AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 3/31 - 4/6

AEW Dynasty 4/6/25

Daniel Garcia vs Adam Cole

MD: Let's go back to Full Gear. It was a night of misery and destruction, where babyface hope came to die in the main event as Orange Cassidy, who the company had rallied around as a leader and who had finally found the strength inside to stand tall failed to defeat Jon Moxley. The one bright spot at the bottom of Pandora's Box, however, was Daniel Garcia defeating Jack Perry and winning the TNT title. The post match was brisk moving, but we were left with the image of Garcia, draped with the AEW flag around his neck, belt in hand, walking to the back in triumph.

Immediately thereafter, we started to see something new out of Garcia. He had resigned with the company, albeit without the braggadocious fanfare of MJF and his tattoo. He was going to be a fighting champion, one that could anchor Collision. He reached to the crowd for support, sometimes literally, began using the ten-count punch like stalwart babyfaces of the past. He was a shining, glowing counterbalance to the New Heel army who were trying to get heat instead of just getting themselves over, guys like Fletcher, Ricochet, Okada, Blake Christian, Lee Johnson. 

He was the one holding up that other side of the scale; maybe with Briscoe, maybe with Hobbs, maybe with someone like Hologram, but it was mostly Garcia with a clear path forward. 

And what happened then? He did what he was asked to do. He anchored Collision. He had solid match after solid match, solid babyface performance after solid babyface performance. But look at the opponents they gave him: Mark Briscoe, Shibata, a three way with O'Reilly and Moriarty, and then on to Adam Cole. It was criminal to some degree. Yes, it was good to beat these people, but he needed heels lined up to knock down. Sometimes making a match that is going to be "good" isn't enough. "Goodness" isn't the same as vision. Garcia had the crowd behind him. Garcia was trying new things pulled out of times past, things that would have worked, that would have established themselves in the hearts of the fans, that could have worked against all of these new heels, all the way up to Mox. He could have been Misawa to Mox's Jumbo. But it needed time to grow and develop and for a crowd that hadn't seen it in years (and some of them having never seen it) to be able to latch on to and understand. 

And he was left, in the end, against Adam Cole again and again. Adam Cole might be the nicest guy in the world, but as a wrestler, as a heel, he's a cool heel, and as a face, he's a cool face. Nothing really gets to him. Nothing registers. His promo explaining why he betrayed MJF was the least apologetic, least likable promo I've heard in a very long time. He didn't take responsibility for his actions. He didn't admit even the possibility that he was wrong. He just doubled down on everything he did and their program was a disaster because of it. If he just channeled his own personal vulnerability instead of a Michaels-esque sort of self-conscious need to be above it all, he could be the top guy that people always thought he could be. He could really connect with the fans. But instead he puts on a mask, and will always ever only be (occasionally) the guy that wrestles the guy for one program.

The nicest thing I can say about this match is that it did channel all of the above, and Garcia, being as good as he is, was able to channel a lot of it in a manner which felt in character, even though you can blur the lines thinking about all of the above. You can make it so Garcia, the character, was the dragonslayer, the guy who wanted to be a new hero, to face all the cheaters and underhanded villains of the world and who was instead put up against people that the crowd backed. He was a fighting champion, so that was fine, but he wanted to carry the AEW banner against the people really doing the damage and they were keeping him away from all that. 

You can see him as someone who watched that Adam Cole promo, who had faced MJF himself and managed to fight him without losing his own standards. Yes, he escalated things with the top rope pile driver, but that was different than striking from behind and behind a mask. And now he had to stand tall against Cole, this disingenuous, untrustworthy, unrepentant (and Garcia, with his background and how he carries himself is someone who, like Eddie Kingston, seems to know a thing or two about repentance) scoundrel, who gets shot after shot on goal while the fans sing along to his catch phrase without really giving second thought to his actions. Garcia had to work for everything and Cole, even though he worked his way back from injury after injury, was never gracious about it, and instead made it seem like that was enough, like he deserved it all because of it. And the fans were split at best?

So Garcia, in the match, got more and more aggressive, strayed from the light, and in doing so, lost his way and fell. When what's happening in the ring correlates to what happens outside, it can be incredibly compelling. And I see that with Garcia now. He wanted to be something pure and good, wanted to represent a new, better AEW, one without all of the irony, one where deeds and words mattered, where actions had consequence, one with honor. And he was never truly given the chance, ultimately felled by a cool face who was the exact opposite of what he was trying to represent, and then he had to shake his hand anyway? Where does he go from there? Does he sink into villainy? Does he become just as bad as everyone around him? Does he stop caring and become jaded? Or does he redouble his efforts and find a purity of heart that help him give people hope in very, very dark times indeed. 

It's unfortunate that what he was primed to become wasn't fully capitalized on, but there's still an opportunity now for something special, because as entertaining and refreshing it has been to see heels that are willing to get heat, that are willing to serve the match and the company instead of just themselves, that are fearless and daring and push to make every action mean something instead of just hit clean and look cool, there needs to be babyfaces that can take advantage of that to help move hearts and minds. And Garcia was willing, was trying, was even starting to succeed. There's a feeling out there that still needs restoring, now more than ever, and it's not the feeling of 2019 or 2021. Where does he go from here, a good man that briefly lost sight of his true north and lost all that he had fought for because of it, trapped in a world that he didn't make? I don't know about the rest of you, but that's something I want to find out.

Kyle Fletcher vs Mark Briscoe

MD: There's nothing in wrestling I'm enjoying more right now than the first few minutes of a Kyle Fletcher match. He's bold and fearless, a wonderfully confident and selfless stooging heel. The more selfless he is, the more over the top, the more willing to look the fool, the more he comes off like a star and the more over he gets. And this match, unfortunately, likely because it wanted to hang with the rest of the PPV card and start from a more "elevated" place of action, tossed that entirely out the window. 

From a story perspective, it did make sense for Kyle to begin with a dive. He had lost two of his previous matches with Briscoe. He knew how dangerous it was. They went right on to apron spots (albeit with some fun vocalization by Fletcher) and then Briscoe going for the chair (with a great moment of Mark telling the fans to boo the ref when he stopped him). That all made sense in character. For the sake of the match, it was about getting a hot spot and feeling PPV worthy. I think that was a mistake. While the show had some fun stuff overall (like the headslapping bit with Ricochet which was one imaginative sequence out of 20 in that match), contrast makes the world goes round and five minutes of Fletcher stooging and stalling and letting things sink in at the start would have stood out far more on this card and would have stayed with people far more than the aforementioned 'hot start.'

What it did allow, perhaps, was Fletcher to really take his time on the heat. I saw people complain about Moxley's "plodding" heat segment in the main event and I honestly that was pretty good with how he moved from one hold to the next smoothly and worked the wound. But even if that isn't for everyone, Fletcher's approach is more engaging. He has big pieces of offense and then he milks them after the fact, really posing and preening and playing to the crowd and let it all sink in until his theatrics lets Briscoe come back and Fletcher cuts him off with something big again, going right back to the preening. It's less, but it lets each thing that actually hits, already impressive on its own, mean so, so much more than if he had just went from spot to spot to spot. No one in AEW is really letting everything sink in quite like he does and if they couldn't have both the early match stooging AND the time-taking in the heat, then I guess it's good that they gave us at least one of the two. 

It worked down the stretch as well, as they threw bomb after bomb and they really, truly needed the weight of Briscoe being so hurt that he couldn't capitalize after, for instance, the cutthroat driver. That became believable because the weight of what happened during Fletcher's control segment and so much of that resonated because Fletcher was so engaged and engaging throughout it. But I think this could have even been better if they did 1/3rd less down the stretch and reallocated some of that time to an opening third where Fletcher could have stalled and posed and used his new tearaway pants and gotten some early shine comeuppance from Briscoe.

