Heel Tommy Dreamer: It's a Gag!

Tommy Dreamer/Mike Awesome vs. X-Pac/Albert WWF Metal 10/27/01

ER: This was only a technical heel performance from Dreamer, because nobody was going to be booed opposite X-Pac at this point. Living through X-Pac Heat was a really weird time. I'm not sure what other situations are comparable to it. He'd been a very popular babyface for a long time, and was then a popular babyface who acted like a heel, and at a certain point people just got loudly tired of him. The Uncle Kracker theme didn't help matters. But X Factor are clearly supposed to be the faces in this match, and it's worked with them as the faces, only the crowd didn't react to it that way. In fact, Mike Awesome got the biggest cheers of the match, any time he would do damage to X-Pac. Dreamer doesn't work as an overt heel, but he has one quality in his heel work that isn't around his babyface work: he staggers and stooges amusingly into position for offense. There are a couple of instances of this here, with the best being he and Awesome missing a double clothesline on Albert. Watch how Dreamer misses versus how Awesome misses. They both whiff, and Awesome just turns around and waits for Albert to bounce back off the ropes to level them both. But Dreamer whiffs, then acts like the motion threw his whole balance off, staggering into place to fill the perfect amount of time before getting leveled by Albert. Dreamer is a real satisfying heel bumper, as he's a good bumper in general for a man his size, but it's better utilized bumping for a big babyface Albert comeback. Dreamer was good from the apron, too, loved him nailing X-Pac with a knee to slow him down for Awesome, and Awesome's top rope clothesline looks great leveling X-Pac. This was a short, tidy, but fun match, and Dreamer makes the Baldo Bomb look crushing.

One Year Immunity Battle Royal WWF Survivor Series 11/18/01

ER: Rock solid battle royal regardless of how stupid the stipulation and the Invasion was. Bradshaw was a real beast, potatoing anyone close to him from WCW or ECW (as I typed that sentence it didn't really sound that surprising) and we got a lot of big spills on eliminations. All you really want from a battle royal is some surprisingly stiff shots, a couple of guys taking death wish elimination bumps, and no lying around. This ticked those boxes, was worked quick (only flaw might have been this needing a couple more minutes to space out eliminations), and had a nice extended run once they got to the final 4 (and I loved that the final 4 was Bradshaw, Billy Gunn, Test, and Lance Storm of all people). It started with a perfect moment: Shawn Stasiak being the first to charge into action, getting backdropped to elimination as the match started. The eliminations were strong, like Bradshaw hitting big lariats to send guys out, Tazz eliminating Crash and Tommy Dreamer while Dreamer was powerbombing Crash, Bradshaw throwing out Kidman with a fallaway slam, just a bunch of guys smacking the ground hard. We also get the great battle royal joy of noticing guys who were in between gear, like Stevie Richards wearing black slacks and a black t-shirt, post Right To Censor/pre-Anything Else. Test wins this thing, but what he sadly doesn't know is that the winner of this specific battle royal gets a) immunity from being fired for one year, but also b) a death sentence within the decade. They did not tell that to Test before the battle royal, he found out after. Also, Crash's death was not related to the battle royal, only Test's was.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE HEEL TOMMY DREAMER

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WWF 305 Live: 1987 Survivor Series Main Event

Andre the Giant/One Man Gang/King Kong Bundy/Butch Reed/Rick Rude vs. Bam Bam Bigelow/Hulk Hogan/Don Muraco/Ken Patera/Paul Orndorff WWF Survivor Series 11/26/87 - EPIC

ER: Great main event to the inaugural Survivor Series, a match that really felt like a big show main event for 25 minutes. Also, they were smart enough to have the final five survivors be the five largest men in the match. They knew exactly what they were selling. This was filled with superstars, down to the least important man. Ken Patera looks like a real force here, maybe the strongest he looked in WWF post-jail. He was like a great dancing babyface, hitting a three kick combo with a finishing punch, quick takedowns, still getting big reactions. Don Muraco looked massive and brought huge energy, standing out like an Incredible Hulk in the ring with some hulking dudes. Orndorff got the biggest non-Hogan reaction of the match, a real testament to how huge his star was in 86/87. He and Rude had some memorable stuff during their early match stretches, with Rude being the real workhorse stooging heel for a solid 10 minutes. Rude got spun around by punches from every single member of Hogan's team, gets run over with lariats, obviously gets backdropped and atomic dropped, but also gets a sly school boy on Orndorff for a surprise momentum swing. 

The final 10 minutes were total big man bliss, a final five that stacks up with the highest average weight per participant in company history. All the big men had great moments, but I was most impressed by Bundy. He was great at running distraction to get Hogan counted out and out of the way, and kept dropping these cool kneedrops and crushing elbowdrops, and missing them even harder! But it was really special how they built to Bam Bam Bigelow alone in the ring against three monsters. You could argue that it was the the biggest moment of his career and he felt like an all timer in the moment. The fans responded to him huge as he was dispatching Bundy and Gang in tough battles (including a great slingshot splash to eliminate Gang), and Bam Bam is really good at selling big man offense (like heavy kneelifts) as a big man should sell them (while also doing a full flip off a big Gang lariat). 

Gang takes a couple of big spills (including a wild fall off the apron) and the Bigelow/Andre final showdown is awesome. Bigelow has a bunch of cool somersaults to try to outpace Andre, and I like how Andre put him down decisively with a butterfly suplex after Bigelow had gone through two men who were already improbably larger than he was. Andre was mostly presence in this match, but it was incredible presence. He loomed on the apron the entire match, stood large in the center of the ring to confront Hogan, and had an awesome standing exchange of punches and chops in a tough Hogan lock-up as the centerpiece of the match. This was an exciting long main event that felt like a huge deal, the main event of a very good show with nothing but long matches. This main event really cemented this match as a super successful concept in the right hands. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE WWF 305 LIVE

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE

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Late But Not Bad: WWE Survivor Series 11/24/19 Blog

