Jimmy Redman

Yeah frankly if there was anything offensive or embarrassing about the whole thing, it was Punk saying this. I almost did a cartoon spit take when I heard him say that on a Countdown. He fucking what.

I can probably put together a decent Stomper List for AJ Styles in TNA if anyone needs it.

New post-brand split yeah.

Miz trolling Bryan with movez is fantastic.

I thought Zack vs Dar was good, but there was a moment where Dar threw a tope for no reason that made me realise that for the cruiser division on Raw, there needs to be a heel who's gimmick is knocking a guy to the floor, feigning to run for a dive and then stopping, flipping off the crowd and telling the ref to start the countout. It's not a dynamic that works for the CWC, but on Raw someone has to be the anti-cruiserweight. Dar works for that spot since he seems like a natural heel and is billed as a ground guy. Anyway I liked this just fine (more than I was expecting maybe) with the dueling limbwork, and the fact that Dar abandoning the leg for the arm was his downfall. Finish looked disgusting. TJP/Swann exceeded my expectations and was pretty good. I liked the use of the cutesy dance-off stuff early, and how Swann in particular used it to transition into something more serious by taking it personally. I also liked how they got to the legwork, with Swann landing on it, but TJP not going after it and the announcers wondering why, until they realised that maybe he didn't see Swann get hurt...until he DID see it and then started working on it. It was really well done, a good example of making things seem "real" as they play out in front of you. Swann sold the leg well, and TJ having his own bad back to deal with added another wrinkle. Finish was a little movesy but still, good stuff. On another note, I kind of dig how so many of these matches involve injuries and limb work angles. There are a lot of them, but it fits in so well with the whole pure sports build~! of it all. Along with the idea of competing wrestling styles and jetlag and stuff, is also the idea that the match is a fight and in a fight if you're doing a bunch of moves designed to weaken or hurt the other guy, they're likely to get injured to some degree. If you're doing a bunch of moves called "high risk", it makes sense that sometimes you end up injuring yourself attempting something. And then it makes sense for the other guy to exploit your injury. It's not just the magic of pro wrestling moves that allows guys to hit them one after the other for two counts until one magic move gets the three count at the end. There's a logic there, both to the moves used during the match, and to why the match ends the way it does - usually because an injured limb is put in a submission hold or buckles at the wrong moment or whatever. Pure sportz build~! The semis look wide open which is cool. They played it up like Zack was injured coming out of his match so maybe that plays into the semi and gives him an out to lose to Metalik. Ibushi is the biggest star but they push him so much that I can see an upset happening, particularly since he isn't signing up. But Ibushi vs Metalik is probably the best finals match on paper.

I like how everyone is so legit worried about Sasha that they got such a convincing nearfall from her fake retirement/surgery. That pop when she mentioned Charlotte and the PPV was like a collective "Oh thank God she's not dead!" sigh of relief. I also like how Nia Jax is so intimidating that when Alicia Fox stepped to her backstage, Alicia did everything except actually try to fight her. "Well Nia, I challenge you...to walk away from me as quickly as possible." "I swear if you don't get out my face we're going to have to...continue this conversation." "Hey come back here! Let's...talk this out some more!"

I don't usually like to be this close minded about someone in developmental, but Angelo Dawkins is truly terrible. I mean, I've seen some barely trained women in this company. I've seen Khali. I've seen Mojo Rawley for God sakes. But I don't remember a single wrestler employed by WWE this century who is as physically unsuited to wrestling as Dawkins. He looks like doesn't know what moves are, like he hasn't spent a day in wrestling school. There are celebrities who had one match when they Guest Hosted Raw that one time who showed more physical competence for wrestling than a guy who has been training full time for three years in the best wrestling school money can buy. I don't understand. When Aaliyah gets her push she totally needs to use that folded-over submission as a finish that nobody can figure out or escape from and we'll all just pretend this match never happened. The good thing about NXT is that can legitimately happen. Bayley finally getting called up appears to have closed the book on what will be known as the Golden Era of women's wrestling in NXT. I am perfectly happy for them to start building it up again from scratch, testing the waters with all the next generation girls and seeing who does what, while periodically feeding one of them to Asuka as a ritual offering to the gods to ensure that the volcano doesn't erupt for another year. (This is the benefit to putting on a consistently good show and building up this kind of goodwill in your audience - when you lose some bodies and have to go through a rebuild the people will go with you, because they know what you can deliver and trust you to do so. Compare and contrast to watching Raw, where they have a good run but one bad episode makes you think "Well, looks like they're back to their shitty selves, I can check out again.") Revival beating down Ciampa and Ciampa doing his best Asuka impression was the best. I am on board with KENTA/Aries (did they ever wrestle?) and Roode/Jose. Shinsuke was Shinsuke. Joe's list of injuries that he conveniently forgot to mention to the doctor gives them a perfect reason to keep him off telly for a while to regroup, and Joe still looks like a badass. TM61 are a fun enough tag team but I have the same problem with them as I have with Buddy Murphy. Someone made the "wrestling is escapism, no one wants to get browbeaten by their annoying female boss" point the other day, and my version seems to be "wrestling is escapism, I don't want to watch these larger-than-life superstars and hear bogan coming out of their mouths."

