacting that needs better timing to work, but when it settled into Baszler working over Banks I think it peaked. Baszler was mean bending Sasha's wrist around, but they abandon it all too early so it doesn't evolve into anything important. Sasha's comeback is good, but more because she works well with Baszler, and not because of where it came in the match. It felt like Sasha just took Baszler's offense for awhile, and then she decided to do her own. The nearfalls and backslide and cradles looked good, but they didn't really feel earned. The finish was no good, didn't need the Reginald involvement, just made Banks look like a dummy. Jax's timing continues to look completely off since her return from injury, and that seemed like it was throwing off Belair too. Belair feels stuck in a rut, and I don't anyone came out of this match looking better. 

Drew McIntyre vs. AJ Styles vs. Kofi Kingston vs. Sheamus vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton 

ER: This was pretty easily the match of the night, even with some minor issues, as it's really the only match of the night that was good. If a show goes out on its best match, it tends to leave a better impression in my mind. I'm simple. But this was good, and it was a great long Drew McIntyre title defense. I thought they did a good thing getting rid of Orton early, with a flash high leverage Kofi roll up, because him giving RKOs to Hardy and Kingston gave us an interesting wrinkle. Styles gets in the match before he needs to be in, trying to get a pin on either of them. I like that it took him convincingly long enough to break out of his pod and get to them that they were able to kick out. Everybody was hitting hard, with Drew especially throwing huge chops and forearms with his full weight. Kingston took some big spills and hit a great tope en reversa off a pod onto everyone. I think McIntyre/Kingston/Hardy/Styles did a great job filling time until Sheamus came in, and I thought the match did a good job at building to the Sheamus/McIntyre showdown. I think a pretty strong case could be made that Sheamus and McIntyre have been the best WWE in ring guys of 2021, and it felt like a big deal when they finally went at it. The slug out looked good, both guys throwing potato shots, and I thought they did a good job of actually making any of the final 4 look like they had a shot. I was believing Hardy could win, and loved when he hit the swanton on Styles only to get his legs buckled by a Claymore. They did a good job of making the killshots unexpected, like Sheamus getting hit with a Styles flying forearm right after nailing McIntyre with a brogue kick. They did the strong form of WWE finisher chaining, the kind that are chained but feel like their bursting in unexpectedly from a blind side of the camera. 

I think the post-match attack by Bobby Lashley was good, and the way they handled the Miz cash in felt strong too. I liked the angle more than the actual result. I like all six guys in the actual chamber match and Lashley more than I like the Miz in ring, and I'd rather see main event matches with any of them instead. But, I like that this sets up a ton of worthy challengers for Miz, and there could be a lot of good matches there. 

Read more!

WWE Clash of Champions Disinterested Not Live Blog 9/27/20

I'm running behind. The last 24 hours I have spilled coffee on and fried my work/personal laptop, watched the Giants decide to not make the playoffs this year, then after found out my sister tested positive for COVID (she is a doctor, this was pretty much expected. She is also asymptomatic this time and thinks she caught COVID in January), so forgive me if my heart or brain isn't too focused on this show. I was interested in the women's matches but apparently it's a real hot time for women to give COVID a spin. It's not been a great day, and honestly I kind of just want something in the background that I don't have to focus too hard on. If I get a couple details wrong or opinions seem off, go easy.


Lucha House Party (Kalisto/Lince Dorado) vs. Cesaro/Shinsuke Nakamura

ER: This was our usual fine kickoff match; these things always deliver in almost the same satisfying way. They feel like a good 8 minute Thunder match. It fills time well and gets the right amount of runtime, not everything is hit clean but they also do some things they wouldn't do on Raw. That's my bar for a kickoff match (and pretty much my bar for any match really) and they clear it. The big fun stuff was big and fun, like Dorado hitting a tope to send Kalisto into a tornado DDT on Cesaro like a lucha Rube Goldberg machine (a tribute no doubt, RIP Notorious Rube Bader Goldberg) and a fun every turnbuckle moonsault spot (Cesaro scooted in on the top rope one and Kalisto overshot him by the amount he scooted in), and we got a bunch of Cesaro showing off his Chikara base skills. Nakamura had a fun performance as the less used heel, but the guy taking cheap shots from the apron. One of my actual favorite parts of the match was Nakamura just kind of rubbing Kalisto's head with his boot from the apron, Kalisto slumped in the corner getting his head lazily shoved around by a Nak boot. I love that kind of stuff. This cleared the kickoff bar.

AJ Styles vs. Sami Zayn vs. Jeff Hardy

ER: I cannot stand them, but I also always kind of love when Jeff Hardy brings back the eyeball lids. He's such a perfect little weirdo goofball. I'd be more into this as a singles with any two guys, but eyeball lid Hardy will probably do a couple of stupid things. But you know what? This was awesome! These three took turns trying to find ways to die off a ladder bump, they keep putting title belts on Zayn (love it) and they pull off some clever spots without coming off like they were being too clever. Jeff should not be taking these bumps, but Jeff is taking these bumps and he's nuts. He falls hard on his hip (I hope he wears pads under his Jnco jeans), crushes Styles with a swanton, gets tipped into the ropes, gets a ladder thrown at him, and eventually gets his droopy earlobe handcuffed to a ladder. Jeff Hardy has to drag this ladder along while it's attached to his body and it gives him a Joseph Merrick at Burning Man vibe. Zayn takes a couple a great bumps into the ladder, flying high on a backdrop and then managing to bump on 3 (4?) parts of a ladder, bouncing around like Sonic before hitting the mat. Zayn and Styles both had big welts on their back from hitting ladders so hard, and we got a really engaging Styles/Hardy exchange. Jeff was lobbing hard elbows at Styles' temple and their early fight at the top of a ladder was a real good version of that. The handcuff stuff played much better than it could have, and Zayn being a total brat really helped with that. A merry prankster in a wrestling ring is something that could be unbearable or really fun, and he seems to know the things that could make it work. I love that they put the belts back on him, Styles cuffed helplessly to the ladder, Hardy dragging his ladder coffin around by his ear, and Zayn walking tall. Great presentation.

