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

Lacey Evans vs. Natalya

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

Sasha Banks vs. Becky Lynch

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

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

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

Randy Orton vs. Ali

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

Alexa Bliss/Nikki Cross vs. Asuka/Kairi Sane

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

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

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

Baron Corbin vs. Chad Gable

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

Bayley vs. Charlotte

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

Seth Rollins vs. Bray Wyatt

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


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

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NXT TakeOver: Chicago II 6/16/18

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

ER: Holy shit this match starts off my night go go go go. They are taking no breaths and it is hot as hell. Burch is working fast and everybody is whipping around the ring, and we get an awesome early match exclamation point when Burch catches O'Reilly on a leapfrog and catches his ankle, slamming it to the mat. Strong is working a weird MMA bully style, grounding Burch and peppering him with mounted punches, and O'Reilly works that too with a nice hardway double leg. O'Reilly's mounted elbows look pretty lousy, but his palm strikes have a nick smack. I'll allow it. Strong has a super underrated dropkick and he absolutely scalps Burch with one. But this match is all about the Lorcan hot tag, one of the hottest we've seen in ages. Lorcan throws a lariat straight outta hell, a couple of massive flying European uppercuts, sick fast flip dive onto everyone, total house on fire. They dump Strong on his head for good measure, Lorcan takes a disgusting bump off the top rope to the apron to the floor. We get a great dramatic 90s direct to video action movie moment with O'Reilly locking Burch in an armbar and a slow camera zoom as Burch is holding two fingers together to keep his arm from being fully extended. Lorcan re-eneters the match to hit a double blockbuster off the apron to Strong and O'Reilly, and then hits a bonkers doomsday device European off the top. Good lord that sentence is a mouthful and this match is really fun. I didn't love the Adam Cole interference and thought it slowed the match down a bit too much, and I didn't like the phone booth fighting spot, but the end run picking apart Lorcan was great. Strong saved his most vicious shots for the death blows, a nasty chop to the neck, a leaping knee to the face, a great diving lariat while O'Reilly hit a legsweep. A lively match, hotly paced, real crowd pleaser.

PAS: Lorcan is a blast, one of the better guys I can remember at pure intense sprint wrestling, actually reminds a bit of Sting as a hot tag, just an intense explosive killer. Lorcan sprints have been some of my favorite things in wrestling for the last couple of years, and I am glad he got a showcase match finally.  That bump to the floor was totally nuts, the kind of thing we might praise Jerry Estrada or Cactus Jack for, it felt like an all time bump freak bump. I am pretty lukewarm about the other three guys in this match, although they all had moments I dug. I am into Burch and Gallagher bring the barfight headbutt into the WWE, I have been in fist fights with Englishmen, that is a move you always have to be weary of.  I am with Eric on praising that cross arm breaker spot. So much of NXT is built around these cinematic moments, sometimes it comes off as hokey (as it does later in this show for example). Here though  I thought the two finger hold worked really well, and would have actually made a great finish, although the actual finish with Lorcan getting pounded from all sides until he collapsed was really great, reminded me of a cinematic death, I could see that being the way Jon Snow dies at the end of Game of Thrones (if he dies, this isn't a spoiler).

Velveteen Dream vs. Ricochet

ER: This is really rope runny but not in a too annoying way. They're both kind of slithery so it works as a fun style battle. Dream has some fun throwback offense, like a great clubbing double axehandle over the bridge, and modern flash like a ankle flip somersault senton, and hits a cool Aerostar-like springboard flip dive that just floats. Ricochet hits his own big tope and a no hands moonsault that kinda misses, but Dream sells it like it totally upended him. There's a little drag in spots and it's a tough pace to work after the previous long tag. The crowd maybe doesn't react as strong because of that. Dream is a loon though and really throws his body into a middle rope death valley driver, properly selling the damage by bumping almost just as big. His rolling dvd is a legit thing of beauty. I don't really love the stand and trade stuff, kind of goes on a bit long and some of the response bumps are a little too planned. But again this crowd is absolutely on fire for this so who am I to be the joyless crap sack? But I don't know, I think Ricochet doing his own just as good rolling dvd is a little silly, and then he hits his own elbow (and we don't even get the best elbow in the business from Dream!?!?), but he eats knees on a crazy far shooting star press, but then Dream whiffs on his elbow, literally landing almost completely across the ring a couple feet from the ropes. It was a bit longer and slower than it should have been, but they kept the crowd through most of it and that counts. A solid if flawed match.