Luke Gallows/Karl Anderson vs. The Revival vs. Wesley Blake/Steve Cutler vs. Bobby Roode/Dolph Ziggler vs. Montez Ford/Angelo Dawkins vs. Curt Hawkins/Zack Ryder vs. Tyler Breeze/Fandango vs. Gran Metalik/Lince Dorado vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. Otis/Tucker

ER: Oh man this is exactly the kind of thing I love to start a show. Gimme a big colorful 20 man battle royal with a long as hell entrance time, every single team getting a separate entrance but an abbreviated one. I'm not kidding here, I was into this from the second I heard there was a 10 team battle royal to start this PPV. I do prefer when BOTH members of a team have to be eliminated, it makes more openings for different psychology scenarios. And this was a good battle royal! I would have changed the order of several eliminations, and you bet your ass the first team eliminated would have been the team that won the damn thing. Wait, do I like this match? I would have rather seen any of these 9 teams win than Ziggler/Roode, so I can't like this match too much. But the work within the match was above average for battle royals. There were plenty of quick glimpses of nice battle royal close quarters striking; Gallows would punch Otis in the head, grateful to be here Curt Hawkins would throw a couple decent punches, people busied themselves well. We did get too much awful Ziggler 1996 HBK cosplay. Too much. How the hell is he allowed to do such hammy tribute? But guys really threw themselves into their eliminations, I was crushed when Otis had his Caterpillar interrupted before the elbowdrop, Aichner should have absolutely slaughtered  Ziggler while he was dangling over the top rope for the zillionth time. Worst possible team won, match was still fun.

Kalisto vs. Akira Tozawa vs. Lio Rush

ER: This was plenty fun, some nice go go go, kept the spotlight shifting to each of the three guys without ever feeling like an exhibition or outright showcase, a weirdly natural way for these three to show their specific skills. This had the feeling of a Amazing Red trainee match, in a good way, with Rush being one of the best post-2000s Red combo of fast precise bumps and great inventive kicks. Tozawa is always a great cog in these cruiser three ways, even when it feels like he's nowhere close to the focus. He's clearly good at helping direct these things, he winds up in good ones too often for that to be false. Kalisto gets all Fenix on us in cool ways, and I dug the Salida del Sol attempts and successes. We get Tozawa's big senton and one of the better sliding kicks in the company, Rush throws the nicest kicks of the match and his frog splash looked tremendous, just a fun match that left the party at just the right time.

Big E/Kofi Kingston vs. Kyle O'Reilly/Bobby Fish vs. Viking Raiders

ER: So far it feels like everything has been given a lot of time, guys getting time to try some new things and stretch out in some ways. This match felt longer than it needed to be, yet came with an absolute superstar performance from Ivar, a guy who has been improving every year for the past few years. This was one of my favorite performances of his, a total wrecking ball, looking bigger than I think I've ever seen him but still flattening with crossbodies, flipping over that top rope like a he was prime Berzerker, working this super fast lengthy hot tag where he just nailed every single mark. Big E takes a big bump on his missed spear to the floor, throws some big belly to bellies, then takes an even bigger bump when he hits his spear to the floor. Viking Raiders are so cool, really a team that was always fun and just keeps finding ways to improve, keeps tinkering with and tightening up offense, evolving. How did they never do a Vikings vs. Harper/Rowan match? What a colossal fuck up. But this was all fun.

Sasha Banks/Lacey Evans/Nikki Cross/Dana Brooke/Carmella vs. Asuka/Kairi Sane/Sarah Logan/Charlotte/Natalya vs. Bianca Belair/Rhea Ripley/Io Shirai/Toni Storm/Candice LeRae

ER: This really did feel closer to some of the overstuffed Survivor Series tags from 30 years ago, though it was also rife with some bizarre character contradictions (Charlotte is just never going to be the likable one in any situation, it does not work), Lacey Evans shunted WAY too far into the background and coming off like nothing (unfair for how far she's come over this year), I have no idea why Candice and Shirai's big plan was just to let their team almost get beat but then run out, and we got a weird tentative performance from Ripley literally one night after she was this Braveheart leader against the odds in War Games. Made no sense. Asuka is still popular than any woman in this match, Kairi Sane came off like the cool smallest/craziest member of a team, Belair should have been made the sole survivor of this and then shot to the top, but her star will be undeniable soon. Her 450 is so rock solid and she knew how to work team bragging better than most here. Carmella deserves a lot of credit for her genuinely good Survivor Series throwback performance, bringing levity but fine execution to all her segments. Dana Brooke also made the most of her actual airtime, thought she took some risks she normally doesn't. I didn't agree with some of the eliminations (Natalya should not be getting the better of her feud with Evans), and it felt like their attempt to keep at least 8 of them even stevens, wish they would have let someone come off more dominant while being confident.

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Roderick Strong vs. AJ Styles

ER: This one had moments but was a little long in the tooth. I mentioned earlier how it felt like some people were allowed to stretch out on this show, but I could use a little editing at this point. This one had peaks and valleys, but did come into the peaks nicely. It's hard for me not to like Strong getting this kind of showcase; the guy might not be a trendy wrestler to like, but he's had a real phenomenal decade while still feeling underappreciated. Styles was really good at running into offense face first, and it was either all AJ or Nakamura was also throwing some of his nicest kicks in recent memory. Roddy had some big cool version of backbreakers, Nakamura is basically Japanese Randy Orton as it's annoying how good they can be sometimes while noticeably holding back on things. Styles has a brighter performance than he's been turning in lately, and this flows relatively smoothly for a 3 way. And I must say I LOVE Strong going over, even if it was of disputable means. A overall nice delivery.

Pete Dunne vs. Adam Cole

ER: This was a lot of what I didn't really want to see. This is a long show, too many matches, but this was the first one I wanted to skip past. Dunne is kind of a frustrating guy for me, and let's just say the Adam Cole Championship era is not something I am enjoying, or looking to more of. Both do a lot of Offense I Don't Like and this was filled with it, like a nightmare 2005 indy match that grew up watching 1999 offense and did it more dangerously in stupid evolved variations. So here we are growing up from doing a Burning Hammer onto a picnic table on an amusing Dateline special, you're a couple of dudes breaking out a flipping piledriver on the apron, in a company where the piledriver is a banned move. But we'll always have a bunch of close ups on derpy faces after unexpected kickouts. I will thank them for keeping this (barely) under 15 minutes, but I don't have to like it. This was not the match to work after War Games, and these two wouldn't realize that.

