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NXT TAKEOVER - Chicago


Dolfan in NYC

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12 hours ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

As others have mentioned, they've backed themselves in a corner with Asuka. There is no one currently on the roster who feels like a legitimate threat to her.  Ember Moon could have been that with better characterization. The next option is hoping someone from the Women's Tournament catches fire and build that person as a contender.  But that would take several months, and they'll have to figure out what to do with Asuka in the meantime.

 

I think at this point Asuka should just forfeit the title when she's called up. Understandably that's not how a territory is supposed to work but this is a special case. I don't think her losing to any of the women will hurt her on the main roster but I don't think anyone in NXT is believable enough to do it and capitalize off that win. They can do a tournament with Liv, Aaliyah, Peyton, Billie Kay, Ruby Riot, Ember Moon, Nikki Cross and some of the newer women and signings from the MYC. 

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12 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I think at this point Asuka should just forfeit the title when she's called up. Understandably that's not how a territory is supposed to work but this is a special case. I don't think her losing to any of the women will hurt her on the main roster but I don't think anyone in NXT is believable enough to do it and capitalize off that win. They can do a tournament with Liv, Aaliyah, Peyton, Billie Kay, Ruby Riot, Ember Moon, Nikki Cross and some of the newer women and signings from the MYC. 

They did the same thing when Paige debuted on the roster and won the Divas title.  Once she did that Regal said she had to forfeit the NXT title so they could do a tournament.  So if they're cool with doing that before then certainly this scenario would work just as well.  The only thing we don't know when she's called up, and if she's there during the Mae Young Classic then might as well have her face the winner of that.

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1 hour ago, JonnyLaw said:

I think it was actually JBL that made her forfeit the title.

You're right, I forgot it was JBL.  But they still had Paige give up the NXT women's title.

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Since you crave it and can't help yourself from the RAGE~!

Per the newest WON

  • Strong/Young - 3 3/4
  • Dunne/Bate - 4 3/4
  • Women's 3-way - 3 1/2
  • Roode/Itami - 4 1/4
  • AOP/DIY - 4 1/4
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It doesn't really bother me, but I always think it's funny and one of Dave's odd spectrum-ish quirks when he gives a match ****3/4. Especially after the whole 6* thing with Okada and Omega. Like, really, a match did something to detract a 1/4 of a snowflake? Ok then. You be you.

FWIW, I couldn't even try to do a good job with giving match ratings. I just know that UK title match was fucking outstanding.

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I agree none of the current women in NXT deserve to beat Asuka(I wouldn't mind Ember if her character was better). I really don't think it'll take long to build the Stardom girls up especially if they're in the MYC. I'd say let's wait and see who's in the tourny and who really gets over from that before Asuka gives up her belt.

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I really do wonder if Dave just can't mentally bring himself to give 5 to a match that happens in the US anymore. But after DIY/Revival didn't, I'd be shocked is anything else ever does in NXT.

That aside, I broadly agree with his ratings on this show. 

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9 minutes ago, Brian Fowler said:

I really do wonder if Dave just can't mentally bring himself to give 5 to a match that happens in the US anymore. But after DIY/Revival didn't, I'd be shocked is anything else ever does in NXT.

That aside, I broadly agree with his ratings on this show. 

Wait until NJPW runs Long Beach. 

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6 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

I really do wonder if Dave just can't mentally bring himself to give 5 to a match that happens in the US anymore. But after DIY/Revival didn't, I'd be shocked is anything else ever does in NXT.

That aside, I broadly agree with his ratings on this show. 

He gave 5 stars to the Young Bucks/Cole vs Ospreay/Ricochet/Sydal match that main evented night 2 of last year's BOLA.  He was sitting front row for that, so being there may have influenced him.

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1 minute ago, Oyaji said:

I'm guessing a PWG match will get the full 5 before a WWE match. Clearly he prefers other styles. 

Pretty much.  But so does every wrestling fan ever, so I dunno why his star ratings are such a contentious talking point, or why he bothers engaging all the nerds who try to argue with him.  I don't tend to rate matches much, but I would probably rate a 1999 ECW match a little more liberally than I would a 1999 WCW match, because that's what I prefer.  Meltzer rates current NJPW higher than current WWE, because that's what he prefers.  Neither of us are any different from any other fan.

