rolling (non-millenials) grabbing the brass ring 2015

I watched most of the G1 Climax night 1. Naito's heel act is so great but the dynamic doesn't work vs Fale. The best part was when he stumbled up the ramp after the match and appeared to collapse with exhaustion, only to land in a Burt Reynolds pose while doing his eye-opening thing. Shibata's arm is messed up badly and he needs to completely change up his matches on this tour seeing as 3/4 of his offense is hitting people with forearms to the face. You wouldn't think that asshole heel AJ Styles vs plucky babyface Shibata could possibly work, but it did. Ibushi vs Tanahashi lived up to expectations, twenty plus minutes just flew by.

The WWE's main roster booking is definitely a bit of a black hole as of Battleground but god damn I loved the goofy house show main event finish of Raw, and cena is the greatest exuberant tag team apron cheerleader in the game

shibata's a plucky babyface? thought he was totally the heel at dominion

Shibata's arm injury has turned him babyface for this tour -- he can't do the vicious stuff he normally does, his offense vs Styles consisted of "spirited comebacks" and not much else.

https://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/rusev-throws-a-fish.gif?w=650

You gotta respect Rusev's willingness to play this mostly wretched material completely straight-faced and then just kill it in the ring anyway

oh man, RIP Hot Rod :( we shan't see his like again. Dusty, Hogan, now Piper - the Legends roster is getting depleted at a very depressing rate right now

Watching the 1984 Tuesday Night Titans was something of a revelation to me - they're in this weird place where they haven't quite broken away from what the company used to be under Vince Sr. and VKM doesn't seem to have quite decided exactly how to achieve what he's looking for. There's still "ethnic hero" guys like Salvatore Bellomo getting TV time and a push and being completely fucking useless, and the whole thing is strange as hell.

Then on the 5th or 6th episode, Piper makes his first appearance and, as someone who was too young to have ever seen Piper in his prime, I immediately got why he became such a huge deal for them. He was this whirlwind of charisma and hilarity and menace and he just blows the fucking doors off the place. He wasn't from the same planet as the rest of them in those days, he even made Captain Lou look kind of ordinary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36b1u9zTp1I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_8Jz9o2H_s

wrestling's a beautiful thing

I still can't stop watching this.

https://twitter.com/okadaasicecream

AJ vs Tanahashi in the G1 far exceeded my expectations, I hope Nakamura brings it tomorrow.

Ive fallen back in love with lucha underground. Only got like 7 episodes left. Pentagon jr. is so gnarly.

it gets better and better and better

I'm kind of happy that the G1 is over and out of my system. It gets dragged out over a month and that's a slog to get through (even if you're only catching one or two matches per day like I was) but the important matches get more time to shine and the wrestlers have more recovery time, so I'd call it a net win. The final wasn't as great as people seem to be saying (nor was the Jr. Heavy championship match) but definitely epic enough to suit the occasion.

So Summerslam and takeover is this weekend, should someone start a seperate thread or are we cool?(also who is mod of this board? Is it dom?)

I heard that g1 had a ***** final and some other great matches. Ive booked Monday off work specifically for watching wrestling, so whats been good?

Paul Heyman is so good at promos i feel kinda sorry for anyone else in the whole history of wrestling.

I think ken c is in charge

i've had paul heyman singing "glory glory BROCK LEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESNAR" in my head all day, just that part

"I heard that g1 had a ***** final and some other great matches. Ive booked Monday off work specifically for watching wrestling, so whats been good?"

check the early run of shibata matches, especially shibata/aj. i generally hate michael elgin but elgin/goto was great, as was most of his matches in the tournament tbh. honma/ishii was a total blast. the finals were real cool too of course

sasha/bayley honestly either should've gone on last or third-to-last cause i'm having trouble giving a fuck about the owens/balor match after that

Yeah they might have been worried a big insane gimmick brawl would've tired the crowd out and ruined the vibe of the women's match if it went on last, but as it was it ended up just kind of hoping nobody got crippled in the ladder match so the show would remain an overall home run

But yeah, ungodly great women's match, so much vicious ROH arm-mutilation stuff mixed with the sentimental WWE main event epic style

The struggle to give a fuck about Owens/Balor is a drop in the ocean compared to the impending struggle to give a fuck about Summerslam

"I heard that g1 had a ***** final and some other great matches. Ive booked Monday off work specifically for watching wrestling, so whats been good?"

