Go2Sleep

The battle royal was an ok concept, but definitely too rushed for a 1 hour show. Swerve and Takeshita got some nice spots, and I loved Brody getting a big win. Totally credible elimination against a higher ranked guy to set up what should be a very good tv title defense for Mox. Also had to love Nick Jackson channeling Rey Mysterio at Fall Brawl 96 with excellent double-ring offense.

Last night was the rare instance of a Dynamite dragging to the finish line instead of cramming a ton of stuff in the last minute. Otherwise, the B&G match was pretty spectacular. Loved the pacing with the heels getting some heat in the middle phases, but not killing all the face heat with every new entrant. Parker's stooging intro particularly stood out. Even Santana's obvious injury didn't seem to hinder the momentum. The finish seemed like exactly the finish they would've done with Bryan in there too, so I don't think they missed a beat there. Not quite as tight as Anarchy in the Arena, but an amazing spectacle nevertheless. Claudio in AEW rules as much as I imagined. Also good to see Taz moving into a bigger announcing role. He's known for his goofy stuff, but he's one of the most underrated announcers ever going back to the brand split SD days. He has that genuine enthusiasm for wrestling and always seems to vibe with whoever he's in the booth with. If JR and Tony want a lighter workload, Taz is the right guy until they can phase Caprice Coleman in. Since TK reads the board, please do a wholesome segment where Taz amicably parts ways with Starks and Hobbs and they wish him well as he has to relinquish his manager's license to do full-time commentary per internal regulations.

Really happy to see this show deliver after so many people were skeptical going in. My top 3 matches were: Ospreay vs. OC. This felt like the sleeper MOTN candidate going in due to the potential chemistry between their acts and they hit it out of the park. Ospreay is the perfect cocky "moves" guy and OC is a great underdog that knows how to build heat and turn it up at the right moment. Ospreay doing moves for the sake of moves made perfect sense against a guy who he felt was well beneath him. We've seen OC work this kind of match before and Ospreay work his kind of match before, but this was a match made in heaven for both of them. The finishing run had just the right amount of stuff to maximize the story and heat, and made both guys look great. The pacing and layout of the match reminded me of a high-end GHC Juniors match from the mid 2000s. Dudes with Attitude vs. Bullet Club. With all the workrate on the show, these guys were smart to incorporate a lot more comedy into the match to stand out. Haven't seen Phantasmo before, but he reminded me of a younger Jack Evans. Good fit for the Bucks, who were turning back the clock with their ridiculous offense. Much like Ospreay/OC, the match benefited from the wrestlers knowing when to turn it down and when to turn it up. Super fun stuff start to finish. Claudio vs. ZSJ. The big thing was of course delivering on Claudio as the mystery opponent. It was never going to be the technical dream match that it would've been with Bryan, but it did end up being a great "small technical guy tries to chip away a freight train" match. Claudio's stair climb with ZSJ on one arm was insane, and fuck the producers for not getting a wider shot of that. Hopefully this won't be the last we see of ZSJ in AEW because while he played the role admirably, he deserves more than a being a heater for a new top guy. Swerve/Lee vs. Hashi/Kanemaru from the Buy-In gets honorable mention here too. SIOG is a great team who I'm hoping won't split. You could make the case that either or both should be pushed in singles, but keeping them warm as a top team for now is a great use of their talent. Kanemaru had a sleazy old guy vibe even when he was young, so seeing him fully lean into it drinking Jack Daniels (or the Japanese equivalent) on the way to the ring while trying futilely try to outwit his much larger and more athletic opponents was good fun. The rest of the show was fine to good individual matches that did feel a bit same-y in aggregate. Highlights were Kingston/Minoru chop fest, Great O Khan's tornado DDT sell, Jericho giving Umino the fireball, Rosa hitting her best looking Fire Thunder Driver ever, and Mox's gusher.

