MikeCampbell

There was a graphic on Raw that advertised El Hijo del Vikingo vs. Chad Gable for the World's Collide show on 6/7, and announced it for the AAA Mega Title. Our friendly neighborhood CubsFan jumped right on it, pointing out that Vikingo isn't the champion, and that he's challenging Alberto for the title on 5/31. And wouldn't you know who won the pony; Vikingo defeated Alberto last night for the title.

And after about a month, I decided to rewatch The Hollywood Ending to see how well it held up. Short version is that it holds up perfectly fine. It may not look like it from a stylistic standpoint, but it's a bit like those 90's All Japan main events, where one can't really fully appreciate everything they're doing if they don't know the whole backstory. And this match does that masterfully. Things like the shoe and champaign bottle and the title being used like a whip are all things that Mariah has used on Toni, and she finally gets a chance to hand it back. The only thing that sort of pushed the envelope was the bit where they both started taping up their fists, and even then Mariah shows that she's following Toni's lead on that one, while Toni looks like she's fully prepared to march right into hell if that's what it takes to get her revenge. There's even a smart bit where Toni surprises her with a German suplex, which looks odd with Toni bleeding so much, and Toni collapses afterwards from the effort of doing the move. It's a brilliant match, and while there's still 3/4 of the year left, I'll be shocked (in a good way) if anything is able to to top this.

I watched the show live with a bunch of friends. We all lost our collective minds during the Hollywood Ending, an absolutely perfect way to blow off a longstanding feud (or as one might say: FINISH. THE. STORY). Then they lost their shit again for Omega/Takeshita, and I was like "It's fine, but I don't think it's all that great." Then they lost their shit again for the cage match and again my response was "Really? I don't see it?" I thought that Toni and Mariah just burned me out, and I coudln't fully appreciate what they were doing. So, after some time to decompress, I fired them both up again last night. Honestly, nothing much changed for me. Both of them had nearly 30 minutes and didn't accomplish what Toni and Mariah did in less than half. Takeshita/Omega was straight out a 00's NOAH main event with Kobashi. The midsection stuff was great, with Kenny taking some truly nasty bumps. But, other than his inability to do the One Winged Angel, it never felt like he was truly inhibited. To the point where Takeshita was hitting elbows right in the ribs and Omega wasn't even registering them. I will give them credit for a smart finish, with Omega escaping the Raging Fire instead of taking it and kicking out, and outwrestling Takeshita to win. But, it just felt too long and drawn out for what all they did. Look up "Overkill" in the dictionary and you'll find a pic of the Osprey/Fletcher cage match. Run ins, buckets of blood, tons of props, at least three different points in the match that should have been an absolute murder death kill sort of finish, only for a regular ass hidden blade to do it,while Fletcher is screaming his head off.

These two have always made great opponents; it's why there was such heavy rumors that WWE was going to sign Averno and bring him in to work with Sin Cara in 2011. And much like Baba did for Kawada in the 1997 Carnival, CMLL gives Averno his first ever win over his longstanding rival in a tournament setting, which can obviously lead to another singles match down the road for Mistico to get his win back. Anyone who's seen any of their previous matches won't see anything new from this go around, outside of the finish. They do their usual sequences, and after Mistico counters La Magistral and does one of his own for a near fall, it looks like the end is coming. But then Averno counters La Mistica and hits the Devil's Wings. And then he does a second one. And then a third one! Averno gets the pinfall, in what had to be considered the biggest upset in Arena Mexico history at that time.

Now that the whole unedited episode of Dynamite from 2/26 made it to Max, I gave the Takeshita/OC title match a second look. It's nothing amazing, but they do a pretty good job of working a simple match where they mostly do things that make sense within the confines of it. The only things that really pushed it were the double ring out tease after the beach break on the table, when they both just stopped selling and rushed in, which obviously made sense for OC. And the sequence where Takeshita spikes him with the wheelbarrow driver and then picks him for the suplex and OC counters into a rolling cradle for a near fall. But outside of those couple of instances, they were pretty much dead on. I'm not a Kenny Omega hater or anything, but I'll be surprised if their title match tomorrow night is anywhere near as sensible as this was.

He's one of those dudes I'd classify as good but not great. The 11/07 IWGP match with Tanahashi is the best match of his that I've seen, and nothing else has even sniffed it. A friend on discord pointed me toward a couple of matches that he said were 'absolute bangers' and they were from 2014 and 16 respectively, which sort of tells me that I really haven't missed too terribly much since I stopped watching NJ with any sort of regularity. And yes, I did watch the Zack Sabre Jr. title switch. And no, it really didn't change my stance on him, although it was nice to see the man get his moment.

