GojiColin

To paraphrase the renowned philosopher Mojo Rawley: That show didn't get me hyped, that show made me stay hyped. So much awesome wrestling right now.

I got lucky and rebooted my browser and now the stream is working fine. Just in time to see Adrian crash and burn.

Man, I keep rebooting the app, get a few seconds of what's currently streaming and then it rubber-bands back to Tyler Breeze's intro before crashing. On the plus side, all the Tyler Breeze intro I could ever want.

Man Tyler Breeze is so amazing he killed the Stream

It kicked me out and then when i restarted the app it puts me back at Sami/Cesaro

That was awesome. Two MOTYC on one show?

Emma just did Batista's finisher better than Batista can

This show has killed my likes for the day. I will rectify this tomorrow.

Man between the "You've still got it" chant and doing the Emma, Steph looks so happy to be there.

I'm happy to say that if I hadn't gotten my monies worth out of the network, I certainly just got it.

I'm watching on my PS3 and had a brief dip in the quality for a second, but otherwise it's been aces.

Who are we to doubt one of the top three high flyers of all time.

So I decided to revisit the start of when I became a wrestling fan again. so I've watched the Royal Rumble and No Way Out from 2000. I think the biggest thing I've noticed is how much more brutal some matches are since things like bleeding and shots to the head have been taken out of the WWE. Watching the Dudleys/Hardys table match, the Triple H/Cactus Jack matches and heck even Bossman cracking the nightstick in half over Tazz's head just seem that much more nasty now. Also I love seeing Rikishi getting the next big thing. I remember his elimination run in the Rumble, but then the next month he pretty much takes out the Radicals by himself on one good leg. That match is also great as Dean Malenko sneak attacks are almost the default transition to offense for his team. It's neat to see him come flying of camera and take people out, it just gives his crew an extra vicious vibe. And while the Hell in the Cell match certainly had the bigger spots of the two matches, I think I prefer the street fight because it just flowed better as a match. To me it seems like there are a lot of awkward pauses in the HitC match while they set up for the next big thing.

I realize I am probably jinxing myself here, but I'm retrying to watch RR2000 and now the chapters in the PPV work with no buffering at all.

I'm watching the 2000 Royal Rumble and there's a bit of buffering, but not nearly as horrible as this morning. So kudos to the codemonkeys for working on it.

My PS3 is working great, I haven't tried on my PC yet though.

I am a goddamned kid in a candy store here.

The fact that Jarrett mentioned India gives me high hopes for his endeavor.

That dragon suplex Modest hit on Morgan was just nasty, like Vader german suplexing Inoki nasty.

I don't know how I missed it, but the Tales of Symphonia HD version is getting released on the PS3 this month. That's the one game I'm missing from my Tales collection, so I'm pretty excited.

Maybe I'm getting my board meltdowns mixed up, but was Resident Evil the guy who posted normal for a while and then started dropping odd religious/end of times statements at the end of his posts and then sort of spammed a bunch of crazy stuff before getting the ban hammer to the face? Because that one always stood out to me. I was another person who came here due to a Scott Keith comment in one of his 411wrestling puro reviews. I think somewhere I still have a box filled with all the printed out DVDVRs somewhere.

