WWE Extreme Rules 9/26/21 Live Blog

Peacock is concurrently broadcasting the commentary of every single language they have right now, so watching and reviewing this PPV live certainly feels like a dubious way to spend my Sunday evening. 

Liv Morgan vs. Carmella

ER: This was a fun way to open the live show, a spirited match that went for more drama than these openers usually aim for. Carmella is quietly having a really nice year and is operating from a real natural character, leaning into a nicely balanced annoying heel role. Liv has been pretty aimless for a couple years now, and I'm not really in love with her current style. She used to be one of the women (along with Mandy Rose) who I kept seeing in strong house show performances without having any TV matches as good. Morgan doesn't feel anywhere near the person who was gluing together good house show tags, but now someone doing some bad indy offense with off rhythm timing. It's an offense that doesn't work with someone bad at taking offense, but Carmella is good at taking this dumb yet complicated offense. There are some hard strikes and kicks, and Morgan maintains a good enough 2:1 ratio of nice folding bumps to every off-timed flat back bump. The Liv win was a real surprise. Carmella has been the way more interesting TV character, and this feels like the weakest Liv work we've gotten. 

AJ Styles/Bobby Lashley/Omos vs. Big E/Kofi Kingston/Xavier Woods

ER: Quality trios with a big Bobby Lashley threaded throughout, kind of taking away from Big E's recent title win even with Big E getting the win here. Lashley looked like a dynamic traffic director, usually the role Styles inhabits in a match like this. New Day split the ring time well with Kofi playing the most effective babyface. Styles was a cool guy asshole and Lashley had some explosive stuff, hitting big on his spears and shoulder tackles. Omos was integrated well and is still good at playing into his big moments. This felt a bit more like a house show match than a big stops pulled out PPV match, but house show style always gives a high floor to a match like this. Lashley's big spear to Styles looked good, and I liked Big E instantly capitalizing on it. Weird to see the new champ E in this kind of opener though. 

Street Profits vs. The Usos

ER: Very good tag that didn't quite hit the heights it could have, but hit all the notes of the strong match you assumed they would have. I think Jey has had a real breakout year over the past calendar year, while I think Jimmy's return has been welcome I think Jey pulled ahead of him as a worker in the latter's time away. Montez Ford has also been on a tear this year, really standing out as a unique high flying babyface in a promotion with several prominent versions of that. He gets great height on offense and defense, and here he has some real standout moments. Ford hits a huge tope con giro over the ringpost, and eats knees painfully on a sky high frog splash. Dawkins came in hot on his hot tag and both Usos really fell into and threw the ropes for his impact. Crowd got more vocally involved in the match the longer it went, which is a good sign they were doing the right things. The crowd responded big to the extended nearfall home stretch, which is what you'd want in a long title match. I thought the build to the home stretch was a bit more interesting and felt more organic. Still, very good tag match. 

Charlotte vs. Alexa Bliss

ER: This is a real battle of disappointing 2021s. Both could use a strong performance in a big singles match. Bliss has been trapped for too long in a gimmick that is antithetical to good wrestling matches. Charlotte has been working with an attitude that I'm not sure anyone understands. I personally don't understand what the chip on her shoulder is supposed to be, but she comes off like a real asshole because of it. And in a match like this, where her being an asshole is supposed to be the focus, it works best. She does not make any sense to me as a babyface, and this match was a much better use of who she is right now. She still badly apes offense, with her doing fewer bad Flair knife edge chops and more difficult timing Andrade offense. She's at her best when she is taking surprising bumps for Bliss, and I think her cocky heel facials after getting knocked on her ass are one of her best features. Bliss feels a little off timing wise, but it also feels like she has consistently barely seen the inside of a ring for too long. This was the weakest match on the show so far, but it was one of the better Charlotte matches of the year. I have no comment on anything that may have happened to Alexa Bliss after the match, as I turned it to the 49ers game. 

Sheamus vs. Jeff Hardy vs. Damian Priest

ER: This was pretty dull for the most part, but they saved their good fireworks for the final two minutes. Going out on a high note earns a match a lot of forgiveness for what came before earlier. Because again, a lot of this was dull. Hardy figured out early the best way to work this, which was to let Sheamus and Priest work a one on one brawl that he stayed would mostly stay out of, then fly in with a dropkick or plancha when neither was paying attention. It was some of Hardy's best offense in months. But then, once Hardy went on a long run against Sheamus, he looked as lethargic and completely washed as I've ever seen him. He entered in fits and starts, with perhaps the best entrance being his swanton that landed heavy on Priest's back (while he was pinning Sheamus). The move chain finish lifted this out of the realm of total disappointment, but this was a drier match than it should have been. Then again, the build for this match was probably the weakest of any match on the card, so that couldn't have helped. 

Bianca Belair vs. Becky Lynch

ER: I love Becky's striped tube sock hear, but don't love the horse hair. And the match was about on the level of the Carmella match earlier, but went on too long to only to end with Sasha running in and elbowing Lynch. I'm happy to have Sasha back, but I'm not quite feeling the motivations within the Bianca/Sasha/Becky program. This had some cool Bianca strength spots, like a great high arcing fallaway slam, a press slam that Lynch managed to reverse, and a big Backlund spot where she stood to her feet with Lynch sitting on her shoulder. Lynch threw her forearms with her whole body and has some nice looking suplexes. Both have a couple of nice suplexes, actually, with Bianca hitting a nice delayed vertical. Looking back with knowledge this was going to end with a Sasha run-in, I wish they would have worked a more go go pace, and it made some spot placement seem odd. I didn't like when Bianca was raining down on Becky with hard corner elbows, the crowd was counting along with them, and Lynch just escapes out the bottom to yank Belair's braid. I always like Belair's hair getting integrated into things, but hated Lynch shrugging off Belair's best strikes of the match like she hadn't taken eight straight. The eventual triple threat match/es we're going to get won't be as good as any combination of straight singles matches they can run, but I Believe In Sasha. 

Roman Reigns vs. Finn Balor 

ER: We finally get rid of The Fiend and now we just have to deal with the Rasta Demon whose special powers I do not understand. Head of the Table Roman has been my least favorite iteration of Roman Reigns. I do not like the slow paced main event epics, nor do I like the meandering weapon brawls. This was a lot of meandering weapons brawl with some stunt falls peppered in, and it never grabbed me. Luckily for them, it grabbed the crowd and seemed to keep their interest. Roman has been on a hot streak and has worked some tight TV matches, and his biggest hand to hand stuff here looked great. I loved his strikes, and his spear was skeleton damaging. Balor took some big falls through tables and took a big tackle through the ring barricade. It was a lot of damage, but I forgot that the Demon has super powers and is the Undertaker/Fiend. He is able to fully shrug off every bit of pain that Roman put him through...but sadly the Demon's kryptonite turns out to be ring ropes. Lightning crashes, the top rope breaks, the Demon is put down by and unexpected fall. This felt like it was really really dumb. Pretty sure this was dumb. 

This was not a very Extreme show, which was probably a blessing in disguise. I wasn't really in the mood to see ladder matches or whatever else they could have done. The show ended on a down note but had a strong first 2/3. The final two matches were intentionally overshadowed by match ending angles. Extreme Rules started with a good head of steam but ended too flatly to recommend as a show. 

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New Footage Friday: SLIM J~! AZRAEL~BRYAN~! KOFI~! BIFF~! LEE~! JAGGED EDGE~!

