Jimmy Redman

Cena vs Umaga, Rumble 2007.

Y'all are sitting here carrying on like pork chops and excuse me, I'm sorry but SHINSUKE NAKAMURA JUST SAILED A STROBE LIT BOAT TO THE RING. I dead set hate this place after Takeovers. And I mean, not only did he do that but he also dragged Bobby Roode to the greatest match he'll ever have in his entire life. There is always a moment in every Roode match - even after I'm done singing "GLORIOUS" for the seventeenth time - when he takes over and starts stinking up the joint in control where I think to myself "Oh right, this is a Bobby Roode match. I almost forgot." I had that same moment in this match when he took over, but then this magical thing happened where they ended the heat and everything after that point was fucking awesome. There was a point when Shinsuke came back where he was throwing these fucking disgusting, hard, shoot kicks to Roode's head, for no apparent reason other than pure insanity or possibly Roode talking shit about his mother and his sister in the preceding three seconds, we'll never know, but holy shit I was sitting here bursting out laughing in amazement at Shinsuke legit trying to kill this man live on television. And then, just when you think you know where this is going, they make a sharp turn and Shinsuke hurts his knee and we get this insanely dramatic finish that you can't look away from and they drag it out and add those twists and it makes perfect sense that Bobby fucking Roode can pin Nakamura clean for the title but it was still heartbreaking and you still had announcers screaming "NO! NOT LIKE THIS!" in despair over a clean finish and just damn. Every asshole who has been saying "I didn't like how Nakamura dropped off the leg selling.." after every Takeover, this one is for you homie because that was the best sell job of anything on NXT since Hero tried to murder Mr. Regal almost four years ago. The other great thing was that the first 5 minutes of taunting and shit was taken pretty verbatim from the 6-man they worked at the Sydney house show for shits and giggles and it warmed my heart to see it on telly. When I saw that in December I said that it sold me on them having a Takeover match, and I was fucking right. I liked everything about the women's match, from the conception (Asuka copping it from all sides, so she goes up to Mr. Regal and books herself into a Fatal Four Way so she can kill and eat all these bitches at once because she is a BAD. FUCKING. ASS.) to the execution. Positioning Asuka vs Nikki as the money match that kept getting broken up by the heel girls was smart. Taking Nikki out with the big table spot was also smart and cool as hell since girls never get to do that shit unless they're having a designated garbage match. And they somehow found a way for the mean girls to believably get heat on Asuka and then a LEGIT NEARFALL when Peyton Royce hit the BIGGEST WIDOW'S PEAK OF ALL TIME and then Asuka BRIDGES OUT LIKE A FUCKING PSYCHO. And then kills them all. I have literally never seen Nikki Cross before in my life, but I was so into this and the idea that they left those two on the table (pun intended) that I would be perfectly happy if they left Ember for another day and built to a big Asuka vs Nikki Mania Takeover match. I thought DIY vs AOP was really good too, they approached the size difference well and built to the big payoff of Ciampa going on a roll and managing to suplex both guys. It wasn't a Revival match, but few things are, and it was still a great little tag match with good work, cool moves, twists and turns, and a creative yet decisive finish. I was so into this by the end that I was super bummed that the heels took the titles from them. I'm still mad thinking about it now. The worst parts of the show were the times when WWE crept into it - adding an ersatz Byron Saxton for Corey to argue with, when arguing with Byron is the absolute worst part of his announcing and why he's so much worse on Raw than NXT. I have nothing against Percy Watson but he added nothing and cost a lot for how it affected the tone. Also Rollins bringing his shitty heatless angle to NXT and trying to make Hunter a heel on an NXT show was stupid as fuck. Just no.

I agree with the last two posts times a million.

It was at some point between the PPVs that things shifted. After the Rumble they still tried to babyface Batista a couple more times (even doing the Cena "doesn't matter if you cheer me or boo me" non turn) and then finally realised it wouldn't work. It certainly wasn't right after the Rumble, and at that point you could tell they were indeed moving Bryan down into a Sheamus feud. They are so lucky they stumbled into it in the end, because it was almost the worst missed conclusion to a story ever.

