caley

There's a really fun Katana Chance-Emma match on Main Event this week which is fun because Katana Chance is so small that Emma gets to be Scott Hall, They talk about Emma being disenchanted with the new crop of superstars not respecting her and she wrestles that way, bullying Chance as if she's WCW-era Rey Mysterio. Lots of disrespectful-looking kicks and Emma busting out offence you never see (A wheelbarrow suplex) and Chance cutting her off with some pretty spectaculr high-spots (A handstand on the ropes into a headscissors! A standing shooting star press off of Emma's back!).. Ending is a little abrupt but Chance's 360 Codebreaker is pretty nuts.

Jinder Mahal's transformation was pretty nuts.

Is there any reason they stopped calling them the Gunn Club? I feel like they were the Gunn Club, Gunn Show and now seem to be just the Gunns. I think the Gunns is the worst of those three, there are so many Gun-related names they could go with (Gunn Club, Gunn Show, Gunn Fire, Gunn Violence, Gunn Control (the latter would really work for heels in Southern states!) that it feels like they settled on the least interesting one. I'm not crazy about their finisher (It just looks like FTR's) which they don't always hit that cleanly, but I really dig everything else about them. I think they should have kept the tag titles as FTR really doesn't need them (FTR are like the Bucks or Usos in that they're basically above the tag division, and teams can get over just wrestling them without the title being involved). I know everyone loves Billy Gunn being with the Acclaimed, but I still feel like he should be back with his boys.

BTW, I HATED the end of the OC/Shibata-Sabre/Garcia match where they all held onto the belt. It was stupid when WWE ended a Raw with Reigns and Lesnar playing tug-of-war with the belt, it was stupid here, too. I'm supposed to believe that these guys who just punched and kicked each other in the end, stand next to each other holding onto a corner or a belt and don't touch each other, just pulling at a belt long enough for the camera to get a shot?! Drives me BANANERS

Taz DID say something along the lines of "Condiments are a pain, but you have to wear them" tonight, right? Right?!

Man if Miro is back, back. Like seriously back and not going to disapper again, have him show up at the first post-Cole-MJF feud and take the top title. The crowd reaction from him, his physical presence and charisma are like few I've ever seen. Like, everything from the first note of his music right to the ad break after his match was the biggest sustained heat I've seen since...Rock? Maybe Lesnar's return? It was just this unending crowd heat and Miro being awesome. Is Andrade not part of Rush's group (I don't feel like googling the spelling so that's what you get!)?! I thought the lights would go out, HOB shows up, then the lights would come back up with Rush and Vance standing behind Andrade. I guess that's my biggest gripe with the show: the matches were good to great, the performances were good to great, the crowd was hot. But there was no real storyline advancement: you got a bit of teasing from Punk (But how much of that is actual storyline possibilities and how much of it is just Punk adlibbing?!); you got HOB attacking Andrade and the rest was just AEWCW Saturday Night. I think a good big angle would have made this seem more like appointment viewing than Rampage 2. A heel turn. A run-in. A group formation.

Not sure if it was mentioned on here (Last time I checked the thread it hadn't been, and I waded through 3 pages of nonsense about Elton John somehow not being awesome?! before giving up), but is it known on here that Collision will be on TSN2 in Canada and not just TSN+?! I'd wager it's probably a one-time or sporadic thing (Wouldn't be shocked if they show the Canadian dates as well), but as someone who is not paying for TSN+, I'm excited to watch the first show.

I will say I THINK that Bret wasn't able to work at Starrcade with his broken hand/wrist that he got from punching Vince McMahon. I'm not excusing the tepid "Referee Bischoff and Zybysko" storyline, but I don''t think he was quite healthy enough to have an actual match. The better play would have been to have the NWO teasing him as their secret weapon against Sting, ref bump, Hart comes out and nails Hogan after teasing like he's going to wipe out Sting, Sting wins. Then you can still do the Hogan revenge tour because Sting didn't beat him clean.

The HHH-HBK still made me laugh at the time and still makes me laugh. The exaggerated rope-running still makes me chuckle. The one that really angered me (at the time) was when DX promised two new members and I had to go out and when I came home I asked my 10-ish year old brother who they were and he went "Uh, you should probably just watch" and it turned out it was Chyna's new breast implants.

