Steventon

Has WALTER actually beaten anyone with the powerbomb in WWE? I think they have stuck to the Clutch and top rope splash as his finishers. Maybe Mastiff if I remember correctly?

WALTER vs A-Kid was a real good big vs little match. Pleasantly surprised how stiff Kid was working, it was needed considering how tiny he looked next to the big man. WALTER gave him plenty before murdering him dead. Ya'll should give it a look.

PAC vs Kingston was good TV wrestling which felt like a grudge match, but you know they have a better match in them somewhere. They purposely weren't going 'big' but what we got was good shit. It's about time Santana & Ortiz staked their claim as the Inner Circle tag team, hopefully they win next week but I think Jericho/MJF is the direction they're going in. The Elite swerve was well done, and even though I have zero interest in the match itself, I have no problem with this leading to a Bucks vs Good Brothers champions vs champions match. Hopefully this means the Bullet Club stuff is going to be a short term programme. There was absolutely no need for that squash to go as long as it did though, good grief. For all the people who get their pants in a twist over Marko Stunt, I'd much rather watch him than Luchasaurus, atleast he knows how to wrestle like a guy who is tiny. The FTR match probably went too long but I enjoyed it for what it was. Main event was good shit, dare I say part of me enjoyed it as much as Omega vs Fenix. I have absolutely no time for Cage but this was about as good of a match as I think anyone can have with him. The big POWAH spots were all sick, and that throw from the ring to the table was fucking bananas. I will always appreciate a guy working over a bloody cut too. Finish was a bit, I don't know, underwhelming. We knew Sting would get involved and what he did was fine, and the big crucifix pin was cool, but it didn't feel as hot as the start of the match. Annoyingly it looks like this fued with Darby/Sting vs Team Taz isn't over yet though. It's been 9 months, time for both sides to move on to something else.

Honestly, who is the audience for this Orton / Alexa stuff?

Who had Adam Pearce on their indy-guys-you-never-thought-would-main-event-WWE-PPV bingo card?

Last Woman Standing match was good, but not great. I would have liked more hoss-ness like their first match, this was a very proto-typical WWE gimmick match, at point felt like it was just one prop-based spot after another. If you're going to have someone get hit with a jagged piece of metal fence, you really need some blood. WWE love an announce table bump in every big match, but Ripley's atleast looked pretty brutal with how she landed. I'll admit I bit on the Kai interference and thought that was the finish, and her getting put in the locker was hilarious. This was probably the closest to a female King Kong vs Godzilla match we'll get in the WWE but I'm not sure I liked it more than their first match. Liked the main event a lot. A match built around a jaw injury is pretty interesting and they did a lot with it. Final run with O'Reilly being a submission wizard and grabbing any hold he could was great. Really good match.

Snoop doing the splash was hilarious Wardlow vs Hager was another dud big man match for AEW. None of these guys on the roster know how to hoss. Wardlow going over the right result atleast. Hager is hilarious and a good bodygaurd but I don't need to see him wrestle again, thanks. Wasn't expecting any developments on the Darby/Sting vs Team Taz front as the big match is next week, but hopefully THAT is the blow-off and both sides can move on to new things. All of this hype around Abadon and she is Sue Yung. It's 2021, I don't think there's any more legs in undead gimmicks at this point. I was expecting to hate Omega vs Fenix but enjoyed it on the whole. I fully expect it to get all the snowflakes from the usual lot, but I didn't think it was anything amazing. If you took a shot for every goofy Kenny face here, you'd be hammered by the halfway point. Fenix going from being solidly in control to the kneeling chop battle was a head scratching transition. I also don't need to see a rematch here so the screwball finish did nothing for me. I did like the physicality though, plenty of stiffness and all of Fenix's spots were pretty great, especially that backflip into the German. Only spot I thought was dumb was Omega catching him mid-air in the Tiger Driver position, it just looked very implausible.

The Liger tag had some fun moments and I enjoyed how over Fujinami was. and Sasuke generally was wonderful. Felt short and Taguchi getting the win felt like the least desirable outcome to me. Really should have had Kanemoto in his spot. I assume he has burnt his bridge there? Moxley vs Archer was a fine if unspectacular plunder brawl. They hit each other hard and did enough spots but it never became anything memorable. The bag spot was a novel idea but Moxley surviving it felt a bit unrealistic. Look forward to Moxley vs Juice III. Ospreay vs Hiromu had some good gymnastics routines but was a pretty mediocre wrestling match. It got better towards the end of course but still did nothing for me. Hiromu's new finisher looks appropriately contrived. Naito vs White had a couple good sections but taken overall was pretty ass. White picking apart a limb: exciting. White doing low-end heel antics and relying on Gedo interference and ref bumps: tedious. Naito also didn't bother to sell the leg injury after the big submission escape and the Destino out of nowhere felt really easy after how much he was struggling to hit it earlier. I enjoyed Okada vs Ibushi towards the end but it's a shame it took us nearly 40 minutes to get there when the first half was typical all filler. Very little in the way of any story-telling until the final third and most of the action was pretty by the numbers until then. If they could shake the length = epic mindset and trim matches like this down to ~20-25 minutes we'd get a much more focused match. It was interesting they played it as Ibushi as the guy who seemed destined to win and Okada had to make the big comeback to win and play spoiler.

Okada vs Naito - NO. This was fine but uneventful. Most of the way it was pretty standard for what you expect from these two, but it went on way too long and as a result the body of the match was really flat, heatless, and lacking in direction. There was some nice struggling over certain big moves, and Naito's random violent outbursts were cool, but they really could have done more with the "Naito tries to break the glass ceiling" story. Finishing run was what the same thing we've seen in every Okada defence, bordering on choreographed-looking dance wrestling, and him winning so decisively really kills Naito as a main eventer for the moment. Inoffensive match, but not particularly exciting. Nakamura vs Tanahashi - NO. Again, this just felt inoffensive without ever really doing much for me. We get some paint-by-numbers Tanahashi legwork, which atleast leads to a good submission nearfall, but Nakamura barely sold it and blatantly blew it off on a couple of occasions. Nakamura's stuff ranged from borderline diva-level to shockingly violent. Him ending a trite elbow-trading exchange by kicking Tanahashi in the head then stomping on his face may have been the highlight of the match. It picked up towards the end and there were some solid nearfalls, but everything before that just felt like filler. Also, for the main event of the biggest show of the year, nothing was particularly 'big' or out of the ordinary.

Wolves won the titles so they could have O'Reilly go over Davey in a iPPV main. Kingston, and to a lesser extent Homicide, being back might be enough to make me watch my first piece of ROH in over a year. Might be.

Sweet. Anyone seen any of them? Worth watching? Hard to imagine that none of them are good.

Did Hashimoto and Fujinami ever have a singles match against each other other than the 2000 one? Seems wrong that their paths crossed so little in the 90s.