NWA Anarchy (Hate Junkies (Dany Only & Stryknyn)/ Azrael/Slim J/Mikael Judas/Nemesis) vs. NWA Elite (Jagged Edge/Bro Newsome/Se7en/John Johnson/Shawn Tempers/Jacoby Boykins) NWA Anarchy 6/30/12 - GREAT

MD: You have to love how many stories they pack into a match like this, each and every time we see one of these big multimans. This one was all action the whole way through but never felt like meaningless noise. Slim J and Azrael working together at the start; the build to Jagged Edge vs Judas (and the payoff in a way that made people want more); Nemesis getting quickly rolled up after wanting to be in there for a chunk of the match (which would theoretically pay off at the end); the John Johnson goofiness which they closed off quickly and with satisfaction; Stryknyn's eye being vulnerable; and having it end with a big finishing stretch between Slim J and Tempers where they were able to set up and payoff the cobra clutch in a clever way for a great false finish before having the turns and setting things up for the future. Everyone did well in there, with the monsters protected and nothing seeming out of place. There wasn't that sense of guys eating pins too easily that you often get in elimination tags too. Mostly everything here was earned. I will say that it didn't quite have the sense of chaotic danger around the ropes with hands swiping that you see in some of the multi-man tags I like the best, but really that just let them focus more on whatever story beat they were telling with the wrestlers in the ring. The crowd was hot for the start of this and it's obvious why given the amount of care and thought put into each and every one of these big matches.

PAS: It is really hard to have a match with this many people in it, and give everyone a moment to shine, and have no unearned pins. I mean you got a pretty good sense of everyone in the match, even the guys who weren't in it long. Loved the Jagged Edge vs. Mikal Judas showdown, really teased a big showdown, got a taste of it, and left folks wanting to a buy a ticket to pay it off. Jagged Edge's chokelsam was probably the move of the match he sent Stryknyn into the cheap seats. Slim J gets the big finishing run with Tempers and it was pretty great, I imagine they had a hell of a title match at some point in this. The finish was booking heavy, but these always are, and I do think a heel Urban Assault Squad is a cool idea., and this was leading up to the great War Games later in the year.

Biff Busick vs. Trevor Lee XWA 1/17/15

MD: This was from January 2015 in RI, so not on as big a stage as their Evolve match a few days before. Lee was 21 at this point but he already had so much of it down. The crowd was absolutely game and really eager to see Biff kill someone. Lee gave them the all too rare for mid-2010s indy wrestling stalling to start and it worked huge. My favorite bit of it was a fan on the outside shouting "I thought you were supposed to be good" and Lee shouting back "I am good!" He cycled that right into a picture perfect eyepoke on a handshake attempt and an opportunistic throw to the outside. All great set up to clearly make the crowd against him and for Biff and to rile them up for some violence. They got that in spades with the crowd brawling as they went all around the place, really keeping things moving including a great visual where Biff got his leg caught on a chair off a whip and bumped huge, and then a bunch of nasty revenge shots using the terrain as a weapon. He even let a kid get a shot in on Lee. Eventually it had to get back in the ring and they moved into more of the back and forth you'd expect with a few big suplexes and shots and collisions. Again, I liked Lee's timing a lot here and his body language, overly following through in a believable way when he was about to run into something for a transition. Biff's stuff all looked unsurprisingly great (though I wish he wouldn't do stuff like the running blockbuster, but I get why he did) with the fans into everything. I haven't seen a Lee match in a long time and this made me want to see how he was doing now as Grimes in NXT.

PAS: This was a really well executed indy wrestling match, which hit on all of it's individual points really well, without ever moving fully into special territory. Still I can imagine the crowd was really happy to see this match live, and I dug watching it 6 years letter. Busick is a guy with tremendous explosion and execution, really tremendous at a fiery babyface comeback. Lee really put in the work early to make the crowd dislike him which made that comeback work. Loved the flip powerslam counter by Lee, it came out of nowhere, looked awesome and was a great moment to cut Busick's momentum reloading it for one more big comeback. This would be a fun feud to bring back in NXT, or if both guys end up someplace else.   

Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston WWE 9/2/19

MD: What a difference a decade-plus makes. This was an entirely different crowd, up for everything, but pretty annoying, down to the CM Punk chant in the middle (though at least that got booed down). It was a sort of crowd Kofi and Bryan were used to by this point, however, and they worked well to it. If you said this was a top 5 Kofi career singles match, I'd believe you, though Bryan drove most of the action and big moments. They worked the first half straight, babyface vs babyface, with just a bit of tension on whether Bryan would turn on him, and it was good, athletic stuff with kip ups and tapitias into surfboards and hesitant handshakes and both guys rallying the crowd and what have you. It felt a little like a mid-2000s indy affair to be honest. Midway through the match, Kofi following some major clowning of Bryan by taking a big bump out and Bryan feigned concern before turning on him with a hard whip into the post. He amped up the aggression after that but didn't really heel it up enough to get the crowd to turn on him, which sort of put a cap on how good the match would ultimately be. The battling over the yes lock towards the end was really good though, especially how Bryan finally got it on Kofi (which is something they probably used in their PPV matches too but I barely remember those); Kofi jumping into it from the top was a great visual. Finish was a bit too big on Kofi escaping Bryan's big stuff without one more rotation of Bryan dodging something of Kofi's but in general it was excellent house show fare that would have been better still if they led the crowd instead of following it.

PAS: The Mania match between these two is an all timer, and it was fun to see how they ran it back on tour. I liked all of the early feeling out sections on the mat, and Bryan turning more vicious. You don't really think of Bryan as an all-time puncher, but he really lays it in here, with those almost Bret Hart overhand loopers. Kofi was fine, he hit his stuff mostly, got height on his dives and didn't get outclassed. Of course this is Brynn's match. He looked great as the wounded ex champ who is plotting to get back on the top of the mountain, only to fall victim to a great looking spinning kick to the face. 

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WrestleMania 37 Night One 4/10/21

I couldn't watch the promos guys, couldn't do it. Not with the frequent audio glitches. This is going to be too much wrestling over a couple of days, and I gotta preserve myself as much as humanly possible, gotta save my wind a little. It's bad enough that I came back into it during a dreadful Hogan/Titus segment that nobody trustworthy could have possibly wanted. 

Drew McIntyre vs. Bobby Lashley

ER: I'm into the idea of a big heavyweight title match starting off the show, especially two heavyweights who actually work like heavyweights. And I thought this was a banger. They lost the crowd a little bit after Drew's kimura, but this felt like a big scale heavyweight match. They worked tentatively for the first bit (possibly working around a damp ringside area), but it picked up when Drew started throwing suplexes. McIntyre's throws all looked strong, didn't look like Lashley was leaping into them. Several belly to bellys, and a a great northern lights, and a big Saito suplex from Lashley. But the best part of the suplexes was that in between them they just hit each other with fists and elbows, there was never any laying around for suplexes. The three straight future shock DDTs Lashley took were real nasty, tucked head and not rolling through them. I thought both submissions came off well, with Drew really looking like he could have gotten the tap with his kimura. Again, they lost the crowd a bit after the kimura, and the MVP interference could have come off more smooth. I actually really like that they didn't do a Big Moment Title Change to lead off the show, because you know they love that. 

Women's Tag Gauntlet

ER: I am personally ecstatic that they got Lana out of the way fairly quick, as I thought there was a non-zero chance we'd get a "Could Lana DO THIS!?" story throughout this whole thing and I didn't want it. Billie Kay is still not there in ring, but I have gotten a real kick out of her the last few months so I'm just happy she's on the show. I really want this big win for the Riott Squad though. This would be a great time to get Riott back up ladder and finally give Liv something substantial. They've been waiting long enough for some elevation, and deserve it. My girl Mandy Rose slipped on her butt and is such a collected badass that she knew she had to get right in the ring and knee Riott in the side of the head to move past it. Rose works stiff during every part of her match, and they isolate Liv Morgan which leads to some nice stuff (Liv really stuffed Mandy running into her boot in the corner). Riott's hot tag felt a bit off, wasn't quite as hot as I wanted, and the blown win call didn't help and otherwise good Morgan small package. Now, the thing I didn't ever expect, is me actually happy that Tamina is motivated and getting instantly rewarded. I would rather watch practically anyone other than Natalya get a more featured role (we've had to get through so many Natalya's Dream moments), but Tamina finally has actually proper gear and and actual proper pro wrestler look a decade in, and she looks motivated. Her Nia Jax match on Smackdown was a great fight, and her superkick in this match was an awesome cut off spot. That Superfly Splash hit with real heft, so I'm all in on seeing her and Nia go at it again so soon after their singles match. Natalya is about the worst baggage a person can bring into a situation, and I wanted this to be Riott Squad's moment, but I'm unexpectedly rooting for Tamina right now and that's cool. 

