AEW Five Fingers of Death 3/9 - 3/15 Part 1

ROH TV 3/13/36

Athena vs Maya World [Proving Ground]

MD: Studio wrestling stemming from recent events when Maya, with Hyan and Deonna, stood up to Athena/Billie/Diamante back during the collaborative Metroplex show. Maya being an Athena protégé has not necessarily been a key part of her presentation so far in AEW/ROH up until this point, but I'd argue that she and Hyan don't necessarily have a clear, defined presentation relative to some others.

Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they tagging? What brings them together past an opportunity taken when others did not? What do they want out of life? What are their similarities? What are their differences? Etc. So far, it hasn't been super clear.

This helped though.

In some ways, Maya feels like even more of a "minion" to Athena than even Billie, because Billie was romping up and down the indies for a couple of years before arriving to AEW and finding her away under Athena's thumb. From a story perspective, one might wonder then why Billie was on TV with her and Maya was watching from the sidelines and then, once she arrived, left to her own devices.

Maya seems pretty happy with her lot in life though and doesn't care to ask those questions. Athena, on the other hand, in wonderfully hypocritical fashion, takes offense at Maya opposing her, complains about Maya crossing a line that Athena herself never truly drew.

Which brings them to this, a chance to make an example out of Maya, to teach her a lesson as she'd taught Billie lessons before, at the end of a forearm. But to show that Maya was even more beneath her notice (even as she was obviously getting under her skin), this was instead a proving ground match.

And Athena meant to prove her point right from the get go. Left hand extended. Her usual dainty code of honor handshake. Right into the magic forearm. Athena stomped Maya in the corner and started in on the ref, the crowd, Maya, the world. She wanted it too badly, however, showing that vulnerability which makes her stand out as much as the intensity. It's a give and take with her and once Maya got just a bit of distance between them, she took, forcing Athena to run into a very clever rope-assisted spin kick.

Now it was Maya's turn to take advantage of Athena's mistake. She had caused it by getting under Athena's skin and now she pressed the issue and reaped the benefits. She hit a series of moves, including doing damage on the floor. The problem was, in the micro, time was against her. She could keep Athena on her toes, but it was too early in the match for her to keep Athena down.

Athena got up. She reversed a whip, caught a kick, snuck in a knee, and then jammed both knees right into Maya's face in the corner. She would then, of course, lean on Maya. Maya's hope spots were solid and believable and tended to come not because of any mistake Athena made (she had already made her mistake at the start of the match and wouldn't make it again), but because she had such familiarity with Athena's offense.

Eventually that let her dodge just enough moves to come back all the way and things went back and forth with bombs, blocks, and roll-ups down the stretch. Maya managed to dodge the O-Face and position around to hook in a Reinera slam just as the bell rang. We were meant to wonder if maybe she could have snuck a win there; all it takes is three and this was deep into the match. But we have seen Athena survive far more than that. No, instead, this was a moral victory, a draw in a Proving Ground match, something unheard of in all of Athena's forever reign, and an opportunity for more. Phantom pin or no, what we're actually left wondering is if Athena would learn from her mistake or if her fury would overwhelm her all the more in their next encounter.

ROH TV Special Friday Episode 3/13/26

RUSH vs BEEF

MD: Two wrestlers. All Caps. You know what you're getting. Look, I have been fairly hard on Dralistico in specific situations when he's up against a babyface and playing a heel, not even a de facto heel, an outright heel, and he tries to steal the clap up and the cheers, not in a jeering way like, let's say, Yuta does, but to really get the crowd behind him. 

And yes, to some degree, Rush does this too, he does. He eats guys up. He takes the air out of the room. But unlike Dralistico or just about anyone else, he's beyond the realm of such expectations. He draws the eye that much. He turns the head. He locks you in so that you can do nothing but hang on and go for the ride. He's Ultimate Warrior and he's Goldberg and he's Buzz Sawyer. There are so few wrestlers in 2026 that can carry that sort of energy. He is an attraction. 

He's not treated like an attraction. He's not used like one. But he is one. Sometimes, I get the sense because of how he's presented, the fans don't really have any idea what they're getting into until that bell rings and the power takes them. 

And it rang here. He kicked away the code of honor. The great thing about this is that Beef, himself, can be sort of an attraction, an everyman. Is he more Hillbilly Jim than Dusty Rhodes? I don't know. Ask me again in five years, but also don't downplay the connection a guy like Jim had with the crowd. Beef has it too. They went off the ropes to start, Beef crashing into Rush, Rush holding his ground. That's the thing about Rush. When push comes to shove (no pun intended), he does give, he does show ass, he does falter. He just makes his opponent work for it and then he takes twice as much back as wrathfully as possible. Here he won that exchange by taking Beef out on a leapfrog allowing him to land an explosive dropkick, but then he ate a bunch of BEEF's fun pokey punches, stooging around the ring for him.

That stooging was short-lived; because he is Rush, he started to fire back. Look, I am not a strike exchange sort of guy. But the strikes being exchanged aren't generally these strikes and not from these two. There was something rough and raw and wild here, something completely out of control. It wasn't pretty. It was far more about the throwing of the strikes than the withstanding of them, and as much about hyping the crowd up and getting into it as anything else. Rush would take a shot and then channel it right into the crowd as he waved his hands to try to rechannel the pain. It went from Beef's hand into his chest, into his arms, into the crowd, back through the crowd, into Rush's body, and then back at Beef. If that's not pro wrestling, I have no idea what is. And it all built to Beef just slapping hands one after the other, an out of control dynamo that wan't to lash back at what had been hurting him. 

It worked until it didn't. Rush caught him, thrashed him one last time with a forearm, sent him spiraling down to the corner. He teased the Horns, rolled back into the Tranquilo pose, and really never looked back from there. Beef had put up a good fight, a noble fight, an admirable fight, but there was a big hierarchy difference here, and all he could do was to try to catch his breath, to keep alive, to roll to the floor to recover. That's the last place you want to be against Rush though, and the end had already begun. The fans knew it too. They embraced Rush, let him lean back into a flag and bask. 

And in a different setting against a different opponent with different stakes on a different stage, maybe it would have frustrated me, but here, on an episode of ROH on YouTube in front of a crowd that just wanted to feel something, anything, no matter what, what can I do but throw up my hands and grin along. He's an attraction being an attraction. Hang on, ride the wave. He comes. He goes. He gets injured. He gets suspended. He gets grumpy. Let's enjoy him while we have him. Now and again we're allowed nice things.

Top Flight/Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs MxM/RPG Vice

MD: We talk about moments. Usually we talk about moments negatively when it comes to WWE because they fabricate unnatural ones and put them above and beyond matches, right? But moments are an important part of wrestling because they're an important part of wrestling matches, just like they're important in any other form of fiction. They should stem from the characters within the match naturally. They should be built to and they should pay off. One of the great fallacies of wrestling discussion of this decade is that it's either/or. It's not. It's all organic. That's true with promos and angles and matches and it's true with moments around and within matches.

And here, they did a great job of building to character-driven moments which had meaning within the match. Part of the joy of a match like this is to see the weird interactions. You have Top Flight interacting with Ortiz and Kingston. I was as interested in how Eddie would interact with Daniels post-match during the hand-raising as anything else in the match. That doesn't mean I don't love action. It just means that I find these characters and their history and all that they carry behind them fascinating as well. It's not either/or. It's additive. And Eddie looked as happy as I've seen him in ages post match celebrating with these guys, and I loved to see it.

