NJ have announced a match for Dominion for the 6 man tag titles. It's Okada / Tanahashi / Ishii vs Umino / Moxley / Castagnoli
Tony Khans Fedora is going to be a meme for some time.
The battle royal has been going about 90 seconds and is a complete shitshow.
This is horrific.
It got worse
Horrible. I just want to go to bed but I’ve wasted so much time already.
Nah couldn’t sit through it. If TNA did this ppv it’d be mocked for years.
Bron Breakker might have the best spear in the game
Reading the NXT review and I've just been reminded of the "Heritage cup" rules. Fuck's sake, sounds a pain in the arse.
It’s British rules isn’t it? Rounds etc.
Yeah. Six rounds (three minutes, or when a fall happens), 2/3 falls, if there's a DQ or KO match is over. It's not super complicated, I think I'd just rather any of the other types of match which are sort of smushed together there.
Easier to follow than AEW who make rules up as they go along.
Double or Nothing was some unadulterated filth. I started doing a proper review but lost my head during the Jericho match.
Firstly, the pre-show match was horrible. Poor Baz is going to be so disappointed at Wembley, Jeff Hardy was a complete embarrassment in this one. He's done.
The battle royal was standard fare for AEW (ie. shite). Tony managed to pretty much bury 20 guys in his quest to get over Orange Cassidy. The usual booking mess during the match as well. The lucha guys did all their flippy shit as 15 other guys stood around waiting to catch them. Then they paid off the big Swerve and Lee split from last year with a confrontation during a random battle royal so it shows where Tony's head is at with maintaining heat in his booking. Big Bill was the best performer in this ffs. Tony is building Orange as a challenger to MJF I'm sure as well. Tremendous.
Then here is where I quit on this thing. Adam Cole vs. Chris Jericho was an absolute embarrassment of a pro wrestling match. If you saw this at your local indie you'd be facepalming but from two veterans this was disgraceful stuff. Adam Cole is boring as fuck and it was low effort weapons for 20 minutes, capped off with a referee stoppage in an unsanctioned match which the crowd rightly booed out of the building. The worst high profile match since that Saudi debacle with Undertaker and Shawn.
The FTR match was alright for a while. Decent ring work but the same old problem with AEW. It's just PWG on steroids where everything has to be one big inside joke, so first they bring in Karen Jarrett because they expect everyone to have been watching TNA 15 years ago, then Aubrey Edwards running to the ring like a meme to take a guitar shot was pathetic but the type of shit that AEW does to spite itself. Clown stuff.
Ladder match was good, as far as ladder matches go. They didn't spam the spots like the Reseda boys and built the match, and the finish, around one big spot. Which is how it should be. But there was far too much Luchasaurus and again the interference ruined things.
Hayter lost the title in quick fashion as expected due to injury, but not quick enough to see some horrendous brawling when the interference happened. They should probably just cull the women's division at this point.
An underwhelming trios match and Rhea Ripley and Dominik Mysterio got the biggest pop which is classic AEW.
Then after what, three years, of building Jade Cargill like Goldberg, Tony decides to kill her completely. I've said before that Cargill is still poor in the ring but once you've committed to booking her strong, you might as well use it ffs. So the match with Valkyrie was actually better than I thought. Nothing groundbreaking but probably her best singles match. Then, inexplicably, her manager gets on the stick and issues an open challenge. That's right, a heel does a babyface thing. Then Statlander comes and squashes Jade in 30 seconds. And there we go, three plus years of undefeated streak ended with no build or heat. What the actual fuck. It could have been a big deal if done right.
Then the World title match which wasn't terrible but had the usual multi-man match issues. It went long and I found myself zoning out for long periods when MJF wasn't directly involved. Jungle Boy looks way out of his depth and the Sammy laying down spot was just stupid.