Zelina Vega vs. Asuka

ER: This was fun, probably the best Vega singles we've had. It's a smart match strategy to just focus on an arm. It's a good way for her to get back into the match at any point, and I like heels making they way back into a match by just grabbing a face by the waistband and pulling them into the ring steps. Asuka knows how to work a match around Vega's limits and they give us decent breadcrumbs throughout. Could have done without some things down the stretch, but I liked Vega attempting to ape Daniel Makabe's bridging pin trick only to get caught for the immediate tap in the Asuka lock. The match had a smart layout and benefitted from it.

Apollo Crews vs. Bobby Lashley

ER: This one didn't grab me. There were some moments I liked, such as Crews' nice running back elbow that sent Lashley to the floor, the nice frog splash nearfall, and Crews getting a quick press slam on the bigger man (press slams are always a good thing). But Lashley matches always leave me dry, MVP needs to be involved for the Hurt Business stuff to hit. This was inoffensive and that's fine.

Andrade/Angel Garza vs. Street Profits

ER: Dug this, thought it built nicely and had a couple surprises, wasn't sure who would come away with the win. Ford looked cool as hell flipping into the ring like Solar and timing a perfect dropkick after doing so, but Andrade pastes him across the face with a dropkick tagging into the match later and that is also cool. I dug the ways Garza mashed Ford's face while cutting him off, really palming his face into the mat like a jerk. We got some nice moments of Ford juuuuuust about tagging in Dawkins, with a great moment of Garza yanking Dawkins off the apron at the last second. The Garza/Ford Spanish Fly looked like a super dangerous early 2000s CZW spot, which is kind of cool and kind of scary. Couple of off moments but an overall super satisfying tag title match.

Bayley vs. Asuka

ER: Oh man I am way more interested in Bayley vs. Asuka, even though Nikki could have been fun in a singles title match. And I WAS getting into this match, until the sudden DQ finish. That's not too satisfying. I would have really been into Asuka Two Belts and then more of a violent Sasha/Bayley feud with no belts at stake. This wasn't given the chance to be much, which is a shame. The energy was good up to the DQ, loved Asuka's fast German suplex and was getting into where it was going. Ah, well, nevertheless.

Randy Orton vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: This is not the night to spend 20 minutes with Randy Orton. Once I saw Orton take 7 minutes to get in the ring during McIntyre's long entrance, my brain screamed out for an audible. I saw Alopecia Big Show came back, and looked small (is Big Show okay?), and that's neat. I also saw Drew hit a Claymore kick through an ambulance door and that looked cool too. This was never going to be as cool as the parking lot brawl from last week, and I guess I'm kind of glad they didn't try to be? I'm sure these guys did great (I will never get excited for drama based around closing a car door).

Roman Reigns vs. Jey Uso

ER: This one did not work for me. I thought they at least put a good effort at inserting personality and family drama into a slow paced cousin fight, but it went on too long for me and wound up having the same effect as the Hart/Michaels Iron Man, in that I shortened the match by dozing on and off during the final half. They should have had this match at their auntie's house so that we could have seen them brawling past photographs and getting shoved over the couch with plastic on it and pressing each other under the floor runner. I did think the nearfalls all worked, as there was a point where I actually thought they were going to give Jey the big win. I think the offense should have been laid in a bit more if they wanted the slow drama to really connect, and I never got that. A lot of the talking didn't work for me, but I still really like what they did and what they went for. It is very possible in a different head space I will love this, so I may run this one back in the near future.

Read more!

WWE Backlash Blog 6/14/20

ER: Getting a late start on this show because I visited my sister this weekend, the first time I have driven more than 5 miles in the last 3 months. When I returned I had a cat who had missed me terribly and dishes that hadn't washed themselves since I saw them on Friday. Asuka/Nia is probably the only match I'm really interested in, but there are several matches that could be good.


Andrade vs. Apollo Crews

ER: Fine pre-show opener, though it felt a little more hollow than I was hoping. Both of these guys do cool moves, and both hit those cool moves here, but it never felt like anything bigger than that. But seeing cool guys hit nice exchanges for 7 minutes is nice on the lead in show, and I liked how they jumped things up with Andrade taking a big backdrop bump on the entrance ramp. Crews and Andrade are both good at quick rope running sequences, and I dug how the ran through those at the same fast pace as Andrade slamming his knees into Crews in the corner. Crews' standing flying offense looked really good, landing flush on Andrade, and the finish was a slick sitout powerbomb reversal of Andrade's trap arm DDT. I know these two have a better match in them, but this was good eye candy to start a show.


Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross vs. The Iiconics vs. Sasha Banks/Bayley

ER: This was kind of a mess, and these 3 way tag matches just seem too tough to work without some hitches or weird bits of laying about. I think Sasha was the big standout, with everyone else blending in a bit too much. Sasha was the one making all of her individual spots look good, like flying into the corner hard or throwing a knee into the side of Kay's head (while Bayley held her), or how perfectly Sasha handled the finish and how awesome her winning pin on Bliss looked. The match structure made everyone else feel pretty faceless, with the Iiconics far more muted than normal, while Bliss and Cross showed good enthusiasm throughout but felt out of the gate that they were losing. I don't think this was bad, but having three people in the ring at all times just leads to awkwardness.


Jeff Hardy vs. Sheamus

ER: I thought this was really good, a match worked straight with some nasty spills and great collisions, no shenanigans, no stupid finish. Sheamus is in the discussion of best 10 minute TV match worker of the decade, and he brings that to a nice clean PPV match like this one. He provides a big solid base for Hardy to slam into, he's never gonna be the guy who bails early on a rough collision, and I dig Hardy vaulting off stairs into him, flying into him in the corner, using his body as a projectile no matter how Sheamus was positioned, and then flying even harder into awful landings. Sheamus has real brick wall offense, the kind that makes the stuff of Sheamus vs. Scott Norton the stuff dreams are made from. He kept finding cruel ways to cut Hardy off, with the worst being him hitting a front suplex and catching a knee on the ringpost, or Sheamus reaching up to knock Hardy off the turnbuckles and Hardy just pitching forward into the ropes. I love seeing Hardy fold on Sheamus clotheslines, or the way his body crumples when he flies to the floor directly into a Brogue kick. This hit hard, landed hard, built nicely, a super professional match that still felt like it was worked aggressively. I never get excited for Hardy matches anymore, but he has seemed really focused since coming back, and Sheamus looks a good as ever. Strong match.


Nia Jax vs. Asuka

ER: Outside of the unnecessary 80s TV match non-finish, this was really good. I've always liked how these two match up, how Asuka knows how to ramp up the stiffness to counter some of Nia's bull in a China shop movement. Nia always looks really strong against Asuka, so I love moments like Nia simply shoving Asuka off into the ropes, because it looks like Asuka is really being flung whether she wants to or not. Nia really crushed Asuka with lariats and avalanches, and I love the way Nia tumbles when Asuka is able to side step and throw in strikes. Asuka swinging into a crucifix, leaping around Nia's body to get a great octopus, or flinging herself at Nia for a guillotine attempt all look really great, because they always look like Nia is actively struggling to prevent them from happening. Jax is really great at being broken down by submissions, really plays a great giant being brought to their knees. She shows off these cool moments every time Asuka snares her with something, and I think it's the perfect kind of spot to show of the dynamics of both. Asuka really hurls herself hips and butt first into Nia, kicks away at her legs, and Nia pays her back whenever she catches her in a big slam, reverses a sub attempt with a Boss Man slam or slapping her into the mat with a sitout powerbomb. Really, I loved all of this outside of the double count out finish. Even the post match hip attack off the apron looked great, and the facials from both ruled. There was no reason to do a double count out finish. Nia wouldn't lose any "mystique" from winning to Asuka, because Asuka rules. They give Asuka the belt without her beating the champ, then you have Charlotte beat her the night after Charlotte lost her belt, then you can't let Asuka win her first PPV title defense. She has done nothing but lose or not win ever since getting the belt, and it's totally unnecessary. As a match, though, this was really good.


Miz/John Morrison vs. Braun Strowman

ER: Modern WWE handicap matches just aren't good, because WWE doesn't want them to be good. The best handicap matches are deeply imbued with southern wrestling. WWF used to run handicap matches like this, understood that you need an element of stooging and the rhythm needed to be different than typical singles matches. Modern WWE handicap matches are worked like a singles match, only the two guys just may as well be masked twins. Something like Razor Ramon vs. Jeff Jarrett/Roadie works great, because Jarrett and Roadie know exactly how to fill time in between taking beatings and know how to gloat when they get an advantage, knowing how to perfectly act like the guys celebrating their advantage as if they don't already have the built in advantage. Braun makes for some good moments, as his misses can still miss dangerously, and I'm not sure there are many big guys who do a ringpost bump as nicely as he does. Morrison's knee strikes looked real junky here, and I couldn't get into a lot of this. Handicap matches can be more interesting than this. Modern WWE handicap layout does nothing for me.


Bobby Lashley vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: This had the feeling of two semi-trained Power Plant guys doing all of the big slams they learned and watched others do, and that is a much better vibe for this match than Main Event Heavyweight WWE Match. McIntyre tosses Lashley into the barricade with a belly to belly, Lashley runs McIntyre horizontally into the ringpost and nearly murders him with a crazy death valley bomb on the floor, the whole thing is just a big Power Plant power move spotfest and that kicks ass. This really felt like the best possible Sean O'Haire vs. Chase Tatum match, with McIntyre going on to hit a wild superplex, plus awesome stuff like grabbing a kimura off a Lashley spear. I like that we didn't get prolonged strike exchanges or tons of dramatic kickouts, but instead the focus was on two big guys slamming each other in cool big guy ways. WWE needs more Power Plant influence, as that sense of danger due to guys not knowing their limits was important.


