BWOTW: 22/5/17 - 27/5/17

Hey there readers and welcome to the newest edition of 'Noah's Best Wrestling of the Week' AKA '#DI-Why Ciampa, Why?'

AJ left his phone just too far out on his bedside table

But let us first take a li'l look at the past week's news....

1. What the actual fuck? Jinder Mahal is the new WWE World Champion. This is real life. This is what is happening now.
2. It appears #DIY are no more, with Tommaso Ciampa turning on Gargano to end this past TakeOver show. I am a very sad boy, a very sad boy indeed.
3. Pete Dunne is your new WWE United Kingdom Champion, dethroning the inaugural title holder, Tyler Bate. I feel this might be to help usher in the start of a new UK weekly show, with a new champion at the heart of it. 
4. It has been announced that the Women's Tournament is entitled 'The Mae Young Classic', which I think is quite nice. 
5. Ring of Honour have announced another War of the Worlds tour with NJPW this August, however, this is in the UK! They list RevPro's Summer Sizzler as part of the tour, following it with 3 WotW shows in London, Edinburgh and Liverpool.
6. Cedric Alexander is back, returning on 205 Live this week. His reaction was....well a 205 Live reaction really. 

There is also something else I wanted to address, doesn't really fit in anywhere else so I'll plop it here. In regards to the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, I did want to try and cover as much as possible. This ideal was made before I realised how the whole thing is scheduled. I don't think I'll try to cover it all, with doing so effectively doubling the workload put into this and my time spent watching - I do have an exam this week so I should maybe spend some time studying. 

Also, its pretty clear that A-Block is where its at, and B-Block just doesn't have quite as strong a draw for me. I feel like I may just leave it at the opening nights from last week. As awesome as the match-ups that are scheduled to happen, I feel it would be unfair to just cover them. So, unless there is a real desire from you guys for some of the live shows, that might be it on the tournament for now. I feel similar might occur when I try to tackle the G1 Climax, but, we'll just have to see how things turn out. Apologies for anyone who was expecting to see coverage of all the taped shows, please forgive me. 

However, I am gonna try and keep up with A-Block a bit and whatever I hear is worth a watch, so perhaps if I feel there's something that deserves to be the 'Best Match of the Week' instead of what's on the covered shows, I may give it the award and write it up there and then. Let me know what you think of this idea, not sure if it bastardises this blog a bit.

And now for the petals on this flower of a wrestling blog, its the matches!

NXT TakeOver: Chicago

Best Match on TakeOver: Chicago: Tyler Bate vs Pete Dunne - WWE United Kingdom Championship Match

Holy fuck-a-rooni we are starting this week off with a big ol' bang. The WWE United Kingdom Championship is making its first appearance on a TakeOver card, pitting the defending champion Tyler Bate against the Bruiserweight, Pete Dunne.

We started off with some slick and sweet grappling and technicalities. I appreciate that in an arena the size of this one they're in, it can't be a bit difficult to get all the joint manipulation and the subtleties of it across to those in attendance, but luckily that didn't alienate anyone. Bate's shoulder and arm received the brunt of Dunne's surgery, with also some nasty finger work, bending and stretching the champ's digits.

Then when things started to pick up, bloody hell they went whole hog. In my opinion, it was (British) strong style at its finest. The strikes were pretty stiff indeed, all the throws and slams were beautiful, it was all so wonderful for me to watch. 

There were so many great moments and sequences in this match its unreal. I just want to show you some of my favourite highlights, I think I have all these following clips in order, but good lord you just get lost in it and its amazing. First, just look at this goddamn aeroplane spin. I have never seen anyone ever get the momentum and speed Tyler gets, its unreal.

Look at him go!

Just amazing. We had a Dunne X-Plex onto the apron earlier on, then we got to see it transformed into an Orange Crush powerbomb;

Dunne has great facial expressions, both in the above with his look of bewilderment, as well as his signature sneers and grimaces. Great storytelling that, when the man comes in with a face of confidence and then has it changed to one of desperation and disbelief. Phenomenal.

Like I said, the strikes came in plentifully, and this next exchange was just class. For whatever reason, open hand slaps have a special allure to them, a combination of impact and big sound. Plus, Bate's rebound lariat is a thing of beauty on top of all that.

Then just the most incredible thing happened. Now, in the tournament final, we had Bate do a 450 splash/footstomp thing on Dunne, and I figured when he was climbing up to the top we'd see it again. Everything I knew came tumbling down. 

Who does the Spiral Tap? AJ Styles and AJ Styles only, or so I thought;



And he hit it flush! Bugger me that was insane.

The whole sequence into the finish, as well as having the finisher teases throughout, and when Dunne finally hit The Bitter End, it felt like it rounded off a perfect match. 

I'm gonna be honest with you guys, this is probably my Match of the Year so far. As a Brit, and a young one at that who is beginning to idolise this current crop of British talent, this was quite overwhelming to me. On three occasions during the match they got a standing ovation. The crowd finally figured out of how to make a good UK chant. I watched this match perched on the edge of my seat, when that match screen popped up I was banging on the armrest to hype me up. Through and through, I love this. Doesn't get much better for me. Guess what's best match of the week.

