Read all about it! News of the world! News of the world!
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| YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!! |
- SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY! SETH'S BACK BABY!
- Big News Brown! SmackDown! is going LIVE on Tuesday night, including a brand split. It is also going live here, right here, in the UK, so forget about it moving to Thursdays. The split is planned to occur in July, with a roster splitting/picking happening beforehand. I think I'll cover this more in depth in a 'BWOTW Special', so stay tuned!
- Ciampa and Gargano now have wwe.com profiles, hopefully this means we're gonna be seeing them more regularly and more prominently in NXT.
- The Mighty Don't Kneel debuted on NXT this week, now known as TM61 - I think its something to do with Australia's location code, but TM61 is also the Pokemon move, Will-O-Wisp which deals fire damage.
- A vignette for Andrade 'Cien' Almas (formerly La Sombra) was shown on NXT too this week. Exciting stuff! He'll probably make his presence known in the Cruiserweight Classic, can't wait mate.
And now for the cream in this wrestling blog Twinkie, its the matches...
WWE Extreme Rules
Best Match on Extreme Rules: The Miz vs Cesaro vs Kevin Owens vs Sami Zayn - WWE Intercontinental Championship Match
Holy balls what a match. What a fucking match. I knew this match was going to be good but I didn't expect this. Everyone brought it, no-one felt out of place. I've felt Miz has been somewhat outclassed by the other three as of late, but he blended so well in this one with all of them.
Getting into it, talk about a stand out opening, a Helluva gate right through the gate and through Kev's face. I was totally engaged throughout, things were never dull and everything just flowed amazingly well. We had a tower of doom spot, an uppercut train, a cannonball train, everyone got some level of kick-assery in. There's just something about Fatal-4-Ways I love so much, the ability to have so much action throughout, all the pairings they can make and all the combos. I feel like this match was great in showing off Sami and Cesaro. Both came ridiculously close in winning, especially with Cesaro making Miz tap whilst the ref was distracted. There was a continued focus on close calls and unexpected kick-outs. Miz hit a few Skull Crushing Finales and each time I had 'Oh for fuck's sake' in my head, and every time he looked primed to pin someone they kicked out or it was broken up, he did win in the end though, but still. God it is so hard to put into words how fucking incredible this was. Even if it isn't get on the Network, get your free month if you don't have it, or any other means you have, make sure you watch this thing. It perks you right up after an English Lit exam.
Monday Night RAW
Best Match on RAW (23/5/16): AJ Styles vs Kevin Owens - Money in the Bank Qualifying Match
We're now in the run up to Money in the Bank, and so we've gotten started on naming participants. On RAW we confirmed 5 competitors - Sami Zayn, Cesaro, Chris Jericho, Dean Ambrose and the winner of this match, which was Big Kev by the way.
It began with a bit of grappling to start off and then some one-upmanship; AJ does dropkick, Kev does dropkick soon after and taunts, that sort of thing. Considering these two had some big matches the night before, I was pretty surprised at some of the big spots they had, especially on AJ's part, what with the goings ons of a bad back. Kev powerbombed AJ on the steps in the later stages which looked fuckin' nasty, another 450 splash which is goddamn beautiful as usual, and Kevin taking some extreme risks. They also missed a cool apron spot thanks to the bloody adverts. I dunno how much WWE relies on ad revenue, but they could at least let the main event run uninterrupted. Well, even so, this was a pretty baller match on an okay-ish rest of RAW.
Thursday Night SmackDown!
Best Match on SD! (26/5/16): The Miz vs Cesaro - WWE Intercontinental Championship Match
Following their Money in the Bank qualifying match on RAW, Cesaro had earned another shot at The Miz's Intercontinental Championship. It was a strong showing from the Swiss Superman to start, bitch-slapping his way out of an arm wrench, and in the process making me piss myself laughing. Miz worked the bejeezus out of Cesaro's arm and shoulder, wrenching, kicking, dragging, punching, calling it names etc. The ending again portrayed Cesaro as more than capable of defeating Miz to be champion, with ref distractions and an exposed turnbuckle. They had it in waiting, and I really like when that happens, they play it up when its first exposed, but leave it soon after, allowing you to forget about it, only to slam it in your face later (well, Cesaro's face anyway). Nice match here, more of the goodness we can expect from the Intercontinental Championship scene as of late.