- CM Punk pipebomb promo July 2011 - The Rock's initial comeback to Raw February 2011 - Nexus debuts June 2010 - Cactus Jack "Cane Dewey" promo in ECW - Steve Austin "No Baby That's For Somebody Else" promo in ECW - Mick Foley promo on Orton in Hershey January 2004 - Mark Henry "retirement" promo June 2013

I'm SO pumped that someone else likes this match as much as me. One of the great modern tag matches that NEVER gets pimped. I think all people remember about it is that Hunter did his quad again.

I don't really know what you mean, CFO$ are awesome and generally all new themes are really good. And like someone said, for this tourney they just tended to make versions of their existing themes or generic stuff, like the CWC, they're not necessarily going to keep those tunes permanently long term.

I'm perfectly fine with being ruffled on this. We've been around the objectivity merry-go-round many times and it's usually a fruitless exercise. I remember clashing with you a lot over it because you find it arrogant to believe that your own view of a match is the only one that matters, whereas I find it arrogant to believe that you can achieve any measure of objectivity beyond your own view of a match. I don't know that we're ever going to reconcile on that. But it's fine, I mean, ruffled as I am I don't really begrudge anyone their methods. In many ways I admire the ambition in the pursuit of objectivity, of fairness, of completeness. I just don't share it, nor do I really believe in it. I get what you are saying but it's probably for the same reason most people's GWE rankings weren't just an ordered list of their favorites. The "Even though I would much rather watch Wrestler A, Wrestler B had a better career and etc." principle translates to matches as well "Even though Match A was more fun to watch, Match B had better pacing/transitions/psychology etc. etc and so I gave it the higher rating.". Trying to maintain some sort of objectivity I guess. Even though objectivity in wrestling is an extremely blurry concept because what people consider great varies a lot. I get that, and I was the same through GWE to a certain extent, but more than anything else this is why I find ranking wrestlers objectively (or at least soberly) easier than ranking matches like that. I need an example. Like, I saw last week some comment about hypothetically rating Great Khali over Bret Hart. I wouldn't, even though in my life I've undoubtedly got more enjoyment from Khali than Bret as wrestlers, but that's more a generational thing since I never watched Bret week to week. But Bret has had much better matches and is capable of much more. BUT, if I watched Bret vs X and Khali vs Y and enjoyed the Khali match more, I'd have no hesitation in rating the Khali match higher. No matter if the Khali match was a 3 minute squash and Bret's was a 20 minute main event. No matter if Bret's was mechanically better, or had more crowd heat, or appealed to more people, or had less botches, or better moves, or whatever. No matter if a technically masterful main event looks more like a ****+ match than a 3 minute squash with a monster who can barely move. Literally all I care about when rating a match is how much I liked it. So if we were to theoretically do a GME project, my ballot would absolutely just be an ordered list of my favourites. I could send it in today. I wouldn't give a single damn about what is supposed to be on there, and I wouldn't have a single thought of putting a match higher than another match I enjoyed more. I'd be the guy who put Scott Steiner #1, is what I'm saying.