WWE Backlash

Best Match on Backlash: Kevin Owens vs AJ Styles - WWE United States Championship Match

With an act tougher than the Salty Spittoon to follow, it's WWE's second Backlash in under a year (sort ya fucking schedule out lads). Taking the cake on this show was Kevin Owens' defence of the United States Championship against AJ Styles.

This was a rather good match I'd say. It is ridiculous how consistent AJ is at delivering great performances, and this pairing with Owens made for both of these guys to have a very nice match up.

I feel like everything they did was nice and smooth, though its only a few spots here and there that were memorable about this. There was this pretty cool sequence with multiple sentons that I really liked.

The big one of course was Styles suplexing Owens on the apron, with the US Champion landing right on the cornered of the edge. Looked very sore indeed. They'd teased a Styles Clash off of the apron onto ringside alongside this. I definitely seen videos of them doing it on the indies on yesteryear, but I would be very surprised if they would be allowed to do such a thing.

The ending, though a little bit of a low-point with Owens retaining via countout, I thought it was quite creative. Styles' leg was slipped into a hole on the commentator's desk where the monitor goes and his feetsies got caught in the wiring. It did look cool, kept them both protected I suppose and leaves there room for a future rematch.

I feel that these two have got better matches in store for us. Maybe SummerSlam might have another clash between these guys, that'd be baller. Still, this was a good match.

Monday Night RAW

Best Match on RAW (22/5/17): Bray Wyatt & Samoa Joe vs Seth Rollins & Roman Reigns

It's a thrown together tag team main event here on RAW, and that's exactly the sort of match this was. Nothing really too memorable about any of it. Just....meh. It was all decent, better to watch than some of the other matches on the card. Sheamus/Hardy felt a bit of a drag, was there Nese/Aries? I dunno, it was an okay episode of RAW. 

Sorry there isn't much of a write up for this match, but I legitimately cannot recall anything standing out or leaving much of an impression. I remember Joe choked out Rollins for the win (I think). Yeah, not long til Extreme Rules so that might shake things up a bit, though I would enjoy  A FUCKING UNIVERSAL TITLE SOMEWHERE ON THE EPISODE. Brock having this belt is doing absolutely nothing for me. Can't wait til he drops it really.

SmackDown! LIVE

Best Match on SD! (23/5/17): Kevin Owens & Dolph Ziggler vs AJ Styles & Shinsuke Nakamura

Guess what! Another thrown together tag team main event - though this is commonly known here as a 'SmackDown! Speciality' (just made that phrase up so dunno if its called that or what). Along with Sami Zayn and Baron Corbin, these four will be taking part in this year's Money in the Bank ladder match at the marquee Pay-Per-View. So, here we have it, Kevin Owens and Dolph Ziggler taking on the team of AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura.

I have to say, this is pretty similar to the RAW match really. Just a bit eh. The match was perfectly fine, but not much more. They don't seem to have learned from the Backlash match and although Shinsuke got the win in the end, he spent quite a lot of time getting beat up by Dolph and Big Kev. Hopefully he gets a big showing in some sort of amazing one-on-one match, whether it be Styles, Owens, Cena or maybe even Zayn again.

But yeah, this match was fine. Highlights of the show were really all the Breezango stuff, just a shame they didn't get much of a match on the episode. 

205 Live

Best Match on 205 (23/5/17): Brian Kendrick vs Akira Tozawa - Street Fight

In my opinion, keeping in line with the rest if this blog, 205 Live delivered with the best match from WWE's weekly shows, with a street fight between Brian Kendrick and Akira Tozawa. It's a rematch from a past 'Best Match of the Week', but I don't think it's the first though. But, this was a great match.

Tozawa started kicking the shit out of Kendrick right from the bell, getting us off to a hot start. Kendrick's ingenuity would be the thing to keep Tozawa down and change the tide of things, and in a setting with props, Kendrick thrives even more. We saw him use the purple tape that the ring crew use for the ropes to tie up Tozawa. First, he taped over his mouth and put him in the Captain's Hook, which was pretty damn cool. Then, he took a more Viet Cong POW camp approach to it;

There wasn't masses of weapons used in this match; they did the tape (if that counts), used the steps a bit, but they went and had some big bollocks on for the use of the table;

Christ-a-loo its a good thing Tozawa landed on Kendrick, he has done some of those dives and pretty much landed directly on his tailbone (see: arse). If he'd have fucked it there he'd be walking funny for days.

That there was the finish by the way, rolled Brian into the ring and pinned him there and then. It was a nice end to the match, a big ol' spot to round off the main event and seemingly end this feud with an exclamation point. Well done 205 Live, rest of the show was a bit shaky but a real good main event here.

NXT

Best Match on NXT (24/5/17): Drew McIntyre vs Wesley Blake

We're at the matches taped before TakeOver, and here we have Drew McIntyre versus a revitalised Wesley Blake. 