If you're pressed for time, watch Styles vs Tanahashi, Okada vs Nakamura (IOW the two matches that decided the A and B block winners), and the final.

Digging deeper, check out Honma vs Ishii, Shibata vs Ibushi (this was stiff as all hell), Elgin vs Ishii, and just about any other Tanahashi match. He had an unbelievable tournament, the matches you wanted to be great were great (vs Ibushi) and the matches you kind of dreaded were miraculously good to great (vs Tenzan, vs Fale).

The tournament itself was predictable in the sense that all the big names tended to deliver in their matches (save for Nakamura who was working around an injury) but there were almost no sneaky surprises. You can look at the card for each day and know exactly which matches are skippable by looking at the names. I think one reason why Elgin got over huge was because he was new to NJPW and all his matches were fresh, otherwise it's been almost exactly the same guys participating for the past few years.

Ok, gave in and signed up for the network today. Y'all watching this?

y...yeah

it's a stacked card, a card stacked with ten banana skins above the precipice of Not Being As Good as Takeover

I have enough cheap beer and Diablo III on my desktop to make this worthwhile. We need a Slack group.

the network currently running at 2005-vintage Youtube quality for me

Yeah, me too. We do what we can.

Orton Sheamus was actually...alright, and sensibly early on

I have never secretly hoped that Vince would die so a small wrestler I like could get pushed wholeheartedly but I have secretly hoped that Vince would die so the commentators might stop saying you have a 25% chance of winning if you're in a four way match

obligatory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFoC3TR5rzI

on one hand, a shitty ending to the title vs title match. on the other hand, lolololol

it probably took 20 guys a whole week just to come up with a finish that aggressively shit

xpost btw, talking about the main but could easily have not been

Honestly thought you were talking about the title v. title match.

After Takeover (read; Sasha v. Bayley) last night, Summerslam really felt flat. The women's match really overshadowed everything else on the card and really should have gone on last.

I can see what they were going for with the two wonky finishes, kinda commendable to at least try and do something to get people talking, given how average the rest of the show was. But the execution of those two finishes was fuckin rotten and what you're left with is four hours (!!!!!!) of competent wrestlers wrestling competently. Fine, whatever. Their own fault for trying to follow up Takeover, which wasn't perfect but was perfectly balanced, giving you just enough of everything.

Rumours have been going round ever since these NXT specials started that the main roster were fed up of going out there with handcuffs on and getting shown up by the supposed 'developmental' talent, wouldn't be surprised to hear more complaints of this sort in the near future.

ok now THIS is money

Brock Lesnar has been instructed to Bolieve

Fuck me that was a shit show. Still not seen takeover. Wcw is 1998 had the best roster ever and they went bankrupt two years later cos she fucking booking defeats all. 2015 wwe roster could be even better and i just really dont give a shiiiiiiiit. The timekeeper couldnt see taker tap out and the ref couldnt either and so... yawwwn. Fucking ruined an awesome match too. Takers sit up and the brawl was especially dope

Shit* booking not she obv

Eh, I think the fault was in the execution rather than the booking. The idea itself wasn't bad. They've clearly got it in their heads that this is their real money match this year, sure, whatever, I'm not really into it but I do see the logic. In theory having Lesnar pass-out while giving Taker the finger etc. was as a good a way to build heat for the rubber match as I can think of without killing Brock's aura. It's just that the whole thing felt entirely unrehearsed and everyone involved did a shit job of explaining what was happening.

Anyway, watch Takeover ASAP imo. Typically exciting work in the ring from most everyone involved, deceptively simple common-sense booking, awesome unique black-and-white look to the whole production giving it a very different feel to the usual stuff they put out. It's no great revelation to say that NXT a promotion firing on all cylinders right now, but I think taking it out of Full Sail and sticking it in front of a sold-out arena really drove home how well-booked the whole thing was and how much momentum they're building up. I'm not used to seeing shows that well put together taking place in these kind of venues with such a "big night" atmosphere.