Alright, time for round two: Tully vs Taylor: No. This was actually a tough call for me. On the one hand you have Tully who is amazing in this match. Whereas Luger and Rude exude smugness, Tully oozes scummyness. Even his style of wrestling has this scummy, reckless feel to it. He also does a great job of making everything Taylor does look like a million bucks. One thing that really stood out to me is that every time Tully would be mugging to the crowd. he would instantly focus right back on Taylor before the challenger could get back on his feet. It really helped reinforce the fact that Tully saw Taylor as a threat to his title. thus he was giving him no quarter. Conversely there's Terry Taylor, who is definitely an awesome wrestler, I mean that bodyslam he hit Tully with at the beginning of the match looked killer; how often do you say that? But my problem with him was that I got no real emotional feel out of him. He didn't wrestle like he hated Tully, or like he was hungry to win the title, or any other sort of motivation. He came off as a dude who wanted to wrestle a good match, if that makes any sense. So I sat there debating the pros and the cons and basically decided that if my instant reaction to match isn't "That was amazing" then it gets a no. Luger vs Pilman: Yes. To me this is like a better version of Tully/Taylor. Again you have the smug champ vs plucky challenger setup, but here you can feel Pilman's desire to win. It's a title match and Flyin' Brian is all fired up. Luger comes out brawling and JR wonders why he isn't tossing Pillman around like a ragdoll. We get the answer for that early on as Pillman has counters for whatever Lex tries, including a super-sweet spin counter to a hip-toss. Lex also takes an awesome spill out of the ring that looked super dangerous, But Lex bides his time and soon enough Pillman makes some mistakes going to the top rope and Luger swoops in for the kill. I love that in every match they talk about how Luger's tortue rack is basically the kiss of death, but in none of the Luger matches has he had to resort to using it. It makes him look like a bigger deal in my mind, plus if/when he does bust it out you automatically know it's serious business. Bret Hart vs DDP: No. I think Jae and I are going to have to disagree on this one. This was a good match but to be honest I was a tad disappointing in it, mostly in Bret. During the match you have the announcers talking about the vicious assault Bret put on Sting, yet in the ring Bret's acting like a mid-card rudo on a C-show. He'd do a move, do some half-assed crowd taunt and repeat. Now part of that may be the way they planned out the match but it really came off as Bret sleepwalking through the match. The scary thing is sleepwalking Bret is still really good. DDP brought the goods though, going the extra mile to make everything Bret did seem killer. Honestly though the postmatch beat-down was way more compelling then the match itself. Bret got that chair and went psycho on DDP, which really made me want to see the blow-off to that. But even so it gets a no from me. Eddie Guerrero vs Chris Benoit: Yes. I feel like I might be biased here because these were my two favorite wrestlers. Eddie's the bad guy here but the crowd can't help but love him. Benoit got sneak-attacked previously so he's looking for some...vengeance. This is the crown the new US champ so both guys are even more fired up. The main thing here is the story of how evenly matched these two are since they were friends for so long. It didn't matter if it was strikes, submissions or suplexes. the two of them were matched blow for blow. Eddie was fantastic with his cheat to win shtick and his reaction when he realized that his attack on the ref went a little too well was priceless. In the end it took an outside influence to break the stalemate and Eddie was more then happy to take advantage. His 'what are you going to do?' look as he was walking up the ramp iced the cake. Daniel Bryan vs The Miz: No. As an aside, I forgot how atrocious Evil Michael Cole was. When you make Matt Striker sound like JR, it's gone too far. But as for the match itself it was really good and did a great job of drawing the crowd in as it went along. Having The Miz focus in on a body part was a good strategy as it not only made The Miz look smart, it kept him from doing some of his less stellar looking offense. Daniel Bryan certainly played the plucky underdog well and busted out neat counters and flash pins, which I think got the crowd into the match ever more. The getting crotched on the ropes/diving clothesline spot was nifty, but took a beat too long to set up and sort of felt out of place with the pace of the rest of the match. Like I said, a really good match, but not up to the level of other matches.