Nikki Cross vs. Shayna Baszler

ER: Nikki's crazy act takes up the first couple minutes, and it's cheesy, but she's committed and it works enough. But once Baszler takes over then I get into this, dropping her in a backpack on the ring entrance ramp and kicking her around, locking in snug chokes, but then giving generously on Cross' comeback, taking a big bump on her shoulders on a back suplex. Baszler throws such awesome knees, but the finish came off a bit too cheesy to me. Shayna locks in a great choke, but Cross lasts way too long in it and ends with Cross eventually passing out while smiling a big inauthentic Joker smile. Baszler almost saves it while screaming crazily during the choke, and her black mouthguard screaming is a pretty great heel gag. Short and not bad, but I think it comes down to me not liking Cross a whole lot.

Lars Sullivan vs. Aleister Black

ER: Fun quick start after a staredown with Sullivan catching the Black Mass again, but bumping to the floor and eating a double knees and a high knee in the ring. There's a lot of near miss back and forth but it's been done well so far. We've not yet gone full do-si-do. Love the spot where Sullivan runs through a clothesline as if he's breaking the tape at the end of a marathon. Sullivan catching Black on the quebrada to the floor is a great strength spot, and we get a cool powerslam into the barricade and a crushing avalanche. Black is so much fun, I really stupidly want a RAMPAGE battle against Braun Strowman. Love that pop up powerslam but I don't know if I love him going up top. I kind of hate when big guys go up just to get caught, felt a little too cheap Hogan Nitro spot. But the clothesline from the apron was devastating and Sullivan does do a big awkward diving hippo splash off the top, catching a knee to the jaw. It looked messy but that may have been to its benefit. Black has some fun 2006 fast indie offense and I like his kicks to various parts of his legs. But Sullivan has some cool tricks too. You don't usually see big guys with neat offense tricks. His chop block to the front of Black's leg is sick, and a giant dude doing a stretch muffler is a wonderful sight in wrestling. The flying headbutt is stupid as all hell to be doing in 2018, Race was saying to cut it out like 30 years ago. And then it gets a 2 and is it worth it Lars? Lars missing the chop block and eating a double stomp to his lower back is a great Jackie Chan moments, and Sullivan sells for Black's kicks better than maybe anybody else in NXT. Fact. He has 4 different crumbling sells, like he's Kawada with a pituitary gland condition. I thought there were a couple minor missteps, but this felt like a pretty great Street Fighter II tournament final. This worked for me.

Johnny Gargano vs. Tomasso Ciampa

ER: This starts off like a fun 1997 ECW Tommy Dreamer brawl, I mean as if they were following a script, with a crowd brawl that sees Gargano get handed a Gargano sign from a fan, that has a stop sign hidden in it. It's so ECW that the crowd ends up doing an ECW chant. My word. The Gargano dive was big, filmed in a way that made it look like he flew 15 feet. Such a TNN garbage brawl, which is hitting the right spot on a Saturday night after a couple cold drinks. I mean this is taking me right back to some 2001 wrestling in college, watching Benoit doing rolling Germans and worked with that Crash aesthetic. Ciampa gets tossed over the announce table and he essentially spin kicks Percy on the way down. We're going through a bunch of greatest hits from 80s to 90s, Gargano whipping him with a belt and we still get a bunch of 90s garbage trash can spots, trash can lid spots, feels late 90s but violently so.

I love the exposed ring as a prop. It doesn't get used that often so it really does have some freshness and mystery to it. It feels like crossing a line. The vibe with the mat pulled back and exposed padding and glossed wood made it feel like two guys doing a drywall job in a halfway built house and getting into a fist fight over who has a nicer car. We get some nice set pieces here, feels like a really intricate stage fighting scene, tons of props. Gargano attacking that knee gives this some edge, both guys not afraid to go low. There is some wonderful soap opera drama on display. I'm sure there were at least two episodes of Passions that had someone remove off someone's wedding ring and spit on it. End gets really silly. They tease a big Gargano jump and don't pay it off, and I think Gargano goes to "nerve damage" selling a bit too often. But he cuffs Ciampa and delivers a bunch of superkicks he can't defend. The move that finishes the match is something that plays even better the more I see it, with Ciampa hooking Gargano by the neck as Gargano is getting back in the ring, and planting him with the DDT on the exposed ring. I really loved it because they exposed that ring 10+ minutes ago, and I love that exposed ring as a looming danger, and it went just long enough and just far enough away from the ring that we weren't thinking about it anymore. It was a quick power outage and Ciampa came off really hatable. This felt a cut below the other TakeOver Gargano main events, but I liked it's overblown style.