Again, like his past few appearances, this was very much McIntyre's match. He got his shit in and looked impressive, he got to do his big reverse Alabama Slamma that looked fucking lethal. But I saw this match as Wesley Blake's chance at reintroducing himself, which I think he did quite well actually. New gear, new music and some new moves to boot. With the way NXT is looking, they could use a new lower/midcard-ish guy. 

Decent match here, just a nice little something to fill time until we get into the next set of tapings.

Ring of Honour

Best Match on ROH TV (Episode 296): N/A

It was repeats of February's Honour Rising shows in Karouken Hall featuring New Japan and ROH talent, so if you're still on that crossover buzz from War of the Worlds, might be worth a watch.

PWG: Nice Boys (Don't Play Rock'n'Roll)

Best Match on PWG: NB(DPR'n'R): The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) vs Matt Sydal & Ricochet vs The Lucha Bros. (Rey Fenix & Penta El 0M) - PWG World Tag Team Championship Match

We're back once again at Reseda, CA to bear witness to Pro Wrestling Guerrilla's Nice Boys (Don't Play Rock'n'Roll). The main event saw a triple threat between three awesome teams for the companies tag belts; The Young Bucks defend against The Lucha Bros and Matt Sydal and Ricochet (I dunno if they have a team name but they really should).

This was just insane, crazy shit happenin' all the over the goddamn place. The Bucks are always on the top of their game in PWG, with them able to thrive in the environment of what I can only presume is 'do whatever the fuck you want'. Ricochet and Sydal, though they don't tag all that often anymore really, pulled out some sick spots. The Addiction parodied the Meltzer Driver with the 'Best Meltzer Ever' (moonsault instead of a 450), but these two upped the ante - Ricochet hoisted 'em up for the tombstone and Sydal finished it with a Shooting Star Press. Just incredible.

I love The Lucha Bros more and more each time I see them. With Penta, I feel its gotten to the point where I reckon his superkicks are probably the best. Y'know those prank videos where they put like tape or cling-film in a doorway and they get the person to come running? The whiplash and fall from it is what it looks like a Penta superkick is. Sounds like a fucking shotgun as well.

One of the best bits about PWG is that they can mix in some comedy, and not make it a comedic match, the spot just meshes in with everything. Here, they went all out;

PWG has always had some of the most clinically insane apron spots and bumps in human history, though ol' Abe Lincoln did do a sick brainbuster to the Confederacy on the edge of the ring. Anyway, we had a procession of nasty falls onto the apron in a row;

Don't worry, no-one died.

One thing that did stick out to me a little was that the finish of this match probably wasn't the high moment that it probably could have been. Watching it, it sort of felt the crowd weren't expecting the pin, not because they thought Young Bucks were losing, but because after all the massive moves and combos done in the match, the final blow didn't seem quite as powerful. It's a risk you run in PWG, but the vast majority of the time they manage fine. Nevertheless, this was an awesome match through and through. I think I preferred the Bucks/Lucha Bros match from last year, but I still enjoyed this very much indeed.

SUPERKICK COUNTER: 9 (plus a metric fuck load of superkicks from everyone else)

The Verdict

Best Match of the Week: Tyler Bate vs Pete Dunne - WWE United Kingdom Championship Match - NXT TakeOver: Chicago

What else, really? The pure wrestling in it, the amazing moments and I have to say that Her Majesty's Royal blood and tea that pumps through my veins may have helped the choice. But, I believe that if I took that factor out this still is head and shoulders above the rest. The PWG match was very good, but I felt there was much more of a story told through Bate/Dunne, whereas that triple threat was more 'BOOM-POW-WHATTHEFUCK-BANG'

And with another week done and dusted here on the blog, here is what the leaderboard looks like nowadays.


Winning 'Best Promo of the Week' this time around is this great segment with the newly heel turned Goldust, who appears to have gone old school, even his paint looks like his Attitude Era run if I remember rightly. I really am looking forward to where they go with Goldy, have a look here;

Welp, that's gonna do it for me for this week. Let me know what you thought? Think anything topped Bate/Dunne? Do you think it isn't as good as I've made it out to be? I know I might have laid it on a little thick there, but bloody hell I really do love this match; it's probably up there with my favourites. Either way, I hope you all enjoy yourselves in these coming days. I've got some time off school so I'm a happy boy, and I hope you all get some relaxation too. Buh-bye for now!

BWOTW: 12/9/16 - 17/9/16

Ahoy to you, dear reader, and welcome to this latest instalment, addition and edition to this little thing called 'Noah's Best Wrestling of the Week' AKA 'Am I Dreaming Right Now?' AKA 'Noah's Birthday Bonanza'

Best birthday present ever

It's been a BIG week in wrestling, so let's turn our heads a little to the left and then down a smidge to look at this week's stories from the wrestling world;

1. 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)
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. It's now confirmed! Roderick Strong has signed with WWE. NXT is getting stacked, they need to call some guys up soon.
5. 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

And now for the syrup'n'sauce on this wrestling blog stack of pancakes, it's the matches!

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!