GOTNW

I don't really care for Zayn and his whole "Ricky Steamboat doing moves from Japan" deal. Miiz gave him a lot early on but he didn't do anything memorable, in fact he outshined his own control segment with his bump onto the steel steps, that's the kind of thing you'd expect from 2011 Dolph Ziggler. I like Zayn's Corner Exploder as a spot that looks nastier than it probably is but this was very basic and formulaic and Zayn's formula isn't one I really care about. I did love the way Miz locked his own hands when doing the Figure 4, how he acted during his entrance and that he actually uses the ropes for leverage like a proper heel. **1/2-**3/4

A battle of shtick so terrible it makes me long for 2016 Chris Jericho. At least his scarf is funny. It's still kind of shocking at times to see women's matches in WWE have good looking stuff, it would probably be less shocking if they weren't surrounded by a lot of sloppy work and eye-rolling set-ups. Forgettable but inoffensive.

This was the worst Tanahashi/Bad Luck Fale match ever. Corbin's stuff looks good and I liked the finish but man the body of the match was just dull. Can Ziggler disappear into the ether already? Seek out a GIF of Corbin's awesome Deep Six instead of watching the whole match.

A MOTYC out of nowhere. A trios match is a better setting for the type of insane spotfest they wanted to do than a singles match and all the faults of the Casas-Volador Jr. singles match were completely absent here. This is probably about as far as Casas could go in doing crazy athletic stuff and it was great, having him as the glue that holds the match together really helped, as did having Dragon Lee and Kamaitachi as the supporting crew, those guys are lunatics, I think about a minute or two into a match there was a Missile Dropkick countered into an Orange Crush Bomb or something equally ridiculous. This type of match can rule with the right lay out and amount of time and they hit it out of the park here. MONEY THROWN.

My anticipation of this match significantly subsided once Casas said in an interview he was going to wrestle Volador's style of match. Casas has carried Volador plenty of times in the past but this is probably the least of their singles matches, it was sad to see Casas overreach and botch his spots which you usually never see. It was still fun, and Casas' Sunset Flip Powerbomb bump was INSANE, but I'd rather see Casas do anything else than watch him do a Cena-Owens type of match against Volador Jr. ***

This was fun, I loved the way Park pushed the ref into Atlantis and put his feet on the ropes while going for a pin, it totally looked like the ref could conceivably miss it. Early chain wrestling was fun and Parka repeteadly going for Fujiwara Armbars at the end was neat. ***

Ultimo Guerrero's been pretty good since losing his mask, he played to the crowd a lot here but never really dropped selling in order to do so. His highspots (which included a badass sliding dropkick that knocked Rush off the apron and a diving lariat off the ramp in which he threw himself so hard he hit a fan in the first row) ruled. Still you watch this primarily to see Rush smash Ultimo Guerrero's head onto a wall and stomp on his head. ***1/4

Marco doesn't do much but his punch looks really good so that's good enough for me. He also did a couple of big dives that looked great. Rush sticks to being Rush here and doesn't do any german suplex no sells to infuriate me. Pretty cool finish with Marco kicking Rush in the balls and then punching the ref. ***

The beginning was clunky, I was wondering if Rush was going to be able to carry Lashley to a good match but before I had time for serious contemplation he started going this amazing stalling which he wed into a transition into his control segment that was him just kicking Lashley around and all my doubts were removed. I have to say though, as much as I love Rush these German Suplex no sell exchanges he's started doing are sub-Kurt Angle level trash. I forgive him because he stomps on people's heads in the corner like Kazunari Murakami and he almost killed himself with the bump on the Spear. **3/4

I have missed these two beating the shit out of each other. I could probably watch Rush pose and yell at fans for twenty minutes. There's nobody in wrestling that's as good as conveying being a dick as him. I loved the way he countered Casas' Scorpion Deathlock and Elite's awesome camera angles also added to the match. ***1/4