Daniel Bryan vs. The Fiend

ER: Man this PPV has run into a ditch and I am really hoping we right this rig before blowing a tire. The Fiend is just slow crawling death, the light is bad, and Bryan almost made this into something interesting. Bryan was interesting! Bryan worked with what he had, and it wasn't much, but he somehow got the fans semi-involved in something that The Fiends was actively trying to not court. Bryan's plancha looked great and was filmed great, Fiend did have a couple nice moments of catching Bryan in mid air and dispatching him, punching him out of the sky or just catching him with a slam. But Bryan was flying into any of that (and into the ringpost) like someone desperately trying to make lemons out of lemonade, and it just did not work. This may have been the worst match on the show, and that should never be the case with a Bryan match.

Roman Reigns/Braun Strowman/Chad Gable/Baron Corbin/Ali vs. Drew McIntyre/Ricochet/Randy Orton/Kevin Owens/Seth Rollins vs. Matt Riddle/Tommaso Ciampa/WALTER/Keith Lee/Damian Priest

ER: So, I did not like a lot of this. This PPV has turned into my own personal nightmare as time has slowed way down and this feels like I will never not be writing about the happenings of this show. Braun got to run ham on people on the floor leading to a big Lee collision, and the home stretch Roman/Lee battle felt like a real Clash of the Titans that SHOULD really elevate Lee. Lee got given a moment, and he made the moment. And there were good moments. But this took a long damn time and just felt hollow and incorrect for much of the runtime. Riddle got what looked like a big moment, and maybe it leads to an Orton feud that he wins, but Riddle is someone that fans are ready to get behind in the biggest way, a guy clearly primed to make the huge crossover jump from NXT. WALTER went out quick and that's really dumb. Rollins is someone I dread at this point. Gable got tricked into looking like a goof, sounding like a goof, and getting treated like a goof. Priest looked like a goof. This was just no good. This has been bad.

Rey Mysterio vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: We know this was going one way or another, and it went the way nobody wanted it to go. I was genuinely excited about this match. We knew Brock was going to destroy Rey. Obviously he was going to snap him in two. But with the added No Holds Barred stip I was expecting Rey to make WAY more inroads than he made. Rey got steamrolled. Rey looked great getting steamrolled, but this was a real flattening. You want to see Brock destruction, but Brock is one of the great selling monsters, so you get more excited to see how small old Rey is going to take a pipe to Brock's balls and maybe somebody gets shoot busted open somehow and Brock ends up beating Dominic with a chain. We get the destruction; Brock throws cruel short arm clotheslines and big Germans and Rey gets ragdolled unprofessionally over the table and into the barricade, but the comeback that comes is just a blink, and comes off more like Barry Horowitz ducking an Undertaker lariat and landing a couple punches before shitting his pants when his luck runs out. We knew this was a possibility, but the thought of the great possibilities was too intriguing.

Bayley vs. Shayna Baszler vs. Becky Lynch

ER: I cannot get over how bad Bayley's haircut is. It is so dated on arrival, the worst kind of late 2000s mom framing, and the battle of The Man vs. The Mom cannot interest me. And they did not do much in this match to interest me. This goes WAY too long - the central theme of almost this entire show - and is just total Dullsville. I thought this was fairly interminable at times, and early this year there was nobody hotter in the company than Becky Lynch and a former MMA crossover star. Now Lynch feels ice cold and Baszler has gone from being a super aggressive asskicker in her 2018 matches to just hanging so far back in the mix in 2019 that it almost feels like she's injured and working 50%. The story was Baszler dominating Bayley but I don't think it came off great other than the nice hanging choke over the apron. This needed to be a real statement and it feels like this just continues a trend of bad main event women's trios. Now the main takeaway - the fair takeaway - is that 3 WAY MATCHES ARE ALMOST ALWAYS TERRIBLE. In some ways the women have been completely upended by these dismal main event PPV 3 ways. But it's only because they won't commit to one or two women that we keep getting these main event 3 ways and multimans that just blow. This never shifted into 2nd gear, and I'm not sure it's they're fault. None of them feel like they're being put in a position to succeed.


ER: This show started promising and had some on paper goodwill, but it just wasn't happening for me. I like some of the wins given to NXT, but a lot of this felt like a flop. And it's tough to sit still during such a long show that also feels like a flop.

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Styles v. Lesnar

1. AJ Styles v. Brock Lesnar WWE Survivor Series 11/19

ER: I'm sure most people were expecting this to be a 7 minute Lesnar mauling, and it is a 7 minute mauling. What I meant is that most people probably thought it would end after those 7 minutes, instead we got something special. But my does Lesnar maul him for 7 minutes. Brock tosses AJ around like a total dead body, and AJ flies around spectacularly. His bumps on German suplexes look absolutely body collapsing, and he bumps over the top to the floor with a real death wish. Lesnar's knees to the ribs look like something a human shouldn't be able to manage. But the comeback is great, and I'll always love that Lesnar missed knee in the corner as a transition. Once AJ gets in control he really makes it count. They flub a tornado DDT a bit, but after that Brock shows off why he is so special, bumping wildly and deservedly for AJ. Lesnar gets run through the ringside steps with such force that it looked like a car crashing through the front of a strip mall nail salon. Styles hits all of his big flying moves, and they work great as actual offense, and better as actual tension: Every time he goes up in the air you keep expecting it to end badly for him, for him to get caught. the moment of Styles locking in the calf crusher was huge. Brock is a super gifted salesman, and in that moment you could see the size difference completely erased, Brock easily looking like a man who could be beaten clean by Styles. And then Lesnar comes up with the greatest escape from the calf crusher, just grabbing AJ by the back of the head and smashing his face into the canvas, several times. It was one of the more violent wrestling moments I've seen this year. And wouldn't you know, all that tension AJ built up with the flying ends up backfiring, with Brock catching him coolly and planting him roughly with a quick lights out F5. Awesome match.