Seth Rollins vs. Cesaro

ER: The Cesaro hit piece is really funny, the best thing Rollins has been involved with since who knows when, and I'm excited for Cesaro's first WrestleMania singles match. I still think Rollins can work like a real putz in ring, and you know you're going to get some floaty looking sling blades and dumb serious indy era spots like a superplex > falcon arrow. That stuff sucks, but he's a fun guy to hit hard. Cesaro hits so many uppercuts that it leads to an arm injury (hitting the turnbuckle when Rollins moves), and so you get Cesaro working stiff uppercuts with a hurt arm, and they build a huge portion of the match around Rollins not wanting to take the giant swing. I always love a match that's built around one guy not wanting the humiliation of being hit with a specific move, almost more than he's trying to avoid being beat, so that gives this whole thing a high floor. The fans clearly want a big Cesaro win, and it is great to gear a crowd react excitedly to these guys who have been working in a vacuum for over a year. A few of them will probably die, but this would be a pretty cool Cesaro win to see in your final months. Again, you build a match in 2021 around somebody trying to avoid a bearhug or giant swing or a stomach claw, and Cesaro hitting this triumphant no hands airplane spin looked like Superman throwing General Zod into a skyscraper. I don't think we could have expected a better Big WrestleMania Match from Cesaro, and I'm happy for the guy. 

Kofi Kingston/Xavier Woods vs. AJ Styles/Omos

ER: I have been so excited for the debut of Omos. There are few things I love more in wrestling than a debuting giant who hardly any people have seen wrestle. His gear isn't as cool as it should have been. I think him wrestling as 7' tall Mr. Hughes would be my favorite wrestling look of the year. His black sleeveless button down looks to Giant Chippendale. World's Tallest Stripper having to duck under hanging lights isn't as cool as 7' tall Mr. Hughes. Gear disappointment aside, I seriously loved this debut for Omos. Woods and Kingston have been having a good year, adding to shows more often than not, and they played a tough role here really well. It's a tough role to be a super popular babyface tag team, while also keeping a crowd excited to see them get tossed around by a giant debuting heel. They have to be a babyface team who is more focused on making a huge heel have a memorable in screen debut, than getting sympathy for themselves. Everybody had a tough role in this match, and everyone crushed it. AJ had to bump around getting his ass kicked so New Day can get at least some big offense before getting their limbs torn off by Omos. Styles built really well to the big Omos entrance, and Woods showed the right amount of fear and awe. Omos worked like a great classic giant, and nothing would make me happier than a 7'3" giant who has never seen any wrestling past 1991. Omos had big overhand chops, a powerful running hip attack, and his high slam backbreakers looked like a proper 1985 finisher. He added a brutal full face claw to Woods while holding a backbreaker, and this made me even more excited about Omos' potential. Styles got this awesome kamikaze flying elbow, vaulting off Omos' shoulders, and I love that they didn't have New Day get anything on him. I want a dominant giant pushed to the top and this is now my favorite wrestling. This kind of debut is the kind of thing that needs to happen in front of a live crowd, potential superstar debut. I am An Omos Guy. 

PAS: Considering how badly the WWE has fucked up giants since Andre, it was pretty cool to see them hit every beat here damn near perfectly. Kind of strange to work the match around heel in peril, but it really worked. AJ is great at being a pinball, and has really developed a scumbag youth pastor vibe which makes you want to see him beaten up. I loved the smirk on his face when he realized he had gotten enough distance to tag in Omos, and Omos came in and wrecked shop. He didn't show off his ability to do a cartwheel or some shit, he just ran through the New Day, killing them with backbreakers and a killer spinebuster throw. I really think if they keep doing this, it will be a huge deal the first time he takes a bump, and totally make a star if someone is able to beat him.

Shane McMahon vs. Braun Strowman

ER: This is my least anticipated match of Night One, but it still has a chance at being a real spectacle. Both guys get purple real easily and that adds to the freakshow element of wrestling that WWE needs to bring back. This show has some real quality vibes. The real danger to a match like is the length, and they hit the runtime mark well. This could have been way overblown, but it was exactly what it should have been. Shane looks a step away from a heart attack immediately, takes several bumps he shouldn't be taking including getting launched into a swan dive off the top of the very tall cage. Elias and Jaxson Ryker have been a really underrated duo. I don't think Ryker sounds like the kind of human I'd want to hang out with, but he is a very good worker with some of the strongest basics on the roster. They added to the match with a couple of big bumps off the cage side. Braun ripping a cage panel off it's clasps was the kind of spot that would play as an all time great moment on a show closing video set to the WrestleMania theme, so that means it's a great spot. This could have been a 20 minute drag, and instead they kept it tight, with the right amount of bullshit. 

Damien Priest/Bad Bunny vs. The Miz/John Morrison 

ER: This show has a debuting giant and a debuting pop star. This is really a night of wrestling booked directly at me. I get excited every time any celebrity actually wrestles. It's great. I love seeing the ones that really get it, love seeing pro wrestlers show off their chops by integrating a non-wrestler into a match, and Bad Bunny is a genuinely big modern star. I don't get how anyone couldn't be excited seeing a big star show how well he can wrestle at the biggest wrestling show of the year. That's exciting!! How great would it be to see Taylor Swift against Carmella and see Swift hit a decent la magistral? Miz is a good opponent for Bad Bunny, and I loved seeing Bunny pull off semi-complicated armdrags that he couldn't quite pull off, and the way his bumps looked slightly more dangerous than they should have been. I love slightly untrained bumps. They feel way more like me missing a step and falling on my butt. Bunny's offense keeps getting better the longer he's in the ring, and his multi-rotation headscissors is better than 80% of that same spot I've ever seen in Chikara. He throws a great goddamn headbutt and sells it with an eyes-crossed wobble, his sunset flip is very good, and he throws genuinely good punches from a far enough distance that's harder to make look good. He went with an ambitious worked punch style and he does it shockingly well. Bunny's selling is strong, watch how well he sells a great Miz low left hand to the spleen. By the time Bunny was hitting a falcon arrow, I was convinced this man has to have a backyarder video from 2007 on YouTube. Priest's hot tag plays a decent enough 2nd fiddle to Bad Bunny, and Bad Bunny hitting a Puerto Rican Destroyer on the floor and two fantastic crossbodies (one his now trademark plancha) is fucking GREAT pro wrestling. Miz was excellent and fed into every single Bunny spot perfectly. This was his best in ring performance since his match with Shane at WrestleMania 35. I love celebrity pro wrestling matches, and this belongs with the good ones. 

Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks

ER: This show has been excellent so far, and this is the match I am most excited to see. It has some pretty big shoes to fill, as this show really has been a top to bottom fun watch. This knocking it out could put this into easy Show of the Year status. Not sure how to feel about Sasha's look, but my instinct is she's going Strange Days club scene so I want to say I'm for it? The build for this match has felt really off, but the early parts of this really felt like the popular slugger who slumps the last month of the season but then rakes in the playoffs. I was always going to be excited for the in ring of this match, but the build left a lot to be desired. But they work this great and Sasha more than almost anyone feels like someone who knows how to turn it up on the big important shows. She deserves the Jeter rep. Bianca's chicken wing slams looked appropriately nasty, and she has a couple of big powerbombs too. Sasha kept getting her knees into Bianca's rib, grabbing Bianca by the braid and kicking her a bunch in the ribs and shoulder, getting her knees up on a great 450, Sasha really just excels in big main event singles matches. She really comes off like a great modern take on the reckless 90s AJW babyface. I love the way she throws her self hardest into her own misses, like jamming her knees into the barricade or into the bottom buckle. The home stretch to this was really good, with Sasha finding several ways to use Bianca's braid against her in the match finally paying off with the return of Belair's hair whip offense. For some reason the wrestler with the among the top 5 hairdos in wrestling history came in with her hair as her gimmick, and now they've spent the last couple years pretending she doesn't have this amazing head turning hair. So we finally go back to a great heel who keeps yanking on it while kicking Bianca in the face, and it pays off with one a hair whip to Sasha's stomach that is louder than anything on the show. Banks had a huge welt from it, legendary spot. This was an perfect way to close out a great night of wrestling. 