This whole International Championship Series perfectly illustrates my frustration with this company, despite how much fun the in-ring product can be. So, Cassidy beats Strong last night, and now he challenges Takeshita next week. The winner of that (the Int'l Champion) advances to automatically defend against Kenny Omega at the PPV. Yes, the champion is part of a touranament to decide who gets the privledge of defending the title against Kenny Omega.

The tag match was fun, but it wasn't a whole lot more than that for me. Things like Omega's midsection getting worked over for a spell and then just dropped, and the goofy bit where Omega hits the V-Trigger and Will hits a wicked Hidden Blade on Fletcher (that was so out of nowhere, that it was worthy of being hidden) only for Takeshita and Kyle to counter into stereo tombstones right after. I get that they're all supposed to hate each other, but instead of telling a story this was just 'Let's do a bunch of crazy shit and hit each other as hard as possible". The Hidden Blade into One Winged Angel is an absolutely sick finisher, however.

This is the best Mistico match that I've seen in a good long while, mainly becuse it's not a typical Mistico match. Mistico tries to make it one, but Hechicero is able to outwrestle him and stop him from doing the stuff he likes to do, and then ties him up in knots, threatens to break his fingers, and rips at the mask. Mistico does win out, but only after he's able to start playing Hechicero's game and outsmart him a few times as well as finally trap him in La Mistica and adjust it to put even more pressure on. Mistico comes off looking like he earned the win, rather than just getting it because he's the top guy and he's expected to. I didn't love this as much as Hechicero's matches with Zack Sabre Jr. either the CMLL or RevPro ones, since Mistico wasn't going to be able to work with him the way that Zack could. But, this is still a fabulous match, and another example of Hechicero being a serious candidate for the best wrestler of the year.

I'm honestly surprised she was even with them all in the first place. When they were first put together, and Top Flight was doing the program with MXM, I was positive that she was turning on them then, and being the new Maxxine Dupree.

I'd seen the two trios matches that gave us Rudo Santito, and I knew about the 3 way hair match with Casas/Santito/Dandy, and about the Casas/Santito match from the anniversary show, but this match seemed to have slipped under my radar. I went into it completely blind, but figuring that I knew what to expect. And I was wrong on all counts. I figured it would be a crazy brawl to heat up the Casas match with Santito brutalizing his brother. And instead it was a mostly mat based match with some great high spots thrown in. The first fall took me a little by surprise, but when Santito hit that sunset flip powerbomb in the second fall, I knew it was over. Felino kicked out and I was biting on everything they did for the rest of the match. The finish with Bestia Salvaje unintentionally costing Santito the match was clever and certainly unexpected. I figured an irate Santito would attack him afterwards, and it never happened. Then he cut the promo and wanted the rematch, and I was ready for the cheap shot to heat up the fans for it, and it never came either. This was pretty much as 'outside the box' as a match could get from what I was expecting going in versus what actually happened. And it's all the better for it.

A big shocker on Collision last night with The whole tournament has made for some great TV over the last couple of weeks. Also, Lio Rush and Action Andretti seem to be splitting off from Top Flight. And the biggest takeaway from the segment is that Leila Grey is the best promo of the whole lot of them.

Between last night and the PPV, Excalibur has thoroughly beaten us over the head with the notion that Danielson's career as "a full time in ring wrestler" is over.

I saw on Twitter that Jacobs was one of the people against the idea of pushing both Daniel Garcia and Takeshita. Which makes the booking at Wrestle Dream extra interesting.

This is a match that's benefitted from hindsight and perspective. People lost their minds when it happened, but it really wasn't all that big of a deal. Between Kobashi's long layoff, Nagata's credibility being a goose egg, and NOAH's inability to elevate anyone as a credible threat, Jun had already run out of real challengers. So Akiyama losing to Ogawa in this way doesn't really hurt him at all. Hell, four years later he lost the GHC to Marufuji in a similar fashion (although it was a much longer match), so if anything, this established him as being vulnerable to flash pins and cradles.

I checked out Death Before Dishonor on a delay this morning (watching Rampage with my father takes priority on Friday nights). It was honestly a pretty good show, overall. The only real black mark on it was the six-way TV Title match. It was a complete trainwreck, which makes me wonder if Atlantis Jr. just isn't very good, to have a real match with any of them, or if TK just wanted to get as many dudes on the show as possible to justify their employment.