PAS: This was really tremendous, best Brock match since the Wrestlemania match with Reigns, and it is great to see that he can still bring it on big occasions. I loved the opening thrust kick right to Styles chest great way to say hello, and the knees he was throwing looked like they were going to puncture lungs. Styles is still an electric bumper even at 40 years old he really has kept almost all of his athleticism.  Some of those suplex bumps looked terrifying, a great combo of force and acrobatic bumps, they weren't the Shawn Michaels/Ziggler look at me bumps, he flew the way a guy should fly when being thrown by a Gorilla. After taking this huge beating Styles comeback was credible and great, his flying moves really land with force, he never felt like he was doing springboards to look cool, they always felt like attacking from afar was his only approach. Airplanes don't try to punch it out with King Kong they dive bomb. The calf slicer spot was incredible, Styles had been killing the leg all match, and Brock sold the calf slicer like all of the tendons in his knee were shredding, Brock countering it by trying to show Styles the inside of the ring was incredible stuff, right up their with Ki breaking Callihan's jaw for violence of the year. I also like how Brock has brought back the F5 as a one move killshot, he isn't throwing ten of the them a match anymore, it is back being a one hitter quitter. Incredible match, loved every second of it. Big match inspired Brock is still the absolute best.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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WWE Survivor Series 2017 Live Blog

"We were all picked essentially at random to be on the brand that we're on, and nobody talks about brand loyalty except for one month out of the year...but tonight, that brand loyalty MEANS SOMETHING for reasons."

1. Elias vs. Matt Hardy

ER: It's so strange to be running a match when the arena is maybe 20% full, feels like those opening card UFC fights where you're hearing individual voices from the crowd and everything is echoing. I think Matt Hardy matches that leave him to sell a specific limb almost always deliver, so I like Elias going after the arm, running the shoulder into the buckle, and breaking out an awesome leaping kneedrop to the arm. The crowd is sparse, but quietly getting into a Hardy comeback, and Elias' double underhook shoulderbreaker is pretty cool, but probably should have been treated as a bigger deal. This never really hits a new level, though. Hardy gets a comeback with the side effect on the apron, but Hardy is moving really slowly these days so even his comeback doesn't feel very exciting. I still like his injury selling, and he takes the post shot great, snaps over on Elias' fishermans suplex neckbrearker, but this was mostly an extended Elias squash.

2. Kalisto vs. Enzo Amore

ER: Crowd is still slowly filling in but my are they silent for this one. Enzo is at least good for a couple dumb bumps a match, and he really whips the back of his head into the mat on that code red, and Kalisto hits a cool rolling death valley driver that I don't think I've seen. Enzo's offense looks pretty bad, that falling boot offense almost always looks dumb. Kalisto gets yanked into the buckle really nicely, but this was nothing to blog home about.

3. Sami Zayn/Kevin Owens vs. Breezango

ER: I don't follow the backstage news as much anymore, but I heard something about Owens and Zayn getting sent home from a tour, and here they are opposite Breezango on a pre-show. And the two of them really lock in those chinlocks. Breeze this rows a nice back elbow but he's mostly in there building to Fandango's hot tag, and his hot tag is good! I liked Fandango's hot jabs and his run up the buckles tornado DDT was nice. Owens finishes with a real nasty pop up powerbomb. He really planted Fandango with it. But this match also wasn't much.

4. The New Day vs. The Shield

ER: This is nuts to see the reunited Shield opening up the PPV, but it's cool to officially open things up with something big. Hey those halfsie Raw/Shield shirts look bad. And I'm into this, as I should be, because these teams should match up well. Kingston's offense looks all flimsy, but we build to Big E's big spear to the floor which always looks the greatest. Ambrose tags in Rollins with the most hilarious fake Ricky Morton hot tag ever, because he "leaps" to tag him, but he's literally standing right next to him. It had to be done to be silly. I think. Thankfully the rebound lariat gets reversed by a huge Big E tilt-a-whirl slam. The New Day stacked splash in the corner is a little silly, but then they shut my mouth by doing a truly silly leaping double DDT with Rollins and Ambrose stacked onto E's shoulders. This whole thing was pretty underwhelming. Roman's spear to Kingston looked nice, but the triple powerbomb somehow looked weaker than Owens' bomb on Fandango.

5. Becky Lynch/Carmella/Natalya/Tamina/Naomi vs. Alicia Fox/Bayley/Sasha Banks/Nia Jax/Asuka

ER: Not enough attention was paid to Lana's awesome Smackdown cocktail dress. Raw team really should run the boards, meaning instead they will just have Tamina eliminate everybody. Tamina has been on the roster for EIGHT YEARS!! She is still really really terrible at pro wrestling. The internet will be furious at the early Lynch elimination. And man they are really actually spending way too much time on Tamina. She is the clear #10 on the totem pole in that ring, and somehow she is being treated as the big star here. It's terrible. I don't so much care about her eliminating Bayley, they've already done the damage to Bayley. But having her treated as as big or bigger star than Nia, and man does Tamina throw some of the absolute worst headbutts I've seen. Tamina has a terrible look, and is really bad at wrestling, and you no longer owe anything to her father. Let the Tamina push DIE. Crowd gets lit up every time Asuka tags in, and her stuff against Carmella looks awesome. That flying hip attack looked near decapitation level. We really have Tamina sitting in the final 4. What have you done. Who wanted this. Sasha is really great at putting over Natalya's stuff, leaning into the 360 lariat and snapping her neck back getting run into the buckles. Boy we are really getting some Tamina Time. Asuka gets the final two eliminations, but man I am confused by sudden big deal in 2017 Tamina. A lot of this was handled pretty poorly. Even the final 2 on 1 was silly, because there wasn't any kind of attempt at a save. They just kind of let Asuka get the pins. This was bad.

6. The Miz vs. Baron Corbin

ER: Miz goes after Corbin's knee and I like how they handle it. Though I was really surprised that they basically had Miz wrecking Corbin the whole match, and had Dallas and Axel at ringside...but Corbin basically took a bunch of damage and then hit his loopy finisher on him to get the win. I have friends over so maybe I missed some of the nuances of this match, but it really felt like Miz worked really hard in this one to wind up with that finish.

