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Iron Moose

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  1. Meanwhile, on LVL UP Lola Vice d Carlee Bright with a "Vice Grip" headscissor. Bright is a former cheerleader with an entrance theme that sounds a bit like Sixpence None The Richer, and her mother is apparently in the front row. Most of this works, but feels more like a demo than a scrap. Vice has a decent spinebuster and ends up bleeding from the mouth - possibly from a shoulderblock - but doesn't capitalize on it by firing up. Bright's inside cradle is not as tight as Dolin's from the weekly show, and she and Vice don't put much into a kickout, versus a release. Bright has a nice single-leg dropkick and ambitious cartwheel-knee thing, Vice quickly ends things by kicking her out of mid-air. There was an unfortunate lack of mother-taunting. Stacks and Luca Crusifino d. Javier Bernal and Drake Morreaux (an affable new guy wearing overalls, kinda swampy with a New Orleans vibe). New Guy's first move is to take down his straps, which seems unearned. It's solid, less of the cooperative vibe here, but the crowd dynamic is a bit off because New Guy is new and seems likable, and beating on Javier tiptoes over the line into getting crowd unhappy. Bernal has a weird top rope elbow leading to a bit of repetitive offense from Morreaux; Stacks and Crusifino come back with a more enegetic finishing run. This was a pleasant surprise; the new D'Angelo Family worked well together, Morreaux has some charisma. Sol Ruca d Wren Sinclair. Wren immediately goes up in my estimation by reacting to Ruca's entrance flip with some posing of her own that manages to come off as enthusiastic, rather than snarky. She continues to be actively in the match with, of all things, a hammerlock - Ruca reaches between her legs to try to break it, Sinclair moves her own leg out of the way to maintain it. We get a bit more standing grappling before an awkward spinout from Sinclair; she smartly brings things back on track with a leg pick and variation of the diving neck snap to a seated opponent. Some back and forth, eventually Sinclair puts some good struggle into getting out of a grounded headlock and we get a funky crossbody collision; a bit more back and forth leads to a blocked Snatcher attempt, duelling rollups and a Sol Snatcher finishes. Ruca helps Sinclair up after the 3, seems glad to be back. Good episode, worth watching. Did we know that Madi Wrenkowski had these incredible rock-solid go-with-the-flow, hold-everything-together fundamentals? She seems really young to give these player-coach vibes and I really want to see her work up and down the entire division now, and get a story that's not just "she's new and nervous and happy".
  2. PAY FOR SEPARATE WAYS YOU COWARDS I feel like it might be leading to this year's Women's Dusty Cup? Fallon/Thea, Kiana/Izzi, Gigi/Ariana, Jacy/Jazmyn, Lash/Jakara all seem like they could bounce off each other pretty well.
  3. Meanwhile, on LVL UP Generally high floor this week. Stacks d. a returning Kale Dixon with a curb stomp with the knee. Dixon doesn't get too much, but has some good strikes and makes a flatliner look reasonable, but pauses a bit much in the finisher setup. Stacks' character work comes through better than in his tags. Lola Vice d. Wren Sinclair with a backfist. This has surprising chemistry. It starts with Wren holding up a hand for a test of strength and Lola just punching it instead. Wren's attire says "completely new at this" but some sequences in her ringwork show a measure of genre-savvy that I think the audience appreciates: Lola blocks what would be a pinfall reversal sequence, Wren catches the the upward kick and turns it into a cradle. Wren has really good follow-through with her shoulderblocks and clotheslines - it feels like a number of other people would be doing the move in a vacuum; she slows down for a sec after each to better express the impacts. Lola does a bit more grappling than usual, reacts with indignation that's a bit more realistic than she usually does. Good stuff. J'Evon Evans d. Javier Bernal. Bernal has a new, somewhat goofy 80s rock outfit and entrance. Evans has a ton of potential and the crowd is really into him, some Wes Lee vibes. A few of their bits seem a bit forced, but both do well overall.
  4. I recognize that the current spirit of the booking is against making fans really unhappy, but I still have this feeling that Becky and Rhea could cost each other their matches at EC, let someone else beat Nia at Mania and run Becky/Rhea without the title involved.
  5. an image has allegedly leaked on the wwe website of the women's EC participants: which, although somewhat predictable, would probably be quite good.
  6. well, that women's title match was fantastic.
  7. Page said something about the whole f'n show, but nothing 100% clear.
  8. I have this weird feeling that Becky and Rhea are going to use the Michaels-Taker II plot beats, which means Becky getting eliminated in the rumble, and then costing Rhea the title in Feb to make the Mania match non-title.
  9. I'm shocked we haven't gotten to Gulak, Dempsey, Axiom, Thorpe or Bate as possibilities.
  10. RKO is the ducked-Superman Punch follow-up. Spear goes into Powerslam. Meanwhile, on LVL UP: Von Wagner beats Luca Crusifino Elektra Lopez beats Brinley Reese in a pretty good (but basic) outing Gulak over Tavion Heights, also worth watching.
  11. Meanwhile, on LVL UP: a clip show, with Thorpe/Chen, Lola/Ivy, Wendy Choo/Kelani Jordan, and Axiom/Tavion Heights all from earlier this year. Good stuff all around.
  12. one idea I saw someplace was that Chase bet on Tiffany to beat Thea and then threw in the towel to ensure it happened.