There were big spots. Of course there were. Top Flight was in there. But my favorite moment in this whole thing was when MXM got Trent to pose (after trying to do so earlier in the match). He lingered too long and it ended up a transition allowing the babyfaces to take back over. That was very lucha-coded to me (though a lot of people wouldn't think of it that way because of the way lucha has been minimized in the States over the years), cocky heels doing cocky things either too many times or for too long and paying for it. What's great about it is that if the babyfaces did it, it'd be a big culminating moment, like Brody King finally doing the macarena but because it was the heels, it was them getting stooged. 

This was a lot of fun and it's always great to see Kingston in the mix with younger and contrasting talent. That's the strength of him. Yes, he can trade chops with Minoru Suzuki or whatever, but it's so much more interesting when you put him in there against a Lee Moriarty or Soberano, Jr. or, I don't know, Doink and see what happens.

AEW Dynamite 3/11/26

Dogs (David Finlay/Gabe Kidd) vs Orange Cassidy/Darby Allin

MD: This match was a cog in the storyline machine, a set up to the Roddy turn (or non-turn or whatever you'd call it) and setting up the six-man for the PPV, but it was also a way to really debut Finlay and make a statement about just who and what the Dogs were. They had that pretty amazing enhancement match on Collision, but this punctuated that real well in an actual match.

They're different than almost every team on the roster because they're dogged, just incessant energy. They have big spots for down the stretch, but for a lot of the body of the match, they just stay on their opponents. If you put Connors in there as well, then he's just throwing himself at people. With these two, it's more catching, like Finlay caught Darby on his dive with a forearm in order to really take over after the initial ambush and fire back. I liked how much they made Cassidy work for literally every inch when he was fighting from underneath. There were one or two times I thought he was about to make the hot tag but they dragged him back like their namesake and it really worked for me. 

And of course, Darby and Orange are the secret main character team of AEW, an odd couple that feed into one another in perfect, subtle ways. To make a very dated comic book reference, they're the Defenders of AEW, a non-team that absolutely work. I get there's mileage out of Roddy and Cassidy (a similar if less subtle team-up) right now, but I'd love to see Darby/Cassidy against FTR or hell even the Bucks (and for me to say that..). They're the TV workmen of the company and I'd be really interested to see a fighting champions run at some point. 

Anyway, this really got the job done and I hope that Finlay, Kidd, Connors get the freedom to keep working matches like this. So much of it was still all action but it was stifling and oppressive in the best way at the same time.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 6/10 - 6/16

AEW Collision 6/15/24

Blackpool Combat Club (Castagnoli/Danielson/Moxley/Yuta) vs. TMDK (Haste/Nicholls)/Lio Rush/Rocky Romero

MD: Right before the finish, Tony Schiavone called the giant swing a work of art. He was close but not quite on the mark. The real work of art was that entire sequence, everything from Danielson's knee (and Nicholls crashing hard into the ropes in a way no one ever does as they take the move), Haste's dropkick, Yuta's sweeping Angle Slam, Rocky's Shiranui, and then finally the double leg into the swing. All of that worked in a rhythmic motion to become something greater than the sum of the parts and greater than most "everything breaks down" finishing stretches. I'm not one to wax poetic about specific visuals in wrestling. I'm a substance over style sort of guy, but the "follow the bouncing ball" wind-swooshing motion here was truly spectacular. I can't really believe it was intentional because creating the sort of visual effect that pulls your eye in exactly the right direction at exactly the right time over multiple moves while still feeling at least somewhat organic would take immense coordination between multiple wrestlers at least somewhat unfamiliar with one another, not to mention the camera crew and producers. I'd worry that any attempt to intentionally replicate the effect would create the most tragically artificial and stilted pro wrestling imaginable. Honestly, I'm not even sure if it even hit anyone else quite like it hit me, but hit me it did.

Speaking of things that are just hitting me, there seems to be an extra bit of magic to Forbidden Door season this year. Part of it is that I wasn't a big 2010s New Japan guy so a lot of these dream matches aren't that dreamy for me. What does appeal, however, is the wild WAR feel of it all in the build, the sense that there's a greater world out there, one that is only enhanced by CMLL and Stardom being in the mix this year. With that in mind, and this being a cold match, I thought they made the most of it. That meant letting Lio Rush go wild against Danielson and Yuta to start. It meant having TMDK act as a unit in almost everything they did. It meant having Danielson play face-in-peril yet again, another stellar such performance in a long line of them now. It meant having Rocky get cocky and then having his coccyx crushed by the absurd and sublime top rope inverted atomic drop. It meant Claudio as the hot tag, running through every bit of interference they tried to throw his way, and Moxley as the monster unleashed who they had antagonized throughout the match but who didn't really get to come in until it was time to end things. Add in the pro wrestling version of The Great Wave off Kanagawa that I recounted in the first paragraph and you ended up with a very fun way to kick off a Collision during Forbidden Door season. Hopefully we get at least one more of these before it's all said and done.

AEW Dynamite 6/12/24

Dustin Rhodes vs. Jack Perry

MD: I had reason to watch some 1984 Tully Blanchard lately. Now, due to the law of transitive properties (We know Perry didn't listen to SOME advice. We know SOME people didn't listen to Tully's advice. Therefore...), we can assume that Jack has probably not been watching 1984 Tully. Tully had this amazing way of starting most of his matches like he was a gentleman, wrestling by the rules, going hold for hold, breaking clean. Only after the babyface got one up on him did he break bad. It made things somehow more hypocritical and underhanded and got him loads of heat.

So, Jack doesn't do that. Dustin came in with a punch to start and Jack immediately went for the eyes. He was pulling the turnbuckle pad off just seconds letter and tossing Dustin into the stairs the first chance he could. He was pulling the padding up and going for a pile driver. Then, later, when had capitalized on the exposed buckle, he hit a DDT on the floor. After that, he nailed Dustin with a (revenge, admittedly) low blow even when he didn't have to. And you know what, I have to admit that it kind of works for me. Yes, there could be some issues with it (and Perry's promos) being out of sync with the Elite's ironic gimmick but no one needs the dripping irony in 2024 anyway. This is far more genuine and visceral. In a singles match where he can be his own thing, he should be the most direct shitheel imaginable; just straight to the point, no filter, no hesitation, not an attempt at sportsmanship or even the very notion that such a thing might be worthwhile or admirable. It kind of works. It makes him stand out. You can have shades of grey matches. You can have Piper vs Bret. You can have Punk vs Page. But more often than not, there's something to the most direct and straightforward approach, especially if no one else seems to be doing it. No one else on the roster is an unmitigated, petulant jerk like Perry (not even the guy that maybe he is listening to, Christian, who professes to be a paragon of paternity, even if it is just the thinnest of patinas).

Of course, this is Perry having Dustin Rhodes, one of the best babyfaces of this century, to play off of,. Dustin is pretty much the only guy on the roster getting the the fans to clap up for him with his selling and his hand motions alone. But still, efforts like this matter. I'm rooting for Perry to build off of it.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 9/25 - 10/1 Part 1

AEW Rampage 9/29/23

Eddie Kingston vs. Rocky Romero

MD: I wanted to hit at least one of the TV matches and while there's a lot to cover with the 8 man tag, it's a lot to work through again. I liked how it felt like worlds were coming together and how they held off on using both Bill and then Danielson, but I don't have a ton to say there and AEW is just producing so much content. As I write this on Monday, I haven't even been able to watch Danielson vs. ZSJ yet.

