AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/15 - 12/21

AEW Dynamite 12/17/25

Jon Moxley vs Roderick Strong

MD: Jon Moxley is going to try to wrestle his way through it.

And why not? Kris Statlander did. Last year she was palling about with Stokely and betraying her best friend and bullying people. Did she ever outright turn face? Was there a moment where she was accepted and forgiven? She won the title listening to his advice, but by that point, the fans were already supporting her again, gave her that big "You deserve it chant." By the time she clocked Yuta, refused the Death Riders' offer, and ran from the ring, it was already said and done. And why? Because she won, that's why.

And then there's Hangman Page. He started the year an erratic mess. He ended Christopher Daniel's career. Brutally. But then he kept on winning and winning, and as the Owen went on, the fans started to flock back to him. He took it all the way to All In, had the entire babyface locker out to support him (which is the only reason why he beat Mox, of course), and then and only then, after he took the championship, after the fans had already come around to him, after he got his old music back even, did he give that promo making amends. And they accepted it without a second thought, and why? Because he won, that's why.

So that's the message. It's 2025. It doesn't matter what you did. You wrestle through it. You win. And they'll forgive you of anything. At least, that's the way Mox sees it.

So that's what he'll do. All that quitting? That's behind him. The C2 is the perfect place to remind everyone just who he is, the warrior that he is, the man that held the company on his shoulders again and again, five of the best in the world in his league, no interference, no excuses, steel up against steel, and in the face of that, who's going to deny what they see before their own eyes?

Sure, his ankle hurts, a painful reminder of that quitting he's trying to sweep under the rug. And Claudio beat him, but then on any night, any wrestler can beat any other wrestler, and he only surrounded himself with the best, and he was on the verge of mathematical elimination, but that's when he did his best work, back against the wall, world against him, all by himself. 

He'd just wrestle through it.

Helping him along the way was the torment in Roderick Strong's heart. He too was a champion, a warrior, a hero in his own mind, a man trapped in a world he did not make, attached at the waist to misfits and goofballs. Maybe it made sense when Kyle was still active, but he had been taken out, though not before winning the war against Moxley. Despite how good he was, despite how much he had accomplished, despite going 2-2 lifetime with Mox, in the eyes of the fans, the matchmakers, history, he was second tier, a B+, the very best of the second best. He too was on the verge of mathematical elimination, yet with so much still to prove (despite spending his whole life proving it time and again). He didn't need to defeat Moxley. He needed to make him submit. And he didn't need to just wrench at his ankle like everyone else. He needed to break his back and make him submit to the Stronghold, his move, his moment, his legacy.

So despite playing with an anklelock early, Strong really didn't target it. At times, Moxley struggled as he moved, stumbling on his way to the top rope, around ringside, even as he forced his way from one side to the other to hit a dive. More often than not, that was enough for Strong to get back in it, but once he was in it, he went straight back to the spine. He went for the Stronghold multiple times, wanting it so badly that Moxley was able to twist and contort and escape the ring. He didn't capitalize on the weakness Kyle had created. He demanded to create a weakness of his own, to win on his terms, to show everyone. 

While the fans were behind him, they were a bit more muted than you might expect from the first match of a Dynamite in a place like Manchester. In wanting it so bad, in needing it so much, he was the one who introduced the stairs, who raked Moxley's back on the top rope. Meanwhile, Moxley was wrestling his way through it, hitting a dive, powering through the pain, going so far as to do a twenty punch on the top. Strong's hunger gave him a symbolic place to occupy, the higher ground, and he moved right in.

And ultimately, it gave him the win as well. With just a couple of minutes left, Strong wanted it too much, rolled into the ring too quickly, and ended up eating a Paradigm Shift. He managed to kick out but not out of the Death Rider that followed. He lost himself to the moment.

Meanwhile, Moxley wrestled through it.

Through it, through the pain, through the fear, through the beating of the Tell-Tale Heart that was Bryan Danielson's career, that ringing in his ears, the constant tap, tap, taping of the raven at his window and all that it represents.

He lived to fight another day, and when there's life, there's hope. Especially for a man who refuses to look down.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 11/10 - 11/16 Part 1

AEW Dynamite 11/12/25

Death Riders (Wheeler Yuta/Daniel Garcia/Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley/PAC) vs Darby Allin/Orange Cassidy/Kyle O'Reilly/Roderick Strong/Mark Briscoe [Blood & Guts] 

MD: Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

It was a long road, but this was where it always had to be headed. Blood and Guts. 

Yes, October and November hadn't gone to plan. He'd quit against Darby Allin at WrestleDream. He'd been on his back foot, barely surviving without quitting (twice) against Kyle O'Reilly. Roderick Strong defeated him by countout to decide the advantage.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered.

They were in the cage and everything was going his way. 

He'd turned on his partner, his brother-in-arms, had started a reign of terror, been champion and locked away the belt. Even though he lost the belt, it could all still be worth it. He was a mad king, an emperor that had been deposed, but he could get all of it back, and even more than that, he could rain vengeance down on all of his enemies. 

Hangman wasn't there, but the rest of them? Front and center. 

And they were bleeding out. 

The advantage might have been an issue. Yuta had been sent out first, the sacrificial workhorse. He'd stalled and drawn Darby out after him, had been tossed into the cage and used it as a weapon himself. He'd been opened up by Darby's modified skateboard (after going for it himself), had been thrashed further by Darby and Cassidy when it became two-on-one. But he just had to hold out long enough for reinforcements, and he did. Garcia came out to even the odds and two-on-two with one man just a little fresher, they fought even. Until they didn't. 

When Mark Briscoe's music hit, they were wrapped around in a chain, beaten and battered. But that's when everything turned. 

Briscoe had been left laying in the back. Maybe it was the Don Callis family, maybe it wasn't. It didn't matter. Moxley didn't care. He'd take opportunity where he found it. 

Roderick Strong came out to make it 3-on-2, but the advantage time had been cut into severely. He hit a few moves but that was all he could do before Claudio's music hit back.

The plan was always Claudio, infinitely strong, infinitely reliable, always a step behind. He tossed Strong into a chair and then swung both Darby and Cassidy at once. O'Reilly came out next, but by then it was too late. Even with a 4-on-3 advantage on paper, the damage was done. This wasn't the happy-go-lucky world of the Conglomeration. It wasn't even Darby's world, one with open skies to leap and dive and crash. It was the post-apocalyptic world of the Death Riders, and they made use of every weapon, every opportunity. Here, no matter what the numerical advantage might say, the odds were always in their favor.

So instead of sending PAC out next, Moxley himself came to survey his gloriously ruined kingdom, to inflict violence and vengeance. He came in with a fork and immediately opened up O'Reilly more (for his transgressions were the worst of them all). He jabbed it into Darby's back, scraped it up and down, offered it to his newest disciple Garcia in a morbid ritual that let him join in. The women had set the stage for this earlier in their own Blood & Guts match and Moxley casually walked behind the timekeeper desk to seize all of the weapons they had left for him. He dropped broken glass in the ring and scraped a shattered mirror across O'Reilly's bloody skull opening him up more. They dropped Darby on his skull and dragged him across the glass for good measure. 

Life was good. All that he had lost? None of it mattered because he'd craft a new gospel in blood and viscera. He'd show the world that everything he'd always said was true. He would be vindicated and validated. 

And when Darby climbed to the top of the inside of the cage and dropped down upon all of them, even that didn't matter. Because that was just one last gasp of futile hope from a man not meant to climb mountains but to fall off of them and PAC was the last man in. Chaotic order was restored. The door was locked. The key was stolen. The Death Riders had a 5-on-4 advantage and could now punish their enemies to their hearts' content.

Everything was going Jon Moxley's way. 

But fate had a way of turning, bolstered by hearts that simply wouldn't quit, hearts very different than the beleaguered, hypocritical organ beating all too quickly in Jon’s own chest.

Despite being ambushed and assaulted and left for dead, Mark Briscoe arrived, wild look in his eyes and bolt cutters in hand. 

-----

Let's stop there. You know how the story ended. Briscoe turned the tide. Yuta faced him on the top of the cage and despite multiple cheapshots ended up eating a Jay Driller onto the steel. Kidd interfered and they put Darby through a flaming table. The Death Riders were ready (with a stapler of all things) for Cassidy to put his hands in his pockets only for Orange to care more than he'd ever cared before as he ripped the staples out of his own flesh. That let him save a defiant Kyle O'Reilly who was being choked out. Kyle refused to quit and in due course, with a few more twists and turns, he made Moxley tap out once more. A poetic ending to the last month and maybe, in some ways, to the last year. Questions remain: Who attacked Briscoe (the Callis family denied it)? Will this elevate Kyle to the next level? What does this mean for an increasingly out of touch Moxley and his leadership of the Death Riders?

As War Games go, modern ones always lean more towards CZW than JCP, more weapons and theatrics than wrestlers just beating the piss out of each other to solve their issues. In some ways, I thought this was a better mix than usual though of course Mox is a Cage of Death guy, so you knew what was going to happen when he got in there. I'd like to see them try the other way just once though. There are enough opportunities especially now that they're doing two of these on one show. 

That led to its own issues too, where they had to switch things up and play around with the advantage. Between Briscoe being taken out, Strong having less time to press the advantage as a substitute, and the sheer force that is Claudio, I thought they handled it remarkably well. Before and after, the characters drove things in interesting ways. One quick example. Right before Briscoe's music hit, when it was two-on-two, Garcia and Yuta had Cassidy down and were kicking him. Garcia, full of bluster and attitude, did the mocking Cassidy kicks and threw it over to Yuta but Yuta, like an animal that had been kicked too many times itself, couldn't help but kick him full-on. The match was full of little interesting character bits like that while maintaining the overarching story. 

-----

Feedback I've gotten lately is that people really like the dramatization approach to reviewing these matches, where I dig deep into the characters and emotions at play and recount the narrative as presented on screen. It feels almost like 80s PWI or something to me and I don't want to lean too hard into it all the time as opposed to a more analytical approach. 

But here's the point: I can only do it at all because the coherency, consistency, and commitment in what's being presented. If wrestlers are just doing a bunch of stuff, even if the stuff is clever or full of workrate or stiff or whatever else, you can't necessarily draw those throughlines. It's the selling, especially the emotional selling, like what Jon Moxley has been doing as of late, which lets me even find the dots to connect. 