NXT
Best Match on NXT (25/5/16): Nia Jax vs Carmella vs Alexa Bliss - NXT Women's Championship No.1 Contender's Match
Bayley's out with a kayfabe injury (I think), so Asuka needs an opponent at TakeOver: The End, decided by this match right here. Interesting match to say the least, I can't think of any Triple Threats to have happened in NXT (if you can, keep it to yourself, I'm trying to look professional here). Alexa decided to let Jax and Carmella focus on each other at the start, a solid tactic, but her plan was foiled eventually. Carmella busted out some bottom rope Suicide Dives in this one, the first being caught, but the second hitting flush. Nia again this week fuckin' destroying shit, really coming into her own and becoming a great big-woman that is quite a rarity in women's wrestling and hopefully she will be used well in this role in the future and on the main roster. I feel bad for this match, in some weeks we've covered in this blog, this very well could've won Match of the Week. Unfortunately, this came up on the same week as PWG, that fucking sick Intercontinental Championship Match at ER, a Super Juniors show and ROH's War of the Worlds. Crying shame for a great match like this.
Ring of Honour
Best Match on ROH TV: Fuck Sake ROH
Again, they've not uploaded the TV to their website yet. I blame Sheamus.
ROH: War of the Worlds - New York City
Best Match on ROH: WotW NYC: Bullet Club (Adam Cole & Matt Jackson) vs Team New Japan (Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii) vs Team ROH (Roderick Strong & Jay Lethal)
Its an inter-promotional match here claiming the spot as the best match on the show. What I loved in this match was its ability to weave together so many angles and stories. Here are the stories this match incorporated:
- Roderick and Ishii's bad blood following their TV title matches
- Roderick and Lethal's animosity after their championship matches, with Strong being the one to take Lethal's Television Championship
- Adam Cole's continuing quest to reclaim the ROH World Championship.
- The stable rivalry of New Japan, with Okada and Ishii representing CHAOS taking on The Bullet Club
- Lethal's ongoing journey to claiming he is the greatest champion in ROH history, and wanting to prove it by beating Okada
This was a barn burner of a match. The crowd were also really into it, there wasn't an 'ADAM COLE BAY-BAY' that didn't go unechoed. It was a tad slow starting, but that didn't settle crowd, with chants, cheers and boos filling the Terminal 5 arena. Bloody hell did the room shake when Okada and Lethal faced off, only to be broken apart with Roddy tagging himself in, followed by mass boos. Once things started to pick up, it was hard to settle things down. Bullet Club riled everything up, with Matt's 'Suck It!' punches (for those who don't know, the 'Suck It!' punches go like this: punch, crotch chop, punch, crotch chop, punch, crotch chop ad infinitum). This certainly kicked it up another notch towards the end. Lethal/Strong strung together an unbelievable sequence of combos, fucking loved it. Then we had finishers after finishers after finishers, Jesus it was cool. And then the finish was Strong taking on Ishii, and a series of jumping knees was what did it. Great match.
Just thought, 'Ah shit I forgot to count the superkicks'. Might have to go back and watch again, which wouldn't be too bad at all, but seeing as its not an official Bucks match I might leave it.
Also, as for the leaderboard, I'm just gonna give points to 'The Young Bucks' because with both of them now injured it'll probably only be this once.
NJPW: Best of Super Juniors 23 Opener
Best Match on BOSJ 23 Opener (21/5/16): KUSHIDA vs Kyle O'Reilly
So, this is my first Super Juniors tournament and it got off to a great start. In the BOSJ, there are two Blocks of 8 wrestlers, A and B, which act as a roundrobin with all the competitors in facing everyone in their block. The winner of these roundrobins, determined by points, face each other to determine the overall winner, who then gets the opportunity to
challenge for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. I'm a tad confused because the champion, KUSHIDA, is in the tourney, so I have no idea what happens if he wins.
Night 1 saw those of Block A face off (plus a bunch of six-man tags beforehand), with the main event being the best of the night. Now this match was fucking stiff. Find 'stiff' in the dictionary, and it will tell you to Google this match because its too expensive to print a picture of these two. These guys like their kicks, and it sounded like someone was taking a baseball bat to a cow each time they hit one. They must've gone like 20 minutes battering the bejeezus out of each other. Plus, with both of these having a liking to submission offence too, there was a fair amount of those two. I always love when someone get's caught in a submission, which Kyle does really well, but KUSHIDA stepped it up a notch and caught Kyle from his running apron-to-floor dropkick. Going into this, I figured 'SHIDA wasn't eating a loss straight away, with him being champion, but O'Reilly had him in a deep as fuck armbar and made him tap. I would love Kyle to go all the way this year. With his reDRagon partner, Bobby Fish, winning the ROH Television Championship I feel Kyle could kill it with a nice singles run in the New Japan junior heavyweight division.