PAS: Really excellent match, in the top tier of Wrestlemania main events and something which felt legitimately meaningful and emotional. So much of WWE emotion feels forced and spoon fed, but the moment at the beginning of the match where Sasha and Bianca took a moment to absorb that they were two black women main eventing Wrestlemania actually got me in my feelings a bit. It is a lot of pressure to trailblaze, and they both delivered. I am a huge fan of strength based highspots, and Bianca had some corkers here. The roll through of the plancha into a press slam, where she walks her up the steps was a spot of the year contender, and I liked her repeater powerbombs a bunch too. That is a spot which can feel cooperative, but Bianca hoisted her with ease. I dug how down and dirty Sasha got, basically turning this match into a impromptu bullrope or chain match with Bianca's braid, super creative and nasty. I bet Bianca's scalp was burning after this match. All of that cheapshot work was paid off with that huge hair whip shot near the end. I don't watch the WWE regularly at all, but if they downplayed Bianca's hair whip on the main roster, it was worth it for the impact of that one shot. My one complaint was the overuse of WWE face near the end of the match, but I guess that is just the style now. Otherwise this hit every beat. Tremendous achievement by both wrestlers. 

This show was a total knockout, nothing worth skipping on this show. It had some real high points with the great debut of Omos, the great debut of Bad Bunny, and a tremendous main event, and the low points were non-existent. Great show top to bottom, with everybody wanting to bring it in the ring. The Omos debut is going on our Ongoing 2021 MOTY List, and Sasha/Bianca is our new #1. A great night of wrestling. 

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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. 

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WWE Survivor Series 2020 Live Blog

This show looks like it has strong on paper potential, as all of these matches could be good. I'm most excited for Sasha/Asuka, but there is a lot that can go right on this card. Let's see!

Pre-Show Battle Royal

ER: I'm always going to be happy about a battle royal getting good time on TV or PPV, even when they don't really deliver what I want. This was a battle royal worked with modern style, which is not nearly as good as any battle royal from 1991. Guys don't know how to occupy battle royal time as well now, and there's a lack of vets from times when battle royals were more commonplace and can show people how to occupy time. Nobody ever took the flag from Lawler, or Funk, or Finlay, who knew ways to work shtick and stories through a battle royal. Here the older guys like Jeff Hardy were among the least visible or noteworthy performers in the match, and the time filling felt more modern and mapped out. There were a lot of apron duels and they all looked good enough while feeling rehearsed and soulless. Ricochet throwing Cedric Alexander onto the apron with a half nelson suplex should be a major thing - and feels bizarre seeing on WWE PPV - but looked safe (good!) but meaningless here. Rey Mysterio has probably the only exchange he's ever had with Kalisto, and we get a quick 2 second cool looking headscissor spot and then they separate for no reason. There felt like too much timing worked around Dominik, Carrillo and Garza looked like they had no clue how to work battle royals, felt like nobody was looking to stand out. Shelton Benjamin probably looked the best and like someone who knew the small increase in stiffness that can make a battle royal performance stand out. Nobody else felt like they were working with his intensity, nobody else felt in the moment, stuck remembering when their sequence came. 

AJ Styles/Matt Riddle/Keith Lee/Braun StrowmanSheamus vs. Jey Uso/Kevin Owens/Otis/Seth Rollins/King Corbin

ER: Pretty early on this does not seem like a good match. The Raw vs. Smackdown shirts are so dorky, and they're even worse with USA and Fox on the back. Fox Corporation vs. NBC Universal! It's like a match they were paid to do at a weekend corporate conference. And Seth Rollins is just the kind of guy that would cause a big dumb scene at that corporate retreat, and I could not care less about his sabotage or whatever weird Jesus stuff it was supposed to be. You can't not have good moments with good wrestlers in the ring, so there were cool things like AJ taking a really high backdrop bump, or Otis working shoulderblock exchanges with Keith Lee. But the Otis/Lee and Otis/Braun stuff should be better. Otis is someone who has been dropping more and more of his actual good in ring work in favor of more and more dumb guy Jake Milliman routine. I've been watching a lot of 1993 WWF lately, and Otis basically comes off like modern Bastion Booger. We could have a fat grappling tank and he keeps working further away from that. Braun's powerslam on Otis looks good, Lee's spirit bomb on Uso looks good, but I did not care about any of the consequences of this match. I don't think there WERE consequences to this match. Does the Raw clean sweep mean something? Is this PPV just Bragging Rights? 

The New Day vs. Street Profits

ER: I love how Big E looks in his Gears of War cotton candy Lisa Frank armor. Kingston/Wood is the least interesting New Day combo, and these teams don't match up in ways I like. The match did snap my attention when Kofi hit one of the heaviest cannonballs I've seen into Montez Ford's stomach, crashing over the top rope and landing powerfully. They even work that into the match and do more body work on Ford, and that's a nice surprise. But I knew it wasn't going to mean much, and it didn't. We build to competent move chaining sequences, a missile dropkick bounces someone across the ring, the person delivering the dropkick stands up to take a big crossbody, it all looks fine. Street Profits are really forgettable to me, and I don't love writing that about a wrestler because that would really hurt to hear. But for guys who can do some impressive things, they are such an out of sight out of mind team for me. 

Sami Zayn vs. Bobby Lashley

ER: This didn't feel like it had the same kind of energy that the best Zayn IC champ stuff has had. And part of that is because most of the time Lashley works matches like he's half asleep. This was half asleep walking Lashley, and Zayn's energy and couple bits of big offense don't come off big or threatening when Lashley barely reacts to them. This did not work for me. 

Asuka vs. Sasha Banks

ER: This is easily the match I am most excited for, even if the face/heel dynamics are screwy. Sasha is the defiant babyface in her Bayley feud, but is default heel against Asuka. It could have been worked compellingly as face/face but Sasha shows that's not the plan with her body language so we'll see. And I'm not sure if it was the cold dynamics or that things took an inorganic turn, but this doesn't come off as well as it should. I liked when each were working arm locks on the mat, but once they got to their feet and Sasha was whiffing with full wind up elbow strikes, everything after felt like a 90% speed rehearsal. A lot of seams showing through signature spots, like Asuka missing a hip attack in the ropes but there being a missed beat before Sasha kicks her, or Sasha missing a shoulderblock through the ropes but there being a missed beat before Asuka kicked her. It's too mechanical for the heat to work. The backslide and roll up sequence to end the match felt like the way you go home when you're given your minute warning on a house show, and even though I liked how the sunset flips and roll throughs looked, liked how natural the lost shoulder leverage looked, it just didn't come tacked to a match that worked. 