Great episode all around, and Forbidden Door looks a hell of a lot better than it did last week even if they're going nuts with the multi-person matches. Christian's promo was awesome, and I loved the simple explanation for why he wasn't doing much since he debuted. "Yeah, I just wanna ride the gravy train, so what?" That's how you do a bitter old-man heel promo without burying the current product. I guess Will Ospreay is unpopular here for whatever reason, but I've enjoyed his mini-run in AEW. UE are perfect heaters for the Best Friends. Also Mark Davis' snatch pile-driver move was beautiful. Malakai/Penta was good as expected and Miro's promo was money as usual. Good to see Silas Young get a nice hometown moment. I always liked him as an ROH midcarder. Not crazy about two 4-way title matches, but if it gets Okada on the show, it's worth it. Main event was fine, the ringside brawl is ppv build 101. ------------ As far as the surprise goes, I think there are a few tiers: 1. Full Delivery: This tier contains Claudio and only Claudio. 2. Acceptable, but not Claudio: I wanna say this might only be Gargano (who makes no sense as a long term member of BCC), but I think Hero might fit here too. Hero and ZSJ had a barn-burner at one of the Mania-weekend shows in 2016. 3. Disappointing, but with some chance to win the crowd back: Biff, Thatcher, Gresham. 4. Biting the bullet for better long-term returns: Moriarty, Garcia. Moriarty would be a crowd-killer due to his jobber presentation thus far, but makes sense as a long-term BCC member (even being mentioned specifically by Bryan early on). Garcia would require some serious retconning and would likely kill the crowd as they scratch their heads trying to figure it out, but he's been pretty wasted in JAS (missing all kinds of opportunities for skits about Jericho teaching him the art of sports entertainment). A straight up swap with him and Sammy makes a lot of sense after the awkward reset phase wears off.

Makes sense. A big part of being successful in politics is getting people to like you.

I remember his BATB 96 undercard match against DDP, who was just starting his big push. Duggan gave him nothing for 5 minutes until the Diamond Cutter finish and then promptly got back up and beat him up after the match. On the other hand, he was really nice to me and every other fan I saw him interact with over a couple different meet and greets, so Hacksaw is a land of contrasts.

Fixed. Santos hasn't gotten to use it in NXT much, but he had the coolest looking tope until Darby started going bowling for midcard heels.

Not sure if my experience is applicable to anyone else here, but here's where I'm at. I don't watch NJ regularly, but I do know that guys like AJ Styles and Kenny Omega were top stars there in the last 10 years or so. I've also seen a handful of the biggest Tanahashi and Okada matches, so I know what they're about. So while I don't watch NJ consistently, I still have a good idea of what their style is, what they value in a wrestler, and by extension what the majority of wrestlers there aspire to be. From there, I can reasonably assume that most NJ's roster will mesh well with AEW's roster and produce a show full of good matches. I can trust my basic wrestling comprehension (plus some Excalibur exposition) to mostly understand any necessary stories and even if I might miss some finer details that regular NJ viewers might pick up, I wouldn't expect it to hinder my enjoyment of the show.

I just wanna say how great it was to hear the vintage JR "Aw, you son of a bitch." Takes me back to my childhood.

So SD was like when Trump would have a rally after a scandal? I didn't watch either, but those two are like the same person so it would track.

It was definitely part of the escalation of women's wrestling in WWE from the dreadful attitude days, but Sasha/Bayley at Brooklyn was THE tipping point no questions asked. The real forgotten heroes were like Melina, McCool, and Beth (although she at least got HOF) who were having real matches regularly (and sometimes very good ones) that were still an afterthought in the context of the overall programming. The Bellas/Nattie/AJ era was the next step up, with Paige and Emma building off that and setting the table for the 4HW. Everyone in the timeline is important, but Sasha gets the credit because her run from R-Evolution through Respect is easily the best single year women's run in North American history, and her match with Bayley stole a workrate oriented show (and Summer Slam weekend really) in front of a legit major crowd. That was the match that made everyone realize women could main event. At no point prior to 2015 would anyone have seriously suggested women main eventing a WWE ppv, and that's happened quite a few times since 2016 including Rumbles and Manias.

I thought most people realized that when the Broken-verse was the most entertaining angle in TNA/Impact history.