On the topic, I don't mean this to sound negative or to pour cold water on anyone, but literally everything said in this thread is exactly why I don't use star ratings or think in star ratings. All these ideas about some semblance of objectivity, a match rating meaning "more" than just how much you liked a match, ***** matches being decided by consensus, a match being perfect and everything you wanted but you can't even rate it as high as ****1/2 because reasons...all of this is just nonsense to me. Again, I don't want that to sound as dismissive as it probably does, it's just that I come at this from a whole different place. I mean, I've watched more hours, written more words and taken wrestling as seriously as anyone in my time, but at the same time, I clearly don't take it as seriously as some of you do. To me the idea that the star rating I give a match has some kind of higher purpose or deeper meaning than "Here's how fucking great this match was on a scale of no stars to five stars" is completely ludicrous. It's literally just saying "this match was fucking great" in shorthand. With a number. Well, technically a symbol representing a numerical value. And the very idea that you can review a match with words and say it was fucking great in so many ways, and then at the end assign it a numerical value that doesn't reflect those thoughts...I don't know what to do with that. I have no idea why anyone would feel the need to do that. So if there's some 3 minute undercard match with stalling and botches and no finish and no heat and it was somehow the most awesome, incredible match I'd ever seen in my life, I sure as shit would drop ***** on it without a pause. I wouldn't give a shit if it didn't "look like" a ***** match or if anyone else gave it ***** or whatever. Why would you care? Why would you let outside influences override what you personally got out of the match? I simply don't understand. I watched the match, this is how great it was. End of story. Again, I hate to sound like an asshole but I find it kind of...self-aggrandising that someone would think their star ratings have some sort of magical objective quality beyond that. I hate to sound so belligerent over this, but this topic ruffles my feathers, as you can see. It drives me up the wall every time when I see someone say something like "I rated this match ***1/4, but to be honest I preferred it over that other match that I rated ****" ...like, if that's so, why the fuck did you rate them that way? What is your rating if not an honest representation of your opinion? You just sound like you're rating things what they're "supposed" to be rated, what you think other people will accept them to be rated as. So it's bullshit, in other words. Having said that, I love lists. Absolutely love a good list. I prefer things like MOTYC lists, a Top 100 matches of all time, ranking the matches of an 80s set, Loss' Top 500 of the 90s...things like that. I find ranking matches against one another is more useful than assigning star ratings individually because like, lots of matches are ****1/4, and not all ****1/4 are equally as good as each other, but then to distinguish them you're trying to split quarter stars into even more minuscule fractions and it's all a bit ridiculous. I don't know what star rating I would give Revival vs DIY, but I do know it was my 3rd best match of 2016. That allows me to compare it to the other top matches of 2016, as well as the Top 3 matches of other years, or other tag matches that I've put high on a MOTY list, and gauge where it stands in the grand scheme of things much more easily.

