Goodear

I enjoy the fact that we are now onto people being down on people who were down on the people that were mad at WWE for CM Punk quitting his job. I eagerly await the next cycle of hate. Regardless, I find Punk's volume of matches make me think less of him when I am usually in the quantity + quality > even better quality camp. Like some of his performances were so off that I found myself being less and less enamored with the guy. I don't think he really works a good 'best in the world' character and I think he's really exposed as not being on the same plain as the elite of the WWE roster.

The thing I look about Rush is that it always looks like he is trying to hurt the guy he is in there with. Sometimes, the lucha style leads itself to being flashy for the sake of being flashy with dives all over the place and wacky graps. But Old Rush, he just punches you in the mouth and drop kicks you as hard as possible and presents as a guy who isn't there to be impressive, he just is impressive. I have compared him to Kerry Von Erich before and he really hits that cord with me as a bigger guy who doesn't back down when it comes to throwing faux fisties. Virus while I will admit is a hell of a technician, doesn't seem to build heat segments they way I prefer. Like to me, it should be a struggle for one of the flippier guys to get off the ground with him and I don't get the feeling that it is. There just isn't enough struggle to the matwork like you would see from the British style, which is how I likes it. Question: I'm not holding this against Virus cause whatever, but how is the guy a rudo? Two matches posted here both end with him shaking hands afterwards? IS that a byproduct of the title match style?

Oh me too, but if Okada comes up against someone like Bryan and I'm looking for a way to separate them, I'm not going to ignore it.

I don't understand why people have a problem with this. He's basically saying "This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me." Its one thing to drop an elbow when your arm hurts. Its something else to throw a picture perfect leap 6 feet in the air dropkick when you couldn't run the ropes or stand a moment before.

Allow me to 'Scrappy Doo' Bo Dallas in a few easy steps. 1) Bo joins the Shield. 2) Bo offers to Roman the opportunity to see how to "really" do a spear. 3) Bo compares ear rings with Dean 4) Bo tells Seth he should "Bo-Lieve in the Shield" 5) The rest of the Shield do nothing about any of this.

I appreciate that Okada at least tries to sell and does so very well in the short term considering where he is working. Like just take the Shibata match up thread. Okada is at least registering a far larger percentage of strikes than anyone else I've watched in New Japan. Everyone else seems to want to fill up their combo meter by letting the other guy forearm them in the face 20 times with no defense. Hell, Shibata kicked a damn ring post and didn't bother to sell it. Okada is like the one guy watching John Cena matches and going "Hmm I could totally do that" while everyone else is getting their Fighting Spirit all over each other.

Its okay Jae, I feel like I should have voted Kana but I already pressed the button for Seth so it all comes out in the wash. These two are wicked close to me.

I really dig Kana's MMA transitions and the way she works holds. That being said, Rollins had a breakout year as a worker and character as the guy who would sacrifice himself for his teammates and it was just too damn cool to vote against here. Kana is super fun though. SUPER fun. She is someone I would go out of my way to see going forward.

Does anyone know where Barry Darsow was 9 months before Okabayashi was born? EDIT: Okabayashi has never to my knowledge had a dinosaur escort him to the ring. Okada has. Voted Rainmaker.

At least if Tyler Breeze was in this there would be a match to put in the poll to consider. Spud isn't good at anything. His offense is laughable and he doesn't even bump super well for a guy as small as he is.

Blue Panther annoys the shit out of me. I hate his 'who me?' expression and all of his facials are totally hokey garbage. He doesn't do anything impressive other than put on holds but since there isn't any decent selling and the escapes aren't done with any effort there isn't any investment from me. It becomes an exhibition rather than a contest and I'm not interested in exhibitions. His match construction is atrocious as those first two falls don't mean anything, but thankfully will be over in under 5 minutes. Park has better strikes but isn't as good at submission stuff as Panther. His charisma connects with me better and he doesn't seem to throw away his early falls as quickly. I voted Park

Who are you to diddley doubt El Dibbelty Dandy?