AEW Collision 4/5/25

Athena/Julia Hart vs Mercedes Mone/Harley Cameron (Parejas Increibles)

MD: This wasn't actually a parejas increibles match, but at the same time, it really, truly was. Athena and Julia Hart, despite celebrating together after the match was over, were absolutely strange bedfellows. This wasn't Julia and Sky hanging in the ropes together pre-match. It wasn't Athena and Billie (or Diamante currently) with meanstreak MIT appeal up against Ronda Rousey and Marina Shafir (what a fever dream that was). Harley and Mercedes did get it and were allowed it in the build to this, but the circle wasn't squared and all the pieces didn't quite fit together. 

That's not to say both Athena and Julia didn't get individual moments. There was a palpable buzz even from a very exhausted double taping crowd whenever Athena and Mercedes shared a ring. Julia's comeback against Mercedes when she lifted up out of the tree of woe was memorable, especially for Mercedes' bump. Very on point for Julia. It's just that they never quite came together and interacted the way you would have wanted to. A parejas increibles match is all about those interactions, the weird mix of alchemy of putting these robust, dynamic, larger than life characters in situations they wouldn't normally be in.

And it's important to make the most of that, because there are some natural shortcomings. In lucha, you often see partners refuse to cooperate to the point of a match breaking down or one rudo helping his opponents instead of his partner, and while that can be chaotic, it doesn't exactly lend to compelling narratives over time (like over the entire CMLL Parejas Increibles Tournament for instance).  Here, the problem was one of sympathy. Julia and Athena are tweeners at best with Athena being positioned as an outright heel on ROH TV. The Hounds of Hell have been babyfaces this year but Julia is maybe less of one depending on who she's facing. Harley is clearly a babyface; not only is she a babyface but she's one of the most sympathetic ones in the company, up there with Orange Cassidy and Mark Briscoe, beloved. 

Here she was expected to help Mercedes work over Julia, and the fans, on one level, would be glad for her when Mercedes accepted her and praised her, but on the other, it all made it tough for the Julia/Athena team to get sympathy. I think this situation would have been hard for anyone on the roster let alone two wrestlers (in Julia and Harley) that had around 150 matches under their belt between them. In a company that's so good at coming up with clever spots and set pieces, I do wish sometimes they'd pause and think about what the most interesting squeezing out of characters and interactions would be in any situation, that could put more emphasis on character motivations and how they feel about what's before them and the broader world. That would have helped Julia here and it probably would have helped Harley too. This was a good effort and an entertaining match (with a great, if muddled, comeback moment with the puppet), but I think in a situation like this, there's still so much more that could be mined with just a little more thought behind it all.

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Eric's WWE Survivor Series Live Blog 11/21/21

ER: Gotta say, it's pretty difficult to find much interest in WWE's programming these days. These constant roster cuts have turned things into the worst possible Oakland Athletics team, where any single one of my favorite wrestlers to watch could be pushed on one program and then released the next day. WWE hasn't been paying off storylines for a long time, making that aspect of their product completely pointless to follow, but still had a roster with a ton of people capable of great matches on any given night. But no wrestler allowed to get past a certain level of popularity, combined with my favorites to watch being on the chopping block every day, and absolutely terrible direction  - the biggest wrestling promotion in history has been presenting the literal worst visual wrestling presentation for several years now - has made this a nearly impossible promotion to get behind and enjoy. I know next to nothing about this card, but I have a tragically boring Sunday afternoon with a sudden hole in it so let's see if they give us something worth showing interest in. 

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Damian Priest

ER: This was at its best during the first half, before the part of the Damian Priest match where every exchange became a reversal of a sloppily thrown spin kick. I like Damian Priest when he throws strikes intended to land; I hate Damian Priest when he throws a strike intended to set up an opponent's strike, which is then thrown to set up Damian Priest's strike. This match was a 50-50 blend of those two Priests, and it kept things from being as good as they could have been. Nakamura isn't without flaw, but it's tough to not look like you're messing things up when you're forced to wait in place for someone's in-ring springboard axe handle reversal. Long story short: The parts where they hit each other were fun, the parts where they missed each other were dumb. 

I am so sick of seeing The Rock in every piece of media. I have had my official fill of The Rock. You gave us Rampage and we will always have that but I am tired of seeing The Rock be The Rock in things. 

Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte

ER: Regardless of how much I don't love this specific kind of match build, where both people just come off like unlikeable smarmy assholes and the heel is the one who I guess is more of an asshole, we can all agree that Becky Lynch's Toxic tribute ring gear is perhaps her greatest all time look. That's a look that feels more important than a match with an uneven worked shoot build. The two people in the ring couldn't back up the build even if the energy felt there at times. Energy can be enough to turn something like this great, but it needed to be done without Charlotte's canned ham. You needed more shit like Becky ripping out a bit of Charlotte's hair to prevent a figure 4 reversal, and less of Charlotte doing Andrade tribute offense that makes her look like George Costanza running through pigeons. Charlotte looks like a total klutz who can't hit the broad side of a barn, and after every Lynch kickout you never know where the Al Pacino overacting dial is going to land. Charlotte has the gift of making it really obvious when she is maneuvering into position for offense, while also being really bad about being in place for offense. The moonsaults looked as bad as ever, and doing a bunch of handspring moonsaults that don't connect in the middle of a worked shoot atmosphere is just the stupidest kind of energy. Bad finish that doesn't resolve anything doesn't do anyone any favors, and surely guarantees more of the exact same build to another similar match. 

Bobby Lashley/Austin Theory/Finn Balor/Kevin Owens/Seth Rollins vs. Xavier Woods/Jeff Hardy/Sheamus/Baron Corbin/Drew McIntyre

ER: When the rosters of two different TV shows have been pointlessly churned with seemingly no communication to talent, it's a bit much to sell a 5 on 5 match expressly under the banner of Brand Bragging Rights. I could not imagine caring less about a team from Smackdown beating a team from Raw, and if there are fanbases of people who have allegiances to either Raw or Smackdown but not both, then I cannot imagine that will ever be me. Best to watch a match like this as a match randomly generated by your AKI engine, since WWE's roster at this point has the consistency of me frequently erasing wrestlers and making new CAWs in No Mercy. And as a low stakes 10 man elimination match, it settles into a very fun match very quickly. Corbin was the early standout, loved his big right hands and how good he is at creating openings and setting up spots for Balor. Woods drops a great leaping fistdrop, Sheamus runs in with a leaping knee, Drew runs in with a kick, it's a cool team working in a good rhythm. These matches are about rhythm and if everyone keeps it reasonably well, it is automatically good. You just need them to be as well oiled as any All Japan Senior Circuit trios match. 

Balor sticks Corbin with the double stomp which looked good, but a shame because Corbin was the guy here who best knew how to tie this into an Actual Match. Austin Theory is someone I enjoyed in his NXT role, who feels completely fish out of water in this match. I buy him on NXT. I do not yet buy him moving Sheamus. With Corbin gone, we quickly wind into Drew/Lashley. Now, I think McIntyre and Lashley are two of the better guys in current WWE, but for the past couple years it has felt like EVERY match has come down to Lashley vs. McIntyre. It is a good pairing that also makes me feel like I'm trapped in time. Still, give me all of Bobby Lashley's big ass backdrop bump from the crowd to ringside. I think the steam gets taken out of this way too early and then continues too long after. Once it settled down to a Rollins/Theory vs. Sheamus/Hardy tag if felt like a house show tag between guys who don't know how to work a good house show tag. I will hoover up the slop on any random WWF house show handheld from the early 90s, but is there anyone out there who would get excited to watch a Sheamus/Hardy vs. Rollins/Theory handheld? This went on too long for what it overall accomplished, and I think it was a mistake to make this seem like a long epic instead of a quick paced showcase. Nobody could look at this match and think it makes for a useful Brand Showcase, and if a Brand Supremacy match can't do that then what did it really do? 

Vince needs to do more eccentric unhinged billionaire stuff like silently pantomime with a golden egg, because what the fuck else would we need from him at this point? 

