That pop for Knight on Smackdown. :cool:
The crowd were right into that whole last bit. Not a bad episode. I thought Mysterio / Escobar took some time to get going and was leading to a turn from Escobar. Good match in the end though.
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That pop for Knight on Smackdown. :cool:
The crowd were right into that whole last bit. Not a bad episode. I thought Mysterio / Escobar took some time to get going and was leading to a turn from Escobar. Good match in the end though.
I like to see a wrestler still being over despite creative/booking fumbling the bag with them. Crowbarring him into the bloodline business also speaks to being seen at a good level backstage as well.
The worry is they see his overness as a means to help the Bloodline stuff spin its wheels until Reigns bothers his arse to turn up and his popularity is a means to an end.
I've still no idea what the endgame.of the Jimmy stuff is but I like the idea that in Romans absence he's swaying Solo to go along with him.
I'm sure it'll be Jey secretly sent Jimmy back to get Solo on side ALL ALONG.
Essentially the wheels need to keep spinning until Mania season, so I expect you're right on Los Angeles Knight.
Tiffany Stratton my goat
Good match? Dunno if I'll bother with much else on the show but I'm gonna watch that and the Hayes/Dragunov match based on the reviews.
I'm guessing the gangbanger tag team walking out on their low riders is meant to convey some kind of image but with the other fella behind them it looked like a stepdad teaching kids how to ride a bike.
Also I know if Jezza is in NXT he has to get some wins but baby face Corbin beating Breakkkker is weird.
Wasn’t a clean win to be fair.
Stratton match was v good. She just gets it. Also, BLOOD.
Rhea Ripley vs. Tiffany Stratton :drool:
Stratton / Lynch and Hayes / Dragunov were both pretty good. I also watched the Heritage Cup match and while I'm not a massive fan of that format it's not a bad way to mix up a show a little and I think they did use the rounds quite well in this case.
You'll be shocked to learn that I like the rounds format. "Butch" is great despite the awful booking so I thought it was good.
Nice to see Dragunov get finally get the big win. Proper wrestler.
Have they completely soured on Breakker? Booking has been odd since dropping the title.
Are they moving up Dragon Lee now? That would be good, he's far better at the flippy shit than any of the AEW goons.
Not bringing Adam out as Sexton Hardcastle. Tut tut. Massive opportunity missed.
Cliff would be a good name.
Adam Cage. Then he can pretend to be Christian's dad.
Edge going to AEW at this point is just a bit weird. Hang it up, mate.
I don't want to see him against Christian, make them a polo neck evil tag team mocking everyone's dead parents and fuck the dinosaur off.
You probably have to go back 15 years for the last time they tagged.
By the sounds of it, he had a couple more things he wanted to do before he left WWE but they didn't see eye to eye on it. I suppose this is essentially his farewell tour, which I'm sure he'll go through a full programme with Christian on.
Christian is the best heel in the business from the stuff I’ve seen. I hole Edge doesn’t bring him down to his level
I've never been a huge Edge fan but Christian is awesome so I'm rather looking forward to Edge vs. Christian at Full Gear (presumably), especially as it'll take some of the attention off the Bucks winning the tag titles in a match nobody wants to see again.
They need to strap a rocket to Takeshita as well and stop putting him in shit six-man tags.
u ok Ben? Or did you not see Nick Jackson’s botch at the end of the awesome 8 man tag match? Not like you to pass the opportunity to shit on the Young Bucks. :flirt:
They do it all the time. It's not news anymore.
Unless they're coming out with Omega, the crowd just doesn't give a shit about them these days.
Darby Allin’s back has to be an absolute mess. Wheelchair by 40.
Apparently a title match that was supposed to be at the PPV has been changed to tonight’s main event. If it’s JD v KO/Zayn on RAW again :D
It was Gunther vs. Ciampa and they went for 23 minutes. Normally I'd seek it out but apparently the commercial breaks were especially bad in this one, Gargano returned, and astonishingly the crowd didn't care for any of it.
I'll still watch it but the way they do that with ad breaks in big TV matches can be very galling.
Especially when you hear the wrestlers/ref acknowledge it like I’ve heard on AEW a few times. Along the lines of ‘stay out, it’s still break.
Aubrey Edwards is horrendous for that.
Baz, what did you, noted Bryan Danielson enthusiast, think of his match with ZSJ?
Excellent. Minimal flexing/posing, technical masterclass. Even Mox on comms was alright, except for the swearing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Seeing Raw live, which I'd never do again, made this especially painful when you're sitting there and realise you're waiting for ads to finish on the TV broadcast and that's why some lads been in a headlock taking a breather for 5 minutes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Sorry to pivot back to Punk again but he comes to mind immediately on this, but watching Collision via the FITE feed (ie. no ad breaks and commentary continuing) made me appreciate Punk a lot in his ability to keep the crowd engaged through an ad break. He'd give that portion of the match its own little story and by the time Riccaboni/Kelly said "and we're back on Collision" to the live TV viewer, he'd have the match back to where it needed to be and the live TV viewer would have had no clue what just went on but the live crowd were kept hot. It just shows the laziness of the system (WWE) or the inexperience/lack of creativity of the wrestlers (AEW) when ad breaks are filled with prolonged boring heel heat segments.