Not every match has this. Not every conventional five star match has this. A lot of times, maybe there's some lip service towards it but it doesn't hold up under scrutiny no matter how exciting and action-packed the match might seem in the moment. You don't have to sacrifice it for "Greatness," because if done with care, it enhances it in every way. It just takes more effort and care.

Maybe that's self-evident, but I honestly don't think you can as easily do what I did up above for the Forbidden Door 2025 cage match main event in the same way. There were too many goofy tonal shifts and funny spots that were done just to pop the wrestlers involved. Specific moments stood out and popped and were impressive but it didn't come together as a narrative in the same way. 

Pro wrestling is an amazing narrative artform that can tell amazing stories almost entirely in ring, through the work alone. This Blood and Guts was built from the Foundation of the I Quit match with Darby and then the subsequent O'Reilly/Strong vs Moxley matches. It was built upon pro wrestling matches that were full of emotion and character development and great emotive performances. That's what made all of the excess here resonate and matter. 

There's a lot to be learned from all of this and I hope the people who make decisions and the wrestlers of both today and tomorrow take the right lessons and not the wrong ones.

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Iron Sharpening Iron. Steel Testing Steel. Stevens vs. Strong.

Erick Stevens vs. Roderick Strong DPW 10/19/25

Oh, the stories pro wrestling can tell.

Erick Stevens was done. He was out. He'd moved on. He was living his life. He was happy. 

But maybe wrestling wasn't done with him. He saw the state of things. Saw everything going right and everything going wrong. 

He saw a hole in the scene, something missing, maybe even a wound that needed healing. Not in himself, but in wrestling itself. 

Which didn't mean there wasn't something in him too. He didn't want a contract. He didn't want fame, fortune, or glory. He knew how it all worked by now. He had his life.

But he had his pride too.

Now, you may stop and say to me that pride is a sin, but there's no sin in this world that can't drive a pro wrestler to greatness (Gluttony? Sloth? We live in a world full of great Super Porky and Orange Cassidy battles).

So he trained, he planned, he picked his moment. 

Deadlock Pro was full of old friends and new foes, a perfect place to test himself. There was no better way to start than with Violence is Forever against Tankman, Kozone and Lo. It wasn't a hero's welcome but it was a warrior's return and that suited him fine. It was a victory. 

He leveraged that victory into a first round match against Kozone at the Carolina Classic, title opportunities on the line, but maybe that was flying too close to the sun for he came up short.

Stevens, a grizzled vet, a journeyman, had a sailor's attitude. He manned the cannons, sent out volleys. Only by shooting his shot would he know where he stood, know what alterations were needed to hit true. 

He needed iron to sharpen iron, steel to test himself against. Like the protagonist of a tall tale, he needed to run against a train to prove himself, to better himself, to prepare himself for whatever would come next, and there's no train that's been running this whole time quite like his old partner Roderick Strong.

Strong never stopped. Strong never looked back. Strong thundered forward. Strong was as good as he ever was and that meant he was as good as anyone. 

As favors went, this promised to be a violent, painful, brutal one. 

And thankfully for us, it was.

They hit the mat hard to start, gritty, intense chain wrestling, counters for counters, neither getting an early advantage. When Strong pressed him into the corner and hit a chop, Stevens fired right back out. Stevens may have knocked Strong down first with a shoulder tackle but Roddy scored the first real points, shifting gears and hitting a leg lariat in return. Stevens answered back quickly, propelling Strong up and over to the apron, knocking him off, and then following it all with an explosive early dive.

That seemed to awaken something in Strong though. He had landed on the apron awkwardly, and in recovery showed a little sign of a limp. Strong spends his weeks up against the best in the world. He's married to a member of the Death Riders. The only instinct he has is that of a killer. His life's work is the dismantling of spines, the world's worst chiropractor and one of its best wrestlers.

At even the first sign of vulnerability, those instincts took over. He stunned Stevens with a diving kick to the outside and got in behind him. He nestled his head under the arm, lifted him up in belly-to-back position and dropped him into a Billy Robinson backbreaker right onto the steel guardrail. 

The Messiah of the Backbreaker had delivered his message to the world once again, and on this night it was even more gruesome and apocalyptic than usual.

And it was everything Stevens had asked for. He was prepared for this, though maybe not for its exact manifestation. Maybe that hadn't been the exact literal sort of steel he'd requested, but it had been close enough.

So as Strong ground him down with holds, Stevens started to inch his way back. He chopped out of the corner. He hit a stunner counter. He fired up with jabs as the fans clapped him up. He rose up out of a chinlock and slammed Strong back into the corner. He fought his way out of the best headlock you'll see all year. Each and every time, Strong cut him off and dragged him back down into pain and darkness, but Stevens kept inching his way back towards the light.

All that inching? It bought him space. It wasn't enough for Strong to grind him down anymore. He had to punish him for his hubris, for his transgressions, for his pride, for the fact he just wouldn't stay down, and therefore Strong started to throw strikes as well. With striking came recoiling. With recoiling came space. With space came opportunity and with one dodge and one spin, Stevens dropped Strong with a jawjacking forearm of his own.

At the nine and a half minute mark, Stevens was fighting even, and by the ten minute mark, he'd seized the first real advantage of the match, careening into Strong in the corner, having become his own version of a runaway train. Stevens pressed that advantage for a minute or two, but when he couldn't put Strong away quickly, he stepped back and beckoned him up. Strong had tried to grind Stevens down but Stevens needed to beat Strong on his feet if he was going to beat him at all. On commentary, Caprice Coleman called it a mistake, but it wasn't a mistake at all. It was the whole point. Stevens needed all the steel he could get; he wasn't done hammering himself up against it yet.

Strong took back over almost immediately. Of course he did. He hefted Stevens up for a superplex. And that? That was just what Stevens needed. Something snapped inside of him, not breaking like so many of Strong's opponents before him, but snapping right into place instead. He found the strength inside himself to burst up, to rush forward, to hit a flurry of offense at a different level than anything else we'd seen out of him during this comeback run. 

It was exactly what he needed. While it didn't put Strong away, it made Strong force things to as immediate an end as possible, an End of Heartache hit almost out of nowhere. 

Stevens had lost the match, but he had gained everything he had been looking for in summoning so dangerous an opponent. 

And what a pro wrestling story these fifteen minutes were to get us to so fascinating and unusual a place. 

Deadlock was maybe the only place such a story could have been told and as I write this, it's going on indefinite hiatus soon. 

But the story was told, and in its telling, Stevens showed everyone that this chapter of his story was just beginning. I'm not sure where the next page is going to take him, but wherever it is I'm excited to see what's next.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 1/20 - 1/26

AEW Collision 1/25/25

Undisputed Kingdom (Adam Cole/Kyle O'Reilly/Roderick Strong) vs. Daniel Garcia/Matt Menard/Angelo Parker

MD: I haven't made it a big secret that I'm high on Daniel Garcia and what he's trying to do. We've got a few heels who are showing signs of life when it comes to stooging, mugging, stalling, getting actual heat (Nick Wayne was great against Samoa Joe along these lines for instance). You need babyfaces willing to be earnest and honest and vulnerable, to show that they care even if it means they're not "pro wrestling cool." A lot of my problems with Adam Cole last year is that he's come off as a "Cool Face" who refused to take any real responsibility for what he did with MJF or his heel run in general. Maybe there's something to that in 2025 when you're supposed to just tweet through it, but I refuse to believe that life or pro wrestling works like that. I believe that things can matter, that choices made in and out of a match can matter, that believe need things to believe in and not just to blandly root for because they happen to win.

It's not easy though! It's not easy for people to be vulnerable, especially when not everyone's doing it. Cole refusing to do it doesn't just hurt the fans' ability to connect with him, but it potentially hurts the fans' ability to connect to anyone. If Cole doesn't care and Garcia does, it risks presenting that openness in the wrong way. The trick is being consistent, refusing to falter, not giving up. That's what a babyface is all about in 1985 or 2025. 

The problem is this: Garcia needs contrast to work against, and a "cool face" or a "stoic face" like Shibata aren't enough. Mark Briscoe, the only other guy on the roster who can match that same level of earnestness, is definitely not it. Garcia needs heels. I get that there have been some weather-related issues, some scheduling issues, but they've spent the last month putting him up against other babyfaces. This is the time where he needs to establish the ten count punch, to establish the charge at ringside, to get over the jackknife pin all the more. And by putting him up against faces instead of heels, it's been setting him up to fail. 

But he hasn't. Maybe the crowd didn't go up for his entrance, but they were absolutely with him by the end. What did the trick? Part of it was having Menard and Parker at his side. Menard's affection for him is so honest and believable that it's infectious and he's so over the top that you buy into everything he does. 2.0 was always a breathe of fresh air in the tag division because they were able to act as contrast for the more high-impact, spot-heavy teams while still taking all of their stuff. It was great to see them back together again.

It was the spots during the commercial break that really got the crowd going, exactly as they were meant to: the multiple ten-count punches, the body slams one after the next. They built to each bit, both in the moment, and by doing three in a row, and by the end of it, the literally freezing cold Jacksonville fans had been heated up not by crazy spots but by simple things that the wrestlers put their heart into.

And the Kingdom did their part. O'Reilly and Strong make for such a fun babyface duo, both in how they interact with one another, and in their tandem offense. As did Shane Taylor Promotions at ringside, the Infantry being over the top, Taylor being full of bluster, and Moriarty seething at the spotlight that he was denied.

Garcia would have been far better served by knocking down heel after heel for six months (and getting knocked down a few times and getting back up along the way). Then, once his act is established, he can go up against faces more frequently. It's asking a lot to get the fans behind what he's trying to do, when it's so different from what anyone has been trying to for years otherwise. It's reeducating the fanbase from scratch, but if it's allowed to work, the gains for AEW could be huge. Its an investment though, and it's working through willpower, talent, and dedication alone, but its up to Khan not just to be a matchmaker here, and to make exciting matches, but to ensure that the investment is protected and set up to succeed. If he does, we'll all benefit.

