maciej

I'm not sure they'll ever use him for anything besides putting people over, but these Lorcan TV matches have been such a highlight of 2017 NXT so far.

Yeah, that was super fun. I really enjoyed Takahashi having an answer for all of Liger's big moves in the middle of the match, then Liger finally figuring out a way to hit all of them at the end only for them to still not be enough to put the younger man away. Meanwhile in the Scurrl/Dragon Lee, Scurrl tied the loose parts of DL's mask to the ropes to incapacitate him for a while, making that the first thing I've ever seen Marty Scurrl do in a wrestling match that I've thought was interesting.

I thought the Taya vs. Ayako Hamada street fight title match was buckets of fun.

I don't think this would be bad or anything, but I don't think Gargano/Ciampa really needs the belt involved to work.

I'm very happy to be very wrong on this topic.

Oh, actually, while I'm in this thread, Tier 1 in Brooklyn is running Matt Riddle vs. Homicide in June (or at least I think they are; it's still in the Facebook event description but I can't seem to find that specific match announcement on Twitter anymore). Also, Low-Ki, Penta, and Jordynne Grace/Lufisto. I haven't been to one of their shows ever, but it seems worth the trip down to Sunset Park.

I know CHIKARA isn't generally this board's thing (or at least it doesn't seem to be in my brief experience), but I went down to Philly for the show last weekend (well, for the show, and to visit friends, and to eat and drink a lot of things) and man oh man was that a good time. It's not that I don't love the crowds at Evolve shows up here in NYC, I do, but it was just very pleasant and fun to be at a show without any drunk dudes trying to get themselves over and with the crowd being encouraged to participate, but then participating in a way that made everyone feel welcome. The wrestling was fun too, with a happy Infinity Gauntlet and a really fun title match between Juan Francisco de Coronado and Oleg the Usurper. They had a good sneaky, technical heel vs. big, dumb face match that had an ending that was both insanely silly and totally made sense in CHIKARA logic.

Isami Kodaka being smart and well-prepared:

Naw, I thought the January match was good, too, but I meant the April rematch.

So, I absolutely loved the Aja/Chihiro title match. I don't disagree with Kevin's review from joshicity that the leg lock so far into the match slowed things down a little unnecessarily, but it was like the only thing in the match that didn't work for me, and Chihiro sold it well enough afterwards. From the beginning stages on the mat, where Aja constantly works smart, with the biting but also using her legs and power to at least hold off Chihiro for a while in a half-guard (I'm only pretending to know MMA terms, sorry if that's wildly wrong), to Aja going into "fuck it, I'm losing, I need to toss her into chairs for a while and get this shit back on the right track" mode at just the right time, to the build to the Germans, the flailing Uraken, man, I really thought they performed the hell out of this. I think I might be a bit on an island on this one; I liked it even better than the also really great Matsumoto/Satomura match.

- I really liked Bailey/Bliss ending on a non-finishing move that made sense given the context. - I was never going to not love anything involving Owens' finger. - Aries/Neville was terrific again.

I know House of Horrors was terrible (or at least, the second half was terrible, the first was at least funny), but the rest of that card was great.

So this is on YouTube:

Yo, I kinda love Jaka.

Well this wasn't wrong.

I kind of expect this too, but I wonder what they kayfabe rationale for it would be. Even more so if they throw in a few of them but not others.

Man, the crowd during the cruiserweight match was just infuriating. Good wrestling show, though.

Yeah, I'm pretty much with this. I'm pretty surprised so many of y'all aren't high on Owens/Jericho. I thought the ring work was very good and the character work was excellent. Wrestling about friendship is my fav.

This wasn’t a bad Wrestlemania (remember last year, everybody?), I think, and I’ll come back here to be positive about the Best Friends match and the women and all the other good stuff at some point, but man oh man did I hate the Triple H/Rollins match. I, like, got legit sad during and after it, that’s how much I hated it. That was just boring nonsense to me; I really wish Triple H would stop. At least the Bray match had some LOLs.

I was really impressed by that women's match and how the first part of it established Ember as a serious challenger. Some of those big strikes and how Asuka bumped and sold for them went a long way and I'm much more optimistic about this feud continuing and eventually leading to a good Ember win than I was beforehand. Also, obviously, god bless tag team wrestling.

I guess my gimmick is popping in here and just recommending matches while staying out bigger picture discussions cuz I have much less context than most of y'all, but I kinda think the 3/5 Stardom tag title match is like MOTYC, really, really awesome. Jungle Kyona and Hojo, whose February match I also really liked, just lay into each other. And Matsumoto playing big sis to Kyona works just great.

Anybody watched the March Seadlinnng? The tag was pretty good, I thought, but I really liked the main event. Sareee and Yoshiko complement each other really well.

Just came here to post that. Hot damn.

re: that Regal thing, I wonder if acknowledging that stuff would have any impact on the face/heel dynamics in WWE or if that's so far removed from WWE TV that it still doesn't matter. I guess I'd bet the latter?

Dozovic really does have a remarkably weird body. Of course this means I love him.