I watched the three big matches out of sheer curiosity. Keeping in mind I don't watch or follow New Japan or have any interest in anyone going in. I think I've watched like two NJPW matches since 2013. Shibata vs Goto Here's the thing. I really, REALLY want to love Shibata. I really do. He's just so...beautiful. So beautiful, coming out looking like a buff Japanese Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I want to eat him up. And early on he'll do some badass something or other and I'll think yes, marry me. And then he'll keep being badass over and over again and somehow it just loses me. It's too much. I mean, the first time you see the Shibata Dick Measuring Show it is mind blowing, revolutionary and amazing. NOBODY has EVER no sold that much shit before, what a badass! But when the hook for the no selling is being novel and never-before-seen, it loses its effect once you see it a few times. It's no longer the above excitement, it's oh, you're no selling the same stuff you always no sell. I wonder which of the 78 brutal shots in this match is the one you'll sell for this time. I don't really find macho dick waving all that interesting for its own sake, so once the initial novelty wears off, I find it all a bit eye rolling. This match in particular I didn't think had much else besides that stuff. Maybe its a character investment thing, but I wasn't really hooked by the story of the match or by Goto's triumph or anything else about it. Stuff just happened, and they did a lot of no selling stuff. That's the impression I was left with. Having said that, I did think the finish itself was done pretty well, it was dramatic and decisive and satisfying and easily the best part of the match. Tanahashi vs Naito Japanese hype videos are so great. The hair in this match is something else. I am enjoying Naito as a goofy, scenery chewing movie villain. He's so ridiculous. I also enjoy Tana a tiny bit more now that the hype train has dissipated and I don't have to go into his matches with unrealistic expectations. So OK I thought this was pretty great. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting from this, but laser-focused knee work sure wasn't the first thing. But I thought they nailed the knee work, Naito attacked it with purpose and variety, he took every possible chance to do something nasty to it. Tanahashi sold it well and didn't egregiously blow it off later, which is all I've ever wanted from him. And they put so much into it that it meant all the more later when Tana turned it around and started going Naito's knee. It even made an ostensibly lazy, worn out trope like a strike exchange cool, when they stopped forearming and started throwing kicks to the knee. Like, even the fact that these were sloppy, loose kicks made sense because they were both trying to kick out on one leg. The leg work was executed so well and gave everything during the match some meaning and purpose. AND most importantly, they did that without then hitting reset and blowing it off to do the finishing stretch. They still stuck to the story while they were escalating and starting to throw bombs. I mean, honestly I started to forget about the leg work before they did - when Tana hit that flurry and went for that final High Fly Flow and Naito put his knees up I FREAKED. I was so caught up with Tana's comeback that I momentarily forgot, and they brought me right back in in the most emphatic way. And they kept doing it as it got higher and higher, and then it ended just at the right moment. I really liked Naito's performance in this on multiple levels. He's such a great dick heel, when he came out I thought his gimmick was that he was drunk, but it turned out he was just an asshole. I don't know why he was fucking with the ring announcer but it worked. And then SPITTING! What a motherfucker! By that point I was all in on Tana fucking this dude up. I also thought his bumping was super, he leaned the fuck into all of Tana's Slingblades and took them all on his fucking neck. Sometimes I think that move looks lame but he made them look like death here. Plus all of the legwork...I haven't seen Naito work since he was much younger and less pushed, but he has grown into this role nicely, colour me impressed. Tana was good in this too, as the kind of ageing ace who refuses to lay down for this disrespectful little punk ass bitch, no matter how many knees he takes out, but in the end, the younger guy is just too good. Okada vs Omega Well. I wonder what I would have thought of this match if I had seen it live, because watching it now it was impossible to divorce it from all of the ******, 'greatest match of all time' hype. So instead of going in with a clean slate, you spend the match asking yourself "Well is it the greatest match of all