BWOTW: 27/6/16 - 2/7/16

G'day one'n'all, sit down, relax, have a drink, get comfy and enjoy another edition of 'Noah's Best Wrestling of the Week' AKA 'Prelude to Possible Fuck-Upery'

Usually my alternate titles correlate to the week somehow, and this one does too. I am heading Stateside on holiday next week and I'm a tad worried it might interfere with my wrestling viewing. I'm there for 2 weeks so potentially two of the weekly posts may be affected. I plan on taking my laptop, so some effort will be made to keep up my writing efforts, hopefully it will be of similar standards. But hey, who knows...

As I said a couple of weeks ago, I have tickets to an NXT taping at Full Sail! I will try to take lots of photos and make a post recounting my experience to share with all of you, my lovely audience with you little cute noses and I really dig with what you've done with you hair today are those new shoes?

Anywho, here's the news we've seen this past week:

1. After all the Twitter back and forth, Vader vs Ospreay is booked for RevPro's August 12th show, Uprising 2016. I'm backing Will as always.
2. PWG have started announcing the Battle of Los Angeles (BOLA) competitors, I might do similar for what I did for the Cruiserweight Classic, mainly because I don't really want to list things in a list. It's kinda hard covering a weekend of PWG or EVOLVE shows on this blog, but now I have spare time coming out of my wazoo, I should be able to report to you lovely ladies and gents all 3 nights of BOLA. And it should be fun, because I fucking love BOLA.
3. Brock Lesnar is the cover star for WWE 2K17. I'm not a huge fan of Lesnar, so I hope the Showcase mode isn't solely about him, but I guess one of them will be. There was supposed to be 2 last year (as well as Austin it was going to be Hogan but due to his 24 inch racist pythons, it was cut) so here's hoping there's 2 this time around.
4. WWE has put up a site to draft your own rosters! Check it out here. I think I was a bit biased, I just wanted to make SmackDown! as awesome as possible.
5. Hideo Itami has returned at an NXT house show! He's been out with a shoulder injury way back when Kevin Owens was NXT Champion, and that was over a year ago. And with the Draft coming up, I would be cool if he was drafted, but I feel he deserves a proper run in NXT.
6. Roderick  Strong has left Ring of Honour and he has been announced for an EVOLVE show later this month. Perhaps this means he could be showing up in NXT sometime? Who knows! Roddy probably.

And now for the microwave of this wrestling blog student flat, its the matches!

Monday Night RAW

Best Match on RAW (27/6/16): John Cena vs Seth Rollins

England in the Euros

This was a pretty good RAW this week, booking aside, and Rollins/Cena was the standout match in this one. With the concept being if Cena won he'd be inserted into the WWE Championship Match at Battleground, it had a major feel to it. There is no doubt in my mind that Rollins is back to his usual self following his injury, once again putting on some of the best matches on RAW and SmackDown! Cena is also back to putting in the work on RAW, which really won me over in appreciating him and his work a lot more around this time last year. Didn't hold back on the big moves in this one, with Rollins even kicking out at 2 from an AA (granted, via rope break) making it feel more like a spectacle. AJ would get involved in the finish, but this still was pretty damn good despite it.

Also on RAW we got a real good New Day/Wyatts segment and a sick Sami promo which are definitely worth checking out too. 

Tuesday Night SmackDown!

Best Match on SD! (30/6/16): Cesaro vs Rusev - WWE United States Championship Match

SmackDown! began with a Fatal-4-Way to decide who would face Rusev for the title later in the night, and the winner was Cesaro - beating Del Rio, Sheamus and Apollo Crews. Before the match each guy had a little promo and Cesaro's was my favourite.

Del Rio attacked Cesaro after the match and then Rusev wanted the match straight away. A big focus in this match was Cesaro's injured ribs and it was portrayed and targeted very well in this match. Cesaro struggled with some of his power moves whilst Rusev was unrelenting in his aim at the torso of The Swiss Superman, I especially liked Rusev's Pop-Up Knee Lift. They expertly teased a Cesaro victory, with him twice managing to wriggle out of The Accolade, first into the Sharpshooter and second into a pinning position before succumbing to Rusev's third submission attempt. A surprisingly good match, I figured since they set it up as a Cesaro injury it would be a quick match, but I think it might have actually been longer than the Fatal-4-Way that preceded it. 
They also announced that on the 4th of July episode of RAW that Rusev will defend his title against Titus O'Neil. So, unless they decide to go all out American Freedom Liberty Mode and have O'Neil defeat the Bulgarian champion, they could make a rematch with the claim of Cesaro not being 100% in this and have Cesaro receive another championship match.  

NXT

Best Match on NXT (29/6/16): Tommaso Ciampa & Johnny Gargano vs The Hype Bros (Zack Ryder & Mojo Rawley)

More stellar tag team action from NXT this week coming in the form of Ciampa & Gargano vs The Hype Bros. What really stuck out to me in this match was Mojo, namely him fitting well into the role as 'Big Heavyweight Bastard' and it was his best performance in a long time. He was damn imposing opposite the two competitors of the Cruiserweight Classic, and his clothesline on the outside to Gargano was both scary and brutal. Gargano & Ciampa are becoming a pretty slick team since being put together when they were brought in, their tag team finisher is really cool too - Superkick/Running Knee combo.
Now, it looks like Ciampa & Gargano are gonna be getting an NXT Tag Team Championship shot sometime soon, which has me super excited, whilst I love American Alpha, it'd be great to see these two becoming serious players in NXT.