Viking Raiders vs. Street Profits

ER: I hope that this satisfied the fans who were exited to see it, and the women who find Ivar cute.


THE GREATEST MATCH EVER

ER: The crowd was electric for this. There was this great sense that - even though I had no history with these two - that they had a great history with each other, and knew what to expect from the other. There were no cutesy I reverse U spots, more like physical chess with both of them knowing what to expect two moves ahead. There were elements to the work that I had never really seen before, simple things that I loved, like putting your forearms up to block an elbow strike, or dropping down to a knee to sandbag a powerbomb. Every guy I saw attempt a powerbomb before this had either hit that powerbomb right away, or got backdropped over. An actual struggle over a big move was a bit of a revelation to me. Seeing Orton drop to a knee, widen his base, grab onto Edge's leg - anything to keep himself from being powerbombed - and that was eye opening. The strikes landed harder than anything else I had seen, and well, I had never seen a man bleed from his ear before. I don't think anything good ever came to anyone after bleeding out of their ear.

And all of that stuff still holds up as special. It's a great match. The level of improv based around things you can't plan (where a guy falls after taking a move, the position he winds up in), all of the ring positioning, it's all impressive stuff. You can see gears working when a strike was supposed to land harder and it didn't, and you can watch some sequences get kind of reworked and changed and added to without ever altering the course of the match. Edge's kicks all land sharp, with that early thrust spin kick especially looking like it decapitated Orton. I actually remember seeing people use "restholds" as a complaint about this match, but I'm sorry, to watch each man's respective hold and to be so disbelieving seems a bit cynical to me. Orton's face lock looked like he was clearly trying to block Edge's breathing with his arm, and Edge's stretch plum looked as if he was trying to separate Orton's neck from his shoulders. There was nothing restful about either of those holds. We get some crazy moments like Edge punching Orton out of the air off an apron drive. Orton actually changes trajectory in mid air from being punched! Edge finally hitting that folding powerbomb was a huge moment and a great nearfall (of several), and while I didn't find the head drops excessive, that Tiger Driver 91 is still shocking. It really is quite the door slam to the match. I hadn't watched this match in probably 8+ years, and at this point I'm not seeing a reason it won't keep holding up.


ER: Strong deliveries from Nia/Asuka, Sheamus/Hardy, and McIntyre/Lashley, plus an arguably perfect main event that will henceforth be known as "6/7/20-6/14/20", means this was perfectly fine show to poke around on a Sunday evening.

Read more!

WWE Money in the Bank Mother's Day Live Blog

I visited my mother yesterday (my parents are hell on a 6' space, my calves are burning from all the backpedaling I kept having to do) and gave her a cool gift, so that excuses me to watch wrestling of potentially questionable quality on her special day. Let's hope for something good out of this show so that I can at least justify my not calling her to hear repeated stories about dumb things my father has done during quarantine.


Jeff Hardy vs. Cesaro

ER: So Hardy misses an entire year with an injury, they bring him back to Smackdown two months ago, spent the interim showing weekly documentaries about his rehabilitation (which hardly anyone gets, let alone several weeks of them), and then put him on the pre-show? I know that card placement matters less in no crowd era, but it's still really odd. It doesn't really matter to me, as the pre-show are almost always good, and they're worked in a way that makes them feel like good Velocity or 09-10 Superstars matches. They almost always hit the match length sweet spot and the layouts always feel so much less produced than main show matches. That feels like it shouldn't be the case, but there's too much of a sample size at this point. And this was really good! This was a much better singles match than I expected Hardy to physically be able of delivering at this point, but the longest straight time off of his career seems to have really done him good. He's moving quicker and more fluidly than he has in the past many years, but he's still taking the same level of awkward painful bumps so I'll just enjoy this while it lasts. He works quick enough here to convincingly fluster Cesaro, but you knew the best moments of this would revolve around what Cesaro does once he catches him. Cesaro catches him leaping off the ring steps and splats him ribs first over the barricade, later shoves him hard hip first into the ring apron. Hardy always seems to take damage on the least padded parts of the human body. Hardy's hard landings here were really entertaining, loved how Cesaro played off him (his big Fuerza bump over Hardy on the ropes was awesome), really liked all of this.

Big E/Kofi Kingston vs. Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado vs. The Miz/John Morrison vs. Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler

ER: This was good, but it feels like I've been seeing this exact match every week for the past several weeks. When they were running this on TV I just assumed the PPV version would have some extra gimmick or stipulation, but it was just longer. Still it was good overall, not always the tightest multiman, not always the pairings I wanted to see, but good. I really like Forgotten Sons, and I realize I'm in the minority on that. Gimmicks aren't the thing that sells me on a worker, ring work is the main thing I care about, and their ring work is more interesting than most teams in WWE. Their double teams are rock solid, neither skimp on small things (Cutler has far better stomps and kicks to the stomach than anyone else in the match), but also add in big bumps (Blake is always good for at least one big bump to the floor per match). Also, big fan of their double team hiptoss to an opponent draped over the ropes, and they're good at coming up with logical spots like that. I'm completely tired by the Miz/Morrison team at this point, and New Day isn't far behind them on people I wish were featured less. But it's cool seeing them work with the Sons and LHP. Dorado and Morrison pulled off a cool dragon rana, Metalik looked awesome with his while hair flowing around his mask (while working too fast for Kofi who looked like a stumblebum side by side), we got a big Morrison Spanish fly to the floor (while far more people than necessary awkardly stood around like goobs), and this was plenty good.