time, yes or no?" And I mean, no, of course it isn't. So then you spend the rest of the match asking yourself "Why would someone think this is the greatest match of all time?" It's all very distracting. Luckily I had this distraction early on because y'all were right, nothing happened in the first half. I can't remember a single thing that happened before Omega's springboard moonsault to the floor. Now I don't necessarily mind a perfunctory opening act if the match has something else going for it like two characters I care about or insane crowd heat or interesting commentary or...something. But there was none of that either, so it was all a bit ordinary until it kicked off. Then, to be fair, it kicked off and it was a completely different match from that point on. Things started happening, bombs started dropping and the crowd woke up. I super loved this period of the match, beginning with that dive and ending in Omega's table bump. It was like one long, extended turning point that took the match from 0-100 real quick. I loved the big moonsault and Okada's loopy knocked out selling of it. There he was stumbling over the guardrail and you're so focused on his struggle to beat the count and then BAM, Omega flies in with the table on him and kills him with a double stomp. Loved that. Then they set up the table but build to the actual spot so well - teasing once but Okada is so loopy he can't get him up for it and they go back inside, then more stuff until oops, they go out and there's that table again but they tease and block and tease some more, then go back inside again and you've finally moved on from it when BAM, Omega takes the biggest backdrop in human history through that fucking thing. By the way when did New Japan become WWE? Guys dragging tables out from under the ring in a title match? Bros in the front row chanting "Lets Go Ken-ny!" ? What is happening. Also, I always laugh wondering how badly WWE would get roasted if they did something as goofy as the Rainmaker zoom out in the middle of the main event of Wrestlemania. Omega sure can bump his ass off but in both a good and bad way. When he shoots off like a rocket he can make a move look devastating, but when he does it at the wrong moment it looks comical and fake. He just doesn't have to take the biggest bump ever for every move. And count me in with the class of people for whom Omega does nothing for as a character. All that OTT, American heel, Bullet Club stuff I find silly, and his "Hurr hurr" heavy breathing, Seth Rollins-style angry face even moreso. He especially doesn't come off well when Naito was such a better heel in the previous match. Okada, well Okada is always Okada. Boring as hell, for the most part, and when he's in there as either the actual or de facto babyface vs a cartoony heel, doubly so. There's nothing to him except elaborate finishing sequences and the Rainmaker pose. When Tanahashi was getting GOAT praise a few years ago I disagreed, but at least understood it on some level. Even if he was flawed he was interesting. He had IT. When that praise shifted to Okada when he replaced him on top I never got that because Okada is just too...bland. Anyway, the epic second half/finishing stretch was fun, very fun, but again all I could do was wonder what made this excessive finishing stretch any better or more magical than any other excessive finishing stretch. The high rating for the match hinges on the stretch, and I just feel like I've seen this stretch many times before, and seen it done better in other matches - Tanahashi vs Okada did it better, even a match like KENTA vs Marufuji did it better frankly. Not to mention Shawn vs Taker, Cena vs Punk and Orton vs Christian did it better too. I don't get what was so transcendent about this particular finishing stretch that we need to blow up the scale for it. I admit I had a massive mental block with it, because the last time I saw Okada work the Rainmaker had never been kicked out of, so Omega kicking out of like three was utter bullshit to me and took me right out of it. There was a moment when Okada hit I think the second and third Rainmakers pretty close together, and I thought "if this ends here I'm OK with that." But Omega kicked out and they danced around for another few minutes and I felt like they missed the optimal window. On the other hand, I did like Omega constantly going for his finisher and always being thwarted. "Could the challenger have won if he'd have hit his finisher?" is an easy story for a rematch. Funnily enough for such a long match it did fly by, I never at any point felt like it was too long or dragging (and I felt that in every single Tana/Okada match). Although to be fair I'm a little stoned right now and not really capable of registering the passage of time either way.