7. Sheamus/Cesaro vs. The Usos

ER: The brand vs. brand has been kind of weird as we have a lot of heel champs right now, so we're getting a lot of heel on heel action, so the crowd is just picking guys as default faces. Which I guess is fine. The work in this is both really good, and also not really captivating. They're all doing good looking moves, they just aren't building in a very interesting way. The end run is really fun, but even then it felt like a sudden call to go home. But these guys are all total pros and hit their stuff really well, and they all have cool stuff to hit. The final Uso hot tag is great, with one of them tagging his brother while doing a running no hands dive over the top and into Cesaro. That's awesome.

8. Charlotte vs. Alexa Bliss

ER: Really liked when this broke open with Alexa whipping Charlotte's shoulder into the floor off the apron. Her abdominal stretch was really great too, digging in her elbow into Charlotte's exposed sides, scratching at her. I love how tenacious Bliss is, loved that guillotine choke build. And both of them going after the other's lower jaw was awesome, just grabbing at jawbone to get to a standing position. Bliss eats knees spectacularly on her twisting moonsault, but leans way out of Charlotte's follow up yakuza kick. This was a fun one, probably the best match on the show so far.

9. AJ Styles vs. Brock Lesnar

ER: I'm not sure how well this will go for Styles fans, but I'm curious how they'll work this one. And as many of us assumed, this is an absolute mauling. Brock tosses AJ around like a total dead body, and AJ has some of the more spectacular German suplex bumps. AJ is flying around spectacularly, including a wild bump over the top to the floor. All of Lesnar's knees to the ribs look absolutely devastating. AJ comes back nicely and I always love Lesnar's missed knee bump in the corner. And then AJ gets probably the longest actual run of offense we've seen against Brock in probably 3 years. They flub that corner tornado DDT, but then Brock bumps around big for him, including an awesome moment where he gets run through the ring steps. AJ hits a bunch of big flying moves, and the big moment of AJ locking in the calf crusher was awesome. Lesnar was selling it great, and the size difference was completely erased in that moment. And then Lesnar just smashes AJ's head into the back of the mat a bunch, and it looks horror movie violent. Every time AJ went up for a flying move I got nervous that Brock would catch him, and sure enough, we got there. AJ takes the F5 super great, and this was really fun. I'm happy AJ did as well as he did.

10. Kurt Angle/Finn Balor/Samoa Joe/Braun Strowman/HHH vs. Shane McMahon/Randy Orton/Bobby Roode/Shinsuke Nakamura/John Cena

ER: I know we all want this to come down to HHH and Shane. I kind of want that. HHH looks really stiff...not in his strikes, but in his mobility. But I think overall this is handled pretty well, with everybody getting time to do their stuff.  But we knew where this was going, and it was awful. There were individual moments I liked, but as a whole none of it worked. When one of the things I wrote down as enjoying is "Angle grabbing an ankle lock when Cena was going to do a fistdrop", or "Shane really flew hard into the ring barrier on that dropkick"...that cool stuff is really minor compared to the blatantly awful longform storytelling once we got to Shane being the lone survivor. There was approximately 12 minutes of guys standing around silently making eye contact while breathing heavily. And thank goodness Raw has HHH on their team, so that he can outsmart venerable warrior Shane McMahon. He sacrificed Angle so he can claim the victory for RAW BRAND! Which comes with no actual reward whatsoever, other than bragging rights that not one single person actually cares about in any way. Braun barely gets any sort of comeuppance, gets to choke him down briefly, which will no doubt lead to a 25 minute WM match with a 10 minute HHH cosplay ring entrance. You knew where all of this was going, and knew it was going to be awful. It was. You could see the crowd actively not enjoying much of the last half. It never got to them chanting or singing or something stupid like that, but people just looked tired and bored and defeated. I can't really blame them.

ER: Underwhelming card. The bad stuff was bad, the elimination matches were the worst, and the good stuff was merely good. Nothing stood out as particularly great. These longer cards are almost always the pits, even the ones that look interesting on paper. The upside is that Brock/Styles exceeded expectations. That was a real high point.

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WWE Survivor Series 2016 (Not Quite) Live Blog

Saw some friends in town from Australia and got momentarily obsessed with the new show The Killing Season, so got home a little after the show started, but I'm here now and starting it from the beginning! Brand supremacy is incredibly stupid!

1. Ariya Daivari, Drew Gulak & Tony Nese vs. Rich Swann, Noam Dar & TJ Perkins

Still a bummer we don't get Gallagher and have been getting Dar, but at least Gallagher's picture has been in the 205 Live lineup. Pre-PPV matches always have a hot crowd because people are just excited to see live wrestling, and this match is immediately ice cold. People DO NOT care about the cruiserweight division, likely because they threw all of these guys onto TV cold and just said "here are cruiserweights!!!" The word "cruiserweight" probably doesn't even mean a whole lot to most current fans. They weren't the ones whining about the nWo interrupting WCW lucha matches 20 years ago. And this match is weird. They're presented as cruiserweights but then they go out there and put on a standard WWE TV match with guys being put into arm locks that won't go anywhere. The whole thing was pretty flat. Gulak did things I liked, but he doesn't have the flash to get over in a 6 man like this. Dar shows us how bad of a catcher he is, the ref stops TJ doing a dive for no reason whatsoever, Swann hits the ugliest standing 450 that he's ever hit. This whole thing shouldn't get anybody excited for 205 Live, which is a shame.

2. Kane vs. Luke Harper

Oooooo a bonus kickoff match! And Kane hits the chinlock to start the match! This whole thing is pretty chinlock-y. Harper gets some moments of nice clubbing, some neat short knees to Kane's head, a big senton that the crowd dug. Kane is pretty sluggish here. Realllly going through some motions. JBL makes a dud of a Walking Dead reference. This was a lot of nothing and naturally you gotta keep Kane strong. He looked really really slow and bad here.

