quackhell

To me Cassidy is in the Joey Ryan, Joey Janella, PCO niche where if you dig their schtick they always deliver and if you don't...man it's a bad time every time.

Seconded. Absolutely love love love this match. Also regarding big/little man and WALTER, his ongoing feud with David Starr is some amazing storytelling bleeding over multiple promotions and branching into other feuds over close to two years. Phenomenal stuff.

It will be very interesting to see if that Last Week Tonight segment gains any traction with fans and we see some signs and hear some chants calling Vince out on the independent contractor bullshit.

A bit of both perhaps? Not knowing exactly how it works with WWE talent coming in and who has final decisions on creative for those guys it's hard to say. Maybe it was just a case of giving it a try and then finding out it really didn't take. It makes sense for them to try new things with the talent and treat it like you would moving to a new territory back in the day. If it's a bust there aren't as many eyes on this product and it really doesn't harm the talent. I still argue it did the Evolve title no good, although the Street Profits came in hot and have made the tag belts stronger so eh, what do I know?

That whole show is awesome and that match is amazing. Progress is such a fun promotion and I just hope they can keep it going when they lose all of the WWE UK talent.

The face off was pretty solid, but Gargano always comes off a little hokey to me and I am sure the match will be full of those moments, but I think the good should outweigh the bad. I was hoping Catanzaro would get rag dolled around a bit more as she is the perfect person to get bullied and chucked around. Man Shaffir and Duke continue to Bulk and Skull around like goofs. Velveteen Dream continues to be one of the best things in wrestling. Dusty Finals was quality, but I was hoping for a Forgotten Sons win because as others have said a makeshift team winning kind of sucks. Plus I think Sons/War Raiders would have been more of a slugfest throw down than what we are going to get now.

Random: Has anybody done a joke tag team gimmick on the indies using the name Already In The Ring? Seems like that would have happened at some point.

It was good stuff indeed and to me just further illustrated the mistake of Aichner coming in as a face when his whole deal just works so much better as a heel. Also he absolutely didn't need to be Evolve champion.

Ooof that Cabana/Sanada match was rough. It really should have been a first round Yano/Cabana match with Yano going over if those two just had to have a dueling comedy match. I don't hate Cabana or anything, but he did not need to be anywhere near the quarter-finals. ZSJ/Tanahashi was just okay to me. Honestly the tournament really seems to be stumbling a bit to the finish. Maybe Ishii/Okada can do something special, I hope so anyway.

I think you are both right in that yes a lot of guys don't read or play the crowd and just want to run their match, but also Gresham could probably be able to adapt and hang if Marty threw the script out the window and go in whatever direction you wanted him to go in. I am biased however because I do dig his work a great deal.

Welcome back Excalibur, always enjoy hearing him calling the action. The Chaos Quarterfinals was just fine I thought. I honestly thought Yoshi Hashi might get a foot on the ropes after the brainbuster and then pull off the upset. He showed a good amount of fire, but in the end he is still just Yoshi Hashi ya know? Okada/Ospreay will probably be a ymmv deal, but I enjoyed it and liked Okada being a little bit more of an aggressive dick at times. Ishii/Okada will no doubt be amazing and i'll still hold out foolish hope for the Ishii upset.

My brackets were already pretty broken and then Ibushi getting knocked out blew them up. Now I just throw my hands up and futilely hope Ishii just murders his way to MSG. Also...the SANADA/Suzuki dueling submissions spot would have been so much better if the Skull End didn't look like such shite. I did like Suzuki having kind of a "for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee" moment as SANADA went for the killing blow moonsault.

I was pretty blah on Nichols being a charisma-less void and then he yells out "Witness Me" during the match. Ooof. I got another Fury Road quote that suits you "Mad" Mikey...."Mediocre".

On one of Kingston's shoots he confirmed the knee injury. Basically Blackjack could have surgery and continue to wrestle or not have it and live just fine. Also Eddie inferred Blackjack's falling out with Quackenbush kinda killed his love for the business.

I will respectfully disagree. Riccaboni is super cringey to me. It's just like he has this endless list of catchphrases for every wrestler and situation and reels them off. It doesn't help that Cabana is yucking it up as the color man. I mean I know that is his gimmick but it all gets to be too much sometimes.