Jimmy Redman

Tracks with me too because despite my early hesitation I fucking love AEW Bryan and Bryan vs Kingston was fucking IMMENSE. Clearly I just don't really like Kenny Omega. Beautiful match but. Everyone knows who they are in AEW and acts accordingly. I love the level to which Bryan understands just when and how much to sell, even in the middle of the no selling strike exchanges. Look at that exchange right at the end - a lesser dork would have done it, taken it all and screamed, then jumped right into the triangle or started running the ropes to hit a move or some shit. Bryan and Eddie do all the huffing and puffing, no sell, yell, then Eddie hits THE uraken and Bryan CRUMPLES. Then he found a submission from his back. That middle finger finish too, my God. I think this is the first time since like maybe 2014 when I've felt the urge to make a list of my MOTYCs. Pissed off dad Mox stomping in, beating the living shit out of 10, leaving him lying in a pool of blood and stomping out was legit frightening. I'm a little concerned that he's going to actually kill Orange Cassidy live on television. Mox vs Bryan might be the most sadomasochistic match ever. So pumped for the Eddie/Punk tease too, that was so well done. Little Thing I Appreciate About AEW #47: They number the rematches they do as like, "Andrade vs. Pac 2", "Dante vs. Sydal 3". It plays so well into the "pure sportz build" nature of the shows, with the rankings and everything, making them seem like a big UFC or boxing match up. It also, consciously or not, separates them from WWE and their endless rematches with the same pairings that don't mean anything. Imagine promoting "Kofi vs. Dolph 30!!" (I don't know what the current day equivalent is...) And like, when I was obsessed I used to do that for myself! I have notes calling things like, "Kofi vs. Swagger IV" and I know which exact Smackdown TV match from 2010 that is, because the workers took it upon themselves to do something interesting with their pointless rematches. But like, the actual promotion getting behind the idea and promoting them as such, and making rematches special, it's so neat. All hail Tony Khan the TEW booker of our dreams. I guess they also have a roster so gigantic that they can afford to keep everyone away from each other, and still put on important unique matches literally every week on TV while not compromising the PPV events either. Like, it turns out if you literally just give a message board dork enough money they can book a better show. Also Dante vs. Sydal 3 ruled.

@Grimmas and I review SHIMMER Volume 16 in a hot fresh episode of SHIMMER HERstory! We have the greatest, funnest, most shtickiest trios match EVER, the highly anticipated rematch between Sara Del Rey and Sarah Stock: Two out of Three Falls for the SHIMMER Title, and Amazing Kong vs. the amazing Cheerleader Melissa. PLUS, thanks to a teeny tiny editing snafu there is 24 mins of BONUS CONTENT~!: We run down the card for the next show, Canada vs. Australia at the Winter Olympics, and I try to explain the Aussie football codes to poor Steven Graham. https://soundcloud.com/prowrestlingonly/shimmer-herstory-volume-16?si=71c3add5dd0b4462ba30d0c941f652ff

So get this guys, I actually fucking LOVED Bryan/Suzuki. I was full on captivated. Starting to think it's a case of, it's not what, but who, and why. I don't want a card or a promotion full of constant strike exchanges, and I don't want anyone and everyone doing them. But I DO want Minoru f'n Suzuki doing them with unleashed Bryan Danielson in a one-off dream match we almost never got. The way in which they were doing the exchanges was so far above the level of what I usually see it's laughable. The way they began and how the tone and seriousness kept changing and escalating through the match. Early on it was, "Okay, knock yourself out, let's have some fun" and by the end it was, "There is NOTHING you can hit me with on God's green earth motherfucker." Out of sheer hubris and force of will. But the way they fucking SOLD that shit too. Bryan being the dumb fuck for getting into the battle in the first place and then getting fucking LEVELLED TO DEATH with the first forearm was incredible. Bryan is tough, but he's no match. There's an actual moment after that where you can see Bryan realising he's never going to win this your turn-my turn battle, so he abandons it and just starts a flurry of kicks to get back on top. Even later with the "kick me and I crunch up and no sell" thing. Minoru does it, again, again, but it's getting harder and harder each time. This is his thing. Then he gets a chance to kick Bryan and Bryan HAS TO DO IT BACK for a huge pop, but then Minoru keeps kicking him, and Bryan tries to keep doing it back but HE CAN'T. He couldn't bridge up the third time and just collapses and gets covered. This is Minoru's thing. Bryan is trying to hang and match him as best he can, but he can't. He's smaller and he's not a murderous grandfather. He needs to do something else. Little shit like that was just genius. It wasn't just taking turns, it was taking turns and finding out who hit harder, and then reacting to that information, and then trying something else, but always going back to the battle because, well, men are dumb I guess, and taking turns to find out who's still hitting harder or who's more hurt, and reacting again. It had meaning to it. At no point did I feel like they were just trading for the sake of it, which is a feeling I get from those spots 90% of the time. Also, the matwork was killer shit. That moment where Bryan turned Cattle Mutilation into a pin, *mwah* I could watch that match a hundred times. In fact I probably should since I was distracted during the finish and kind of missed what happened before The Knee That Beat John Cena. So I guess in conclusion my problem isn't necessarily with strong style, maybe it's just with people who aren't Suzuki doing it.