Nia Jax/Shayna Baszler/Lacey Evans/Peyton Royce/Lana vs. Bayley/Biance Belair/Ruby Riott/Liv Morgan/Natalya 

ER: I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about this, honestly. We get a highlight package of Nia Jax putting Lana through the announce table in literally the exact same way 9 different times. They are really hammering the Lana as demoralized underdog who doesn't quit, and Byron Saxton is awful and phony trying to broadly hammer home the details. But Lana acts mopey and it comes off too grade school. The match is dry as hell, and feels loose. A lot of quick camera cutaways from moves that look messy or strikes that catch air, people staggering awkwardly around unsure how to sell a strike they know didn't land. The quick eliminations in the middle made it so none of them felt like an accomplishment. You had what could have been a huge moment where Peyton Royce of all people - someone whose specific charisma I really like - hits a huge superplex to the floor (after nearly every person in the match stood assembled for ages) and back in the ring finishes Bayley, only to be eliminated herself by freaking NATALYA of all people less than a minute later. And Natalya, who they still in 2020 pretend is a thing, gets eliminated by Lacey Evans not long after that, confirming that Natalya will never be a thing and they'll not figure out why that is. It's an awful layout that shows bland parity, nobody gaining or losing anything from their eliminations. Lana stands on the ring steps the whole time and it's the most predictable thing ever to have her become the sole survivor. Byron Saxton fake laughs his way through the whole thing, the man whose voice goes up a register when he's laying it on real thick. Baszler and Nia and Belair get eliminated in unconvincing ways that require them to be idiots, Lana stands on the steps with her weird smeared lipstick with a comically large frown on her face, and again I STILL have no idea how they exact people to be reacting to this. This was a bad match. 

Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: For a non-crowd modern WWE main event, this is probably as good as you can realistically hope for. This is the kind of match that didn't completely work for me, but likely would have worked incredibly well in front of a live crowd. Daniel Bryan knows how to work big matches with no crowd, but this kind of big build Marvel match needs a live crowd to really thrive, and really connect with me. I think they did all the right things, and I think this would have killed, so that's a shame. As it was, it was a strong way to not kill Drew and keep a couple different stories going into potentially interesting directions. The nearfalls played well the big finisher kickouts played well, the surprise Uso table spot played well. The match was probably the only match on this show that felt like it actually accomplished something when it was over, and as backhanded as that sounds I do mean that in a very good way. 

ER: It was fun to see the Godwinns again, and it's cruel that no handhelds have ever shown up of the 2007 WWE house show matches Henry had with Gordy's son against Regal and Dave Taylor. I really wanted that 2007 comeback for Godwinn, when they were bringing back guys like Animal, Tatanka, and Duggan, HOG would have been a cool mid 40s addition to C shows. 

This show was not very good. Both elimination matches felt consequence free and mechanical, and "mechanical" is the overall best description for this show as a whole. For a show with nothing but the traditional elimination matches and title matches, this was not a show filled with excited/exciting performances. Vince looks like shit, and that rules. Good night. 

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The Horror Show at WWE Extreme Rules 7/19/20

ER: I am very interested in both women's title matches, and probably not anything else! I do have a perverse interest in how they're going to pull off the eyeball gimmick without making kids hate wrestling.


Kevin Owens vs. Murphy

ER: This was given more time than a typical pre-show match, but I liked the first half of the match a lot more than the second half. The first half was based around Owens throwing stiff strikes, hard shoulderblocks, big clotheslines, and I'd much rather see that. I get less interested by the time we have a too long fight on the top rope and the big nearfalls feel too performative. The best parts were always Owens shaking Murphy with elbows and crushing him with a cannonball, but I was less interested in seeing them have a Murphy match. It played better than a lot of that stuff, so Owens kept the floor high. A spirited and plenty hot opener, just not my preferred heat.

Tables Match: New Day (Big E/Kofi Kingston) vs. Cesaro/Shinsuke Nakamura

ER: This was a big moments match with plenty of cool big moments. Even on moments where the set up was longer than needed, the spot wound up paying off. I liked Nakamura's logical work around the tables, saw him smartly position them a couple of times, liked how he shoved one out of the way when rolling to the floor. I loved the spot where Kingston flew to the ground and smacked face first into a table, held there like a wall by Cesaro and Nakamura. Big E's spear through the ropes to Cesaro looked as spectacular as ever, and we should celebrate that he is still doing that spot. The final table spot looked crazy, Kofi getting drilled through those tables by Cesaro is something that would have played for two years in an ECW intro. Nobody will think about this spot after a couple weeks, but it looked crazy in the moment. The spots with the tables, in the tables match, were good! So this was fine.

Nikki Cross vs. Bayley

ER: I was excited for this one and really liked the how they started it. I bought into the idea that Nikki could pull off a flash upset. Nikki was getting smart quick roll-ups and landing heavy on several straight crossbodies for nearfalls was really engaging. I like Nikki's way of not rolling through crossbodies, but actually treating it like a potential finisher by landing hard. Her crossbody off the apron to the floor was really great, and I liked Bayley being kept on the ropes. They had a couple of fun fights in the ring skirt, and I'll always react to those. But the problem is that Nikki Cross is not good in a lot of ways. It can take her forever to get into position to deliver something, which makes disbelief suspension a lot more difficult, especially since we were supposed to believe that she had the capability of surprising Bayley. She doesn't get the reactions she could on offense because she doesn't seem to know how to peak things. She has been working a vest unzip/vest removal spot for over a year now, and it's like she never quite knows how to use a proper strap removal spot within a match. She makes it look like she's just removing a piece of clothing that got in the way. This match was one I was excited for on paper, but it kind of just wound up exposing Nikki's singles match weaknesses. I'm still into the Sasha/Bayley act, and that kept the bulk of this strong.

Seth Rollins vs. Rey Mysterio

ER: I'm...not really sure how I feel about this one? It's a weird gross idea that feels hard to pull off, while also feeling like something that nobody ever asked for. Trying to stab someone in the eye is a great way to end an I Quit match, but a match where the sole focus will be on pulling out an eye? I don't know who was asking for that. I'd also be willing to bet that someone on the writing team got the idea from watching Fulci's Zombie rather than from watching Magnum/Tully. The thing is, for a match with an insane advertised conclusion, Rey busts his ass to make this work, and Rollins comes along with him. Rey was really great at inserting Rey spots in the middle of eye spots, and he takes some wild bumps to make this match feel even more dangerous. The apron falcon arrow was sick, and he was so good at working spots around turnbuckles and ring steps. Rollins was no slouch, and I liked his ringpost shoulder bump among other things, but Rey is just too good. Trying to gouge someone's eye out on the corner of a ring step is gross stuff, and Rey plays the fear of it really well. He does great with a kendo stick jammed into the corner, really going after that Fulci eye gouge where the gap between eyeball and wood slowly closes (needed more sharp jagged splintery bits). This finish is what the finish was advertised as being. Part of me thinks "Hey that owns!" It looked disgusting and Rollins throwing up after is the kind of apex to the Grand Guignol shit they have been trying to pull off in little ways. But another part of me still just finds the stip odd and unnecessary. Plus, this is a fed that chose to only use Pirata Morgan twice and was uninterested in bringing back old and crazy PCO. I'm not sure I can trust them to know how to properly book pirate Rey.

Asuka vs. Sasha Banks

ER: This was a really great match with a monumentally stupid finish. It's pretty deflating to work through such appealing match with fine drama and an exciting build, and then completely undercut every part of it with a finish that hasn't flown in 25 years. Having a ref get taken out of commission, to be replaced by a heel wearing a ref shirt, is an idea that Vince Russo buried and resuscitated hundreds of times, a man who never learned the lessons of Pet Sematary. Just a weak an unexplainable finish to be doing in 2020. But the rest was great! Sasha has been my favorite to watch weekly these past several months, and I think her and Bayley are doing a great job essentially running television. I'd much rather see them doing what they're doing, than seeing Charlotte clogging up main events. Sasha bumped huge here and really made this feel special. She flew to the floor on a charge and flew again after getting knocked off the apron by a hip attack. She kept building her bumps to mean more the deeper we got, and the way she flew into Asuka's Germans took this to another level. Sasha can come off clumsy on big bumps, but I think she's gotten so much better at body control over the years. These suplexes looked like they really folded her in half, but going back and watching them you can see her land on her back and shoulders and fold in a way that looks like she just got dumped directly on her neck. A safer bump that looks career shortening is a smart move, and it looked killer. Sasha's comebacks were good, and the Banks Statements was used really effectively. It's a great finisher that plays even better with a flexible opponent, and Asuka was really good at making it matter as she scrambled to the ropes. Both of their kicks looked good, I loved Asuka turning a Banks top rope arm drag into a nasty knee lift to the chin, I was really loving all of this. But that finish is a real deflator.