This Brand Battle Royal is not a serious match and doesn't need to be considered as one. This is a Pizza Hut commercial and not a battle royal, and we don't need to act like this matters and that Colored T-Shirt Wrestling isn't one of the stupider features of modern WWE Survivor Series. 

The Usos vs. Randy Orton/Matt Riddle

ER: A not bad tag that relies on the strong timing of Randy Orton and Jey Uso. Riddle has been having a tough to watch year, with some of the worst vignettes and listless in-ring. We all get in ruts and his rut has been difficult to see so frequently this year. But it's fairly effective have him sell, run into nicely timed Jey Uso superkicks, and make dumb faces until making the big hot tag to Orton. Orton has always been a strong apron guy and he's been utilizing his apron work well in this tag team. Apron work is one of those skills that will keep on aging wrestler's floor high with me, and I like how Orton keeps leaning on it as a strength. He's good at tossing Usos around and hitting snap powerslams, and his RKO on the Jey superfly splash looked like a great finish. This match benefitted from its lackluster surroundings, but still earned enough of its status as "the best this show has given us".

Bianca Belair/Carmella/Liv Morgan/Rhea Ripley/Zelina Vega vs. Sasha Banks/Shayna Baszler/Toni Storm/Shotzi Blackheart/Natalya 

ER: I like how this looks on paper, this looks like a match I want to see! The women all have blue/red-accented gear is such a better look than the t-shirts. This looks like a real joshi final battle where everyone is taking this seriously. Guys wrestling in red t-shirts look like employees participating in a mandatory 5K.  The pace of this match is much better than the pace of the men's match. It's a shame Carmella went out so early, but Natalya did that weird thing where she memorably shows up in a match with 10 people, and I liked Baszler rolling on the mat with Ripley. The match was already the most fun of the night when we got to the great Sasha/Bianca section. WrestleMania feels like an eternity ago but their match was the best WWE match of this year and their in-ring chemistry still has a lot to offer. When they're in the ring together they really feel like the two biggest stars in the company, the two closest to being chopped down, and there are few people who actually feel like stars when I watch them. Bianca's kip-ups look punched with confidence and Sasha is able to convey the same kind of "can you believe this shit?" attitude Charlotte shouts to the back row but using only her eyes. 

Sadly, we hit a bad patch right after those two megastars made the crowd sit up and pay attention, with some quick eliminations and suddenly several women all lying dead around the ringside area selling mystery injuries. This isn't a ladder match, why are they all suddenly doing ladder match disappearance selling? A few dumb do-si-do moments on the floor lead to a Sasha count out in completely unsatisfying fashion, and the way Bianca goes from being down 4-1 to eliminating Baszler and Shotzi felt forced and cheap. The disappearance selling takes away a lot of the charm of a charismatic Survivor Series match, a series that can benefit from apron work. These women get so out of sight while selling nothing that you forget who is even still in the match! You could have made Belair look really really good while also having her plausibly fight off Shotzi and Baszler, but this felt like suddenly everybody had to be somewhere and it killed the buzz. 

Big E vs. Roman Reigns

ER: I think this was a good match, but these Roman matches have really become the blown out 150 minute MCU epic instead of the tight 90 minute action and stunts movies that he could be having. This was a long show, filled with long matches that mostly didn't deliver, and you need to be better at reading the arena than this main event was. This was a cold, tired crowd and that did not lead to any kind of pace being pushes AT ALL. That said, Roman did his specific thing that - love it or hate it - did turn a dead silent crowd into a slightly more involved crowd the longer he stuck to his routine, and there's some respect there. In its favor, even though the melodrama of them getting to the action was at times too much, when the action was gotten to it looked like a well done Godzilla/Mothra collision. Big E took some hard bumps for Roman's biggest stuff, and that uranage on the shoulders looked deadly. Roman's punches all looked big and the deadlift powerbomb was impressive. I wish we could have made this more of an unpredictable Brock bombfest and gotten out of here quicker, but they made the good stuff look good and that stands out on this show. 

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WrestleMania 37 Night One 4/10/21

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

Drew McIntyre vs. Bobby Lashley

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

Women's Tag Gauntlet

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

Seth Rollins vs. Cesaro

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

Kofi Kingston/Xavier Woods vs. AJ Styles/Omos

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

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

Shane McMahon vs. Braun Strowman

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

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

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

Bianca Belair vs. Sasha Banks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns

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

Matt Riddle vs. John Morrison vs. Bobby Lashley 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Sasha vs. Charlotte Street Fight

53. Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte WWE Raw 11/28

PAS: You have to give a lot of credit to both of these women. Multiple times this year they have been placed in high profile, unprecedented spots and they have delivered every time. This was my favorite of their main roster matches. It had a real sloppy violent feel to it, which is the kind of wrestling I love, it actually weirdly felt a lot like the Jordynne Grace vs. Heidi Lovelace IWA-MS streetfight we loved so much from 2014 (review here). Same kind of crowbarring, same kind of recklessness. I loved that insane bump Sasha took off the ring apron, totally looked like it knocked her cold. Charlotte's moonsault was totally nuts, and the finish was awesome, looked totally painful and really took advantage of Charlotte's flexibility. I liked this a lot better than the Hell in the Cell, had all of the things I liked from that match, with less of the things I didn't.

ER: Sasha Banks has been one of my very favorite performers over the past year, while I think Charlotte keeps looking worse and worse in ring. I thought we had already added this match to our 2016 MOTY List, and when I saw I never wrote my part of the review (Phil wrote his share several years ago) I figured I'd fix that. The only thing I really remember about the match is the finish, with Sasha locking the Banks Statement on in the crowd, bending Charlotte back over a handrail. These two had a crazy 2016 against each other, and this match might have had their craziest material. This was falls county anywhere and was worked really stiff, and several of their big spots were dangerously ambitious. Sasha hits a really great dive early, following it through to the floor and landing like a super heavy crossbody. They both take hard suplexes and spills on the floor, Sasha breaking out meteoras from high landings, and she takes a really crazy bump off the apron. Sasha was always great for a reckless death bump in a big match. Charlotte has always had really ugly form on chops - that hasn't changed - but ugly or not, her chops on the apron landed with a thud. She was chopping Sasha right in the boobs and Sasha paid her back with an elbow. It all builds to a Charlotte moonsault off the announce table up on the entrance stage, and a moonsault from that high up, with the only thing standing between you and concrete being a 110 lb. woman, is a psychotic spot for a WWF main eventer. The whole match had a real strong fight feel to it, and the crowd picked up early on that they were killing each other out there, and that really added to things. We're a little over 4 years later and I think Sasha will be the biggest star in wrestling if her current trajectory keeps up. Meanwhile, Charlotte's in ring stock has fallen every year since. We'll always have 2016. 

2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Royal Rumble 2021 Live Blog

Nia Jax/Shayna Baszler vs. Asuka/Charlotte

ER: I thought Charlotte and Nia looked like a real mess throughout their whole Raw match earlier in the week, and they seem to have less chemistry a week later at the Rumble. I think it's pretty shocking how much Charlotte especially has regressed in the past couple years, and I wish they would hurry up and get Asuka away from her. I've mostly been a high voter on Jax but she's been noticeably slow and lazier in exchanges since coming back (ACL tears in both knees will do that to you). Things get clunky whenever Charlotte is in this one, and part of that is Baszler and Jax not being great at getting into position for Charlotte's offense, but a bigger part is Charlotte requiring people to too often be in specific position for offense that doesn't look great. She made a great diving save to break up a pin, but every one of her stomach kicks looked like she forgot what move she was supposed to be replicating. I'm also well beyond the point of needing to see Ric Flair on TV more than once or twice a year, and do not care about this angle with him and Lacey. I don't think this match ever came together as anything resembling a satisfying tag, the Asuka/Charlotte pairing does nothing for me, and the Baszler/Jax pairing has been very underwhelming. They need to separate all four of them and see if that helps freshen any of them. 