Speaking of Cody, I forget which show the skit was on this week, but is there a reason why Cody was wearing a three piece suit in his own house in the middle of the night?

I'm catching up on TV today, and as soon as my partner sat down the first thing she said, honest to God, "Are the ring ropes higher than normal?" "No honey, everyone is just short.." I cannot even. She is also obsessed with Jungle Boy's hair, but then again, so am I. I had fun explaining who his shoot father is. 8 man was a pretty good time. Sammy got over with her in 5 seconds for having purple sparkly tights and doing flipz, so Tony Khan, since you need help with the female demographic, here we are. Sparkles and flips. I hate to be this guy but I'm already kind of over CM Punk doing the same promo in the same spot every week. Like, it's nice for him and I'm happy for him. But he's going to be skippable as a promo until he has something juicy to do. Serena Deeb is the fucking BEST and Serena-Shida ruled. The whole set up with the 50 wins trophy and Serena playing spoiler was great. I'm still new to this I guess but I love the records gimmick. Shida's front facelock airplane spin was amazing. I assume this TBS Title is for Jade Cargill to have some direction while she dominates the undercard. Although her taking her first loss in the finals on the TBS debut would be decent too. Maybe this is what they give Ruby to do since they want to keep Britt Baker on top for a while. I loved the theme of the ladder gimmick being Orange wanting to do his cute shit and there literally just being no time for it. Too many ladders, too many bodies. Some really gnarly bumps in this, and I had that "Ooh do you really want to be killing yourself during an ad break?" thing. I guess it was an anniversary show, but it's kind of hard to do ladder matches on TV with ads. Hangman coming back and being so fucking over was great and I instantly like Hangman so it worked on me.

Weeeee're back! Steven Graham and I review SHIMMER Volume 15 for all of your ears, up now on the PWOM Podcast Network. Sara Del Rey defends against Amazing Kong! Daizee Haze and Sarah Stock have a (spoiler) motherfuckin' barnburner! Along with a rare and elusive Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew tag match, the final (?) Danger vs. Rogers match, and the debuts of Jetta, the future Madison Rayne and the future Canadian Ninjas. We will be bringing you new episodes every Monday, so check it out and check in with us! https://soundcloud.com/prowrestlingonly/shimmer-herstory-volume-15?in=prowrestlingonly/sets/shimmer-herstory&si=1bca8a55db5a4ac4a8dc0c4653fd122e

I appreciate that, I just got around to Rampage and yeah I enjoyed Bryan vs Nick. It had more of the matwork stuff I enjoy from Danielson and (slightly) less head trauma. Basically I want Danielson to lean into his lucha cosplay aspirations rather than his NJPW cosplay aspirations. But that's just me and I realise NJ heavyweight matches are the style of the time. Also Orange Cassidy is the best. I had never considered the idea of Orange doing a promo, but he is Orange. The best.

This is why I appreciated Billie Kay trying to sound like the biggest bogan she possibly could.

