 |
| Best birthday present ever |
- Titles galore! Becky Lynch is your inaugural SmackDown! Women's Champion, Heath Slater and Rhyno are the inaugural SmackDown! Tag Team Champions, and Jesus Henry Christ, AJ STYLES IS WWE WORLD CHAMPION (more on that later)
- TJ Perkins is your winner for the first Cruiserweight Classic and the new WWE Cruiserweight Champion. Fuck me, what a tournament, all 10 weeks were astounding. When/If Triple H does take over from Vince one day, after this, there is no doubt in my mind that he'll do a great job.
- Welp, CM Punk lost his debut UFC fight. But, despite what happened in that octagon, my respect for him rose tenfold even before he even stepped inside. Just seeing Punk enter with 'Cult of Personality', which was unedited making it even better, made me happy. Fair fucks to you, CM Punk, I look forward to what's next.
- It's now confirmed! Roderick Strong has signed with WWE. NXT is getting stacked, they need to call some guys up soon.
- New Japan Pro Wrestling's revenue for this fiscal year is $32 Million, up by $5 Million from last year. They're in the ass-kicking business, and business is good
WWE Backlash
Best Match on Backlash: AJ Styles vs Dean Ambrose - WWE World Heavyweight Championship Match
Honourable Mention: This whole show
Sweet lord above, what is going on? Is this real? Jimminy jillikers, Radioactive Man.
Right, let's do the match first and then I can gush all over the place so much it'll be easier to just move house than clean it up.
First off, fucking Backlash is back guys, never thought I'd cover one of these on the blog, and we've got No Mercy coming up! SmackDown!, if you give me Vengeance or Armageddon, I'll be happy.
As soon as we that bell rung, dueling chants of 'LET'S-GO-AM-BROSE/A-J-STY-LES' of seemingly equal support. Now, Dean is arguably one of, if not the, most cheered wrestler WWE has on the roster, and for AJ to have the same level support, and even getting Dean boo'd is a testament to how popular Styles is, even with the non-hardcore fans.
We start things off much like AJ has done lately, out-wrestling and mouthing of to Ambrose, which is such a great little detail that makes his character really come to life. The early goings also saw Dean pull off some more traditional wrestling, with the intent to be to throw Styles off his game. Soon after, it became a pretty back and forth for the next few minutes, and then we got AJ taking control following a super cool leg-breaker-drop thing, the proceeding to continue the beatdown on the leg, weakening it for his Calf-Killer submission. He kicked the shit out of it, and the application of the aforementioned submission hold then heightened the drama.
Ambrose soon got back on his feet and began his string of offence, which was mostly his typical, frantic attacks. One highlight of this was a clattering slingshot into the post;
We had some brawling on the outside after this, going round to the commentary tables and then stumbling into the crowd. The latter minutes saw it go back to the more equal advantage from the start, trading blows and big moves, until we came to a close. The ref accidentally gets knocked down and then it all finally played out;
THE UNBEATABLE POWER OF THE DICK KICK
Fucking hell, mate. To think, this time last year, AJ was in New Japan and most fans just kinda accepted that he'd never be in WWE, with the idea that whoever in the higher-ups didn't see anything in him. Now here we are, AJ has been in WWE for 8 months and he's won the most prestigious prize they have. Holy balls, I'm sat here writing this and I finished watching this match nearly two hours ago and the ecstatic feeling of seeing him win is still with me.
Add to this that on RAW we have Kevin Owens as the Universal Champion, it just doesn't seem quite real. Two guys who many never thought would reach these heights, and they've done it within a fortnight of each other. Sheer bliss.
As for the honourable mention, this whole show was great top-to-bottom. The Women's title match was action packed, really enjoyable; Usos/Hype Bros had some cool moments; Miz/Ziggler was way better than I thought it'd be; the impromptu Kane/Wyatt was decent; the tag title match was really fun and exciting; and then we got this sweet-ass main event.
Coming off of SummerSlam from last month, this was a breath of fresh air. All the matches were at least 10 minutes, the match order made sense, nothing felt like a slog to watch and it all flowed nicely. Just goes to show that quantity sure-as-shit doesn't mean quality.
Monday Night RAW
Best Match on RAW (12/9/16): Kevin Owens vs Roman Reigns
We're still in the infancy of Big Kev's title reign, and we have him this week facing off against Roman Reigns.