AEW has had a good year when it comes to reigns and I'm hoping we get just that from Eddie over the next six months or so. Theoretically, we can get matches both on AEW and ROH TV and whatever NJPW tends to be doing with their Strong guys against a variety of opponents. Rocky fits really well in that "variety" mold. He's never quite the spiritual successor of Ogawa that I want him to be, but you get just enough of it, tempered by his own eclectic background that it becomes interesting. That was at play here. He'd slam right into Eddie despite the size differential and then pieface him to try to goad Eddie into a headscissors takeover (it worked). He'd throw himself at him with three topes in a row (that didn't work). Meanwhile, Eddie would keep asking for more, goading Rocky back and maybe drawing him out of his game as well, not necessarily out of some sort of grand strategy, but just because Eddie's Eddie and how do you even deal with that level of stubbornness? It let them rationalize Eddie staying in position in the ropes to set up one more or another; he was just asking for more until Rocky gave him enough to keep him stuck there for a few extra seconds.

So yeah, I want to see Eddie against quick guys (for ROH, Gravity and Blake and Andretti/Martin are right there, for instance), and big guys (JD Drake, Lance Archer, Shane Taylor) and sneaky guys like Rocky or Moriarty. As a match in and of itself, this wasn't necessarily going to be as memorable as most of what we got over the weekend, but as a match as part of a memorable title reign, it fit right in.

AEW WrestleDream 10/1/23

MJF vs. The Righteous

MD: I know. I still haven't seen the Danielson match and I'm detouring for this. I'll get there. We have to pace ourselves in this world. Speaking of that, I thought a lot about Punk as the heir to "neo-Bret-ism" which is the idea of making moves matter, or at least that's how I define it. You can see that in some of the reviews here in the last two years. It's about creating a sports-like approach using pro-wrestling tropes and norms that's based in logic and consequence. I don't actually think MJF is that, but he's doing something very similar. He's being the heir to Dusty.

Phil (Schneider not Brooks) and I are both big fans of minimalism in wrestling, but I think Phil leans more towards amazing execution, as in the sheer amount you can accomplish with a punch that either looks legit or is legit. Simple, straightforward, primal, violent, right? For me, the ultimate goal of pro wrestling is to do as much as possible with as little as possible. That's the height of the art form, to manipulate hearts and minds with as little pressure put upon the lever as possible. It's a work, not a sport. You're supposed to work people. Doing it with as little as possible to the highest possible effect means that you leave more in the tank for later.

I loved MJF talking to Alvarez in the post-show scrum trying to explain that this wasn't a gimmick; it was the point, and that by getting the crowd to care about personalities, you can get anything over. I wouldn't put it exactly that way. I think a lot of it has to do with narrative structure and storytelling, and commitment to character and being on all the time (if you believe, they will believe; if you show consequence, they will feel consequence), but it's close enough that I have lots of warm feelings towards this entire endeavor. My feeling on the historiography of pro wrestling, or maybe, I guess, the history of criticism, was that fans in the early 80s were absolutely spoiled with this sort of working, with the artfulness of someone like Dusty or Valiant knowing how to do so, so much with exactly as much as they needed, finding every shortcut (And shortcuts are amazing to watch and appreciate), with guys like Lawler and Bockwinkel knowing when to pick up the pace and control the tempo, to bring things up and then back down. They didn't know how good they had it and became desensitized to the wonders of the form. Something like Dynamite vs Tiger Mask was candy, pure and simple, a drug right into the pleasure center of their brains, and a way to rebel against artfulness through sheer sensation.

And over time what was truly valuable ended up lost traded instead for what was physically difficult but mentally easy, a lowest common denominator put up upon a pedestal as the highest treasure of the land. MJF is trying to reclaim what was lost, one stupid gimmicky move at the time. He walks to the ring setting up the body slam, setting up the kangaroo kick, setting up the idea of choking out Joe, setting up ramming a head into an ass, and then he builds a match to the payoff, teasing it, denying it, fighting for it. And then he provides it. He's the Pied Piper, the Music Man, the Monorail Salesman, and he wove it all together in the face of difficult odds and fighting from underneath and hope lost and gained once more, and it's every wonderful, ridiculous, serene thing wrestling can be when you just lean into making things matter and creating meaning. How can wrestling be better than that?

I guess maybe ask me again on Wednesday after I've seen Danielson vs ZSJ.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death Week of 11/8-11/14

AEW Dark 11/9 (Taped 11/5)

Darby Allin vs. QT Marshall

MD: This was about getting a crowd that was owed stars a look at Darby. The pre-match promo by QT saying he'd do a favor to a friend and soften Darby up for MJF was just a way to try to put a little more heat on a throwaway webshow match. I have a lot of thoughts about QT actually. He's apparently Khan's Bruce or Fink (probably somewhere in the middle), the guy he'll call to talk booking plans at 4 am and that conveys a lot of the messages forward. Wrestling in AEW wasn't actually a given for him; it just sort of happened. He's also an experienced journeyman wrestler, has fairly decent size, can hit stuff. I saw him vs Danielson in 2010 in Puerto Rico a couple of weeks ago. AEW has an unbalanced, large amount of undercard heels though, and while it's possible, maybe, if all the stars align, that he gets some sort of DDP run that gets over, he'd have so much more value to the promotion if he started to work more like a manager. There are a bunch of managers and seconds on the roster, but they're all older and shouldn't be bumping or more non-wrestling looking guys like Andrade's assistant. I get why QT wants to go out and be more of a player/coach than just a coach of the Factory though. I just don't think he has as much value as he might leaning hard, at 36, into being what Paul Jones and JJ Dillon were five years later in 83.

Ok, the match: Early on, I liked how all the motion was about getting over Darby; Marshall would use his strength to redirect Allin or force him up, but it was all about Darby smoothly recovering and keeping the motion going. Darby countering the suplex in midair with a kick is the third time in a week I saw that sort of spot. Have I just not been paying attention or is it a new zeitgeist spot thing? I like it, but not if it's overdone. Anyway, it's not that Marshall's belly to belly and top rope headbutt didn't look good, but he probably would have stood out more on the show with a chinlock with his feet on the ropes and a Memphis headlock hiding a punch. I liked the comeback and the suddenness of the coffin drop, where instead of just sitting around, you could buy that Marshall had no idea where he was or what was about to happen. Ok showcase match for Darby for the crowd but I still think it would be good for Marshall to see the hole in the promotion and gravitate towards it.

AEW Dynamite 11/10

Bryan Danielson vs. Rocky Romero

ER: I've heard recently of the Rocky Romero Renaissance, but I'm still a skeptic. If Danielson is going to have matches that I've already seen him have 15+ years ago in CA, then I am still more excited for the upcoming matches against Larry Blackwell, Scott Lost, and Jardi Frantz. Still, this is the same kind of very good TV match that Danielson has been having for a long time now, and those will always be satisfying. I liked how Danielson took Romero's offense, like catching a rana off the ring steps or taking a hard back bump off a tope, and I liked Romero trying to spam the cross-armbreaker (as if anyone in attendance thought Danielson was going to tap to a Rocky Romero submission). I wish Romero did some more interesting things to set up the armbars, as other than a cool knee to Danielson's shoulder it was pretty much him doing Rocky Romero Offense and then just trying for the same cross-armbreaker from the same position. They sold throughout like they had already each worked a match, and that was kind of odd, and it felt like there were missing steps in this, as if those glue moments happened somewhere else and nobody will ever get to see that full match footage. But this was a fun Danielson TV match, and it's his own fault for consistently crafting matches better than this one that a match like this can come off Less Than. 