That would be a very odd choice since 4-ways are sprint-y by nature, let alone one with Pac and probably Miro/Malakai. Surely there's someone who would be a better fit there. Also, I really want Minoru vs. Garcia for this show.

Jericho seems to get into a lot of scraps for someone who doesn't come across as a real tough guy by pro wrestling standards. I'm sure his conditioning and even the basic grappling concepts one would acquire only studying pro wrestling probably give him a leg up on an average person, but he doesn't seem like someone who would hang with legit fighters. He does seem exactly like the type of guy who would get into trouble running his mouth, and getting more brazen after each time he gets away with it though.

Without getting too spoilery, this is a fun show. Satnam looked... better than I expected. Full Card: Jake Hager vs. Eddie Kingston Jay Lethal and Satnam Singh vs. 2 Local Jobbers Kris Statlander vs. Red Velvet Trent Baretta and FTR vs. Will Ospreay and Aussie Open

Thunder Rosa has been sporting this look lately, which I guess is not very subtle, but still cool:

I was pretty confused about the need for another singles belt, but if they keep it to non-US wrestlers only, that would be a pretty good gimmick. Good way to get a lot of guys from other companies in for one-off good matches that don't need much if any tv time to build. The name is silly, but at least it's "old school territory" silly and not "named after our tv stations" silly. They really need women's tag titles more than anything though to get more value out of their roster.

I like the Casino style Battle Royals since it staggers the entrance pops, gives the match a little more room to breathe, and leans heavily into the "big mystery entrant" trope that makes the Rumble so fun. Pac vs. Buddy is nice too. Can't wait til 600!

At least AEW has started to consider opponent quality somewhat. The Varsity Blondes getting a tag title shot was like if Vanderbilt played D2 teams for 10 weeks then got into the SEC title game.

Imagine being able to go back to 2002 telling everyone how the HHH/Stephanie future pans out.

It's true that he couldn't make his pec injury worse, but I would think in a physically demanding activity like pro wrestling, you drastically increase the chances of jacking up your shoulder on top of everything else if you have to compensate for a nonfunctional pec. There's also the issue of putting your opponent in more danger for similar reasons. Luckily neither of those two things seemed to happen. Sometimes good things can come from bad decisions, though. Life's weird like that.

TK replying to randos on twitter to defend his favorite wrestling show makes him the most relatable billionaire ever. After the format has been clarified, I think Mox vs. Tana is the most likely route, but pointless speculation is more fun, so here are my dark horse winners: 1. Danielson: Not really a dark horse, because I think most people see him as a reasonable possibility. Still, he hasn't exactly been on the title path since his loss to Hangman. If he's healthy enough, now is a great time to squeeze in a run for him, and Punk vs. Bryan is an obvious ppv main event if you can get there. 2. Miro - They obviously have something lined up for him because he's been doing nothing (on AEW tv) for months. Still, whatever that plan is hasn't started yet, so there's time to change course and they clearly see him as a major player. Building up a monster heel for the babyface champ to overcome is tried and true wrestling booking. 3. Malakai: He's been insanely protected, has a cool stable, and all the monster heel booking stuff with Miro applies to him as well. While he's more likely to be the face of the trios division when that kicks off, there might be time for a singles run here, and he definitely has the chops to pull it off. 4. Jay White: I think I remember reading he's done with Impact, and if you want more NJ crossover, he's your guy. Obviously his American drawing power would be suspect, but everything else fits.

Cody is the South Park version of Mel Gibson.

Sucks that Punk is hurt, as he was having a great run. I am a bit selfishly excited that next week's Dynamite in KC won't be "not wasting our best stuff against the NBA" filler, though. Mox winning the belt here when the last time around he was a late scratch for health reasons would be a nice little arc, but there's no shortage of awesome choices if they wanted to go the surprise route. Danielson, Wardlow, Malakai, Miro to name a few.

After that promo on Dynamite, I feel pretty confident that MJF's contract issues are all worked out, and he has big program or story arc lined up after he takes a little break. On the topic of themes, I've taken a liking to Thunder Rosa's faux-Chicano-metalcore sounding theme. They should commission Upon a Burning Body for a special entrance at a big Texas show.