Kevin and Reigns had a pretty standard match in the first half or so. Lots of mouthing off from Kev as usual which will never fail to give me a laugh. Another giggle came from Cole's reaction to Kevin faking out on a kick, slapping on a chin-lock instead, which I can only describe as a high-pitched 'Hooh!'
Things started to really ramp up after Seth Rollins interfered, leading to the match being restarted, kicking it off with Owens just lobbing Roman directly into the steel steps. Owens imitating Reigns's 'OOAAHH!' was also a great touch. We had both of these guys pulling off some high impact moves on each other in the latter half, and with both kicking out real close to the 3 count.
Rusev made an appearance to cost Roman the match, with Owens taking advantage and landing a Pop-Up Powerbomb. Good match here, sure it would've been better without the two run-ins, but, it was a good way to further the two stories of Rollins/Owens and Rusev/Reigns.
SmackDown! LIVE
Best Match on SD! (13/9/16): Naomi vs Natalya vs Nikki Bella vs Alexa Bliss vs Carmella - No.1 Contender's Match for the SmackDown! Women's Championship.
We've crowned Becky as the Women's Champion for SmackDown! so now we've gotta find out who gets the first crack at her. So, we've got all the others from Backlash up against each other.
We had the benefits of multi-person matches here, with a focus on fast action and making sure the lulls are pretty much non-existent. Natalya was especially wrecking shit, suplexing people, beating the shite out of others and being the closest thing to a hoss this division has. Had a focus on the brewing rivalry between Carmella and Nikki, with them breaking up each others pins, and then we had that cool diving clothesline from the steps by Nikki.
Whilst that was pretty sweet, the best moment of the match was Alexa's sunset flip powerbomb being interrupted by a kick to the face;
We got a quick series of moves that could have won the match, until we had Bliss steal the win from Carmella which I was so stoked about. Bliss, now with her new Harley Quinn-esque look, is probably the most overlooked woman on the SmackDown! roster. She was killing it in NXT since turning heel, and has some of the coolest moves in the division. Lynch vs Bliss at No Mercy, sounds awesome.
NXT
Best Match on NXT (14/9/16): Drew Gulak vs Hideo Itami
It's time to look to the yellow brand, it's NXT! The best match this week was that of Cruiserweight Classic participant (and God I hope soon-to-be member of the RAW Cruiserweight Division), Drew Gulak taking on the recently returned Hideo Itami.
Just real quick, how fucking cool is Gulak's theme? CFO$ really out-did themselves with making 32 songs for the CWC, and this hands down my favourite, and a lot better than most in the WWE.
Now, focusing on the match, this got off to a hard-hitting start withing mere seconds. Gulak just steps up and leathers Hideo's cheek with a massive open-hand slap, and there was plenty more in the later minutes. Hideo wouldn't be outdone though, coming right back at the Philadelphian with hard hits in the forms of kicks, chops and slaps of all sizes.
To demonstrate how hard these shots were, here's the referee's reaction to them;
I was glad to see Gulak having quite a fair chunk of offence to dish out to Itami, seeing as since returning Hideo's matches have essentially been just 'kill fuckers'. He locked on a couple cool submissions and like I said, beat some tar out of Hideo.
In the end, we got to see the GTS for the first time on NXT television and Hideo pick up the victory. Please WWE, sign Drew Gulak and make him the nasty bastard of the RAW Cruiserweights.
Cruiserweight Classic
Best Match on CWC (Finale): Gran Metalik vs TJ Perkins - Grand Final - WWE Cruiserweight Championship Match
Backlash made me lose my shit, this made me find it again and then proceed lose it once more like an amnesiac with a colostomy bag.
The whole special was breathtaking, the semi-finals were superb, the tag match was great and then it all came down to the grand final which blew it all out of the water. Metalik and TJ threw caution to the wind and emptied their entire arsenals in their ultimate efforts to win the tournament and the revealed new WWE Cruiserweight Championship, which looks gorgeous if I do say so myself.
If you were to plot this match on a graph, (which is pretty weird, the fuck you doing mate?) it would show that action/drama/goodness had exponential growth over time. Started fairly slowly, feeling each other out, exchanging holds, the usual. Then in came the big bastard chops and strikes as well, the slams, the dives and the multiple submission attempts.
Metalik took some skin off with his chops I tell ya, sounded like someone hit a raw steak with another raw steak with some gall behind it. Not to mention his superkicks which were incredible, must've thrown like 4 of 'em in all.
