Great Balls of Fire 2017

[Matt D]

Just now, El Dragon said:

The biggest bummer for me right now is that there is so little heyday RoH for me to give to Matt to review online. Joe/Danielson from Midnight Express Reunion is one of those matches everyone should watch once.

I was fairly tuned out from wrestling from 04-09 or so, at least relatively. I was live at a lot of the Boston area ROH shows up until 04, though. Not all but a bunch. I haven't seen a ton from after that.

[Overly Critical Man]

Big Cass has the worst goddamn theme music possible and whoever made it is bad and should feel bad.  

[FireThunder]

The Big Cass graphic SNAFU is almost as good as cHARLOTte's new Smackdown entrance video before somebody noticed and changed it.  He also has some generic ass music.  We'll call it a work in progress...

I enjoyed the show but you could tell the crowd was just getting worn down by the heels winning practically everything.

The crowd was hot for Neville and Tozawa.  Good match and then Neville wins with two low blows and a spin kick to the gut.  Storywise, it makes sense.  Just like with Aries, Neville wasn't able to just shove Tozawa around so he decided to cut corners to retain his belt.  But like Marty said, it would have had much more impact if the announcers had mentioned something along those lines.

The ambulance match was pretty fun.  Can't wait to see how Roman tries to explain away attempted vehicular manslaughter just because he decided to jump into the back of the ambulance and save Strowman the effort of having to put him in.

[RIPPA]

 

[hammerva]

As much as the "BIG ASS" picture was a great unintentional screw up, nothing beats all of the pictures of wrestlers next to "EAT BALLS".    

Hopefully Vince looks at the female posting the video of the car crash (Jordynne Grace) and realize she would be a huge upgrade to Dana Brooke.   

[nate]

Now that I think about it - sorry if it's been mentioned - aside from the copious amounts of bloodletting on display, there was an inordinate amount of nut-based offense.  For "Great Balls of Fire" ...

[RIPPA]

6 minutes ago, hammerva said:

As much as the "BIG ASS" picture was a great unintentional screw up, nothing beats all of the pictures of wrestlers next to "EAT BALLS".    

Hopefully Vince looks at the female posting the video of the car crash (Jordynne Grace) and realize she would be a huge upgrade to Dana Brooke.   

I am assuming this means Grace is in the Mae Young Classic (same with Allie Kat who was also in that segment)

[Sublime]

The show was fine, nothing was terrible but it still felt like it went to long especially the ambulance drama stuff. I hoped that Hawkins and Slater were out there to be mauled by Strowman after he emerged from the ambulance but instead we got the jaws of life and Cole using his serious voice. I LOL'd at Corey saying something about roman going to far and Cole saying "it's not the time to place blame" really? you just watched a guy try to kill someone I think it's ok to blame him. Was it a double turn? I guess we'll find out tonight but I don't have my hopes up for it. Vince probably thinks what Roman did was a fine face move because Vince is a crazy person with no moral compass.

The tag match is the best the non-Broken Hardys will be able to do and it was a lot of Cesaro and Sheamus being good pro-wrestlers who did a great job working around the physically broking down Hardy's limitations. Alexa/Sasha was good, Rollins and Wyatt was far better than I expected given who was in it, Enzo cut a really solid promo and he is probably less dead in the water than Big Cass is just because of his promo's and charisma but still he's on life support in the water. Joe/Lesnar went about how I thought it would Joe got to look a little better that I expected but it was still Brock who've I've been over with for a long time now, the last Brock match I've enjoyed from start to finish was with Roman at Mania (and even that ended with Rollins winning which didn't leave a bad taste in my mouth at the time but the title reign afterwards....)

[RIPPA]

 

[Jenalysis]

4 hours ago, Go2Sleep said:

Watching Raw Talk: While it would be well beneath her talents, Sasha doing a wrestling messageboard hipster gimmick would be pretty funny. "Oh you were a fan of Team Extreme, that's cool, but I was a fan of the Hardys when they were managed by Michael Hayes, bet you don't remember that. Do you have a VHS of Matt's debut against Nikolai Volkoff? Didn't think so."

Maybe Bayley could take up that gimmick, not like she's doing anything better.

Also on the pre-show, Neville slowly walking to the timekeeper's area doing the "give me my belt" gesture while the ref was dangling it behind him was hilarious.

Have Sasha claim to have seen the Hardy's when they were putting posters up at NC State while watching the secret dub of Sailor Moon that had Jupiter in a wheelchair.