Goldberg vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: I am here for MMA shorts Goldberg. Really, I am here for Goldberg, so. This didn't really have the same kind of impact or sustained heat of the other Goldberg comeback matches, and ended really flat. It had a lot of promising steps throughout, like the spear nearfall to start, or the spear through the barricade, and I fully bit on the jackhammer kickout. Once Goldberg hit it I actually thought they were giving us another Goldberg run. And while I liked Goldberg's missed spear chest first corner bump, McIntyre needs to find something a little more interesting to do than making dumb Edge faces in the corner for FAR too long while Goldberg sells damage. I know part of the modern WWF dogshit style is to make dumbshit faces in the corner for too long before hitting your finisher, but this felt way too long, and ended this on an unfortunate note. 

Carmella vs. Sasha Banks

ER: A lot of this match really was not hitting for me, until things picked up with the Reginald involvement. It felt like they kept skipping steps within the match, like there weren't any kind of transitions between offense, they just went right to moves. Except Carmella was doing the moves deliberately slow, because heel I guess, and then when Sasha took over she was already doing "frustrated by only a 2 count" faces. It all felt really underbaked. The Reginald involvement added something unique to the match, loved him catching Sasha and eating a headscissors, this guy rules. But he's quickly sent to the back and Carmella does a dive that lands her right on her face. It used to be Sasha's job to almost break her face on dives, so Carmella is trying to do the equivalent of stealing her rival's finisher. Ending felt abrupt and not set up super well, with Carmella getting a couple nice reversals of big Banks spots, but then just getting tapped anyway. This was not a strong title match, and there aren't any weaker Banks title matches coming to mind. Major disappointment. 

Women's Rumble Match

ER: Bayley/Naomi is a good way to start the Rumble, but MAN has Naomi been a complete afterthought for seemingly 2 years. Her whole career has felt like her having a big showing on one of the big WWF PPVs, then them mostly not doing anything with that. She really could have been a major star a few years ago and they just repeatedly stall out on her. This is the first time she's been in any kind of match for 5 months, but I'm not sure if there were injuries or just a lack of interest. This really should be Bianca Belair's match. It has to be. If they just pull the trigger on her, come on baby! How awesome is Belair, skipping to the ring and removing her earrings for a fight? I've really been enjoying Billie Kay's solo run. I thought she was sunk for sure, but she's done far more interesting things than Royce since the split. Still would like it more with them together again, but oh well. I don't love Shotzi coming in and just doing all of her offense, the way she would entering a tag match. Everyone running at her, one at a time, the way you would in a hot tag or in a ninja movie is just dumb. It's one of the main reasons there aren't many good battle royals anymore, because "working a battle royal" is not the way most wrestlers work battle royals now. I don't like regular match in my battle royal, I get that in regular matches, which are plentiful. Watch a Rumble match like '89 or '90, and it's all those guys just filling the time with fighting. It's all punches and clotheslines and choking with boots. Now it's offense and I don't think it's better. 

Jillian Hall seems to be doing a Judy Tenuta thing now, and I think it works? Maybe it's an indication how well Peyton Royce is doing post Iiconics that I had no idea who her entrance music was for, and the Titan Tron video took forever to say it was Royce. Ohhhhhhhh shit I've been typing about it this entire time and I just realized they might get the Iiconics back together for this and I fucking want that so bad. It's a good way for them to get back together. Let them eliminate a couple people together and it's a great way to organically show that they're better when they're together! It would actually be a smart way to freshen up the roster, get an interesting team into the lifeless Asuka/Charlotte and Jax/Baszler stuff. But, of course, they don't do any of that. Royce almost immediately blends into the background of the match, and Kay is eliminated a few minutes later. A fruitful storyline abandoned without mention. 

Not a fan of the early and tossed off Toni Storm elimination. I've kind of unexpectedly become a big Toni fan over the past year. I am not interested in this becoming The Charlotte Match. But it really feels like a dumb thing WWF would do. "Ric had what we've defined as the Greatest Rumble Performance so now we need to give Charlotte her Greatest Rumble Performance." Please don't give us that. Too many people have been entering with missile dropkicks. It is stupid that so many have entered the match by immediately climbing to the top rope, and nobody has been punished for climbing to the top rope in the Royal Rumble. The ring is FILLED with people, someone should knock this person off the top rope while they are voluntarily standing there! This is another reason why people cannot work battle royals. The handstand set up for it was dumb, but I did like Dana Brooke hanging off Ripley's neck in a headscissors while Ripley tried to shake her off from the apron. Brooke was memorable in elimination. The layout of this has been weak for long stretches, like a couple instances of someone getting eliminated right before a new entrant, losing any impact of the elimination. BAYLEY'S elimination happened DURING Mickie James's entrance!! Who fucked that up!! Bayley was clearly one of the favorites to win this match, and they moved on within three seconds!! They showed her elimination as a replay, because the cameras were on James and not the arguable biggest name in the match being eliminated. That's really really bad layout for a Rumble. 

WWF could use Alicia Fox back. She would be a fun NXT act at minimum. Give me a Foxy/Aliyah pairing, that would be great. Strong inside cradle on R-Truth to get the 24/7 title back from Fox, good weight on the back of the thighs. I love Dakota Kai, and goddamn did she get eliminated. Ripley just dumped her face first on the apron. Not happy seeing Mandy and Kai eliminated back to back. I'm jinxing the hell out of my personal favorites. They do ANOTHER elimination RIGHT BEFORE a new entrance!! It has to be intentional at this point, and that is so stupid! Nikki Cross gets eliminated one second before TAMINA comes out. Eliminations with zero fanfare are a battle royal curse. There is a way to make eliminations sink in and at least let the announcers talk about the implications a bit, no need to be doing all of these at the exact same time as a thing that everyone is more interested in. The Naomi/Bianca stuff was good, they need to focus more on how long both have been in and they've been a little background, but I like how they're getting more screen time the longer they're in. 

They're going to do dumb Alexa Bliss stuff, aren't they. Yep. But THAT is a good elimination by Ripley! Thank god they had at least some Rumble decency, to have a dozen people in the ring just watching someone go through a long "transformation" without doing anything about it. I am so happy we didn't have to spend more than a minute on that. Ember Moon is yet another person coming in and doing all of their offense like a a normal match, but she dropkicks Naomi right in the face in a way that didn't seem intentional. Ember Moon looked really bad on her elimination, with that slow motion "setting up a spot" run she did to get backdropped by Shayna. Loved Nia's "I can't, she's family" excuse to not go after Tamina, but her hockey fighting with Shayna after Tamina's elimination looked bad. I'm not into the Nia/Shayna thing, just doesn't feel like it's going anywhere and the journey to get there isn't interesting. Do I hate Natalya's new gear? My instinct says yes, but is there an element of it I'm underappreciating? Perhaps. I'll level with you, I did not know there was important emotional history with Natalya and Lana. Was that elimination effective? I could not tell you. I have not been closely following the Natalya/Lana relationship. Charlotte has felt like a complete non-factor the entire time she's been in the Rumble. She was not working to stand out at all, so I am fully not interested in her valiantly battling against two foes, and I also don't understand her treating her elimination like a drunk sorority girl getting thrown out of a bar that overserved. 

I'm a big fan of Bianca going to WrestleMania, it's a great choice and the most interesting direction to go. But I wished I enjoyed her and Ripley's final two. I thought a lot of it looked real bad, like them doing really slow reversal sequences and slow thrown missed strikes. Ripley was hanging on the ropes dangling, and Belair just stood there waiting instead of kicking at her hands, literally standing there waiting to do the spot that came next. Working battle royals as a normal match suuuuucks. So I thought their final two stretch was not good, but the end result was great, and they did a genuinely great job of making it look like either Belair OR Ripley had a chance. That's important. Bianca's winner's speech was the kind of thing that would have been nice to see in front of a live crowd. 