R-Truth vs. Bobby Lashley

ER: This match was nothing anyway, throwaway match as part of a feud I could not care about, so it's not much of a crime that I was distracted throughout this. Because once I noticed that the announcers ONLY refer to Bobby Lashley as "Bobby Lashley", it was all I could concentrate on. This is a promotion that has been weirdly obsessed with changing someone's name to a single word name, and yet we can't go through ANY part of the match with hearing "Lashley with the slam" or "Lashley with the pin", it ALWAYS has to be "Bobby Lashley with the pin!" Bobby Lashley, Bobby Lashley, Bobby Lashley. They could not stop saying this man's full fucking Christian name for 5 seconds. Nobody else gets this treatment. They either lose one of their names entirely, getting called - very normally - by ONLY their last name in a match because we know who this person is at this point, or have some kind of nickname that you can alternate with (Roman with the slam! The Big Dog with the spear!). But they can only and ever call this one person by their full name. Whose direction is this, any why? This can not be an accident and now we all have ONE MORE reason to hate Bobby Lashley segments.

Bayley vs. Tamina

ER: You have seen me write about this before, and as long as they keep doing it every year I will continue writing about it, but I cannot stand the 2-4 month period of every one of the last 10 years that WWE insists on telling us that Tamina matters and we need to be serious about Tamina and here's your yearly Tamina PPV match challenging for a title before we realize "well she's still Tamina so we didn't learn". There were people like Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, and Sarah Logan, the former who was returning from a long injury, the latter two who have been quietly overdelivering on syndicated TV matches and house shows for years...but we're going for our 10th go round on Tamina, so you gals will have to back up a bit. You can tell she's really trying, but every year it's the same bad gear and the same way of cumbersomely getting into position for opponent offense. However, this was a real class Bayley performance, as her working aggressively and outpacing the larger Tamina made the match much more interesting than it should have been, and made Tamina's monster moments feel bigger because it's not just her badly dominating a match, it's her using a couple things in spurts. Bayley outsmarts her and it makes Bayley getting the tables turned into some interesting stuff. Bayley bumps big for her when she does eventually go on the rampage, including a big flying bump over the announce table. Tamina still comes off klutzy throughout, but the layout is really smart and she at least does her best within the layout. She does a clumsy missed superkick, but the spot is Bayley catching it and turning it into a kneebar, so her clumsy kick wasn't the important thing in the spot. The match felt carefully constructed to be about spots where her clumsiness was out of the way quickly because it set up something better from Bayley. Bayley's high cradle finish looked great, a legit pin that looked like anyone on the roster would have had a hard time kicking out of, and it went just the right amount of time. Post match is even good, with Tamina immediately picking up Bayley for a samoan drop after losing, but Sasha drops her with a great chop block and then throws a stiff kick to her chest in high heel boots. I'm calling this an easy best case scenario for a Tamina singles match, could not imagine a better version of this particular match.

Braun Strowman vs. Bray Wyatt

ER: I'm happy this was kept short, I just can't get into Bray Wyatt. I actually liked the Fire Fly match, but it's not enough to buy him any kind of goodwill. Still, this was kept short and that's good. Strowman took a few really cool big man bumps (great missed charge into and over the announce table, real sturdy shoulderblock getting thrown into the ring steps), and then got in the ring and got hugged for a long time so I could look at Twitter for a bit. Then Strowman finished him, and I like that.  But honestly this had the same amount of time to do something as Bayley/Tamina had, and this came nowhere close to accomplishing what they did.

Drew McIntyre vs. Seth Rollins

ER: Didn't feel like this one, but I'm sure Rollins talked about his destiny several times and had a Seth Rollins match, which I'm sure are for somebody. I feel bad for McIntyre that this is how his title reign is going, but I wish him the best. I saw the finish of Seth Rolling hitting a superkick by being bounced into the ropes by a nice headbutt, and the superkick causing McIntyre to bounce into the ropes and hit the Claymore kick. Claymore kick looked good, but guys hitting moves because they got hit by moves is the dumbest most played out shit at this point.

Money in the Bank

ER: Oh my god they're doing the Money in the Bank matches CONCURRENTLY!? This has potential to be a tremendous trainwreck, one of those ideas like World War 3 that you can't focus on anything. But World War 3 could have had great potential as a recorded match, as the worst thing about it was knowing there was probably something cool happening somewhere in those 3 rings, and you were likely missing it. Filming one of those and showing the finished product with the best moments chosen from the camera angles would have been a way more successful version of that match. The whole thing has this fake Michael Kamen score that makes it feel like a bunch of backyarders made a movie combining Die Hard and Rat Race. The comedy doesn't work anywhere near as consistently as in Rat Race, but there were tons of great moments and a fantastic lead performance from Otis. The cameo jokes were almost all poorly written (Stephanie plays comedy too smarmy and broad, Brother Love stuff felt forced and pointless, Johnny Ace at least at a pie to the face well), but I smiled a lot and laughed a few times. Otis is the guy who really went for it, and really it shouldn't be much of a surprise that he thrived here. He's someone who can do Looney Tunes spot well, and was constantly saying funny stuff like in the weight room before the match started where he was just saying "sets and reps, sets and reps". It was funny hearing Carmella's sneakers breaking silence with different sounds, milking a squeaky waxed lobby floor for laughs and then doing the same by doing an overly long moonwalk on office carpet. Otis absolutely plastered Heyman with a dish in catering, and Heyman mugged while covered in sticky rice. Otis and Nia smash Rey between their bodies, Dana Brooke slips on a wet floor and is never seen again, Shayna weirdly feels like the least featured person in the match, and things get decidedly less fun once they get out on the roof. The roof stuff was fairly uninspired, other than two casual murders that never get mentioned again. I'm happy with the two winners, as I wouldn't have had money on Asuka or Otis, but think that those two have been two of the best performers of the silent era. I like when matches seem to reward performance.


