rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

AJ Lee is retiring. Guess she came back for the Wrestlemania paycheck and nothing else. At least that's what her completely uninterested wrestling showed since her return.

yeah respect but she's been half assing it for quite some time--that AJ/Paige series of PPV matches from last year was outright bad tbh

neville vs rollins

not exactly cena/angle

Haven't caught much of Lucha underground since it started but I just finished watching the Grave Consequences casket match from the other week and it was totally really good as casket matches go, probably primarily because the casket actually had very little to do with anything except for the finish and a couple of big spots. Mainly it was just a damn fine brawl, another solid big monster / little underdog fight of a similar vibe to zayn / Owens (though Fenix got in a good amount of offence here).

Thought that fenix was good as the sympathetic though kinda non-descript tecnico getting his ass kicked all over town, but more so I really enjoyed Mil Muertes, who actually didn't seem very Lucha-y in terms of his style, aside from the odd tope or two which seemed kinda obligatory just to prove that he could do it. He worked well as this big bruising asshole, his look and demeanour reminded me of The Spoiler or someone, one of those big and surprisingly athletic masked heels you might sometimes see watching old southern territories stuff. But old-school look or not, he worked a great pace here. I am also a fan of mask-ripping and bloody-forehead-biting as heat-seeking offence in these kind of matches. I'd certainly have been booing the dude if I'd been there, anyway.

Basically it is only a short match really and the pace is wicked fast from the outset so if you have a spare 15 mins at some point then I would definitely recommend this as a good watch.

On the down side, everyone there was chanting "holy shit" every time either dude in the ring moved a muscle while matt striker was sitting there going "lol right on guys" while also, and perhaps even more annoyingly, providing the most infuriatingly smug and self-satisfied meta commentary one can readily imagine I.e. At the climatic moment when the apparently conflicted valet is holding the casket open as the two dudes struggle on the apron and vampiro is doing an ok job of selling the "but which dude is she helping?!" tension, matt striker is literally sitting there saying "this is building tension" yes thank you you fucking goon we have read books and seen films before, we do not need you to signpost the fucking plot points for us, I mean one of these guys is carrying a magic stone from which he draws mystical occult powers, whyyyy would you want to draw attention to the artifice of this whole thing??? He wasn't totally terrible for WK9 imo and I do like that he calls the moves, but my god, trying to get over with the "internet crowd" by saying shit like "I'm markin out bro!!!!!" On a fuckin royal rumble ppv of all places or nodding along sagely for every superfluous overkill This is Awesome chant or w/e srsly fuck matt striker for always

But yeah matt striker and wrestling fans in general are the worst, check out that match

matt striker is only saved from being the worst commentator in history because mark madden exists

that Grave Consequences match is absolutely fantastic though, good shout, I've been hearing people recommend it but this is what finally got me to watch it

still have a nagging doubt this Ricochet-Nakamura match in London is gonna turn out to be a hoax

lol please come to watch Leo Messi and Harry Kane at this testimonial match my god but how i love wrestling. wish i was in the UK this summer

but my god, trying to get over with the "internet crowd" by saying shit like "I'm markin out bro!!!!!"

And that's not even his most annoying habit, which would be yelling "OOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!!!" after literally every high spot or finishing move.

I might be passing through Toronto in May, I'm seriously thinking of tweaking my travel dates to be there for the ROH/NJPW show.

still not as bad as cole inserting one or two OH!!!s in the middle of a 15 minute conversation about hobbits

i've been without internet for the last few days so for the want of anything better i've been going back over a few things i had saved on my harddrive and it really is p. heartbreaking to watch how completely earth-shatteringly awesome Stone Cold Steve Austin was in 96-97; I mean when he comes down the ramp for his match with Bret Hart at Survivor Series 1996 he shoots the camera this look that communicates more than a million amazing promos ever could and you just believe (sorry Roman Reigns) in this guy and man as a guy who first tuned in to pro wrestling in late 2000 / early 2001, when Austin's time was most definitely past (aside from that one awesome 2/3 falls match he had with HHH), it is still completely fucking tragic to see how he went from this incredible harbinger of the new era of professional wrestling to this fucking goof in camo shorts driving SUVs or quad bikes or whatever down to the ring to do the same old beers'n'stunners routine.