Kevin Owens vs. Roman Reigns

ER: This didn't hook me until they started fighting up into the "crowd", and I liked some of the stuff up there. Owens had all these nasty chairshots to Roman's knees. He was jabbing the edge of a chair into Roman's patella, then just bashing them from the side, all really nasty stuff that should be sold throughout a match. They looked really hobbling but Reigns didn't treat them as such a moment later, which is disappointing. Owens had a nice bump off the riser and a good moment of him beating the 10 count. But once they went backstage it just felt like the same kind of slow Shane McMahon prop show that they've been doing into the ground. This whole thing is going too long, and I am so tired of these slow epic brawls that always make 20 minutes feel like 30 and 30 minutes feel like 45. These matches are more "ideas" matches than interesting fights, but none of the ideas are as good as any of the homebrew shit cooked up in the Last Battle of Burke. Sitting through an endless 25 minutes with a handcuff spot at the end taking up over 10% of the match is such a punishing waste of time. Michael Cole was right when he described this thing as brutal. I thought it would never stop. 

 

Men's Rumble Match

ER: I have not been following the storyline here, and that is just cruel to start this thing with Edge/Orton. This feels like they're fucking with me. Edge is at least a more compelling character now that his gimmick is that his body could break at any minute. Sami Zayn is looking, dressing, and wrestling more and more like Buck Robley, and I think it could make him one of my favorites. Has Mustafa Ali had his first name back since joining Retribution? Is Retribution a stable where getting back your own name is important, and that's why most of them have names like their parents were "child can choose their own name" parents? Edge has a better spear now than he did 10 years ago. When I'm not too into a match, I usually don't find myself saying "You know I bet this thing could get better if Dolph Ziggler got involved." I want to see a run from super gassed Carlito!! He looked like peak 80s gas Jimmy Snuka with cool Dick Anthony Williams facial hair. 

These things kind of stink now that the moments are all planned in the exact same way. Guy comes in, does his signature offense while people run at him one by one, do pose to hard cam, storyline for next elimination starts once new entrant is done with his offense, elimination culminates with 10 seconds until next entrant. They have gone to that exact same pattern in this and the women's rumble, and it sucks. 

Kane comes out looking more like the local guy playing Kane on an Australian knock off indy. That other guy might look better in ring at this point though. I wish Otis would have been in the match longer, thought his discus clothesline and capture suplex looked really great, but at least his elimination bump was the nastiest of the men's rumble so far. Dominik got big height, and Hurricane would be a nice guy to have back somewhere, but this rumble is not great. There are no compelling stories here, and it's felt like it's been full of restarts. Christian return is cool, and here's a thing I cannot believe: When Christian, Riddle, Big E, and Bryan all teamed up to force Lashley over, that was literally the first time in EITHER rumble that a group decided to go after one person. It's been all these stupid paired of "stories" that aren't really interesting, instead of people actually thinking like someone IN a rumble. That moment actually felt like a rumble, like a few people suddenly remembered a rumble strategy. What I said earlier about Edge having a way better spear in 2021 than he did in 2010? Still holds, as his spear on Styles looked great. Victoria Beer, seen in the background of every lucha match I've been watching lately, is now sponsoring Royal Rumble entrants? Nobody else got sponsored? Kane and AJ Styles were in there, StopTheSteal didn't want to sponsor them? Christian and Sheamus always had great chemistry. I'd love to see a 2021 Christian/Sheamus match. 

Cesaro lifting and throwing Strowman over the top would have been far more interesting than Strowman eliminating Cesaro, and Sheamus deserved better. Bryan and Riddle really laced into each other during their portion, and Bryan would be my easy pick if asked "Who would you like to win this rumble?" This is the first time these two have had an exchange of any kind, and it all looked really great. What looks riduculous is every person still left in the match lying around the ring while Bryan and Riddle can just have a 4 minute match. Nobody should be lying on the mat for that long, let alone four people at the same time. I thought the finishing run was pretty bad, thought the Bryan elimination was a pretty big nail in the coffin. The Edge story is not something I can get too interested in, but all of his spears looked great in this match, and I could actually see him being a part of a good match now. I'm not expecting it, but he is slightly more interesting now than a decade ago. 

ER: Disappointing show top to bottom. Both Rumbles were really uninspired and badly laid out, the Last Man Standing match felt endless, the tag title match was bad, and the Sasha match was below her level. That's a bummer of a show right there. 

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WWE TLC 2020 Late Blog

My sister is moving in a month, so I spent the weekend with her packing boxes and moving things into her garage. A stunt show PPV I can have on in the background and pay partial attention to sounds like it could be fun. Not super familiar with the card so I'm kind of going in blind, which hopefully leads to being pleasantly caught off guard. Am very excited for Sasha/Carmella.

Daniel Bryan/Otis/Chad Gable/Big E vs. King Corbin/Cesaro/Shinsuke Nakamura/Sami Zayn 

ER: Bryan keeps shaving the sides of his head higher and higher, and he continues his career trend of Always Having the Hair of a 10 Year Old. Otis is wearing a Vader singlet, and this match looks like something that can't miss on paper. These 8 guys in a 2000s NOAH setting would light things on fire, so I'm high hoping this one. And it was actually really good. It had a great Coliseum Video feel to it, the way it was worked, and the way it was 4 babyfaces vs. 4 heels and they're mostly aligned because of being either a face or a heel. Zayn was avoiding Big E and running around the ring and hiding like Jimmy Hart, and it was balanced well with quick tags and a brief cool down to build to the big finish run. Corbin is good at working cool down (that's an actual compliment) and good at inserting himself in the hot finish, Bryan glues all this together to build to the big Otis hot tag, and the finish stretch move chaining all looked good. Cesaro hits this awesome deadlift Dr. Bomb and just lets him go, Corbin hits a great spinebuster on Otis, we get our big showdown between Big E and Zayn and Zayn gets caught. It's all very satisfying pro wrestling. 

AJ Styles vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: I really liked this, but thought the ladder stuff really took away from the match at points. I liked the first 8 minutes when no weapons were used the best, with Styles bumping big around the ring and ringside. He took hard hits into the buckles, got dropped ribs first a couple times on the barricade, got thrown over a table with chairs on it as if he were in a fight in a closed bar, and it was great. Setting up tables and climbing ladders changed the pace of the match, which they made up for by building to hard landings (Styles gets tossed hard on a ladder and thrown over the top through a table at ringside), so everything looks like it really stings. But I think the ladder climbing really took me out of it as the climbing doesn't feel anywhere near as climactic as had they just been wrestling. Miz cashing in his briefcase and then doing the slowest possible climb really made this stip feel stupid, though I think the fight choreography when they got to all three fighting on the ladders was good. Styles working over McIntyre's leg lead to a couple nice moments, like the calf slicer through the ladder. Styles' bump off the ladder to the floor looked sick, and Miz was made to look like an absolutely tremendous fool. Also, I do not need Miz in the title scene and him losing in this kind of fashion is perfectly fine for me. A match that lost me, but one that also had a lot of good (front loaded), but needed an editor. 

Sasha Banks vs. Carmella

ER: I thought this was really good, as good as I was hoping it to be. It had a couple twists and turns, made Carmella look like a worthy challenger, built to a feverish home stretch, one of those matches where a better opponent helps bring out the best parts of Carmella. Sasha is really great at this point, so much that it always bums me out that none of this is playing in front of live crowds. Sasha feels like she'd be the biggest thing in 2020 wrestling if there were live shows. I'm really glad this was a straight match and not worked under the TLC stip, a straight match was the right choice and the drama over nearfalls and submissions is more interesting than climbing and falling. The involvement of Reginald was good, loved him catching Carmella on a dive, ducking Sasha, and tossing her into a headscissors. And the payback was well played late in the match with Sasha hitting a meteora and then getting blasted by a couple superkicks for a genuinely strong nearfall. I thought Carmella could actually win it there. Sasha was great at running into everything Carmella had, and both kept things real close on sunset flips and small packages. It's really nice seeing such fine execution on pinfall attempts. I loved both of Carmella's submissions, both of them look like sick lucha maestro subs and are both somehow locked on just as smoothly. Both of those subs would look awesome applied by Negro Navarro or Blue Panther, but it also looks awesome applied by Carmella. It makes me happy. This whole match was fun throughout, really made me smile and enjoy the wrestling the whole time. A very tight build and explosive finishing stretch, just another great Big Match Sasha performance. 