So is it safe to say yet that being in the WWE doesn't really give someone a super advantage in the tournament yet?

Nakamura just looks really sloppy to me like he is going to throw this kick and well maybe it will be off the right by 4 inches or whatever. But he also looks like he's trying to work a Johnny Depp in a Tim Burton movie gimmick so I guess it works. AJ on the other hand, infuriates me for reasons I can't explain. Like just his gloves make me wanna throw a brick through the television. I mean I don't because I'm not made out of money Mick Foley. But ugh, AJ Styles sucks.

Okay, probably none of you remember this but I was all "ugh all lucha guys are the same and do the same match and blah blah blah" before this tournament. Now I have watched a couple of guys that make me look like a total jackass (and I've voted for one of them today) but Titan... Titan is what I was talking about. There is nothing about Titan that makes me take notice. Like if he, La Sombra, and Mascara Dorada changed gear for a night, I would not be able to tell them apart. That is no damn good folks. That is poor character wrestling and move set development and everything except mad flips. So phooey on your Titan. (I realized the tournament hadn't really been spiteful yet this year so this was harsher than I would normally put it.) Big E is a serviceable big guy who has some issues but stands out by being a guy as wide as he is tall. He has a nice ode to Rick Steiner style that I appreciate and I think he has nice throws and clotheslines. I don't have the issue with the big ending everyone else seems to have since most every finish is bullshit. It's supposed to be...

Casas is really good at being very diverse. Like he will be in there with Maximo and he comes off almost playful and then he gets in there with Rush and it is Katie bar the door chops and stuff flying all over the place and watch out here he comes! I think his weakest point may be his finishing stretches but I haven't seen a lucha match really pull that off yet while watching this stuff. I may not call him top 4 in my mental rankings, but he was probably the guy I like watching the most out of the lucha side and the best I guy I hadn't seen a ton of leading up to the tournament. Big Show is good, don't get me wrong but he seemed way less consistent this year than last with less stuff I was interested in. WWE is in a weird place with him and Mark Henry where they both seem like real life super nice guys, but I really enjoy their heel work so much more. Sometimes the best characters aren't the real you dialed up to 11.

There was a start to this when he fish hooked Sami for a second but it went past the announcers so it was easy to miss. Something like that would be really good for Graves since it sort of fits his gimmick nicknames (Leader of the Filth Parade?) and is somewhat unique for the company. This was far and away the best I've seen Graves work his character and it wasn't all on Zayn. It was like someone sat him down at Arrival and really got to him on how to work a good match without giving the fans anything to cheer for.

Hey, so I watched this week on Hulu and tried to go back to watch Adam Rose again but the show was gone But as a way to make it up to me, Arrival was there! Be back in 2 hours world!

To be fair it wasn't the full Bullet Club experience as there was only one guy constantly interfering instead of five.

Before there was Mankind and Socko, there was the Dog Faced Gremlin and Alex. Killer Karl Kox wants to know what the fuck y'all are talking about. I'm prepared for my mind to be blown. Learn me some history Unca Rippa.