3. Bayley, Alicia Fox, Nia Jax, Sasha Banks & Charlotte vs. Becky Lynch, Naomi, Alexa Bliss, Carmella & Natalya

I think most of this PPV will be individual entrances. Nikki was attacked backstage by an unknown assailant (maybe the return of Midnight!?!?) and replaced by Natalya. Natalya and Nikki confuse me, because I watch Total Divas with Rachel, and that has to be a scripted show. But in these backstage "acting" segments both (especially Natalya) are such terrible actresses, in a way that never shows up on Total Divas. Are the situations scripted and not actual words? Because Nattie is completely unconvincing whenever she has to act. I didn't really get into this match until the Carmella/Fox segment, oddly. I liked the way they matched up. Bliss hits a neat moonsault to quickly eliminate Foxy though. I like Jax but man was it a dumb choice for her to wear a big red Raw shirt. Couldn't they have just made her some red accessories for her outfit? Her and Naomi match up nice with Nia absorbing a big crossbody to the floor, and Naomi bumping big on the floor as Jax destroys her. I do hate how these eliminations just come so quickly. Natalya is really getting the weird push suddenly, with her just steamrolling Sasha and then dominating Charlotte, until Charlotte hit one kick to eliminate her. Really hard to get too into this match where every single pairing has just ended with someone getting eliminated. Hardly any tag outs or drama, just new pairing, new elimination. Becky takes an eternity to set up an armbar and somehow Jax just taps to it. Man this match is really bad. No flow whatsoever. Bliss gets eliminate as I type that. This suuuuuucks. Half the stuff Lynch does looks really good. She always throws a nice legdrop (all the variations), some of her suplexes are great. But sometimes her move set up can take an eternity. The Bayley to Belly really did not look like a "killshot" move. Lynch took like 90% of their segment together and Bayley just wins the match with one suplex. This was terrible. I've made a terrible choice.

4. The Miz vs. Sami Zayn

This is a real nice, hot match. I don't love either guy but they're matching up really well in this one. The small knee selling work is good and Zayn ramps up the selling after hitting a Blue Thunder Bomb. Maryse interjecting herself on the floor was great and her work and timing as a second is always worth watching. She knows when to hold back and has great reactions (her whipping her arm around while Miz is locking on the figure 4 is Wendell Kim-esque in it's animated excitement). Zayn locking on the figure 4 was a little clunky, with Miz pulling his own leg into position to help him out and we all knew there would be some sort of masturbatory '97 reference on this show, because they can't help themselves. If there HAD to be an SS97 spot this was probably the best case scenario, as the cut over to Maryse ringing it was great. Overall match was good. But damn at this point I'm pretty sure they just book shows in Canada so that they can rub the SS97 finish in their face. They're like a guy who had awful 90 second teenage summer camp sex with a girl who then sends her a letter every couple years reminding her of it.

5. Enzo Amore & Big Cass/The Shining Stars/Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows/Sheamus & Cesaro/New Day vs. Heath Slater & Rhyno/Breezango/Usos/Hype Bros/American Alpha

I don't mind Enzo and Cass yammering on for several minutes, as it allows me to FF with zero hesitation and attempt to get closer to live. Cesaro's dinner jacket/carnation look amazing, but he really needs that shit to be tearaway. Who takes a jacket off over their head? I like whenever Michael Cole slips up and says "Hype Brothers", but sadly he's not on commentary here. I don't know why it makes me laugh. Is there an ECW chant? We immediately start with two different eliminations. "This changes everything!!" Probably not. Gallows punches in the corner on Mojo looked really great, and Anderson throws an awesome knee to Ryder's face. Gallows and Anderson appear to get better as WWE's interest in them gets lesser. These matches are the pits with all the fast eliminations. How are these pins not being broken up!? Everybody has fucking 8 partners just standing there watching. And they all look like total goobers in their branded shirts. Primo does a cool weird bump in the corner that ends with his leg getting hooked. Man the way every single person tonight is getting eliminated after one move of offense, I'd be terrified to get in the ring. Does everybody have a fucking bus to catch or something? Slater's stage dive off the top looked great. But it's really hard to care about any of this. Not one once of psychology. I much rather would have seen a normal tag match between any of these teams. Usos vs. Sheamus/Cesaro for 10 minutes would be really good. Almost none of this match was good.

6. Kalisto vs. Brian Kendrick

Really fun start to this one, especially the "Kendrick using environment" spots: Holding onto ropes, the funky schoolboy into the bottom turnbuckle, kicking Kalisto's trapped body in the ring steps, but really anything he does has looked good. Kendrick breaks out a nasty back suplex and a cravate, and I loved Kalisto's fast head and arm drag to try and shake the cravate. Kendrick makes leg kicks look good and is really smart with his rope usage without getting cutesy. And then they break out the Spanish Fly from the apron which is pretty crazy, and then Kendrick catches Kalisto's tope in a really awesome way, just completely getting barreled over. This is really fun. This is really a PPV with some fun singles matches and horrible multimans. Damn that headlock takeover to set up the bully choke was sick. Really got into all of Kendrick's choke, with Kalisto gamely fighting to the ropes. Kendrick looks really great in this, even landing a vicious diving axe handle. When was the last time you saw a nasty axe handle? Kalisto's offense is really benefitting from Kendrick too. Nobody whips their head into the mat for Kalisto's kneeling rana quite like Kendrick. Well, that finish blew and I was not expecting to see Kendrick win. So the cruisers are staying on Raw....but 205 Live will be taped after Smackdown? How will any of that work?