Shelton Benjamin/Cedric Alexander vs. Xavier Woods/Kofi Kingston

ER: This was good, and kept up the same fun energy the entire rest of the show has had so far. This has been a very fun show, everyone feels like they're trying a couple new things in the ring, it's made things feel special so far. This tag was no different, and it made me realize that I appreciate that The Hurt Business actually seems to be growing as an idea. I like that it wasn't one of those ideas where WWE seems on board with it for two weeks and then loses all interest, instead it seems like they're letting it grow naturally. It's given new life to Shelton Benjamin and made him as relevant as he's been in 15 years. If they want to they could let him ride out a couple more years as an upper card tag worker and he'd be great at it. It's also been good for Cedric Alexander, who instead of being one of several similar 205 Live babyfaces, his style feels more focused for being in a regular tag team. Both teams worked a fun fast big bumps style, and kept the match to a brisk 10 minutes for maximum impact. I love how definitively Hurt Business won the belts. There was no bullshit, just a dominant team catching the champs. Benjamin hit a pop up superplex that should play in Hurt Business highlight videos, and the Alexander backcracker finisher is the premier use of that overused move, and shows that an overplayed move can still be used effectively. I'd love to see the Hurt Business continue to evolve and even add members, and would love to see them have a run with multiple title holders in the stable. This whole match really got me into the potential of them, so I'd call that a huge success. 

Nia Jax/Shayna Baszler vs. Asuka/Charlotte

ER: I was just thinking the other day that I had not missed Charlotte, and yet I was happy to see her here just because I will take any new face in this match rather than see Lana in the main women's program on Raw. It's poorly executed, it's obvious, the commentary screams all of the bullet points for how we're supposed to feel about it all, but I just don't want Lana in these matches anymore. That said, I wish it didn't feel like Charlotte was immediately Superwoman again. It felt like she just ran through Nia and Shayna, and while I admit the Nia/Shayna hasn't lived up to its potential, they should be a pair who are on Charlotte's level. You can make an argument for the surprise factor, they weren't expecting her, but they just got outmatched and I didn't like that. Asuka automatically feels like the smaller banana with Charlotte around, as she had to spend the match being the one to take a lot of Nia and Shayna's offense. But Asuka is good at that and I liked the way her hip attack took Nia out of things at the finish. Still, this match played into my worse fear, that we're going to go straight back to a Charlotte-dominated scene. 

Roman Reigns vs. Kevin Owens

ER: This didn't feel far off, but this didn't work for me. I didn't like the Uso interference, and Uso made to look as effective as a manager only type. There were a lot of big spills - maybe too many - yet I thought several of the biggest ones were shrugged off in the name of blocking someone's climbing. I was not into the slow climbs no matter how earned they were with big bumps. I thought going to Uso for every big Reigns comeback came off weak, and that it would have been perhaps more played out to have the interference happen in only one big moment instead of all through the match, but it would have made for a better match and made it appear Owens had more of a chance. Roman going through the barricade looked fantastic, and was one of the best looking "leveled barricade" spots they've done. No matter how I felt about the match layout as a whole, I thought that looked the best. Owens took some nasty falls into ladders (Roman too), but these slow paced Roman walking matches have not been my thing. 

So, I had a really fun time watching this show, and the vibe seems to be turning with those last couple matches, turning into something much less good. The tag match and Reigns match were not my thing but I also don't think they were bad. BUT. It feels like I would be tossing a lot of goodwill and pleasant memories right out the window if I put myself through a Randy Orton/Fiend match. I mean what kind of psychopath would I have to be to do that? 2020 has been difficult enough, why would I put myself through all of that? Let's go out on a high note, and be happy for the fun stuff we did get. 

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WWE Survivor Series 2020 Live Blog

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

Pre-Show Battle Royal

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

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

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

The New Day vs. Street Profits

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

Sami Zayn vs. Bobby Lashley

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

Asuka vs. Sasha Banks

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

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

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

Roman Reigns vs. Drew McIntyre

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

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

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

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WWE Hell in a Cell Approximately Live Blog 10/25/20

I think this show has a chance to have a couple big match deliveries, as Sasha/Bayley and Reigns/Uso both have strong on paper potential. Phil has a rare Sunday evening free so will also be sitting in and contributing to a couple cherry picked matches. And Jeff Jarrett is there? Jeff Jarrett is with WWE now? Is it weird I want to see Jarrett wrestling in NXT? 

R-Truth vs. Drew Gulak

ER: I don't follow the 24/7 title so I do not understand any of the Little Jimmy references that Drew Gulak is making. Does Truth have an imaginary child friend that accompanies him? I don't know about any of that. Is Drew Gulak bringing his Chikara mime training into the WWE where I don't want it? This is perhaps the most Chikara match I have seen Gulak work in WWE, and it's a bummer that it feels like he had those great silent era matches with Daniel Bryan and then opted to take him off TV. Now he's bumping for Truth's John Cena cosplay (which might also be a regular thing? Again I haven't seen 24/7). This looked like they would get the comedy out of the way right at the beginning and then work their way into a good match, with Gulak twisting Truth's ankle and dropping down with Indian deathlocks. But the Cena comeback jokes came really early into the match, and went right through to the end. During the straight faced moments of the match they had real nice chemistry, and that delayed sunset flip snare was pulled off by two guys who could have turned several cool sequences. I don't think we're ever getting that match though. 

Jey Uso vs. Roman Reigns

PAS: I think this ended up being a bit much. Samoan acting is more visceral than white boy acting, so this match was better than the super dramatic NXT matches. It came close, and I bought most of the emotional beats of this match, but it was really long and there was long sections of conversation and emoting and not a ton of wrestling. I also really need more violence in the Roman goes-too-far section of the match. That stair-assisted dropkick looked like something that Tommy Dreamer didn't cleanly hit in a comedy hardcore match, not something that showed Reigns lost his soul or whatever it was supposed to convey. I thought the spears looked great and Roman has a nasty guillotine, and that the finish worked well. It needed to be about 10 minutes shorter and Jey's white pants needed some blood for it to totally work for me. Afa and Sika at the end was awesome though, and I imagine this leads to Rock vs. Roman for the true head seat at the table which should be incredible. 

ER: Is this really the first WWE I Quit in five years? But I am not really enjoying this. I am not a fan of these Marvel battles where guys speak dialogue to each other before taking theatrical bumps and gnashing their teeth at the lights. If they were doing this on a windy green grass hillside cliff I could possibly get into it more. It does not work for me as pro wrestling, and it does not work for me as high drama. It was like they were doing a musical so the story took 5x as long to tell itself, ended up going way too long, and had too much dramatic build between each bit of wrestling. The spears were spaced well and I enjoyed things like Jey scrambling to choke Roman with the strap, but this dialogue thing is boring as hell to me. I don't think guys sound cool while barking one sentence "in a fight" platitudes. I think this stuff is really terrible, at least this presentation of it. I think I Quit match structure can already have a lot of lags and downtime, but they were dragging things down with dialogue AND I quit back and forth, which means we got a ton of lying around, far too much talking, and far too much of the ref asking if Jey wanted to quit every couple seconds. The only benefit of having this long slog of a match first is that the show still has plenty of time to recover. I liked the Wild Samoans appearance at the end and even though this match bored me to tears I would be undeniably excited by a Reigns/Rock match. 