JBL has been ranting about Big Match John since 2013 and it bears fruit when you come to a situation like this where, like Loss says, the pattern is finally broken.

Furthermore, this is all totally fucked up and I hate wrestling. Because they're putting Kendrick in the cruiserweight division on Raw and that's utter bullshit, not just because nobody deserves that kind of treatment, but because nothing, fucking NOTHING on earth would be more perfect than GM Bryan bringing in his best friend Brian Kendrick to face The Fucking Miz on Smackdown as his proxy. I mean...imagine the promos Miz would cut on Kendrick. And Kendrick's desperate, bug eyed, bawling, last chance, "nobody loves pro wrestling more than Brian Kendrick" indy veteran is the PERFECT foil for what The Miz currently has going on. Like, maybe even more perfect than Bryan is. Because at least Bryan reached the top of the mountain for a glorious moment in the sun, before dying for our sins and paying for it forever. Kendrick has never had that, he's given the same amount of years, toil and love to the business, destroyed his body just the same...just to be a 37 year old indy worker who's been given a bone in the CWC. So Miz kind of has even more legitimate ammunition to hurl at him since he's destroyed his body for nothing in that "argh that asshole heel is kind of right but I don't want to ever admit it" way, and Kendrick is even more fired up to get at Miz because not only would he love to beat the shit out of Miz for being Miz, not only could he avenge his best friend Bryan who can't defend himself, but winning the Intercontinental Title would legitimately be the biggest achievement of his career and this is his absolute last chance to accomplish something that meaningful in wrestling at his age. It's his CWC motivation, but times a hundred. Of course none of this will ever happen and now I'm upset.

Loss' argument is everything that I was thinking and trying to say about the match when it happened, but he's expressed it far more articulately than I could. So thank you. There are real world problems when you start breaking things down into "well, lots of guys have managed to pin Cena before.." and stuff, but the achievement of the match is in getting you to forget about all that WWE bullshit and just focus on this match and the story they're trying to tell. And they nailed the story they were telling. They can't account for shitty booking. They just had to make AJ's clean win seem as exciting and significant and earned as possible.