Also it occured to me while watching some Attitude Era stuff that in addition to being pretty much the best pro wrestler that has ever existed c. 2000-2002, The Rock's legacy in this business is a despicable one bcuz due to his overwhelming awesomeness he clearly replaced Hulk Hogan as Vince McMahon's platonic ideal of what a wrestling champ should be at some point in the early 00s and therefore we have only him to blame for a great many things, potentially even Cena himself tho in particular one might pick out Miz's 2010-11 title run and that godwaful WM main event

Austin's comeback in 2000-2002 was incredible, with HHH injured and the Rock AWOL much of the time he carried nearly every big main event for the promotion for a year and a half. Nobody wanted to see him as a heel, which was of course a monumentally dumb decision that everyone involved has gone on record as saying they regret, but in the ring he was as good as he ever was.

You can't really hate on peak Attitude Era Austin's in-ring style without hating on the Attitude Era itself. If technical wrestling was the key to the wrestling boom then Bret Hart would have set the world on fire. Austin as a brawler was the final break from the dominant styles of the 80's and early 90's, that style (which at the time was completely fresh in WWE main events) was what made the difference between two million and seven million people watching RAW every week. It fit his character and the car-crash era of TV perfectly because you could advance the storylines by hitting guys with chairs week after week and just creating complete chaos just as easily as you once could by exchanging holds in the ring.

lol i ought to include some kind of disclaimer on any posts i make here on Thursday nights to the effect that the following is likely to be a poorly punctuated mess of unsubstantiated drivel and should probably be ignored by the public at large (I have Thursday evenings / Friday mornings off work).

but yeah i was being silly and hyperbolic and I went totally overboard with the criticism the other night, but even so, agree to disagree on this issue i think. though it is very likely that my opinions on this matter are shaped by a childhood in which I was a total mark for The Rock, to such an extent that I really wasn't into Stone Cold at all, I just take very little joy in Austin's character and performances back then relative to his work from 96-98. And it isn't just a ring-work thing either. I love his 2001 stuff with Angle, Benoit, Jericho and the aforementioned HHH match. That stuff was all great. And I'm absolutely not trying to deny what he achieved in terms of revolutionizing the prevalent style of the day and what he did for the business. I'm just saying I can't take very much pleasure in a lot of it now for whatever reason.

I can rewatch his rise from 96-98 and be utterly thrilled decades after the fact with how intense and how obviously superior this guy was to everything that was happening around him (and I would probably include Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels in that) and it's like when you watch that stuff any element of mystery as to how this guy carried the company and the industry as a whole into such a hot period just kinda vanishes because it is immediately obvious when you watch him how completely sand occasionally transcendentally awesome he was at the whole shebang. But his stuff post-98 tends leaves me cold and idk i can only apologise but i do disagree and there are a ton of guys from that period who i would rather watch now

2001 is a sneaky contender for his best in-ring year tbh. it's not fashionable to say so because nobody liked the heel run/the invasion but he was clearly hungry after missing most of 2000, the angle/benoit/jericho/hhh stuff is absolutely great (and even with that heel turn, rock/austin at mania 17 is a strong contender for the best mania main event.)

austin in 99-ish is important obv but a little too pander-y, his best year as a babyface character is definitely 97 imo

2001 was easily his best in-ring year IMO. He was tearing it up on PPV and free TV all year.

v sick of getting LU championships spoiled via wiki, and nerds who act like the dates they were filmed are "canon"

generally don't look up any wrestler who has ever appeared on the show it'll be like "super fly is a wrestler who has appeared on lucha underground. he is not lucha underground champion; prince puma, instead won the championship in october 2014 in an episode that aired in 2015. super fly had nothing to do with that."

not lying, i literally found out prince puma was LU champion in 2011

it really made the announce tables look weak

― qualx, Monday, March 30, 2015 9:34 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean, my literal response to that reigns/show spot was "so fucking what" so gj wwe booking

everyone is stupid:

1. what is the point of a cage match if the authority is in charge and can do something like stick kane in as "the gatekeeper"? how did orton not think of this?
2. aren't cage matches no dq? what was stopping orton from using it?
3. why are the announcers making a big deal out of rollins using it? no dq! and if it were dq he'd retain anyway so who cares?
4. if rollins does it doesn't that automatically make it not an RKO? why can't it just be a diamond cutter?
5. was orton dq'd when he RKO'd kane? none of this is clear!
6. the entire point of this match was to put over the importance of being clear and thorough when declaring rules

intro to raw tmo should just be steph admonishing the two of them for their decisions

I haven't even watching Extreme Rules yet because I felt like it was going to be garbage and I chose sleep instead. I do like Rollins using the RKO since they banned his curb stomp.