Elias vs. Jeff Hardy

ER: I've been into comeback Jeff Hardy, and I'm fully into appreciating Hardy as an all time great at this point. But this kind of thing feels like a Raw angle and not something that needed to be on PPV. 

The Miz vs. Otis

ER: I really liked this and how it felt like a late 80s Saturday Night's Main Event match. They worked straight and that benefitted the match, and I loved everything after Otis's big babyface shirt tear. This was a strong Otis babyface performance. He ran into a Miz boot and looked tough as Miz was laying in kicks to the chest. But the wild man shirt tear Otis was him having the fun kind of breakout that will keep someone memorable and durable, like Jim Duggan. Otis hit a great spinning lariat and smashed into Miz, felt like a guy who would be getting huge potential reactions if we had crowds. It isn't hard to picture Otis catching on as a durable cult character with crowds, the same way Santino was but even more pushable as a wrestler. The Tucker turn could have gotten a surprised reaction from the crowd too, like or love where they go with it. This was pretty easily the best match so far on this show, but I hope we get something stronger. 

Sasha Banks vs. Bayley

ER: I am very very excited for this. For the past year plus Sasha has been one of the only people in WWE who actually makes me WATCH. She has had several stretches like this over her career, and has been a consistently great wrestler and character for the better part of a decade now. I think her work in this Bayley feud has arguably been the best of her career. And I liked this match and much preferred their method of storytelling, even if they didn't quite take things the direction I would have wanted. I liked the emotion and I liked a lot of the brawling and selling, but I didn't love the stretches where it became a propped up weapons showcase. When you actually fighting each other gets way more heat than making arts and crafts weapons, just go for the easier option of fighting each other. Sasha contributes the best parts of this for me, but they're a good pair. I loved Sasha's tope and her being crazy enough to get the back of her head whipped into a chair on a sunset flip. She's a CZW wrestler doing joshi drama and it rules. She gets trapped in the ring skirt in a cool way and is a strong enough salesman that the beatings she takes are always more convincing. All of the fighting was great, and all of Sasha's assorted meteoras looked awesome. But the prop set up slowed things unnecessarily, as a strong match was right in front of them with much simpler weapon usage. But Sasha was great at throwing herself face first into ladders and chairs, and her comebacks always played strong. The finish was great, with a Banks Statement around a chair a nasty worthy way to end a long title reign. Banks could honestly be the biggest female star in WWE history. I think she has great potential to break out on a big level. 

PAS: I thought had some very good moments, but ultimately went too long. It felt like a big time Indy wrestling stips match that didn't know when to end. They had a bunch of cool ideas and crazy bumps, and if they had picked four of them and built the match around those four moments it could have been awesome, instead they had twenty ideas and it kind of just kept going. I thought the finish of the match was awesome as was all of Sasha's double knee variations into parts of the cage. They undoubtedly took a ton of cool looking punishment, but at some point twenty five concussive shots with weapons just drags on.

 

Bobby Lashley vs. Slapjack

ER: Okay Bobby Lashley vs. SLAPJACK might be one of the weirder singles matches to land on a WWE PPV. Shane Thorne has never been on a WWE PPV, and hadn't even appeared on a TakeOver in four years. But here he is, debuting on PPV as Slapjack, and I think that is a kind of fun odd thing? It's a fun quick match, with Slapjack bumping around nice on Irish whips into the buckles and flies around for every Lashley throw. His comebacks were convincing and the big schmozz finish was used better here than the Hardy/Elias match. This was a nice palate cleanser and honestly the most interesting use for Retribution might be as a jobber stable. A stable of masked jobbers who all bump makes a ton of sense. Their faces are even covered so you don't have to see their shamed faces. WWE doesn't need revolution angles. They need 6-8 masked jobbers to flesh out their undercards and get fucking worked over by more interesting people. A dedicated crew of people who never win and nobody expects to win, bringing back showcase squash matches and 90/10 mildly competitive matches to establish new offense and alternate finishers. Do that and it will be a more successful idea than whatever Retribution ever leads to. 

Drew McIntyre vs. Randy Orton

ER: This was boring and not at all what I want from pro wrestling. They do not do this high drama wrestling as stage craft bullshit well, and it is infecting these shows. This show especially feels like ACTING has been featured far too much. They're taking advantage of the Our Town set up and getting a little bit too confident with their stage chops. This was slow and masturbatory and I couldn't stay engaged in any way. The end. 

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WWE Summerslam 8/23/20 Taking My Sweet Time Blog

I am not expecting a whole lot from this show, and those shows can sneak up and surprise me. It feels like I've been saying that about every show the last year +, and that's probably because I have not been excited by many on paper lineups they've been throwing out there. But good matches are always a possibility. Sadly, this card doesn't feature Pat McAfee, so good matches on this show aren't as likely. Also, sad to see Renee Young leaving, but obviously she is talented enough to just not be in wrestling. Her commentary with Regal during 2014 NXT is some of my favorite WWE commentary of the decade, and she was never properly utilized after that on any important program. Honestly, she stuck it out longer in WWE than made sense, and I'm sure she's going to crush wherever she winds up.


Apollo Crews vs. MVP

ER: Pre show matches deliver more often than not, and this one added to the "delivered" bucket. MVP working as an opportunist is a fun undercard thing to see, loved him shooting for a kneebar to start the match, then just blindsiding Crews while the ref separated them. His superplex was sloppy, but in a way that kind of added to it and made it feel impactful. MVP also throws his strikes with more immediacy, which is one of Crews' shortcomings. In fact the weakest part of this match was Crews seemingly holding way back on a lot of his offense. He was treating MVP like he was mid 90s Giant Baba, barely touching him with his forearm strikes, and hitting these weird weak avalanches. That was mainly a problem earlier in the match, as once he hit his nice flip dive he felt a little more normal in the ring. The match finishing dead lift blue thunder bomb ruled, and Crews needs to do more cool stuff life that.

Asuka vs. Bayley

ER: I really liked this, but felt like it lost a lot of steam in the final minute or two. They kept up a hot pace, with Asuka coming off nicely chaotic and Bayley scrambling on her heels. Asuka hits the flying hip attack to knock Bayley to the floor, and Bayley manages to take Asuka's flatliner type move off the ring steps and distracted from the fact that Asuka was splatting with a hard back bump. Bayley's scream and sell of that move was so effective in making that spot work. I liked Asuka going after Bayley's arm (even though it really didn't lead to much), and liked a couple of the spots where Bayley went after Asuka's leg. Even though Bayley's actual heel hook looked really awful, the moment where she turned an Asuka missile dropkick into the heel hook was awesome. After that there were a couple hinky moments, like Asuka waiting bent at the waist waaaay too long to take a sunset flip bomb in the corner. The finish was good and a nice call back to the beginning, and I thought the execution was great: Asuka hits the hip attack to knock Sasha off the apron, and Bayley grabs her with a small package off the ropes. Looked great. I don't have a strong opinion either way on whether Asuka should have won or lost, as I'm a fan of both acts, dig what Sasha/Bayley have been doing and have no problem with them dominating the belts.

Andrade/Angel Garza vs. Street Profits

ER: I think this might have been helped by a live audience. That sounds like an obvious statement, but I think these kinds of matches are really hurt by no crowd. The kind of match that plays like a cold tag or a fun Smackdown match depending on the crowd sounds, like a AAAA center fielder. It's mostly the Andrade show, with Garza practically playing this like a handicap match past a certain point. They worked over Ford and I love how they cut him off by catching the top con hilo and powerbombing him on the floor. That spot could have looked overly planned, but it came off smooth and then mean. They set up the Dawkins hot tag well, and I like his big man leaping back elbow. That move was used by a lot of mid 80s WWF guys, one that I associate with that era, and even though I'm sure he's not consciously doing it because of that, I still like seeing it. Andrade's fake out pump kick into the back elbow always looks great, and I love how hard Dawkins bit on dodging that kick and eating that elbow. Somebody's wrist tape even flies out when the elbow lands, and gear getting knocked off someone after a big impact move is never not awesome. The Street Profits as an act don't do a lot for me overall, and Vega's team actually needs to win occasionally but instead they always seem to go down clean as a sheet. Ah well.

