NintendoLogic

Looks like "Rusev Day" is the new "CM Punk."

I feel like Joe is going heavy on the chinlocks to keep the crowd from getting behind him too much.

He got plenty of boos. WWE mutes the crowds when he comes out.

This is actually a good sign for Braun. Vince has a history of pushing his top guys as Randian supermen whose every actions are inherently good simply by virtue of being the top guy.

I don't think Owens was the legal man.

Fantastic match. Nakamura has officially redeemed himself. Even the shitty ending was good in that in had me wanting to see a rematch rather than feeling like I had been ripped off.

I wouldn't be surprised if Carmella got the Jinder Mahal drop-the-title-on-Smackdown treatment after that.

She was pathetic on offense, which is especially egregious when you're supposed to be a monster. She had nothing to offer other than a million biels. It was like when Ezekiel Jackson would do nothing but bodyslams. I think the biels all make for great visuals, she had several avalanches and a big lariat, and she didn't have more offense as she was using her bigger moves to set up Bliss offense. The missed somersault senton and banzai drop, and fighting over the middle rope samoan drop, all gave Bliss actual realistic ways to stay in the match. If Bliss took more monster offense, it wouldn't have been a very interesting match. I'm not impressed by WWE transitions because they're pretty much all laid out by agents. If all that's asked of you is to keep things interesting for the 20% of the time you're in control and you can't do that, you're clearly not much of a worker. Even the crowd saw through her.

She was pathetic on offense, which is especially egregious when you're supposed to be a monster. She had nothing to offer other than a million biels. It was like when Ezekiel Jackson would do nothing but bodyslams.

I actually enjoyed Orton's performance in that match. The Rusev Day chants made me laugh, though.

Fantastic troll job by WWE there. Getting the crowd pumped up with that Joe promo and then bringing out Randy Orton.

OK, I'm officially on Team Alexa. Nia Jax just isn't that good.

That superplex spot followed by the second SCF kick-out is the perfect summation of everything I hate about Rollins.

I'm pretty sure Seth Rollins is my least favorite wrestler on Earth.

The WWF had no fewer than three gimmicks dedicated to ridiculing Dusty in the late 80s. In addition to the polka dots, there was Virgil and Akeem the African Dream.

I like Orton's chinlocks. He works them like he's actually trying to rip his opponent's head off, unlike most WWE heels who think that working a hold means making mean faces while applying it.

What about the fact that CMLL has no real footprint outside of Mexico? Virtually every promotion on Earth has been WWE-ified to some degree. And the puro influence has obviously been felt far and wide. Even British wrestling has consistently punched above its weight in terms of influence.

More reviews: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/16115-dave-finlay-vs-doink-the-clown-cwa-121794/?p=5846528 http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/41892-mao-kazumi-kikuta-dinosaur-takuma-kotaro-yoshino-vs-sanshiro-takagi-ryuji-ito-dick-togo-taka-michinoku-ddtbjpw-toshikoshi-pro-wrestling-123117/ I tried to create a thread for the minis match as well, but I kept getting a driver error, so I'll just post the review here.

HeadCheese picked this match from the DDT/BJW New Year's Eve show for the Secret Santo project. A couple of pre-match notes. First, Takuma and Yoshino are a tag team known as the Dino Stones. Takuma has a dinosaur tail on his singlet and Yoshino comes to the ring wearing a Fred Flintstone tunic. They also come armed with prehistoric weaponry, Takuma with a bone and Yoshino with a club. Second, Togo is accompanied by a diminutive fellow with a Hitler mustache. We begin by Takagi demanding that the referee check Yoshino's afro for international objects. The first few minutes are fairly nondescript until Takagi and Takuma square off, leading to the greatest spot in wrestling history. Takagi attacks Takuma by BITING HIS TAIL. And Takuma SELLS IT. The action then spills to the outside, where Team Taka uses Dino Stones' bone and club as weapons. Most of the rest of the match consists of an extended spot involving MAO in the corner and pretty much everyone on the show running into him, including his teammates, Togo's mini-Hitler, and all the wrestlers in the previous matches. I only recognize Ryota Hama and Colt Cabana, but two of the others are dressed as Ryu and Zangief, the latter of whom actually does a spinning clothesline. Even the referee and a cameraman get into the act. It's like a Family Guy joke that starts out as amusing but gets beaten into the ground until it's no longer funny but then comes back around to being funny when they keep going. After all that, MAO actually pins Taka with a schoolboy a second before the ball drops. Happy New Year, Taka. As my writeup indicates, this was just a silly comedy match. But what comedy it was. Seeing Taka smiling and goofing around is quite a change of pace after watching him in Suzuki-gun.