The return of heel Bo Dallas is something I really appreciate and so is Sandow. I'm glad we're getting to see more of him.

Also: the return of King of the Ring. How much did people care?

extreme rules was solid enough for what it was. tag match and pre-show match both great, and reigns has figured out how to be a good big match worker. kind of terrible main event

re: king of the ring, they basically just kinda threw it out there and it was done by tuesday, so probably not much beyond the initial nostalgia pop. we got a real good neville/harper tv match out of it though

https://twitter.com/mountain_goats/status/595019376513949696

Worth checking out Sami Zayn's Raw debut against Cena last night. They let him kick out of the AA, promising start

It was about as perfect a debut he could have. He was allowed to stay in the ring as JOHN CENA backed away clapping and saying "tough kid" to the camera. He kicked out the AA and got out the STFU. He hit that diving through the ropes DDT, a blue thunder bomb and got Cena in the koji clutch. And Bret fucking Hart, in Montreal, introduced him in his home town, by hitting jobber Heath Sleater with the mic.

Raw in general was great. I've not seen much Raw recently, even clips of much. I guess I love the New Day and the Kidd/Cesaro team.

i really want to believe it's all a work but http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2015/0505/593997/sami-zayn-injured-on-last-night-wwe-raw/

i'd be more doubtful if the aggravation didn't visibly happen during his entrance, or maybe it's just a well-planned work

At Verne Gagne's funeral, Bob Backlund "started yelling out out what was described as a heel promo at Greg Gagne while Greg was delivering the eulogy

itami's hurt too after they were kinda building to him being the new #1 contender. nxt might have to undergo some panic booking soon

such a bummer. i have tickets for nxt philly next week and i was looking forward to seeing zayn + itami :(

yeah man, i'm going to the friday philly show and i'm really bummed about it

kevin owens tho!

wooo! live nxt tnite!

good news fad- they announced a championship match for tmmrw finn-Owens and Finn says he's bringing the demon

http://www.wwe.com/shows/wwenxt/nxt-takeover-unstoppable-2015-05-20/tyler-breeze-declaration-of-intent-27390265

how was nxt?

loved it. the crowd was great. mick foley came out to say hello, hhh came out to introduce the main event which was a sasha/charlotte title match, he got lots of "thank you, hunter" chants from the crowd. the crowd also gave tons of "E-C-W" chants, esp when rhino faced corbin. corbin won and then teased the crowd afterward about how he'd beat any ECW legends, and then rhino gored him. owens-breeze-balor triple threat for the title... whole thing was a blast.

Sounds like the best show. How was Owens? Does he show signs of his injury?

Sasha Banks is like my favourite current wrestler. Hope people appreciated her in the main event.

I was annoyed Corbin was getting boring chants after like 10 seconds On tv the other night. Was that match good? I presume it was a warm up for the rookie before takeover?

Owens looked great. For the first 1/3rd of the match he sat down outside the ring and watched and the crowd chanted: "Rest, Owens, rest!"

Corbin got boring chants too - hard for me to tell tho whether it was bc he was facing Rhino or bc people are generally cool to him. He was definitely in heel mode on the mic after the match. The Dempsy-Jason Jordan match was so bad, the crowd cleared out to hit the bar and bathrooms. People in both lines were joking that in NXT the Divas aren't the bathroom match, Bull Dempsy is.

the crowd at the last nxt episode was awful 100%

feel like sasha/charlotte are one of those pairings who are just going to be totally electric together for years ("wrestling soul mates" as ambrose has said)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHsuWP7q-mQ

I'm sad they've decided to go back to making Sandow a joke. Ascension is such a waste. Has anyone watched the whole PPV?

yeah. best things: tag match was terrific, bray/ryback overdelivered, main event was a lot of fun albeit predictable finish

worst things: cena/rusev. i like both guys and think the us open challenge has been one of the best parts of raw, but christ this was unwatchable

i thought cena/rusev was fine apart from the obviously terrible ending, though maybe 80% of the credit goes to rusev's facial expressions.

i liked that rollins got a clean win (errrr or as clean as you can get having three guys interfere on your behalf, i guess) and the shield reunion bit was great. would be good if rollins spent another few months trying to settle on a new finisher.

yeah, tbf i think the ending really colored it for me. and i've probably just seen too many of these things, reusing spots from cena's older matches with umaga and orton stuck out. rusev worked hard as always, really hope this breakup doesn't leave him dead in the water.

man i love the shield

can't wait for MITB!

also uhhh elimination chamber

Uhhhhlimination Chamber