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He also repeatedly brings up things like "setting" matters and pretty much acknowledged that basically only a match at Mania could get a 5 for the WWE (not that directly but it was fairly obvious when reading it)

Funnily enough - I seem to recall that at the time it was all around CWC ratings and where Dave said that he should have given Kendrick/Ibushi 5 stars (I can't remember if it was on rewatch or if it was he was saying if he had seen it live. Dammit... now I am going to have to look)

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It is easier to just repost the whole god damn thing but if folks have never seen it - agree with or not you will at least see the reasoning that Dave uses and then apply that into your own interpretations of his ratings

Quote

Watching what may have been the best tag team match in North America in years on 9/3 in Reseda, CA, was a surreal moment.

It was the second night of the Battle of Los Angeles tournament and it wasn’t exactly a secret that the main eventers were going to try and tear the house down and have the most mind-blowing match possible.

When the match is The Young Bucks, who are the stars of Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, teaming with Adam Cole against almost a dream team of high flyers and state of the art new-wave style wrestlers in Matt Sydal & Ricochet & Will Ospreay, you pretty much are going in with amazingly high expectations.

The match was amazing. It has been so long since I’ve seen a tag team match that good. In fact the next day, in talking with people, the only comparisons anyone could come up with in North America were those old Dragon Gate six mans that were held every year over WrestleMania weekend. At the style they worked, I’ve never seen one as good.

There was too much to describe, a never ending array of acrobat moves, jumping knees, kicks, brainbusters and regular and reverse huracanranas coming from all directions. At one point Ricochet and Ospreay both did Space flying tiger drops at the same time. There were the usual simultaneous dive spots, reverse huracanranas off the top, and the Young Bucks Meltzer driver (which never happened) was instead topped by Ricochet using a tombstone with Sydal doing a shooting star off the top rope as the spike.

If this show had streamed live, people, well other than the 400 fans at the American Legion Hall in Reseda, the entire hardcore wrestling world would be talking about it as match of the year and North American tag team match of the decade.

I’m not saying it was better than any of the three ***** singles matches I’ve given this year, and the truth is, there were some in the building who didn’t even think it was the best tag team match on the show, due to an almost as amazing match with Fenix & Pentagon Jr. vs. Chris Hero & Tommy End which was a very different type of match.

After the triple shooting star press finish, I had no reservations that it was a *****match. It actually brought me back more than 27 years to Chicago, in the clip that people bring up to me fairly often of the Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat match, with me visibly in the front row with Brad Muster of the Chicago Bears after Steamboat won the title. When it was over, everyone around me was either saying five stars or saying it was the best match they’d ever seen live (and that’s without the Jim Ross audio track which elevated the PPV version of it).

Here, one friend held up his hand and said “five,” and another pointed to the one botched spot early in the match where a Ricochet Biel throw on Sydal, that was supposed to wipe out their foes with some kind of a crazy flipping dive move, got tangled up in the ropes and fell down to the floor and said that kept it from five.

Sydal and Ricochet were visibly upset for that one second, but the Bucks and Cole started stomping Sydal immediately so it was a good immediate recovery.

You could say that kept it from being a perfect match, if such a thing can exist. So it was not a perfect match. I have no reservation in saying they did more than enough to overcome that. Granted, this style isn’t everyone’s taste and I have reservations about just how much they did. For people who don’t like the Young Bucks or Ricochet vs. Ospreay, you could probably say this match was the epitome of what you don’t like. It’s also exactly what the crowd wanted and expected out of the match, except it was a little more innovative and better.

Ospreay is probably the breakthrough star of this year, but he is clearly in pain. Granted, I used to watch Terry Funk being barely able to walk, and then he walked through the curtain and was a performer completely different from these six, but he was every bit, if not more of, a riveting performer for the audience. Funk was also 45 when he had that legendary run with Flair, while Ospreay turned 23 in May. It’s sad to make that comparison while, at the same time, marveling at watching this guy, who barely anyone knew a year ago in North America, have two of the three best, if not both of the best matches over Mania weekend, and then go to Japan and become almost an instant star on arrival. But he’s already cutting back on his schedule, and he’s a guy who should have the Balor or Zayn career trajectory in WWE, except getting there much younger. But WWE requires a body to hold up to nearly 200 matches a year.