I want to preface this by saying that I really enjoyed the match, and the entire show, and this isn't just me being difficult. I loved Bryan-Omega, and the spectacle of it all and the moment was incredible and they hit another massive home run. But I didn't come away from it thinking it was a five star match, or one of the best TV matches I've ever seen, or the best Bryan match I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of reactions like those and while I fully understand, it didn't do that for me. I think I've hit upon one of the reasons why, so this may sound weird but I pose this as a genuine question. Where were the wrestling moves? To me it felt like half an hour of mostly guys just kicking and kneeing and chopping each other really hard. Which is like, cool, but maybe not entirely what I expected from this. They opened with chops and kicks and strikes. Every time Bryan got an opening all he seemed to do was just go back to throwing those kicks. Omega hit what felt like half a dozen of those running knees, which look fucking disgustingly stiff, but by the end of the match I had become completely numb to them since he kept throwing them and they kept not doing anything. (Except the big running one on the ramp because that was cool as fuck.) Apart from that, Bryan took the Dragon suplex on the ramp, he did the backdrop off the top and did Cattle Mutilation... and that's literally the only moves I can recall from the match. In 30 minutes. You all know I'm not the kind of person to get all "moveset", but like, it really stuck out to me how little wrestling or wrestling moves were in this. Not even any matwork early on. As I was watching, as long as this match went, I just kept kind of waiting for the "wrestling match" to start, if that makes sense, and I felt like it never did. It just felt like a beating, who can hit each other with more of the same repeated stiff strikes. So my question is, is this a typical Kenny Omega match? Is it a typical pre-WWE Bryan Danielson match? Is it just representative of the typical workrate style du jour in general? I haven't seen enough of Omega, Danielson or wrestling in 2021 to really know the answer to that, so I'm asking. I don't get the hype about Omega at all, but that's a snap judgment from a very limited sample. Something about him leaves me cold, and I don't see what he does in-ring that sets him apart from literally any technically good guy going long and having indy epics. He's Adam Cole to me, and I don't mean that as a good thing because I feel the same indifference towards him. So maybe it's me and the house style, so to speak, has passed me by since the mid-2010s. I felt the same watching All Out at times, whether it's the proliferation of no selling and "take turns" mirrored no selling, or just the fact that so many guys seemingly have a strike or strikes that looks like a death blow to the head that they hit ten times a match without winning. Like, literally. Where are the moves?

I just signed up for the Fite trial for the same reason, except I can't watch live. I can't even remember the last time I avoided the internet so I could watch wrestling on TV spoiler free. It was probably like 2011 when I was obsessed with Smackdown. This is all still super weird, but in a good way.

I remember saying to I think Loss on Twitter, when people started eulogizing NXT, that you can treat Takeover Nola as the series finale for the Golden Age of NXT that began in 2013 or so and it's a hell of a five year run of wrestling television. If Gargano and Ciampa had graduated to the main roster after that and the cycle continued maybe NXT could have kept on trucking as Hunter's Super Indy for a while longer (at least until they tried to put it against AEW). A lot of their issues pre-AEW stemmed from those guys not getting off the train and causing the talent backlog. But then that's ultimately the fault of Vince and Creative for making the main shows so bad that talent actually preferred to stay in developmental forever rather than work Wrestlemania.

In fact 9 out of the top 10 of those shows had The Rock or Brock Lesnar. Of course it's not a coincidence that those guys always appear on the biggest shows, but yeah.

I kind of agree with both of you in that Page has been absent for this whole post-Punk period (so to speak) and completely new fans wouldn't know him from Adam. So to speak. I'd be in that boat, I know enough from reading about it but I've literally never seen Hangman before in my life. BUT I also agree with El P that if you just bring him back in a big moment where he looks like a star that's all you need. AEW have the momentum to do it. Also, I don't think you need Kingston to BEAT Miro in New York. Just to do the match. I think Kingston coming out for a title match in front of like 20k hometown fans going apeshit for him in the biggest match of his life is where he wins. Has Jungle Boy lost to Miro yet? He seems like a natural candidate to eventually dethrone him. And I think there's lots of juice in Miro yet.

I'm torn between this and wanting Kingston to get his Miro rematch in NYC. (Assuming it means Suzuki is back for the NYC show.)

What does it say about the absolute fucking state of me that I still remember off the top of my head that MITB 2011 did 195,000 buys.

Also I just realised... they almost put the battle royal and Ruby's debut on the pre show. Happy accident, but how about we don't need to wait for happy accidents hey.

I can't even legally leave my house at the moment so COVID would have to be very, very willing. Locking you in for the AEW Down Under PPV in 2035.