Aaaand the main event. I just hate these types of matches. Full of stupid spots for no reason other than a pop. Jumping from extreme deathmatch to overzealous comedy and back again is just bizarre and completely off putting if you're not in on the cult. As predicted Moxley bled insane amounts just because he wants to and clearly having eight people in the match wasn't enough because this one needed interference as well. Tony went full ECW/WCW hybrid on this match and got the worst of both doing it. Also, did they hire Kevin Dunn for this? The camera cuts were nauseating. Takeshita heel turn to set up a 5v5 with probably Ibushi. Marks stroking their cocks, non-marks scratching their heads.
Hands down the best part of the whole show was the look in Tony Khan's face as MJF sold himself to WWE in the post-event presser thing they do.
Last edited by Ben; 30-05-2023 at 07:21 AM.
It feels like Matt Hardy's been involved in a never-ending cycle of matches nobody cares about to win control of the contracts of wrestlers nobody cares about.
Cargill lost her streak to an open challenge? Incredible.
You don't seem to enjoy these shows, at what point do you stop watching?Originally Posted by Ben
I keep going back because there’s like a dozen guys I like to watch but the booking is steadily killing my interest. WWE is too boring outside of one or two feuds so I keep giving it chances. I want to see how the whole Forbidden Door to All In stretch plays out because it could be really interesting, especially if Punk does actually come back.
The last couple of PPVs were alright but this seems like the worst one they’ve done.
This fucker is winning at life with a schedule like that
So lol that he used to complain about Brock being part time.
Has anybody ever properly called him out on it during a feud and actually committed to it? Rollins for last year's Rumble maybe? I think he did it in a couple of promos.
Cena giving it loads about the Rock going off to Hollywood was great, he ended up getting to both beat him and join him.
Double Or Nothing was probably the worst AEW PPV I can recall, but only because the bar is set so high. The only AEW-PPV-level match was the four pillars title match, but even they felt a bit flat. There were some great spots and ehh cmon MJF could have lost but it didn’t exactly feel like Austin, The Rock, Triple H and Kurt Angle in there, did it.
Anarchy in the Arena is always toss cos there’s too much going on for the cameras to show, but it was even worse with a live band doing three renditions of Moxleys theme music in the background.
At first I was annoyed by the Cargill- Statlander thing but hopefully it’s just giving Jade some time off before moving up to challenging for the proper belt. What is Hayter’s injury? Presumably the plan is to drop the belt to recover in time for All In, but who the hell knows with AEW.
Also lol at the reaching, those saying Jeff Harry’s botch was him selling an ankle injury. I wish.
I'm a twit
CM Punk baby.
Seems like Tony wanted it to be a surprise but shite ticket sales have forced his hand.
LA Knight
London will erupt for him winning MITB.
I've not seen the match yet but odd choice to have him and Montez Ford in the one qualifier when they'd have both seemed obvious choices to be in it.
yeah!la knight
London will erupt for him winning mitb.
The Knight / Ford match was good, despite being fairly short probably my favourite Knight match so far in WWE or it's up there at least. Still feels odd you wouldn't have Ford in the MITB match but hey-ho.
Bloodline segment was great. Saw Solo's second turn coming but they strung it out really well until it happened and I'm glad Jimmy is now getting the chance for some spotlight in the story.
That new belt still isn't good but it at least looks like a fancy toy now, not the awful designs they had before.
Might be the smoothest of all time
Lovely stuff. I'm sure I've read/heard before that Rollins had to convince Orton to keep that in their match because they'd been practicing it and couldn't get it right the day before.
1 and 16 my favourites.
16 is amazing because of Heyman's timing with the promo and Orton hearing the voices after. So fun.
That KO / Gunther match was a bit of fun, eh? Not sure I've ever seen Gunther win just with a roll-up before, I wonder if that means we're getting more of this? I wouldn't say no.
Quite nice that they've planted the seed that Gunther is beatable. I thought they were going to use the triple threat at WrestleMania as a cheap way of getting the belt off him but I think that rollup is the start of the road to him losing the belt properly.