The WWE thing where the ad break serves to completely reverse the momentum is infuriating as well.
When I went to Raw in 2015 they didn't have any ad breaks that went across matches - or at least I didn't notice any.
That mentality just shows the actual wrestling match is usually the least important thing on the show to them. Everyone pops for a promo or a fucking entrance and then the match starts and it's two minutes to the break and you never actually get to see the start of a comeback (unless it's the final one) because they do it during an ad break. So whatever enthusiasm you had to see a fucking wrestling match on a wrestling show is immediately sapped because it's never allowed to build any heat. And then you have the WWE style of match that is engrained into everyone so when the time calls for two guys to have a long uninterrupted match on PPV, the match is usually flat because they simply don't know how to get heat.
Vince Russo was right (broken clock and all that) about all TV matches needing to be less than five minutes. In this era of the ad breaks all being during the matches, they might as well get in and out of there before they go to commercials.
They were chanting ‘DIY’ to be fair. Which is surprising as it’s not like they’ve been introduced together on the main rosterQuote:
Originally Posted by Ben
I meant more for the actual match. Was just a shit crowd I think, compared to the hot ones we've been accustomed to for the last six months.
Mine ended with a 5 man match with the Raw Survivor Series team fighting each other. It didn't stop for ads but it did feature people very obviously getting into place for the next spot while they were "off camera." The highlight being Rollins punching Strowman once while he was stood by a table then running off to attack somebody else and Strowman very gingerly climbing onto the table to lie down.Quote:
Originally Posted by SvN
Boy, you'd love AEW Dynamite.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian
That’s the second CM Punk reference recently involving Rollins. He mentioned he’s the ‘best in the world’ the other week and now Cole made references to an ROH ‘pipe bomb’ back in the day.
Maybe wishful thinking.
I think it's happening. Rollins made the comment about Punk being toxic that had to be a work. Then Punk made a comment on his CFC commentary the other week that he's got "a couple of months free" as his 90 day non-compete is basically up just before Survivor Series.
There's too much money at stake not to make it happen and now UFC own the thing, personal feelings can get to fuck.
I don’t really want to see him wrestle but I’d look forward to the reactions and what he has to say. Doubt he’ll be filtered all that much otherwise why would he come back.
And ‘Mon the chaos
Is his relationship with UFC alright? He was shit when he fought for them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
The only other fighter who was worse than him was James Toney.
Wishful thinking? He's shit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waffdon
I’d take a CM Punk swap for fucking Edge any day of the week.
I’d say Punk was worse. Toney fought Randy Couture ffs he had no chance, whereas Phil Brooks fought bums in comparison.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sir Andy Mahowry
That is true. Toney was completely set up with that, Couture was never going to give him a chance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Baz
Despite the ad interrupts in the first half of it Gunther / Ciampa was lots of fun and they did at least leave most of the second half of it ad-free. And while the Gargano return clearly didn't get the pop they were hoping for (unsurprisingly) they did at least get some cheers and DIY chants (after Raw had gone off the air) so it wasn't too awkward.
Enjoyed Rhea being more overtly leader of JD and I'm enjoying McIntyre's fairly reasonable heel turn. Or shift into a tweener role, whatever they're doing. I like when wrestlers actually remember stuff before the previous fortnight in their promos and McIntyre pointing out nobody "did the right thing" when he was getting ganged up on by the Bloodline was good and made sense. There's clearly also a Cody match coming for him somewhere.
Toney wasn't that bad. Fella was a good boxer in his day and was absolutely crucified by UFC.
There was also that guy who got signed because he beat Kimbo Slice in a street fight and then he got embarrassed pretty sharp.
Yoji Anjo is a famous bust in that he managed to get booked into quite a few fights by UFC despite not having much ability and got soundly schooled every time. And before all that he was a wrestler for Takada's UWFi (worked shoot style matches, which was HUGE at the time) and tried to do an angle off his own back by rocking up to Rickson Gracie's gym with a camera crew, expecting Gracie to back out of an impromptu fight, then he could take the footage back to Japan and become a megastar. Unfortunately for poor Anjo, Gracie accepted the challenge and beat the shit out of him which completely torpedoed the UWFi promotion because they'd lost their shoot fight credibility. In hindsight, the guy must have had massive balls to go into shoots for real after that.
Tony Halme (Ludvig Borga) got messed up a few times before descending into far-right lunacy and shooting himself in the head.
In fact, early UFC tournaments were full of lunatics who had no clue and are absolutely essential viewing just for the intrigue. There was a dude who tried fighting with one boxing glove.
Early UFC tournaments were wild.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
A 600 pound sumo v a 200 pound kickboxer.
Repeated punches to the dick in one fight.
I also think one of the early fighters went to prison for rape and/or murder.
Edit: For gang rape and then he murdered his cellmate. He was also the one that took all the cock punches.