Speaking of Jericho, it's funny to me that while it's so ubiquitous in AEW and I love metal, I still have never actually heard the song "Judas". Anyway, more shit I like about AEW at first glance: Everyone has friends! I like that so much of the roster are in these official-to-unofficial groups of friends who have each others' backs and occasionally valet or tag together. With so many people on the roster, coming out for your buddy's entrance is a great way to get your face on TV for a week without having time for anything else. You have natural tag team and 6 or 8 man tag matches to run once one guy from group A is fighting with a guy from group B. Or you can turn it into full blown Faction Warz. It also means that if someone gets attacked or beaten down, their friends are not far behind to make the save. It cuts out those interminable "Triple H 20 min beatdown" segments, and shows that the babyface that you like is actually liked by his friends he travels with every day! Imagine! It humanizes everyone who needs to be humanized. Think about how much it adds to Orange's act that he CBF but one thing he WILL get up for is supporting his friend in a big match! Think about how much it adds to the Hangman story that the Dark Order, newly crowned champions of friendship and positive support, embraced Page and showed him how to believe in himself. And for someone like me popping in to their first PPV or TV show, seeing the amount of guys who were there simply to valet their friend or congratulate them after a win or stand in the background of a promo... it makes the "AEWverse" (so to speak) seem HUGE. It gives the impression that there are SO MANY MORE people involved than just the guys wrestling on this particular show (which is true), and it makes you want to tune in to all the other shows to see what everyone else does. I love it. Another thing I absolutely LOVE is how much they emphasise WHERE they are. Everything about Punk's return and All Out was Chicago. It was a huge deal and for a couple of weeks Chicago has felt like the wrestling capital of the galaxy. It mattered that the shows were here. When they go to Cincinatti this week, it matters that they're there, because it's Moxley's hometown. It will matter when they go to New York, because that's where people like Kingston are from. It motherfucking mattered that Pittsburgh was Britt Baker's hometown. And it matters on a level so far beyond the trite WWE First Commandment: Thou Shalt Always Lose In Thy Hometown. It's truly laughable. These guys come off like conquering heroes for their people. It places them in the real world in a way, that they're an actual person who has an actual home and family and friends and roots, and connections to life beyond the company, but in a way that doesn't completely disregard who they are ON television as a wrestler. Another thing WWE fails immensely at. It will sell tickets in markets forever, not just because "I'm from Pittsburgh and therefore I love Britt Baker", but also "I have to see Britt Baker in front of the Pittsburgh crowd". And it comes off like a million bucks. And the more you establish these guys in their home markets and put them over and give them these moments, the more effective the eventual (and EXTREMELY INFREQUENT) "heel ruins the homecoming" angle will be. I could have kept this shorter and just said "They do all the things WWE should have been doing the entire time." But I guess they don't, and that's why we're all here. I love using the real songs too, another thing that you can only do with money, and another way they can outstrip WWE. I've literally been going around my house singing "Ruby Soho" and "KAZE NI NARE" like it's 2016 and I'm banging Nakamura's theme. Again, I haven't been this excited about a wrestling show since peak NXT.