NXT~!~!~! New Theme Song, beat is okay but the lyrics are kind of bad y'all. New NXT Champion Adrian Neville starts out in a contest with Comacho and while the match isn't really all that, the commentary crew is all over telling the story of what is coming up and how Neville will have to react to being the champion. Its a great way of getting over that everyone is going to be going after Adrian now and he ain't got no more friends. He goes over Camacho with the red arrow, but the big story is coming as a not smiling Bo Dallas interrupts a post-match interview to remind everyone Neville climbed a ladder to win the belt like a 'Dad cleaning his gutters' which is an awesome line for the Bo character. B is great here going from vapid smile to no expression at all. Thumbs up from Bo! Cheep pop! Paige and Emma do some separate promo work after their match at Arrival and Charlotte interrupts them both with her dad in tow. Ric comes off as really creepy here in an perverted old man kind of way. Charlotte comes off ... okay. She's not a natural promo but the right lines were there for her character. She'll be facing Emma ... NeXT! Charlotte enters with Sasha Banks and 'Summer on a stick'. Next wristlock sparring to start with Emma getting the better of it. The move about and Charlotte 'tweaks her ankle' on a floatover which is totally a ruse. But the nice thing about it is that Emma didn't immediately get all worried, she went for a cover instead and then paused at the referee's instruction. Then while Emma is distracted by Shasha's "concern" Charlotte kips up and does her finish thing *super* quick. This does good things for Charlotte getting her over as smart without Emma looking really dumb. Sami got what he wanted from the match with Cesaro. In my opinion, totally time for him to start pulling down wins instead of great efforts. Corey Graves in NeXT against some guy I don't recognize. Yoshey something or other. I hate god damned Corey Graves and his dumb knuckle tattoos. And his dumb other tattoos (the masked wrestler on one shoulder is the worst). And his skinny jeans. And his hair cut. And he buries Tatsu because he doesn't shop at Hot Topic. And then buries Sami Zayn and Cesaro and everyone and I hope Tatsu kicks him in the teeth. So mission accomplished I guess you fucker, you detestable ass. Sami lays down a challenge. ADAM ROSE PARTY! I have no idea what Adam Rose is (I know he's Kruger) but there is a gladiator! And Kallisto makes his debut in the background I think twirling a baton? And I want to have Adam Rose's babies 3 seconds after meeting him. Even if he would call me boring. OMG is he NeXT?!? Xavier Woods is PISSSSSSSSSSED. So that is a refreshing change for his character, he better not come out all smiles and kissing babies when he faces Rusev even if he is probably getting beat. Rusev and Lana respond with lots of Bulgarian and Lana says he accepts for next week. ADAM ROSE PARTY~! Versus a COWBOY~! A Real Cowboy? This is great if only for the crowd turning on some dude who tries to start a "We wan Kruger" chant. Tensai is a ROSEBUD. I... I... I... I wanna join. MOAH Adam Rose! ZAYN/GRAVES NeXT I'm wearing out the shift key and for that I apologize. Again the announce team does a great job of putting over the story. Zayn needs wins now and Corey is using him to get up the ladder and is manipulating the situation. The other thing Corey does well is have nothing that I want to cheer for. I want to boo the guy and he plays into that role. He isn't there to get cheers for anything. He lays in a fishhook and its mean and he's a jerk. He pulls out a nice backbreaker as a cut off spot and damn it. Corey Graves is having a good match. Damn it. Couldn't he just suck? Argh. Sami wins off a small package to counter a second backbreaker and I'm pretty happy. You know, even here, Sami gets over his 'never back down' character by telling Graves he will fight him on the way from the ring. Great episode this week. Yup.

Before there was Socko, Rick Steiner talked to his own hand.

I meant it as Terrible kind of works like Rush but I couldn't tell you who pioneered it or anything of that nature.

I really think Neville has come into his own as the Lance Russel of NXT where he plays the strait man to Bo Dallas and Tyler Breeze shenanigans. For a flippy guy, I don't feel like he does a million of them so it feels more important. He's also decent at power and striking stuff as shown on his powerbomb on Tyler a week or so ago and the head kicking he did to Zayn up above. I feel like he is putting the pieces together and it way better about making people care more about him than just them caring about the red arrow (which was the case when he first started). Terrible strikes me as trying to follow the Rush template of luchadore stuff (I have no idea who came first) but he's not as compelling a figure to me. The Shocker match above was kind of poop and using the Styles Clash and almost hurting a guy didn't make a good impression. I'm just not seeing anything here that makes me think he's any better than say, Bobby Roode?

I've watched all of three Sombra matches (so I am clearly the foremost expert in La Sombra) and in every one he did a 'missed lionsault into a backflip splash' pin for one of the first two falls. It was like 'Why do people trying to keep powerbombing Kidman?' all over again.