NXT Live Road Report - Sydney, Australia 13th December 2016 I have never been more excited to go to a show since I first started watching, I don't think. Ever since Takeover Brooklyn when the tickets came out I've been giddy as a giddy schoolgirl dreaming of singing and chanting and screaming and dancing like the absolute worst kind of Full Sailer. On the other hand, I was going with my mate who is a casual WWE fan and has never seen or heard of NXT in her life, so she was going into this absolutely blind. We were the odd couple of cliche. You can see the difference in the crowd, even in Australia. Normal WWE shows are chockers full of little kiddies in Cena outfits and adults wooing all over the place and talking about Stone Cold. This was a very adult crowd and just seemed...nerdier. Smarkier, in other words. Tozawa vs Almas was on first. I Need To Catch Up On NXT #1: I haven't seen Almas work heel yet. My mate couldn't believe how short Tozawa was, even for a cruiserweight. Tozawa's screaming stuff got over, and he did a couple of dives. He did slip off the top rope at one point, which lost them the crowd for the rest of the match really. This was fine. The most over thing in the match was people doing the 10 chant. That shit is massively over. I Need To Catch Up On NXT #2: I didn't know that Billie Kay and Peyton are now a mean girls tag team. They came out as huge faces being from Sydney, and said heartfelt thank yous to the crowd, before heeling and saying they'd like to be announced from Orlando instead. Our response was to sing the National Anthem at them. I mean I know they have to reflect the TV and work their gimmicks and all, but all this really did was kill the match for the crowd because they largely stopped the cheers for themselves but nobody gave a single shit about the babyface girls (Liv and Aaliyah) either, because they were facing the Aussies. The first minute of this with Liv and the heels was like the ugliest, greenest minute of wrestling I've ever seen live. It's the kind of "worst possible timing" stuff when you're sitting there with a casual fan and hoping to convince them that women's wrestling is different now and worth their attention. It picked up, but it didn't amount to much and again, the horrible crowd dynamics just killed it dead. But having said that, I can see that the Aussie Mean Girls have potential as an act, and I'm sure it comes off a lot better in America. Billie Kay in particular was good heeling it up, they could TOTALLY slot her in for a throwaway Asuka title defense if they wanted. Aaliyah will be pretty good like 9 months from now. Wesley Blake is a lot fatter than I remember. The crowd chanted "Fat Dolph Ziggler" at him. Sorry Grim. Never seen his streamers gimmick before either. There have been some shitty ass names out of development, but swear to fuck Oney Lorcan is the worst fucking made up name I have ever fucking heard. I don't see how he'll ever be taken seriously. This was a whole bunch of nothing, so much so that this garnered the first ever fully ironic "THIS IS AWESOME" chant I've ever heard (I've seen it done on the indies for supposed-to-be-bad comedy stuff, but never when a match was just outright bad and the crowd used it to shit all over them). Biff didn't do anything particularly interesting or Biff-like. Blake is a warm body. But this was all just a set up anyway, as Lorcan won and then sold his knee afterwards, so Patrick Clark could come out and challenge him to another match. I Need To Catch Up On NXT #3: I don't think I've yet seen Patrick Clark on TV but he was pretty great heeling on the crowd like a douche. With the caveat that this was mostly house show stuff that would never fly on TV, like grabbing his dick and challenging the crowd to fights, he riled everyone up more than everyone else so far combined and clearly has a big future as a heel. After all the nonsense Lorcan rolled him up and pinned him for the lulz. Fun house show stuff in the end. As soon as the announcer bird said "..is a tag team match. And this match is f-" people went bezerk. This sure was a smark crowd because the people were so ready for a God damn NXT Tag Title match. Revival were hugely over, maybe even a little moreso than DIY. This was a 20+ minute Revival vs DIY house show match, so you can just imagine how fucking good this shit was. So, so, so good. This didn't have the pace, the highspots or sick stiffness of the Takeover matches, but it had everything else - tag team moves, great ref work, super teases and cutoffs, comedy, crowd interaction, a super drawn out hot tag, and a perfectly built long extended finishing run. Again, the finish wasn't as crazy as they are on TV, but they DID get me to bite on a nearfall off some cheating and had me believing for half a second that they'd change the tag titles back on an untelevised house show with a rollup. It was everything you could want their house show match to be, and I'm so glad I got to see it. I didn't want to get my hopes up too much with the Revival, I'd have been happy to see them get a good match out of TM61 or whatever, but as it turned out I hit the fucking jackpot. Speaking of TM61, they were first up after intermission vs Moss and Sabbatelli. I've never seen Riddick Moss before and with a name like that I always assumed he was black. So that was a surprise. Never seen Tino either. They actually seem pretty OK for young green lugs. That one TM61 guy, the good looking one with short hair, there is just something about him that is so...off putting. The way he moves and gestures and works, it's just...I don't even know, like he's trying too hard. He's got that exaggerated movement going on that guys from like the 80s had. He's like some babyface jobber from WWF 1985 has been teleported to 2016. Anyway TM61 are fun enough, and obviously they had the crowd behind them (even though they were announced from Western Australia which got them booed. I don't think WWE has fully cottoned onto the rivalries that we have with other states). Once again, you could feel the crowd pick up when the women's title match was announced because that meant ASUKA. What a star she is. To Ember Moon's credit she was