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said by everyone, but for what it's worth, what a fantastic, home run show. Everything clicked, everything was good, every potential moment or surprise completely delivered and then over-delivered. The entire vibe of the company is on another level, where everything feels super exciting and groundbreaking, and we're all along for the ride together. All I know about AEW is stuff I read on here or Wrestling Twitter. Punk's return Rampage was the first show of theirs I ever watched. This is the first PPV. I know enough to know that there are a lot of moving pieces and long-term storylines and details to AEW booking. And yet, everything I watched made complete sense to me. Nothing was stupid or confusing without a backstory. Nothing was beaten over my head either. But everything mattered. It mattered and it was cool and I got it. AND, because I am a wrestling nerd in general, there were so many moments that DID hit me because I have a more extensive knowledge of certain people or styles or history. And I'm sure there were a million details that meant more to regular AEW fans than me, because they have that knowledge. And for people who are way closer to the mythical "casual" wrestling viewer tuning in without much background knowledge at all, you got CM Punk and Daniel Bryan and Jericho in a high-stakes match, plus all this cool new shit to blow you away, and all the signings make it look like the hot place to be. Like, you can see in an instant why AEW is winning the "demos" and all that shit, they are probably able to lure back a lot of lapsed wrestling viewers by simply just... putting on a good wrestling show. It's both the simplest and not simplest thing in the world, but that's really all I kept thinking during the show: This is how wrestling *used* to feel like (and I say that as a baby with absolutely zero experience with WCW or ECW or much of anything pre-WWE Corporate Monopoly). And to a lot of people in that *grew up on the Attitude Era* demo, people in their 30s now, this is exactly the kind of show for them. And for people like me and younger, who have never had experience with a truly competitive alternative, it's seriously a whole new fucking world. I know NXT is a punching bag right now, but it legit feels to me like the classic era of NXT, the first few years of Takeovers, with the same vibe of simply "This is just a good pro wrestling show." Weekly TV was short and sound and enjoyable, and Takeovers were rare big events that blew everyone away. I used to watch Takeovers in shock, because from one match to the next everything was good, everything worked perfectly, and the vibe was overwhelmingly fun and wholesome and exciting. It's that exact same feeling, except this is x 100 because NXT was a little hidey hole within WWE, and AEW is completely separate from that company and all it's foibles and mannerisms and verbiage and aesthetic and main roster and every piece of toxicity that threatened to leak in, and finally did. And AEW is on a completely different, major league scale. NXT was "What if WWE got to book their own smark show?" AEW is "What if the smarks got to book their own WWE?" I'm rambling now, but yeah I totally get it. I don't have the means or the time probably to get back to watching wrestling like I did, but I can see myself watching the PPVs and big TV shows and following along, in a way I never expected even as soon as a month ago. What stuck out to me most was Ruby. All through the battle royal I kept thinking, "When is Ruby's non-compete up again? What if it's not her and it's Mercedes or someone instead, I'd be fine but maybe the crowd would be disappointed..." And then when the Joker countdown began and the crowd chanted "RU-BY-SO-HO" I honestly thought to myself, "Okay, she's definitely coming because they wouldn't accept anyone else and AEW wouldn't let the crowd down here..." and sure enough. We've all been so destroyed that the idea of "Just give the fans whatever the fuck they want" is so insane to us, and yet it's making AEW the biggest deal ever by just doing it, because we as fans are all so legit fall-over happy at the idea of just getting what we want for a change with no catch. It's like that one night at Wrestlemania where Bryan goes over, but now we're allowed to be happy all the time? Not just once a year? Does not compute. Also Ruby's face when she came out and heard the pop she got destroyed me. She was this close to bursting into tears and losing it and you saw her literally square herself up just in time. Also at the end when she won and could let go, and the first thing she did was look up and say, "Hi Bryce!" and hug him... man. I cannot even. I keep getting distracted by the bigger picture, but Ruby is a perfect encapsulation of what's going on here for a generation of talent. Coming into the business with the giant WWE Monopoly and no competitor, making WWE and the prospect of winning titles and making the main roster and having Wrestlemania Moments (tm) and being One of Them the only real high achievement to aspire to in the business. And leaving anyone not on the WWE radar to a life on the indies getting by, or at best, featured at the TNA level. And then the unthinkable happens! Punk and Bryan get over and HHH gets his hands on developmental and suddenly the previously unwanted toys have a chance! We want small guys! And women! And indy geeks! And non-whites! Come on, the "boyhood dream" you had of working at WWE and getting a