This was a good but not overly good show, but it never felt like a bad show. Everybody was working hard even if they were working at something that I wasn't digging. I think all the matches essentially accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. I also think a couple of these matches could improve on a rewatch, so it always felt like a show that mattered.

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NXT Sacramento LIVE REPORT 8/12/17

I couldn't make it to the San Jose show on 8/11 (driving to San Jose during Friday rush hour traffic? It would have taken 3.5 hours), so Rachel and I drove to the Sacramento show on 8/12. I have the historic worst luck with driving to Sac. It's always something. Road closures, massive rain storms, accidents that cause huge traffic delays, literally every time I drive to Sac it's a non-stop stream of omens telling me to never return. Last night was no different, filled with accidents causing traffic delays, and getting trapped in Sac post-show due to freeway onramps being closed for construction. The detour signs literally lead in a loop around Sac. It was a disaster. It felt like we were being sealed inside Sac like some kind of Escape from NY colony.

But the show itself was great, and the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium might be my favorite wrestling venue. It's been around for decades, has killer concert posters from old acts that played there, such as "The Beach Boys - America's #1 Surf Band!" There were two Beach Boys shows, a "pre-teens and childrens" matinee with "one parents admitted free per child" and "25 FREE LPs given away per concert!" The tickets were $1.75 in advance and $2 at the door. WTF?? Even with inflation that's like $15! They also have great posters for other shows there, the Dead playing 12/22/70 (a show with no known tapes!), great blown up photos of The Clash and Zappa (not playing together, obviously), just a cool old venue, tons of original beautiful moldings, weird quirks like having to go down a few flights of stairs to use the bathrooms (people in wheelchairs had to use employee bathrooms!), genuinely classy and classic place to see pro wrestling.

We showed up right as the first match was starting, bought the cheap $20 seats, and really the balcony is a perfect view at this venue. We were lined up perfectly with the ring on the left side (looking from the entrance):

1. Andrade Almas vs. No Way Jose

ER: Good opener, Jose has been way over with live crowds both times I've seen him. Almas works almost nothing like he did as La Sombra, I don't think he even does as many highspots as Albert Del Rio. But he looked good and was almost playing up a low rent WWE Eddie Guerrero sneaky heel. He bumped big for Jose (including a great bump to the floor into the railing) and ate the pop-up KO punch great, made it look like a deserving finisher.

2. Ruby Riot/Sarah Logan vs. Sonya Deville/Mandy Rose

ER: This might have actually been my favorite match of the night (this or the women's title 3 way), which I wouldn't have expected had I seen the specific match listing before the show. But I came away really impressed with the Deville/Rose team. Deville may have actually been my favorite performer of the night, but both were great as a team. Both really knew how to work from the apron, better than almost anyone else on the show. Deville especially was awesome, always throwing cheap shots (even ones that weren't meant to land, just always keeping the idea there) and was smart at how she moved around the ringpost to attack. Rose kept fans in the front engaged while not distracting from the match, both had good timing on their sneak shots. I think a couple of Deville's nastiest strikes came while she was on the apron, namely Riot getting tossed into the ropes and Deville laying a kick right into her lower back. Riot was a great FIP and we got two versions of a spot I really love, the babyface trying to leap to the hot tag but getting caught in midair by the heel, and those seconds spent with the face caught but still tryyyying to reach for that tag but falling short. The way they handled it was great: Riot ran for the tag but Deville caught her, Riot coming really close to a tag (and Logan doing a great job of reaching for the tag while still being mindful of the tag rope), but Deville threw her off. Riot caught up and charged back looking to do the same, and Deville just speared her out of the air. Awesome spot. Rose bumps really acutely as a heel, she whips over super fast on armdrags, really making the faces look like superheroes. Logan I had never seen before (she appeared to be working a female Skinner Steve Keirn gimmick, or maybe a girl you would talk to at a small town tailgate party) and wasn't too impressed; she didn't really know what to do on the apron, and had a kind of stilted hot tag. But Rose worked around it fine and I came away really loving the match.

3. Oney Lorcan vs. Lars Sullivan

ER: Lorcan wasn't announced ahead of time for these shows (and they announced like 18 people), so I wasn't expecting him, so he was quite the pleasant surprise. He's definitely one of my favorites and the crowd was into him. Lars was a guy I had never heard of before, and the dude is a monster. He looks like Nate Diaz, if Nate Diaz had grown to hideous proportions by chugging Venom all day in Arkham Asylum. It was a fairly short match with Lars dominating, and while the guy is super green he still looked impressive. We got two different press slam spots (and I love press slam spots), with him pressing Lorcan from the floor into the ring, and him holding up a delayed slam in the ring. Lorcan gets a couple nice moments, like him switching his weight on a slam to maneuver into a sleeper, but the match peaked once he snapped and started going off on Sullivan. Lorcan started flying wildly into him with his awesome uppercuts, grabbed Lars by the beard and started slapping the hell out of him, but then flies off the ropes for another uppercut and gets demolished by a lariat. Sullivan wins with a huge uranage (does another after the match for good measure), but I was hoping for ONE more Lorcan hope spot; if he had reversed that uranage into a guillotine choke or DDT, before the inevitable Lars win, this could have been MOTN. As it was, it was still a blast.