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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Strong vs. Hook

 

15. Roderick Strong vs. Hook AEW Dynamite 9/25/24

ER: I've been saying, and I know I'm not the only one, that AEW needs to hit the 8-12 minute sweet spot on matches a lot more. Here's a great nine minute example of why that works so well. They worked this at such a brisk pace that 14 minutes of it would have been overkill. The offense wouldn't have felt as tough if they kept it up that long. This was a quick nine minutes, but I never felt like anything was rushed through or undersold. 

Roddy is a great opponent for Hook. In fact, a lot of people seem like great opponents for Hook. That probably means Hook is well beyond his years for a guy under 80 matches in. He was a hit on arrival and even though this is the first Hook match I've actually written about, I've been admiring the act the entire time. I missed a lot of his 2024, so I still haven't seen a lot of the "long" Hook matches. He was a great squash worker, and he's nestled in nicely to the 8-12 minute sweet spot while AEW seemingly doesn't know what to do with him. His takedowns remain strong the whole match, and I buy him doing all of it. His poise and feel are so good this early, that I worry he's going to lose his charm the more polished he gets at pro wrestling. He's at his best when he's not moving like a wrestler, and I hope he maintains what makes him unique when he's closer to match 200. 

Hook understands a ton just 80 matches in, while Roderick Strong is a guy who can still seem wise beyond his years 1,400 matches in. I don't think I would have predicted this 18 years ago when my buddy was obsessed with him as the Master of the Backbreaker. This episode of Dynamite was sold on a very specific kind of 2006 indy wrestling nostalgia, with Nigel McGuinness getting his final return match against Bryan Danielson. Bryan Danielson had one of the most acclaimed final runs in wrestling history, and a career even the many Danielson optimists (we were all Danielson optimists) couldn't have imagined in 2006. But Roderick Strong has been there the whole 18 years since then, and he's kept his style just as relevant to each era as Danielson has. Roderick Strong has quietly been really, really good for nearly 25 years now. I don't think Strong has the high end classics that Danielson has, but he keeps finding ways to be the perfect TV match worker, and I love TV workers. He became a Christian level TV guy with slightly less opportunity and visibility. His NXT TV matches were a highlight of that run, and his house show work had the kind of tight execution that plays well in that environment. He does tired indy things better than the other indy workers: He knows how to throw an elbow, knows how to blend thigh slap offense, and hits chops designed to echo in a gymnasium or stadium. Roderick Strong embodies more about 2006 wrestling than Bryan Danielson and he's fucking great at it. He's just now entering his 40s and he doesn't Move Weird like Christopher Daniels (yet). He only seems to be getting faster and tighter and he hits just as hard. He's the kind of worker who can adapt to any opponent, an evergreen Good Hand. 

I dug how he and Hook went after each other. The opening scrambles were cool, Strong having actual answers for Hook's difficult-to-counter judo. Bennett and Taven added the right amount of spice on the floor, with each taking a big bump for Hook that led to Strong yeeting Hook into the ringpost. I don't think I've ever used that word before. I don't know if people are saying that word any longer. I think I'm using it properly and it's the only way to describe what happened. Hook's suplexes look like Hook's. They're not quite the same as you've seen them. He's small but throws larger. His hiptosses and northern lights look just different enough. He judo throws Strong off three different chair edges in one throw and Strong was so good all match at feeding into all things Hook big and small with that same energy. Man has had That Energy since 2006. We need our 8-12 minute kings, to nurture the next generation of 8-12 minute kings. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 11/18 - 11/24 (Part 2)

AEW Full Gear 11/23/24

MJF vs Roderick Strong

MD: I have a soft spot for AEW. No big surprise. I write about it every week, right? Part of why is that it really made me care about modern American wrestling again. And the thing about caring is that you get invested. And sometimes that investment takes you good places and sometimes it doesn't, but it's always better than not caring at all. 

I can't think of a moment in the last couple of years where I was more invested than the very start of the MJF vs Ospreay All In match. I had been watching MJF's American Title run, vs Oku, vs Templario. I wrote about them even. I had also seen Ospreay a bit and wrote about him. I wrote about the Danielson match and the crowd that seemed to be high on the fumes of the spots instead of fully engaged in the actual narrative of the match. I thought long and hard about how to get around that, how to tap into something old and primal, how to deny the crowd something they wanted for as long as possible until the pressure built up and the exhilaration could boil over. Between how MJF was wrestling and the code that I thought I had cracked (and I thought maybe he had too), I was incredibly invested on how MJF was going to wrestle the match. That's kind of unique when you think about it. We don't often consume art focused on the artistic choices in the moment. Maybe people who went to see Megapolis really were invested on whether Coppola would go this way or that, or people ready to listen to a new album of their favorite band would want it to lean towards one sound instead of another, but it feels kind of rare to me, very much a wrestling thing, and very much for the people like me who are very, very invested in it in a certain way.

So I sat there watching alongside so many other people around the world in real time and I saw the entrances and I waited for the moment the bell would ring. He just had to do one thing. Instead of rushing forward, he had to dart out, had to stall and stall and stall some more and deny the home country crowd everything they wanted (and felt entitled to get) from Ospreay. Then he could force a mistake and use every dirty trick in the book to deny it some more. Because he had already proven he could hang in the hour long match, there was real hope he'd have the freedom to do it. I was as invested in a performance as I had been in a very long time and boy did my heart ever sink when Max rushed forward instead of backwards. He went the wrong way! Both literally and figuratively. And they had a perfectly fine Ospreay "all the hits" sort of match, though one that couldn't live up to the hour long match they'd already have, and it set up Garcia's return and Ospreay's victory and it was fine. Perfectly fine. And I was pretty miserable about it all I have to admit. Max had the chance to get the most heat imaginable in front of the biggest crowd with the biggest stakes and they just went another way with it. I thought the subsequent Garcia match was pretty good. He shouldn't have worked it the way that I wanted him to work the Ospreay match and he didn't.

Which brings us to this. Look, I'm not saying I'm not at all invested in Max still. Yes, I was disappointed once, but I think his heart is in the right place and he's as well-positioned as anyone to champion so many lost elements of pro wrestling, the stuff that can really manipulate minds and move hearts that makes it such a special and unique art form. Sometimes maybe he can't get out of his own way in his own perceived need to protect himself as a drawing act, to compete with all of the other six star players on the card in the eyes of fans that he doesn't trust to take leaps of faith with him, and maybe, just maybe, he himself doesn't believe in the power of pro wrestling quite enough. Because when you see some of these crowds and how they react, how they've been conditioned to react over the last couple of decades, sometimes it's real hard to have faith and work towards something deeper and more meaningful when there's easy candy and empty sensation always within reach.

I've got my own thoughts about the Cole program and the eventual match to come, but the Strong match sort of worked within a vacuum from that. The dynamics were easier to work out. Strong is a cleaner babyface here, a guy who is trying to help out his friend against a scumbag heel. He's coming in hot, wanting to get his hands on Max, maybe even wanting to spare his friend from getting his hands dirty (because they are dirty enough - no, that's me reading in what I'd in the story; it's not what's been on screen). Strong's out to end the threat of Max once and for all, for the good of all. Max is doing everything he can to avoid such a fate and to wound Cole as much as he can in the process (and then to rub his finger in the wound if he can).

To be honest, I was more invested in Fletcher vs Ospreay because I thought maybe, just maybe, Fletcher would be the one to crack the code (I now believe the code is uncrackable because Will Ospreay, the human being, will not allow it to be cracked; I was disappointed in the match but less so in Fletcher who shows such promise for the year to come). So I came into MJF vs Strong with an open mind. And I have to say, Max absolutely outdid himself. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things (because why would I, right? Just one guy), but I came out of the match actually kind of proud of Max's performance. Which again, is just a sign of being invested in this stuff. I can't think of another match where I came out feeling proud of any wrestler like this though, so on some whimsical level, I guess it's worth noting.

In the Garcia match, it didn't make sense for Max not to engage. He wanted revenge for what happened at All In (even if that was revenge from Garcia for something else). Here, he didn't want to fight Strong, not really, certainly not on his terms, so when the bell rang, he rolled right out, stalled, and started to run him (and New Jersey) down on the mic. That would help to set up the finish but also worked to at least partially turn a crowd geographically inclined to root for Max against him. Roddy cut it off with a shot and Max, instead of engaging, retreated. He went up the ramp and was chased back down only for Roddy to miss a strike against the post, allowing him to start working Roddy's hand over it. 

What followed was a nice little early match heat, Max dismantling the hand, playing to the crowd in the most irritating ways possible, and keeping Roddy in a hold. Here, he did a beautiful Bockwinkelian rendition of telling Roddy that the crowd didn't care about him, which got them clapping Roddy up. It was appreciated, let me tell you. Yes, the crowd still traded chants, but I think they would have been far more for Max otherwise (part of that is the problem of the story where Cole prematurely betrayed him while the fans were still trusting him, but I'm not going to get into that). He did a masterful job at giving Roddy every chance to keep the crowd behind him. 

Roddy eventually came back with a backbreaker out of nowhere and he started tearing apart Max's spine. Max shifted his offense from the hand-focus to just whatever might work here, but he ultimately got swept under. Roddy hit the End of Heartache, but instead of kicking out, Max got his foot on the rope, protecting the move, infuriating the fans, making sure he didn't seem tough but instead sneaky and tricky and savvy. Everything right, again and again. It all built to Roddy hitting the Sick Kick. Instead of going for the pin, however, he (infuriated himself) needed to put Max away for good with another End of Heartache. That let Max reverse and hit his Brainbuster finisher. Roddy got his hand over him (again protecting Roddy) but Max turned it into the Salt of the Earth for the win. 

I'm going to reiterate, everything right. It was some beautiful pro wrestling. Roddy absolutely did his part, from the first shot when Max had the mic all the way to the momentary lapse where he didn't go for the pin after the Sick Kick, but this was Max embodying all of the outwardly selfish but truly (secretly) selfless qualities of a classic heel. I'm still kind of dreading the eventual Cole match because I have no idea how they can square the circle on the story so long as Cole's acting like a justified babyface and trying to "cool face" promo through it. But after this match, I'm willing to give Max a chance to at least try.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 9/4 - 9/10

AEW Dynamite 9/6/23

Darby Allin vs. Nick Wayne

MD: Wayne's an interesting case. He's so young but he only has 50 less matches under his belt than a Daniel Garcia or Isiah Kassidy. I worry that the reward structure may have been skewed for him poorly on the indies (I worry about this with Billie Starkz too, who has more matches than half of the women's roster), like a tree that was allowed to grow strong but in a stilted direction because of obstacles in its path. Working with a good chunk of the AEW roster will help him, and working with some of the rest probably won't, so it's a roll of the dice how he ends up in a couple of years.