Wrestlemania Moment (tm) are suddenly possible! So you come and work in WWE and get these Moments and are so utterly grateful for WWE for being magnanimous enough to hire people they never saw as stars and giving them a chance for a big crowd to cheer for them. And now we come crashing back down to earth, because working for WWE is still working for WWE, 99% of the time. That 1% of "I got to main event a show!" or "I have my own action figure!" or "I had my Wrestlemania Moment (tm) in front of 100,000 people" is the carrot they dangle to get you to forget about the other 99%. The never ending road days (pre-), the travel expenses, the drudgery, the politicking and living on a knife's edge, the repetitiveness, the lack of creative input, the garbage TV. And while Bryan is also the 1% of guys who they never ever believed in but finally gave in, the other 99% of guys they don't see as stars will... never be stars. We all know the running joke of NXT call ups. The clock reaches midnight. The thing is, despite everything that sucks about working for WWE, there's never been a viable alternative that offered anything close to what WWE could. Not in terms of money, exposure, talent, or legacy. Until now. AEW has the creative freedom, in-ring possibilities, and potential for a bigger push. It has the reach and TV exposure. Work-life balance and a nice work environment. It also has the money to offer. And now it is very quickly creating its own legacy in wrestling, with the ability to provide Big Moments (tm) to wrestlers. That was the one thing WWE still has a monopoly on. Wrestlemania. That's it. But if Ruby can jump ship and have a bigger career moment in AEW than even having a match at Wrestlemania, so can any of them. And WWE slowly loses its last bargaining chip. I also think the Ruby move is important because if there is one thing AEW has always trailed behind in, it's the women's division. Once you establish AEW as the better option for women as much as the men, man. I don't really know what the weekly stuff is like, I just hear a lot of talk about it, but I like the women's roster a lot on paper, having seen I assume almost all of it here. Get Serena Deeb in full time and we're cooking, at least in terms of the top, and you have time to develop the Jade Cargills who look amazing and just need time to get good. KAZE NI NARE! I got stupidly invested in the tag title match and I was lucky that that's the one my girl sat down and watched with me. She was sold on Rey Fenix after the first highspot. They eventually lost her with the spiked shoe but because she can't handle gore in wrestling. What can you do. The cutesy stuff lost me a little by the end. I think if the match had gone from the spikes to the Penta Super Dooper Canadian Destroyer and then straight to the Fenix cage dive and finish, it would have been a perfect cage match. Still, amazing match, amazing moment, and amazing visual with Penta looking all the way fucked up. I have a feeling if I watched regularly the "house style" would lose me more. There is so much no selling and trading no selling and wobbling no selling and it's all just too much. As a one off too much is fine. Every week, yeah nah. Also the prevalence of trading spots. Not just throwing forearms or chops back and forth, but literally like "I give you a suplex, then you no sell and give me a suplex, then I run the ropes and give you a backbreaker, then you run the ropes and give me a backbreaker", like why do all moves have to be no-sold and mirrored? Don't people have moves that just work? Watching Punk's match was like watching a match transplanted from the 80s into the 21st century, when in fact it was only a match transplanted from 00s workrate into current day AEW workrate. Punk is 100% going to need to spend his time in meaningful, story-based feuds, and not spend too long in the "this is a dream match in and of itself" stage, because he's not going to deliver the kind of matches the crowd expects as a dream match anymore. That's not even a knock on the match, it's just that the wrestling style has changed so much since Punk left. Also the fucking genius of the Cole and Bryan thing. We all know enough to think Bryan is coming out here. We think, we hope, we work ourselves up to expect it, but we're not sure. But after all this thinking and hoping and expecting, it would be disappointing if it didn't happen, even though nobody told us it would. It's hard to live up to those kind of illogical expectations. So the main event is Omega over Punk, surely something is happening afterwards. Sure enough, we get the beatdown and the promo. And out comes... Adam Cole. Quite possibly the one person on earth who could be put in Bryan's spot here and not completely disappoint the crowd, because they love Adam Cole. So you get surprise #1. THEN instead of making a big debut as a face and confronting Omega, we get the SWERVE~ and he turns heel and joins the Elite. Surprise #2. THEN you DO get Bryan after all! He's here! Surprise #3, the biggest of all! So on paper, you get exactly what you thought, hoped and expected to happen: Bryan debuting by confronting Omega to close the show. BUT they did it in such a way that it was still a HUGE surprise when he came out and you got a whole bonus person as well. Somehow meeting everyone's illogical expectations and completely surpassing them at the same time. Remember in the beginning when I said I didn't have much to add? I haven't had thoughts about wrestling in a while and now they won't stop.