AstroBoy's Secret Santo pick features Finlay defending his CWA Intercontinental Championship against the Sammy Hagar of Doinks on the final day of the annual Euro Catch Festival in Bremen. And the commentary is in Welsh, which might as well be Klingon as far as my ears are concerned. These two stick to the mat in the first round. Seeing the Belfast Bruiser and a clown have a straight wrestling match is quite a sight. It kind of reminds me of that Pirata Morgan/Brazo de Oro title match. It was a bit disconcerting after Finlay's pre-match promo promising to lay waste to "this WWF clown," though. That doesn't last long, as Finlay Pearl Harbors Doink as he makes his way back to his corner after the bell. He then tries to take advantage at the beginning of the second round, but Doink greets him with a cup of water to the face and gives him a taste of his own medicine, eventually catapulting him out of the ring. Things settle down once Finlay makes it back in, and a Greco-Roman knuckle lock takes up most of the rest of the round. Evidently nothing of note happened in rounds 3 through 6, as the footage cuts straight to the seventh round. Doink spends the round beating Finlay from pillar to post. He rams him head-first into the turnbuckle, rakes his eyes on the ring ropes, and slams his head into a table. He even subjects Finlay to his own sternum-first apron slam spot. Doink further enrages the burghers by throwing water at them, leading to a lady in the crowd flipping him the bird. The eighth round begins with Doink continuing on the attack. He applies a sleeper only for Finlay to counter with a jawbreaker followed by a tombstone for a rather abrupt win. No doubt about it, this was a happening.

He was clearly the worst of the Four Corners, though. But that's no insult when the other three are the greatest of all time. That aside, this is a good pick. On the one hand, Taue was a part of enough classic matches over a long period of time with a wide variety of opponents that he can safely be considered actively great rather than just along for the ride. On the other hand, you've got some people claiming that he was better than Kobashi, which is insane.

I recently rewatched the Bret/Flair Iron Man match, and what struck me was the fact that both of the falls Flair picked up were by submission. Granted, he was using the ropes for leverage both times. But still, this was a time in which it was basically unheard of for a top babyface to submit, let alone the world champion. When Flair won with the figure-four as a heel in the past, it was from the babyface being pinned after passing out. It makes me think that Flair may actually have been trying to sabotage Bret to a degree.

Nothing will ever top Bo Dallas being pushed as a heartthrob.

If JvK has been driven to the right, that's a pretty dire statement on the state of the left in the West. To hear them tell it, anything less than full communism is neoliberalism, which is indistinguishable from conservatism. It's crap like this that's going to get Trump reelected. That's entirely untrue if you actually understand what the term is meant to describe; that is, the change in the operation and organisation of capitalism that began in the 1970s and the logic of which was politically hegemonic for about 35 years. Let me ask again. What exactly is the difference between neoliberalism and conservatism? Is it solely the the former is more socially tolerant? Short answer: Yes, pretty much, generally speaking. Long answer: Neoconservatives prefer to use weapons on their enemies and neoliberals would rather starve them to death, as someone here who I won't name in case he doesn't want to be dragged into this thread said to me once in a chat where we were discussing the term. The war in Afghanistan was started by a Republican President, escalated by a Democratic President, and further escalated by the next Republican President. Bush championed NAFTA and Clinton saw it through. Both parties are opposed to single-payer healthcare, with a few outliers as exceptions. Both supported the bailout. Both supported No Child Left Behind. Both support the Patriot Act. Presidents from both parties have promoted outsourcing of jobs. Even on social issues, Clinton signed DOMA, welfare reform, and the crime bill. They are pretty much the same. There was incredible continuity in American government from Reagan to Obama. If you use the term neoliberalism, you basically believe that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are the same or close to the same on virtually every issue, only disagreeing about things like gay marriage and abortion. It seems like the differences are bigger than they really are, which makes sense when there's tons of overlap in party donors. The Powell memorandum in the early 70s, along with the formation of the Trilateral Commission, are usually cited as the birth of neoliberalism. Milton Friedman is usually cited as the godfather. Except that Clinton and Obama both raised taxes on the wealthy. Or that Obama enacted the largest expansion of the welfare state in since Johnson. Or that Wall Street turned on the Democrats with a vengeance after Dodd-Frank. Or that pretty much every Democrat in the Senate with presidential aspirations has endorsed Bernie's Medicare-for-all bill. Or that a federal jobs guarantee has become the default position of the Democratic Party virtually overnight. It's one thing to say that these measures don't go far enough. But to act like there are no significant differences between them and the Republicans is nothing more than vulgar Chomskyism.