Still, this had to be a huge deal for him, main eventing Dynamite against Darby. While this was a babyface match and mentor vs. student, there still needed to be a wedge to deal with the hierarchy and that came when Darby, on instinct as much as anything else, went for one of his early match dives and absolutely wiped himself out as Nick (instinctively himself) dodged out of the way. They had to burn two commercial breaks on this match for some reason and this let them burn the first even as it explained why Darby didn't just swallow him up early. In the time before Darby was able to mount a comeback, Wayne hit a combo superplex/fisherman's suplex. I didn't love it but when you keep in mind that Wayne hadn't taken any damage yet in the match and the fact that it's easier to take someone over with a fisherman's suplex than a standard suplex, or, you know, a falcon arrow, it was something I could live with in this very specific situation. It goes back to wrong lessons though. I'm sure that we'll see him do it again in his matches, especially down a stretch where it'll get a big pop but will devalue a standard superplex (poor Phil, who worked so hard to increase their value).

Darby kept coming back into it. Against a Luchasaurus that was demolishing him, he needed big hope spots. Against Nick Wayne, even with a damaged back, he was going to take back the offense. In fact, he brought things back to center so thoroughly that he got on the mic and told Wayne to hit him harder. Wayne responded with an opportunistic superkick. They were clever here in coming up with ways for Wayne to justifiably stay in it: the missed dive, said superkick, Darby hesitating on the coffin drop. Somewhere in there Wayne hit Wayne's World and it was all a little too abrupt to work as a nearfall. That's a needle Wayne will have to figure out how to thread: how to hit a move that should be sudden and unexpected, that needs a leap off the ropes and can come off as contrived if not careful, but also make it feel weighty enough to the crowd to come off like a finisher. I know people are split on it, but Van Dam always selling the impact of the five star frog splash gave it a little extra oomph. Maybe Wayne could kind of hit an overbump bounce as he lands with it? Anyway, while I was thinking about this, they went into a hot roll-up heavy pin exchange for the finish before Darby just decided to end it with a stretch and some stomps for good measure, something that felt totally believable that a "big brother" would do when he's had quite enough of his little brother. Like I said, I didn't love every part of this, but the parts I didn't love I'm probably at least ok with. I'll give Darby credit for that but with a pinch of optimism for Wayne's future.

AEW Collision 9/9/23

Darby Allin vs. Roderick Strong

MD: Some interesting math on this one. They had to make Roddy look strong to counterbalance his nebbish sort of character. He can be sniveling and detestable but he still has to be potentially dangerous. They had to protect Darby, especially as he's coming off of that loss against Luchasaurus (no matter how that actually played out) as he'd be losing again. The finish was going to be at least moderately clean, or indirectly unclean at best. That is, Strong was, with no direct interference at the end, going to hit his finisher and get a clean pin on Darby. So what do they do? A lot, maybe too much. They led with a pre-match Luchasaurus ambush. They ended with Fox and Wayne getting in each other's way as they brawled with the Kingdom.

Somewhere in the middle, you had a guy with a hurt back against a guy whose whole deal is to target the back. Maybe, just maybe, that might have been enough? Strong's act was probably a little too cutesy twenty (or almost twenty) years ago, even though he figured out how to broaden it well in the 2010s. In today's world, though, when the percentage of matches focused on a body part is much lower than it was back then, it really does make Strong stand out. Darby is a selling machine. Most of the cutoffs of his comebacks in this one weren't do to anything Strong actually did, but just because his body gave out on him and he slumped down. That's fairly unique. You see a babyface fail to pick up his opponent due to the back giving way or the heel getting in a cheapshot to the back, but here Darby just hit a few shots and then slumped with Strong doggedly right back on him. So the little moments were compelling, and then the big shots of Strong crushing Darby on the top turnbuckle or the apron or the rail were as grisly as you'd expect from Darby. I don't know, maybe there were a few too many moving parts by the end, but say what you will about Darby's back or Roddy's neck, they were both strong enough to carry all the things this match had to achieve.

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 5/1 - 5/7

MD: Going to be more words than usual this week. I can't fill any sort of void except for maybe in my own heart but I'm feeling inspired. I know to a lot of people Dean was a sort of distant memory, someone who inspired them years ago or that went to shows or wrote with them. Those stories have meant so much to so many to see. Eric's post was wonderful. To people still on the DVDVR board, however, and there is still a board, and it's a pretty damn good place to talk about wrestling in longer form with more permanence than you can get on twitter or reddit, he was still a fixture. Dean retired a few years ago and started to watch every bit of televised wrestling and drop a sprawl of text immediately after it finished. It was distilled DEAN and an essential daily part of my life even just two weeks ago. Go click on this and read some of his posts over the last few months; you'll be glad you did. 

As for AEW, I said I might shift to covering a the webshows a bit more and what they do? Kill the webshows. If it's really because their TV partners didn't want them pushing content out on YouTube and if it speaks to the strength of that relationship, great. I'm really going to miss Dark and Elevation though. Elevation especially was how I got into AEW the most in late summer and early fall of 2021. Squashes and competitive mid-card matches with no commercials or time constraints or even plot progression built up my connection to wrestlers unfamiliar to me, and there were a lot. I get that you don't want to put squashes on TV and I get that sometimes these extra matches wore out crowds, but at its best, it allowed wrestlers to experiment, to get reps, to figure out what worked and what didn't and let crowds see certain stars (the Matt Hardys of the world), pop for their entrances and themes and signature moves, even when they weren't going to be on the main show. It gave us an Emi Sakura or Nyla Rose tag week after week after week after week and they were all a blast. It let the Acclaimed figure out how to be the Acclaimed or the Gunns figure out how to be the Gunns and let Athena as hard as one could go during one night in Canada and suddenly become one of the the best things in wrestling. I'm not sure how things will shake out in the months to come, if Rampage will serve this purpose more and if we'll get that itch scratched with the ROH studio tapings or if extra matches even end up on Bleacher Report, but I'll miss goofy rookie Elevation commentary from Wight and Menard (and Eddie Kingston for a while there!) and even goofier expert Dark commentary from Excalibur and Taz. I hope we see the return of Super Strong Suplex Machine sooner than later.

AEW Dynamite 5/3

Jericho Appreciation Society (Daniel Garcia/Jake Hager/Angelo Parker/Matt Menard) vs Orange Cassidy/Bandido/Adam Cole/Roderick Strong

MD: Nice big 8 man tag with a lot of little story beats. It's nice to see Strong outside of the WWE system again where he can feel like a big deal. That's part of the joy of AEW. I don't usually have a ton to say about Cole. My main takeaway on him is that he's been woefully miscast as a heel forever. The fans want to cheer him. They want to cheer his song. He has the offense of a scrappy babyface. He has the size of a scrappy babyface. I've seen him in interviews say that it's not an issue because he gets the fans to boo him during the match, but I honestly don't think that has played out in practice, at least not in AEW. This feels fresh. They played up the relationship between Cassidy and Cole but never really did anything with it unfortunately. The only sign of anything off at all was Bandido tagging Cole by slapping him on the back.

I liked how the match turned on the caught dive on Cassidy (with Garcia coming out nowhere with a knee to the back). I like Cole getting taken out when he went for Jericho at first opportunity; in general, even with him getting to tag with Strong again, he portrayed a certain intensity from his entrance to his first big boot, to the finish and both charges up the ramp. The buried what I was looking forward to the most in the commercial break, but 2.0 feeding and stooging for Orange Cassidy was a ton of fun as you'd expect, as was the suplex spots with Bandido. Garcia was a glorious jerk during the beat down on Cassidy, walking over him repeatedly and stepping on the ankle to prevent him getting away. Everyone got to get something in down the stretch. I'm looking forward to Strong against any of these guys and certainly to Hager vs Bandido if they ever want to run that, but Garcia is a top potential AEW Cassidy opponent and they're running that next week.

Darby Allin/Jungle Boy vs MJF/Sammy Guevara

MD: I don't think anyone would say that this main event angle has been a total success, though people can definitely appreciate that they're taking this swing and trying to elevate the pillars like this. What has worked, more than anything else, has been the MJF/Sammy pairing. In fact, given that we're still weeks from the PPV, it's a shame they've gone away from it here. I wouldn't mind if they go back to it at some later point. They were full on Heavenly Bodies/Too Cool here, full of themselves, congratulating one another, constantly jawing (including with the crowd during the commercial break to get big heat), constantly posturing. I would have liked some dumb simplistic double teams but I was ultimately happy with what we got, including the assisted abdominal stretch and Hollywood Blonds' terrible towel with Max's scarf.

Darby and Jungle Boy hit everything clean and played face-in-peril well enough, though the focus was really on the heel antics instead of the come back attempts. It's a bit like seeing Jarrett again. AEW's tag scene has had such a focus on big spots and cut off near falls that bullshit like this is fresh and really stands out. I liked Jungle Boy as a hot tag. We saw him so long with Luchasaurus where he didn't get to play that role. And Sammy looked amazing taking the tiger driver and code red, almost as good as I've ever seen either taken, which was impressive in such quick succession. Max's convoluted killshot looked great too, though he'd probably be better served with something way more simplistic that is just put over as deadly due to superior execution or some such. The finish with MJF and Sammy hitting moves but the other wanting the pin contrasted Darby tagging himself in but to hit a move and then go for the pin instead, making the babyfaces look somewhat more respectable while still playing into the animosity between them and pushing the 4-way to come. I have no idea what Khan has planned between now and May 28 but hopefully it's even more entertaining than the Sammy/MJF pairing; that feels like a bit of a high bar to clear though.