(Note: God bless auto-saved content) Wahoo vs Magnum: No. Originally I had this as yes, but Magnum/Nikita set the bar for what a 'Yes' was going to be for me. I've never really seen any Wahoo matches before, but I definitely liked him as the wily veteran using all the tricks in the book to defeat the widly popular challenger. In a way he reminds me of Finlay: A guy who wrestles a non flashy style and makes everything look like it hurts. That's not to say Magnum didn't hold up his end of the deal, he really looked like a star in that match. I liked that at the end of the match that Magnum got tired of Wahoo's antics and gave him a taste of his own medicine by going after the cut on Wahoo's head. I just thought it was a neat way of showing that while Magnum's a good guy, you can push him too far and he'll retaliate in kind. Mangum vs Nikita: Yes. So we're at match 6 of 7, both guys know each other well by now. You know this is going to be great when Magnum puts Nikita in a headlock and you believe Magnum wants to crush the Russian's head with it. Magnum then does some amazing armwork to make sure Nikita's sickle is out of the picture. I mean seeing Nikita's arm bent like that and the vein popping out made you believe Magnum was trying to tear it off. Then you have Magnum refusing to break the hold, dragging Nikita out and then posting the arm. I think that works really well with the storyline of the series, as it's not so much good vs evil now as it is survival (Magnum) vs victory (Nikita). Nikita has his own game plan and once he gets in control of things he's out to crush the life out of Magnum. It feels like every move he does is to choke/crush Magnum's will to survive out of him. It's interesting that this is match with a lot of basic submission spots, yet none of them feel like breathers or time-killers. Also this match might have the best Dusty Finish ever. If I could give this two yeses I would. Magnum vs Tully: Yes. I remember watching this for the first time when the WWE Cage Match DVD came out. It was so good that I immediately watched it again. Now watching it again it really is just an amazing way to end a feud. It's become apparent to me that Magnum is just so good at being the good guy pushed past the point of no return. There's really no one in modern wrestling that does it as well as Magnum does, if at all. Luger vs Steamboat: No. This was definitely eye opening for me as my memories of Luger are from the dying days of WCW. This Lex Luger is a who other guy, shockingly athletic for a guy his size. Not only that he hit some nasty clotheslines on Steamboat, especially the one to the outside, Steamboat was great here as well, using his speed to take advantage of the bigger Luger. Getting launched from one ring to the other was a great visual, but man it looked like Steamboat wasn't going to make it for a second. The ending was a neat way to give the crowd what they wanted and Steamboat chasing Luger with the chair was great, but it kind of felt like a letdown to me. Even though I'm giving this a no I liked it a lot, but it's a 'Very Good' match, not 'The Best', Luger vs Rich: No. Man Luger is such a glorious bastard in this match. He just radiates smugness at all times and his preening at the start of the match after hitting a couple simple moves was the best. Tommy Rich is great as the guy who gets in flurries of offense and can frustrate Luger and get in his head. But in then end Luger shows he really is the Total Package by using his brains to defeat Rich. While I think that the Steamboat match was the better technical match, I think this match had a lot more character to it. But still it falls into the 'Very Good' category. Luger vs Flair: Yes. This is sort of the counter-point to Magnum/Wahoo. Here we have wily veteran Flair desperate to beat Luger so he can go on to face Sting; yet Luger has no desire to give Flair what he wants. Luger has joined the forces of good at this point it seems and I must admit I miss the smugness from his other two matches; thankfully we have Flair who more then makes up for it. Watching the opening part of this match it dawns on me that Batista really took a lot from Lex's playbook. Lex looks like a monster just shrugging off Flair's inital onslaught and making the Nature Boy pay every time he stopped to gloat. But Flair goes into 'Dirtyest Player in the Game' mode and suddenly Lex is very vulnerable and does a great job showing it. Lex sends Flair sailing off the top rope and they get the perfect shot of it, making it look that much more impressive. The ending looks like it's going to be a let-down, but then Stan Hansen shows up and just mugs the crap out of Lex. My first reaction upon seeing that was "Man I want to see that match". But wasn't it Hansen that Lex had troubles with and caused him to head to the WWF? Or is my timeline off? Either way a great match with a great build up to another match. An easy Yes for me. Dustin vs Rude: Short haired Rick Rude looks pretty damn bad ass, but the real shocker is how massive Dustin looks compared to Rude. I'm not a huge fan of Ironman matches as they often end up stretching a match out too much. I feel like this match has about 10 minutes of dead time that could have been cut out and it would have been much better for it. That being said both guys were great here, especially Rude. He, like Lex Luger, just exudes smug confidence. But he also does lots of little things, like after Dustin works his back over he tries to do the hip swivel but is in too much pain; or when he comes off the top with an elbow to the head on Rhodes as if to say "You Rhodes aren't the only ones who can do that". Dustin also does some great stuff, especially when his counter out of the tombstone and counter into his own. It wasn't the usual reversal spot, it was more of a struggle to get free sort of deal. Of course my WWE-washed brain boggled at the tombstone only getting a 2 count. but it's a different time and place. The last four or so minutes get really good, but the ending's a bit of a let down. In the end I think it's a really good match, but runs a bit long to be a 'Yes' for me. Sting vs Rude: Apparently the match itself isn't on Youtube and the Dailymotion version has been taken down.

Man I dug that Ziggler promo, I liked the unbalanced vibe to it. After I finished it I found myself coming up with a storyline where a crazed and desperate for validation Ziggler gets used by the Authority to take out anyone in their way.

Thanks for the context!