The Z

Alex Zayne! Awesome!

I mean Timothy Thatcher and Biff Busick are both freelancers now, so...

Rumor has it lately that WWE only cut out the Anthony Ogogo match from Ch. 127, but it was PROGRESS' own decision to cut out the Gresham matches from Ch. 128 and 129 to give people an incentive to buy PROGRESS' own streaming service. Of course since then Gresham competed for and won the PROGRESS World Championship at Ch. 130 and of course he also competed in and won the entire wXw 16 Carat Gold 2022 tournament. None of those shows aired on the WWE network yet, but obviously it would be utterly insane to release any of those shows without the Gresham matches.

Joey Janela vs. Barry Horowitz

They were able to get Ninja Mack as a last minute replacement for Biff. Holy Shit!

Yeah, that's a real bummer. Even with Busick the line-up was already pretty weak this year. I'm crossing my fingers that Jonathan Gresham vs. Fuminori Abe will happen at some point during the tournament. That would make up for a lot.

He really is:

The second MDRN NMD TNG show from last weekend. I would highly recommend watching Chris Ridgeway vs. Kid Lykos and Dean Allmark vs. Martin Kirby, but you can also just watch the whole show. Yesterday Hard Hit aired their entire show from December on YouTube, which had a 40-minute main event between Minoru Suzuki and Hikaru Sato. I thought I could watch it later, but they apparently deleted the whole thing after the initial airing. Damn.

I would actually prefer a middle way between live iPPV and waiting half a year. The impatience of my fellow wrestling fans annoys me a lot more than the slow-as-hell schedule of PWG. Everything has to be live live live for most people nowadays. I've never watched anything life in my entire life, outside of the shows I've attended myself. I'm old enough to remember a time, when you had to wait months for some tape trader to have the show you wanted and then you waited months more for the VHS to arrive at your house. Obviously we don't want to go back to that, but the quality of the majority of the live Indy shows sucks ass. Of all the GCW shows at least half of them have terrible audio and or video issues. Everything would be so much better, if people were just willing to wait a day or two (or even a week) for the VOD to be released. That's my rant for today.

I wonder, if they could do VOD now, if they wanted to. The reason they always give for not doing VOD is that they couldn't use contracted wrestlers, if they did, but is that reason even still valid anymore? Clearly AEW doesn't give a shit, as Jon Moxley, Joey Janela etc. appear for live broadcasts of GCW shows all the time. Ring of Honor doesn't have anyone under contract anymore. The only promotion that might be tricky is Impact, but even with them, some wrestlers have appeared on live Indy VODs. Mike Bailey has worked for GCW a couple of weeks ago and was already announced for more shows. Josh Alexander worked the recent Terminus show and works for AAW all the time. There are other examples like that. Might be a case by case issue with them.

Here are a few of my favorite shows from the last 12 months: rSpring Break Presented By 44OH!, 04/09/2021 (Duh!) Draft Day, 05/15/2021 Tournament Of Survival 666, 06/05/2021 ('m not even a big death match guy, but this is just a really good show) 3 Cups Stuffed 09/03/2021 So Alive, 12/04/2021 On the pre-show he said it was one of their partners who said this on their last show before the pandemic shut down everything, which would have been on March 20th 2020. So I'm thinking it could have been one of the IWTV owners or one of the promoters that they used to team up with for the Collective, which would have happened not soon after, if it wasn't for Corona.

I have seen pretty much every GCW show of the last three years or so and it's my favorite promotion in the world. Yesterday's show was far far below average when it comes to quality for GCW. Chances are you pick any random GCW show out of their catalog and it'll be much better than yesterday's offering. Does anyone know who said the "I've seen a million GCWs come and go and it's not going to last" quote to Brett Lauderdale? I initially thought it was someone like Jim Cornette, but of course, why would Lauderdale care about what that guy thinks. This must have been someone he used to respect a lot.

