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I can hardly think of a worse idea for building a match than to have the two participants accuse each other of having bad matches. Granted, I hate all work-shoot stuff, without exception. But this is unbelievably dumb on a whole new level.

I see the resemblance, but the way she's doing it in that gif, it doesn't look like it would actually put much pressure on the shoulder. The opponent's elbow is up too high next to their head, and Ronda's own leg is blocking her from getting any more torque. As I understand it, that kind of bent armlock works best when the opponent's elbow is closer down closer to their hip (as in the drawing @D.Z posted). I know it's a worked hold and all, but I don't see how a bent armlock from that position would work even in theory. It does look like it would be a mean wristlock, though. And of course I could be completely wrong, I'm not a grappling expert.

Yeah, it does look like it would be a wristlock if anything. I don't buy it as a bent armlock (like a keylock/americana). Maybe they wanted her to have something different since Asuka and Nakamura both do straight armbars IIRC, but still wanted something resembling an armbar finish, and thought the arm-in-the-armpit straight armbar was too dangerous. I love seeing Ronda hit Judo throws on people, though. I don't think I'll ever get sick of that.

I don't watch consistently, but I checked out the Rousey/Bliss match--does Ronda always do her armbar like that now, with the arm clearly bent? What's going on there?

^^^somebody help me understand the joke please

There's no hypocrisy, though. There's nothing hypocritical about thinking that wrestling being unrealistic to some degree is fine, but that it being unrealistic to another, much greater degree is bad.

Nick Aldis was robbed. First, he had the match won after he caught Cody with the forearm on the outside. Cody was practically KO'd and would have been counted out for sure. But of course, Cody's hand-picked ref stops the count, throws up the X but DOESN'T stop the match, and gives Cody eons to recover. Then, Daivairi comes down to try to talk some sense into the ref, since the match is clearly over with Aldis the winner. So naturally Cody sends his crony DDP out there to put a stop to that. THEN, later on, Cody's wife blatantly interferes, with no consequences for Cody. And that awful crowd calls Aldis an asshole for dropping the elbow on her, even though he obviously pulled it at the last second to protect her (how else could she have come out with Flip Gordon in the next match, completely unscathed?). I'd like to see paper champ Cody give Aldis his rematch on a show where Cody isn't literally paying the referee. Come wrestle in a 6' x 6' ring on Championship Wrestling from Hollywood like a real man.

More and more I'm thinking that if your suicide dives don't look like this, you shouldn't be doing them.

When faced with questions like this, it's important to remember that the demon gimmick is incredibly stupid and lame, and will therefore never be cool or make sense at all.

Man, I thought this might have been my imagination last night, or some kind of audio problem. The crowd was still happy to chant "Yes!" at all the right times, but I thought they seemed pretty muted in between. Bryan catches Miz by the throat, and there's no big cheer. Bryan has Miz up for a top-rope hurricanrana, and you can hear a pin drop! Pretty weird.

This really stood out to me during the match tonight! I have no idea why WWE doesn't just acknowledge it. It would only help. There have to have been quite a few fans wondering why Seven didn't just get in there and break up the submission like wrestlers do in tag matches all the time. I mean seriously, it's an important match rule that plays directly into dramatic finishes, and the announcers must be instructed specifically not to mention it. It's mind-boggling.

The tag match tonight was my first time seeing Trent Seven. Was that a representative performance from him? I thought he looked remarkably slow and sloppy compared to the other guys.

Yeah, I don't think NJPW has finisher overkill. What they have instead is overkill on moves that arguably SHOULD be finishers. Like, Okada won't kick out of the One-Winged Angel, but he will kick out after something blatantly more dangerous, like an avalanche dragon suplex.

Yeah, the idea of NJPW running a largely separate U.S. offshoot always struck me as preposterous. So much of what people like about NJPW booking depends on them doing discrete tours, big annual tournaments, and shows filled out with relatively inconsequential tags (sometimes nothing BUT tags) so they don't burn through big matches. You can't replicate that system on a national basis in the U.S. So a hypothetical New Japan USA promotion would basically be NJPW-style wrestling, but with more American wrestlers and American-style booking, plus occasional appearances by the big New Japan stars. That already exists and it's called ROH.

Jack Bates is also Peter Hook's son! I've seen them perform together, it's kind of adorable. Jack does a lot of the actual bass-playing because Peter can't sing and play at the same time. Corgan's NWA is in the weird, unenviable position of having intriguing creative ideas, but not having the kind of wrestling talent it needs to really make them work, despite coinciding with a talent-rich boom period for independent wrestling. If the best you can do for a headliner in 2017-18 is Nick Aldis, that's pretty rough. Not an original observation, I know. But it makes me wonder: who's the best person they could realistically get for that role? Is there anyone who stands out, who people think Corgan should be angling for?

I didn't think Omega/Ishii seemed any more dangerous than any of those guys's other big matches. Naito/Ibushi, on the other hand, was straight-up idiotic. Probably not all that much more idiotic than some other recent NJ matches, but still really dumb. I mean, at a certain point you have to ask: if you're ALLOWED to just pick someone up and drop them right on top of their head like that, why doesn't every wrestler do it all the time? Why powerbomb someone on their back when you can spike them on their neck with impunity? Obviously that's not a New-Japan-specific question, but my point is that when head drops are done sparingly enough, you can ward that question off and suspend disbelief. A match like Naito/Ibushi makes that impossible for me. But I know I'm in a small minority on that.

I think I've said this on here before, but I'm convinced SANADA applies it that way on purpose. It's supposed to be a variation on the dragon sleeper that puts the pressure on the opponent's face--closer to the End of their Skull, if you will--so the move is more of a neck crank than a choke. It still looks bad because his opponents clearly have to make an effort not to let their heads slip out. But he's not doing a dragon sleeper wrong, because he's not doing a dragon sleeper. This is my hypothesis.

He was also born and raised in Hawaii, and started his pro career there. (He went to high school in Guam.)

I actually really liked YOSHI-HASHI/EVIL. I'm one of those people that thinks Y-H is a fundamentally good wrestler, and he's got one of the best lariats in the world right now. And I loved the shooter sadist vs. unintimidated veteran brawler dynamic of Makabe/Suzuki. I've never been all that invested in a Makabe match before, but when he hit that last King Kong kneedrop I was pumping my fist in the air.

I do not for one second believe that this JR/Barnett/Jay White thing is legit. The idea that Barnett would be so incensed that JR got his chair tipped over that he'd storm the ring in the middle of the show is a pretty big stretch.

One worrying thing about the Bullet Club angle is that the Firing Squad shirts still said "BC" on them. So we may be looking at two officially warring factions both calling themselves "Bullet Club", a la nWo Wolfpac vs. nWo Hollywood. I'm not too keen on that idea, but from a branding/merchandising perspective, it might be too good for them to pass up.

I don't know about never. Don't they have a history of running the occasional heavyweight champ vs. junior champ match, like Okada/Ospreay earlier this year, and the famous Hashimoto/Liger match from '94? I could see a situation where Okada and Scurll hold their respective titles again and get matched up to headline a secondary show. But yeah, it's not a match that will definitely happen in NJ, and in any case it wouldn't be happening there anytime soon.

"The J.O.B. Squad" is pretty bad, for the winking work-shoot nature of it if nothing else. At least "The Undisputed Era" sounds like something a bunch of arrogant lugs would come up with because they think it sounds cool. But yeah, it's a bewilderingly bad name.