Pro Wrestling Guerrilla: All Star Weekend XII
Night 1
Best Match on PWG: ASW XII N1: Chris Hero vs Evil Uno
Bloody hell. What a goddamn match this was. Hero and Uno going one-on-one here, this is only the second ever Evil Uno match I've seen, and I reeeeaaaally like him. Facing Chris Hero would be a daunting task for most wrestlers, and Uno had this relaxed and un-intimidated swagger to him right from the off, especially present in the way he sauntered out of Hero's cravat towards the start. Strikes played an important and heavily featured role in this match. Hero obviously is well versed in fucking people up with any and all the limbs he has, and Uno faced him with more of his own. Uno even used some poison mist, which is always awesome when it is totally expected, like if I were to watch some Tajiri matches from 2005 SmackDown! I'd be looking out for a green cloud, but having Uno spit it from out of nowhere was so cool. My highlight from this match was the 1-counts from the ending sequence, Uno dropped Hero on his head with a Gotch-style piledriver and Hero kicked out at 1, driving the crowd crazy. Then he ate a punch of elbows and forearms, gave Uno a signature Rolling Elbow, and then Uno kicked out at 1. The crowd flipped shit at both of these, and rightfully so, 'cause their awesome. Great match all round, loved this one.
Night 2
Best Match on PWG: ASW XII N2: Roderick Strong vs Zack Sabre Jr. - PWG World Championship Match
Good golly gosh this was a match and two thirds. This match has been built to for months. PWG only has around 10 shows a year, so considering how little time they have, they've certainly made a great rivalry for this match, I don't even think these two faced on one-on-one before this.
The match started with Roddy trying to get rid of the original ref, Rick, for another, Justin. This was stopped when Rick superkicked Justin. Jesus. Within the match, it was goddamn brutal. Every hit had impact and force behind it, all of them were fucking malicious. Strong would power over Zack, who would gain the upper hand with his technical prowess, but in the early goings Roddy used his sheer strength to knock Sabre back down. We had a nasty looking apron spot, with Roddy dropping Sabre on his knees and chin by the looks of it.
Now for my favourite but: Eventually Roddy got sick of the 'SHITTY LITTLE BOOTS!' chants, and took his boot off. Not to be proven wrong, the crowd then chanted 'SHITTY LITTLE SOCKS' at his ankle high socks. Roddy then revealed that they were, in fact, mid-calf socks! Good God Almighty! But then Zack took off his boot and revealed with pride his knee high socks. WRESTLING.
The match came to a climactic end, Zack landed a cross-armbreaker from the top rope, then turning it into a hammerlock, an armbar and a stretch muffler. Crowd were going apeshit. Commentary was going apeshit. And then Roddy tapped. Everyone went fucking insane. Incredible match.
The Verdict
Best Match of the Week: The Miz vs Cesaro vs Kevin Owens vs Sami Zayn - WWE Intercontinental Championship Match - WWE Extreme Rules
This was a tough week to choose a winner. Just fucking look at the length and the quality of the matches covered in this post. This week was a good week, besides all my GCSEs of course. I strongly encourage you to search out these matches, definitely this Intercontinental Title match, and especially Roddy/Sabre Jr. Everything was awesome this week, just a shame about ROH, but we did have the amazing 3-Way Tag Match.
After a crazy week, here's the leaderboard now.
Take care guys, and be on the lookout for the Brand Split Special.
Best Match on BOSJ 23 Opener (21/5/16): KUSHIDA vs Kyle O'Reilly
So, this is my first Super Juniors tournament and it got off to a great start. In the BOSJ, there are two Blocks of 8 wrestlers, A and B, which act as a roundrobin with all the competitors in facing everyone in their block. The winner of these roundrobins, determined by points, face each other to determine the overall winner, who then gets the opportunity to
challenge for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. I'm a tad confused because the champion, KUSHIDA, is in the tourney, so I have no idea what happens if he wins.