AEW Rampage 5/5

Lucha Bros/Hijo del Vikingo vs QTV (Powerhouse Hobbs/QT Marshall/Aaron Solo)

MD: Figured I'd give this some time too. There are a lot of different possible structures and narratives in pro wrestling. It doesn't have to be shine/heat/comeback. As long as there's a narrative throughline and things have weight and matter, as long as they have some semblance of build and payoff, you can do a lot of different things. Some stories are easier to tell than others. Some are more natural. Some require less work on the viewer. And, it's valid to occasionally just do a your move/my move fireworks spotfest so long as it's driven by a purpose on the card and it doesn't have a negative impact on it. Even then, however, I tend to find that last option limiting. If you pull back just a little on that, if you just take a breath and think things through, you can still hit a lot of those spots but underpin them with a more compelling narrative. Doing that will only make the spots feel more impressive and compelling because there'll be something providing them with actual substance. It's almost always additive if done well and smartly. The best wrestling is when people combine working smart and working hard, when you have both "workrate" and narrative, when one is the means and the other is the end.

So often with the Lucha Bros, I see a heck of a lot of means and not a lot of end. That's most especially true when they're up against similar opponents with similar mindsets. They try to go over the top and in doing so end up completely untethered. It pops the crowd in the moment but you end up remembering spots and moments, not the match as a whole.

One of the great things about AEW is the WAR-like nature of the potential pairings. You'll see Lucha Bros and Vikingo against the most logical guys in the world (let's say Rush and Dralistico) but you'll also see them here against QT, Hobbs, and Solo, three guys with wildly different skillsets. After a bit of posturing, QT took all of Vikingo's flashy stuff. I'll admit I had mixed feelings about his basing. In general, we applaud wrestlers for getting into positions on dives and saving the spot and their opponent. That's outside of the ring; when it happens in the ring however, it always feels a little dodgier. That was the case with the implosion 'rana. QT rushing to position made it feel more impactful but also poked at the suspension of disbelief just a tad. Still, it felt novel for him to be taking all the offense instead of someone like Kommander or Gringo Loco. There's value in that sort of dissonance too. Then Hobbs came in and just shut everything down. Solo is a 14 year vet 34 year old still trying to find his way but he can hit stuff clean and is pretty punchable, so it's not like he's a bad hand to have in there and to follow up Hobbs' stuff with a bunch of annoying offense to get under the crowd's skin. The built through the commercial break to the comeback and went into a finishing stretch. That's where we got the dives and the real bombs and because of the anticipation everything felt bigger than it would have if they were just escalating and escalating through spot after spot after spot. Speaking of escalating, I'm glad we didn't get the 630 through the table here. That shouldn't be an every match move, even if it's teased every match. It's one of the biggest spots in the promotion and they should only use it when it really matters, not against QT on a Rampage with a weird time spot. It was ok to do it a couple of times early to establish it but now keep it in the pocket so that when it happens, it means as much as humanly possible and that it also doesn't devalue other big dives and spots people do across the promotion. The finish felt a little abrupt to me but ultimately worked; Hobbs was distracted. Why was Hobbs distracted? Because he was choking Abrahantes and that's the best reason to lose a match I can think of.

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2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Strong vs. Dragunov

24. Roderick Strong vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT 8/17

ER: What a great Roderick Strong performance in a gritty NXT opener, Strong throwing some of the best strikes in the entire WWE calendar year, busting Dragunov open and landing every shot square. Dragunov is an annoying hambone and Strong bloodies him up bad and keeps up the beating. Strong had several nasty knee strikes, maybe the best kneelifts in current wrestling. Dragunov throws his own big knees to Strong's midsection and I am perfectly fine with two guys deciding who can knee the other harder in the stomach or kidneys. Strong also throws blistering chops, and seeing a stiff chop battle between them feels almost novel in a world of forearm exchanges. Whenever Ilja would start to make one of his dumb faces or do one of his dumb flourishes, Strong would be there to shut it down. The best was Ilja going for his rope feint but getting punched through by a running Strong dropkick before he even got midway through the ropes. When Ilja gets busted open it's an awesome visual, as he starts leaking out of his head and dripping a ton of blood down Strong's back while fighting for some big launch angle German suplexes. I didn't love the finish, as Strong hit the nastiest strike of the match to reverse Ilja's torpedo headbutt and it had to get ignored for the sake of the finish. The timing on it was spectacular, with Strong nailing a flying knee right as Ilja has flown into his headbutt, and it looked so rough that it 100% should have been the finish. But Ilja is the guy in a big singles match at the next TakeOver, so he just gets up and hits the headbutt anyway. I didn't like that. Still, a great 12 minute TV war and most of the theater kid stuff neutralized. 

PAS: I am just one hundred percent in on Ilja at this point. Like I said in my Ringer piece, I think he has transcended the shittiness of his faces and is now just the Crispin Glover of pro wrestling. Strong doesn't have a lot of charisma, so is a great foil for an over actor like Ilja. It's like Pacino doing line readings with underacting Keanu Reeves in The Devil's Advocate. Strong brutalizes Ilja's chest, he has some great pale skin to get bruised up. His gross blood adds a lot to the match, and I loved how fast Ilja can move, he has real fast twitch explosion. I didn't mind the finish. Dragunov's whole thing is how much brutality he can absorb, and I don't mind him eating a huge shot and continuing forward. Forward is his only gear so if he isn't dead he is coming at you.

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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On Brand Segunda Caida: Necro Butcher in IWA-EC

IWA East Coast is this weird IWA offshoot which has been running in West Virginia forever, its was always available but not super disseminated, tons of it is on IWTV now so I want to grab some good looking Necro matches

Necro Butcher vs. Brain Damage IWA-EC 11/23/07

PAS: This is a first round match in the Masters of Pain tournament, and has to be up there with Necro's greatest death matches. Brain Damage is a rectangle headed death match guy who made his rep on especially hard punches and headbutts, so a natural heavy handed match up for Necro. The first part of this match was really tremendous, worked as an arena brawl with both guys pasting each other with hard shots, and Necro taking a package piledrive on the bleachers and a double knee drop which smushed his head on a chair. It also has maybe the most violent barfight spot I can remember with Brain Damage and Necro just unloading with jaw adjusting shots. The middle section has a bit too much construction for my tastes, with Brain Damage especially taking a long time to set up a barbed wire net between the guardrail and the ring apron. They got back to the bread and butter at the end with both guys just standing and throwing punches until Damage got the knock out with a fireman's carry into a punch, which honestly didn't totally work. Still this was incredibly violent stuff, with most of the match being hard violently brawling.

Necro Butcher vs. Roderick Strong IWA-EC 2/4/09

PAS: Necro versus indy darling is one of my favorite match types ever and this was a great version of that. Strong has been very good for a long time, hits very hard, has a lot of skill, but can be a bit mayonnaise. Necro is a guy who can bring the spices though, and this was a great blend. It actually starts with Strong trying to grapple with Necro, taking him down and trying to work a cross armbreaker. Of course it breaks down to a fight, with Strong absolutely strafing Necro with chops and Necro firing back with sick chops of his own and some of his soup bone right hands. They brawl into the bleachers, and around the crowd and end up in the ring where Necro hits a diamond cutter on the edge of stood up chair, only to get his kidneys driven into the top of the chair with a backbreaker. Lots of moments where I said fuck out loud because of how hard both guys were hitting, killer stuff. 

Necro Butcher vs. Sami Callihan IWA-EC 9/20/11

PAS: This is actually a great blueprint for what an entertaining comeback Necro Butcher match could look like. Sami is really stooging it up at the beginning, Zybyzco stalling, throwing a kids drink away, talking trash. They do some arena brawling, which is mostly softcore hardcore, lots of hitting each other with plastic garbage cans, and plastic signs. Sami does take a big bump down the bleachers, and Necro is chopping hard, but this isn't dangerous stuff. Sami clips the knee, and really works it over, which is a nice showcase for Necro's selling, an underrated part of his game. Necro makes a couple of valiant comebacks, and eventually steals one with an inside cradle. Necro with sick violence and crazy bumps is awesome stuff, but he is really good at working as a hometown hero pulling one out, and if this is the kind of thing we get out of a Necro return tour, just smart safe wrestling, I will be happy.

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Matches from PWG All Star Weekend Night 1 1/5/08

Low-Ki vs. Bryan Danielson - EPIC

PAS: This was their first match against each other in four years, and their last ever indy match (they had a couple of FCW matches during their time in WWE Developmental). This was the matchup that launched modern indy wrestling, but this is one of their least hyped matches (PWG footage used to take so long to show up, that sometimes their stuff would fall a bit through the cracks). This was really great, as good if not better then their matches earlier in the decade. This was structured a bit differently, as these weren't young guys trying to prove themselves, but established stars. Danielson worked this as a heel, really trying to torture Ki by ripping up his arm in gross ways, he also had mixed in a fair amount of MMA spots in his arsenal, and there was a couple of really slick moves in and out of the guard, I especially dug him working an armbar, jumping into guard to throw down elbows, and slipping right back into the arm bar. Danielson also kept attacking with Goodrich elbows, setting up the finish nicely. Ki breaks out a bunch sick kicks to the chest and face, including catching a Bryan tope with a head kick. The finish run was awesome stuff, as they are fighting on the top rope, Ki actually bites Bryan getting him in position for the Warriors Way, Ki then hits the Ki Krusher, and spins it into the Ki clutch where he pays Bryan back with Goodrich elbows of his own. This is a undercover classic, I think it had too much matwork for the people who were really pushing PWG in 2008, but I am always going to love these guys banging the mat. 

Jack Evans vs. Roderick Strong

PAS: This was a fun match, although fell a little short of what these guys can do at their peak. Evans, at this point especially, was completely rubber-spined, and Strong found a bunch of ways to twist him into pain pretzels, at one point he had him wrapped up the ropes and nearly touched his ankles to the back of his head. Strong also unloaded some blistering chops, and Evans took a gross bump to the floor when he missed a dive and nuked his ankle. Evans always had a bit of an offense problem, he is kind of the Lugentz Dort of indy wrestling, he ends up going over in this match, and I just had a hard time buying the stuff he threw putting Strong down, although the 450 always looks great.

Eddie Kingston/Claudio Castagnoli/Human Tornado vs. Necro Butcher/Chris Hero/Candice LeRae -EPIC

PAS: This was a total blast, a wild brawl which ebbed and flowed had great pacing and told a bunch of little awesome mini stories. All six hit the ring fast and start brawling, and they eventually spill into the parking lot. Necro starts throwing rocks at the heel team, I mean big stones tossed hard, the kind of reckless insanity which made Necro special. This was a Necro masterpiece, he wilds out smashing the shit out Tornado and Kingston with crazed punches, at one point he comes in as a hot tag a just throws these totally gross JYD no hands headbutts. Tornado is a great gross cheapshotting prick, he absolutely obliterates LeRae with a superkick to the throat which puts her on the shelf for most of the match. Every time Kingston and Hero matched up it was as borderline unprofessional as you want from those two, and the finish was great with LeRae getting back into the match only for Eddie with a full wifebeater smirk, line her up for a backfist, with Hero diving in front of the bullet only to lose the match. On paper this looks awesome and in ring it delivered on it's promise.