This show went by quickly (though there was some small help from the fast forward during the Rollins match) and had no high end matches, but had some nice performances, some over-deliveries, slightly better than expected overall.

Read more!

WWE Elimination Chamber Running Behind Live Blog 2/17/19

Akira Tozawa vs. Buddy Murphy

ER: Boy there are a lot of guys in wrestling who look like Buddy Murphy now. It seems like they weirdly do this with the PPV 205 Live matches, like there's a weird disconnect with how they market the brand and how the brand is actually executed. Murphy comes out here working a slow, methodical match while the hype is all "coming up some highflying cruiserweight action!!" and here's Buddy Murphy holding a long rear chinlock and abdominal stretch while we get a lengthy New Day inset promo. Murphy chops the ringpost but doesn't go very far with it, and they do the cool spot where Murphy catches a tope and lifts Tozawa into a suplex. Fans were amped for Tozawa's comeback and I dug his great backdrop suplex. Tozawa is pretty awesome about getting big height on flapjacks, and they do a wild spot up top where Murphy lifts Tozawa practically about his his to throw him, and Tozawa snags him with a frankensteiner. Murphy's honky tonk strike combo looked way too much like memorized square dance steps; take that shit down to Kodiak Jacks on ladies night, take it away from my wrestling this evening. Murphy did a fine stumble out of the ring after taking a reverse rana, way more interesting than running back to do something else, and Tozawa's two fast topes to the floor looked really good, he always looks like he makes solid contact on dives. And I thought they did a good job with Buddy coming back into the ring to get hit by a big Tozawa senton while draped over the ropes. Draped over ropes spots are iffy so Murphy instead "getting back into the ring" covers it better. The scramble to the finish was really fun and I totally bought Tozawa's submission as a potential finish, and really liked the groove this settled into down the stretch.

Carmella/Naomi vs. Liv Morgan/Sarah Logan vs. Iiconics vs. Nia Jax/Tamina vs. Mandy Rose/Sonya Deville vs. Sasha Banks/Bayley

ER: I dug that they had Carmella out first, and how much of a boss she looked with an extra long moonwalk. Entrances alone got me excited for this one, with the Iiconics talking trash and laughing at the other teams, Peyton Royce's new warm hair color looking great,  Rose and Deville taking their time getting to the ring, Deville wearing cool new pants, this whole thing could be really good. I think it's a great idea to start with Rose and Deville as it feels like this puts them into a good spot to get more heat and more attention. There's a lot of good stuff to start, a little awkwardness with rope running, but Bayley bumps big a couple times into the grating around the ring, Rose takes a nasty neckbreaker onto the grating when she gets a foot stuck in the cage, cool stuff. I love Mandy Rose but damn does girl have some wild lipstick teeth. Someone really needs to do a fishhook spot and wipe it off, it makes it look like she's missing her front teeth. They do a big suplex tower stuff and I never understand why the people on the bottom of the tower sell. All they did was powerbomb someone, they didn't take a bump, but there's Logan and Morgan, just as wiped out as everyone else who took a superplex. The Iiconics coming in was my favorite part of the match as they immediately go for a dozen pinfalls and suddenly I want them to be tag champs. Things get a little crowded after awhile as nobody has been eliminated and we need to thin things out a bit (I assume Nia will do that). A few scattered incels try to ruin Carmella's team entrance but people are into it moments later when she hits a couple nice superkicks on Logan. There are 17 people on commentary I think. Trainwreck spot with people hitting suplexes and superkicks back to back to back comes off less better than WWE matches usually do those spots, and it ends with more lying around. There's lying around, but nobody getting pinned, so I'm curious where and how they want to peak this. I thought the Iiconics double pin elimination looked great, and we get the desired Nia Jax wrecking ball entrance. The horror movie monster build up to Nia and Tamina dragging Iiconics back out of a pod - like Michael Myers crashing through the closet door looking for Laurie - was long but well done, and them violently swinging the Iiconics into the cage looked great, probably best spot of the match so far. I like Nia's dominance but the match isn't totally doing it for me once the Iiconics are out of it, but Nia does an insane Bull Charge crashing through a pod at full speed and KOing herself, which is a smart way to get her out of there so everyone can target Tamina. Graves keeps talking about his daughters watching at home and it feels pointedly gross. Down to two teams the intentions are good, even if some of the executions aren't. Every time they did a pod spot it looked good (Sasha and Bayley each got their backs run into support beams) but some of the moves looked a little off, had some timing glitches. But it was laid out well enough that the fans were way into it the whole home stretch, so I'd say it was a definite success even if I thought the match underdelivered on quality.