I have to echo everyone else's posts on this one. This is a super great TV match, with Shawn deferring to the champion, and working his style of match. Benoit works this like it's still 1997 and he looks at Michaels, but he really sees Kevin Sullivan (sans the trips to the bathroom). I'm seriously trying to think of another post comeback Shawn match that even sniffs this one, and I'm drawing a blank. The finish is beyond awful, but the last thirty or so seconds don't do anything to tear down what Shawn and Benoit built up for the first 27:30.

From what I can gather, this is Yutaka Kobayashi's pro debut, I can't find any sort of pro wrestling background on him, only MMA stuff. And it's quite a debut, even if it's a fifteen minute broadway. His matwork is very quick and smooth, very reminiscent of a young Kiyoshi Tamura. The match has some extended mat periods, but never feels lazy or like they're using the holds as an excuse to rest and kill time. Kobayashi is clearly the better mat worker in this case, and Izuchi manages to more or less not lose, but hitting a series of kicks culminating in a head kick that take a point, and staving off the juji-gatame long enough for the time limit to hit just as Kobayashi gets it locked in. Even without winning, the match establishes right out the gate that Kobayashi is someone to keep an eye on, and that he can be a problem for anyone on the UWF roster.

This Hangman/Swerve deal has got to be the best "double turn" since Bret and Austin in 1997. Even before the finish, where Swerve wanted to keep going and Hangman peaced out, there were hints about it. Hangman hit the DDT on the guadrail and rolls in and tells the ref to count him out. Swerve hits the Deadeye through the table and then quickly gets Hangman back into the ring so he can win the match the "right" way. I'm loving this BCC/CMLL stuff, although I do wish they didn't rush to get some of the lower card dudes involved quite yet. It just reeks of AEW not wanting to beat any of the BCC guys, but it's not like they can keep the feud hot by always having their guys go over. Danielson is working the NJPW show on 2/11 and the NJ/CMLL tour starts on 2/12. Cubsfan hypothesized that perhaps Hechicero will be in the front row on 2/11 and will have some sort of confrontation with Danielson. I'm beyond happy for Sting, a guy I've been watching since I was six years old (and I just turned 41), getting one last title run before he hangs it up. I just worry that it means we'll get another title run from Matthew and Nicholas, and their neverending parade of bullshit.

In a freaky coincidence, I just happened to watch the match on the date of its 20th Anniversary. It's been the best U-STYLE match I've seen by a fucking mile. There's an undercard match between Kyosuke Sasaki and Crafter M that almost seems to be their attempts to pay homage to Tamura and Kosaka, but that comes off like an exhibition. This feels like a real contest. It's the first time in the history of the company that Tamura has truly looked like himself.

I'm thinking the same thing. And it's actually for the best, IMO. Perry has been gone for so long that any return outside of him being the Devil comes off like a retread. Let him spend a few months in NJPW and then do something to build up to Forbidden Door and cut a scathing promo on how the company did him wrong, and hopefully create a buzz.

I had to work at the crack of dawn on Sunday, so I wasn't able to watch live. I figured I'd watch it after work. Then, I get a text from my father at about 8:00 that morning telling me that Joe was the new champion and that Adam Cole was the devil. And there went all my urgency to watch the show. I did finally watch it this morning. Adam Cole leading a heel stable is a movie that we've all seen before, but I'm still OK with it. With MJF out for a bit, they have feuds with Hangman and the Acclaimed that can be used to fill up some time until Max is ready to come back. When the lights went out, I just rolled my eyes. It's way too overdone at this point. Hell, having the masked guys line up on and the floor and Cole hitting him with the crutch would have been better, and probably gotten a bigger pop.

This just never comes together at all. Takada doesn't seem to be in the mood to do fuckall with Nakano, a far cry from what Yamazaki did with a few weeks before. Nakano hits a huge German and Takada just leaps to his feet and starts blasting him with kicks to show everyone who the man really is. 18 minutes for these two was just way too long, they could have chopped this down to six or seven and probably not lost much.

So the first AEW Triple Crown will be decided between Eddie Kingston, who came up with the concept of the title being a Triple Crown, started the tournament going 0-2, and came back to win his block by beating the same man who proclaimed him to be "a bum." And Jon Moxley, who has a long history with Eddie Kingston, including a feud over the AEW Title, which Eddie never won, and after becoming allies, became rivals again this year. Baba or Chosyu couldn't have booked this any better.

I also had Garcia getting the upset to keep Brody out of the semi's. I was originally thinking that Claudio would upset Bryan and Kingston would beat Andrade to give them all a tie, but your way sounds a lot less chaotic.