The guy is an amazing talent who has the chance to be the face of British wrestling on a worldwide basis the way nobody ever truly has been, partially because communications are so different today. You always hope when seeing a high flyer who is ahead of their time, that they do a style that enables them to end up like Negro Casas, who remained amazing into his 50s, as opposed to being the next Dynamite Kid, who was one of the guys who put smaller wrestlers on the map in Japan, but was destroyed by injuries by the age of 28.

All kinds of things happened within a split second. The ground immediately broke into a loud “five star match,” chant. I’m sure that chant has happened before, and after this, I’m sure it’ll happen again and like all chants of that type, become diluted with time. Actually, the next night, one or two people in the crowd tried to get that chant for two outstanding matches (one of which was The Young Bucks vs. Fenix & Pentagon Jr., and the other was Ricochet vs. Will Ospreay, which was incredible), and in both cases, almost nobody would join in and the chants went nowhere.

But it was the first time that had happened when I was in the building. And at the same moment, Ricochet and Ospreay looked directly at me. On Twitter and other places, I’ve read people saying that if I held up my hand with five fingers, it would have gotten the biggest pop of the night. So my split second judgment was that I wanted to cover the show, but not be part of the show, which isn’t always the case when you have people blowing kisses at you before they hit a move with your name on it. The wrestlers deserved the pop, not me, and they were getting it anyway.

Ricochet then grabbed the mic and said that whether this was or wasn’t a five-star match, they did all they could, the fans had fun and that is what wrestling is about. He then noted Ospreay was there in the ring, and gave a strong hint that since they were both in the tournament, they would face each other the next day.

While people credit me for the idea of match ratings, or blame me, even though it’s just a standard thing critics use whether for movies, music, food, dancing shows and even real sports in their own way like gymnastics and diving or synchronized swimming, it’s totally subjective. There is no right or wrong. Some people take my ratings as some official standard, and others get completely outraged when every really good WWE match doesn’t get *****.

As best I can tell, the idea of ratings matches came from Jim Cornette, long before he became a manager. He came up with the system, and his childhood friend, Norman Dooley, who put out the funniest newsletter of the early ‘80s, “Weasel’s World,” was the first guy who used them in a publication.

When I started this newsletter nearly 34 years ago, I was already a subscriber to “Weasel’s World, so I just copied the system, and in time, it was just assumed that I created it.

If you sit down and think about it, there are all kinds of questions in the sense that I would rather see a safer style with compelling drama. For example, the television presentation version of the Brian Kendrick vs. Kota Ibushi match on the cruiserweight classic show was a ***** match to many.

But I also talked with people who were at the show in Orlando last week where that match was taped and at BOLA and said there was no comparison. It’s really not fair since Kendrick vs. Ibushi was edited, like a Lucha Underground match, since they had to undo that Ibushi got counted out, restarted the match for a ridiculous lame, although necessary reason. Some other things were also edited out. The NXT editing is pretty much seamless and it’s the same thing with the cruiserweight classic. But it really isn’t fair to give ***** to a match because the television version had key mistakes edited out. And, a live show doesn’t have the advantage of great commentators who have been pushing the Kendrick storyline since the start of the tournament.

This was a “cold” match, no television hype, no build coming in, and no storyline past the idea that with guys that talented and motivated you may see something really special. Not only that, but the pressure was on all six because expectations were so high than an excellent match would have been viewed as a disappointment.

Given those parameters and the audience they were playing before, the match worked pretty much to perfection.

The weekend had plenty of **** and better matches. None got that chant. The Bucks vs. Sydal & Ricochet already had a phenomenal match before in PWG that I was at a few months ago, and it didn’t get any chants like that either. The Revival match with Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano was more traditional style and was still physical but with less flying and one could argue is the superior style. A point in its favor is the Revival vs. Ciampa & Gargano were able to tear it up their style a few nights a week, week-after-week. Doing the style match is only possible when working a lesser schedule, and comes with risks.