Much appreciated. I've been up all night so words don't mean words anymore.

Guys if I can figure out Fite TV after a night shift, I might actually purchase this show. I've never spent money on a live non-WWE show in my life. I don't even watch wrestling anymore!

August 22nd NXT TAKEOVER: BROOKLYN - Sasha Banks vs. Bayley - NXT Title What a time Brooklyn was. It's a show that doesn't lose a thing watching it back now. The magic of NXT during that time was just something else. I had completely forgotten that Steph came out here before the match to suck her own dick. The thing that sticks out the most in 2021 is how hard they were trying to push the "Double Main Event" line, instead of just putting them in the main event. It's very... quaint, would be the nicest possible way to put it. The video package, on the other hand, is an amazing piece of business, weaving through the stories of Bayley and Sasha rising through NXT, with the story of everyone turning on Bayley while she stayed true to herself, plus now being left for dead by the other Horsewomen going to the main roster, all leading into this title chase and her NEEDING to win this match. Everything about this rules. So Bayley comes out in fucking 'Merican Dweem polka dots. Stop it! Sasha has worked Raws and PPVs by now, but this was Bayley's first ever big arena show. She must have been going nuts. And not to be outdone Sasha ROLLS OUT IN A CADDY. Imagine Eddie Guerrero being your favourite wrestler and you are granted a wish from a genie to just cosplay as him in WWE whenever you want your entire career. By the time she comes out in this car wearing her PPV coat and is lifted up onto the apron by her security team, she looks like the coolest fucking person on earth. Every. Thing. About. This. Rules. The first cool moment was the debut of the Bayley springboard elbow in the corner, which actually looked super organic, since it was the first time, plus Sasha leaned into it so naturally without looking like she was feeding for it. Sasha is ri-fucking-diculous. Like seriously, ridiculous. I say this in every one of my reviews from 2015 and I am running out of words for her. She misses the knees, but then shoves Bayley to the floor HARD, mocks her, and beats the shit out of her. Then she misses the knees AGAIN, but Sasha headscissors her back into the corner, beats more shit out of her, and goes up the top to hit the FUCK YOU SUPER DOOPER KNEES! That was one of those spots where you can see the crowd literally rise to their feet in anticipation of this big move. Great way to bust out something big for this, plus show how hard Bayley made her work to hit the knees, and how determined Sasha was to actually hit them. The work and the moves and the physicality is so great, from both, but everything still centres around the story. The match starts with Sasha getting in Bayley's face and bitching at her, which only fires Bayley up to start unloading offense on her. After the big knees, Sasha again goes back to bitching in Bayley's face, telling her she's not good enough, telling her she'll never be champion, all the things she kept telling her during the build. Every word is just fuel for Bayley's fire, and she comes right back but BAM - Sasha turns to the weakness she was always going to exploit: the injured hand. She whacks it, pulls all the strapping off, then jams the hand between the steps and the ring and KICKS THE STEPS INTO HER MOTHER FUCKING CHRISTING HAND. Then as the ref checks on Bayley through the ropes Sasha busts out the REY MYSTERIO JUNIOR SOMERSAULT SENTON OVER THE REF'S BACK~! The girl just does what she wants. And she can do what she wants, because when the time comes she EATS ALLLLLL THE SHIT. Sasha tries to do a fucking rope walk lucha armdrag by squeezing the bad hand, but Bayley just HURLS HER INTO NEXT WEEK to block it. There's a great strike battle here, where Bayley can't use her broken right hand, and is forced to just throw these awkward left armed forearms as hard as she can until she can make a comeback. Bayley attempts a Belly To Belly, but Sasha avoids it and hits A FUCKING BANK STATEMENT TO BAYLEY'S BAD ARM AND PUTS ON THE BANK STATEMENT! Bayley reaches for the ropes with her bad hand and SASHA STOMPS THE FUCK OUT OF HER BROKEN FUCKING HAND! I can feel this moment in my BONES, I swear to fuck. A moment where this went from awesome to something different altogether, something transcendent. Bayley reaches the ropes with her left hand instead, but Sasha pushes off them with her foot to flip over and continue, only for Bayley to REVERSE INTO HER OWN CROSSFACE. Sasha is so desperate selling this and grabbing for the ropes. HUGE momentum changer. Bayley picks Sasha up by the legs and flips her up to her feet and IMMEDIATELY HITS THE BELLY TO BELLY! SASHA KICKS AT 2!! Crowd is going BANANA at this point, and so am I. Holy fucking shit. It can't be stated enough just how fucking smart these girls are. Just how much you are rewarded for watching along every week and following their journey. On the road to Brooklyn, Bayley finally beat Charlotte by hitting a Super B2B off the top. So when Sasha kicked out of her B2B here, what does she do? She throws her up top to try the Super version. But Sasha is Sasha Fucking Banks, and she blocks it, tosses Bayley off and SPIKES HER ON HER FUCKING HEAD, and hits her own SUPER METEORA KNEES for a big nearfall. Now both of them are looking for a super dooper death move to finish this off, so Sasha puts Bayley back on the top. This time Bayley blocks her and HITS THE SUPER DOOPER POISON RANA OF DEATH AND DOOM!!! SASHA IS KILLED DEAD, BAYLEY IS AFLAME, THE CROWD IS LEVITATING, PULL THE PONY, BELLY TO BELLY, ONE TWO FUCKING THREE. Bayley bursts into tears. Charlotte and Becky run out and hug her. Sasha eventually gets up, and just straight up hugs Bayley with zero hesitation. No tease, no kayfabe, just real emotion and love and feeling and the universe converging to create magic in the vibrations between human beings. This was the culmination of so many things at once. From a storyline perspective, it was the end of Bayley's long road to the NXT Title, and really her entire character arc, going from the naive fangirl of 2013 to the matured, focused ace of the division we have now. Beyond that, it also felt like the end result of everything the women had been building the division towards since NXT began. The Bayley character actually started during the first NXT Women's Title tournament (with the Paige/Emma final) and really everything they've been doing since has lead to this moment of utter triumph. Even if it was a "co-main event", it was undoubtedly a BIG FUCKING DEAL. Sometimes in WWE's history the women have had certain opportunities; they've had a good storyline to work with, or they've had the luxury of getting *time* for a match, or they've been given licence to go wild physically, or they've been made to feel important for once. I don't think any two women in WWE, in the history of the company, have ever had all of those things at once the way these two did here. They'd never truly been given a chance to knock it out of the park like this, and they not only knocked this one out, it left the stadium and I'm pretty sure left earth's orbit on the way to the moon. Now everyone is crying. I'M crying. And they do the big Four Horsewomen Curtain Call. Watching it back I enjoyed spotting Becky tell the others to pose to all four sides of the ring for the crowd. The veteran. This match is beautiful, it is everything, it is far, far more than pro wrestling. It is perfect.