Rush vs. Maximo (CMLL 3/18/16)-YES see MDA for comments Nominating: HARASHIMA vs Shigehiro Irie (DDT 2/28) http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/34205-harashima-vs-shigehiro-irie-ddt-2282016/ AJ Styles, Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows vs Roman Reigns & The Usos (WWE Raw 5/2) http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/34231-aj-styles-karl-anderson-luke-gallows-vs-roman-reigns-the-usos-wwe-raw-522016/ Emma & Charlotte vs Becky Lynch & Natalya (WWE Smackdown 5/3) http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/34249-emma-charlotte-vs-becky-lynch-natalya-wwe-smackdown-532016/ AJ Styles, Luke Gallows & Karl Anderson vs Roman Reigns & The Usos (WWE Smackdown 5/3) http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/34251-aj-styles-luke-gallows-karl-anderson-vs-roman-reigns-the-usos-wwe-smackdown-532016/

My interpretation is that Yamamoto was just throwing them to piss Tamura off. The mind games in this match are an interesting beast-Tamura did throw the slap before the bell, but he also came off as cool and collected. This is best demoonstrated in Tamura managing to provoke Yamamoto to start hitting him with "serious" punches that the ref quickly punished him for. Eventually all hell broke loose so they'd both punch each other hard and the ref would just let them duke it out. Anyway. This has dethroned Takada-Koshinaka 5.8.1986. as my best match of all time, which is honestly something I never expected to happen. I still kind of wish Takada/Koshinaka was my #1. I certainly think it is the most ambitious and fascinating pro wrestling match ever. And it's the one match that I thought could have reached pro wrestling perfection. I did think it had some flaws (I didn't like a revenge tombstone and it had a blown spot or two too many). Still the way they seamlessly transitioned from using shoot style to junior to classic wrestling stuff is just unreal. This match wasn't as ambitious. It just happened to be the perfect shoot style match. And shoot style is my favourite pro wrestling style, and Tamura is the wrestler who best encompasses what I want out of shoot style. This is his masterpiece. It's hard to put the beauty of some of the grappling sequences into words. Does "the best stuff ever done in wrestling" sound like a good enough visual image? If there's one thing I dislike about RINGS it's that I feel they sometimes used rope breaks as a cheap way to generate heat and kick things into another gear. That's pretty much everything Tamura stands against as a wrestling character. He refuses to use rope breaks unless he is in mortal danger. He's always looking for a counter to a submission. Maybe it's his supposed inferiority complex, maybe it's his insane drive to be the best-it doesn't really matter one way or the other. I love the way this match progressed. The insanely hot crowd chanting both fighter's names before the beginning of the match is the kind of stuff that instantly slaps you in the face. That something so simple could add to the match so much. There's no wasted movement, no down time-it's not 20 minutes of nearfalls, but it is constant action. Not constant highspots even. But they're always looking for an opening. Always looking for a transition. There are several moments in the middle of the match where they tease you with a bigger submission nearfall only to counter of it. And the match builds and builds and then it just explodes into the most dramatic best thing to ever happen. Tamura and Yamamoto put on a clinic in selling fatigue-and even in the amazing final battle manage to throw in neat touches playing up to Tamura's character. Despite always being a wrestler who insisted on winning using his ground skills Tamura throws that all out of the water and dares Yamamoto to get up and continue their striking battle. It's an all time great moment based on his performance in the match and execution alone but the backstory adds to it as well. And when it's becoming obvious neither of them are going to prevail he shoots for a takedown right at the end to try to win, which may be the ultimate Tamura moment.

I'm as open minded when it comes to what can be great in wrestling as anyone. And I honestly can see someone thinking Jericho is a great worker right now. If you interpret him as a comedy worker, then, yeah, totally.

Fun quasi-hoss match, I loved Rusev's knee counter to Big E's Spear through the ropes and they did a nice job of incorporating the stable brawling into the match but I can't shake the feeling these guys are either too athletic for their own good or too short for the roles they're cast in. Rusev doing Spinning Heel Kicks just doesn't seem right. **3/4

I disagree with this as heavily as humanly possible. He is much closer to Chris Jericho than the best WWE workers.

Axel most certainly has the right bloodline to still be employed, I'm sure that The Rock likes working with him helps as well. This was the best Crews showcase match so far, no long chinlock and Axel took the less than anyone did vs. Crews and didn't work in a needlessly long chinlock in a 2 minute match. He also took a great over the top bump off a early Crews punch. Fun for what it was which is more than I can say for the other XX Crews main roster matches I've watched so far.