So that was something. This week I have no idea what to do with Mauro shouting things like "This ain't your grandfather's puroresu!", but Daniel Bryan was channeling his inner elliott by getting not one but two El Satanico name drops into this thing. Metalik/Tozawa was better than I expected going in, I was worried when they went into a horrid lazy puro forearm battle early, but damn by the end this turned out great. Great dives, great fire up/striking battles (eventually), great finish. This was Tozawa's best outing for sure. And yet I've already forgotten about it because HOLY SHIT AT KENDRICK VS IBUSHI. I had high hopes for this and they didn't let me down. This was something. I LOVED the opening. In some ways it was my favourite part of the whole thing. For the first two rounds Kendrick came out thinking he could win. He was desperate, but he was confident enough in himself that he could get the job done, IF he took the opportunities and shortcuts that were presented to him. They were fair fights. But now that he's up against tournament favourite Ibushi, he's just as desperate but he's not as sure of his chances this time. In fact he's kind of acting like he knows he's already lost. So from the opening bell he's doing the most basic, gauche cheating shit - going to the floor, taunting him, going for quick countouts...he's reaching, really reaching, and it's borderline pathetic, but this is what he feels like he has to do, because he just HAS TO win but he's also up against Ibushi so he's kind of fucking doomed. Those first two minutes did more to put over Ibushi as a threat than anything else we've yet seen. AND THEN...that neckbreaker on the turnbuckle. First of all, it was fucking boss as fuck and how has nobody done that move on a show that I've seen before. But second of all, that was THE moment, the great equalizer that fucked Ibushi's neck so much that it brought him back down to Kendrick's level and made it a fair fight. It reminded me so much of Taker injuring his leg during the second Shawn match, in the sense that it was just the luckiest, most opportune thing that could possibly happen to Kendrick in that moment. The one thing that gave him a legitimate chance. And of course Kendrick is scrappy and desperate and dangerous enough to target the neck like a total asshole, which was glorious. Ibushi for his part keeps himself in the game by constantly kicking Kendrick's fucking head off whenever he can. That outside-in German was motherfucking BONKERS AS SHIT and it still wasn't the coolest move of the match because BURNING FUCKING HAMMER MOTHERFUCKERS! I dunno man, I saw the replay and Ibushi took that thing right on his fucking head so I'm not entirely convinced that he's not dead in the ground right now and we're all in some kind of delirious denial phase but ok. Anyway it was sickness and a super nearfall and I was throwing things and then Kendrick countered the thing into the choke and I threw some more things and Jesus I haven't wanted someone to win a wrestling match that badly in a LONG time. And then after all that they get to the finish that was written in the stars at the opening bell. After the match when I saw Kendrick's eyes well up and heard Bryan's voice crack I totally lost it. Then they came back and he was bawling and the crowd was chanting and Bryan came down and fuck man. Just fuck. This show is the best.

People: Kevin Owens isn't believable in any way! People: I'm pretty sure Owens didn't know he was winning the title because he looked SHOCKED.

Dave is usually a hard marker for WWE workers over a certain height and weight limit.

After the end of the show I left thinking maybe Steph accepting Heyman's final apology was legit and thus if there's really some war brewing with Haitch, she has Heyman and Brock in her corner. To what end I don't know. Most likely, it was a waste of time segment designed to kill time and prompt Shane to act hard on SD to move towards the match.

Papa H is just hilarious.

I'm not really up with my 2014-15 so there may be a more recent example, but the last I can think of is the Mania XXX main event. Also, just before that was Orton's gauntlet run through all of the EC participants, that lead to great TV matches with Bryan, Cena, Cesaro, etc. So early 2014 may have been his last run of great work. There's also the Evolution/Shield tags that came just after Mania XXX.

The change in position and purpose (hey!) makes all the difference with me as far as appreciating Jericho. Earlier in the year when he was supposed to be doing things like "AJ and I had these classic face vs face matches" to start it off and then even after the turn where he counters AJ at every turn and they're portrayed as equals or mirror images in the ring, having "great matches" was part of the story they were telling, and so Jericho being noticeably not very good in the ring was dragging the whole thing down. AJ looked like an idiot when he had to slow down for him, or when Jericho botched all of the moves he was supposed to be showing off, or when being pinned clean by him at Mania. His character work was fine even then, it was always fine. He just couldn't deliver on what it was promising when it came to the matches. Now that he's fully positioned as an old sleaze in a tag team and it's not important for him to be keeping up in the ring with the best guys on the roster, it works a million times better and yes, he's doing great work right now.

For y'alls information, Prisoner has been given the reboot treatment in the guise of a new show, Wentworth, which has the same setting and same scary guard, but in modern TV drama form. Worth a watch.

I think there's something to be said for Ki being one of the biggest wastes of talent/potential of the 21st century, since it was so often that his personality stopped him from getting further or remaining employed wherever he went. Remember, he signed with WWE at the same time Bryan did. He was/is his own worst enemy.

Mauro spending the first match shouting about MMA means this week he was channeling his inner Dave Meltzer on commentary. Apart from me ROFLing at him saying goofy as fuck lines like "Shades of the Pancrase fighting organisation~!" the opener wasn't anything, and I agree that trying to randomly shoehorn an intense strike battle into what was up until that point a pretty co operative-looking flippydo dance was lame. I actually liked Gulak/Zack quite a bit, I thought it was a huge step up from Zack's first round performance. I at least buy Gulak being a grittier fighter who will throw strikes and force Zack to toughen up a bit to compete in the clutch. And I think grapplefuck is another one of those things in wrestling that I am going to enjoy a lot more when filtered through the lens of WWE/NXT. I really liked the exchange that ended in the back suplex, and also the final moments. Zack is still unconvincing as a favourite but he did better here. Perkins/Gargano was good, but really only hit a high gear with the dive that re-injured Gargano's leg. I am so impressed with the foresight in factoring Takeover into a match that was taped weeks ago, and it gave the final stretch a hook. Perkins is great physically, but he has the kind of quiet, expressionless face that makes him look like he's just play acting as someone with charisma, instead of actually having charisma. In a week where we're talking a lot about the buckle bomb and the danger of moves that involve a guy being hurled into the furniture with no control, Gargano's Lawn Dart move looks scary and unnecessary as shit. I'd be perfectly happy if he limited that to once a year. Finish was inevitable but well done, since I still perked up at one or two of Johnny's nearfalls. For the quarters, the only safe calls I can make are Zack over Dar and Ibushi over Kendrick (sadly). The other two matches I can see going either way.