The Miz/Shane McMahon vs. The Usos

ER: This is pretty fun as the Usos are a good team to have in there working a straight non-gimmick tag with Shane. Usos are tough but they're lean and mean now so Shane actually has a little size on them, but they still look like guys who should run over Shane. The crowd feels a little burned out after the big Chamber match so this feels like a good spot to have Shane, and the crowd is quiet throughout but does get up a bit for his flurries. Shane is the quintessential dorky dad at a BBQ, who is cracking jokes and getting too drunk on IPAs, so ends up doing some stupid stunt while his wife asks him not to, please. The coast to coast dropkick is obviously a guaranteed pop (it better be!) and him flying off into a superkick looked great. I thought the finish was actually pretty dumb though. Shane does another "dad goofing around on the roof spot" and flies through the announce table, but then we have Jimmy Usos eat knees on a splash and take the Skull Crushing Finale, but then he just rolls up Miz while getting pinned. I hate those finishes that involve a guy just taking a couple big moves and just deciding he was still the stronger man. I didn't need to see tag champ Shane, but I thought the finish could have played out better here.

Lio Rush/Bobby Lashley vs. Finn Balor

ER: I can't really get into this one too much, even though it has some fun flashes. I do perk up when Lashley takes a nice bump to the floor, and shortly after catches Balor and basically double legs him all the way into the ring barricade. I don't really care about this feud or the stakes though, so I just can't get too into it. They handle Balor's big comeback well though, with him making small strides against Rush after he's been worked over by Lashley, then hitting a big flip dive on both and immediately separating Rush from Lashley. Him easily moving from flip dive to attack on Rush was a smart touch, but a lot of this match didn't move me.

Ruby Riott vs. Ronda Rousey

ER: Ronda is wearing a cool version of Tamina's outfit, and this is probably pretty easily the match I'm most excited about on this card. Aaaaaaaaaaaaand it's a quickie. Riott stalls, Ronda hits her twisting fireman's carry and grabs the arm. Damn, what a drag. I get having a huge Goldberg finish for Ronda, but she doesn't need it, people already know she's dangerous. Every PPV match Ronda has had has made her opponent look more badass even in losing, and there's no reason that couldn't have happened here. Riott Squad feels like something the fans are dying to get behind, and their legs keep getting kicked out. A hot 8 minute matcha against Ronda would have legitimized Riott, so this was a major disappointment for me.

Baron Corbin vs. Braun Strowman

ER: Kendo stick stuff to start didn't do a lot for me, but Corbin sliding out of the ring super quick to reverse an Irish whip, then sprinting back in the ring a swinging a low as hell lariat, really shows he's been watching The Big Bossman in AJPW stuff. Tim Livingston had told me this earlier in the week when he was over, but I thought he sounded like a crazy idiot. Turns out I just haven't been paying attention to Baron Corbin matches. And in no time flat this match kind of rules, with Corbin chucking a huge ergonomic office chair at Braun and then tossing him straight into the ring steps, then clonking him with the steps. I guess I should have known that we would get a lot of interference in a No DQ match, though it robbed us of the nice brawl we were getting into. The big finish looked like a big finish, with him getting triple powerbombed through two stacked tables, read like a classic ECW spot. But I would have rather had a cool match than an advanced angle. This show has majorly underdelivered so far.

Kofi Kingston vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Randy Orton vs. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe vs. Daniel Bryan

ER: The Chamber has routinely been my favorite of the WWE gimmick matches. The 2011 Chamber with Lawler almost winning the title from Miz was one of the most fun live shows I've ever been to. But I'm not too excited about this Chamber match, although I'm amused at just how 2006 it is. Seriously look at the names in this one! Who would have guessed in 2006 that all 6 of these guys would be high up on arguably the largest B-level WWE PPV? The "Apex Predator" is one of the worst nicknames ever. That's about one tick away from sounding like "Dumpster Rapist" Randy Orton. Bryan and Joe start and do a nice greatest hits package, Joe throwing kicks and rolling into a kneebar, Bryan's chest getting nicely reddened, Joe attacking with more kicks and my god Bryan takes a real beating that he sells as if the beating was taking an eternity. Kofi got the big gauntlet run on Monday and he gets to look pretty triumphant and on the level of Joe and Bryan here, which is a surprising development. I would have much rather seen Big E be the breakout singles star of New Day, though I liked Kofi's tope en reversa off the cage. These guys are putting together a pretty nice collection of stuff, Samoa Joe does a huge senton right on Bryan's hip that had to have screamed. Styles has casually been taking big spills around the edge of the cage, and Hardy hitting a swanton off a pod onto Styles while Styles WAS DRAPED ACROSS THE TURNBUCKLES looked wild, total Chamber highlight reel spot. That he ate an elimination Bryan knee right after was a great touch. You knew from the gauntlet and how commentary couldn't stop talking about Kingston the whole match, that this was coming down to Bryan/Kingston. I've never been a big Kofi fan outside of cute Royal Rumble spots, and for awhile several years I thought he had the worst offense on the brand. But you cannot deny this reaction he's getting here, and Bryan is a total master and feeling like a big deal while making it seem like anybody has a chance. Kofi gets a couple of HUGE reaction nearfalls, hitting the SOS and later hitting a double stomp that almost sees him stomp Bryan's dick. Fans sound like they want a Kofi win SO bad, which is exciting. Kofi gets rammed into the pod in a real nasty way, and gets a great nearfall kickout after Bryan hits the knee. I didn't love Bryan reversing a pin immediately after taking the Trouble in Paradise, feels real dumb that someone's finisher didn't buy them a single second of dazed opponent, and they already did that exact same thing earlier into the show. Some agent needs to think of a better way to build drama. Crowd is obviously still rabid so I'll shut my idiot mouth though. It's actually kind of shocking to me how silent and disappointed the crowd got when they realized Bryan was winning. Like they wanted to see Kofi win SO BAD that once Kofi missed a big Superfly Splash (and looked like he whipped his head into the mat) the crowd got silent, like they knew THAT was it. I'm really impressed with the connection the crowd had to Kofi, it always makes a match better even if it's not a reaction I share.