Dolph Ziggler vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: I thought this was really good. There isn't much in WWE I am less interested in than 2020 Dolph Ziggler matches, and yet this was a great title match that made great use of an intentionally lopsided stipulation. The stip (No DQ for Ziggler) made him more interesting. Ziggler throwing chairs at someone's knee in between taking painful throws over the announce table and into hard ringside objects he set up is just going to be way better than a typical Ziggler match. Ziggler was great at turning his normally athletic bumps into actually painful bumps, and Drew was wrecking him with glee. Ziggler took a great bump into the ringpost on the floor, ate several sick belly to belly suplexes in and out of ring (a cool fast on in the ring and a wild one into/over the announce table), and my favorite was probably McIntyre's awesome vertical suplex on the floor that really splatted Ziggler. Ziggler's cut off spots were strong, and I really got into the stip of him being able to cheat to stifle any momentum. The table spot was big, and they parsed out the nearfalls to keep the excitement strong. The finish was good too, and I'm unsure if that's because it's an actual good finish or that many of the other finishes have been bad enough that a competent finish feels like visionary genius. I wouldn't have guessed this would be the strongest match of the show, but it was and that's part of the fun.

Swamp Fight

ER: WWE is aiming, or more likely only capable of reaching, for deep cut straight to Netflix horror and those movies that used to be on the bottom row of Redbox kiosks. They need to surprise us by giving us a cinematic match that is based on Portrait of a Lady on Fire. We all saw the Matt Hardy stuff several years ago and I can't get too excited these days about a weekend Friday the 13th project.


ER: The show underwhelmed and underdelivered, but Asuka/Banks gave us a really good 15 minutes and McIntyre/Ziggler was an unexpectedly strong showing. Rey had a great performance in a weird situation, and other than the Swamp Fight the floor was high. But the show also felt a lot longer than it actually was. And that kind of speaks to the weirdness of this show. A show with a strong men's title match, a strong women's match, and a great Rey performance feels like a show I'd leave behind fondly. And yet we're here.

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WrestleMania 36 Night 1 Live Blog

ER: So I admittedly haven't been very engaged by the empty arena era. Wrestling is obviously better with a crowd (duh), and I wasn't actually expecting most of the WWE roster to be so bad at working in this new environment. This was a unique forced opportunity to do something weird with your style and change up your act in different ways, show your personality when your voice can be heard louder than ever, and instead most of them have responded by just pretending there is a crowd. Bryan, Asuka, maybe a couple of others have adapted well to the empty arena, but that's it. BUT, there are a lot of intriguing matches on the card, so let's see how it goes.


Cesaro vs. Drew Gulak

ER: I loved this, the absolute coolest way to do a short match. Gulak had the brilliant Bryan match (what feels like a lifetime ago now) and this had some of his strongest ringwork that I have ever seen. I have watched a LOT of Drew Gulak matches and not only was he breaking out tricks I've never seen from him before, every single thing he did was extremely tight. This was work that would make Finlay jealous. He had several awesome counters and reversals, including a gorgeous crossface reversal out of a Gotch piledriver. Gulak really showed off his underrated clothesline, sending Cesaro over the top to the floor and hitting a great flying clothesline off the apron (the diving clothesline is one of the hardest clotheslines to make look great, and this felt on the level of Daisuke Ikeda's diving lariat). He even does a trippy armdrag reversal on the floor off a Cesaro tombstone attempt, reminding me he was co-trained by Skayde. I love how heavily Gulak flew into everything, getting shaken by a Cesaro uppercut, and the way Gulak flew into it from the top rope make it look like he didn't know he was about to eat an uppercut. It's that extra level of committing to a move, to get thudded with a harder shot to commit to the realism. Cesaro also rewards him with the best elbow strike of the match (and surely the show), really putting over who has the power here.  I liked how on top of Cesaro he was, in the way he was constantly working for something in any second of potential downtime. Seeing a match like this and you become aware of how much some guys lie around nearly every time they hit the mat. Here Gulak takes any pin for or against him to take advantage of the prone Cesaro. Cesaro getting pinned and using the kickout to float over into a Fujiwara was logic that exposes the rest of the brand as resting on their laurels, and I loved how effectively he worked that crossface. Cesaro deserves a ton of credit for how well he played into Gulak's work, selling perfectly for all the holds and reversals but also expertly staying in position for all of it, occupying himself so realistically. The sudden explosive Cesaro finish worked for me, him realizing he won't shake the tenacious Gulak so just using his one real advantage - his crazy power - to muscle him up, disorient him, show off his traps and his balance, and then drive him hard to the mat. I loved every second of this.

PAS: This was really great stuff, it feels like given 14 minutes or so and an actual audience, these guys could have a match as good as Bryan vs. Gulak. Really makes me want to find whatever Ant Gulak was vs. Claudio from Chikara. Man Gulak was killer on the mat here, just constantly looking for an approach to grab and twist an arm, such a cool way to have a mat based match with very little time to do it in. Very weird that a guy is coming into his mat wrestling prime during his WWE stint. Cesaro was awesome as a guy whose power cannot be contained even with a bad wing. Empty arena wrestling is still weird and unsatisfying for me, but this is how you work around constraints.


ER: Until that video package I had no idea how - except for Willie Nelson - WWE has exclusively used black performers for America the Beautiful at WrestleMania. And I was weirdly into the overly long and bizarre show intro, which felt like Asylum making their version of Aquaman.


Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross vs. Asuka/Kairi Sane

ER: This was one of the matches I was excited for, partly because Asuka has been one of the only people who has taken advantage of the empty arena to do different things. She seems to genuinely enjoy the chance to be a goofball in this environment, and I love the way Sane plays her runty second. And this was good! I loved Kabuki Warriors all throughout, with Sane mocking Cross and Bliss when she shouldn't and always paying for it, while Asuka talked trash and danced and then would land a nice forearm or knee (her hiptoss into a knee strike on Bliss was so great, and made even better by her knowing look into the camera after). Bliss and Cross had good energy to counter, especially Bliss who really felt like she was flying into everything at top speed. Her Twisted Bliss moonsault to break up Asuka's rear naked choke was awesome, really crashing hard on Asuka (and, well, Nikki), and the one that pinned Sane was accidentally nasty as she landed right across Sane's legs. I think this would have played really well in front of a crowd, and it felt like Cross wasn't really as animated here as she's been the past few months. I'm sure a crowd would have helped with that as well. I didn't want Kabuki Warriors to win and would have rather had them cheat to retain, to keep the program going a bit and test the Cross/Bliss partnership.


Baron Corbin vs. Elias

ER: Elias just shows up after taking a "flat back bump" off the top of a cherry picker and Cole just going "well we weren't sure he would show up but he's here!" is so silly. And this is a match everyone is going to dump on, but I thought Corbin was good all things considered. He works better in a crowd setting, as you can real feel the disgust and apathy and it can kind of lend itself to a better match. But his work looked strong, loved the way he pinballed hard for a big Elias mule kick, hit a couple hard lariats. He's still been the only person who can credibly pull off the Boss Man type slide before, and there have been several people who have been trying that one since the internet all apparently watched that match. I didn't care about any part of the story personally, as it all seemed very out of sync with itself. Elias gets shoved off a landing to potential serious injury, comes out (still booked even though they said they didn't know he would show), blasts Corbin with a guitar...but then basically gets his ass kicked for a big portion of the match. Still, Corbin is going to get crap for his performance, and he shouldn't.