7. Shane MacMahon, Bray Wyatt, Randy Orton, AJ Styles & Dean Ambrose vs. Braun Strowman, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Chris Jericho & Kevin Owens

They're starting this off really slow which makes me think this is getting way more time than the other (terrible) elimination matches. Not tons to comment on at first, except for Shane's goofiest punches ever. It was nice to see Jericho's missile dropkick catch Shane right in the jaw. He is far and away the easiest guy to root against in this match. Is windbreaker pants really the best he can do for ring gear? How is the casual fan supposed to feel about him? He's supposed to be some kind of legend, right? Yuck. Ambrose hits a really nice lariat on Owens, then whiffs by a few feet on a tope that I think was supposed to not whiff. Styles hits a pretty wild flying elbow to the floor, Owens hits a nice fat guy senton to the floor and eats a back breaker over the barrier. This is actually pretty fun. Strowman kicks Shane in the face and I love it. Shane almost hangs himself clotheslining Braun over. Looked sloppy as hell, but the sloppiness gave it a nice reckless feel. Oh my but those Shane punches in the corner are the shittiest. Graves sucks the company dick and calmly puts over all the time Shane spends in the boxing gym. Good lord Braun tries to murder AJ by throwing him over the top to the floor, and either threw him too short or too far and AJ takes a nutso bump rolling over the top rope backwards to the floor. Good gravy. Much as I will continue to root against him, Shane's elbow through Braun on the announce table looked awesome, and Ellsworth grabbing Braun's leg to keep him out of the ring was a pretty clever way to keep Braun strong-yet-eliminated, and about the best use of Ellsworth. Also a good use of Ellsworth, having Braun launch him off the ramp through a table. Why were there pizza boxes on a table next to the entrance ramp? Who was just sitting there eating pizza and couldn't clean up his garbage? Somebody on the ring crew is going to have to leave an anonymous comic sans note asking people to clean up after themselves.

Shane commits on a missed dropkick and nicely sneaks in knees to counter a Lionsault. His timing on getting the knees up was really good. Damn Jericho slamming AJ's head into the mat looked nasty, just grabbing him by the hair and violently slamming the back of his head into the mat. The stuff with the clipboard was all realllllly stupid. The match goes 30 minutes with only 2 eliminations, and two guys go out because of the clipboard. That's really dumb you guys. Fuck I hate that I've actually liked a lot of Shane's stuff in this match. He's eaten several nice Reigns punches, and then flies wildly off the top rope into a spear. Though Reigns wasn't totally accounting for the weight and almost spiked his own head. It looked like Shane nailed him with a DDT. Oh, and they're sort of selling it that way, so that works for me. Some of his awful punches aside, Shane has clearly looked better than Rollins in this match, at minimum. Orton has been in like 30 seconds of this now 40+ minute match. I've actually been surprisingly into this whole match but it's finally starting to drag for me. But that's okay because it's over!! It looks like this has been getting pretty roundly shit on, and yeah there really wasn't any psychology outside of "These guys were randomly picked to be on one show, these were picked to be on the other show, they have zero alliances, but this time it counts!!!" So that's really stupid. Nobody actually cares about "brand supremacy". And yes a lot of this was constructed as valiant hero Shane fighting the odds. But I thought this was totally fine. Long as hell, but I was never bored. Not glowing praise I know, but this was definitely not as bad as some are making it out to be.

8. Brock Lesnar vs. Goldberg

I understand the modern medical age we live in, but I still am amazed that 50 year old Goldberg looks essentially the same as he did 16 years ago. Goatee is whiter. That's it. I'm kind of foolishly excited for this one. And HOLY SHIT THEY BOOKED A SQUASH!! THAT was not the finish I was expecting. The whole build up I've been asking "how is a 50 year old who hasn't worked in 12 years going to get thrown around by Lesnar??" and then they go and have Goldberg squash him. Two spears, jackhammer, done. I'm kind reeling, and don't totally know if this was the stupidest way to book this, or the smartest. Lesnar has dominated almost everybody for 18 months, and now a guy who hasn't wrestled in 12 years beats him in 90 seconds. This has to send a terrible message to every single full time wrestler. BUT it also kind of makes sense that the first big Lesnar loss in ages would come in Warrior/Honky Tonk fashion. Just totally surprise Lesnar and mow through him, don't let him even get to suplex city. BUT then you go right back to thinking that there were other guys that are actually ON the roster that they could have booked to do that. This program is over, right? Goldberg isn't sticking around? So does Lesnar go back to dominating the actual roster and they just stop talking about how Goldberg came back, squashed him, and now Lesnar is right back to being better than the regular roster? I don't know!!! It seems kind of dumb and kind of hilarious but was also kind of awesome. I bet nobody was expecting this finish, which is amusing and I was certainly left with my jaw dropped. They built this up for like 2 months!! And then it takes 90 seconds and they go "Thanks for watching, universe!!" This is like one of those UFC fights that get 24/7 type specials, crazy build up, and then someone catches a high kick one minute in. So ridiculous.

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WWE Survivor Series 2015 Live(ish) Blog

So I basically have not been watching any WWE television. If I remember something is on then I'll flip over to the channel, see if anything catches my eye. The product is not doing a whole lot for me right now. I'm going into this not knowing literally any of the matches on the card. That sounds like a terrible idea.

1. Traditional Survivor Series Match: The Miz, Bo Dallas, Stardust & The Ascension vs. Neville, The Dudley Boyz, Titus O'Neill & Goldust

ER: Kind of hilarious that we get a "traditional" Survivor Series match on the pre-show of Survivor Series. Can't have this Survivor Series shit getting in the way of Survivor Series. And woof that is one dogshit 5 man team right there. I mean good lord. The team name should be "The 5 guys Eric would switch channels to avoid". I mean come on. I'm watching you BLIND Survivor Series, and this is what you immediately do to me!? But I cannot skip it, because they had to throw Goldust into the thing. And he was the 10th guy announced. If it had been pretty much 90% of the rest of the roster, it would have been skippable. But I gotta watch any and all Goldust. And he immediately eliminates Viktor with his gorgeous powerslam. I'm not too broken up about that. Titus' corner strikes on Konnor look really good. Konnor's jumping elbowdrop on Ray looked pillowy soft and terrible. Neville gets a fun flurry against Stardust and then gets pinned by a bulldog. We're going into dumbshit quick pin mode. This is mostly awful. Cody punches Goldust in the ear and things get better. Bo Dallas has a shitty chinlock. Match ends awhile later. Nothing to see here. Goldust looked good. None of the eliminations had any build or meant anything. This is clearly a horrible idea of mine.

Byron Allen (?) says that match reminded him of all the Survivor Series matches from when he was a kid. Yeah. There's zero chance this match reminded anybody of anything.