  13. Meanwhile, on LVL UP: Tatum Paxley beats Dani Palmer. This is a follow-up to Paxley abandoning Palmer in mid-tag match weeks ago, and might have landed a lot better with a bit more promo time beforehand? The ringwork ranged from questionable (some preemptive selling) to effective (Paxley's work on Palmer's leg starts really bad and gets much better). It's good that they didn't start with a collar and elbow since there's a personal issue behind this, but on the whole this was uncharacteristaically disjointed. Fans of tiny paunts will dig this one. Riley Osborne d. Tavion Heights. Fun overall, but I don't think it had a clear dynamic aside from both wanting to win? Heights has some fun suplexes, Osborne got good air on sometimes-unnecessary flips. A few moments of miscommunication where everyone seemed uncertain, but that's what shows like this help practice dealing with. Osborne's pants, while not tiny, have cutout patterns that are more associated with distaff counterparts.
  14. Clip is here: https://old.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/jnijio/uncool_with_alexa_bliss_alexa_bliss_recounts_an/
  15. oh, absolutely Reigns. Gunther, you can break the glass for Ilya or Bron, or do a multiman or ladder where someone else wins without him losing. Reigns has a lot more emotion and identity wrapped up in his story. And Gunther still has room to ascend.
  16. Meanwhile, on LVL UP: tl;dr: good episode, go watch it somehow. Ivy Nile d Kiyah Saint. This felt longer than expected, in a good way. Ivy gave Kiyah a good bit of time on control or establishing parity, but IMO this was more interesting in showing some challenges for Ivy and the model of the show as a whole. For Ivy - she has really effective physical charisma in contradictory directions. She's been able to pull off 'confident, cold, aggressive', and she can pull off 'desperate, uncertain, overpowered', but 1) being in relatively short matches against inexperienced oponents means that neither extreme feels earned, and 2) the latter is a stretch when she looks so much stronger than almost all her opponents. The other thing was that this was a decently compelling face performance from Saint, but the audience was generally very pro-Ivy the whole way through. The crowd's bias for familiar talent might be complicating the situation for the less-familiar ones. Axiom d Riley Osborne. Riley's entrance is hazardous for people with photosensitive epilepsy. There's a lot of very clean flipping and Malenko-Guerrero reversals starting this off, and we get a few moments of escalation that don't quite work for me. Early on, Axiom extends his hand and helps Riley up, midway Riley extends his hand and Axiom slaps it away, and then later we get Axiom letting Riley back into the ring cleanly, to which Riley shoves Axiom and Axiom responds with ... a very slow single-leg. A bit later we get a shout of frustration which is immediately followed by a forearm, rather than either a slap or punch. There's some very fun stuff - a rana with some real snap on it, something that might be called an armdrag over the top rope, a midair dropkick counter that evokes HBK/Shelton from the Gold Rush and a great frog splash over the ref into the finish - and I think you could pretty well call both of these dudes up to the main roster yesterday, but with a critical eye there are some subtle points that could be polished. Axiom leaning a bit heel is interesting, as flippy, heroic and masked is very uphill to boo, but it worked here.
  17. the weird thing about that vignette to me was how dated it seemed -- like it's from when they were briefly trying to give GUNTHER a stereotypical finisher (the emerald flosion, as "the last symphony"). The bit with the hand sanitizer also felt a lot more Previous Creative Regime than anything we've seen recently from Kaiser et al.
  18. Dragon Lee also seemed like a natural fit.
  19. I'm not that clear on a winner, but I understand why the buzz trends towards Vice. - she has a clear ally in Elektra Lopez who's been established as decent at cheating - she's got another front-runner (babyface, adrift since Sol's injury) in her first match (who can make her look good) - MMA in WWE has been positioned as generally above singlular martial arts, and she's had significantly more screen time than Petrovic - I think she was the one to announce the tournament, giving her a primacy bias - even though Lola's still in very broad strokes, we have less of a sense of who Kelani is (and a loss would give her more to work with as a character) - if the endgame is a shot at Becky, a villain might get more out of that than a generally friendly cipher, but that's a lot more debatable?
  20. Bracket for the Women's Breakout Tournament in the first spoiler box, speculation below.
  21. Meanwhile, on LVL UP : Fallon Henley's hot streak continues with a fun, solid match against a returning Ariana Grace, who is now workshopping a beauty queen gimmick (although a "you may kiss my hand" moment feels more like generic princess. ) Grace gets a few moments to cut a promo about how she's happy to be back, we can call her Miss NXT, and that her first act is to teach humiility to the classless brute Fallon Henley. Henley reacts well through the entire bit - she's happy to see Ariana back, bemused and a little impatient as she goes on, and then skeptical, offended, and increasingly irritated as the match goes on. Henley moves fast, hits her stuff clean, and I get the impression that Grace has a good instinct about the level to which she should be selling, for example, a glancing blow compared to a more impactful one. Grace also gets bonus points for, when she tries a feet-on-the-ropes roll up, pushing off the rope with her foot to add to the leverage. It kind of feels like the NXT Women's Division pendulum swung to gymnasts and combat sports and this is a brief swing back to delightful character schtick. Myles Borne (w/ Gulak, Dempsey & Kemp) d Riley Osborne - it's my first time seeing Riley. His pre-match promo is a bit grating (he has a lot of energy! he's excited!) and his entrance might induce seizures, but he's very quick and flippy. He does that weird UK sequence with offering his thigh before going between his opponent's legs, and then a few seconds later he does the same kind of flip out of a hiptoss that Sol did a bunch. There's a fantastic transition where Borne kicks him out of midair, and they have some nice peppy exchanges throughout before Myles wins with a dragon sleeper (after Riley misses a shooting star and lands on his feet. ) Good work from both. Oro Mensah (w/ Meta Four) d Tavion Heights - Mensah is a bit of a mystery. The contrast between the Little Mermaid palette and the painful kicks is a lot. Heights has some good power spots, but this overall left me a little cold. Still, really solid episode from top to bottom.
  22. That would be wildly unexpected and chaotic and now I will be disappointed if it's not the case. Also, this works equally well as a response to Shadow's post
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