PAS: I am coming off watching Romero kill it with Negro Casas live, so I am at a high point in my Romero fandom. I was into this, it is fun to watch Danielson work as a skilled counter mat wrestler. Romero isn't Drew Gulak, but this match had some of that same energy. I especially loved the last couple of minutes, which were all about trying to grab something and twist. The finish with Romero flattening out to stop the LeBell lock, only for Danielson to switch to the Tequila Sunrise was sick stuff. Danielson is a guy who can come out of nowhere to get you and this was great example of that. 

AEW All In 11/13

33. Darby Allin vs. MJF

MD: I get the build was about MJF winning with a side headlock takeover, and everyone lauded the Malenko/Guerrero opening bits, but they built this with MJF mocking Darby Allin's dead uncle, so maybe that wasn't the way to go? It worked out fine, as Darby would be stepping on MJF's throat on the apron a couple of minutes later and with the goading skateboard finish, but it was all a little too cutesy with mirrored body language and synchronized timing on lifting shoulders up and what not. I think there would have been a way to do this with MJF going for the side headlock over and over and Darby having to reverse and counter that would have been both more logical and story-driven as opposed to chain wrestling for the sake of it. Once the match actually got going and became about Darby's back and ultimately, after backbreaker after backbreaker, MJF's leg, it was very good. Darby's going to bump and sell around the ring as well as anyone on the roster and I liked the variations. If they felt gratuitous, it's because MJF is such a troll. Shame on the announcers for not being able to call the Billy Robinson backbreaker though. 

The leg was a way for Darby to believably stay in it without ever totally taking over the match. MJF's timing for Darby's tope and the camera angle for Darby running across the ring wasn't quite as good as the one with Sting and 2.0 but it was a close second. I liked how MJF used the Scorpion Deathlock and Darby used the figure-four which almost felt like the heel was using the face submission and the face the heel submission. MJF shouldn't have been able to turn it; the heel ought to get to the ropes in that situation instead. That's a nitpick though. The things that hit well, like the code red reversal into a power bomb, hit really well, and the match more specific spots that worked than didn't. I liked the finish. Maybe I would have liked it a little more if he had taken the ring bell because they were aping the Savage/Steamboat stuff as well. The deal with the Savage/Steamboat Mania match is that they'd already worked all of the hate-filled revenge matches around the loop so all that was left was wrestling and the title. This match tried to balance the two a little more and the ultimate result was impressive but maybe a bit uneven.

PAS: I thought this was really excellently worked, but had one too many ideas. I thought the opening of the match actually worked well. Darby was trying to answer MJF's taunts about his wrestling ability by hanging with him with counter wrestling. Darby has such incredible body control that it is really a pleasure to watch him do that stuff. I also liked MJF getting frustrated with being matched move for move and unloading with the cheap shot. The second part of the match, with Darby having the bad back from the missed apron coffin drop and MJF constantly crushing his own knee trying offense was neat too. That avalanche powerbomb counter of the code red, and the powerbomb on the knee were both incredible looking offensive moves. I didn't love going back to the Malenko vs. Guerrero roll ups, felt like that part of the match had passed, and MJF doing the spot with the skateboard and the ring felt like something this match didn't need. Almost like a TV show with too many plot lines, it felt like you could have saved some stuff for a future match.

ER: This was an incredible match yet I wish they had decided to drop a few of their ideas (as if they won't fight again and won't need something to use in that next match) and I wish it didn't have the first couple and last couple minutes. This match is something that excelled far past the headlock takeover and Malenko/Guerrero roll-ups and it's the bulk of the match that I loved so much. Once things moved past fast count roll-ups where shoulders aren't even touching the mat and moved into MJF working over Darby's back, they hit on something really special. I think MJF is an underrated in-ring guy and a vastly overrated promo guy, and this match was a testament to how far his in-ring has come. I loved the story of him destroying Darby's back at the expense of killing his own knees. Darby splats fantastically onto the ring apron on a missed Coffin Drop, one of those falls that would have me laid up for a week, and MJF wastes no time exploiting it. MJF's best in-ring attribute at this point might be that he's really great at being the "smart dumb guy", planning out a smart strategy but able to be lead away from that or continuing his strategy as it hurts him. This was a great match for that, and his work over Darby's back was really punishing. 

"Big move onto my own knee" offense almost always looks stupid, but MJF's powerbomb onto his own knee looked absolutely crushing, like Darby's spine should be completely misaligned. There's an incredible spot where Darby fights for a code red, and MJF fights it into a kind of cursed splash mountain. He drops Darby with backbreakers that look devastating, and his knee selling is so good that even as Darby is getting crushed you get the sense that he has ins. I am happy the crowd rose to their feet while they were both rolling around like goofs getting 2 counts for things that weren't even close to pins, but I hated that choice with a passion and thought it really distracted from everything they had done. The match had become something different and much better than they had initially started with, and it felt like a major regression - not a callback or joined loop - when we went back to that shit. The cheapshot leading to the side headlock takeover win was well done, and the bulk of the match is incredible, bookended by some things that a 22 minute match did not need. 


16. Bryan Danielson vs. Miro

MD: This one was all about Miro controlling the pace. Danielson would try to turn on his asylum-escapee-no-longer-straightjacketed adrenaline and Miro would just shut him down. It's interesting Danielson didn't target the neck earlier. He even went out and said that would be his gameplan when he was on commentary on Dynamite. The leg was bandaged but he didn't gain much ground there either. What's going to stand out, what we'll remember years from now about this one, was Miro taking three shots from Danielson just to hit one of his own. Miro, being one of the great vulnerable monsters in wrestling history, knew exactly how much to give and in doing so put over both the kicks and himself. The finish was sudden and ugly but in a good way given that you needed something out of the ordinary to explain Miro's collapse after a match where he was getting chipped away at but still seemed to have a lot of armor left.

PAS: Danielson has been such a force during his AEW run, it was really cool to watch him run into someone he couldn't just overwhelm. Miro's strength allowed him to shrug off Danielson's submission attempts like Kimo on Royce Gracie, and Miro has one punch KO power. Miro does really cool versions of my two least favorite current wrestling tropes: his religious fanatic cursing god is the best possible version of NXT shocked face, and the Bolo Yeung style offering of his ribs is the coolest strike exchange you can get.  I loved the finish, it looked really awkward in the best way, with Danielson just spiking Miro on his bad neck from the top in a way which almost looked like an accident. Breaking someone's neck is a great way to crack a brick wall.

ER: You know it's a great match when you get a classic fired up Danielson performance where he's leaning  into the prospects of getting a potentially deadly concussion, and get to see an equally fired up career high performance from his opponent. For several years now Miro has felt like an absolute dead in the water guy, doomed to either not live up to or not get the chance to ever really show how far he can go. I had completely written Miro off, a guy whose big run feels much further in the rearview than its actual six years. Rusev Day was four years ago? Feels like a decade. When he joined AEW and immediately started goofing around with the worst act on the roster? I thought he was unrecoverable. Now, Danielson has been on a genuine tear in 2021, having high end matches all year with everyone, and it's really easy to credit Danielson and Eddie Kingston for Miro's big resurgence...but he is clearly a changed man. 