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NXT Worth Watching: Ciampa/Thatcher vs. Strong/Cole

Tommaso Ciampa/Timothy Thatcher vs. Roderick Strong/Adam Cole NXT 2/3/21

ER: NXT has been the most entertaining part of mainstream wrestling TV of 2021 so far, and it feels like a lot of guys recognized to hold back on a lot of the melodrama. There is a lot more personality on NXT lately, beyond "I am serious about this and am shocked when you kick out of my moves". Guys are figuring out how to do "serious" without looking ridiculous, and this tag is a good example of a Mid-South style tag fusing with the modern NXT style. Modern NXT style is too obnoxious uncut, you need to cut it with an older, better regional style to make it bearable and much better. I think Ciampa has really excelled with these changes, going from seeming comically overly serious throughout the latter parts of the Gargano feud, to reigning in the sillier aspects and coming off as much more of an asskicker than before. He is wrestling more like Roderick Strong, which is a good thing. He hits hard on chops and elbows, and makes simple forgotten moments like kicks to the stomach look actually damaging. When a guy makes you notice how painful a transition kick to the stomach looks, it means he's really focusing on all details. Strong is as good as ever, maybe the most underrated worker of NXT brand history. Preposterous to think of him not having the role Cole occupies, while also excelling in the role of the clear #2 of a stable. 

Ciampa and Thatcher spend much of the match cutting Strong off from Cole, and both teams blur the line of face/heel without it ever getting dramatic and scowly. Strong is great at eating a beating while fighting back, and I especially loved a couple of body shots he threw while Thatcher was prepping for a suplex. I thought Ciampa's timing was excellent throughout, thought a knee he rocked Strong with made for a real surprise kickout, and when I rewatched the spot I thought his action was so strong throughout the whole sequence. The pinfall he sinks on Strong really added to the kickout, feels like he's paying the kind of attention to his game that stands out when you watch Bret Hart singles matches. Cole is energetic in his hot tag even if some of his stuff isn't my favorite. He fit into the match fine, and as the match turned into NXT chain spots I thought they built through them well. Strong was really awesome on offense and defense the whole match, loved him flying through the ropes with a Fuerza bump when Ciampa scouted a baseball slide dropkick, love that immediacy Strong brings to his moments. The Dusty Classic has been a fertile ground for quality men's and women's tags, and this is my favorite of the men's side (so far?). 

PAS: This didn't really do it for me. I really enjoyed the Strong vs. Thatcher parts of the match as they really had some nasty grappling and Thatcher has really dug into the sadistic parts of his character. He really does seem to gain joy out of hurting people, and Strong has always been a solid if a little colorless wrestler. Strong hits the mat just as hard, and lands some big chops. I though Ciampa and Cole were pretty bad though, especially in their exchanges which were dancey reversals as bad as the worst of this modern wrestling style. Man do I hate when two people "know each other so well", and this was some very bad "know each other so well" wrestling. Finish run just felt like the same PWG tag finisher spamming stuff we have seen for years. The individual moves look cool, but it was kind of formless and didn't build to anything. That finish run doesn't play to Thatcher's strengths and he was the guy I came into this match wanting to see. 

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Get Close Up, Soaked Up, Kingston is KG Post Up

Eddie Kingston vs. Roderick Strong FIP 6/30/07 - GREAT

PAS: Kingston Road matches aren't my favorite type of his matches, but he does US Indy All Japan as well as anyone. Both of these guys really set out to brutalize each other, as this was more of a Kobashi vs. Misawa style match than the Kawada stuff which Kingston usually does when he works this style. Sick hard chops by both guys, Strong has always been a bit colorless (especially aughts Strong) but his execution was always good, and he works stiff. Kingston shows a couple of his tweaks, and I loved him screaming at Strong to get away from him when he was trying to fight off a superplex. The match had some gross head drops, including Kingston throwing a release Dragon suplex, and Strong winning and retaining the title with a Tiger Driver 91. You can really see their youth in this match, as I don't think the suplex bumps would be nearly as athletic if this match happened today, although a slowed down version of this would probably even be better. 

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NXT TakeOver: WarGames 2020 Live Blog

I don't think we've gotten a good WarGames match from NXT...yet. That said, I think this looks like a really good card on paper, and I'm excited for both WarGames matches, really like how both teams match up. 

Toni Storm/Dakota Kai/Raquel Gonzalez/Candice LeRae vs. Ember Moon/Rhea Ripley/Io Shirai/Shotzi Blackheart

ER: Shotzi comes out in her new deluxe tank, with TCB on the front (I assume that means Tankin' Care of Business?). I like Dakota Kai to start the match, but I don't think Ember Moon was a great choice. Ember Moon is someone who always does a disservice to her own offense, because she chains it in a way that you see her opponents brushing things off quickly just to take something else. She has a very good low superkick to a kneeling opponent, but it's always done just to set up something else, even when it looks better than a lot of her other offense. I don't think her chaining things through the first 5 is a good thing, but I liked Kai a lot. Some of her offense isn't as plausible, but she uses her thrust kick wisely and it always looks good. 

And somehow they make the rookie mistake of letting the babyfaces add a man first. WHY would you voluntarily set up Dakota Kai as de facto babyface? It's the easiest mistake to avoid under the specific booking parameters of a WarGames!! Commentary keeps trying to think of things to say, and every single thing just makes it sound like Kai is a valiant babyface. "This is the hardest 3 minutes of Dakota Kai's life" or "you remember Kai was out of action with a knee injury", just everything they said about her pointed out how hard she was fighting through this genuine disadvantage. I don't know how you lay this match out and decide to make Dakota Kai the top babyface, but this is what they did, and Kai is putting in the best babyface performance of the match. She gets powerbombed down the cage by Moon, who then hits a sick crossbody into her. But Kai fights back, and soon she's down two to one, but she jumps on Shotzi's back and tries to fight off the unfair double team, gets dropped with a great Doomsday Device missile dropkick, but somehow fights back from that! Later she gets beat up by Rhea Ripley the second she entered the cage, eating a ton of short arm clotheslines as the commentary continues to struggle with the undeniable fact that Kai is the babyface here. Shotzi was so incredible in the build up to this match, and she is the most afterthought person in the entire match. This makes no sense!!

They are also working this WarGames the least interesting way: Pretending the cage is not there. The knock on a lot of these NXT WarGames is that they are normal matches that happened to be surrounded by a big cage. This is that. Kai takes a nasty spill into the cage 2 minutes in, and the rest of the match is as if the cage is only there to obstruct our view. And since you can't bleed, it means the match becomes an exercise in Singapore cane shots, which is not as interesting to me as someone getting their face smashed into chain link. Ripley eventually takes a bump into the cage 20 minutes later, and Io Shirai does a Great Sasuke tribute by flying off the cage into everyone while entirely in a trash can. Raquel Gonzalez makes a great catch in the middle of it all, really absorbing all of a tiny person wearing a trash can. Kai even gets walking tall moments down the stretch!! It's amazing! She hits a killer double stomp off the top, flatting Shirai under that trash can, then triumphantly beats down Ember Moon and stands tall with a chair. Things do finally get good and heated after, with Moon hitting a pretty disgusting Eclipse, with Kai whipping her neck across the back of a chair. I didn't think Moon was doing that move anymore (don't think I've seen it since she came back), and it's cool when someone breaks out something big like that in a big match, and I like that Moon crashing through a chair taking Kai out of the match also took her out of the match. LeRae kicks a trash can lid into Ripley's face, Shotzi sentons LeRae off a ladder, Shirai eats a Gonzalez powerbomb through a ladder, tons of great stuff down the stretch. But I gotta say I'm pretty stunned how marginalized Shotzi was in this match, for a match that really felt like it was announced and built as HER match. I don't know if anybody would have picked Gonzalez pinning Shirai for the finish of this, but most of this was brutally backwards. 

Tommaso Ciampa vs. Timothy Thatcher

ER: I've really been digging Thatcher bullying guys on NXT, but I like when we get big match Thatcher. I think a lot of this was really good, and I bought into a lot of the attacks from both. Thatcher really looked like he was choking the life out of Thatcher (Ciampa's head veins are a gift when it comes to selling a sleeper), and Ciampa's bully choke down the stretch with Ciampa attacking Thatcher's freshly bloodied ear was great. Rhea Ripley got an earring ripped out of her ear against Io Shirai, then competed in a WarGames without a drop of blood, and then immediately following WarGames Thatcher gets his ear ripped open somehow. Ciampa's back neck is a compelling match story for me, and Thatcher is a guy who can do painful looking things to a neck. So I bought into Ciampa's neck selling and also loved when Thatcher would whip his head back with uppercuts. I do think the match went way too long and really didn't need to be worked as an epic, didn't need stuff like Thatcher bumping for 6-8 straight clotheslines (things like that felt transported from a different match), and I think Thatcher should have won here. I don't want them to fall into the temptation of turning Thatcher into a shoot guy who only picks on guys that can't defend themselves but never uses those skills to beat better guys. 

Dexter Lumis vs. Cameron Grimes

ER: Trevor Lee was someone who always wanted to work long matches and big title defenses in CWF Mid-Atlantic, and he seems like a guy who would get into trying to have interesting matches within somewhat limited match gimmicks. So far his performances in a cinematic match and blindfold match have been appropriately stoogey but perhaps too silly. And he brings strong stooging to this strap match, but just like the WarGames match earlier in the evening, it is a gimmick match that keeps pretending like the gimmick isn't there. Long stretches of the match are spent without them tied to a strap, and I was actually interested in how they were going to work in turnbuckle touching until realizing that of course it would just be a normal pinfall match. The best parts of this are Grimes taking a hard beating around the ring. He did a really good job at getting dragged and flung by the strap, including two painful bumps into the protective hockey arena siding, got pulled nicely into an uppercut, did a great job of falling while being yanked. My favorite bit of Grimes offense was when he just punched Lumis in the eye, and Lumis sold it like a guy who just got punched in the eye. They worked a few good spots around getting tangled up in a strap, and I loved when Lumis wrapped Grimeses' ankles and yoinked the strap, sending Crimes crashing head first into a chair. The finish submission looked good, like Grimes getting hogtied into a choke, overall liked what Grimes tried to do with the gimmick. 