Shayna Baszler vs. Becky Lynch

ER: Baszler is someone who seems to benefit from the empty arena, as you can really hear how hard she's smacking Lynch. Best case scenario from Baszler with no crowd is that you might hear some mean shots land with that same echo you'd hear on a sub-100 attendance Futen show. And this is really great. I would have liked it to go several more minutes and for Lynch to actually build a bigger comeback. I suppose it depends on if they get another match, but having a heel like Shayna toss around and wreck the champ all match while the champ escapes with a leveraged pin still feels like something that should continue the program. It doesn't make Lynch feel like a strong champ or babyface if she just wants to move onto someone new without actually definitively beating Baszler, so we'll see. Shayna did get that great Futen echo on her strikes, and I loved the way she treated Lynch like a kid sister she was roughhousing with. I loved that thump of her strikes, and things like manhandling Lynch up and slamming her into an armbar or swinging her into the announce table played great. I loved how dominant she worked and how Lynch was barely scraping out of match ending moments. We've seen Baszler get beat several times by this same kind of pin, flipped over from her choke, and on a show like this you'd think it would have been cool to show that she's finally learned to counter that counter after it causing her so many losses. That's a really weird mental gap that should have been solved by now. I wasn't expecting the Shayna win, and I like this finish if it furthers the program. But I'm really not sure why it would.


Daniel Bryan vs. Sami Zayn

ER: Okay, people on this show are working stiff to take advantage of the arena acoustics and I am 100% okay with that. Bryan looked like he was trying to murder Zayn, all of his regular offense looked like it was landing 20% harder than normal. This Gulak/Bryan partnership is really pushing both of these guys to new heights. How special is that? I was into all of the early Zayn stalling and running because not only does Bryan play well off of that kind of thing, but I was also confident it would lead to Bryan unleashing hell on Zayn. Bryan is so believably irked by Zayn that it really adds to the match, and the stiffness puts it over the top. Bryan's kicks and grounded strikes were so good, but by the time he built up to stomping repeatedly through Zayn's face while holding his arms, he was just over the top insanely stiff. Zayn wasn't going to just take it, and he came back with a great follow through lariat (with Bryan trying to one up him not long after with one of his best flying elbow smashes). You knew there would be Cesaro and Nakamura interference, and I loved Bryan wiping both of them out with a big tope down the stretch. We did get another sudden finish, and really every singles match on this entire show has had a finish that has come without a ton of build or kickouts. Bryan of course flew hard into the helluva kick, but I wanted a little more time.

PAS: I haven't been watching much Zayn, but kind of weird he is working as Bobby Heenan now. Still Ultimate Warrior never beat Heenan this badly, Bryan was in full Finlay mode. I don't remember him ever throwing his kicks this hard, and that was the best ever head stomp spot I have seen him do, and he has been doing it forever. I agree that empty arena suits the guys who are best at just unleashing stiffness, and don't need a bunch of dramatics and chants. Bryan is straight up channeling FUTEN now (those crowds were pretty quiet too) which I am into. I would love to see what he would do with a guy who matches him in violence.


Kofi Kingston vs. Jimmy Uso vs. John Morrison

ER: It doesn't get much dumber than defending the tag titles in a 3 way singles match, but these are isolated times. Plus, it's probably not as dumb as these guys all taking ladder bumps with nobody live to react. But doing a bunch of dumb ladder spots to silence is kind of fun in a backyarder kind of way. It's not too hard to picture three teens falling off a picnic table in the public park closest to their home. Needs more of "friend filming everything reacting and distorting the mic audio. This had some genuinely great spots, and also a lot of messiness. Morrison especially looked klutzy early on, but seemed to get better as the match went on. He had a couple tough crashes into ladders, and I liked little moments like him getting a ladder pushed onto him but it landing so he came out unscathed in the middle (before eyepoking Uso). Aspiring to be ladder match Buster Keaton is more interesting than aspiring to be ladder match Shawn Michaels. I came away super impressed by Kofi. Kofi clearly got the picture from all the prior matches that stiffness was the flavor of the day, and I don't know if I've ever seen Kofi lay in shots the way he was here. His clubbing forearms were so great, you could see Morrison's back get redder as Kofi was beating him. Kofi also made his shots into the ladder look better than the others. Morrison was doing stunt falls that had little meaning behind them, and here's Kofi ramming himself at high speed into ladders and crashing hard, a simpler bump than the big spills from ring to floor but so much more effective. Uso even took what looked like an insane bump off a ladder to the floor, and it was barely focused on for two seconds. Uso himself basically shrugged it off to get in place for the finish. This felt too long (really feels like we haven't nailed the right time on any match so far, as everything has either felt too long or that it ended too suddenly), but I liked it more than I expected to like it. Finish was


Seth Rollins vs. Kevin Steen

ER: The Seth Rollins match is almost always the match I least look forward to on a PPV. I never care about his feuds, I never care about his matches, but I would rather see him in something like this than a title match epic. But even Rollins is working more stiff, and a Seth Rollins match focusing on some nice kicks (he had a couple soccer kicks to Owens shoulder that felt far stiffer than anything in a typical Rollins match) is going to be better than the modern Edge matches he usually works. His tope hit unusually hard, really crashing Owens back into the barricade, far different than his usual topes where he extends his arms to far ahead of him that it looks like he's trying to avoid contact of any kind. Owens bumps really rang out in the silence, and he had a major hand in making me more interested in Rollins, and still got to fire back with stuff, like his nice cannonball. I really liked the false finish, with Rollins braining Owens with the ringbell for the DQ. The silent building really does wonders for ringbell shots as the TANG of the bell resonates while you get a big THUNK from the wood that makes it sounds sturdy as hell. The change to a No DQ was a fun surprise, and the work after the change was even better. Rollins was really lacing into Owens with soccer kicks, and they came off painful in a way his stuff almost never comes off (except against Lesnar, who is someone who forces you into working stiff or else get run over), and we also get a couple more ringbell shots. Owens' revenge shot is great, and I really wish they had ended things with Owens just pulverizing Rollins. Instead, they lost me a bit with that big stunt fall off the sign. I didn't like the "How's this for a WrestleMania moment" call, felt really forced, and it took the shine off a big leaping elbow that actually looked great. The replay angles made it look less impressive, but the first shot was far back enough at an angle that it made it look like he was leaping really far. But they weirdly didn't cut to a replay in the aftermath, and instead held firm on both of them. Part of me was thinking "well I guess it's just part of their now played out direction style to just cut to a replay several times" but this time it felt like it needed that. Because instead, we just heard Seth Rollins making risible old man orgasm sounds for an exceedingly long time. Those sounds started making me snort laugh and then I was out of what had been a surprisingly nice ass kicking. Still, even with those old man pleasure sounds, this shot way past my expectations.


Braun Strowman vs. Goldberg

ER: I was actually excited for Reigns/Goldberg. I was fairly optimistic that both are smart enough workers that they would have put together something smart and really fun. Seeing Reigns eat a spear while up for a Superman punch would have ruled, and I hope we get to see it at some point (though there is less reason to do so now). Braun is a fine replacement but the match needed an extra twist to make it work. This was 2 minutes and okay, and I think with 1 more minute it could have been memorable. It needed at least one more miss from either guy, a 1-2-1 or a 1-2-1-2, and instead we just got a 1-2. Goldberg hit some great spears, Braun hit some nice powerslams. We needed one little surprise, and it was explosive enough even with the short runtime, that a couple of extra beats would have made it much more memorable.


AJ Styles vs. Undertaker

ER: So, I loved this. This was SO MUCH BETTER than a brutal 20 minute empty arena "regular" wrestling match. That would have been abysmal. Over the last decade the only way to get something interesting out of Undertaker has been by having him take a beating against a larger than life figure. You had him getting dumped on his head by Goldberg last year in an extremely fun old man scrap, and several years ago we got the all time great Hell in a Cell match against Brock (which is our #3 match of 2015, and was #1 for a bit). Those matches saw Taker against two larger than life men and felt like genuine dream matches with high ceilings. A 55 year old Taker against Styles didn't feel like a match with a similar high ceiling for me, and since nobody was telling us what a Boneyard Match was I was left to my nightmare visions of the Sting/Vampiro Graveyard Match.

