The Z

Yes, wXwNOW, it's €9.99/month. They haven't put anything for free on YouTube in years, so it's either that or "you know what".

Had to collect my thoughts a bit after the last weekend. This was my third year in a row attending 16 Carat Gold. I think the overall match quality was a bit lower this year than the previous two years, there was a lot of stuff that was just mediocre and of course the David Starr thing (though expected) left a bitter taste in everyone's mouth. However the matches that were good, were really REALLY good. So I put everything from the weekend that I consider absolutely must-see in a handy list and ranked them. I'm putting this in spoiler tags for the unrealistic case, that someone's reading this who wants to watch the shows unspoiled.

I assume everyone's already been waiting for my annual 16 Carat Gold post. OK, I Know nobody cares, but here it is anyways. Full line-up of this year's 16 Carat Gold participants: "Speedball" Mike Bailey Chris Ridgeway Shigehiro Irie Black Taurus Puma King Alexander James Daniel Makabe Eddie Kingston Jurn Simmons Cara Noir Marius Al-Ani Lucky Kid Lio Rush The Rotation Julian Pace Bandido Alex Shelley will wrestle as a special attraction on Night 2, WALTER will only appear on the Sunday matinee event. David Starr vs. Bobby Gunns for the wXw World Championship will headline Night 2, where Starr will put his wXw career on the line. And of course Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda at Ambition (as well as Ethan Allen vs. Luke Jacobs). Overall the direction of wXw has been pretty poor lately, but they never disappoint at 16 Carat and I think this line-up is pretty fantastic. I actually don't think you could have put a better line-up together in this current Indie landscape where WWE and AEW have signed up 90% of the wrestlers. So many potentially great first-time match-ups you never would have dreamed of (Makabe/Ridgeway, Rush/Bailey, Taurus/Kingston, Bandido/Irie and many more).

He did say that many many times, but on the other hand money talks. For what it's worth he's barely working any Indies anymore, not even the WWE-affiliated ones. He was the head trainer of the wXw Academy and he handed that position over to someone else in January of this year. I also remember a time, when he was only working for wXw and said on podcasts he has no interest in working the Indies, especially talking very negatively about what he called "dream match factories" like PWG and Revolution Pro. A year later he was working for both of those promotions and everywhere else.

...and Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda

Does anyone know what's going on with Astro City? After the Ongoing was finished Busiek announced the series would continue in OGN form, but that was in January of 2018 and I couldn't find any more news since then. With Vertigo no longer being a thing, is it safe to say it's dead? Would be a damn shame...

Surely this has to be amongst the weirdest matches you could book in the year 2019?

I hope someone else wins the title from Amale before then. Bringing Satomura over to wrestle her would be a waste, she's... not good.

Needs more Kanemoto.

They finally completed the line-up for this year's wXw World Tag Team Festival. They changed the tournament from an 8-team round robin tournament (2 blocks of 4) to a 12-team single elimination tournament this year. Mexablood (Bandido & Flamita) Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch WRSTLING (David Starr & Eddie Kingston) Aussie Open (Mark Davis & Kyle Fletcher) WorkHorsemen (Anthony Henry & JD Drake) Anti-Fun Police (Chief Deputy Dunne & Los Federales Santos Jr.) Timothy Thatcher & Veit Müller The Crown (Jurn Simmons & Alexander James) Arrows of Hungary (Icarus & Dover) Jay-AA (Absolute Andy & Jay Skillet) RISE (Ivan Kiev & Pete Bouncer) Vollgasteren (Julian Pace & Leon van Gasteren) The finals will be a four-way with the current tag team champions WALTER & Ilja Dragunov gong directly to the finals. The reason this is happening is because WWE are having NXT:UK tapings on the same days as Day 1 and 2 of the tournament. I don't like the change to the single elimination format and especially not the four-way as the final and overall I don't think the line-up is as strong as last year, but there's still plenty to love here. They also released the line-ups for the Ambition Wildcard and Femmes Fatales tournaments, which are happening as matinee events on Saturday and Sunday. Femmes Fatales: Lufisto, Faye Jackson, Sweet Saraya, Lana Austin, Session Moth Martina, Leyla Hirsch, Sammii Jayne, Amale, Wesna, Baby Allison Ambition: Daniel Makabe, Dominic Garrini, Scotty Davis, Damon Moser, Alexander Dean, Rust Taylor, Kevin Lloyd, James Runyan. Also Timothy Thatcher vs. Oney Lorcan is happening as a superfight on Ambition. Should be a fun weekend.

PAC vs. Soner Dursun from February 23rd. Great match!

Going to Summer Sizzler the day before, was the correct decision.

I'm actually flying to London for this and the two RevPro shows the day before and after. Anyone else from the board going to be there? The main three matches look pretty nifty. That Ibushi match is a bit of a disappointment, though.

Well, I have Dora at #14 on my RT list and it currently sits at 75% with 24 reviews. So that's not good.

Yes, whole tournament happens in one show. Ambition is a shoot style tournament, though, in case you didn't know. Most matches are only a couple of minutes. That's not everyone's cup of tea.

Twitter mostly, but wXw has all of their line-ups on their website, too. The line-up for Ambition 11 the day before looks great, too. http://www.wxw-wrestling.com/pages/posts/ambition-11-6114.php http://www.wxw-wrestling.com/pages/posts/wxw-toronto-6113.php

and Thatcher vs. Ishikawa II on the same show. I'm honestly surprised RIPPA has been completely sleeping on this. We don't even get line-ups like this at home outside of 16 Carat.

Well, at the moment they still have four talents in my opinion, Bandido, Jeff Cobb, Marty Scurll and Mark Haskins. Of course I expect all of them to be gone sooner rather than later.

More interesting will be, if and for how much longer PWG will be able to use ROH talent. The only reason they were allowed to do so (again) was, because the Young Bucks demanded it. Now they're gone and on top of that Excalibur is working for AEW.

...and I even had Child's Play in 13th place on my RT list as well.

A no rope shoot style show from the UK. Josh Barnett's Bloodsport, this is not, but it's alright: Card from Cagematch: "Speedball" Mike Bailey vs. Brian Cage from some random German Indy: For further entertainment read the comments from pissed off Brian Cage sock puppet accounts in the comment section.

Not sure if this is on my end, but the mobile version of the board doesn't work for me anymore, since the board was down yesterday.

Men In Black International is starting strong with 33% on RT (23 reviews). Phew, another bullet I successfully dodged.