Sonya Deville vs. Mandy Rose

ER: I wish this was worked under different circumstances, as it really shouldn't have taken this long to give these two some kind of PPV showcase singles match. The incident that happened to Deville is genuinely terrifying and it was pretty incredible she went out there and made the best of it. Oh god she wasn't forced to go out there and do this was she? Anyway, I wish this match was better, because they went out there and tried to do the right match. The stip got changed and the feud got cut short and it sucks that things turned out this way. They went out and had the No DQ fight they should have had, it just didn't look great. Rose is someone who has killed it in every house show match I've seen her in, and for whatever reason it does not come off on TV. Whatever crowd connection that I've witnessed firsthand several times is mostly gone on TV. She comes off flat and kind of dead eyed, and I think people think I'm lying about her house show work. It's No DQ, they try to throw a lot of strikes, and a lot of the strikes don't look good. Mandy does this weird thing where she just doesn't sell a lot of Sonya's elbows, just kind of holds still while Deville is throwing blows. They wanted to have a tough fight, and their heart was in the right place.

Even though a lot of it didn't look great, the bar has been lowered a lot this year and even just a match that at minimum aims to work within the story instead of having a "great match" is going to win me over. I liked Mandy trying to slide chairs off a table into Sonya's face, feels like a reckless spot where a camera guy can take a shot in the balls or something. Sonya is also someone who hasn't translated as well as it feels like she should. It didn't help when WWE brought in a bunch of actual MMA women right after she got on TV, but she's also dropped a lot of the MMA stuff that she actually did quite well. I'm sure she could have been told "hey don't work like all of these actual MMA women we brought in", but I also like the fact that she's someone who throws sidekicks without kickpads. Mandy threw some hard knees to make up for her weird strike selling, and there were a couple of nasty spills on hard surfaces. Again, it was the match they should have had and that counts for a lot, and I'm glad it happened. And it's honestly hard to care as much about a match like this when it's so closely related to an actual Manhunter fucking Tooth Fairy incident (incel-dent?), but there were small amounts of carny "on with the show" joy here.

Seth Rollins vs. Dominic Mysterio

ER: No matter how this match goes, Dominic took one of the best on screen beatdowns of the past 5 years, and that can't be taken away from him. The cane beating would have gotten over with a mid 90s ECW Arena crowd, and that's more cool carny wrestling bullshit to find sicko joy in. We are truly blessed getting a Pat McAfee match one night and Dominik Mysterio's debut a night later. Wrestling debuts (yeah yeah I know Pat worked a match a decade ago, it's fair to call this a debut) are always exciting for me. I love seeing how much someone "gets" and what nuanced (if any) part of wrestling they understand from match one. Now, even with that beatdown angle, I haven't been able to get into this feud at all. Rollins is so dull to me, and Dominik really isn't a great actor, in ring or out. I was more excited for the McAfee debut, and that was in a match with ADAM COLE! McAfee/Cole felt like a perfect amount of time to deliver the story they needed to. Yes, it should have ended after McAfee's punt to the chest, and we didn't need Adam Cole's home stretch acting chops, but it was laid out fantastically. This match went too long, and the smoke and mirrors weren't anywhere near as satisfying. Rey and his wife did what they could, and I dug their Louis Vuitton gear. And Dominik did really well for a first match! He hit some fairly complicated stuff, missed a real nasty splash into Rollins' knees, and looked like he belonged. If you saw him at your local indy and this was his first match in, you'd be leaving the gymnasium and at least bring him up positively on the ride home. There was a good match in here, even if this wasn't it. I'm more interested in what Dominik does next.

Sasha Banks vs. Asuka

ER: This was the match I was most excited for. Sasha is probably the wrestler who I like the most, without ever thinking to answer "Sasha Banks" when thinking about wrestler I like the most. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I *always* get excited for big Sasha singles matches. I think she has easily been the women's MVP over the past 5 years, and I think she's easily the most consistent and delivers more often in big matches than the rest of the 4 horsewomen, and she has by far the most natural charisma of the 4. This was the match I was most excited for, and it delivered. These two both took some shots, it felt like it peaked perfectly and ended right where it should have, and the way they laid into each other made it feel important. Sasha went after Asuka's leg and it backfired, as Asuka just started throwing kicks, and I love Sasha when she realize a plan isn't working. The match is tough right from go, loved Asuka yanking Sasha off the apron into a kneebar, felt like a cool dickhead babyface thing to do. Asuka hits ringpost on a kick and winds up eating a nasty powerbomb off the apron to the floor, big THUD sound. Both flew gleefully into moves that targeted their heads, Asuka taking that powerbomb and then immediately eating a head kick, Asuka later landing a DDT off the middle rope that Sasha takes on her face. Sasha is great at taking Asuka's offense, they're an awesome super complementary pairing. Sasha takes the missile dropkick better than any other heel, her bumps less athletic but more ragdoll and interesting. I love their dueling arm and leg work, the battle over the Asuka Lock and Banks Statement is a strong finishing stretch. The double callback hip attack finish was handled well, and the tap for the Asuka Lock felt nicely triumphant. Sasha Banks really deserves a lot of praise for the character work and personality she's brought to the empty arena era. And this was her strongest match of the year.

Randy Orton vs. Drew McIntyre

ER: Very low expectations for this one, which may be to the benefit of the match. Orton starts with a lot of smug stalling, which is the closest we get to Jacques Rougeau style buffoonish smug stalling. It's not anywhere near as good, but I like the tradition. This is a slow paced match, but it felt more natural in its pace than the other purposely slow "dramatic" matches from this weekend. This felt hard fought in its slow pace, and that makes this kind of thing work. Orton is someone I have to be in the right mindset for these days, but he can still work within that window of interest. I liked him spamming RKO attempts early after weaseling out of contact, then ramping things up to meaner stuff like two back suplexes on the unbreaking announce table. McIntyre's spinebuster to comeback looked good and the overhead belly to belly landed heavy. I liked it a bit less once we went into the longish feeling second half, where it felt like it was based entirely on attempts at Signature Offense. The stuff where Orton was just stomping on him and dropping him from a high place where stronger. Still, for a modern WWE title match epic, this felt above average. I wish we could have just had Drew pin Orton with the Claymore kick. Randy Orton is fucking 40, guys. Let a dude in his mid 30s win with his finisher. Let a 6'5 265 lb. guy win a match differently than a Terry Taylor finish.

Braun Strowman vs. Bray Wyatt

ER: It's sad when a match between two heavy dudes doesn't inspire me. They keep it short and to the point, and for that I am thankful. But this should be more exciting. The chokeslam into the announce table looked hard and the spear through the barricade was a nice crash. But this felt kind of stale on arrival. This should feel bigger and be cooler, and it shouldn't be that hard. It wasn't terrible by any means. The Braun powerslams where impressive and Wyatt's tool box attack had a stupid 1999 quality to them. Both a pretty uninteresting to me at this point (think of the sadness in that. Braun is 375 and he's not an automatic What Worked for me), so who won or lost didn't interest me. Therefore, the uranage and double Sister Abigail on the exposed ring boards was a cool enough finish to make me come around a bit on it.

BUT of course this match was just a mere slow set up for the real main event, which was Roman Reigns returning after 6 months to kick the shit out of both of them. Reigns looked like an absolute superstar destroying both men, and it's cool as hell seeing him in pure destruction mode. His spears on Wyatt were among the best of his career, and the visual of him wrecking Braun with chairshots was strong. This was the best way to bring Roman back, having him Walking Tall as we fade out. Roman really saved this segment and made it immediately feel more electric. Roman had Braun's best matches and some of Bray's best as well, and it immediately felt like that.

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