The shit that the crowd were into as well!!! Mega-pop for fuckin Blue Pants! The Vaudevillians hot-tag! The Sasha-Bayley match was absolutely molten. It could've and should've main-evented, which is frankly kind of astonishing given this is the WWE we're talking about.

It's not totally beyond WWE to put on great and well-booked PPVs - I think Wrestlemania this year was an excellent show pretty much top to bottom, for instance (Sting shouldn't have shaken hands tho) but this particular show was bland as fuck and running it the night after the best NXT show so far has thrown a lot of the problems they have with the main roster currently into very sharp relief.

From the women's POV the Divas on MizTV segment last night was absolute flaming death and only made this worse

Sasha is now pretty much Daniel Bryan, in several key ways

so now sasha has wrestled my top 2 matches of the year, i think she's the best working wrestler

side note: aiden englsih and simon gotch are fucking excellent, i cannot wait to see more of them

side note 2: did they change their billing from "villains" to "villians" when they decided to go face with them? i see different spellings wherever i look! maybe it's a spellcheck thing?

Wcw is 1998 had the best roster ever and they went bankrupt two years later cos she fucking booking defeats all.

WWE won't be going under anytime soon (not that I'm implying you were saying that) but point taken. When was the last really satisfying payoff to a 6-12 month long feud in WWE? The main event of WM 30? Rock-Cena I? You could argue that neither one had a proper payoff considering how they followed up on them.

I still haven't seen Takeover either, but at least in NXT they understand how to book a big match -- Wrestler A beats Wrestler B, Wrestler A becomes the clear focus of the promotion and Wrestler B moves on to something else. At Summerslam it's all "Brock vs Taker, 16 months in the making!" but can't decide on a proper payoff so they book a fuck finish. If the goal is another match at Mania, why not just have Taker win clean (setting up the rubber match) or Brock win clean (continuing the theme of Taker never having beaten Brock), either option books itself.

As for Rollins vs Cena, they must have booked it to get a few more mentions on the E! Network rather than booking to set up future matches that people might want to see. It's really too bad because there was some great wrestling up and down the card on Summerslam.

When was the last really satisfying payoff to a 6-12 month long feud in WWE? The main event of WM 30?

Well if we extend this to include NXT then the Sasha-Bayley match on Saturday definitely counts. But yeah on the main roster this is a real problem. Match quality is as high as it's ever been across the board but they're giving us no reason to care about 95% of it.

if NXT counts, then sasha-bayley, sasha-becky, sasha-charlotte, zayn-neville and maybe zayn-owens (if you count that as payoff) all require inclusion.

I meant main roster only.

Craziest week in recent memory?

The champion Seth Rollins girlfriend is released after revealing she hangs swazticas around the house and shes said some other racist shit before too.

TNA's Bram, Charlottes former husband, has been arrested for domestic battery.

Snuka's case has been reopened and he has been charged for murder. What this means for Vince, who supposedly had a lot to do with why he wasnt charged in 1983, god knows. Also i presume Tamina's career is very much on hold, poor lass.

A man has been shot by the police outaide the performance centre after going at the officer with a knife. He was repeatedly turning up trying to stalk a female wrestler, supposedly lita or aj lee, who both definitely wouldnt work there anymore.

Its Only Tuesday.

imo it reflects badly on seth, not that i was assuming he was a saint before but there's no way he didn't know about 'that side' of her. a lot of the stuff that came out was already public knowledge, just got rehashed following Literal Nazigate

I would just like to say thank you to Sting and Ashley from HR for my new respect for Seth Rollins as a whole.

Best part of NOC was KO winning the IC strap from Ryback, who should have never had it.

can you believe his reign was 100+ days? he defended it what, twice?

worried about KO with the belt until they show they're going to book him decently and not just as a scared baby who walks out of matches twice a week