pretty over too. So guys, public service announcement: Asuka vs Ember at Takeover Mania Weekend is going to be fucking BONKERS. You heard it here first. This was a great match, right up there with the tag title match for MOTN to be honest. Asuka was house show Asuka and not TV Asuka, so she was less murderous psychopath and more normal champ defending the belt. She didn't even go heelish, in fact she was full face and Ember actually got the heat on Asuka, if you can imagine such a thing. But yeah this ruled, they did a lot of high paced RVD-Lynn "these two are equally athletic" stuff to open (in a good way!) and man Ember can do some stuff. Asuka killing her when she could was fun. Ember does a great tope. They built this REALLY well and they had the crowd totally along for the ride on all the nearfalls. Finally Asuka kicked her out of the sky and whacked on the Asuka Lock, so the only downside was that I didn't get to see Ember's finish live. This ruled, I love women, I love everything. And yet! I had promised my mate a night of embarrassing singing and carrying on, but with how the card was they basically squished all of the singing and carrying on into the main event - Nak/Ty/Buddy vs Joe/Roode/Drifter. What was funny is that apparently the advertised main event was a fatal four way for the title, so the change pissed off a LOT of the crowd and they spent the main chanting "FOUR! FOUR! FOUR!" at the Drifter, who claimed to take credit for the six man to get more heat (and then there I am thinking "Really guys? We're getting a WWE 6-man tag and you'd prefer a clusterfuck?? Are you insane? 6-mans are awesome!"). I Need To Catch Up On NXT #4: Since when has the fucking Drifter been back? I will admit he's about 37 thousand times better than he was the last time I saw him, and he can actually play his guitar so well done there. He did a singing bit before the match and it was some fun heeling. "GLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIOUS!" Singing "GLORIOUS" was my #2 reason for going to this damn show and let me tell you, it is just as fun as it looks. Soooo fucking great. Roode is such a...Roode, but it doesn't matter because that song is solid fucking gold. Joe was SO fucking over. Aussie Buddy Murphy the Australian wrestler, however, was not. Again, being billed from Melbourne didn't help, and he looked pretty out of place here, but whatever. Like Roode, Ty is not really over by himself but the 10 stuff is PHENOMENALLY popular and will give him a career for years. "OOH WA-OH OOH OOH..." I have no idea how to properly transcribe Shinsuke's song, but that's fine because I have no idea how to properly transcribe the feeling of singing Shinsuke's song in a crowd. Like fuck, I remember in April when he first came out to it at Takeover and I lost my shit. I got it off Youtube and drove around in my car for weeks doing nothing but singing along to Sasha's and his theme songs. Then I remember the next Takeover when he came out and the whole crowd was singing his song just like I did and I lost my shit again. Seeing Shinsuke live and singing this song was my #1 reason for going to this show, and it lived up to all my hopes and dreams. It was SO. MUCH. FUN. I didn't even need to see the match at this point, I was happy. But I did see the match and it was a super fun house show main event, to put it that way. Nobody did much of anything spectacular, and Nak and Joe in particular largely stayed out of it. But it was a good fun romp nonetheless, with lots of comedy and cute stuff, lots of basic tag stuff that always works, and a LOT of crowd chants. NXT indeed. The heel team were great house show heels. And Nak is fucking Nak. He and Roode had a little run there full of great, hilarious shit, so I'd be happy for them to mix it up on telly. BUT I swear, the best thing about this match was the post-match. Ty cut the thank you promo, and then Nak did the most amazing, garbled "G'day mate!" Aussie accent through heavily broken English you ever heard. Then he and Ty both did the Nak pose on the ropes, while Buddy just looked on. So the other two try desperately to convince Buddy to do it with them, and he's having NONE of it. They argue and argue, and Buddy is unmoved but he sticks his hand on the rope to lean on as he's making his point and BAM! Nak kicks his leg out from under his leg and he magically falls down into the pose against his will! Hoorah! This was just excellent and I hope there's a GIF somewhere of it soon. MVP of the show: CFO$. I was going to make a new thread for this, but I may as well say it here since it is so closely linked to my enjoyment of this show. But can we all stop and take a moment to appreciate that CFO$ is the Lord and Master of not only this show, but all of NXT and in fact all of WWE? Is there anyone more valuable to the company right now? NXT themes are outstanding. Even the nondescript ones like a random instrumental riff for TM61 or whatever, they all sound so fucking great. Like, Spotify will occasionally slip a random WWE theme into the playlists it curates for me, and honestly unless I stop and look at the artist, I would never know the difference between the wrestling songs and the other metal instrumentals or pop-rap joints that are on there. They're so good they sound like actual songs. Especially the women's songs. We know Sasha's rules. Asuka's rules. Billie Kay's song is fucking excellent. Even Peyton's too. Ember Moon's. Emma's heel remix of her original babyface tune is outstanding and I'm going to be soooooooo sad if her repackage includes a new theme song. And oh my God Holy Shit right, WWE just released a piano instrumental version of Sasha's song and it is the GREATEST THING YOU EVER HEARD. I can't even deal. I love DIY's metal groove. I mean I literally had never seen Tino whatshisname before in my life, but I swear I already know ALL the words to his theme song because Spotify played it for me and I was like yeah boy. And I mean, I cannot emphasise this enough, I just paid like $150 for a house show ticket and my #1 and #2 biggest draws were theme songs. Songs. That's how amazing they are. So yes, NXT is great, CFO$ is great, wrestling is great.