Yeah, he doesn't need to lose it any time soon still but it's just the first chink in his invincibility.
Why does Twitter like to compare Gunther and Keith Lee?
I'm a twit
I've no idea, I like both but that's a bizarre comparison other than them both being units.
Apparently The Iron Sheik has died.
Fuck the hulk hogan
We lost a legend
I assume he's not having the blokes who run his Twitter account buried with him so "he" can continue to tweet his madness even after death.
I've got no doubt they'll carry that on like nothing happened.
I've been actively avoiding AEW after the Double or Nothing clusterfuck but it looks like Adam Cole and MJF had a 30 minute draw on Dynamite last night. I've never been overly high on Cole like others but he can work a good match (like Roddy Strong) so I might have to cut short the hiatus to check that out, especially with the announcement it will be MJF vs. Tanahashi for the title at Forbidden Door which should be a great babyface vs. heel match.
But then they announced SANADA vs. Jungle Boy for the IWGP Heavyweight title. Like, how has Gedo been talked into that? Obviously Japan don't give a shit about this PPV but how the fuck has the most prestigious title of all time been reduced to fucking Jungle Boy, the most boring wrestler on the planet? Less charisma than Lance Storm and can't even work. That will be a car crash of a match.
If there was a list of things that might tempt me back to a wrestling show I was taking a break from a 30 minute Adam Cole match would not be on it.
I'm coming back for Collision and Forbidden Door so it was only going to be a few days early.
Cole was decent in NXT to be fair. Why would would book a 30 minute draw right off the bat after one week of build fuck knows, but that's Tony for you. In a vacuum, I feel it will be a good match.
Ian, it's actually alright. You're right with the sentiment of who the fuck should get excited for Cole, but 30 minutes of MJF is great with anyone but Jungle Boy.
Just watched it now. It has the's from Cole when MJF kicks out of pins and way too many superkicks which both annoy me with him because he can work otherwise, but they paced it well with good psychology (particularly from MJF on the arm). Although I enjoyed MJF a lot more than Cole in this. He's just so far ahead of most of the roster in terms of understanding how to work a match properly, which is more an indictment of them due to the fact MJF works once every couple of months and he's only like 25. Some overbooked shit towards the end but it's not AEW without that so it is what it is there, but the draw ending was timed really well (which is usually messed up far more often than it should be). A proper face vs. heel match which AEW neglects far too often as the crowd were well into this. The Tanahashi match should be great.
Having said that, now the concussion good will is wearing off Cole, they need to switch him heel. A small babyface needs two qualities: selling like you're on the verge of death and comeback fire. That's the two things Cole lacks. As a little twat heel he has a lot more upside.
You do get some odd title matchups in the run up to the G1 (Yota Tsuji had a go last week) but someone clearly has a higher opinion of Jungleboyjackperry than most of us because him vs Sanada is a hell of a mismatch.
Obviously Tony has a hard-on for Jungle Boy (same with Orange, but let's not go there again) so giving him an AEW World title match is one thing, but him managing to convince Gedo to book him against the IWGP Heavyweight champion is actually mental. It just shows that NJPW fans (domestically, anyway) don't care about these joint shows and NJPW is only doing it because it's free money to them while Tony plays out his fantasies.
Still, I'll be watching because the other announced matches are genuinely great.
I suppose for a one off match it's tricky to find someone not in a program already and sufficiently high up the card but AEW have half a dozen better options sat at home with nothing to do.
Adam Cole is great on the mic (as a heel) but his matches are all one note because they descend into superkick madness and almost endless near falls.
He could be great and he did have a couple of really good matches in NXT but he needs to calm it down.
That's basically where I am. He's an amazing promo / character. But quite aside from looking like I could take him I don't like his moveset and his most lauded NXT singles matches I thought were.over-choreographed messes.
How did you feel about his Gargano match in NXT 'How? Because I genuinely hated it while everybody was fapping over it.
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