I know that most people reading this understand that most every ****3/4 match could be a ***** match. Usually, but not always, it means I was thinking *****, but for whatever reason, I just wasn’t able to convince myself without reservation. Match ratings are a fun discussion topic, and will probably always be around, even though one can argue there are negatives in the sense the idea of what Ibushi vs. Kendrick was at least trying to accomplish, and in the televised version did accomplish, should be the ultimate goal. And one can argue doing a match like that sets a standard that isn’t a good long-term direction for the business. You can’t do it on a regular basis and for the most part can’t do it after a certain age. But on the flip side, for the guys involved to make a name without WWE television, in 2016, it may be the best, and perhaps only direction for those six to take to make their names as strong as possible.

Because the match is so famous, and was either the best or second best match in WrestleMania history, the first Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker Mania match (generally the two matches most mentioned for best in Mania history were that and Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin in the I Quit match), I probably get more questions on why that didn’t get *****. When it was over, I was debating in my head about whether it did or didn’t, and just the idea of the debate is going to mean ****3/4 almost every time out. You can argue differently and when it’s that close, and it’s all in the same ballpark anyway.

I strongly considered ***** for the Ospreay vs. Ricochet match in Tokyo, but it ended up like Michaels vs. Undertaker. I felt it was athletically at a level of nothing I’d ever seen before, or since, plus it was mind boggling the amount of attention the match got, particularly for a match in Japan. But I wasn’t sure, like for Ishii vs. Okada and Omega vs. Naito.

Sometimes it’s time and place, well, actually it’s always time and place. The Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada match from the January 4, 2015, Tokyo Dome show (the one Jim Ross called) I gave ****3/4. I’m convinced if I saw that match as a standalone, I’d have given it ***** given the storyline and drama. But it came after an even better Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi match. The crowd always plays a part. If this six-man was in Tokyo, depending on how he crowd reacted, it still would have been super. Maybe it wouldn’t have come across quite as special just because there is the feeling that the singles matches are the big thing and those fans wouldn’t see a six-man tag as special, while in ROH or PWG, those names to that fan base would see it differently.

 

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Slowly getting through TakeOver; as mentioned earlier, took a break after realizing anything after the first two matches would immediately be a disappointment.

Women's 3way was very well done, but I hated the ending. Why is NXT burning through challengers for Asuka? Either call her up or let these other women have a chance: both Riot and Cross have a lot of talent, and to be double-pinned like that in the end was bullshit, IMO. An extended feud between Riot and Cross would be a lot of fun, though.

Itami/Roode started slow and kinda awkward...lots of close-up shots of Itami whiffing on kicks. Once they decided to just beat the shit out of each other, things got better; but while I like how well both men sold injuries during the match, I didn't feel like these two guys really meshed well overall. Finishing sequence from the GTS to the pair of Glorious DDTs was pretty awesome, though.

Main will have to wait for another day...

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On 5/30/2017 at 2:24 AM, Marty Sugar said:

Women's 3way was very well done, but I hated the ending. Why is NXT burning through challengers for Asuka?

Presumably because they know the current batch is getting left in the dust when the new group of signings arrive,

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29 minutes ago, Norwegian Rudo said:

Presumably because they know the current batch is getting left in the dust when the new group of signings arrive,

The thought of Nikki Cross and Ruby Riot being left in dust makes me a really sad panda.

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6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The thought of Nikki Cross and Ruby Riot being left in dust makes me a really sad panda.

Agreed.  I'm not as much a fan of Ruby as I am Nikki, but she's really good.  And Nikki is not only really good but has a great gimmick that makes her stand out.  Here's hoping they're mixing it up with the new batch on a regular basis.

If anybody's going to be left in the dust it's folks like Liv and Aaliyah.  I can see them going back to the Florida house show circuit if the new women end up outshining them.  It'd be a shame as I've grown to take a liking to them even if they're not stellar workers.

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