4. Kassius Ohno vs. Killian Dain

ER: Ohno is rocking the Sac Kings gear and Dain...is another of those War Machine Hanson types who is big and burly and hoss-like but usually doesn't come off like a hoss. I keep getting tricked by this guy as my brain goes "OH GREAT a big fat hairy guy" but then I remember that I've never actually seen a Big Damo match that I liked. He doesn't have great strikes, but he still has a higher floor than most guys because he has moments where he uses his fat. Being fat and using your fat will get at least some reaction from me. Ohno was the reason to watch this and Hero as Buddy Rose is extremely entertaining. This could have been more of a bomb throwing hoss battle, but what we got was good stuff. Dain is kind of a lousy seller, and doesn't take very interesting bumps, but he leaned into plenty of elbows and kicks from Ohno, and as one would expect Ohno's elbows and kicks loosened jaws. Ohno had some fun show off moments, like his rope flip Misawa feint, and still nuttily busting out his handspring from in the ring to the apron to the floor. He does that and blasts Dain in the jaw, I flip out. I still don't know how Ohno makes his roundhouse pump kick look so good, but it always does. We get both men using fat guy sentons, Ohno does a great elbow pad removal before attempting a killshot (you all know how much I love Lawler taking down the strap, Valentine moving the shin guard, etc., so Ohno tossing the pad is 8 stars from me), Hero misses a great moonsault (and calls his shot by pointing at Dain through his legs from up top!), Dain finishes with a nice Vader bomb (got good and horizontal), and more good spots that I'm forgetting. I don't think we could have expected a better match from these two, so I was plenty pleased.

5. Nikki Cross vs. Ember Moon vs. Asuka

ER: This was my other contender for favorite of the night, even with the 3 way aspect kind of making itself known too often. I'll give credit to all the gals involved for busting ass and getting around the stip. Even though there WAS a lot of "person sells on floor longer than normal so other two can work", they got to those moments in quality ways. I hate in a 3 way where someone is in the ring having a normal match, then takes a move, holds their midsection and rolls to the floor for a few minutes. It's so unnatural. Nobody ever does that in a singles match. Here the attacks themselves actually knocked the person to the floor, with the best being Asuka doing a baseball slide dropkick on Nikki but Nikki catching her in the apron skirt and clubbering her to a pulp. All three women looked great, with Asuka looking like a superstar. She has awesome charisma, I like her moveset, great look, and she has no problem leaning into strikes. I did think Nikki's frayed bootcut jeans were a little amateur, but she seems like she wrestles like a female Dean Ambrose, so I guess it fits. And she's probably better than current Dean Ambrose so why not. Asuka landed some nice hip attacks and locked in a sick abdominal stretch/cravate, Cross and Moon both had some nice respective clubbing forearms and kicks, but surprisingly the real good moments of the match happened with all three in the ring. We got a superplex/powerbomb spots, which are a little played out at this point, but a superplex is always going to look nasty. Best spot was a beautifully timed moment where Cross was getting back into the ring but got nailed with a running butt attack by Asuka, knocking her into the guardrail. It leaves Asuka sitting on the middle rope (where she made contact), and one beat later Moon nails her with a superkick (and it was the nastiest strike of the night, even factoring in Lorcan and Ohno). The hit all the beats perfectly, sequence of the night. The end involving all three was also great, with Moon hitting the eclipse, really nasty finish that Cross made look like a whiplash inducing snap. Asuka runs in from the floor, attacks Moon, throws her to the floor, vultures the win. It doesn't sound special, but the timing was so exact that it was a great finish. The misdirection was strong, it genuinely looked like Moon could get the win, and Asuka made it in, tossed Moon, and stole the win in perfectly believable bam bam bam timing. Great stuff.