Lean mean crazed eyed murderous Miro looks like the star that Believers have been saying is there since before the Cena win. Danielson *could* have worked this great match with just about anyone on the AEW roster, but Miro helped this get to a higher level because Miro felt legitimate. Miro looked like a New Japan Red Army psycho here, hammering into every part of Danielson's body and responding to Danielson's kicks and elbows with more violence. Miro took all of Danielson's offense and made it look damaging, while making himself look properly unmanageable, and it's a really impressive window to hit this well. He threw Danielson so wildly overhead, and Danielson is a maniac who will take great throws on his head and shoulder, and that kind of give and take punishment made this feel like a FUTEN fight. Miro takes a DDT on the top of his head that made him look like the guy on the cautionary Check Pool For Water sign, and the KO stoppage from that looked great, like Kurisu shoot knocking a dude out but still locking in a submission. 

2. Eddie Kingston vs. CM Punk - EPIC

PAS: An absolute classic. The build on this match was tremendous and they went out and delivered everything in the ring. So many brawls these days are full of elaborate set-ups for stunt bumps or weapons shots, so it is great to see an old fashioned fist fight. I enjoy someone getting hit with a chair, I love it even more when it is a fist.  Kingston laying Punk out before the bell with a backfist and laughing maniacally was a great start, as was a dazed Punk flipping him off from the floor. We were off from there with great hard shots from both guys, Kingston delivering some of his epic selling (both GTS's felt like he got hit in the head with a shovel), and Punk leaning into his assholeness. I thought the Cena taunt was great (although I could have done without the Guerrero tribute, I get why he did it, but not this match), and Punk really looked deranged with blood flowing down his face. I loved near the end when both guys were slumped in the corner, and they rose up to maybe the only good looking Frye vs. Takayama exchange in wrestling history (non-Necro Butcher division). I am torn on the finish. I really am so invested in Eddie at this point that any time he loses it pisses me off, but hopefully they keep this going and its leads to Eddie's moment. There is so much meat left on the bone.

MD: Totally unique, unbridled match, with a lot to pull apart. Was it a case where the match got away from Punk in the most amazing ways or was it the plan all along? They definitely got the mood right here to start, with Punk skipping all of his usual pre-match antics and getting right to it, only to walk right into the backfist. That said, while it never really let up from there, it did take a somewhat bizarre turn. The blood came early, to the point where Punk worked most of the match with it and the back half of the match with it basically dried all over his face. I'm not sure I've ever been more disappointed with announcers than in this one. They left so many potential hooks on the table, and with Khan's post-match comments about the boos for Punk being like Rock's at Mania vs. Hogan, I can only imagine some of the way the match turned wasn't entirely the plan. Those boos came late in the match when Punk pounced on a mostly defenseless Kingston with the elbows and knees, though. They weren't facile boos. They weren't boos in a bubble. They weren't goofy Canadian nostalgia boos. The fans specifically disliked what Punk the wrestler chose to do in that moment. It was heat. And it had been something building in the match until then. 

Before that, Punk clearly disrespected Kingston by hitting the Cena spots. Even with the blood coming down his face, that's what he chose to do against this opponent, with this issue, in this setting. Then there was the moment that the crowd first went from dueling chants to chanting solely for Eddie, a real turning point in the match. How did Punk respond to it? By deciding it was time to do the Guerrero tribute (the third or fourth of the night at that). Whether or not it was genuine and heartfelt and whether or not it just happened to be the point in the match when it was originally planned, it came off as a complete jerk move, using Eddy's memory as a way to willfully (and pettily!) misunderstand and twist how the crowd had decided to solely get behind Kingston with their chants. In the end, even if the announcers didn't pick up on virtually any of it, even if Khan seemed to indicate it was something else in the media scrum, I'm pretty certain Punk knew what he was doing, and it all added to the animosity in the match and got the crowd more and more behind Kingston and his defiance. Ultimately, I had a sense that Punk, the character, was punishing Kingston for ruining his fun, and though it seemed like he was offering his respect with the handshake post-match, to me, there was something else going on entirely. Hopefully this isn't the end of it, because there are still places for this one to go.

ER: Not many matches can come off as both a feud blowoff and a feud starter that's merely laying the groundwork for the danger to come, but this managed to do that while being 25% shorter than the next shortest match on the PPV. I had no idea how the fans would react to this one and wasn't sure they would turn on either man (I was expecting far more Both These Guys type chants) and loved how Punk was able to draw those boos WHILE being busted and without resorting to any kind of actual cheating. Punk drew heat by just choosing the best moment to throw grounded punches at Eddie Kingston, a man who talks constantly about how much he loves punching and being punched. Punk and Kingston understand the moments and the context within their matches, and they understand how to use it to add even more depth and then pay that depth off. 

I'm with Phil, in that Kingston matches are some of the few in modern wrestling where I stop thinking about who will be booked to win, because I only want to see Eddie Kingston win. Eddie Kingston makes me root for his victory in the same way I root for the Giants to win (presumably) shoot baseball games. But he's so easy to connect to that I also root his stupid decisions, especially if they seem like its what he personally wanted. I didn't want to see Kingston get nailed with a GTS, but I cannot deny the man the joy of popping up before getting hit with one. Kingston took both GTS as effectively as any man can, and I love how Punk has shifted his delivery and selling of the delivery. The move doesn't look sloppy, as it used to, and now just looks difficult to hit, and like it takes more out of him TO hit it. Those are conscious changes to a small part of a wrestler's game, and seeing someone evolve their game like that always catches my attention. These two catch my attention, and I want to see them evolve this feud. 

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MLJ: Virus vs Rocky Romero [CMLL SL]

2004-12-10 @ Arena México
Rocky Romero vs Virus [CMLL SL]

22:23 in

So in my search for Negro Casas vs Tarzan Boy, I came across this. We really don't have a ton of Virus online from 2000 to 2009 or so. And this isn't just Virus but title match Virus against, at the least, an interesting opponent. Romera was in as Habana Brother I and he was the first Super Lightweight champion. Virus had beaten him back around a year before, though it doesn't look like he defended it too many times. Averno and Volador, Jr. were the seconds.

I'm really glad I bumped into this one, because it's a great look at a younger Virus, firmly into the gimmick, and with some momentum. Some of the general rules that apply to younger Negro Casas apply here too. He showed his usual mastery on the mat, had that sense of competition and struggle, even when they were doing quick pin spots, but he did everything about 25% faster than he does now and while that's not the most important thing in the world to me, it was still great to see him lock in his complex holds at the higher speed.

Romero was fine. He had some vaguely indytastic offense but it fit the match they were working. Even the more elaborate strikes didn't seem nearly as choreographed as they could have. He also brought enough attitude and general emotion (especially frustration) to things that it made the fans get behind Virus when he was fighting his way out of holds. I don't think I'd ever heard a Virus chant before seeing this match.

I just wish more Virus from this era was online. One of these days I'm actually going to go out and try to see if I can find the Ricky Marvin title matches and the Fuerza/Juventud singles matches. Virus is worth it. Anyway, check this one out.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 9/23/15 Review

1. Silas Young vs. Michael Elgin

Elgin hasn't been on TV in awhile so he goes over pretty strong on Silas here, but Silas is more of a regular so might have been nice to give him more. Although when he did get more his stuff looked kind of weak, including an incredibly goofy slingshot double foot stomp...thing, that doesn't really look like it touches Elgin. But Young at least takes Elgin's stuff nicely, especially a massive powerbomb on the floor into the guardrail. Kevin Kelly was doing his horrible style of announcing, where he doesn't so much do play-by-play as he does just yell out random nouns that he sees. When Young went for a backbreaker on Elgin, Kelly just yelled "Surgically repaired KNEE of SILAS!" Not anything about the backbreaker, just decided to point out Young's knee, which had nothing to do with any part of the match. It's like he spends 80% of the match looking elsewhere, and then occasionally looks up and points out the first object he notices. Maybe it's some sort of creative writing thought exercise? Needed more underlying homosexual shame and rage, like the other Silas Young matches.