ER: I thought this PPV overall was a miss, but it ended strong. The main event chamber was easily the best match on the show, and there's something to be said about ending any situation on a high note. The rest of the card didn't do much for me: Women's chamber had some great moments but some drag throughout, tag match was unexpectedly fun with a finish I didn't like, Riott got her momentum slammed shut again, I got deprived of another great Ronda match, got robbed of a big guy brawl as it was getting good...everything until the main basically left me flat. The show did end on a sustained high note, and that counts for something.

Read more!

When Shotgun Saturday Night Went to Chattanooga, 2/16/99

On 2/16/99 WWF had what had to have felt like an interminably long taping in Chattanooga, TN, taping 19 matches for airing on Super Astros, Sunday Night Heat, Raw, and Shotgun Saturday night. 19 matches on a Tuesday night! But the three matches from the Shotgun taping stood out more than the rest, because all three matches were WWF wrestlers against local southern indie talent. It's another invasion that was shut down one night in, but this one probably didn't have the same drawing potential. After the ECW invasion, after the NWA invasion, before Invasion. This is the Tennessee Mountain invasion we never talked about!

WWF Shotgun Saturday Night (Broadcast 2/27/99)

HHH vs. Buddy Landel

ER: HHH does his very long ring intro that 17 yr old me thought was cool, and Jim Cornette on commentary says "These people are jacked tonight! They're ready to suck it!" The match started out good and ended quickly in disappointment. Buddy and HHH each have their ponytails and each clearly wear their influences, and Buddy is a little thicker around the middle at this point, but it starts simple and cool. Landel grabs a tight headlock, HHH gets one of his own, both guys get a little time to establish their headlocks, HHH gets a nice go behind and Landel snaps him with a nice back elbow. It's all shaping up very nicely, Landel eats a knee and takes an impressive snap bump...and then HHH calls for the Pedigree and it's over, 1 minute and 40 seconds in. 100 seconds, with the first 80 seconds worked like they were going 8-10. Not only was that pointless, it reeked of wanting to put someone in their place. Is it possible that they were in the middle of a long night of tapings and wanted to speed things up a bit? Sure. But it sure felt disrespectful to someone like Buddy.

The Hardy Boys vs. Frank Parker/Roger Anderson

ER: Hardys come out in their OMEGA shirts (that wasn't a thing they normally did during this era, right?), and this match rules. This is more like it. This is going the way of a Hardys squash, and it's fun seeing their offense from 20 years ago. Matt had a great elbow drop that he doesn't really use anymore, Jeff did his awesome swanton to the floor, Matt hit his nice bulldog, we get a cool double team where Jeff leapfrogs Anderson and he runs right into a Matt swinging neckbreaker (it's a smart way to get someone in position to take a neckbreaker, as they'd be naturally ducking their head down so the don't run face first into a leaping man's crotch) Death & Destruction were taking hip tosses and big backdrops and not gaining any ground. And then Anderson held the top rope down without Jeff seeing it, and while running the ropes Jeff took an absolutely insane, fast bump over the top to the floor, smacking his head off the apron on the way down. Awesome bump that sounded like it surprised Cornette. From there Death & Destruction get a lot of control, and they worked the match from there as if they're an actual signed team. Parker drops a great leg, there's a fun chop exchange in the corner between Matt and Anderson, D&D take over with some kneelifts, it all gave a cool glimpse of a tag scene that might have been, if only WWF wanted a couple other guys who looked like Festus. Imagine three awesome lumpy bald goatee guys in a stable!? Hardys' finisher was really awesome, the legdrop/splash from the top, and this match delivered what I hoped this match would.

Tiger Ali Singh vs. Killer Kyle

ER: This is me, going out of my way to watch a Tiger Ali Singh match. What a weird WWF run he had. I bet most people can hardly remember a thing about the guy, but he showed up on TV for years, then would disappear just as quickly as he came. Who kept wanting Tiger Ali Singh? This was also worked fairly even, and Cornette really didn't talk much about the Smoky Mountain alum Kyle. Each got to hit cool powerslams and Kyle gets to throw a bunch of punches and chops. Singh was pretty bland, hit a needless chinlock and made Kyle look bad when he unexpectedly backed out of a punch that Kyle was clearly throwing to connect, threw off the timing of everything. The finish was cool though as Kyle whiffs on a lariat, and before turning around Singh kicks him in the back of the knee and then hits a neckbreaker.

So instead of trying to make money on a Tennessee invasion, bringing back Smothers and Tony Anthony and the Rock n Rolls, they went and shot this moneymaker in the foot right as it started.

Read more!