Night 1 saw those of Block A face off (plus a bunch of six-man tags beforehand), with the main event being the best of the night. Now this match was fucking stiff. Find 'stiff' in the dictionary, and it will tell you to Google this match because its too expensive to print a picture of these two. These guys like their kicks, and it sounded like someone was taking a baseball bat to a cow each time they hit one. They must've gone like 20 minutes battering the bejeezus out of each other. Plus, with both of these having a liking to submission offence too, there was a fair amount of those two. I always love when someone get's caught in a submission, which Kyle does really well, but KUSHIDA stepped it up a notch and caught Kyle from his running apron-to-floor dropkick. Going into this, I figured 'SHIDA wasn't eating a loss straight away, with him being champion, but O'Reilly had him in a deep as fuck armbar and made him tap. I would love Kyle to go all the way this year. With his reDRagon partner, Bobby Fish, winning the ROH Television Championship I feel Kyle could kill it with a nice singles run in the New Japan junior heavyweight division.
Pro Wrestling Guerrilla: All Star Weekend XII
Night 1
Best Match on PWG: ASW XII N1: Chris Hero vs Evil Uno
Bloody hell. What a goddamn match this was. Hero and Uno going one-on-one here, this is only the second ever Evil Uno match I've seen, and I reeeeaaaally like him. Facing Chris Hero would be a daunting task for most wrestlers, and Uno had this relaxed and un-intimidated swagger to him right from the off, especially present in the way he sauntered out of Hero's cravat towards the start. Strikes played an important and heavily featured role in this match. Hero obviously is well versed in fucking people up with any and all the limbs he has, and Uno faced him with more of his own. Uno even used some poison mist, which is always awesome when it is totally expected, like if I were to watch some Tajiri matches from 2005 SmackDown! I'd be looking out for a green cloud, but having Uno spit it from out of nowhere was so cool. My highlight from this match was the 1-counts from the ending sequence, Uno dropped Hero on his head with a Gotch-style piledriver and Hero kicked out at 1, driving the crowd crazy. Then he ate a punch of elbows and forearms, gave Uno a signature Rolling Elbow, and then Uno kicked out at 1. The crowd flipped shit at both of these, and rightfully so, 'cause their awesome. Great match all round, loved this one.
Night 2
Best Match on PWG: ASW XII N2: Roderick Strong vs Zack Sabre Jr. - PWG World Championship Match
Good golly gosh this was a match and two thirds. This match has been built to for months. PWG only has around 10 shows a year, so considering how little time they have, they've certainly made a great rivalry for this match, I don't even think these two faced on one-on-one before this.
The match started with Roddy trying to get rid of the original ref, Rick, for another, Justin. This was stopped when Rick superkicked Justin. Jesus. Within the match, it was goddamn brutal. Every hit had impact and force behind it, all of them were fucking malicious. Strong would power over Zack, who would gain the upper hand with his technical prowess, but in the early goings Roddy used his sheer strength to knock Sabre back down. We had a nasty looking apron spot, with Roddy dropping Sabre on his knees and chin by the looks of it.
Now for my favourite but: Eventually Roddy got sick of the 'SHITTY LITTLE BOOTS!' chants, and took his boot off. Not to be proven wrong, the crowd then chanted 'SHITTY LITTLE SOCKS' at his ankle high socks. Roddy then revealed that they were, in fact, mid-calf socks! Good God Almighty! But then Zack took off his boot and revealed with pride his knee high socks. WRESTLING.
The match came to a climactic end, Zack landed a cross-armbreaker from the top rope, then turning it into a hammerlock, an armbar and a stretch muffler. Crowd were going apeshit. Commentary was going apeshit. And then Roddy tapped. Everyone went fucking insane. Incredible match.
The Verdict
Best Match of the Week: The Miz vs Cesaro vs Kevin Owens vs Sami Zayn - WWE Intercontinental Championship Match - WWE Extreme Rules
This was a tough week to choose a winner. Just fucking look at the length and the quality of the matches covered in this post. This week was a good week, besides all my GCSEs of course. I strongly encourage you to search out these matches, definitely this Intercontinental Title match, and especially Roddy/Sabre Jr. Everything was awesome this week, just a shame about ROH, but we did have the amazing 3-Way Tag Match.
After a crazy week, here's the leaderboard now.
Take care guys, and be on the lookout for the Brand Split Special.
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