 

[The Natural]

5 minutes ago, alstein said:

Have Sasha claim to have seen the Hardy's when they were putting posters up at NC State while watching the secret dub of Sailor Moon that had Jupiter in a wheelchair.

 

It's still real to her dammit!

[Godfrey]

Great show with some questionable finishes but all the right people won. I want Joe as champ but it didn't feel like the right time somehow. According to Joe's Twitter thing's aren't over and I am A-OK with that.

Wish Cass had demolished Enzo more, not because I find Enzo super annoying but because if Cass is going to be a heel he needs to come out of the gate as bad as possible. He's not bigger, stronger, or more intimidating than Braun so he needs to be vicious and cruel to make up for it, and that match wasn't enough. And yeah, he needs way better music. Maybe something like this: 

 

[Spritenaut 32]

Cass is so lucky his girlfriend is on Total Divas.  That promo on the aftershow was brutal.  I feel like his heel turn has already stalled out.

Neither Enzo or Cass is complete enough to go far on the main roster.  Why'd they split them up again?

[RIPPA]

Because they think Cass is going to be a huge star

[EVA]

I feel like a smarter turn for Cass would've been him revealing that he never thought of Enzo as a friend and was just using him because wrestling fans love catch phrases and he recognized Enzo was a catchphrase machine who could make him rich, and even though everybody thinks he's just a big, dumb guy, he's invested well and now he's rich as fuck and just doesn't need to put up with the headaches anymore.

You could even go deep and reveal that through some shady business dealings, Cass got most of the royalties and Enzo is broke.  (They do love broke baby faces.)

At least that would be a new shade to his character, as opposed to being...pretty much the same guy, just meaner.  Or trying desperately to appear that way.

[Matt D]

1 minute ago, EVA said:

I feel like a smarter turn for Cass would've been him revealing that he never though of Enzo as a friend and was just using him because wrestling fans love catch phrases and he recognized Enzo was a catchphrase machine who could make him rich, and even though everybody thinks he's just a big, dumb guy, he's invested well and now he's rich as fuck and just doesn't need to put up with the headaches anymore.

You could even go deep and reveal that through some shady business dealings, Cass got most of the royalties and Enzo is broke.  (They do love broke baby faces.)

At least that would be a new shade to his character, as opposed to being...pretty much the same guy, just meaner.  Or trying desperately to appear that way.

"You were just my trained monkey. Everyone loves a monkey."

[JonnyLaw]

12 hours ago, Josh Mann said:

It would be have been fine but they don't ever have a consistent strike zone on finisher protection. Hell, just on Brock there's no consistency.

It felt like the story they were going for was "Brock got lucky and caught Joe off guard", which is fine and all, except everyone is so used to numerous finisher kickouts.

11 hours ago, Tim Evans said:

For a feud with four guys I really like, I'm over the Hardys vs Sheamus/Cesaro feud. Hardy's shouldn't go 30 minutes again. Especially Matt who looked like he was dying out there. I don't know where they Champs go from here since the only other babyface tag team is Slater and Rhyno?

I'm guessing The Club or Revival turn face or they run a heel v. heel feud next.

[APO]

Not really seeing any sort of double-turn from the end of the ambulance match. Honestly don't even see how Braun is particularly sympathetic since he's catching a receipt for trying to kill Roman months ago. 

[Craig H]

I think they have to do Joe vs Brock 2. Actually give them time and tell Brock no more suplex city. These two can go. Let them go. 

And then have Joe go over. 

The way they briefly talked about it on Raw Talk, it sounds like the direction is a rematch. 

[Kyuubi]

Okay, Sasha is the second best women's wrestler in the company. Will be third when Io heals up. But this promo was shooty to me. I never thought of Alexa as Eva Marie so it may be a story they are telling. Great promo from Sasha.

I did not like this PPV overall. WWE is so hellbent on Roman vs Brock for WM then fine. I am looking forward to Wrestle Kingdom for the first time ever.

[Sky Blue Sam]

50 minutes ago, APO said:

Not really seeing any sort of double-turn from the end of the ambulance match. Honestly don't even see how Braun is particularly sympathetic since he's catching a receipt for trying to kill Roman months ago. 