Ring of Honour

Best Match on ROH TV: Taeler Hendrix vs Kelly Klein

It's a special edition of Ring of Honour TV, an entire episode dedicated and focusing on the Women of Honour. The main event of the show was, in my humble opinion, the best match on the show - Taeler Hendrix vs Kelly Klein. I like how they've built Klein as a big monster of the division and her pairing with BJ Whitmer has certainly helped her gain heat. Hendrix was flanked by Truth Martini, so I'm not too sure how long ago this was taped. Hendrix was a big striker in this contest, hitting some big kicks on Klein, especially a jarring savate kick that popped McGuinness on commentary. One of my favourite bits was when Hendrix got a 2-count and Martini just yelled 'DAMMIT!' after a slight delay, laughed so hard I nearly dropped my sandwich. One nit pick I did have was Klein kicking out of Hendrix's Tombstone Piledriver, even though it's not Taker doing it, its a move with such gravitas that it should be a definitive finisher. 

In all, I really liked this episode. I am a big fan of women's wrestling and a supporter of WOH. It's a good start and hopefully we get to see this on more than just their YouTube channel, maybe eventually some more full episodes and possibly an ROH Women's Championship - the promos for Hendrix/Klein had this idea of becoming 'The Woman of Honour', so they might do something with that. Plus, with Candice LeRae coming in things could be about to pick up. It's just a shame that there were a few pricks in that audience yelling shit at the women, not cool at all. I mean, Taeler kissing Klein as a means of distraction, while inventive, didn't help too much. But its part of her character, so some compromises might have to be made for the time being to help show to those select dickhead fans women's wrestling should be taken as seriously as the men's.

ROH: Best in the World 2016

Best Match on ROH: BitW: Bobby Fish vs Dalton Castle - ROH Television Championship Match

In retrospect, I probably could've waited a day and added this to last week, but fuck it, it's my blog, and I have mostly free reign.

I loved seeing Bobby Fish win the TV Title back at Global Wars and here we have his first championship defence against a man who became the number one contender at the same event, Dalton Castle. Bobby also had some new red boots that I thought were pretty swanky indeed. This was a pretty damn good match. Castle's weirdness was on full display, having a special entrance that featured even more of his boys, who were obviously the ring crew from earlier in the night and even more when he blew raspberries on Bobby's tummy. This was a pretty rough match between the two, though Bobby didn't hit as many strikes as he usually does, they did a lot of work outside the ring and a lot of throws, including some onto the floor and into the turnbuckles. Dalton even belly-to-belly'd Fish over the guard rail onto some security dudes, then he stroked a bald man's head. Kind of a strange finish with a roll-up, I would have liked Bobby to finish stronger, but I suppose they're wanting to do another Castle/Fish match somewhere down the line.


I don't usually write stuff like I'm about to on here, but I've got some thoughts I want to share with you guys.

This Pay-Per-View had the potential to be goddamn amazing, but, it stumbled on its way there. First half of the PPV, pretty damn solid, good matches, I liked it. 
Then we get to the highly hyped Corino/Whitmer Unsanctioned Ultimate Fight Without Honour, arguably the only match on the card that has had a decent amount of development over the past few months. It was going pretty well, had some ingenious weapon usage that I thought was really cool - rubbing alcohol poured into a cut, sock full of coins plus I loved Corino faking out Whitmer and lobbing a chair at his legs. Corino bleached his hair blond again and it looked sick. It was a massively bloody contest, and then we come to the finish. 
The lights go out, and they come back on to reveal Kevin Sullivan, mind you, you probably wouldn't be able to tell seeing as commentary didn't say his damn name until the match ended, only referring to him as 'The Dark One', oooh spooky. But, it was hard to take this man seriously when he was looking like a retirement home escapee who's drugs had an unforeseen side effect.

What are you doing out of bed Grandpa?

And his goatee's shit. So this seriously tainted the PPV in my eyes, I was enjoying that match but then hey-ho guess we cant have nice things.

Later in the night we were subjected to a fucking abysmal All Night Express promo. They are now known as 'The Cabinet' alongside Caprice Coleman who is now their 'Minister of Information' in their campaign to 'Make Wrestling Great Again'. So, they spent like 10 minutes babbling on with 0 people in the arena caring at all about this shitty Trump joke. Valuable Pay-Per-View time that could have been dedicated to the World Championship Match.

This wouldn't have pissed me off as much if the World Title match hadn't have been criminally short. Lethal/Briscoe II could have been a Match of the Year candidate given their previous encounters, but alas this didn't happen. Instead, we got a sadly cut short match that unfortunately was nowhere near the quality of their first match for the World Title. All because of that piece of shite segment.

MFW I realise this segment is still fucking going

I'm sorry, I just had to get it out. But hey, its not like I've been deterred from continuing to watch ROH, I've followed WWE all these years through all of their crappy PPVs right? I still fucking love ROH.

The Verdict

Best Match of the Week: Dalton Castle vs Bobby Fish - ROH Television Championship Match

Yes, despite the disappointing bits of Best in the World, it didn't stop this from being the best match I watched this week and I would definitely like to see Fish and Castle face off again somewhere down the line. I really hope Fish has a quality reign, I think he's one of the most underrated wrestlers out there, plus he looked damn good in that suit he wore in his pre-match promo. And just like that, here's how the leaderboard looks.

That's it from me on this one, hopefully I can manage to bang these out whilst I'm abroad. Even if not, I'll catch you, my lovely readers, down the road and maybe in one of those nice diners you drive by and always mean to go in, but its so far out of the way you don't often get chance. Seesyas.