6. SAnitY (Eric Young/Alexander Wolfe) vs. Authors of Pain

ER: Well, Authors of Pain still stink. These guys are a bad Ascension, and you can see how well Ascension have done on the main roster (they do probably have better looks than Ascension, so that may help them). This whole thing started pretty ugly with a before-the-bell brawl that was supposed to look unhinged, but just looked like four guys throwing mostly bad punches. Wolfe's punches especially looked terrible. BUT he was redeemed later. So let's skip to later, because this match was dry as a desert. AoP had dud control segments, though EY is still a good face bumper. I had written most of this off, but then EY got the hot tag and Wolfe had an actual good hot tag run. His timing was on point and his energetic elbows and clotheslines and house on fire offense was surprisingly effective. We built to a couple nifty nearfalls, and AoP won the match by DQ by dragging ref Drake Younger out of the ring and punching him. So, pretty lame. BUT, then Wolfe hits a wild flip dive and EY hits a fast bullet tope, so for a match with a cheap finish it sure exited the ring better than it entered. Salvaged.

7. Hideo Itami vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: I'm sure many would say this was the match of the night, and I liked the first half, but once it devolved into sexy dance fighting and clumsily set-up signature offense I think it got a little cold. The early parts were worked slower, with Itami grinding in headlocks and playing an amusing "Budro not wearing kneepads" stalling house heel, avoiding contact and rolling to the floor to avoid stuff. I was digging it. Itami kept taking nice little bumps to the floor, landing in painful ways, falling into the railing, great bullshit. But at a certain point went into our rehearsed we're having a real WAR part of the evening, with unnatural spot set up and strike exchanges and dramatic kickouts that weren't dramatic. Itami still has a bunch of holdover 2004 offense, nowhere near as good as his stalling heel work. Gargano gets into the ring, Itami stops him with a nice kick to the chest. Then Gargano has to act like he's stuck entering the ring, hanging in the ropes, for 10 seconds so Itami can stomp him off the ropes. The stomp looked nasty, the landing rough, but the set up is just absurd in 2017. Gargano has a bunch of smaller versions of those moments, unnaturally rushing over to roll Itami over so Gargano can hit his sliding pivot kick, or getting kicked into place just so he can deliver a strike in a certain way. It's unnatural and silly. The finish was at least hot, as I liked the reversal. Itami went for the Go 2 Sleep, Gargano caught his knee on the way down and locked in the Gargano escape. The crowd even seemed to get more robotic during the "hot strikes" section, doing a lethargic "This is Awesome" chant (though this match was the first match back after intermission, so I don't think I can fully blame the crowds lethargy on their robotic match structure).

8. Roderick Strong/Aleister Black/Drew McIntyre vs. Riddick Moss/Tino Sabbatelli/Bobby Roode

ER: This really had to win me over, as entrances alone took 16 minutes. I knew I had a 2.5 hour drive back home, and it was already 10:15. Jesus, Aleister, walk a little bit faster to the ring. So the entrances take an eternity, I was ready to dump all over the match, but everybody really busted their ass. I expected nothing from Moss and Tino, two guys who you might recognize from their trick bartending work at The White Swallow, but they were really great at feeding all the face team offense and stooging around, nicely playing off Roode's stooging. They acted like Roode acolytes and it was amusing the way Roode kept throwing them to the wolves. Strong looked great here, and it's kind of wild to think that my favorite period of Strong's career has been the last 2-3 years. He's been around so long, I just think he's really finetuned his game. His chops blister and he's great at crowd control in a busy match like this. And those backbreakers still break. Aleister Black worked stiff and did some nutty stuff on a non-taped house show, peaking when he hit a moonsault to the floor on Moss & Tino. Roode kept trying to avoid McIntyre the whole match, rolling to the floor, even getting shoved back towards the ring by an older woman at one point (A STUNT GRANNY!?!?). All three heels did some inspired apron work, acting like great meatheads. We got a hot sequence where everybody hits their finisher, where one guy hits his, then he takes the next guy's and so on. WWE is always pretty shockingly great at the timing of those and this was no different. Tino makes it work by running fast into McIntyre's shotgun knee, but the whole thing was hot. Again, I was pretty tired at this point, just sat through an intermission and the two weakest matches of the night and THEN 16 minutes of ring entrance...but they won me back over. No small feat.

Another great NXT house show, I really hope they keep doing these so that I can see them once a year. According to special live guest William Regal, he was happy that they got 1,500+ people there, since early NXT shows "did 50 people on a good night". Is he acting like NXT used to play smoky bingo halls until they took them to the big time?? But this show was a great time, filled with a crowd that loves pro wrestling, watched in a great old wrestling venue. Yes, please.

Oh, and a final shoutout to the NXT ring announcer, who had no protected seat so had to sit right at ringside with the ring bell, and ran around ringside away from the action all night in very high heels. She put on a Julie Newmar-esque performance of high heel running and irked facials.

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