Damian Priest vs. Johnny Gargano vs. Leon Ruff

ER: I really liked the two quick Ruff/Gargano matches I've seen (I'm a couple weeks behind on NXT TV, not sure what happened right before this show), and would have preferred seeing a PPV level Gargano/Ruff singles. I am also a guy who isn't a big Priest fan. However, having one much larger guy in there could make for a fun dynamic. The story of Priest not wanting to bother with Ruff because he only cared about taking his pound of flesh from Gargano was strong, even though Gargano's work with Priest is nowhere near as well done as Gargano's work with Ruff. All the Gargano/Ruff portions were good, but the Gargano/Priest stuff had awkward timing on several spots (including stuff like Gargano having to redo a tornado DDT spot, and a silly missed ear clap from Gargano after Johnny ducked early). Ruff eats a big razor's edge through one of the safety shields, and I really wish I could hear a real crowd during his eventual comeback. I think he would really be connecting with fans and I think the Gargano angle would play great in front of real crowds. I really wanted that Leon Ruff/Mikey Whipwreck story to keep going. Ruff keeping the title is could have given him a little more legitimacy, leaves you with a Gargano/Priest #1 contender match while moving Ruff onto someone else for a bit, and instead they just have Gargano win the title back. Ruff's involvement still felt like the best thing about this to me, and right up to that spike DDT that ended him he made everything look good. This was better than I was expecting as they dealt well with getting the third man out of there, but I also didn't love a lot of the Priest/Gargano stuff. The Scream mask guys were the absolute pits and killed any chance at the match being actually good, and I can't get excited in any way for an Austin Theory higher power situation. Nobody wants that. 

Undisputed Era (Roderick Strong/Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish/Adam Cole) vs. Pat McAfee/Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch/Pete Dunne

ER: Pete Dunne moves to Florida and within a couple months he's already getting that Crossfit body. He also might have jaundice? But I liked the opening with O'Reilly and Dunne, thought their mathwork had several fun scrambles, and had nasty things like Dunne kneeling on O'Reilly's arm while attacking the body. This WarGames is already so much better laid out than the women's match, with McAfee doing an awesome job being the guy acting like he wants in that cage, and Lorcan being an excellent choice to help Dunne dismantle O'Reilly. Lorcan dropping KOR with a half nelson suplex before Dunne runs in and kicks KOR's arm out from under him is a great asshole move, and seeing Dunne and Lorcan work as real assholes is great. Lorcan is also great at eating offense, so when Bobby Fish runs in Lorcan is expert at taking the UE double teams (I especially liked him getting pump kicked into a suplex). Weapons in WarGames is pretty stupid and unnecessary (you are in a cage you should act like you're in a cage and use it) but the cricket bat is a more interesting weapon that other played out stuff we've seen. Burch smacking O'Reilly in the bad arm with a cricket bat at least gives off a good sound. But we also get way too much table set up. I do not need all of these tables set up!m You have a whole cage, use the cage! WarGames matches do not need long spot set-ups.

Pat McAfee is a real genuine standout, a personality so strong that it only highlights the personality flaws in every other person in the match. It's incredible how much he gets about what he's supposed to be doing in there, and having him hit a moonsault through a table is the best kind of icing on that cake. The home stretch of the match had good energy, but also a lot of misspent energy? All of Adam Cole's offense runs looked bad, and the best use of Cole was when McAfee clipped his knee. Also, Wade Barrett refers to Pat McAfee as "one of the dirtiest players in NFL history" and...I guess I would really need to see footage of a punter who is also a dirty player. That sounds like a hysterical character (that Pat McAfee assuredly was not). I HATE the Undisputed Era "fight between the two cages" trope in these WarGames match. How does a team with guys I like keep doing things that I dislike? And this thing just goes WAYYYYYY too long. Way too many comebacks, way too many "peak" moments to build to, soooo much fat that could have been trimmed. It just felt like they kept building to the same big moment over and over again, like we were trapped in a loop and nobody knew how to actually finish the match. They build to McAfee and Cole alone, everyone else laid out, several times, and it never finishes anything. Every big move would just get a kick out, and then everyone would lie around for awhile before doing it all over again. McAfee completely knocks the wind out of himself when nobody decides to catch him on his bonkers cage swanton, Lorcan and Burch pull off a sick Doomsday Device, McAfee kicks out of Adam Cole's bunny hop flipping piledriver, everyone in the match lies in one part of the ring while Dunne and O'Reilly fight and also refuse to get pinned. This whole thing was 20 minutes too long and they kept building to things they had already built to. I like both of these teams, and like both of them against each other. But this was TOO MUCH of them against each other. I was totally burned out by the home stretch of this match, because it felt like we got too much wasted time and it felt like they were needlessly filling time. No main event should feel like it's just filling time. Still, Pat McAfee is a star. 

This was a disappointing show. But, up until the part of the main that started taking too long, I was still really enjoying this show. It was an underwhelming yet entertaining show, until it felt like I was trapped in an endless series of big encounter kickouts. There were plenty of strong individual performances, in fact every match at minimum had one real standout performance. So we end up with a show that underdelivered on quality, while also having no true bad matches and thus having an entertaining floor. You can't really call that a win, but it's not a terrible loss. 

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NXT Great American Bash 7/1/20

Tegan Nox vs. Dakota Kai vs. Mia Yim vs. Candice LeRae

ER: This is done elimination style, which is at least a nice change of pace from these multimans where people conveniently disappear the entire match. The early chaos was good and filled with fun Kai faces and a surprise early Candice elimination. Mia Yim had one very clunky spot where she dove "at" Nox and instead flew to the floor, but Nox hadn't been in that spot for awhile so it looked like Yim just turned around and ran/dove at nothing, like Kerry von Erich hitting a sunset flip on someone standing 10 feet away. But right after that she goes on a real fantastic run, hitting a sick rana on Nox after running across Kai's back, then snapping off a rana on Kai right after, then running into consecutive nice topes on both. It was really exciting in the moment even though after she was eliminated it did come off as one of those "let her get a series of cool moments before she gets pinned". I did not love the final Kai/Nox singles match. Tegan Nox just does not do it to me. Her wide mouth shocked faces on kickouts, her moveset that is a distilled version of the most current/basic indy moveset. It has no personality, and Nox herself appears to have no personality outside of "fashionable apron move shining wizard that doesn't hit and also knee brace". Kai's exaggerated heel expressions adds to things, but I just can't get excited by "Nox should have been finished but now she is fighting back with her heatless offense that everyone does!"

Timothy Thatcher vs. Oney Lorcan

ER: This was the exact kind of 10 minute fight I wanted to see. You knew you were going to have to endure 7 or 8 different Mauro references to Stu Hart and the Dungeon for whatever reason, but they ripped at each other's limbs in the best way so who cares. The grappling was strong and I dug how they established that Lorcan was going to hit harder and take more risks, while Thatcher felt like he was going to endure some chops and some unfavorable mat positions just for the chance to take apart Lorcan's arm. I like Lorcan's specific level of crazed and focused, where he also has no problem leaning into Thatcher's strikes and has no fear about landing in a disadvantaged position. Thatcher works for a nice Americana and Lorcan takes a nice bump to the floor, and I adore Thatcher's big throw belly to belly, where the motion seems so graceful and the hangtime sublime, and Lorcan lands like a sandbag. Lorcan really pays Thatcher back with a nasty half nelson suplex and then slaps him repeatedly down to the mat. I'm into the focus that guys like Lorcan and Gulak have brought back to a single leg crab, as they know how to lock them in so effectively that they make a hold WWE has phased out seem actually dangerous. But Thatcher's kneebar variation was my favorite thing here (if not this, then Lorcan's early match low angle headscissors takedown, one of the coolest headscissors I've seen in months), locking in a half crab of his own and then clutching Lorcan's shin, spreading pressure from the hamstrings to the knee to the quad. That's a disgusting hold and it needs to finish a few matches. Lorcan is a savage so of course tries to dig into Thatcher with a fishhook, and the way Thatcher shifted his weight and rolled across to a Fujiwara to break and win was a thing of beauty. I've seen these two square off several times over the years, and they always bring new fresh tricks to the table. Can't think of better ways to kill 10 minutes.

Rhea Ripley vs. Aliyah/Robert Stone

ER: This wasn't going to impress the crowd seeking a MOTN, but this had a vibe similar to old Coliseum videos or something like Razor vs. Jarrett/Roadie that isn't really seen on WWE TV anymore. They still do handicap matches, but they too often get trapped in this shitty modern version of a handicap match where everybody is still working all of the same spots they'd work in a normal singles match. This is not a great match that people will talk about at the end of the year, but everyone involved worked it exactly the way it should have been worked and I really liked it. I loved seeing non-matches like Heenan vs. Boss Man or Genius vs. Hogan when I was a kid. A match made up of two mostly non-competitive stooging heels is a rarity on WWE TV today, but was a structure that created a ton of fond memories for me as a kid. Stone and Aliyah knew how to create that kind of energy, that ineffective stumblebum who still had a couple small advantages. Rhea got some fun 1 on 2 runs, loved the double boston crabs and other spots where she's just too cool to fall for their Wile E. Coyote bullshit. Stone is a guy who was a regular wrestler who WWE hasn't used as a wrestler until now, and he knew exactly how to work "actual wrestler playing a non-wrestler". He's lean, he's wearing boxer's shorts comically high, he bumps just like a manager who knows how to bump but plays like he's falling on banana peels. He misses a plancha, gets caught doing a roll up and headbutted, just flailing at trying to get one over on Rhea. Aliyah is charming and has no chance against Rhea, it's all fun. This kind of lighthearted southern stooge handicap match is real Memphis, and is a missed presence on WWE television. This played like 1995 WWF in the best ways, an era that plays better than ever in 2020.