We have to remember also that this is overseen by the same person who was in charge when Austin dropped HHH from a great height in a car, for the purpose of revenge, so I can see it's possible they'll still have Regins portrayed as face

[Kropotkin's Beard]

That was the first time I've watched live wrestling since the NXT Takeover with Zayn vs Nakamura (I live in the wrong timezone for live PPVs), and almost all of my wrestling viewing the past few years has slowly been working my way through all the episodes of ECW Hardcore TV & Raw from the start, plus the the Pay Per View shows. But something about the idea of Joe vs Brock was interesting to me and as I was already up it just worked out.

Bearing in my mind that my knowledge of the current product is what I see folk talking about on Twitter, I quite enjoyed it. It was less of a chore to sit through for 4 hours from the pre-show to the main event than some of the old ROH DVDs I found which was nice. Neville vs Tozawa was fun enough as an opening match, Bray vs Seth was utterly forgettable but I guess the bloke calling himself a god needing an eye poke to win was mildly funny. I can't even remember anything about Miz vs Ambrose except how utterly mesmerising Bo Dallas looks as a sleazy as fuck roadie for a '70s rock band. I know nothing else about Bo's place right now, don't know why he's a groupie for The Miz, but I do know he looks like the kind of roadie who'd get a blowie off of groupies before letting them backstage with John Bonham. It looked so much better & more interesting than the brief still photo they showed of him wearing a suit badly. I wasn't bored at the time at least. Felt like Big Cass vs Enzo went on too long. I was expecting a squash along the lines of The Steiners murdering jobbers in 1992 and this just went too long and Cass's offence didn't look nearly vicious enough. Maybe it worked with people who watch more often but I just thought it wasn't enough of a squash. And Cassidy is going to need a manager to speak for him. Or at least he would if it was 1995 but instead he'll probably just be left to flounder out there.

As for the stuff I was more excited by, even though on hearing there was a 30 minute Iron Man tag match coming up I was close to just calling it a night I ended up really rather enjoying it. Cesaro is still utterly incredible which wasn't a surprise, but I was surprised with how well the match was put together from top to bottom. Even the predictable finish was just built to really well. So props to whomever was responsible for that. I am confused that they've not been able to come up with a cute team name for Sheamus and Cesaro though. Finish of Banks vs Bliss was a damp squib straight out of a '93 episode of Raw but everything else about it was really quite enjoyable. Braun Strowman vs Roman Reigns was really fun which surprised me. I'd never seen Braun before but he was very enjoyable. The ending, the missed spear right into the ambulance, was quite funny, and then everything after it was just mad. Let's just kill Braun Strowman. I don't know if it turns Roman Reigns or not but I'm glad I witnessed it because it was just bonkers. Absurdly melodramatic but in a really good way.

But it was the main event that I was there to watch. Was it perfect? Nah. Certainly wasn't the best Joe match I've ever seen (I had to look up Joe vs Necro from the IWA:MS Youtube page this afternoon and rewatch that and it was as insane as I remembered). But I felt like Joe came out of it as still looking really strong. Though I was also left wondering if someone couldn't teach Brock another variety of suplex than the German because it seemed a bit of overkill, maybe I'm missing context that makes that really cool. I actually believed at a couple of points that Samoa Joe was going to beat Brock Lesnar, which was cool. Felt like it would have been better with another 5 minutes, for the time they had I liked the end product. Enough where I'm seriously considering watching Raw tonight. Maybe.

More likely I end up just sinking back into a pit of old stuff that I didn't see when I was a kid because we didn't get it because it's kinda fun, though one thing I did like about watching live wrestling is just that's it's fun to chat shit with others on Twitter doing the same thing. There's less people talking about In Your House 6.

[APO]

55 minutes ago, Sky Blue Sam said:

We have to remember also that this is overseen by the same person who was in charge when Austin dropped HHH from a great height in a car, for the purpose of revenge, so I can see it's possible they'll still have Regins portrayed as face

Eh, Roman's more of a tweener with face tendencies than a straight-up face. It's perfectly in line with how the feud has gone, IMO. 

[Godfrey]

Also, Samoa Joe has made me excited to watch RAW tonight. Priests from the Vatican are on their way to my house to verify whether that classifies as a miracle or not.

[Matt D]

17 minutes ago, Godfrey said:

Also, Samoa Joe has made me excited to watch RAW tonight. Priests from the Vatican are on their way to my house to verify whether that classifies as a miracle or not.

There's a moratorium on me making more bets until I pay off on the last ones, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts tomorrow.