2. Caprice Coleman vs. ACH

Well this didn't do a whole lot for me. All thigh slaps all the time. Just a buncha slappy sounds with legs extended in kick like motions. Legs not touching opponent's bodies, but slappy sounds happening anyway. If a superkick missed in Philadelphia, would it still make a slapping sound? Always. Always.

3. RPG Vice & Kazuchika Okada vs. Hirooki Goto & Briscoe Bros.

This started out not very good, and by the end I was on board. Jay started with Okada and it's not shocking that Okada had bad looking strikes, but Jay looked like he was holding waaaaay back. No clue what was going on here because a few minutes later he's beating the hell out of Trent. Maybe Jay was just being a slow starter, because by the end he's tossing out headbutts and big lariats and looking like a monster. But if this match works, and eventually it does, it's because Mark was absolutely on fire throughout the entirety of this. I couldn't take my eyes off that crazy caveman. Yeah Trent can take a big bump and Goto threw a nice spinning heel kick in the corner, but this was the Mark Brisco show. All of Mark's palm strikes looked great, he flung himself into offense, all his combos looked cool while also looking like he was just making them up as he went. He looked awesome, one of my favorite Mark performances. And after Jay's stumble early with Okada, he went out on a wild note just killing Baretta. Briscoes make everything better.


This week's show went by quick, even if looking back I didn't love a lot about it. That's...good, right? All worth it for Mark Briscoe.

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Ring of Honor on Destination America 6/24/15 Review

1. Roderick Strong vs. Shinsuke Nakamura

Well this was...disappointing. I love Nakamura, and Strong has been on a real nice tear the last year +, but this just didn't gel. A couple of Strong's knees looked nice, a couple of Nak's knees look nice. But they did too much of that obnoxious fast slow fast big match indy style, where we're rushing all around, but then suddenly we're both sooooo tirrrrred and we're hit hitting each other with forearms using the lasssst strength in our boddddddies.......but then we're up and running and we're doing moves where we awkwardly drop each other on our own bodies instead of the mat!! I didn't like it. I've seen so much Strong that I've liked lately, and this felt like him wrestling like the Strong I have not liked. Loved Nakamura flying face first and getting turned inside out on Strong's flying kick, but all the moves dropped onto knees looked crummy, the fast slow fast got tiring, and they just didn't click. I still like both guys, it just didn't work for whatever reason.

2. Gedo vs. Michael Elgin

This was short but I liked it plenty. Elgin has maybe too much offense, could probably trim that up a bit, but I liked Gedo peppering him with jabs and trying to avoid big bombs and throws from Elgin. I wish there was some more Gedo offense as it was mostly him sticking and moving and trying to dodge Elgin offense before Elgin just kinda goes on a run to the finish. Elgin hits a brutal back elbow, and his powerbomb into turnbuckles, then seated was nice. The corkscrew senton seems a bit silly for him, not just compared to his power offense but within the context of this match. But his power stuff looks good. I wish I could have got at least one Gedo fistdrop though. It's like Modern English not doing "I Melt With You". I shit you not, Modern English played "I Melt With You" twice in a row when they played my college town. They literally played it, people loved it...and then they immediately played it again, and people flipped out even more. What's that about highspot overkill?

3. Kazuchika Okada & Roppongi Vice (Rocky Romero & Trent Barretta) vs. AJ Styles & The Young Bucks

God, Phil is going to murder me for writing up a fucking Rocky Romero match instead of any number of things he has saved in Drafts. But I actually dug this match....and I think I kind of really like The Young Bucks, which either makes me a complete asshole, a total chucklehead, an ironic contrarian, a contrary Iranian, or a person with poor taste in wrestling. Wrestling is absurd bullshit in most of its forms, and I often don't care for comedy in wrestling, but sometimes there exists some sort of parody that is so on the nose and amusing that it just clicks for me. I'm thinking Chris Hero's weird Chris Divine tribute run in NOAH that no NOAH crowd understood. Bucks seem just a slight tick different than Chuck Taylor brand comedy, and it's all the difference in the world. There's a smug shrug about them, where instead of appealing to the crowd with their bullshit, they just do their bullshit to entertain themselves, because they can. And what's great, is they cut off others' bullshit, to do their own bullshit, which is awesome. Barretta was doing his stupid ass apron spot where he runs around yelling before hitting a disappointing slingshot move (I had blamed Chuck Taylor as a poor influence on him before, but here he did it again with no Chuck in sight, so the blame for shittiness is all on Trent now) and as he goes through his whole "crowd hype" routine, one of the Bucks waits until the very end to superkick him. It would be like letting Scotty get all the way to the end of the Worm before superkicking him out of the way. It's like they read my mind. "Ugggh, gotta wait for Barretta to go through all of his dance steps before hitting this.......thank you. Thank you, Bucks." If you're going to buy into the absurdism that is standing forearm exchanges or rope running, then you may as well buy into a fucking stuff piledriver with a springboard 450 sitout assist. That kind of overkill takes things to a sort of practical performance art, where you look like a clueless asshole for even criticizing it. It's like criticizing the Stooges lyrics or Ratt's song titles or early 80s Italian "Escape From New York" ripoffs. They are exactly as they appear to be, and they don't give one shit. Over the top offense like that is a wonderful thing for a heel tag team to do. It comes off like the cockiest shit in the world when it hits, but the set up is so long that it provides natural opportunities for babyfaces to gain momentum. Their superkicks don't look great, but they're treated essentially as tantamount to slaps, so they don't need to be good. You start thinking of them as more of an insult as opposed to a killshot, and their matches suddenly get even better. Superkicks while Styles is about to hit a Styles Clash? Awesome insult to injury spot. So yeah, whatever the Bucks did in this match worked on me to insane degrees. They hit the right notes which is not what I was expecting.

As for the others, Styles worked well with Okada who looked about as expected. I liked Styles putting in little things like front kicking Okada's arm when he went for the Rainmaker. Romero has been working on his spit takes which are done well, but really feels like something a heel should be doing. Add in a Bucks spit take where one of them spits in the others face? License to print money. Barretta has plenty of bad traits, but then he'll bump like a lunatic (see him getting suplexed into the buckles by Styles) and toss out some offense with surprising impact. My opinions on him switch constantly within a match. I was not really excited for this match at all, but ended up really loving it, even with its flaws. Seemed like they had a goal in mind, and they met the goal. I'm kind of stunned at how much I loved the Bucks. I can see every single argument in the world against them, and I can see myself hating them the next match of theirs I see, but this shit worked.

This was easily the best show they've aired since being on DA. Really smooth hour of wrestling right here.

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Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 5/9/15

1. Fuerza Guerrera vs. Super Crazy vs. El Mariachi vs. Rocky Romero

This was the main event of the 2/28/15 show in San Francisco. This show was hyped and advertised around a main event of Super Crazy vs. Juventud Guerrera but to the shock of not one person who follows lucha libre at all, Juvy did not show up and instead sent his father in his place. Now if I had gone to this show I personally would have been way more excited, as seeing Fuerza in a high school gym sounds way more interesting than whatever underactive performance Juvy likely would have put on. I've already seen Juvy in this fed and the most amusing thing was seeing what he could do without actually having to bump. If I'm going to see somebody work Buddy Landell no kneepads style, I'd choose Fuerza over the Juice. Of course, Fuerza vs. Crazy sounds INFINITELY more interesting than what we're getting here: Not only a 4 way, but with the two additions being these two duds. Talk about being elated when Fuerza comes out, to that major kick in the dick when Romero comes out. We'll see.