NXT TV August 5th 2015 - Bayley vs. Charlotte Flair Bayley has begun her road to Brooklyn, she'd been out with a broken hand and returned, still bandaged up, and set upon her goal of working towards the NXT Women's Title. She had just beaten Emma, whom she'd been feuding with for months, and challenged Charlotte to a match. Bayley has been chasing that win over Charlotte for literally years, ever since Charlotte turned on her originally in 2013. Bayley chased her for the title in 2014, couldn't beat her. The four way from Takeover Rival was still built around Bayley chasing Charlotte, but then Sasha won the belt and that big victory still eluded her. Now she's chasing Sasha, but Bayley knows that she has to go through Charlotte first, even just for her own satisfaction. It's the one big accomplishment that she needs to tick off, besides winning the title itself. They start out with a handshake, everyone is a babyface now, and they get going. Bayley hits the first tackle, and Charlotte immediately kips up. Fuck you and your dreams Bayley, Charlotte is still Charlotte. Bayley is on a mission and hits a flurry of offense early, including the dropkick through the turnbuckle, all the way until she hits the corner, somersaults out, waves her a-BIG BOOT CUTOFF. Bayley gets cut off but never really succumbs to any kind of heat, she just keeps unloading all the offense she can think of, and caps it with a huge FRANKENSTEINER OFF THE TOP! This kid is DETERMINED. That spot woke the crowd up too, they started out polite and even had duelling chants with the persistent rudo section from mid 2015, and by the stretch they were going apeshit for everything. From here it was just bomb after bomb, a battle of wills. Charlotte hits a neckbreaker-spear combo. She does the Figure Four, but can't bridge, and Bayley reverses it. They do a backslide sequence, and Bayley's lightbulb goes off and she flips out of the corner Bret-style and lands right in a BELLY TO BELLY! Charlotte kicks out! Bayley hits a sweet German, but then gets rolled up into the bottom turnbuckle and eats it. Charlotte goes up top and Bayley hits the SUPER BELLY TO BELLY to finally, ultimately, definitively pin Charlotte. A pin she's been chasing for two years. Izzy is bawling at ringside, and Bayley gives her a headband after the match, in I think the first inkling that she would become a recurring character in the ensuing months. This match was very stretch-heavy, but it was a great stretch, the big moves popped, and they really made this feel like a meaningful result. It felt like Bayley's whole title chase was at stake here - if she couldn't beat Charlotte, she couldn't go on to win the title.

Main Event 29th July 2015 - Becky Lynch vs. Brie Bella This is Becky Lynch's first singles match on the main roster, albeit on a C show. She didn't take long to start making history, because I feel like this is clearly, at least through 2015, the best match Brie Bella ever had. There is an AMAZING moment early where the bloke on PBP is putting over Becky's performance at Takeover Unstoppable and Jerry Lawler, with a completely straight face, goes, "Yeah, that was awesome!" There is a 100% chance that he had NO FUCKING IDEA ON EARTH what he was talking about. Anyway, this match was Actually Good. Becky shines early going for arm holds, working the arm, and seems to be so shoot excited that she's kind of wobbly, which they explain by stating the obvious saying that it's main roster nerves, which I like as an extension of the NXT style of "Enhance the story by just showing their real emotion." We get a neat story where Becky is going for the arm early, but then she gets posted and Brie is the one that takes over with arm work. She looks good doing it, and throws in nifty stuff you wouldn't expect, like a cross armbreaker with her foot in Becky's face, all nice and rough. Full credit to Brie, she not only stepped up physically for this but she was calling the match, and I know that because she was yelling louder than Cena throughout. Becky made a nice comeback and Brie cuts her off by going back to the arm. She hangs Becky's arm on the rope and hits a HUGE missile dropkick for a big nearfall. In the end Brie Bella actually does LA MAGISTRAL and Becky rolls right into the armbar and wins. This was just good shit, and like I said I believe the career Brie Bella match, if anyone was wondering. Judging from the rest of 2015, Becky Lynch is FAR AND AWAY Brie's best match up, and it's a real feather in Becky's cap that she was always able to work so well with her.