But this felt better than the TNA Broken Hardys stuff, and it felt better than the similar stuff that Lucha Underground did. This was much more like a late VHS era straight to video release, like you went to the video store and found a 1999 Lance Henriksen supernatural biker action movie that you didn't know existed. Or like when you found out that there was a third Prophecy movie in 2000 and not only still had Christopher Walken but also Brad Dourif. The match could have benefitted from a character actor cameo (Mark Boone Junior feels like a guy who could have been affordable, just have him ride in with Taker and then toss him a pistol or something later). It used sound FX far better than Lucha Underground (which seemingly only had one SLAP effect and one bone crunching effect. It also looked like, even with the added FX, that Taker wasn't risking it and laying in big right hands to AJ. Taker kept relying on that right hand and I loved when eventually he was surrounded by druid goons, he just kept turning and punching guys with that hand. No blade attacks, no weapons, just a right hand. This had the cool outdoor bumps that other similarly filmed spectacles have had, and the actual brawling between Taker and AJ had more in common with the Regal/Finlay Parking Lot Brawl than with the awful Graveyard Match or even the Hardy Boys stuff. The twists were all fun, the spills into open graves looked good, and you KNEW there was going to be a tombstone with AJ Styles' name on it. AJ fell all over this graveyard and haunted barn, tossed onto old wood and crashing through fences. I thought all of those effects looked good, like the druids breaking through the barn (which had the proper horror lighting) or the two of them breaking through a fence. I mentioned Lance Henriksen earlier and some of these overhead shots looked like the land where Pumpkinhead was filmed, and it was lit the same way as the final showdown with Pumpkinhead. And yet this did not set unreasonable Pumpkinhead hopes, because everything they had done had been cool in its own way. Within their own canon I think this came off even better than something like the crazy street fight violence of the Hollywood Backlot Brawl, and instead of Piper breaking his hand on Goldust's face we got Taker cutting his arm on a window and AJ yelling about a broken finger. This whole thing was a ton of fun and again, SO MUCH BETTER than any "normal" match we could have had between them.


So I thought this show was great. The matches I absolutely did not care about (Rollins/Owens and Styles/Taker) WAY overdelivered, and you also had Gulak/Cesaro and Bryan/Zayn (added to our 2020 Ongoing MOTY List) that came off impressively violent and cool. This whole thing was more than enjoyable, it kept me entertained the whole way through, and these days it doesn't always take much to make me lose my concentration. I'll come back tomorrow to do the 2nd half, although it has some BIG damn shoes to fill.

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

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

Daniel Bryan/Erick Rowan vs. The Usos

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

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

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

Rey Mysterio vs. Samoa Joe

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

Shane McMahon vs. The Miz

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

Tony Nese vs. Ariya Daivari

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

Lacey Evans vs. Becky Lynch

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

Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte

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

Charlotte vs. Bayley

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

Elias vs. Roman Reigns

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

AJ Styles vs. Seth Rollins

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

Lucha House Party vs. Lars Sullivan

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

Kevin Owens vs. Kofi Kingston

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

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

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

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Bryan vs. Kofi II

31. Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston WWE Raw 5/6

ER: This is the surprise rematch to their classic Mania match, and while there was no chance it was going to approach the peaks of that match due to the original's circumstances, nobody told Bryan it wasn't a big deal. Bryan's work in the match looked on another level, intense enough that Kofi wasn't going to be able to look that good during his comebacks. Bryan can tailor a match around an opponent's strengths, but he's not going to dumb everything down. I loved Bryan posting Kofi and going after the arm, thought the tiger driver into an armbar was a cool moment, and I dig how Bryan is still going to attack the rest of the body and not focus on one part, still laying in body shots. There are a couple big moments here, namely Kofi taking a particularly wicked bump to the floor that saw him fly past the ropes and land flat on the floor (but he's lucky because his coccyx and back of head appeared to take the brunt of it!), and I was genuinely worried for him...but then cackled when Bryan attacked him and threw him into the barricade. The struggle around the Yes Lock was cool, loved Bryan really imposing his will on Kofi by not using a clever reversal to apply it, just grab the weakened arm and muscle him to the mat. Bryan's dropkicks to cut off looked good, and I thought he set up Kingston really well, but wish Kingston had driven it home a little more on the shots that were supposed to look good. The finish felt like it should have been another nearfall, but this was another excellent Bryan carry.

PAS: This may be the best Bryan. He is just such a focused killer, while still putting over his opponent huge, it feels like he just shaved away everything extraneous from his game, and he is a sharpened knife. Loved all of the arm work in this, when Kofi countered the armbreaker, I loved the glint in Bryan's eye as he twisted right into the LaBell lock. Kofi took a big bump and I loved his bounce up the stairs into a dive, outside of that he looked a little out of his depth. I especially didn't like how weak the finisher looked, you got to hit a guy to put him down.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Bryan vs. Kofi

2. Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston WWE WrestleMania 35 4/7

ER: Nuts to think that for seemingly years people filled their diapers online about how Bryan needed to be champion at Mania, and now those people are all dying for Bryan to lose the World title at Mania. I wouldn't have guessed ANYone would ever be higher than Bryan in the internet's eyes, but if I did I certainly wouldn't have bet on Kofi Kingston to be that guy. Nobody was clamoring for a Kofi Kingston World Title run 4 months ago. Nobody was demanding a main event singles run from Kofi. These people don't know what they want. I've been a big fan of Rowan's metal band shirt selection, saw him sporting Kreator a week ago. So him crossing over into horror films is a nice move. George A. Romero now has a WrestleMania reference under his belt. And this was good! We expected this to be good. Bryan is a main event megastar. I've seen him in matches where he knew exactly what to do in front of 70 fans, and here he is an absolute master at working in front of 70,000 fans. This had a feeling like it was going to be Kofi's big moment, and you could see what an awesome hand Bryan had in that. Excellent pacing and build, with big moments playing big. Kofi had a couple cool nearfalls off of flash roll ups, Bryan had a couple cool reversals into the Yes Lock, Kofi leaned into all of Bryan's crisp offense, Bryan snapped off some sharp kicks, and fans kept getting more and more into Kofi the longer this went. They really got as much time as they could have possibly wanted to give Kofi a gigantic moment, and Kofi kicking out of the big knee and hitting his best ever Trouble in Paradise (look at how manly Bryan is running face first into that thing) to win the title did it. This was clearly the moment the fans wanted (that they didn't want 4 months ago) and I'm sure giving them the moment will slow down the nitpicking and bitching and use of the phrase "shoved down our throats".

PAS: I thought this was incredible, Bryan is inarguably one of the top 5 wrestlers of the 21st century, and this was his masterpiece. Somehow he was able to get a New York City Wrestlemania crowd, the smarkiest of all smark crowds to invest entirely in a babyface victory over maybe the all time smark darling in wrestling history. There was no dueling chants, no fight forever, no this is awesome, it was just a crowd entirely invested in a babyface getting a win. The pacing of this was perfect, Bryan knew just when to slow it down, speed it up, give Kofi a moment and snatch then it away. I loved all the cut offs by Bryan, multiple different ways of snatching Kofi out of the air and grounding him into the mat. Loved all this little crossfaces, body shots, twisting of limbs, it had a very Regal feel to it, without any of comedy flourishes Regal would do to entertain the audience.  Bryan wasn't here to entertain, he was her to ruin the crowds good time, he was going to kick over the stereo system, piss on the floor and end the party.  I thought Kingston showed some nice fire, and some good fight out of holds, and this only works because of the good will he built up over a decade, but I imagine you could have put any random midcarder in this match and Bryan could have danced this dance.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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