Alexa Bliss is the fucking World Boss.

I'm going to the NXT show tonight and I am super excited.

Oh wow. I never came across this when I was looking for the rare and elusive Good Lashley Match.

They can do a draw in the Iron Man and still says she's undefeated.

Corbin/Kalisto is probably the best ever Chairs match, but Show/Sheamus is another example of a good one. And don't shoot but I did really like the Cena/Barrett one, as a goofy gimmicked romp. What I liked most of all about Miz vs Dolph was their use of the ladder. Both the plethora of cool, inventive, nasty looking spots they did with the ladder as a weapon, AND the staggeringly logical use of climbing. The first half they basically eschewed climbing or wacky bumps from upon high and went for "I'm going to use this ladder to beat the shit out of you and end you", which I appreciated and kind of figured a lot more people here would have appreciated as a way to structure a ladder match in 2016. It was all worked on the ground, on the floor, and they just used the ladder as a giant lethal weapon. In my old age I am losing patience for silly climbing spots that kill suspension of disbelief, which are mainly guys having to climb ridiculously slowly to allow their opponent to catch up, without earning that level of OTT selling. There was none of that here. They just cut that climbing shit out early on, Then when they began climbing, it was sensible because they were climbing quite quickly, to reflect the fact that this guy has just beaten down the other guy enough to go for it. He has no reason to sell death and slow climb, he's on top, he's dominating. I loved that. It was only after they both started selling the leg that the climbing became slow and laboured, and obviously, because they're trying to climb on one leg. I just thought they really earned the drama at the end with how they built up to it so logically. Also, that leg work was fucking sick. On the show as a whole, I really liked the production decision to do all those pre and post-match interviews. The show kind of felt less like a "PPV" and more like a "Network Special", if that makes sense, and I mean that in a good way. It was kind of like an extended Smackdown episode, and Smackdown is great. Between the booking and the interviews there was intrigue and storyline development coming out of every single match. Even ones you didn't expect to. Like, Baron Corbin beating Kalisto isn't that interesting going forward. But Baron Corbin beating Kalisto, then going straight to the announcers and yelling in their faces, and then going on Talking Smack and telling Bryan to put him in the main event...that creates intrigue as to what Corbin will do next. And I'm someone who ordinarily couldn't give a fuck about what Baron Corbin is doing. I loved Becky's promo too. The poor girl just lost, she went through a table, Alexa is staring her down brandishing HER title, and you stick a mic in her face? I was thinking "What the fuck could you possibly want her to say right now," and apparently she was thinking the same thing because that's what we got. I liked it. On the other hand, a terrible production decision was showing slow mo replays of the fucking CROWD after every single fucking spot. Who's idea was that? Fucking ghastly.

God damn. I have to start watching Talking Smack.

What the fuck match were y'all watching? That was fucking spectacular.

Otunga's bit about Miz as an athlete is awful. Even JBL tries to get the message across live on commentary that you can't say a guy who won the WWE Title and is the IC Champ has no athletic ability, that just buries everyone.

They should just play blonde tag with the Who Ran Over Nikki angle forever. Carmella: it was Natalya! Nattie: it was Alexa! Alexa: it was Renee! Renee: it was Maryse! Maryse: it was Eva in a wig! And etc.

Of course, my bad. I confuse their 2010 and 2012 feuds. The SD match on 21/12/10 is great too though.

I think he was at worst a Top 5 guy in WWE from 2008-10. In 2007 he was on another planet, but there's no great drop off in quality when he comes back from the injury. The list of his high end matches from those years is pretty impressive: And there's a lot of really good TV stuff as well - matches vs Swagger, Jeff Hardy, Triple H, Dolph, Gabriel, Jericho, Punk, Henry, that Bourne tag...just off the top of my head.

I would like to state for the record that this was not, in fact, the history-making first ever Falls Count Anywhere match for the WWE Women's Championship on Raw. Nevertheless, it was fucking awesome.

Would he have brushed it more if he'd have held the title a little longer? I don't think so.