Roderick Strong vs. Dexter Lumis

ER: This one needed to be a bit shorter. I liked elements of it, and overall like Lumis as a character. So far I'm into the act, and I'm a Strong fan. Strong is maybe the wrestler I've most enjoyed over the past 15 years, who I talk about the least. He's been a good wrestler for a long time, someone I've seen live several times, someone who has made a ton of tape in several feds. And I think I like him a lot more than I've maybe written about. But I wanted this a little tighter, and without the distracting/overblown finish and Bobby Fish interference. Lumis brings an importantly different vibe to NXT, and Strong was playing a tough guy getting his ass beat really well. I'm a fan of strap matches and there were some cool things involving it, involving weight distribution, and plenty of Lumis yanking Strong around. Strong takes a great splatting bump getting yanked into the ring steps, opting instead to fly over them and backsplash the floor. I don't need the long "Lumis likes getting whipped" spot, but I like the nice Strong superplex, liked Strong tying Lumis up with the strap to lock in a Boston Crab, liked a lot of this. I had hoped this one would play as an overachieving old school stipulation brawl, and we didn't get there. But, it had a lot to like.

Io Shirai vs. Sasha Banks

ER: Just keep on giving me these Sasha Banks NXT main events daddy, and I'll keep enjoying them. It is exciting that there are signs of Sasha and Bayley being Actual Draws, because their act clearly has been one of the best things about minimal crowd wrestling. This whole thing is a win before it even starts, as Sasha/Bayley come out in a convertible and Bayley is holding Sasha's corgi in her lap. You give me corgis in my pro wrestling and I am going to care demonstrably less about the pro wrestling. This whole match was a great main event title match, not worked with parity but still managing to make it seem like either could pull out a win. Io's offense landed heavier here than it usually does, and part of that was Sasha's ragdoll bumping, but a big part was Io clearly working up to a main event singles match. Her missile dropkick, 619, and especially tope hit harder, with that tope really just flattening Sasha at the gut. Sasha goes for meteoras and knee strikes with gusto, which hit hard when she lands them and leaves her wide open when they miss, and that's a cool thing to base a match around. There is one messy spot with a German suplex miscommunication, but I think it adds to the match because of how Sasha chooses to sell it. Sasha was clearly supposed to land on her feet, but they get crossed on the release point and Sasha gets awkwardly folded and instead lands on her knees and face, kinda. But thankfully Sasha does not sell it as if she stuck the landing, and they both sell the proper amount of confusion, the way you should when a landing doesn't go perfectly. The big moments come off big, like Sasha trying to hit a wild sunset flip bomb and eventually flinging Shirai into the plexiglass, or Sasha's big missed frog splash that lands her in a crossface (that I thought was the finish). I'm still on the fence about the end of match interference, as I like Sasha trying to cheat using a tag title and liked the expected Asuka counterbalance. Asuka hits Sasha with the mist but I guess I wish Asuka hadn't just stayed out there dancing around in plain sight of the ref, while Sasha's face was now suddenly green. There were easy ways to do this spot and not have the ref come off dumb. But the match was strong, Banks is the queen, and Shirai looked good in her first match as champ.


ER: This was a real fun 2 hour show, that same sweet spot that the early (and excellently paced) In Your House shows went. 1:45-2 hours, every match with a totally different vibe. That's a great way to run a wrestling show, and this was a fun show top to bottom.

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WWE Big 3 Returns! Lorcan, Gallagher, GULAK 5/24-6/7/20

Battle Royal WWE Smackdown 5/29

ER: Drew Gulak has not had great luck in battle royals during his WWE tenure, but he's always a good presence in a battle royal. Here he is mostly on the defensive, but I like how he hooks his leg over the bottom rope while trying to eliminate guys from the apron, mostly locked in a battle with Cesaro. I will always love battle royal spots where one man is on the apron and someone in ring is pushing boot to throat, and Gulak is great at hanging on while Cesaro pushes that boot under his chin.  It feels like a good idea for me to make a couple keyboard shortcuts for Gulak, one of them being "would have liked to see this go longer but", as I was foolishly thinking his return after not taking a weak offer was going to turn into one of those weird Vince "this guy stood up to me and now I respect him" kind of situations, and I would have like more of him with Corbin. Corbin and Gulak had a good match on Smackdown last month, and Bryan had a great match with Corbin, along with a great trios. So they were keeping that Cesaro/Nakamura/Corbin feud going with Gulak and it would have been cool to see that go in Gulak's favor. But I also like Gulak taking a huge hiptoss to elimination, so oh well. As for non-Gulak people, Dolph Ziggler continued to show that his greatest strength is as a guy who comes very close to being eliminated from battle royals before eventually dying on his elimination bump. This was a decent enough battle royal.


Oney Lorcan/Danny Burch vs. vs. Roderick Strong/Bobby Fish vs. Tyler Breeze/Fandango NXT 6/3

ER: I wish this got twice the time it did, because I loved what these guys were bringing. The structure was tough to follow as it was a 3 way tag, meaning three guys were in the ring at all times, except for half of the match you had both members of UE in there and after awhile everyone was involved. Typing that out makes it sound like this was a mess and that guys would constantly be getting in each other's way, but somehow this was worked with precision. Everyone (except maybe Fish?) was working snug, and with nearly everyone involved at all times I thought they did a killer job of always giving everyone something to do. Burch is like an old man luchador as he seems to get better the higher up his trunks go, and here he at later career Villano III levels of trunk height (he really needs to pace himself as he's the same age as me, meaning those trunks will be over his tits by age 48, way too soon). Three way exchanges can be clunky and tired, but Burch was in their keeping things moving and mixing up strikes, throwing in a hard headbutt to make sure the exchange never approached rote, hard dropkick, throwing a surprise back elbow at Fish on the apron (which was paid off nicely when Fish laid him out on the floor later), and running interference for Lorcan's hot tag. Strong was a great pinball for Breeze and Burch, and I like that he took over when he just said fuck it and had Fish come in the ring full time. Fandango's hot tag was cool, totally forgot he had a cool snap powerslam and after he broke off the second one I kinda just wanted him to keep going. Lorcan's hot tag obviously ruled, with him flying into everyone with chops and elbows. Love how he flew into one corner with an uppercut, and cleared his path with an elbow on his way back to throw an uppercut in the opposite corner. Fandango tossing him over the top into most of the guys was done really well, but everything here was done well. With just a couple more minutes this could have been list, and it really wasn't far away as is.


Drew Gulak vs. AJ Styles WWE Smackdown 6/5

ER: Hot little Nitro match with both working quick to make up for the time. Styles always tightens things up when working against guys like Gulak. Not that Styles is out here showing daylight every other week, but he's also not throwing corner punches or aiming lariats at throats like he did against Gulak here. I like how Gulak recognized Styles' aggression early and started turning that into submission attempts, running Styles' into the mat with his cool crossface variation. Both guys got bounced off their head and shoulders in uncool ways: Styles shoving Gulak down into a backbreaker that bounced his head to the mat was probably my favorite moment of the match, and Gulak pays him back late with his cool drop down Michinoku driver variation. A fired up Gulak is quite a thing, and he really crushed AJ down the stretch with a dropkick that looked like it would have staggered anyone on the roster, big clothesline and an even bigger corner clothesline, and he knew exactly how snug to hold that pinfall. I had the weird hunch Gulak was winning here, and I'm happy he got the win with no kind of shenanigans, just outsmarting Styles and beating him to the punch.


Oney Lorcan vs. Tehuti Miles 205 Live 6/5

ER: I've been enjoying Tehuti on 205, he's the newest 205 guy who doesn't actually work like a cruiserweight. I like his brand of minimalism, and really enjoyed his Tyler Breeze match from a couple weeks ago. This match is built around the simple premise that Danny Burch kicked Miles around the ring last week, but Miles won with a schoolboy while grabbing the trunks. Someone who does a schoolboy with a handful of trunks on the show hyped entirely around the spectacular things that smaller wrestlers can do in the ring is someone I'm going to enjoy. This whole thing is worked simply, like a fun house show match where the goal is to pay off the simple story they broadly presented to the crowd. There's a reason that simplicity works. Lorcan uses almost entirely chops - and one wicked knee to the gut - to start and finish, hitting our story note early when Miles bails to the floor after taking some chops, gets stopped by Burch, then turns around into another Lorcan chop. The camera work was surprisingly good (because it was actually different) during Miles' control, and I especially liked the camera zooming in on Lorcan's face when Miles was scraping it with his boot in the corner. Miles drops some nice elbowdrops and works a cool Fujiwara armbar, then of course tries to win a handful of tights. This got a lot of time and I'm sure there was a better match they could have had, as neither guy was bringing out his biggest guns. But I liked the simple storytelling, Burch yelling about the pulled tights leading to Lorcan rolling Miles up with a prawn hold, and I like when guys work a more bare match like this. It's cool seeing wrestlers boiled down to their basics, and I'd love to see them build off of it.


Jack Gallagher vs. Isaiah Scott 205 Live 6/5

ER: This felt really scattered but always threatening to get really good, and the most successful moments were typical for Scott matches: whenever he drops the unnecessary embellishments things look better. This had a lot of Scott embellishments, and it played more like a Scott showcase than an actual match. And that's kind of what it feels like EVERY time we get a Gallagher/Scott match. Gallagher is great at working style clashes, but against Scott you never get enough "clash", you get guys waiting around for Scott to finish his windmill backspins so he can finally hit his headscissors. There were at least four different moments where Gallagher had to pause and leave a limb out for Scott to finish his embellished sequence, or stop short because he arrived at the right time for a sequence but Scott wasn't done with his handstand. Gallagher would try to drop interesting threads into the match, and Scott would make sure they'd go nowhere. I got excited for the moments that felt like the change was happening, like Gallagher wasting Scott's time avoiding him on the apron, only to grab his leg and yank it through the turnbuckles. But those moments where quickly forgotten in favor of Scott working so so armbars. When he toned down the BS it got good, and Gallagher's adjustments to go briefly into control were cool. I loved Gallagher leaping into a guillotine to drop Scott to a knee, or Gallagher working a side headlock on the top freaking rope, and reversing a big backdrop suplex into a hard landing crossbody. But you take a cool moment like that, and it instantly looks more silly with Scott kicking all four of his limbs like an upturned turtle. There was plenty to like here, but the main thing that hurt this match was that it never felt like a match, it just felt like Scott doing Scott things.

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