TJ worked Metalik's knee relentlessly, wearing it down with stretches and twists, and landing a barrage of kicks on it. The multiple attempts at the knee bar made for some great dramatic build up and tension, especially with increasing attempts, I was sure Metalik was gonna tap much sooner than he did.
This match also had its fair share of awesome high spots, Metalik flew with a suicide dive and then crashed with a wincing proper thud on a later tope con hilo, right on his back, looked bloody sore.
Another example of the stupendous shit we saw included TJ diving onto Metalik and pulling off a frankensteiner that sent them both tumbling to the outside. I thought that was fucking cool, but then Metalik went and did this;
Cleared the top rope like it was nothing. Ballsy stuff right there.
The ending was great, an attempted Metalik Driver from the second rope countered into a knee-bar that was contested and struggled, so much tension, back-and-forth, 'will they?/won't they?' until Metalik finally succumbed to the pain and tapped out.
What an incredible match to end an incredible tournament. I was fucking hyped for this whole thing, and that only built from it's announcement to it's premiere, and it was better than I could have imagined. The presentation alone was awesome, like a legit contest with the introductions, the mat logos, the pre-match stats, and I love the colour scheme too, why don't more things use purple?
The best part of it all? That this is only the first one.
Congratulations TJ Perkins.
Ring of Honour
Best Match on ROH TV (Episode 260): Bobby Fish vs Katsuyori Shibata - ROH World Television Championship Match
Main-eventing this week's episode of ROH TV was the bout of Shibata challenging Bobby Fish for his World Television Championship.
Now, a lot of this match could be summed up as 'kicking the fuck out of each other'. They were swinging like their lives depended on it, and landed some stiff looking shots. To the chest, to the head, to the legs, all over, and the effort and pain being taken only goes towards making the title put over as even more prestigious.
We had some cool spots with continuously shifting the pressure on a leg-lock, and later on seeing both competitors having each other in a heel hook/Achilles lock at the same time, the latter being the cooler of the two, looked like they were getting some proper torque on those joints.
The end saw Bobby pick up the win by countering a rear naked choke into a pinning predicament, managing to fold up New Japan star and get his shoulders to the mat to retain his gold.
Pretty good match here, and if you did want to watch, as always, ROH TV can be found for FREE on the Fite TV app, or at their website www.rohwrestling.com/tv/current.
Lucha Underground
Best Match on LU (S3E2): Killshot vs Marty 'The Moth' Martinez - WMD Match
Right, this one got announced on last week's show and I figured a WMD match would just be the usual sort of no-disqualification match. Fuck me was I wrong.
We had weapon crates, missiles, boxes of grenades and a fucking machine gun nest set up. I can now safely say that LU is fucking crazy.
This went fucking everywhere and involved everything. Started off going around the crowd, Martinez got busted open fairly quickly and good lord the crimson tide slowly spread down his body, it looks like they might have wiped him down a couple times because that shit was ridiculous. There were time when Marty put his blood-covered fingers into Killshot's mouth and I felt wrong just watching it.
Chairs got thrown, as did ladders, as did a person. Some real gnarly shots with all the weapons from both these guys, but I feel whilst Martinez lost the blood, Killshot took some insane bumps, like when he got chucked over the ropes and exploded into some tables, and both of them landed on ladders and crates at some point in the match.
The match finally came to a close when Killshot did a big double stomp off of a ladder and through a table which was fucking sweet I tell ya, sweet!
Some intense action here that made for one hell of a match, but, what is it that takes the mantle of Best Match of the Week?
The Verdict
Best Match of the Week: Gran Metalik vs TJ Perkins - Cruiserweight Classic Grand Final - WWE Cruiserweight Championship Match
I mean, c'mon guys, this was fucking legit. It built and built and built, giving me stuff I had never seen before (see: that gif from before). I know a lot of people wanted the final to be Sabre Jr vs Ibushi, but c'mon guys, they ain't signing and if it did happen, I gotta say that'd be kinda boring. The match those two could have had would've been great I'm sure, but them losing made it much more unpredictable and exciting. Metalik vs Perkins wasn't a match that had popped into my head of wanting until it was set up, and it was in-fucking-credible.
And with that hectic week under our belt, the scoreboard now looks like this.
That's all from me folks, hope you've had a good week with lots of smiles and laughs and I hope that those in your future will do too.
Seeya next time!
No comments:
Post a Comment