2. Roman Reigns vs. Alberto Del Rio

ER: Roman is getting what they call a "Cena reaction". Del Rio looks like a star. He looks like he's in the best cosmetic shape of his career. He looks pretty massive. I didn't realize he was larger than Reigns. Del Rio looks really good throughout this. Dug his hotshot and enziguiri, then he takes a nice thud on a Fuerza bump. Reigns takes a nice ringpost bump. ADR makes me buy his missed double stomp off the top. He did a real great knee buckle stumble sell. JBL tries to make it out like he faked that knee buckle as part of a strategy, but faking a knee injury to take a superman punch sounds like a pretty fucking stupid strategy. I liked ADR in this, and the match got about 14 minutes to do something, but didn't do much for me. They tried to make the stretch run dramatic, but really they just had ADR lock in the armbar a couple times only to have Roman power out. Kinda made all the babbling about a weak shoulder come off as a shrug. Nice individual moments. Pretty unfulfilling as a whole.

3. Dean Ambrose vs. Kevin Owens

ER: There's a fat guy in the crowd clearly telling his woman the back story on every match so far. You can totally tell. He's pointing at each guy and leaning in, you can just picture him saying "alright so this guy beat a guy named Dolph Ziggler. I know, right? I don't know. Yeah it's probably not his real name. But Ambrose. Yeah the skinnier guy. He beat Ziggler. This is a semi-final. There's a whole tournament." And boy this isn't doing a whole helluva lot for me either. And as I type that they start to win me over. Owens hits a mammoth superplex, Dean hits one of his best ever rebound lariats, Ambrose eats a couple nice superkicks, takes a gross slam into an announce table. But the build for these matches has done absolutely nothing for me. Both have come off like guys doing moves with no consequences. I mean jesus even though I thought they looked nasty, in the last minute of the match Dean got slammed into the announce tables, took two superkicks, and then still got the pin.

The SNES commercial for TLC looked really great. The Reigns superman punch animation was perfection.

4. Ryback & The Lucha Dragons & The Usos vs. New Day, Sheamus & King Barrett

ER: Unhip Sheamus made me chuckle saying they were gonna get jiggy on these poseurs. Big E avoiding eye contact with him afterwards was perfect. Woods has an amazing James Brown pompadour with a ducktail mullet. The construction of the whole thing is really impressive. Sadly it will probably all tumble down after one bump. Sheamus takes a couple really great bumps to the floor working Sin Cara: one nice tumbling one landing on his side, and taking an enziguiri and bumping on his knees to the floor. Ouch. Ryback hits one of the ugliest dives ever, but we'll just go A for effort on that one, like when Road Dogg tried to moonsault off a cage. This whole thing is pretty fun. Big E's spear to the floor is such a brutal spot. New Day is probably the best possible use of Kofi ever. He doesn't have to do tons of offense and let Big E carry the load. New Day ditching Sheamus kinda makes sense, and Sheamus works shockingly well with smaller workers. I loved him stomping on Kalisto's hands. Sheamus did about as good a job as possible holding down the fort without a team. This elimination match was a massive step up from the garbage one on the pre show.

5. Paige vs. Charlotte

ER: Charlotte has never impressed me before. Paige has a really great abdominal stretch, pressing down hard on the side of Charlotte's head every time she wrenches it in. Paige also takes a mean electric chair bump onto the apron. Charlotte's rolling headscissors was both goofy and painful looking, so it gets a pass. But it's not as nasty as Paige's surfboard lock or her great knees in the corner. But those were not as nasty as Charlotte's scream and face after hitting a so-so spear. Match overall was pretty decent. Charlotte still doesn't do much for me. I don't think she has much body charisma, and a lot of her offense feels very dependent on somebody leaning way into her offense.

6. Tyler Breeze vs. Dolph Ziggler

ER: Ziggler has an updated look on mid 90s cruising attire Shawn Michaels. Even has those same awful boots. Kenny Omega douche hair + Shawn Michael lube guy at the fisting station gear = profit?  Match itself was decent enough for a completely heatless affair. Both guys did some things that looked cool, also never made me care about the things they were doing. Some of this may be the announce team. The announce team is the ultimate limp dick tonight. They sound rehearsed to say what is happening in front of them, while also not making it important or interesting or dramatic. It's a brutal combo. Breeze bumps into Dolph's stuff well, flying into a dropkick and planting himself on a flapjack. Announcers push this as a HUGE win for Breeze, but really it would have been far more shocking to everybody if Ziggler would have won. That dude loses to everybody, and has been doing so for years.

7. Wyatt Family vs. Undertaker & Kane

ER: Undertaker's slow menacing walk to the ring looks less doomy and more accident victim learning how to walk again. But in the ring he looks spry enough against Harper. Kane takes an awesome bump over the announce table. Cole is desperately trying to push every single Undertaker movement as "ANOTHER CLASSIC #UNDERTAKERSURVIVORSERIESMOMENT!!!" He's beyond insufferable. Braun takes a fine bump through an announce table, Undertaker impresses me by getting Harper up for a Tombstone eventually, and really this was Undertaker going through some greatest hits so Cole could cream his jeans and scream VINTAGE!

8. Dean Ambrose vs. Roman Reigns

ER: This was pretty easily the best match of the night, but that wasn't really saying a whole bunch. I almost always like it when Shield guys match up, and this match was short for them (about 10 minutes) but was worked at a quick 10 minute match pace. I don't care for the spear as a death finisher, but Ambrose is great spilling all around for Reigns, and I liked the kneeling punch exchange. Also thought Ambrose looked badass with his torn shirt from the previous Owens match, made him look like a hero towards the end of an action movie.

Sheamus cashes in MITB afterwards, and yeah that concept is pretty beyond played out. It's an amusing dick move to cash in on Reigns while Reigns was celebrating in his massive confetti pile Good lord whoever ordered confetti accidentally checked the "case" measurement instead of individual confetti packages, so on the "Confetti Celebration Dial" instead of getting "Tasteful World Title Celebration" we ended up getting "Rip Taylor Just Died Two Days Before Pride Weekend and We Must Celebrate His Memory".

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