I've always felt that was the catalyst. It was the first one titled Raw is War with Marilyn Manson music and guys walking through some dystopian wasteland looking more like superheroes than wrestling clips set to WWF-created music. The main event was kind of something never seen before in American pro wrestling: with Bret going on a very non-babyface, profanity-laden tirade against Vince McMahon (One of the earlier onscreen revelations that he was the actual owner and not just some goofy announcer, as I had believed for many years) while JR apologizes repeatedly while the ring crew disassembles the cage felt so much like "Did they forget the cameras were rolling? I know wrestling is fake but this feels really REAL" moments. Like you hear often about the early days of the NWO that people were calling 911 talking about these guys attacking WCW wrestlers for real because it was treated so differently and this was one of the first times WWF felt that way. Plus the booking in that main event was incredible: a week before WM, you put on a match that completely could impact your main event, and the dynamics of Steve Austin trying to help his bitter rival a week before WM because doing so would give him a world title match is the kind of real-world logic that you almost never see in WWE. Then Undertaker has to come down and help his WM opponent to presever their Title match. They basically set up a year's worth of feuds a week before WM. About the only lowlight is Shawn's appearance as he didn't seem to know what he was doing, just meandered around and at one point tries to pick up a section of pipe for some reason. They should have had him get in someone (even Vince's) face to sow seeds of whether he'd get involved in one of the main events.

I was hoping for a reviving of the Inferno Match of Kennel From Hell!

This. That was, what, a 20 minute segment?! I couldn't believe how quickly the show blew by when I hit the FF as soon as MJF came out and didn't let up until they had moved on. WWE does this shit all the time where a heel runs down a face who just stands there and takes it, then says something not nearly as vengeful back, and looks completely lousy. I think the better use of time would have been for MJF to start running Cole down only to walk into a superkick and Cole walking out like a "I'm not going to play this little game with you". Would put over Cole as a guy who isn't going to get caught up in MJF's head-games and force MJF take another tact with him (Sneak attacks, payiing off other guys to beat him up...your standard MJF playbook...man am I tired of him...) This feud is probably good for @just drew as I don't think anyone in AEW has gone into a feud with MJF and come out hotter/more over than when they went in. JungleHook-Vance/(I don't know how to spell his name) was really fun though a little part of me was disappointed that Taz didn't get up out of his seat and clobber Jose. Did anyone catch what was said post-match when they were talking about how good-looking JungleHook were and it cut to that, ahem, bouncy woman cheering, something was said and then the announcers just kind of chuckled and moved on?

Early on when Scrypts nailed a couple big punches on Kato and staggered him and Kato had this look of sorta respect for him, I thought "Man, Kato and Scrypts as a tag team would be really fun actually" and after Axiom showed up and helped Scrypts I thought "Scrypts should turn on Axiom and form a team with Kato". Also, I think they should change Kato's name because I keep thinking it's going to be a Flintstone. Hail's victory was a pretty amazing NXT pop. If WWE can overlook her size, she could be a big star because she plays that lovable underdog to character to the absolute hilt.

One of my favourite Arrested Development gags was George Michael deciding to change his name to get away from the similarity to the singer and "that incident" and deciding to change his name to George Maharis, the same actor whom had once been arrested for having sex in a gas station bathroom with Perfecto Telles (Whose name comes up later as someone dating Maeby). The Maharis incident is never referenced on the show and is only funny if you happen to know the story (Which I did not until I saw something online).

I'm not sure I've ssen a colour commentator repeatedly flummox his PBP man just as much as Booker and Vic. There are times when Booker says something that is so strange or so opposite to what is being presented that Joseph will just say "What are you talking about?!" Booker's the best.

Oh man, I love him so much. First match of the night, first exchange of the night and he sounds like it's the most exciting thing he's ever seen. Somehow, some way, he ALWAYS sounds like he is breathlessly enthralled by the action. And it never sounds like he's forcing it.

Let me preface that this is no knock on her as a worker, but I really hate just about everything about how WWE presents Raquel Rodriguez on the main roster. Her theme reminds me of the late 90s when WCW would bring in luchadores and give them you know Football Highlights #45 or whatever, but WWE had some generic latin guitar for an empty room song for every luchadore on TV. Rodriguez is big/scary, her theme should be imposing. Then she comes out, smiling and waving, turns her back and flexes her back muscles while trying to smile at the crowd over her shoulder and it looks SO stupid and forced. Once she gets in the ring, it's fine and good, but everything leading up to it is just terrible.

Maybe Tony is as down on friendship as Vince McMahon. I mean, he clearly doesn't like "Best Friends" maybe he just hates friendship, too!