"Stark" is the German word for "Strong", so this name is along the same lines. "Kampf" is just the German word for "fight". Guess what Ringkampf literally translates to? Never understood the association with Nazism from the English-speaking fans

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Brody King on this week's episode of NJPW Strong Xtra. Robbie X vs. Francesco Akira One of the best high-fliers around today against the Italian All Japan sensation Joe Lando vs. Corey McRae Short but sweet shooter vs. flier match Rocky Kawamura II vs. Takuya Wada Main event from one of the latest Hard Hit shows, Japan's other shoot style promotion

Night Two of the Defend Indy Wrestling Ten Year Anniversary Tournament was just released. Once again I can't recommend these two shows highly enough. Every match on either show is worth a watch. Jordon Breaks vs. Harry Sefton (12/11/2021) This match has that old school feeling! Kira Chimera vs. Ava White (12/11/2021) Mike Bird vs. Hari Singh (12/17/2021) Always good to see Mike Bird!

Yay! They put up the complete Nakajma vs. Kitamiya Hair vs. Hair Cage Match on YouTube:

Just caught up on the last episode.

HELL YES!!!!

Smokin' Aces (Charlie Sterling & Nick Riley) vs. Greedy Souls (Brendan White & Danny Jones), 12/12/2021 Fantastic tag team match! Nico Angelo vs. Lee Hunter, 11/21/2021 I love that are still a few promotions running ATTACK!'s old stomping grounds. I wish they would release their shows in full, I would probably even pay money for them. Hoping this will be the year ATTACK! comes back.

Another must-see match on this week's episode in Gabriel Kidd vs. Eddie Kingston and I don't even like Kingston that much usually (sorry), but they just clicked incredibly well.

Two full shows that are definitely worth your time: DEFEND Indy Wrestling Ten Year Anniversary Tournament - Night 1 (11/27/2021) Card: Danny Jones vs. Josh Terry The O.J.M.O. vs. Nino Bryant Laura Di Matteo vs Alex Windsor Nico Angelo vs Jay Joshua Chuck Mambo vs TK Cooper All five matches on this show are fantastic! MDRN NMD Tuesday Night Graps: Treasure Hunt Spectacular (11/30/2021) Card: Mark Davis vs. Kyle Fletcher Seven Man Scramble Match: Chris Egan vs. RUFIO vs. Jack Bandicoot vs. Man Like DeReiss vs. Scott Oberman vs. Natalie Sykes Martin Kirby vs. Chris Ridgeway Dean Allmark vs. Lee Hunter Team Bucket (Kid Lykos II, Luke Jacobs, Nico Angelo & Rhio) vs. Team Frog (Big Guns Joe, Gene Munny, Kid Lykos & Mad Kurt) You're definitely going to want to see Davis vs. Fletcher, but the rest of the show is fun, too.

In all his years as trainer I've never heard anything bad about him. That's not good. You want trainees to be treated like shit, otherwise how will they know their role? Surely they've already called Hugh Morrus to give him his old job back.

WOW! What a show! The two main events were fantastic, but holy shit, that six man tag was everything to me! Only the fourth highest ranked match from the show on Cagematch for some reason, but I had a huge grin on my face throughout that whole match and yelled out several times. Everyone brought there A-Game, but good god, KENTA and Inamura... To think I initially was disappointed that KENTA was only in a seemingly random six man tag... Inamura is a megastar! Give me the Inamura/KENTA singles match now!

They could go with Christopher Daniels, he was in the main event of the first show after all.

If it wasn't already clear before then, one thing has become abundantly clear over the last few years: Vince is the kind of boss, who wants to be surrounded by Yes-Men and Yes-Men only. People who have their own ideas about how to do things (e.g. Paul Heyman) never last for very long in the WWE, at least not in a creative setting. The only people who thrive there, are people, who are complete and utter suck-ups like Prichard and Kevin Dunn. Triple H got a pass, because he's the son-in-law, but I guess Vince's patience finally ran out.