Annnnnnnd this match was pretty much a total mess. Everybody but Mariachi works rudo, which falls flat when they're all working each other. Crowd was noticeably less heated than normal. Oh, but Mariachi comes back at the end of the match after his elimination to do a heel turn. So that solves that? Fuerza is the first man eliminated, so when the most interesting person in a match is gone halfway through that will never help things. Romero tries to work stooging comedy heel which - believe it or not - may actually be his worst hat. I know it's hard fathoming just what Rocky Romero is worst at, but working stooge comedy when you have zero presence or charisma is just tragic. Romero excels at being bad, but there's an additional layer of badness because he seems to have no idea WHY something he's doing might not work. I have seen Mariachi several times now and he's just not good. He goes through the motions of lucha, but really just doesn't have any substance of any kind to his stuff. His execution isn't good, he routinely blows up midway through every match I've seen him in, he has no idea how to work tecnico or rudo, and he's sluggish even early in matches, his headscissors and armdrags are sloppy and implausible...he's just not good. The promotion routinely pushes him as one of their four top stars, but even they have no idea what to do with him as sometimes he's a rudo, sometimes he's a tecnico, rarely is he over. They gave him a female valet for awhile, had him giving out sombreros, any desperate trick. It hasn't worked.

So we get this elimination match, with three rudos and a poor tecnico who eventually turns, no real focus, no real plan. Fuerza is 60 years old, but did more than you possibly could have hoped for. He still throws a mean right hand and in this match he threw a couple dozen of them; seeing him wander around throwing those rights was easily the best part of the match. For his part, at least Romero did a couple decent spit takes after taking Fuerza's punches. Fuerza didn't really bump much, but damn the dude is 60. Who needs to bump at 60? My dad is 60 and hates walking more than a couple blocks. So really watching Fuerza punch Romero a bunch and kick him in the balls was worth the price of admission. Crazy tried some things here, some of it looked really good (real nice big tumbling bump to the floor, awesome tornillo elbow drop) and some of it didn't like his tarantula that took ages to apply. We've gone over Mariachi and how he's just not good, and Romero worked as expected. He threw one of the worst elbow drops I've seen. Once Fuerza got eliminated halfway through we then went into awkward 3 way dance mode and really Crazy can probably be held accountable more than most for my eyes still having to see fucking 3 way dances in 2015. Mariachi is next out and then in a completely nonsensical move comes back later to cost Romero the pinfall even though Romero was no more responsible for Mariachi's elimination than anybody else, and Mariachi had mostly paired off with Crazy. Just a limp dick finish to a match that had already gotten pretty brutal once Fuerza vamoosed.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 12 Workrate Report

1. Alex Koslov & Rocky Romero vs. The Young Bucks (5/3/14)

We only get about 1/3 of this due to clipping and really that's probably for the best. What's shown is good and amusing, but I'm having a hard time imagining 15 minutes of this. Even in the 5 minutes shown we get Romero and Koslov showing off their comedy chops which was insufferable enough as it was. Still this was plenty entertaining. I really liked the Bucks here as they hit all their marks. NJ crowd seemed into them, all their double team offense was on point, they made Romero's offense look good which is a true talent, etc. Their stuff tombstone still looks devastating and yet is still more of a transition move, but their finisher looked great with Matt doing a Finlay roll to set up a Nick 450, to set up a Matt moonsault. Speaking of comedy chops, Barnett was really ramping up the yuks during this one. Coulda done without that.

Oh and to tally up the Matt D v. Young Bucks count, we'll go ahead and go

MATT D: 1
YOUNG BUCKS: 2

I liked the Bucks here, what can I say.

2. Kota Ibushi vs. Ryusuke Taguchi (5/3/14)

Well...not really sure what the point of showing this was. They clipped it all to hell, maybe showing 3 minutes of it? But again instead of showing just the "good parts" they showed stuff like opening headlock takeovers and other test of strength type exchanges. If you know that you only have a few minutes to put over a match, do we really need to set the mood by showing us "in case you were wondering, this match started like almost every New Japan match you've ever seen". After some pointless feel out stuff we eventually cut to Taguchi's bad offense (I do a sit out powerbomb and you kinda maybe fall chin first into my knees?!) and eventually Ibushi wins it. Ibushi is a guy I really like, Taguchi showed next to nothing here, and really this show had a really fun Ishii match that isn't getting shown so that instead we can watch 3 minutes of Taguchi and 5 minutes of Rocky Romero. Priorities?

3. Kazuchika Okada vs. AJ Styles (5/3/14)

Okada has a great sit down interview pre match, going over how he was caught off guard by Styles, saying he really wasn't *that* great in the U.S., and was in his decline. Then put over the Styles Clash by saying that he had taken it from Tanahashi before and thought it was no big deal, but taking it from Styles was a whole other level because Styles "must adjust his weight differently". That's so damn awesome.

And the match itself works about like I thought it would, with enough good stuff to make it enjoyable. Still it was structured like a lot of Okada matches, with his opponent doing lots of stuff with the sense of "Okada's going to take a bunch of offense and then at some point just start going for Rainmaker lariats". And that most definitely happened. And we also had tons of limp dick Bullet Club interference. Boy is that lame. Interference is one thing, but Bullet Club's interference rarely even looks good. Okada gets dumped to the floor and we get just bad stomps from Anderson. That's the brutal interference? Stomps that don't make contact? I'm sure plenty of NJPW purists were tickled at Yujiro interference leading directly to an IWGP title change. The end of match interference was handled embarrassingly as well, with Anderson just grabbing and holding Red Shoes so he couldn't see the interference, and then the run ins. Just lazy and it came off really poor. Styles looked really good throughout, my favorite spot being a nasty springboard loaded up punch. Styles worked great opposite Okada and really knew how to feed into everything; reversals from Okada's signature stuff all came off natural and logical, especially uncoiling from the Rainmaker to hit the Pele kick. But damn all the Bullet Club stuff just comes off so forced, really took what could have fun a fun match into "whatever" territory.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/23/14

For this episode we go back to the 2/22/14 SF show that I was at live. My favorite match of the card was a trios featuring Drake Younger and Willie Mack, and then of course there was the main event of Timothy Thatcher vs. Blue Demon Jr. which was an interesting performance seeing one of the absolute best workers in the world go up against one of the laziest.

Oliver John & Brian Cage vs. Rocky Romero & Vaquero Fantasma

Few things can make me less excited for a match than the words "And their opponents....Rocky Romero!" Babyface Rocky is even worse as he doesn't have a very likeable face and just does more goofy faces and dancing in between his random move generator offense. But if they insist on putting him against Cage and John then obviously it wouldn't make sense to have Rocky as a rudo. Oliver John has a pretty belligerent personality so really only makes sense as a rudo and Brian Cage works well as his bloated, gassed up enforcer. But there is just not going to be anything remotely interesting enough about Rocky to make me get behind him in any way. Fantasma is most often on rudo teams in this fed, so here he's just kind of thrown onto the tecnico side (I assume due to lack of other bodies?) and doesn't really work any differently than when he's a rudo. Except that from what I've seen he has more rudo strengths than tecnico strengths. Not necessarily through personality, as he wears a mask and doesn't really bother to emote anything through the mask, but more in his actual work technique.