Rematch for the IC title. Ryder has a lot of fun babyface shtick but also adds some new stuff here like the neat slingshot splash and a final cut. Miz took a cool bump off Ryder's Apron Dropkick into the barricade and busted out a counter Liger Bomb out of nowhere which completely caught me off guard. These two did a good job of using learned psychology and I loved the finish with Miz just punching Ryder in the eye off a Maryse distraction. ***-***1/4

Going from Emma matches to this seems like a real downgrade. Man there are definitely better ways to spend my time than to watch these two do slow motion chain wrestling. Natalya does that one move of hers I like, the slingshot back suplex atomic drop followed by the cool back stomp. Stuff happens. Then Summer Rae viciously throws Natalya onto the ropes and kicks her out of the ring. Suplex on the floor! Seems kinda stupid to take bumps like that in a throwaway TV match but as the one person commenting on them-yeah I'm fine with them. Natalya dropping Summer Rae on her face and dragging her into the middle of the ring for the Sharpshooter finish looked really good. Props to whomever agented this.

Solid workrate match. I think Jericho's hilarious is way too hilarious for anyone to boo him. Him knocking the chair down at ringside, calling Ambrose silly names during the match and randomly attacking Ambrose out of nowhere were all awesome. Really only way anyone could boo him is if he was dangerously sloppy and seemed to hold down younger/better talent and well.....you know. They screwed up the set up to Zayn's rope walk DDT and Jericho recovered nicely after a Double Underhook Backbreaker match. Ambrose and Owens at commentary were amusing and this did a good job of incorporating the angle surrounding the match into the match itself. **3/4

After so many good TV matches I'm regreting ranking AJ Styles as high as I did on my GWE list a lot less. This was another *** match, what really stood out was AJ's amazing bumping, it's not that he'll overbump, he'll just take moves in ways that make them look as possibly dangerous as possible. He had an all time great Backstabber sell and just threw himself on Del Rio's Baseball Slide, I also loved the way he got out of the tree of woe. Styles' apron knee is a thing of beauty. Match had a lovely flash pin finish as well.

Not really shocking this was better than their Raw match that had to build to that terrible Wrestlemania match. Anyway. I enjoyed this mainly due to Emma's performance, she continues to build her case as a top 5 WWE worker in 2016. I loved the move where she went to roll up Paige but instead just slammed her into the corner, it looked vicious as does everything she does. Paige and her three moves are ok I guess but don't look especially good even if Emma does her best to make them look so. Fun three minute match, really no reason why all other short TV matches shouldn't be like this.

This was neat as expected, Ryder is one of the few guys who knows how to work like a proper traditional babyface and is WWE's best JTTS currently. Corbin is also awesome, I love all of his strikes and he did an awesome looking choke where he just stood on Ryder and pushed his throat onto the bottom rope. The sternum bump seems to be used more often these days. Finish ruled as well, it's great whenever Corbin busts out the End Of Days in the middle of a sequence instead of doing the generic WWE set-up.

I got the feeling this match was at least somewhat famous. I remember being somewhat disappointed with it but it also having my favourite counter in pro wrestling history (Hashimoto cutting off Kawada's Jumping High Kick have to also mention-I pop big whenever english commentary says "gamengiri" which is just japanese for face kick).

I'm shocked they got so much time (~15 minutes on TV) but it was totally the right call. Man Miz is just fucking good right now. He can stooge and feed the faces so much because he's good enough that his character doesn't need to be presented as especially strong to be able to take big portions of the match if needed. When AJ goes for his Dropkick sequences Miz cuts him off and quickly slams him. This is smart, but also sets up a revenge spot of AJ Bodyslamming Miz later in the match AND builds to AJ successfully hitting the Dropkick. When Miz gets in the ring before AJ does he'll jump him as soon as AJ gets in there. And there was an awesome spot where he used Maryse as a human shield but instead of acting like a generic dumb WWE babyface AJ went around her only for Miz to catch him with a quick cheapshot. AJ did a good job of selling the leg injury and I liked the finish with Miz trying to run away and Gallows and Anderson preventing him from doing so, they've been presented as heels so far and I do see them turning on AJ eventually but you might as well build suspense with them helping him against heels as well. ***1/4

I love this match up so much, watching Ryback throw Kalisto around is great and they're awesome at incorporating the size difference into their matches. Kalisto took the nuttiest corner shoulder bump ever and the finishing stretch was an awesome battle with both of them countering each other's finishers in unique but logical and dope ways. ***1/4