He was absolutely miserable to my little brother when he did our local indy in the early 2000s, which lead to a lifelong "feud" between the two that existed only in my brother's mind, much like the feud he carried for years with his second cousin after they got into a scuffle when they were 4 or 5 years old. Funnily, years later, the two ended up working together and didn't realize they were related for weeks before my mom went into the store and it all clicked, they were pretty good frieds for a few years too. Unfortunately, my brother never got to work with Greg Valentine so that feud lives on. On another Valentine tangent, you know who he always reminded me of? https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bubble-bobble/images/6/6b/1039781-blubba_large.png/revision/latest?cb=20120720111134 The evil whale from Bubble Bobble! They have the exact same face, dont they? Or is it just me? It's just me, isnt it?

Bruce Hart in his biography claims to have written Bret's column for years until Bret took it away from him as punishment for (I think) siding with Vince after Owen's death. It''s one of an endless number of things Bruce claims he did that people ripped off (Him and Brian Pillman's team was CLEARLY the inspiration for the Stone Cold character; the Hart Foundation's jackets were his idea (Bret claimed a photo of a monkey in epaulettes was the inspiration...no seriously), and IIRC Bruce even believed that he was the first perrson to give wrestlers theme songs to come to the ring to).

I also liked Heyman keeping Roman appraised of the situation because, seemingly, Roman couldn't be bothered to watch a 3 hour Raw either: "You know my tribal chief, if you just turn on the TV, you could watch all this yourself. No, I made sure that you had USA, it shouldn't be hard to find. Well, it's just then I could go back to the lockerroom and stop standing on the ramp giving you play-by-play. Well, no, yeah, there are a lot of commercials, I understand."

The Owens/Zayn team has reached a certain formula that works exceedingly well in-ring and out that makes you want to keep going like this forever but also feel kinda bad because both could/should be working World Title matches on the reg. too! I enjoy the Sami mouths off, challengers come out, Owens wants to fight, Sami tries to talk him down format. Indus Sher looked amazing here. The fact that Graves name-dropped them as potential tag title contenders, along with Oblivion, Imperium and teams from SD, should tell Viking Raiders all they need to know about their WWE immediate futures. Methinks, Excalibur might be shouting "War Machine!" before too long. I DEAN'ed this episode (fast-forwarding most of the promos and angles, rewinds; brings the show down to a brisk 40 minutes or so (Obviously exaggerating but it really does speed it up), so have no opinion on the lengthy Becky, Cody promos or the Seth Rollins interviews. Battle Royal was okay, even if there were like 4 guy-eliminates-guy-stares-at-him-til-someone-else-eliminates-him-while-he's-distracted spots in a row there. Was disappointed to see JD McDonagh go out so early, but his post-match attack and promo gives me hope they'll do something with him. The Domenick Mysterio stuff is really funny and really good, but gets harder and harder to watch with Corey Graves shouting "MAMI!" all the time. Genereally speakin, everything is a little harder to watch with Corey Graves. I wish he would go to Edge's doctor and go back to wrestling because I think there's a number of guys they could plug in to his spot on Raw that would make the commentary instantly better. I really do like Kevin Patrick, though. I think he should be the heir apparent to Micheal Cole.

I think the match I enjoyed the most this week was Bro Country-Hank/Tank from NXT

I'd forgotten that it was gone in the States! If it makes you feel any better, it is, on average, $4-10 higher than a place like WalMart.

I didn't read the whole thread, but the highlight of the night was Tony Schiavone saying something along the lines of "No spooky witches at ringside is a good idea...it would be a good idea all the time, no spooky witches...except then I never would have met my wife" then there's a beat and Tazz and Tony laugh, and Excalibur goes quiet as if he's had to mute his mic. I also laughed at Sting talking about Darby Alllin being a self-made man who had no ins to this business like the Stinger when he was young and I thought "Yeah, it must have been really hard for the bleached-blonde, 6'2" guy with the bodybuilder physique to get noticed by pro wrestling feds when there was a much shallower talent pool for people to draw from!" That said, Darby's vignette really made me want to watch him win the title. Sammy's vignette was like it was written for a different person then they just spliced Sammy's name in: "Follow your dreams, kids! I'm living proof." says the guy who sticks out his tongue, cheats to win and makes out with his girlfriend to anger the crowd. Julia Hart looked like a car-crash victim after that match, basically like she was holding her own hip in place. Anna JAS looked...I'll just settle myself down here and stop. The match was pretty fun with two wrestlers of so little experience. Cage match was a little more death match-y than I am really into. The image of Moxley holding that turnbuckle dealy at crotch-level and trying to push it into Kenny's mouth was a different type of hardcore that I'm also not really into.