Live Oliver John got on the stick before the match and called the audience a "bunch of wetbacks" which is a bit too mean and a not too clever racist insult. I mean, there's going to be some blatant racist schtick when you're working a border patrol gimmick in front of a crowd that's 80% hispanic. I'm about as Caucasian as you can get (Swiss-German ancestry) so it doesn't offend me, but the use of the work "wetback" is just lazy and an obvious attempt to shock. There are so many more inventive ways to insult an audience, and this just came off as uncreative and hack. I mean if you're going full on over the top racist hack, might as well just find a couple old Blanche Knott books at the Goodwill and at least fit some structured jokes into your routine. It would at least come off a little more prepared than just red-face screaming "wetbacks!!!" into a mic. Although the hispanic teen girl in front of me was clearly not expecting to hear that word, silently turning to her friend with her mouth and eyes wide open. So...mission accomplished, I guess? Wisely, the TV actually leaves off the opening mic work, which they normally include (you GOTTA include full entrances and middling heel stick work when you're paying for the time!).

Match itself was as okay as a match featuring Rocky Romero is going to be. Cage has packed on so much mass that he's not nearly as mobile as he was even a year ago, but he can still occasionally surprise, like when he bumped nicely for a Romero rana. Romero for his part hit a real nice dive. As with a lot of PWR matches there just isn't a lot of substance. The matches always seem to take a long time to get going, and then they end right when they seem like they're going to roll. There's often a lot of bullshit and rudos taking powders on the floor, some threatening to walk out, some regrouping, and then rudo control segments with holds. The formula works to a degree, and sometimes it doesn't take much more than that. But there needs to be a certain quality level of the workers involved and a lot of guys in PWR aren't at that level. Oliver John is a good heel and I've enjoyed his work in the past. Brian Cage is gassing himself to full Scott Steiner levels of immobility. I mean like he's literally bigger and bigger at every single show I see with him. But he's still young and has ability, so he's still athletic enough to overcome things like not being able to put his arms down all the way. But these two just had nothing to work with opposite Fantasma/Romero. Romero had one hot 15 second bit with a nice rana and that dive, but the rest just shows he has no idea who he is or who he's supposed to be within a match. Him at one point doing horrible "he's standing right behind me, right?" comedy, blindly feeling behind him and discovering Cage was there, is not even normally a babyface spot and yet still was so badly executed that it was embarrassing to watch. I mean this isn't exactly news in 2014, but Romero is just completely clueless as far as working any sort of compelling characters to build drama within a match. Just an awful worker. I could see Cage/John working well with more capable faces. These weren't they.

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Rifling Through the Trash: The Unfinished Segunda Caida

We here at Segunda Caida all watch a lot of wrestling. We also start a lot of projects. More projects than we can ever ever possibly finish. We start watching something, write about it, don't finish writing about it, and there it sits. We have about 80 unfinished drafts dating back 4 years. Some of them may get finished some day (IWA-MS show reviews, WAR show reviews), others are kind of pointless to ever finish (old CMLL TV write-ups, reviews of WWE Superstars episodes). Still these write ups all took at least SOME time out of our schedules, and it's only fair that we get SOME use out of them. Tom used his best shitty tag team name from his "shitty indy name" rolodex AND made fun of RPGs in almost the same sentence.

The FINAL snippets from TomK's review of ROH's "Take No Prisoners":

Vulture Squad v No Remorse Corpse

TKG: Huh? Why? The bonus match from other show on ROH PPV is kind of a staple, but why this match? Did someone say “hey this show is missing a big moves workrate tag”? This whole entire card has been really well paced with every match being different than the one before, and matches ending without long finisher exchange sequences and excessive kickouts to protect the main event. There is a reason not to do a workrate tag with hot finisher train. The opening Ruckus v Rocky Romero mirror missed stuff was every bit as laughably bad as you’d expect. Where is Julius Smokes? Jigsaw without the mask looks like a guy who should have been on the second season of the Wire. Maybe not White Mike, but White Mike’s skinny cousin. When Ruckus eventually joins Eddy Kingston, I want a Smokes managed Jigsaw/Grim Reefer tag team. Is “Eight Myle” a shitty enough tag name? I also don’t think I’ve mentioned the shitty “pokemon” style tales of the tape that they’ve been doing before each match. I didn’t mind this when they used it for the Aries v Nigel main event as they where actually building the match around the idea that the two knew each others stuff. But really if these are the talking points, give them to the announcers to make. Putting it up on the screen really feels like someone is laying out the profile pages from a role playing game.

Notes for Phil: I think you liked this more than I did and thought the spike piledriver was a good finish and finish train wasn’t too long or something like that. You're wrong. But that's what you were arguing.

Phil reviewing IWRG 6/17/10:

Bombero Infernal v. Dr. Cerebro

PAS: This really felt like heavyweight professional wrestling. Just a pair of big guys throwing big bombs (indy lucha big, I am sure Dr. Cerebro is like 5'4). Infernal jumps Cerebro outside and whoops on him for the first fall. Cerebro has a really great looking trickle of blood rolling down his face. Cerebro fires back with some soup bones, including a spectacular elbow smash plancha which looked like the ghost of Misawa. Finish was decent, although the low blow finish is such a lucha cliche, I don't want to see it infecting IWRG.

Mickie Segura/Trauma I/II v. Los Gringos VIP

PAS: 2010 IWRG is so good that the baseline for an average match is pretty high. It will consistently put out solidly worked excellent matches with occasional flashes of brilliance, that it is kind of hard for a match like this to stand out. This was six very good wrestlers having a very good trios title match. We got a long first fall of mat work, it isn't normally what you expect out of the Lucha Libre VIP team (outside of Avisman, who is the guy who doesn't work the mat in this match), but they are pretty good at it. I especially liked El Hijo Del Diablo v. Trauma I, which was really a pair of powerhouse using their strength to move in and out of hold, Diablo is having a hell of a year. Second fall was rudo triple teams and brawling, which was done well, although there was no huge bump or blood or anything to distinguish it. Third fall was a traditional title match third fall, down to the step over toe hold comedy spot which you see a ton of in classic lucha (the spot which ends with the Technico wiggling in a pinning all three guys.) Good workman like lucha libre, which won't register when we look back at 2010, but is certainly well worth spending 20 minutes watching

Notes from EricR watching the 3/27/14 TNA iMPACT:

~Davey/Edwards vs. Magnus/Abyss: Wow Davey Richards is just a hilariously bad wrestler. I mean, not as horrid as Abyss, who seems to fight every natural way to take bumps and go against every body instinct to fall in the most ridiculous way possible. So Eddie Edwards always does a spit take bump in his matches, and here he took an elbow from Magnus and ended up accidentally spitting directly into Davey's (on the apron) eyes. And what's amazing is Davey sold it! He didn't just casually pretend another human being, his partner, didn't just accidentally spit directly into his eyes. He sold it. But he didn't sell it like a normal human would sell the indignity of feeling another human's warm spit hit your eyes and face, he sold it like Eddie Edwards was a Dilophosaurus and he was Nedry getting acidic mucous spit into his eyes. The goggles! They do nothing!!! He also later took the most hilarious back bump, where it looked like he was jumping up and landing back first on a big trampoline, just 11 year old me getting bounced higher and getting sick air, landing on my back. Or doing a cannonball into a swimming pool, with all the grace of a "mom watch me dive!" child.

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