I think there's a point to be made about the language people use. Johnny is right in so far as we don't often hear about Hunter or Vince or any other male domineering GM/boss figure "emasculating" the wrestlers. They use other non-gendered words like "burying", even though they are basically playing the same role and treating the wrestlers the same way. So clearly - at least in this specific context of wrestling power struggles - emasculating is something that a woman does to a man. However, I think it is far more an interesting point to explore regarding language choices and gender, than it is evidence that therefore anyone who dislikes Steph McMahon being a misogynist. Especially when a. it is her job to get people to dislike her, and b. there is a long and well-documented list of perfectly legitimate grievances against Steph both as a performer and as a backstage whatever-she-is. Frankly putting forth the idea that anyone who hates her or criticises her is just being misogynist is horribly reductive, and is really not treating her as a human being with flaws and characteristics that can be debated on their merits, like anyone else in wrestling. On Steph, I thought she was fantastic in 2013, during the Daniel Bryan era. Post-Summerslam she and Hunter got a LOT of screen time for their heel stuff, and there was literally no single episode of Raw where they both performed that Steph didn't vastly outperform Hunter on the mic and as a character, even though Hunter was ostensibly the main heel boss. She's had bursts of being really good, and even today could probably pick up a mic and cut an awesome heel promo. Her main issue is her lack of selling and showing ass, which is effective in small doses, but tends to kill things dead when she doesn't have it in her to look vulnerable or get her comeuppance when the time comes. She learned from all of Hunter's worst instincts in that regard. Her match with Brie is a great example of that - she tormented her forever, and this was a rare opportunity for someone to actually get some physical retribution on her, but then they get to the match, and instead of telling the story of her getting her ass kicked by Brie, Steph saw it as an opportunity to show off how well she could wrestle after 3 kids and took the entire match. And then won! Steph has absolutely no idea how to be the heel who gets beat in the end. Which is the whole point of being a heel. So I mean I liked her in 2013. I like her in small doses, I can laugh at all of her transparent self-aggrandizing without getting mad about it, and I think she's a great promo in a technical sense, but she has such a lack of understanding of how to be a truly effective heel, which involves being able to give as well as take. Her and Hunter are a hell of a pair, but I'd argue Hunter has even shown himself a little more willing to sell than Steph has.

The best/worst thing about the Bryan and Miz thing was when Bryan was like "I was more impressed with Apollo Crews than you at Summerslam" and Miz was just dumbfounded. "He LOST!!" And he was right, Crews lost clean as a sheet in the ring, no cheating, no shortcuts, no bullshit. Miz won. And it's not even like Crews put in some massive "going down swinging" losing effort either. He just lost. There's no kayfabe justification there. Nor is there even any meta justification! Crews isn't a super worker, nor does he work the kind of hard-hitting, high-risk wrestling martyr style that Bryan was championing. So when it comes down to it, Bryan was basically saying... "CREWS HAS MOAR FLIPZ!!!11!~!!" He was sub-Youtube commenter in that moment and it was brutal.

I also think Dave's problem with attending WWE shows live is that he feels it's a completely different experience without commentary and the TV view and thus ends up having to watch the TV version later on anyway to be able to report on it properly.

No idea why you're surprised. It was announced weeks ago that Raw was getting the Cruiserweight division. I disagree with it too. With Bryan as Smackdown GM and CWC commentator, it made too much sense for SD to get the Cruisers, I guess. No I know, I'm not surprised. I'm just...*sigh* It's not even a Raw vs SD thing. I just don't wish the main roster on any of these guys.

...to Raw? RAW?? *sigh* If we must.